Bring back the Milk man

This week its idea sharing time

I am going to share my idea for creating a more sustainable community, and in return I ask that you share yours.

Remember we are thinking environmentally, socially and financially. This 6 petal flower diagram is useful to visualise how these aspects are connected when thinking about what denotes sustainable practice. 

My idea is to reinstate the local milk truck 

Instead of delivering bottles (glass or plastic), the milkie brings round a vat and you go out and fill your jug or bottle and pay for the volume you take.  Initially due to current rules and regulations this would be offering only pasteurised stuff, but then potentially as laws changes A2 and raw...... who knows. 

How cool would it be to bring the milkie back.  The milkie could also deliver  fresh bread and other local produce and maybe even other stuff. For example,  the local veterinary clinic could get them to deliver food ordered online by their clients for example.

Of course the milkie would use a highly efficient, electric vehicle and will have EFT POS facilities. 

NZ Milkman, Circa 1980's. Image source

There are many advantages to this system:

• Provides fresh milk delivered to your door
• Supports local businesses
• Reduces the number of plastic milk bottles going to landfill or recycling
• Ensures the milk stays in the dark until it is delivered to the end user (in the vat) and then the end user can put it in the fridge (just in case it really is true that milk kept in the dark tastes better). 
• Avoids many daily trips to the supermarket made by the majority of people who tend to buy milk and bread and other fresh items several times a week - reducing our reliance on fossil fuels
• Gets the neighbours out on the street talking to each other with a daily meeting point around the milk truck. Who knows what great ideas could stem from those daily meetings. 
• Employs a local person to be the milkie

What idea do you have that could help to create a more sustainable community?  

Now I am really looking forward to all your ideas!!

Have a great week.

The benefits of greening your building

Green buildings are good for your people and good for the bottom line too!

A growing body of evidence is showing that greener work spaces reduce absenteeism and use of sick leave, increase the profits of the business, and work-environment survey results improve, reduces respiratory allergies, asthma, depression and improve productivity.

Don't believe me?  Here is some research to support greening your building: 

• Effects of Green Buildings on Employee Health and Productivity
• Greener Buildings, Better Places, Healthier People
• Employee Productivity in a Sustainable Building

What can you do to improve your building?

1.  Make the stairs more inviting so people are encouraged to walk them - art, plants
2.  Double glaze windows
3.  Use a dehumidifier
4.  Create living walls/displays
5.  Frame natural settings outside through windows.  If a ground floor window looks out onto a waste land, consider what you can do to to make it a nicer view.  This might involve changing the layout of a room or doing something creative outside the window. 
6.  Create an inviting rest area for staff and a separate one for clients who need to wait around a bit.
7.  Maximise natural light. This makes people feel better. 

I am sure you can think of many more. 

Most people feel good about creating a better space so why not encourage the creativity of your staff - run a competition to improve the green characterisitcs of spaces in your building.  Give each team a small budget to help with it and then give the winning team a bigger prize. 



Inspiring waste reduction

Welcome back to term 3!

I finished last term with something light hearted.  Maybe it inspired some creativity over the term break.  Don't forget to share that creativity with everyone!

This term I am going to start with an inspiring waste reduction story.  But before I start, I just wanted to share the short story of waste.

Recycling
When it comes to recycling - in terms of plastics, which form the bulk of recycling, this is actually downcycling rather than a fully cyclic system.  Plastics lose strength over time so cannot keep being remade into products indefinitely. The recyclable plastic that comes your way might make it into another product of lower quality but eventually the quality of the recycled plastic is so low that it cannot be re-used, so it is sent to the landfill.   

It is also worth noting that of every recyclable product made - only around 20% make it to a recycling bin - 80% end up in landfill.  Go on, admit it, you have disposed of a recyclable container, especially when out and about and its hard to find the right bin.

Paper and metals have better recycling potential and paper products can of course be composted at the end of their natural life when they can no longer be recycled due to weaknesses in the fibres. 

Remember also that the process of recycling is very energy intensive and it would be far better to design a long lasting and reusable cyclic product than a single-use recyclable product.

Landfill
The way landfill is designed in the ideal situation is that nothing breaks down or is able to leach into the surrounding soil and therefore into waterways.  But remember, we only have one planet earth and every resource we will ever have is here already (exception - solar energy inputs from the sun).  So, any resource we send to landfill is a resource lost to us.  In addition to this, any organic products such as paper or food and garden waste that should have been redirected from landfill to recycling or compost will break down in a landfill situation and be sources of methane emissions.  Methane is a strong greenhouse gas.   When these products are dealt with correctly (e.g. recycling or composting), these emissions are minimised. 

So that's the story of waste, in a a very brief nutshell. 

Inspiring story
This inspiring story about a coffee shop shows you just want can be done if you but your mind to it.  Inspiring stuff indeed. 

Tell us what you are doing at home or workplace to create a cyclic system or to support business in a quest for better practices.  Sharing will help to seed ideas to other people and grow the good!

I look forward to your feedback.

Final word:  Don't forget to vote in this years Packaging Awards.  Go to www.unpackit.org.nz to vote for best and worst packaging.