More innovation on the micro-recycling front!
The overflowing bin pictured in the post below has disappeared, and was replaced by a receptacle more in keeping with waste reduction:
And the tiny toy blue bins distributed with the launch of our new program have become the latest fashion accessory! Combined with your lanyard or belt retractor, or a garden-variety carabiner, these containers can be used to help you carry your waste with you - to the recycling depot, your home, the junk yard, the night club… endless possibilities!
Use it to dispense, then re-spense your Kleenex…
Lug your organics…
Or use it as a safe, sturdy and stylish holster for your Blackberry, cell phone or PDA!
There are even unconfirmed reports that they can even be used to enjoy a hot, overpriced beverage. (Mine is being used to hold pens right now, but my daughter’s Barbies may need it for the next time we play Malibu Board of Works.)
The corporation’s new recycling regime has been in place for a week now, and things are starting to settle down. There are still a few wrinkles - some organic waste bins haven’t yet arrived, leaving people with a five minute walk to divest themselves of a banana peel - but overall it’s a positive change. People are even starting to talk about lugging a mug instead of collecting oodles of evil Ooh La La styrofoam coffee cups!
Having a better recycling system was something employees in this building repeatedly requested, so it’s up to us to make it work. I’m down with that. Still, there’s a certain amount of culture shock when you have to do something in a new way. And some of the employee reactions and workarounds have been pretty funny.
The Hour did a very funny parody of the new recycling system last week. And this week, I noticed a few foibles in my corner of the second floor. To wit:
When a good old fashioned garbage bin was found lurking in terror inside our kitchenette, it was quickly assaulted with waste of all kinds (including, inexplicably, some recyclables.) As you can see, some people don’t have a clear idea of “capacity” - perhaps they think it’s a sort of Garbage TARDIS and will turn out to be bigger on the inside than the outside.
That prompted a miffed nearby cubicle dweller to post a two-page scolding, concluding thusly:
Some, with a better idea of capacity, decided to ignore the cute little official micro-garbage that attaches to your blue bin, and create a big bin of their own:
Another colleague was eager to get with the program, but didn’t have one of the normal under-desk blue bins we all have. So he called up to request one, and this comical arrangement was waiting for him the next day:
Talk about overkill! He’s a big guy, but how many pop cans do they think he goes through? He can almost bathe in that thing. Notice how it’s almost the same size as the filing cabinet behind it… and it makes the wee garbage sidecar pocket look really funny by comparison. Reminds me a bit of Master Blaster from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
Kid one-liner of the day:
“Daddy! I made an invention out of Cheerios and water, but it started to smell.”
[my five-year-old, as I walked in the door the other day]
Today CBC in Toronto unleashed a new recycling program which has everyone in a tizzy. It’s a 180 degree turn - whereas before they didn’t recycle enough, now it’s almost impossible to throw something away.
It’s a great idea, but for the moment confusion reigns. It’s a cold Monday morning, and as everyone arrived they blew their nose and looked for a place to put their used Kleenex and empty coffee cup… and had no clue what to do with either.
The garbage bins had all been taken away, replaced with an unlabeled black sidecar hanging on the blue box. These lunchbag-sized containers, which replaced a daily garbage bin five times the size, are to hold your garbage for a full week.
Organic and paper waste can now be dealt with in new ways, but the accompanying literature didn’t explain what to do with used Kleenex or empty Tim Horton’s cups. I’m told that a clarification is coming, but until then, here are the answers I received to my top five questions:
1) Kleenex: if it’s gross, put it in the organics bin. If it’s clean it can go in paper.
2) Organic bins: small green bins, emptied daily, are supposed to be in each kitchenette. But the lids didn’t arrive today, so they should be available tomorrow. For today, you can take organic waste to the new bin in the main recycling centres.
3) Cardboard coffee cups: These CAN be recycled in the paper box. They often have a waterproof coating, but this generally comes out in Toronto’s recycling process. I’m told the city doesn’t advertise that, because they aren’t convinced that they’ll be able to handle coating from ALL the Tim’s cups if people knew to put them in the recylcing. So they’ve been deliberately vague.
4) If your miniscule garbage container fills up (e.g. you use two plastic cups in a week) you can empty them at the main recycling stations. These used to only receive recyclables, but now have a big bin for garbage too.
5) Bring out your dead… electronics. Today and tomorrow, the corp will take your dead electronics from home (cell phones, monitors, printers etc.) and have them recycled. Good deal!
More as it unfolds… excuse me while I walk my pile of Kleenex down the hall. (Get that free flu shot, OK?)
After an abortive attempt at drafting up guidelines for how CBC’ers should and should not blog, the corp today released the real version of it’s approach to employee blogging, Facebooking, podcasting and more.
It’s called “Self-publishing and self-expression on the Internet”, and - though not perfect - it is an eminently more sensible document. The tone is cautiously encouraging, and the bulk of it explains how existing policies - journalistic, IT and HR - affect what you do online.
Though I don’t know of any bloggers who were consulted this time or last, the change in tone certainly reflects the lively conversation that evolved last time around. I recognize a few bits of the text.
And I’m very much surprised to see the last bullet point referencing the CBC Blogging Manifesto, which I helped create more than a year ago.
- The CBC Blogging Manifesto that is referred to on Inside the CBC, the official blog of the Corporation, and elsewhere on the Web, is not corporate policy or guideline. It was devised and adopted independently by a number of prominent employee bloggers. While not formally sanctioned, it nonetheless offers good advice to those wishing to blog about CBC/Radio-Canada, or to those wishing to carry out any similar self-publishing activity.
