5 Creative Ways to Reuse Your Yoga Mat

After a long a fruitful life giving comfort to your soles, knees, and even palms in downward dog, your yoga mat is looking a little run down. What are your options?
PLEASE don't throw it away. There are so many better and more respectful paths to send your workout buddy down.
You can look for a yoga mat recycling program near you. Because of the great correlation between yogis and caring about what happens to the planet, many studios, non-profits, and yoga mat companies have figured out easy programs where you can drop off your yoga mat and make sure it does not add to the landfill.
But before you even do this, are there other uses for your yoga mat where you could keep it around?

DOGGIE DONATION: Let your yoga mat have a new life sitting under Fido. You can use as a seat/back of car liner for when your dog comes for a ride, or many animal rescue groups take donated mats to line their crates.
KITCHEN HELPER: Line your kitchen shelves and drawers with your yoga mat to stop glasses/plates from shifting - especially aesthetic when your yoga mat is a fun color! Also, if you have extra, a little square of yoga mat can be a great grip pad to open a tough-to-open jar in the kitchen. You can even make yourself a no slip mat to stand on while you wash dishes or cook.
GREEN THUMB: Use your yoga mat as a knee mat in while gardening to cushion your knees. Yoga mats can make great liners for under house plants. You can cut them to fit each plant pot.
THE GREAT OUTDOORS: Take it camping to put under your sleeping bag instead of a sleeping pad. Or keep the mat in your car on warm summer days for a nice picnic or beach seat. A nice little cut and folded yoga mat can be great for hard seating at outdoor sporting events.
GIVE BACK THROUGH GIFTING: Cut up to make cute mousepad gifts for your family and friends! Make creative masks for children to play with, or even create the perfect set up for an impromptu baseball or kickball game. Yoga mats make easy to carry and clean bases. Make a cute cork board gift for someone special - or yourself!

Let us know if you have any other creative ideas!

Whatever you do, try to train yourself to think first - could I reuse this or do I know someone else who could use or reuse the thing I am looking to get rid of? Next, research recycling options. If there's nothing available, maybe there is an opportunity for you to start something!

Conservation or Corporate Environmentalism - who's sexier?

So I spent the weekend back up in Canada hanging out with my environmentalist dad and his friends.

Guess what we talked about...
How to save the world.


Their approach - conversation.  They are activists fighting the man, stopping evil corporations from polluting rivers, killing plants and animals.  It was interesting to hear how they are using the grassroots organizing tactics, leveraging laws and government agencies and processes to slow process and engaging residents to take action and use their voices.  It was very inspiring, a great reminder that we all have the opportunity to fight for justice.  But is it also a long and hard fought road, it is painfully slow and tiring to be fighting all the time.

I believe I have similar goals of protecting the environment in my work, but rather than fighting the man, I am the man and I am working within to make change. Companies have the opportunity to make positive impacts with every decision they make.  And that has been something I have been able to help steer.  It does not happen every time and there are often trade offs, it moves slow and gets frustrating, but when change does happen it gets pretty exciting.

I suffer from the grass is always greener on the other side syndrome and get really excited by activism.  This was very evident in talking this weekend. Creating petitions, buttons, creative ideas on how to bring awareness to an issue. I think I just need to reframe my work - creating policies, procedures, excel files and guidance documents... and maybe a button just for the fun of it!

I have come to realize that we need both a activist and an internal change approach towards shifting our world towards more sustainable behaviors.  They feed upon each other, driving change and showing examples of that change shows that good can be done. So to everyone inside or on the outside, continue your great work.

Shout Out at Sustainably Chic http://www.sustainably-chic.com/

I wanted to take time today to give a shout out to someone doing something important and fantastic in the sustainability space today - and that would be Natalie, founder of Sustainably Chic (which you can find at http://www.sustainably-chic.com/).

I had the pleasure of connecting with Natalie over the phone last week, and her passion for sustainability in fashion is only matched by her immense energy put towards making a difference through her website and blog.

Before we spoke, I was already taken with her story (http://www.sustainably-chic.com/about/). To enter college as a fashion major and through the same curriculum that churns out fast fashion devotees by the drove, and instead be driven to make a difference in the way we choose our fashion and our expectations of the industry. Too often the fashion-sustainability relationship is seen as a push-pull, win-lose one. I love that Natalie sees opportunity to make better choices and learn.

