The Story of Stuff, and an angry letter

I recently watched the video The Story of Stuff with some friends. (Warning, previous link has sound...) In a succinct twenty-minute whirlwind, it does a broad survey of the often-overlooked environmental and social problems caused by our modern-day consumer economy. The tone was irreverent and frequently over-the-top. I found that amusing, but it could likely be off-putting to those who don't already have a concern for these issues. Nevertheless, I was impressed by how the filmmakers neatly outlined the problems and listed some of the solutions, in such a short video.

On a related note, I bought some pantyhose the other day, and when I opened it, I was disgusted at the amount of packaging it used. Really, there was more packaging than pantyhose. So I fired off a quick note to Hanesbrands, Inc.:

I recently bought a Hanes Luxe Solutions Comfort Thigh High. When I opened the package, I was appalled at how excessive and environmentally-unfriendly the packaging was. There was an outer vinyl(?) package, a cardboard cover, an inner plastic sleeve, and another piece of cardboard backing. This amount of packaging is totally wasteful and unneccessary.

As a consumer, I am perfectly capable of evaluating a product without it being overpackaged for my examination. As a global company, Hanesbrands Inc. is perfectly capable of the minor degree of innovation required to redesign the package to use fewer and more eco-friendly materials, while still protecting and displaying the product attractively. Furthermore, reducing the amount of packaging could even reduce manufacturing and transportation costs for Hanesbrands.

After this recent product experience drew my attention to Hanesbrands, I researched Hanesbrands' track record for environmental and social responsibility on the Responsible Shopper website, www.responsibleshopper.org. I was very disappointed at my findings. I hope that Hanesbrands make a more sincere and substantive effort to address its tarnished record, perhaps starting with a simple reevaluation and redesign of its product packaging. Until then, I will take my business elsewhere, away from Hanesbrands.

I try to take a few minutes to send a note to a company if I feel strongly that their practices could use improvement. I know that my letter is only a drop in the bucket, but hey, with enough drops you can overflow the bucket.

More green job leads/resources

Making a note to myself about a couple of green job leads/resources.

First, the Sierra Magazine article Hot Jobs for a Warming Planet gives some ideas and includes links to green job listing websites. They forgot about engineering, though!

Also, my friend J. emailed me the following:

"My friend is starting a social venture called Taoit.com up in Berkeley. Please read about it at http://www.taoit.com/what. If you are interested in learning more I can put you in touch with him. He was doing his PhD in environment engineering at Berkeley and took a leave to pursue this company with his advisor."

And here's the job description from Taoit:

Taoit - Web Developer

Do you want to use your talents, skills, and creativity to change the world? So do we. Taoit is building an information platform and suite of tools to inform consumers about the environmental, social, and health impacts of products and companies, and to empower them to take actions to improve their lives and the world around them. We are a top-tier VC funded startup at the forefront of integrating science, technology, and consumer research to empower consumers around the world. We are located in downtown Berkeley, steps from BART, great restaurants, coffee shops, book stores, and the University of California. We are looking for a superstar web developer to join our founding team and to help us change the world. The web developer will help to build all aspects of the Taoit website, from front-end to back-end, through the use of world class programming skills employing Ruby on Rails/Agile/TDD/REST.

DUTIES
• Implement key website features with speed, agility, and precision;
• Be involved in the entire application stack, from back-end database to user interface implementation;
• Collaborate with small team of developers.

REQUIREMENTS
• Ruby on Rails programming skills;
• Extensive and demonstrable experience building consumer-facing web applications;
• Driven by agile methodologies, test-driven development, and a deep sense of pride in written code;
• Passion for writing concise, clear, and elegant code that supports accessible web standards;
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills;
• Master of key web development tools weapons, including RoR, MySQL, HTML, XML, CSS, Javascript, Ajax, and Flash.

COMPENSATION
• Competitive base salary, benefits, and early stage equity.

To apply, please send your resume to: WebNinja@taoit.com

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Merry Christmas, people

Merry Christmas, everyone.

