Just realized

I’ve had my beloved Canon camera for a year now…I love that…just a random observation…

The iPhone

The iPhone is playing music right now, it’s also recording my thoughts in the form of this blog, and I can’t help but think of how cool this thing is… It’s true I waited for six hours on line starting at six in the morning….but I swear it’s worth it. After getting my phone activated, I started trying totext message with it immediately – realizing that it’s touchscreen would leave something to be desired – but not much… Honestly it’s great… But the real utility to be found with this phone is the fact that it basically does everything you need it to do… Everything.

I’m on a budget – it can track my expenses…I’m studying for an exam – it quizzes me while I’m on the go…I have a blog idea – yup, I wrote this entry while waiting for the bus…

I have lists of everything on here – abs to top it all off it plays music – I’m on love and it only took a week… short of a computer, I am more dependent on this device than any other.

The problems that it has had for me, have all been software related so far – no cut and paste , spotty support for the landscape keyboard – but all and all, this device IS prime time and I would wait in line for six hours again for it…

Waste Not Want Not

I was shocked today when I read a story in Reuter’s talking about the propensity of Briton’s to waste food. Some of the more shocking finds were:

* Briton’s wasted about 6 billion tonnes of food annually.

* Stopping the waste would result in a CO2 emissions reduction of 18 million tonnes annually, the same as    taking 1 in 5 cars off of the roads in Britain.
* The amount of discarded food would fill London’s Wembley Stadium EIGHT times.

Now I’m no saint as far as wasting and throwing away food, and I’m not at all suggesting that this is a problem that is limited to only Britain, but I couldn’t help but think about the implications of this seemingly harmless habit.  Everytime you throw away food, you are a) driving up the prices for everyone else and b)keeping good food out of the hands of people who probably need it. Like homeless people.

You are also driving up the price of oil and adding to carbon emissions.

I never even thought about the latter two as consequences of not eating your lima beans…

It makes me wonder if there could be a better way to prevent that type of waste from occurring.  Something like smaller packaging, purchasing food in bulk in a futures type of manner.  Local food co-op purchasing.

One of the things that I notice that I’ve wasted is eggs and canned vegetables.  Both of these are heavily packaged foods and no single person is going to eat an entire can of jalapeno chilies.  It just doesn’t happen.  Now that isn’t to say that you might not NEED an entire can of jalapeno chilies from time to time, just usually if you make something like chili and you make enough for yourself for the week, oftentimes the packaging size is incongruous with how much you are going to actually need.

It’s the classic hot dog/hot dog bun package conundrum.  Hot dogs packaged in groups of 12, buns in groups of 8.  Either way you end up purchasing WAY more of something than you need.  It’s “good” business, unintelligent economics.

So how can one solve that problem?

Reusable food containers.  Stop dispensing milk in disposable cartons.  Start putting milk in nalgene bottles.  Start making small, standardized, lightweight, leak-proof containers.  Start putting things like milk, yogurt, eggs, flour, bread, and processed vegetables and fruits in them.  Make grocery stores the place of packaging instead of the factories.

How does that help?

Well, for one it cuts down on the amount of space and equipment and energy that is dedicated to packaging in food processing plants.  That has immediate price benefits for not only consumers but also for food manufacturers.

Secondly, it reduces the amount of energy used to transport and refrigerate packaging.  If packaging is 2-3% of the weight of many foodstuffs, there is a large amount of energy that goes to refrigerate it.  There is also a large amount of energy that goes to transport it from place to place.  Imagine if we could reduce the amount of energy output/CO2 emissions by 2-3% with one policy solution.

Another thing that happens, is by putting packaging in the domain of grocery stores, you give businesses an incentive to encourage consumers to recycle.  If you put packaging in the area of the grocery stores, you not only lower the costs of their inputs, but you also give them the power to near permanently lower the amount of packaging turnover…

By doing this, you reduce not only the amount of energy and money that goes toward making packaging, but also the amount of energy and money that goes towards eliminating packaging.

It’s an interesting thing because it almost makes me wonder why our government hasn’t seen fit to tackle this problem.  I’d think that Republicans, with their family values and business/economics “accumen” would be all over this problem.  I’d think they would be trying to cut fat everywhere they could, both in businesses and in consumers – use terminology that they like – tax breaks for grocery stores who would implement recyclable packaging equipment into their locations.  Tax breaks for food manufacturers/processors who want to transport food in less packaging/do less packaging in their locations.

Another reason this would be good business?

By marketing the change in processing location as a strategy/tactic to reduce consumer prices and make food sales more environmentally sensitive/benign you tap into a LARGE reservoir of consumer sentiment and worry.  You motivate consumers to shop at your locations (even if it means driving farther).  You differentiate yourself from the competition in a meaningful and long-lasting manner.  You derive a great deal of “halo effect”.  The lens through which you are viewed is seemingly cleaned off.

Want more business?  Want more profits?  Want less costly food?  Want less pollution? Want less costly transportation bills?  Want less legislative oversight and control?  Want a better brand?

Waste Not Want Not..

Bike Messengers and Your Groceries

Imagine this scenario: You head to the local grocery store on your lunch break – you throw some fruit, vegetables, cereal, milk, and spices into a small basket and swipe your credit card. You hand the basket to the clerk and walk out of the store with what you want. Meanwhile, the clerk takes the basket to the back of the store – and your groceries get bagged and boxed. You head back to the office and get back to work. You head home a few hours later and when you get there – in your entryway is a package – filled with your groceries, temperature controlled and happy as a clam.

Delivery of groceries can work. It will work better if there is a brick and mortar store for customers to go to and pick their food themselves. It will work best if there is transit to and from the store that doesn’t require the shoppers to carry their groceries on a train or bus back to their homes. It will work best if there is a flexible delivery system and a method to get the groceries back as soon as possible and at as low a price as possible. This is why I suggest bikes. Bike messengers can cover a great deal of area in a limited amount of time. Dropped off at a key intersection by a panel van full of groceries and riders, a highly flexible and low emissions delivery network can be planned and realized in real-time. By updating the queue of groceries to be sent out every 15 minutes, there can be optimized routes and groceries delivered as quickly as possible.

But why? Well, simply this – if we can manage to encourage people to walk to the grocery store, or ride their bike, or ride the train to the store instead of driving their cars, we can increase the market for mass transit. Most people drive to the grocery store with little time, and they only want to get the groceries back in their car as quickly as possible and get back home. But they have to plan out a time to go to the store – they can’t do it during their lunch hour without getting in their car. They can’t have their groceries delivered at a time of their choosing.

But if it’s possible to offer this, wouldn’t people take a store up on the offer of delivery? Especially of canned and boxed goods. And since they wouldn’t need to necessarily come to the store, they could order online from the store. Delivery could be done quickly from a neighborhood store. My thought is that one van delivering the groceries of 200 people throughout a day is better than 200 individual car trips to and from that grocery store. What do people think?