Biodiesel: 15% War Required

Posted on February 23, 2008 in Save the World | 4 Comments

I love those “Biodiesel No War Required” bumper stickers, but I thought that they’re actually not completely accurate. Since the majority of biodiesel that is actually consumed is B85 (85% biodiesel, 15% petrol) I figured this would be more accurate.

No political statements implied, but if this pisses you off, then feel free to chime in on the comments or link to me from your blog and let the world know how much you hate me.

Starbucks Recycling & Other Feedback

Posted on October 3, 2007 in Save the World, That Pisses Me Off | 3 Comments

Dear Starbucks,

As a patron that visits mostly your Portland stores at least 20 times per month if not significantly more, including some necessary evening and afternoon caffeine injections, I find it really sad that your business decisions seem to include a lot of unnecessary waste.

This isn’t some rant about how you are evil by trying to conquer the world of coffee retailing (if you haven’t already) but some long-considered feedback about waste that is apparent to me as a consumer, and things that could be easily rectified.

Below you’ll find a few reasons that could be dealt with. I’ve even included some suggestions so I’m not one of those complainers that actually offers no input on how to make things better.

You don’t offer recycling for plastic, glass, or paper in your stores. At our office, we’ve decided to put your paper cups to good use for something (stay tuned for this one) since it pains me to toss them away at your store. We used to carry them back to our office to recycle, but that is so boring and would be unnecessary if you had a recycling container on-site. As a side note, it really frustrates me when I get a “double cup” from baristas. Isn’t that what the sleeve was intended for? Quick fix: Get some recycling bins from your local garbage suppliers and put them in the store. It doesn’t have to be fancy, just useful.

Only 10% recycled fiber in your cups? Come on now. 10% is barely anything. But I’m ignorant about food-container laws, so maybe this isn’t your fault. I’ll not press it. Quick fix: Have cups produced with higher recycled materials if possible.

Your “Song of the day” idea is great. But why print cards to give away? This is just more wasted paper and trash. Shame on you! Ya’ll are from Seattle, right? Aren’t you all tree-huggers up there, or is the money starting to get in the way of business decisions? Quick fix: Give away a different code every day on something like starbucks.com/song/ or print the code on your cups or the hot-sleeves.

You’re selling songs on itunes now instead of a CD. This is great! But please don’t make us buy cardboard to go download electronic music. But, at least this is a step in the right direction. Now if only I could recycle the cardboard after I download my music onto the laptop or ipod touch through the on-site t-mobile hotspot…

Also, please stop putting more add-on sale stuff into your stores. I know it’s nice to make more money (hey, I like it too) but I don’t want to buy a book or a stuffed animal with my morning coffee. The extra space could be used for expanding your food offerings (good job on the bacon-avacado-burrito thingy and the lunch salads) to include some items that are presumably healthier than the glazed donuts and chocolate coffee cake. I for one would by more food-ish items for breakfast or lunch.

Thanks for listening.

Starbucks Should Offer Recycling

Posted on July 28, 2007 in Save the World | Leave a Comment

For a company based in earthy Seattle, I think Starbucks might be a bit more geared toward recycling. I’m one of those customers that visits about 20-25 times per month, and I find it really annoying that they don’t offer a recycling station to deposit my drink container. I say “drink container” since I sometimes buy something in a can, or plastic/glass bottle.

Many local coffee shops give you the option for in-shop dining, but that’s not offered at Starbucks. At least they could offer a spot to recycle their containers rather than throwing them away.

I end up just hauling the containers back to either my office or house so I can recycle them there.

I Ran 5 Stoplights on Friday

Posted on May 13, 2007 in Save the World, That Pisses Me Off | Leave a Comment

I rambled earlier about how I can’t stand inefficiently timed traffic lights and how we could reduce idling emissions put out by cars just by having the lights timed better.

Sure, that would help a little, but I think what might help even more is to have them on sensors. It wouldn’t be too hard to retrofit radar sensors onto lights, although sure it might be a little costly. But what’s more costly - radar sensors or those under ground wires they bury?

Here’s the deal on Friday. I woke up at 4:45am, wide awake. After about 20 minutes tossing around, I decided to go to work early and off I go. While on the way, I came to 5 different traffic lights that allow side-street traffic to flow onto more major roads. Every single one turned red right as I got there, with NO ONE coming from the sidestreets. So instead of just sitting there waiting, I decided to go through after stopping.

It’s a known fact that cars pollute more during “cold start” conditions that can last for a varying amount of time depending on the vehicle, your driving habits, speed, etc, so I’ll use the “environmentally unfriendly” concept as an excuse, but it’s also super irritating to have a timed light turn red for NO REASON at all. Especially at 5am when the roads are empty. Here’s a quick solution - make these types of lights so the minor road is blinking red, and the major road is blinking yellow during certain hours of the day. Say like, 11pm to 6am, or whatever traffic surveys show as the low hours of driving.

I know, this is probably really nit-picky (I’ve been called that recently) but it seems like such a waste. And since Americans can’t figure out the “yield to the right” concept, this could be a good 2nd choice. Along with that, make it so the left turns are allowed without a separate signal during these times too. The more you safety-net everyone, the less likely they’ll live up to higher expectations - so give us a chance, the dumb ones will die, but that’s just part of nature.

Now, I’m not like a complete red-light-running fool. The lights that actually had a reason to change because of traffic or pedestrians, I stopped at. There were 2 of those. So on my commute 71% of the red lights I encountered were there to do nothing other than cause irritation, take me longer to get where I was going, and cause my car to pollute more and get worse gas mileage.

Plastic Bottles, Coconut Fuel & Solar Golf Carts

Posted on May 8, 2007 in Save the World | Leave a Comment

Check out this picture of plastic bottles, courtesy of Hydro. The one in the background is 3 Football fields worth (roughly 2.5 million) which is apparently the amount of plastic bottles used in the US every hour. At least according to this guy. Who knows if it’s completely accurate, but even at 50% that’s a huge amount of bottles. Why did we ever switch away from reusing glass for soda bottles - just because of the cost?

On a related “save the earth” note, Hayden sent an email about how a small island in Papua New Guinea is using coconut oil to power vehicles and generators. I think this is super cool, but it’s still not all that great. Isn’t the whole global warming problem because we’re putting off gases? Burning vegetables doesn’t cause gas? I really don’t know, but it seems like it would still. Sure, it’s a BIG step forward, and absolutely worth pursuing, but I think there could be better alternatives.

For example, while I was in Belize on Caye Caulker and Ambergris Caye checking out real estate in Belize and other stuff like that, I noticed that these islands had almost NO cars. Most were used for construction with a special permit. The modes of transport were walking, biking or golf carts. Keener and I talked about how cool it would be if one of these smaller islands were able to go 100% self sustaining from solar and wind power. Golf cart roofs would make an awesome spot for a solar panel to continually charge their batteries, and there is plenty of wind and solar to power houses too. I’d love to be involved in making something like that happen, just for the cool factor. So, when are we moving?

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