There is a new program created sometime during the summer of 2007. It is a free program provided by the city of Los Angeles which gives all multi-family residential properties bins for recycling. This includes apartments, condos, town homes, and trailer parks. If the property contains more than five (5) units they will provide: the recycling bins, weekly pick-ups of materials, and educational materials for every unit. With more than 3.8 million inhabitants, it is certainly an area which needs to push towards a lifestyle of protecting the environment.
As a tenant myself, I have pushed to enrolling my apartment complex and neighboring building into the program. It is actually quite easy. You have two options. You can talk to your manager or property owning into calling the Bureau of Public Works (1-800-773-2489). Or you can call them and give them your manager or property owner’s name and number and they will attempt to convince them for you. The main reason I pushed for the program at my building is because I recycle regardless of the hassle, but I wanted to reduce the stresses associated with having to commit to it. It takes only about five minutes to call, but I would suggest visiting their website first for more information. If you want to increase public awareness you can download and post these fliers made by me (Recycling Flier).
Bureau of Public Works
Monday thru Saturday
7:30am-4:45pm
www.larecycles.org
Every day now, without fail, information seeps into my head about how much worse everything is in comparison to the past. Sex. Drugs. Violence. Global Warming. It is everywhere. But, is anybody doing anything about it? If I had to take a guess, it would be no. Not even a chance.
As an example, let us take into consideration of the waste we produce. Landfills, I have heard about this growing problem since being in the third or fourth grade (over a decade ago). There is a lot of talk on this subject every year and I am sure each person has seen the iconic recycle symbol everyday of their lives, but a majority of us still do not recycle. Personally, I would of started several years ago, if I would of known that it takes about five minutes to call ‘Waste Management’ and order a free recycling bin. Here are four of fifteen facts about waste from The Daily Green:
- Forests store 50% of the world’s terrestrial carbon. (In other words, they are awfully important “carbon sinks” that hold onto pollution that would otherwise lead to global warming.)
- Half the world’s forests have already been cleared or burned, and 80% of what’s left has been seriously degraded.
- 42% of the industrial wood harvest is used to make paper.
- The paper industry is the 4th largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions among United States manufacturing industries, and contributes 9% of the manufacturing sector’s carbon emissions.
- Paper accounts for 25% of landfill waste (and one third of municipal landfill waste).
However, on the good side the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that “in 2006, the national recycling rate of 32.5 percent (82 million tons recycled) prevented the release of approximately 49.7 million metric tons of carbon into the air–roughly the amount emitted annually by 39 million cars, or 1,300 trillion BTUs, saving energy equivalent to 10 billion gallons of gasoline.” This is an increase of the eight percent we had in 1990, but it just illuminates that only a small percentage of the population are making a serious effort towards fixing an issue that they are reminded about every day. There is a video created by Jorge Furtado called “Ilhas das Flores”. It can be found translated on YouTube.
If you would like to take action, find a problem and fix it. And there most certainly will always be problems, but that is no justification for no action. The best thing you can do for your environment is care. Care by recycling, reusing, and using your purchasing power to push the market towards a healthier future. More specific actions can be found at Zero Waste America.
Apple took a bite in the right direction with this statement. Unfortunately it was dropped in 2002 by the company when they began to realize their recently released iPod (October 2001) was going to be success. Why “Think” and why “different,” when the only possible choice for a mp3 product is from Apple’s iPod lineup. However, the corporation has always been a strong competitor, which explains their more recent success. My problem with the company is that they falsely advertise to their consumers.
To begin, they insisted with their “Think Different” campaign (with images of Gandhi, Lennon, and Cesar Chavez) to free ourselves from the norm. Basically, all the great minds did not join the bandwagon, but did something different and so should you. Or in case your mentally incapacitated, stop using Windows. And I would agree to a certain extent, Windows is not the best. But my problem with Apple does not manifest from a preference in operating systems. It is that with all this talk of freeing ourselves of social norms and pressures, that they had and still continue to have the most restrictive system of products.
For instance, lets say that I want to listen to the song “1234″ by Feist which played as the background music for their 3rd generation iPod nanos. I could hop on Limewire and download it in less than a minute for free. But today I am going to be a good samaritan and buy it legally. So I go to Apple’s website and realize in order to buy a song from them I have to download iTunes. So, I go and download the hefty 45 MB program and ten minutes later I got the song at a lousy 128 kilobits per second. Assuming the software works. One would assume since I paid money for this song that I would have all rights to do what I want with it, nope. FairPlay kicks in. More restrictions. Now, lets say theoretically I owned an iPod. It runs off of a USB cable so I should just be able to slap some songs on with no fuss. Yeah right, iTunes is required. The same is with all products related with Apple. If you want a OS X, then you need OS X hardware. Where do you buy Mac hardware? From Apple’s website of course, unless you can manage to find a local storefront. Another restriction. Basically, if you go Apple, then you are gung-ho about “simplicity” and personalizing your iLife. Or in case your mentally incapacitated, “Think Regime.”
As for their user base, Maddox articulates it perfectly in this article.