Through her shop and blog, Natalie is rendering the world an incredibly valuable service; she is connecting people eager and interested in making sustainable choices in their fashion purchases with amazing businesses that have sustainability somewhere in their core values and in their products. While the blog tells you fascinating stories about these businesses and how they came to be, at the same time Sustainably Chic offers an irreplaceable database for people who want to make sustainable purchasing choices but don't know where to look. I highly encourage you go explore today!

Anyway, it was amazing to speak with Natalie, and I was only more convinced of how awesome her mission is and that she will achieve it. Instead of being frustrated she cannot jump the massive gap between where the industry is today and where we might wish it could be, she is content to make the move from fast to slow fashion patiently and with intention, one sustainably chic step at a time.

Preaching Outside the Choir

Days like this remind me that all too often we are preaching to the choir.

Having just graduated from my MBA program in Northern California, I experienced this realization in another group as well. Now that is a place where people are preaching to the choir! My fellow students seemed to have the same values, wanted to head into entrepreneurship (why? "To be my own boss!", and had similar goals for their futures in general. And I don't even think I went to a typical business school. The program was designed to get us there so we got similar coaching from everyone in career developments, and classes structured by professors based on the long accepted tenants of business.

I remember in one of my favorite classes, my professor putting a quote from Peter Drucker up on the board: "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." I love this idea of a giant culture monster snacking on strategy cookies. The best laid plans are only as good as the people who implement them - and if the people trying to implement a new culture or value system or anytime of change have no idea how to speak the same language as the people they are trying to change, change will never come.

Having graduated and gone into my dream field of sustainability, I see this all two often. We seem to cater our work and celebrate our victories with businesses who already "get" why sustainability is important, with students and interns who are willing to take no to low paying jobs to change the world...I want to start communicating with a different audience. Not that we should forget all these good hard working people. It's just that they already get it. And in my experience, there are enough people working with them that no one will notice if I wander off to find a new group to preach to.

That's why I decided to get my MBA. I wanted to speak the language of future CEOs, CFOs and the rest of the C-suite. I want to convince major business leadership that we need to start fostering a culture within our businesses that contributes to society and the environment in a sustainable and real way.

I want this new idea to link more people than it separates. With the new interconnectedness of the global community, revolutions have been started and relationships forever changed. Sustainability can follow this trend and use its overarching connection to everyone to break down walls. Sustainability must be added to how we view holistic business strategy - no matter the department or team or title - we must be asking ourselves, "will this last? Can design a system that recreates what it takes away?"

I think this is very possible. We need more people on board. We need to think that - possibly - sustainability cannot fit into the rigid boxes that Porter's forces drew around how we do business. That when we think about sustainability, it is a pursuit important enough to use teamwork. In the face of sustainability, we need our first reaction to competition to be partnership and collaboration - not a zero-sum game.

I am excited to see where the next few years take us. And can only hope we start preaching - eh, I don't really like the word - that we start the conversation about sustainability with some new audiences, in a language they can understand. 

Hungry for Good | The Plight of Food Deserts

“Please place your tray tables and seat in the upright position and get ready for take off.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my window seat, trying to figure out what to do with my life, both long term and in the short gap of the flight in between take off and that magic point at 10,000 feet when approved electronic devices were allowed to entertain me again.

I pulled the inflight magazine out of the seat pocket in front of me and thumbed to the table of contents.

Food deserts across America, the title of an article read. I remembered sounding it out again in my head, just to make sure I hadn’t missed an extra “s”. Mmmm…desserts.

This article was my first introduction to the phenomenon known as “food deserts”: geographic areas where residents’ access to affordable, healthy food options (namely fresh fruits and vegetables) is restricted or nonexistent due to the absence of grocery stores within expedient travelling distance. The concept of food deserts was uncovered when Center for Disease Control (CDC) and census report data revealed a curiously strong correlation between an individual’s cardiovascular health and their zip code.

