Okay, maybe it has been a while

Yes, so it has been brought to my attention numerous times that I haven't updated my blog in quite some time. Things have been busy with school and work and in some ways I haven't been as good about my environmentalism as I would like.

So, I have started biking at least a few times a week to work and back. This has been... an experience to say the last. Before this the most biking I had done was around my neighborhood for fun so I had bought an inexpensive Target bike which came up to Seattle with us. Needless to say that this just wasn't cutting it for on street commuting so I headed over to REI and bought myself a lovely little Novara Buzz which treats me well except for getting hit by a car and the need to buy a new saddle. (I'm fine btw, the car didn't hit me going that fast and all I suffered was some bruises, scrapes and a sore throat from reading the driver the riot act.)

I'm still working on making the office a greener place, especially in ways that save money since budget cuts are hitting the University hard. A recent project of mine that has finally met with success has been working with Office Depot to reduce the amount of packing material in their deliveries to the University. As the person in my Department in charge of ordering office supplies I was often distressed that I would order a few things (box of pens, staples, a few pads of paper) and it would come in this HUGE box filled with plastic air pillows.

I didn't want to throw these away because they were perfectly reusable but they kept coming in faster than I was able to find homes for my ever growing stash. I also noticed that a lot of other departments were just throwing theirs away which was both a waste and horrible for the environment. I finally contacted Office Depot to request that they take the materials back for reuse since this would clear out some of my space and save them money. I got a response back that the company would do this once but would not make it a regular thing because it caused too much extra work for the delivery drivers. I then asked that our orders not have packing material since there was really very little chance of anything being damaged. I was told that this could not be done on a department by department basis. There were a few more emails back and forth in which I suggested a central drop off point where departments could return the materials for Office Depot to reuse. Today I received noticed that the University of Washington had given Office Depot approval to not include packing materials in orders that did not contain fragile items. So YAY, score one for less unnecessary waste.