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Posts Tagged ‘recycling tactics’
Tuesday, April 20th, 2010
One of the sad truths about urban life is that we often do not know our neighbors well. Yet, our neighbors are working diligently to make our neighborhoods better places to live and work!
Each Earth Day, ShoreBank recognizes one of the unsung heroes in our community by presenting an award to a customer that exemplifies ShoreBank’s approach to sustainable development. Deemed “The Green Neighbor Award,” recipients are nonprofit organizations that promote environmental sustainability in urban neighborhoods, while also catalyzing job growth, community empowerment, and economic inclusion.
This year’s winner is the Resource Center, a nonprofit offering recycling services to neighborhoods throughout the city. Led by long-time Executive Director, Ken Dunn, the organization has pioneered ways to transform trash into economic opportunity for low wealth communities.
To use the organization’s own words, “For 35 years, the Resource Center, a non-profit environmental education organization, has led the way in demonstrating innovative techniques for recycling and reusing materials. Too often in the urban setting, abundant and important resources are wasted. In our recovery work we aim to reverse waste and to improve the quality of life for urban dwellers. We have been devoted from the beginning to the economic and educational revitalization of city neighborhoods through recycling, urban gardening, composting, and other programs that reclaim and reuse resources.”
But, as Earth Day’s 40th anniversary approaches, it is also important to realize how important ShoreBank’s (and your) support is to our green neighbors. When Resource Center needed a working capital loan, following a collapse in the price of aluminum, paper, and glass, it had few alternatives. As a nonprofit, it was ineligible for an SBA loan or any of the other governmental loan programs that support lending to small businesses. ShoreBank, however, offers a novel lending program that enabled the Resource Center to obtain the necessary financing, preserving 23 green collar jobs and ensuring that 14,000,000 pounds of waste continued to be recycled annually.
With commodity prices now largely recovered, the Resource Center is again expanding its services, adding to its payroll, and helping to grow the green (neighborhood) economy. Thanks to green neighbors like the Resource Center, Earth Day is sure to be a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
Tags: environmental sustainability, green banking, green jobs, green neighbor award, recycling tactics, urban gardens
Posted in Green Collar | 2 Comments »
Friday, February 13th, 2009
Did you know that 7% of all mobile phone contain enough personal data to facilitate identity theft (according to a British Telecom study)? This statistic will most likely increase as more people conduct banking and purchasing activities on mobile devices. Additionally, with new device models, features, and services plans launching all the time, mobile phones have a short lifespan. That is why, when it is time to purchase a new cell phone, you should recycle your device. Not only is it environmentally important; doing it the right way will prevent identity theft.
In a 1.2 billion global mobile phone market, 60% of all purchases replace existing cell phones – only 1% of which are recycled. However, 99% of recycled cell phones contain personal data, including, potentially, bank account information (according to a recent Regeneris study). For Americans, whose average 18 month cell phone lifespan equates to 130 million replaced cell phones and 65,000 tons of waste, this research means that we have a big opportunity to reduce waste – but we need to protect identities in the process.
For those who (hopefully) opt to recycle their mobile phones, it is important to take more than just one step to ensure that your personal information is completely wiped from those devices. Wiping a cell is not like wiping your hard drive. For commercial reasons, mobile phones do not have the open architecture that PCs do.
That means that even if the DIY among us delete everything in their phones, this only deletes references to where the data is located and not the actual information (which is stored elsewhere). I do not know about you, but even though I love recycling, I would rather not risk recycling my identity. That is why I recommend performing any, if not all, of the following tactics, before you recycle your phone:
• Do not store any personal information on your mobile phone which you would not want a stranger to see.
• See your cell phone manual or wireless provider’s website for specific information on permanent information deletion
• Remove your SIM and memory cards prior to donating your cell phone
• Verify that the mobile phone recycling organization erases data
• Use the data erasing software programs
You can protect all of your personal information and the environment. For more information on how to recycle your cell phone, we found this article to be helpful:
http://www.voip-news.com/feature/50-ways-leave-cellphone-011608/
Tags: community development, environmental sustainability, green banking, identity theft protection, recycling tactics, ShoreBank, triple bottom line
Posted in Outreach | 3 Comments »
Friday, February 6th, 2009
Buying time might be one of the few “purchases” that does not require me to spend any money. Yet, the government’s decision to delay the digital TV conversion is just postponing a purchase for millions of Americans. And if we need to spend green, it is also nice to save some green. Regardless of whether or not your household is among the Neilson Media Research estimated 6.5 million unprepared, our analog televisions have a sustainable question to ask us as we face our three upgrade decisions: purchase a digital to analog converter box, purchase a digital television, or subscribe to a cable service.