Guiltily I think of the Whole Foods four blocks in one direction from my house, the Trader Joes three blocks in the other direction, and the Farmers’ Market available twice a week directly across the street from my house. And yet many people have limited to no access to fresh food due to lack of availability. While people are surrounded by corner stores and supermarkets that carry processed foods, or an overabundance of fast food chains selling cheap foods that are high in fat, salt, and sugar. Arguably unhealthy eating may seem economically cheaper in the short term, the long-term consequences these consumers are tallying up increase risk for serious even fatal health disorders.

Luckily public awareness on the subject has been growing. Movements like that of First Lady Michelle Obama (“Let’s Move”) include goals of eradicating food deserts by increasing people’s access to healthy food options. Still, awareness isn’t the only battle to be fought; we must start to get creative to eliminate this issue. While utilizing support of government tax benefits or endowments of charitable entrepreneurs is effective, we cannot rely solely on these types of windfalls. Initiatives from U.S. universities have created programs where food trucks deliver fresh produce at affordable prices and some of these trucks can even collect food stamps. There is no easy answer to this problem but with great minds motivated to find solutions, we can expect great victories in the future.

I found a great quote while researching food deserts where University of Michigan Professor George Kaplan commented on the term food deserts, saying “A desert is, of course, a place distinguished by the absence of vegetation, rain, etc., which is the sense in which the word is used in this report. Food deserts are defined as “areas with no or distant grocery stores.” But the word “desert” is also a verb — “to leave someone without help or in difficult situation and not come back.” This seems to me to capture an important dimension of food deserts not conveyed by the noun.”

We need to decide here and now that while some people have been left without help in difficult situations, we are sending help, and with each individual effort to shrink the food deserts, we are coming back.

Trader Joe’s, knowing that 40% of food sold at U.S. grocery stores gets thrown out because of overstocking or being past the “sell-by” date, has arranged a new food discount store called Daily Table the repackages and offers this food at deeply discounted prices. 

Read more: http://inhabitat.com/former-trader-joes-president-plans-to-dish-out-expired-food/ 

Initiatives like “Freshmobile” carry fresh, healthier food options to underserved communities in “pop-up grocery stores” in trailers and traveling food trucks. “The movement first got going in 2003, when a Bay Area group introduced organic food to West Oakland neighborhoods in a roaming solar-powered, biodiesel-burning food truck. Over the years, the mobile market idea gained steam. In June 2011, Fresh Moves, a Chicago non-profit launched its one-aisle grocery store on board a donated Chicago Transit Authority bus, and currently serves Chicago’s West Side neighborhoods. This August, the Seattle-based group Stockbox Grocers will launch its first store in the city’s South Park neighborhood, serving healthy food and to-go meals out of reclaimed shipping containers and storefronts. Residents of Portland, Ore., Kansas City and Baton Rouge are also seeing groceries-on-the-go rolling through this summer.”

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/07/24/can-pop-up-grocery-stores-solve-the-problem-of-food-deserts/ 

Take a look at your own community and decide what you can do today. 

Our ability to adapt

This has been my 3rd year living in Hood River and it has been the strangest winter yet. I look out my window at one tree and its dying leaves because we got a cold snap so early that the leaves didn't have time to prepare for winter.  At the same time, today, I am looking at daffodils in full bloom. The daffodils don't know it is February, they just know it was warm enough to start blooming.

I wish I could say I have enjoyed my spring - which has felt like summer, but I wonder what will happen yet.  Spring is still a long way from over. In years past there have been storms and cold snaps still to come.  Will that happen this year?  We are all waiting and seeing.

I am actually not going to talk about global warming, but rather about uncertain weather in a time when humans believe that we can mange our businesses and our lives with complete certainty.
If we do get a cold snap in the next month, there is a chance that all of the blossoms, now thriving in full bloom, will die.  Therefore no fruit will grow.

And while we have created mechanisms for uncertainty - like insurance -the impact is significant.  Insurance is for the exception, not the rule.  And each year as the uncertainty thickens we may have to rethink insurance.

So as businesses, we need to start taking into consideration more uncertainty, to take part in more scenario planning, and to broaden the way we look at the world.

As each company goes into their yearly business strategy development, it might be worth taking a farmers almanac in with you and start to look at the world through weather and what this may mean for your business.

