Holistic Business

Frankly, I don’t care. Come look at mine - you’ll see what I mean.

I was walking to the post office the other day and was, once again, angered by the pesticide warning flag on my next door neighbor’s lawn.

Hey, buddy - see the big grate in the street in front of my house? It’s called a storm drain. Water runs off your yard, flows into it, then goes into local streams, creeks, the river, and eventually the Atlantic Ocean.

Oh, you fish? DO YOU EAT THE FISH? How does it feel to know you are eating pesticides?

What’s the problem with clover and dandelions? Why this obsession with having the greenlest lawn?

I admit, most of our neighbors probably talk about us (What is with those people? Their yard looks like one big field of weeds!) Weeds to one person are wildflowers to another.

It’s not even the matter of how it looks - let’s put that aside.

Just think about it. How many homeowners are there in the US? What percentage of them get their lawn sprayed to protect against bugs and weeds? Just imagine how much poison ends up in our streams and rivers. It’s disgusting. For a real eye-opener, read this. Scroll down to the case studies (if you can stomach it).

If what they are putting on your lawn is so bad they have to put warning flags on it - do you really think all trace of that goes away? Do you let your children, grandchildren, pets, and other loved ones walk, sit, eat (in the case of little ones and pets) the grass?

OK, enough ranting, now for a little help.

We have throughout our town, brick walks in front of the houses. If you’ve ever lived with a brick walk, you know how weeds can find the tiniest spot to set root and just *don’t* want to be pulled out. Sometimes (again, I’m sure people talk) I end up having to mow our walk.

But, here is a great earth friendly weed killer recipe:

• one gallon white vinegar (smaller mixture, use 4 cups)

• 1 cup regular table salt (smaller mixture use 1/4 cup)

• couple squirts of liquid soap (dish or hand soap) - this is just to help the mixture cling to the weeds

You’ll want to heat up some of the vinegar to totally disolve the salt or your sprayer will get clogged. Also - don’t pour hot liquid into your sprayer, let it cool down. I just use one of those sprayers you can pick up at the garden center or grocery store.

In the morning, on a sunny day when there is little chance of rain - spray this mixture on the weeds. It works like a charm and does not injure any widlife (human or otherwise).

Try it and let me know what you think. I’ve got to do this myself this weekend.

I hope you’ll feel better about yourself and your contribution to a greener earth by using an environmentally friendly weed killer.

Namaste ~ ~ ~

Technorati Tags: pesticide warning flag, earth friendly, weed killer, environmentally friendly weed killer

Celebrate Spring and make a difference!

What a wonderful time of year to celebrate Mother Earth. I love Spring. It’s a time for naturally happening new beginnings and a great opportunity to make some changes for yourself.

To find out what local events you may be able to participate in go here. You may just want to plug in your state, if you put in your zip code, it won’t bring up local events outside of your immediate town.

One of the tips and the big push this year to contribute to not only more conscious living, but more money in your pocket is to switch out your light bulbs. We did this at home (which also includes my office) years ago and it makes such a huge difference. We change bulbs much less frequently and enjoy a savings on our utility bill.

Also, on the Earth Day Network Web site (just click on the Earth Day logo above) you can download various tips for what you can do at home and work and with your children to make the world a better place.

Make a change, every little bit counts!

~ ~ ~

Just a little side note: if you are a Holistic Business owner interested in networking - check out Holistic Business Networking. Network with like-minded professionals - make friends and grow your business!

Namaste ~ ~ ~

Technorati Tags: Mother Earth, Earth Day, Holistic Business, Holistic Business Networking

I shake my head an awful lot thinking, “it must be me”.

My 17-year old stepdaughter lost her cell phone. Most likely in the Newark International Airport. Yea, right - gone. Called and had the number shut off - no big deal. Maybe it will turn up in her bags . . .

Ten days later upon her return, off we go to the cell phone store. Well, she’s had a phone for a few years and is really, really careful - so last upgrade I did not go for the insurance. Ouch! Unless you are signing up for a new service agreement, the phones start around $200. Ouch!

Well, the young man waiting on us was looking at the account and noticed the phone that my 14-year old stepson has is insured.

Get this - he tells me to call the insurance department, hands me a card with their number on it, and report the insured phone missing. Then for just $50 they’ll send me a replacement.

WHAT??? But that’s not the phone that is lost. His reply - oh, don’t worry about it - people do it all the time.

Well, if that’s true it’s a crying shame. My mother’s voice actually played in my head at one point asking if everyone was jumping off a bridge would I do it too?

So, we had a discussion about ethics, honesty, and integrity and I hope the kids got something out of it. I explained that I didn’t really care if I was one in one thousand people who wouldn’t do that. It was not a matter of “getting caught” either. I’ll be the first one to complain about feeling as though I’m getting ripped off right and left (and I’m really pissed at Cingular right now for blocking calls to free conferencing numbers) but that still does not make it right in my book.

Is it me? Am I odd? Would you have done it?