Each one of these digital conversion alternatives consumes varying quantities of energy and resources. Cable service alone cannot decrease that 50 billion kilowatt hours of electricity US televisions consume. Digital televisions and converter boxes increase the quantity of energy required to produce and run those electronic items. However, should you decide to minimize energy and dispose of our analog televisions, consider that only 18% of consumer electronics, including TVs, are collected for recycling despite making up almost 2% of the municipal solid street waste. How can you possibly make the sustainable selection?
Consider the following if you are:
LiveEarth.org
Adding a converter box or a cable service
• Purchase and plug all electronics into a power strip and turn it off when done watching
• Ask your cable service provider about its cable and/or digital-to-analog converter boxes’ energy consumption when deciding upon or renewing a cable service contract.
• Look for a digital-to-analog converter box with an ENERGY STAR label. If all converter boxes met this spec, we could save 823 million kilowatt-hours of energy and $85 million in higher electricity bills.
• Select the “home” mode for brightness. The “retail” mode or “vivid” mode consumes 10-30% more power.
Purchasing a digital television
• Choose a LCD television. In some cases, LCDs can use 50% less energy than their plasma counterpart. A typical 42-inch plasma TV will cost at least $200 more to operate over the life of the product of a similar sized LCD.
• Purchase a smaller TV. Larger TVs use more energy than smaller ones using the same technology. You can save money on the store and on electricity.
• Ask if the retailer or manufacture will recycle your old TV. Best Buy, for example, will charge $10 to recycle any item with a physical screen and give a $10 gift card to each customer that recycles a television.
Disposing your analog television
• Donate. You can list your analog television on www.freecycle.com or on www.craigslist.org to find it a new home. Another alternative is to give your old TV to a charity organization. However, check whether or not the organization is accepting analog televisions in light of the pending digital transition.
• E-cycle. Investigate the following sites to locate your local e-cycler:
o www.earth911.com
o www.nrc-recycle.org
o www.mygreenelectronics.org
Of course, unless you cease watching television, once we have converted to digital, the next big question is how often to watch our televisions. This transition gives us the opportunity to change our television consumption behavior to create long-term environmental impacts. Let us use this delay to save some green all around.
Statistics Sources:
National Resource Defense Council
Environmental Protection Agency
Federal Communications Commission
ENERGY STAR
Tags: community development, energy efficiency, green banking, recycling tactics, ShoreBank, triple bottom line
Posted in Green Collar | 1 Comment »
Friday, October 17th, 2008
As ShoreBank’s new Online Channel Manager, I’ve just emerged out of post-MBA unemployment and am now immersed in a quest to fully understand economic concerns and ShoreBank’s potential to alleviate them. These two phases of my life have a surprisingly similar theme: frugality. The financial meltdown has intertwined with inflation to stimulate monetary concerns for everyone. However, that does not mean that we still can’t find creative ways to maximize our dollars! Here are a few investment tricks to try as we approach the holiday season(s):
1) Investigate high yield savings accounts, like those at ShoreBank. They are great ways to accrue up to 3.50% APY on your money with minimal effort. With the holiday season approaching, $350 on $10,000 will certainly let you loosen your financial belt by a notch.
2) Do not charge more on your credit card than what you can pay off per month. If the temptation of a credit card is too much for you to resist, try paying with only cash. It is amazing how easy it is to restrict extra spending when you only have $50 in your wallet.
3) Downsize your home. You don’t have to move to downsize. You can raise your income (and ’spring clean’) by creating an inventory of your items and selling unwanted/unused items on Craigslist.org or at a garage sale.
4) When you leave, turn ‘it’ off. Unplug non-essential appliances—even “turned off” appliances can use energy. For example, a plugged in (but “off”) television still uses about 20 watts of power. Also, set your heater to a lower the thermostat when you are out of the house. Turn off the lights when you leave each room. Turn off your computer. It may seem small, but $20 in savings on our electricity bill could buy your dinner.
5) Buy used or at discount. Research Freecycle.org or Craigslist.org for gently used items. Try to shop for your favorite items at discount or outlet stores. You not only save money, but you get the added thrill of getting great deals.
6) Grocery shop every week instead of every month, if possible. Buy only the items you need for that week’s meals. This eliminates overstocking (and overspending.)
7 ) Research free events in your city. The city government often sponsors several events, ranging from pumpkin festivals to musical concerts. Local colleges and universities also provide a number of low cost events that are open to the public. You save money and get exposure to new forms of entertainment!
8 ) Go out at ‘deal’ times. Go out to dinner on nights when they have specials. Go to matinees. Shop on ’sale’ days.
9) Try to spend nothing on one day per month. It is really hard, but surprisingly rewarding if you can do it.
I’d love to hear how much you can save, or your own tips and tricks. At ShoreBank, we want to help you change the world, and part of that involves providing you with resources to manage (and save) your money.
Tags: community development, green banking, high yield savings, recycling tactics, ShoreBank Direct, triple bottom line
Posted in Banking Industry | 4 Comments »
