Renew subscriptions online, save a tree

A thought occurred to me today, just as I was about to drop two magazine subscription renewal envelopes in the mailbox:

Why not do this online?

I subscribe to two monthly magazines, Wired and Harper's, and both have been bugging me for months to renew my subscription. Harper's even sent me a letter saying that, by renewing early, I could save them the cost of several more notices.

Now I realize what a smart idea that was. Renew early and save the company postage and printing costs AND save on the fuel it takes to ship that envelope from Red Oak, Iowa to my apartment in Jackson, Michigan. Harper's wins, and so does the environment.

But then I thought, shucks, I betcha I could do this online. Sure enough, both sites had a renewal section. All I needed was my name and address, and a debit card, and in two minutes both subscriptions were renewed. No postage needed, no mail infrastructure to engage, no check to write, no yucky envelope taste on my tongue.

I should've thought of this a long time ago...

Defending Apple's environmental record.

Giving all the guff that Apple has received lately about becoming more "green," it's no surprise that Apple would want to protect its reputation - especially considering it was founded by two liberals in Northern California.

I opened my shareholder meeting proxy vote ballot several weeks ago and found this little gem as one of the voting items:

TO CONSIDER A SHAREHOLDER PROPOSAL ENTITLED "AMEND CORPORATE BYLAWS ESTABLISHING A BOARD COMMITTEE ON SUSTAINABILITY", IF PROPERLY PRESENTED AT THE MEETING.

Could this be the work of board member Al Gore? Or pressure from groups like Greenpeace? Or maybe it's just Apple finally getting serious about recycling and sustainability.

Just how green is Apple? Before Greenpeace launched its campaign against Apple, highlighted by its mock apple.com site (that asks "We love our iPods, but can we lose the iWaste?"), Apple was phasing out production of lead-balloon CRT monitors beginning with the iMac G4. And according to Apple, the "greening" began ten years earlier:

Apple started recycling in 1994 and today we operate recycling programs in countries where more than 82% of all Macs and iPods are sold. By the end of this year, that figure will increase to 93%. Apple recycled 13 million pounds of e-waste in 2006, which is equal to 9.5% of the weight of all products Apple sold seven years earlier. We expect this percentage to grow to 13% in 2007, and to 20% in 2008. By 2010, we forecast recycling 19 million pounds of e-waste per year — nearly 30% of the product weight we sold seven years earlier.

Right. And just recently, Steve Jobs bragged about the MacBook Air's environmental laurels onstage at Macworld. Its LCD is mercury- and arsenic-free. The circuitry is PVC free, and Apple plans to "completely eliminate the use of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), brominated flame retardants (BFRs), and arsenic in its products by the end of 2008," according to its website.

Plus, as you can see from these pictures, the packaging is much smaller and more efficient than other Apple laptops - by almost half. Even the aluminum laptop enclosure can be recycled.

Like they did when the new iPod packaging was released in 2006, Apple was quick to mention that smaller packaging helps the environment by using less resources to haul cross-country.

(You can also use iPod packaging in more inventive ways - see here)

You can even recycle your iPod or a cell phone from any manufacturer. Apple includes the shipping label for you, so it doesn't cost a dime. Now that's cool.

What seems to plague Apple, a founding member of the US EPA ENERGY STAR program, is its lack of bragging. The company is known to be tight-lipped, on everything from new product launches to goings-on at its corporate headquarters, and when the company does brag, it's usually about usability breakthroughs and life-changing inventions. Here's an example: did you know Apple has a partnership with its hometown, Cupertino, CA, to recycle electronics free of charge? It doesn't even have to be an Apple product. They've been doing it since 2002.

Apple has used the same materials other computer makers use, but as the green tidal wave grew in strength, it quietly went about its business. Granted, pressure from the sustainability community has quickened Apple's pace in phasing out harmful chemicals and implementing take-back programs, but my feeling is the company would have reached its public "greeniness" eventually. It would've had to: Al Gore is a board member, remember?

Now Steve Jobs makes a point to bring up Apple's greening at every major public event. Never mind that they've been winning waste management awards as far back as eight years ago.

But any visitor to sites like Low End Mac, or even our own Newton community, knows that Macs have an incredibly long lifespan. People still use Mac SEs and Quadras for everyday use, seeing nothing wrong with running OS 8 and Netscape to do all their work. Browse eBay sometime and see what "obsolete" iMac G3s go for. Shucks, I've been craving an iMac G4 for a while now, and am still waiting for the price to come down low enough so I can snatch one.

Mac users hold onto their computers, or sell them so someone else can use them. Can you say that about a 1997-era Dell? Do you see kids lining up for 30,000 used HP laptops, priced at $48 a piece, like they do for iBooks?

I've experienced, first-hand, the type of recycling Apple users utilize: at a recent e-waste drive for my recycling group, a man dropped off an Apple IIc (which some folks still use as a gaming platform). Once I saw a Mac SE/30, and another time someone dropped a PowerBook 5300. In other words, it takes years for Apple users to finally say, "Okay, I've had this long enough, and don't use it day-to-day. Time to recycle." Is anyone going to recycle a used PowerBook G4? No. Never. It's going on eBay, and it's fetching several hundred dollars at auction's end. Used iBook G4s still go for almost as much as a brand new MacBook.