P.S. We ended up finding someone selling the same model phone she lost on eBay for $50 and all ended well.

Technorati Tags: ethics, honesty, integrity

I’m very conscientious about reusing and recycling. I want to share some of my tips for running a environmentally responsible office. Of course, these are all things that are much easier to do in a small home-based office, but larger offices should be able to find ideas to carry into their day to day routine as well.

• Make it easy. Have a good size container right next to your garbage can for paper recycling - and use it! Ask yourself before you throw something in the garbage if it really belongs there. When you are paying bills (if you are still getting the paper version) the envelope and all inserts should go right in the recycle bin.

• When it comes to paper - reuse as much as possible. If you consistently print a lot out for proofing, reading, etc., when you are done with it and you don’t need to keep it - have a spot to put it. The next time you need to print something out for the same reason - print to the other side. You may need to experiment to see which way it feeds through your printer and may want to quickly put a highlighted line through the already used side to avoid confusion.

• If you have an overabundance of paper waiting to be reused on the other side, take some sheets, cut them in quarters and put near your home phone for message taking or use them for grocery lists, reminders, and other times you just need a little something to write on.

• Once you’ve totally exhausted all print use of the paper, decide if it has confidential information and needs to be shredded. If it does, start a pile of “clean” (nothing with messy ink, no credit cards, etc.) paper for shredding.

• After shredding, put a bag with your gift giving items to use for filler in gift bags. By putting bill inserts and other colorful paper in this pile you’ll have a nice mix of colors and textures.

• Printer cartridges - I think most office suppliers now offer a credit towards new cartridges when you bring the used one back. Now, you may sit there looking at the cartridge and thinking “this thing is so small how bad can it be for me to throw in the garbage?” Well, consider this:

55.6 percent of American consumers throw out their empty printer cartridges instead of recycling them, a Harris Interactive poll released today shows. Those cartridges add more than 40 million pounds of unnecessary waste to our nation’s landfills. The cartridges take more than 1,000 years to decompose.

(read more here)

When I recently purchased a new printer, I bought 4 cartridges each of black and color. I have a spot for the spent ones and when I put the last new one in the printer, I go off to Staples with whatever old ones I have, buy replacements and get $3 off on each new one in exchange. You can probably do this through the mail as well, I just happen to ahve a Staples less than a mile from my house (as a virtual assistant that makes me very happy.

• Have another smaller container for the non-paper recycling. I know the HP printer cartridges I use come in a recyclable plastic holder. When I do need to install a new cartridge everything but the foil type bag is recyclable. The cardboard, the inserts, and the holder.

I can already hear some people that may be serious recyclers in their home environment saying “I don’t have the time for that! My time is money!” Well, of course it is. But, it’s up to you what you do with that time and I firmly believe the trade off could be tremendous if more people took this seriously. It’s really not that time consuming, after a bit it’s second nature. There are probably other things you do that are a truer waste of your time.

Operating a holistic business is much more than what you do, it’s also about how you do it.

I know I always feel a sense of pride on garbage day when I see how little we put out and on recycling day how much is sitting at the curb.

Technorati Tags: environmentally responsible office, virtual assistant, holistic business

Special thanks to Juliet Austin and Nathaniel Richman for posting about this on their Website Design and Promotion blog.

From Greenpeace’s site:

Right now, poison Apples full of chemicals (like toxic flame retardants, and polyvinyl chloride) are being sold worldwide. When they’re tossed, they usually end up at the fingertips of children in China, India and other developing-world countries. They dismantle them for parts, and are exposed to a dangerous toxic cocktail that threatens their health and the environment.

It’s time for Apple to use clean ingredients in all of its products, and to provide a free take-back program to reuse and recycle its products wherever they are sold. That means:

Remove the worst toxic chemicals from all their products and production lines.

Offer and promote free “take-back” for all their products everywhere they are sold.

I really love my Macs but am not one to stick my head in the sand and do get very passionate about excess waste and chemicals leaking into our air long after the usefulness of the product has passed - and doing everything I can to not add to the already sickened environment we live in.

When I viewed the pictures and read the statistics on Greenpeace’s site about the dumping of iPods and iMacs in China I felt ashamed to have 2 iMacs and 4 iPods in my household.

So, as a consumer, I ask everyone to click on the “I Love my Mac” link above and educate yourself and spread the word. Even if you are not an Apple consumer, other computer manufacturers are not pristine with their disposal practices either. Even if you never considered yourself a supporter of Greenpeace - read what they have to say.

Especially if you run a holistic business - we’re supposed to get it and do something about it.

Everyone reading this most likely owns an Apple product, has bought one as a gift, or knows someone who does.

Please - pass this information along, the more people that tell Steve Jobs we expect more from Apple - the better off the world may be.

Technorati Tags: Juliet Austin, Nathaniel Richman, Website Design and Promotion, Greenpeace, Apple, iPods, iMacs, holistic business, Steve Jobs