6 AM Pacific

Reuse is Like Cutting Consumption in Half

If you are like me you don’t send Fedex packages too often (not yourself, at any rate). I happened to do that a couple of days ago and was quite tickled to see a simple change that Fedex had made to their envelope. You know, the one made out of stiff cardboard which looks like it can stop a bullet if need be to save the two sheets of paper inside.

Well, Fedex is doing its bit to save the planet. What they’ve done is they made the foldover (“lip”?) on the envelope longer and put two strips of adhesive instead of one. The first time you use the lower strip to seal the envelope. The receiving party opens the envelope using the handy “opener” (?) embedded into the fold. After opening it, there still remains one strip of unused adhesive which can be used to send out another fedex package.

I thought it was very ingenious. But the tubelight went off only after I had assiduously used both strips of adhesive to make doubly sure that my super important package was sealed shut!

Photo by hyku

Copenhagen – the Mother of all Negotiations

Who hasn’t been in a tough negotiation? If nothing else, negotiating with your kids can often be most difficult. But the negotiations at Copenhagen summit and next year on climate change are going to be the hairiest negotiations you can ever imagine.

An FT article [pay wall] shines some light on why the negotiations were so difficult. The biggest reason is of course that these are multi-lateral negotiations. And different groups have different interests. Developed countries want developing countries to make commitments on emission reductions while not over committing themselves. They also want transparency in developing country emission measurement.

Developing countries don’t want emission reductions to get in the way of development. They want developed countries to pay for clean technology.

There are a also a whole bunch of developing countries in Africa who are not significant emitters but will feel the brunt of climate change. They have nothing to give in the negotiations but a lot is at stake for them.

And then there are also a few heads of state like Chavez, Morales and Ahmadinejad, who simply use the stage to take potshots at the US and the West. But they still have to be invited to party.

Obviously, 170 independent actors can never achieve any consensus. So groups were formed. US, UK, Germany, France as representatives of the developed countries and China, India, Brazil and South Africa as representatives of the developing world. But this still wasn’t enough to get an agreement. The bulk of the world’s emission in the next 20 years is going to come out of the US and China. If only these two countries had sat down and thrashed it out, we would have had a deal.

The world is not going to be happy with their leaders if they don’t put their shoulders to the wheel and get a deal together soon in the new year.

Evoking Negative Images can make for Effective Messaging

The California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco has unmatched green credentials. A roof top garden called Living Roof, insulates the building. The solar canopy has 60,000 photo voltaic cells. The insulation in the walls is recycled denim. The disposable plates and forks in the cafeteria are compostable. All waste bins come in threes. The one that is generally called ‘trash’ carries a powerful message in its label. Brilliant.