Take Newton users. Here is a dead-and-gone, by Apple's standards, product, and yet ten years after the last MessagePad came out the community is as big and as vibrant as ever. The iPhone has come and gone, and Newton users are still trading and swapping and modding their green-lit hearts out.

That's how Apple fans recycle their computers. They either keep using them, give them away, or sell them. Or tinker. Or upgrade. Or...

That doesn't mean Apple should slack in the recycling department. E-waste is a scary and growing problem, in this country and especially the third world, and Apple would be smart to keep its name out of that quagmire altogether. Apple has enough problems fending off criticism for its sweat-shop labor practices.

Dell teamed up with Goodwill to recycle old computers in my state (Michigan), and several others, which was a smart way to get its name out there in the fight against e-waste. Maybe Apple would want to do something similar: attach its name to a big program, and reap the PR benefits.

Maybe that's what this whole board committee on sustainability is about. Apple sees the growing awareness for environmentalism, and - if the board is smart - wants to do the right thing by its mostly-liberal fanbase.

Because that's the name of the game here. Apple, as a responsible and influential company, should be doing the right thing. Recycling and environmentally-friendly products help in the quest.

But in quiet ways, Apple (and Apple fans) has been doing some of this right along.

Thirsting for plastic.

Water is expensive.

This according to a New York Times column (Aug. 1, 2007) that pointed out if you got your eight glasses a day from bottled water, you could spend $1,400 every year. Compare that with the $0.49 it would cost from plain old tap water.

Consider this: all that plastic costs barrels of oil. All those bottles cost money and CO2 to ship cross-country. Only 23 percent of bottles are recycled, and states like Michigan don't offer a deposit as an incentive.

Recycling Jackson has reported on the thirst (pun intended) for recyclable plastics: companies can't collect enough used plastic bottles, even though the demand is high. Companies are willing to pay decent money for someone's used Aquafina (which is tap water anyway) bottle.

Plastic bags, however, are a totally different story. They're a pain in the ass, according to a Salon.com story about the difficulties of recycling the jelly-fish like bags:

"Every year, Americans throw away some 100 billion plastic bags after they've been used to transport a prescription home from the drugstore or a quart of milk from the grocery store. It's equivalent to dumping nearly 12 million barrels of oil," writes Katharine Mieszkowski.

Only one percent of those are recycled.

Some have said plastic is better than paper, but you can't grow more oil like you can more trees. "The only salient answer to paper or plastic is neither," says the article.

When I attended a Mariner's game during a recent Seattle, WA trip, I noticed that everywhere I looked there were bins for recycling plastic pop, juice, water, and - yes - beer bottles. And when the game was over (they lost to Texas by one point), the announcer even reminded the audience about the recycling bins.

What do Seattle Mariner fans know that we don't?

I'll admit: I'm a fan of bottled water. It tastes good, it's portable, and I can make a health and wellness justification when I bypass the sugared soda pop for a liter of the clear stuff.

But paying $1 or more for a bottle of the same stuff I flush in my toilet seems absurd, doesn't it? This is the same stuff I use to clean my dishes, wash my car, and brush my teeth. And it's still the safest and cleanest in the world. Some parched countries in the Sahara would give a lot for a teaspoon full of what I watch go down the drain every morning.

So recently I've started drinking plain tap water. And you know what? It's not that bad. I add a few drops of lemon juice if I don't like the taste, plop in a few ice cubes, and away I go. I'm not any less satisfied. My thirst is just as quenched, and I didn't contribute any more plastic molecules that will be around longer than the cockroach.

The critique is two-fold, involving both the use and waste of plastics and the mania behind obtaining fresh water from somewhere besides the garden hose. The more you think about it the more ridiculous it seems.

All that craziness has me thirsty. Time to grab a glass of cool, clear...

Well, you know the rest.

eJunkies anonymous.

I've made a big step in my life. One that has involved plenty of thoughtful analysis and probing soul-searching. It's nothing to be taken lightly. I have to do what's best for me.

I purchased compact fluorescent light bulbs.

Because I have to do what's best for the environment, too, and when I learned that most of a incandescent bulb's energy is lost to heat - and how I could save money on my electric bill - it just made sense. It's not often you'll get a household item that will pay for itself over time.

The deep, deep discount on Amazon.com ($4.99 for four bulbs) helped a lot, too.

So now when I turn on the lights at home I know I'll be helping the environment, saving on my energy costs, and reducing my impact on Global Warming - literally. Have you ever felt a lightbulb when it's on?

I think something clicked in my brain back when we learned about recycling and Earth Day in school. All that planting trees and three-Rs just made sense. Why waste?

Katie also handed me her old cell phone to recycling (or sell on eBay - we haven't decided yet), so I sent an e-mail out at work asking for anyone's old phone so I could take it to our recycling site. I also bought and distributed recycling bins around the office - especially near the copy and fax machines - so we can reduce our paper waste.

