When choosing to purchase a service or product..........

Over the last 2 weeks, the veterinary profession has featured on FairGo.  

To review the stories see:

• Wednesday 15th August 2012 - the initial story which caused an outcry from the profession for being unbalanced and unfair, regarding industry pricing.  
• Wednesday 22nd August 2012 - the followup that provided a more balanced story regarding varying prices between veterinary clinics.

The second story featured an comparison between a cheaper, high turnover veterinary clinic and a more expensive veterinary clinic.   

These reports looked at what care the patient received and the associated costs.  However one thing that was omitted by these reports  when looking at the different veterinary clinics was  the people.  Are the veterinary nurses paid a living wage? What about the veterinarians - are they paying themselves a reasonable wage? Are the hours reasonable for being able to have a life outside work? Do the staff get reasonable breaks during the day? and so on.

Photo source: www.verso.co.nz

This is an area often forgotten when considering whether a service is value for money and ethical.  

The same goes for the cheap t'shirt or other item of clothing you may come across for example.  If the price seems too good to be true it probably is.  Someone along the way was exploited to produce it for that cost. 

Remember, when making cost comparisons to not only consider the product or service quality and cost, but consider how the business looks after the people that are part of the chain the provide the product or service.  If your business is ethical and looks after its staff  - promote it.  Let your staff tell the story.  This is a marketing advantage.    

Let's not just be driven by price, let's be ethical consumers, not only on environmental issues but  the social issues too.  

I look forward to your thoughts and feedback.  

Kind Regards
Francesca

I'm too busy..........

Back in March, I blogged on Community.  In that article I mentioned the nine  fundamental human needs.  Just to remind you these are listed below and you can read more by clicking here:

(Affection, Creation, Freedom, Identity, Idleness, Participation, Protection, Subsistence, Understanding)

One of my colleagues sent me this link, where Tim Kreider has blogged on busy-ness.  

It struck a cord with me this week as I have really felt that busy-ness.  And as I read the post I thought about my own life and how I do actually often feel if I am not busy I am not contributing in some sub-conscious way.  I have always got a list of things that need to be done, which I work on and add to all the time and  just taking time to "pick more daisies" has been rare recently.   

There is always another side of it and that is busy-ness without actually achieving much.  We all know someone who always appears to be busy but achieves nothing.  Maybe you put yourself in that category.

Surely there is a happy medium where you are able to meet the 9 fundamentals of human needs including idleness without being run off you feet being "busy".

If I Had My Life Over - I'd Pick More Daisies

by Nadine Stair

If I had my life to live over, I'd dare to make more mistakes next time. I'd relax, I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I'd have fewer imaginary ones.

You see, I'm one of those people who lived sensibly and sanely, hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I've had my moments, and if I had to do it over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I've been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute. If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter than I have.

If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I would pick more daisies.

My Mum always liked this poem and I know that if she had known she was going to die at the young age of 63 she would have adhered to it more too.  She spent a lot of time in her life saying "When I retire............".  She didn't get that opportunity.  Don;t let that be you.  

Weekly challenge - to build idleness into your daily life.  Remember this is a fundamental human need.  Idleness for you may be different from what it is for me - it could be sitting and watching telly, it could be having coffee with friends, it could be sitting in the sun dozing and dreaming.  Don't save idleness and creativity for when you have more time or when you retire.  

I think the blog is right - you don't have to be scheduled every minute of every day to be happy, fulfilled and a contributor to society.   I love the reminder about kids having unscheduled playtime too.    

Of course if you thrive on being busy and it doesn't cause stress to you or impact on family, friends and other aspects of life then great!  If it does, take a moment to work out how to improve the situation.  Only you can take control of your own life.  

Have a great weekend.  

Kind Regards
Francesca

Being green...........

Presentation link
Last week I added the link from my presentation to the previous post for those who never got to listen, click here.  

In follow up to that presentation, I wanted to expand on a couple of points that came up for discussion................

Recycling vs truly cyclic
While recycling is far better than doing nothing, it is not the answer.  What we should be doing is looking at how the waste can be designed out of the system.  So when looking for solutions to problems that create waste think about options that could be implemented that design waste out of the system. 

Bio/degradable plastic bags
With regards to my comment on these that I forgot to continue the discussion on, relating to biodegradable plastic bags, unfortunately they are basically a just another problem.

Unfortunately they appeal to people that are trying to improve the environment, but they in fact cause as much of a problem, if not more.  If you must choose to use plastic bags, it is far better to use plastic ones that are recyclable like the supermarket bags than biodegradable plastic bags.  As per a previous post, with the biodegradable bags,  they have simply  added a polymer to them that makes them weaker and break into small pieces when exposed to sunlight.  The small pieces then get into waterways and into the food chain.  They can't be recycled so can't go that way and they also are no good in landfill because it is dark - they just stay like any other plastic.  Of course the best option is something that was sourced from a sustainable source, is reusable many times and  then fully biodegradable at the end of its life - cotton, hemp and paper may fall into this category, but check out the origins of the bag first.  

The really disappointing thing is that people choose them becasue they genuinely think they are better and want to do the right thing and someone up the food chain is making a lot of money about of praying on this.

Challenge
Whenever you are in a shop that offers you a biodegradable plastic bag, decline it and take the time to educate them why you are declining.  If they hear it enough times, someone will feed that information up the chain.  

Food for thought
To end this blog, I got this email from a colleague the other day and it is so true, I thought it was worth sharing:

Being Green

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.
The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days."

The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

She was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.

But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.



Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags.

But too bad we didn't do the green thing back then.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building.

We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that young lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room.. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.. 


Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn.. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?

Food for thought isn't it...............

Kind Regards
Francesca