Sharing | Collaboration vs. Competition in Business Today

Just a quick thought - about sharing. The activity we have been encouraged to participate in since kindergarten, even earlier if you have a little sister or brother!

But in business, sharing is hardly encouraged. Sharing puts us in danger of losing our competitive advantage and falling behind after we have worked so hard to be a leader in our product/market/industry.

Yet, in light of new movements towards green solutions and sustainability, we see a shift. These "tree-hugging" goals seem to be by nature more collaborative, but there also seems to be real business reasons for erring on the side of sharing over hording information when it comes to making sustainable changes in the world.

One of the coolest examples is Tesla. On June 12 2014, Tesla Motors‘ CEO, Elon Musk, wrote a blog stating that "the company would not initiate lawsuits against anyone who wishes to use their technology in good faith." While this does not mean for free, Tesla basically announced openness to license its unique technologies. This move actually grows the market for Tesla by helping other car companies produce electric vehicles. Here, Tesla saw beyond the immediate goal of "winning" in the car space and made strategic decisions based on growing the electric car market to initiate a complete change of which technology people use for transportation through sharing information.

Toyota has just followed suit. In this case, Toyota is giving other car makers free access to over 5,000 fuel cell patents through 2020. This action that may shortsightedly seem like an over share of confidential information is again dramatically growing the market and Toyota will benefit.

While sharing your one-of-a-kind Grandma's own recipe that brings everyone to your restaurant over all other dining options in town may not be the best idea for business, telling your competitors that you found a great new water-less dishwasher technology that saves you $200 a month on your water bill might be. If you are only concerned about your revenues and profits for the next month being better than theirs, then go ahead and pocket that $200. If you care about the environment, water use, and the sustainable future of your community, start considering what you can share to make a lasting difference.

Green Marketing Best Practices

As consumers turn to greener products, companies scramble to meet these demands. Whether people are motivated by the idea of saving the environment, healthy living alternatives, or higher qualities of products, it has become clear that companies must respond. 

Yet, as companies scramble, they often move too quickly, without strategic forethought or good intentions. Here greenwashing is born. Misleading claims, overstating achievements, and more can take a company's green initiative from beneficial to high-risk. Being perceived as participating in greenwashing will not only damage a company's reputation and credibility, it can also have very real legal repercussions. 

The best way to avoid greenwashing is to know the FTC's guidelines by heart. But for those of use who do not have a couple free months and a law degree to make sure we know every last word, here are a couple tips for best practices in green marketing for your company:

1. Transparency
With new trends of reporting and sharing information skyrocketing, do  your research and share the information. By providing access to details and reporting on progress, companies are avoiding the most dangers reactions to not marketing green correctly. When sharing your information about sustainability, showing that you used third party accreditors will also help add validity to your claims.

2. Live Your Values
When a company truly commits to its values and lives them everyday, it is hard to stray from the true intention captures in green marketing. Communicate your values in your marketing. Sharing what you believe in as a company can help you take a break from traditional sales marketing and share more about why people should become your loyal customers - not just a quick solution or value-add but commitment to a longer relationship because you care about the same things. Educating your own employees can do wonders for making sure your commitments to sustainability are followed at every level and in every department of your company, even ones where involvement is not obvious, but misalignment could lead to greewashing. Also, a visible and active CEO wins trust and shows the way for the rest of the company. While sustainability has to be incorporated at all levels to be successful, a company that does not also have top down leadership in this area will not succeed. 

3. Think About the Whole Life Cycle of Your Product
When companies sell a product, it can be easy to only think about the creation of that product and not the full life cycle of that how product effects the earth and community during use and after its useful life. But if you are going to make green claims about a product, you have to! Minimize life cycle impact by thinking about responsible use and disposal. By considering this larger picture view of your products, your company may find unrealized value that could be captured with helping your customers upkeep their product or in some cases even add more value to customers by helping them dispose of or recycle your products after they are done with them. 

Good luck with greening your marketing practices!

Check out more pertinent information on FTC guidelines:

http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/media-resources/truth-advertising/green-guides
http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2012/10/ftc-issues-revised-green-guides

These are just some of our thoughts! A great article from GreenBiz goes into much more detail:

http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2014/01/14/five-strategies-avoid-taint-greenwash-your-business