The funny thing is all this doesn't take much work. A few half-hours a week, and you can make a little bitty impact.

Considering we're all making a great big impact on the world at large - did you know the plastic we create will never go away? - it's shameful to think some people don't do anything.

It might be that I dig the warm, squishy feeling I get when I do something like e-cycle cell phones or batteries that would have otherwise ended up in the trash. I don't look for any recognition or thanks, but it always helps when people play along.

At work, when I asked for paper grocery bags to store all our to-be-recycled paper (it makes it easier to just toss the whole thing in the recycling bin), my coworkers came through in spades.

And after I sent out the e-mail, one coworker came up and gave me a cell phone she put in her desk. She didn't know what to do with it.

Little things like leaving lights on when no one's in the room, or throwing away a blank sheet of paper and not using it for scrap, or buying those stupid disposable mops that Swiffer is so proud of - it drives. Me. Crazy.

But I'm not interested in changing everyone's mind. It's impossible. I remember Dr. Renner picking on me in the newspaper office, saying he was going to crown me "resource managment czar" because I was such a pain about reusing paper and turning off lights. And this coming from a professor who would burn through reams of paper like a junkie with pharmacy keys.

Instead, I'll quietly go about doing my own thing - like those fancy new lightbulbs - and wait for the rest of the world to come to its senses.

*Click here to empty recycling bin*

This weekend, I strengthened my resolve to never let anything go to waste.

I was working at the Recycling Jackson drop-off site, a little cubby-hole of land where Jacksonites can drop off cans, bottles, newsprint, etc. to be recycled.

As a board member of Recycling Jackson, we're asked to volunteer a weekend or two a month to help out. No problem there - a little hard work never hurt anyone (but I learned that 16 and 17-year-olds hate volunteering their time, however - at least the ones I met).

Our organization is also starting an e-waste program, where folks can drop off old TVs, microwaves, and computers to be recycled or disposed of. Electronics tend to be stuffed with harmful gases and materials that can do some real damage to the environment, so the idea is we'll take care of it harm-free.

One lady pulls up in her van and drops off some computer equipment. I look in the back of her van and there glows, turquois-green, one of the original iMacs that Mr. Steve Jobs and company released unto the world in the late '90s.

"Does that thing still work?" I asked the lady.

"Yeah, our daughter used it, and we decided to upgrade," she said. "There's nothing wrong with it. It works fine."

Yoink.

I'm glad that there's a program to dispose of e-waste properly. I'm also glad that this lady didn't just chuck her Mac into the dumpster, smashing the screen and releasing who-knows-what into the atmosphere.

And I'm glad I got a free iMac. You betcha.

But then I thought, "Good Lord, is that what we've come to? A $1,000 piece of equipment is tossed in place of an updated version just a couple of years later?"

In other words, I have an issue with waste. Always have. I remember using the same waterbottle (an Aquafina 20 oz. model, I believe) through two years of my college career. When it got empty, I refilled it in the drinking fountain. It worked just fine.

I hate Styrafoam. I hate paper plates. And I really hate those new Swiffer dry mop thingies, where you use them and then toss the little static pad. What a waste.

Renner used to make fun of me for it. "We have a new czar of recycling," he used to tell me. "Don't you know some people say recycling uses more energy than it saves?"

This coming from the man who would make 200 copies of a three-page article for a 20-student class, and never went double-sided.

The idea that we can use something, throw it away after one use, and never look back disgusts me. But there is an opposite extreme. Take my gramma. She will use a hammer, lose it, and buy another one. Then she finds the old one. Now she's got a dozen hammers in her garage. She'll never run out as long as she's alive (unless she loses all of them - which is very possible).

So the system most of the world has in place - planned obsolescence, I believe it's called - just drives me crazy. I know that the iBook I just bought will be obsolete in a couple of years. And what can I do about it? Well, I can spend a butt-load to upgrade it, knowing that at some point all hardware reaches a ceiling. There's no durability. Not any more. All because companies want you to re-buy what they sell.

Take a lightbulb. There are lightbulbs out there that will last years and save you money over their lifetime. But most folks don't want to pay what they see as a higher price initially. It's madness! And some of the practices are downright sinister. Even Apple does it (here too)

Luckily there's a group of people out there who have found inventive ways to re-use electronics. Like making your iMac an aquarium.

So should my new seafoam beauty crash without the hope of recovery, I know I can make it into a great piece of urban art, like a Bauhausian kitty litter box. But it will not go to waste.

My car isn't the most stylish, or the fastest. But it sure gets me where I need to go. My clothes aren't that fashionable, and I often shop at Goodwill - and when I lose interest in an item, or it doesn't fit, I donate it back to Goodwill. It's a cycle.

There comes a time when a product's effectiveness and viability become absolutely terminal, and at that point I may replace it. But it better have lasted me a long time.

Give me something with a lifespan, damn it.

Or give me an iMac - and I'll put it to good use. I promise.