Inspired by a message from my corporate technology department.
Next GroupWise purge: Saturday, October 20th, 2007
On October 20th, 2007, we will purge all GroupWise accounts of non-archived mail dating from prior to October 19th, 2007.
We realize that the inability to store messages for more than 24 hours may cause some minor inconvenience to employees. To minimize the impact of this new policy, please follow these steps:
- Delete all messages as soon as you have read them (the existing Read/Unread functionality is redundant, and will be deprecated.)
- If you think you may need particular details at a later date, please commit them to memory, or write them down in a three-ring binder. But please purge the pages from your binder at least once a week, as binder space is expensive. NOTE: Information Technology is investigating an upgrade to 3″ binders, but these may not work with all applications and are not supported.
- If you intend to be on vacation or sick for more than 24 hours, please set up an auto-delete rule on your GroupWise account. A simple automated reply message should be created, such as: “I’m sorry, I’m not around to receive your e-mail right now, and have deleted it. Please try again when you know I’m at my desk.”
- Employees are encouraged to subscribe to a free Gmail account, where storage space is somehow almost unlimited. According to their website, such accounts have “Over 2910.863667 megabytes (and counting) of free storage so you’ll never need to delete another message”. We originally believed this counter was in fact counting down the diminishing amount of space, as ours does, but was not the case. We suspect witchcraft.
- Pay careful attention to the size of attachments, particularly audio, video, text or data files, which are often reasonably large. Do not send such files as e-mail attachments. Burn them to a CD or DVD, and put them in the internal mail. Or harness the power of the internet by placing them on a file-sharing system like BitTorrent so they can be accessed without undue strain on our capacity.
- Pay careful attention to the word count on messages you send. Where possible, use emoticons to convey context without using undue characters. Text message abbreviations and short grunts are often sufficient.
- To ensure efficient use of our finite resources, all libraries and archives will adopt a similar purge policy beginning immediately. If you subscribe to a periodical, a new issue will not be released until the previous one has put in the recycle bin and the bin has been emptied. Television programs are requested to reduce the number of shows they produce, as archive shelf space is limited.
The Access to Information law:
Each employee has the duty to safeguard in an appropriate manner business records that he/she creates or receives from an external source:
- Please delete all messages of a non-essential or essential nature. If possible, please avoid sending them in the first place. Work-related conversations must be plausibly deniable. If you must communicate with another employee, ensure nobody is watching.
- To understand how to distinguish business records from transitory records, please apply our new “year zero” filing criteria:
Did it happen prior to September 1, 2007? If the answer is “no”, the information is transitory. If you believe the answer is “yes”, you are simply incorrect.
Once again, thank you all for doing your part to reduce the load on the GroupWise system. This internet thing can’t keep growing forever.
Please delete this message.
Too slow. I’ll retract it. You didn’t see me….
So, last weekend was absolutely lovely outside - or so I’m told. It was a bit of a tough one for me, because I was stuck inside with the girls. Actually it was even tougher for my eldest - she had a stomach bug, and on top of that her first pet fish died. Still, it was nothing I couldn’t alleviate by spending all weekend in the basement making… princess crafts.
First up was this pair of “Pretty Princess Headresses” - design courtesy of a book of princess crafts we were given a couple of years ago. Now, I don’t know if real princesses ever wore dunce caps covered in tissue paper and stickers, with streamers taped to the top, but the important thing is that my girls don’t know either. Next time I’m at the Tower inspecting the Crown Jewels, I’ll let you know.
After that came a 3D “Zigzag Castle Card”, which made a nice backdrop for small plastic toys to cavort in front of. Not exactly how it looked in the illustration, but worse things can happen when you give a five-year-old a pair of scissors.
You’ll be pleased to know that since the weekend a moat with alligators has been added. OK, that was me last night after the girls went to bed.
Did my masculinity suffer from so much girlishness? Not really - it has faced worse challenges over the past five years. (Also, Sunday night I hit Home Depot and fixed our toilet - booyah! Man again!)
In fact, I’ve been compiling a list for a friend of mine who just had a baby girl. Unfortunately I only have two items - three would be a bona fide list, but I’m stuck here. Perhaps you can help. It’s called…
Signs you are the father of little girls:
1) You automatically sort your laundry into lights, darks and pinks.
2) You sit down to go pee, because you are just too tired to stand.
What else? Dan, Joe, surely you guys can help here… Tessa and Jayne must have observed a few masculine indignities… help me out?
——————————
UPDATE: And just like that, the thoroughly emasculated Sinsiter Dan heeds the call! Here’s his list, which is bigger and better than mine by far:
I started writing a list in your comments on the ‘father of girls syndrome’, and it got a little longer than I had intended. Being a Letterman fan, I must have a predisposition to lists of ten;
1. Sometimes there is no alternative to accepting the role as the Evil Stepmother.
2. Every third sentence having to do with the bathroom ends with; “But not daddy, he’s different” (I got this a lot in university too)
3. You know who Loonette the Clown is, and your creeping sexual attraction for her has become a matter of some concern.
4. You know who Loonette the Clown is, and apparently that’s normal.
5. Even though they never show up, all the Disney princesses are still invited to Thanksgiving dinner.
6. “That’s what Cinderella would do” becomes an acceptable argument.
7. Dora is okay, but suddenly seems Diego seems shifty.
8. Every day is a new lesson in things you didn’t explain that made someone cry.
9. Your facial hair is added to the list along with quantum theory of stuff that makes no damn sense.
10. The difference between pigtails, ponytails and a topknot is now a subject on which you could write a doctoral dissertation.
Thanks, Dan!
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