I'm currently visiting my mom in SoCal for the holidays. Hating the SoCal traffic and ultra-sprawl. In a couple of days, we'll head to Arizona to see the in-laws.

One weird thing we encountered while walking around the neighborhood here was a megachurch. It was a convention center-sized campus with a huge sanctuary, twice as much parking as a Wal-Mart, and a cafe and two retail spaces. It was like a big-box store for God! It's still being built and isn't yet open for worship services.

Other recent activities:

Attended two Messiah Sings - one hosted by my choir and also the Stanford one. The one we host has a better level of audience musicianship, but the Stanford one is more like a big, festive community event. Also, Sugar Daddy can accompany me to the Stanford one because they have a pick-up orchestra for instrumentalists like him. In fact, the Stanford Messiah Sing has become quite a tradition for us - we've attended it for the past few years.

Also, Sugar Daddy and I are slowly getting over our nasty colds.

I finished another piece of my volunteer web project for New Dream.

I ended up pouring a lot of time into a homemade Christmas present this year. One of my pastimes is wild edible plants, and last year I gathered leaves from California bay laurel trees, dried them, put them into recycled jars with labels I designed, and gave them to friends and family who cook with bay leaves. Well, this year I got a little more ambitious. While we were at the Calstar weekend astronomy outing at Lake San Antonio this past October, I gathered a bunch of valley oak acorns from our campsite. I decided to prepare them by adapting a couple of traditional recipes that originally used chestnuts. The end result was jars of Ghiande al Liquore (Acorns in Spirits) and Glands Glacees (Candied Acorns), which I'll give as gifts to some friends who also have an interest in wild plant foods. It was a fun project but more messy and time-consuming than I realized...it takes a long time to shell that many acorns, and also the candying process took 4 days and involved a lot of sticky sugar syrup. Also it was kind of an experimental thing. The brandied acorns take 2 weeks to cure so I haven't sampled them yet and don't know how they turned out yet. I did try the candied acorns and they are a little bit more firm than chestnuts would be, but I like the flavor (although Sugar Daddy thinks they have a woody taste). Well, at least these gifts are going to people whom I know will appreciate the novelty and the experimentation, even if they taste weird :)

Nonprofit Java jobs at Benetech in Palo Alto

This landed in my inbox recently - interesting. The location is ideal, and I've got the requisite skills. It just depends on whether I want to keep doing Java and if I want to work for this particular organization.

Engineering, Support, and Management positions at Benetech (Palo Alto, CA)
Please reply to: hr@benetech.org

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Please see the links below for more information, and if you are interested, send a cover letter/resume to hr@benetech.org. Also, please pass this on to other folks you think might be interested...

Thanks,
Anna

The Benetech Initiative - Technology Serving Humanity
www.benetech.org

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Benetech's Bookshare.org project just received a major five-year award from the Office of Special Education Programs of the Department of Education to fully support - for free - all schools and students with qualifying print disabilities in the United States, with access to the Bookshare.org collection of accessible electronic books and to software for reading those books.

To support this award, we are hiring for the following positions:

Bookshare.org
* Technical Project Manager (#TPM)
* Collection Development Specialist (#CDS)
* Customer Support Specialist (#CSS)
* Education Outreach Coordinator (#EOC)
* In-House Scanner Validator (#IHSV)

Engineering
* Build & Release Engineer (#BRE)
* Software Engineer - Java (#SEJ)
* Web Site Engineer (#WSE)
* Web Site Developer - Intern (#WSDI)

Benetech
* Director of Marketing (#DM)
* Accounting Clerk (#AC)
* Administrative Assistant (#AA)

More information is available at
http://www.benetech.org/join_us/employment_opportunities.shtml
and
http://www.benetech.org/join_us/position_postings.shtml

More local non-profits focused on technology

When I told B. at Hands On Bay Area that I was resigning as a Project Leader in order to invest more time in a non-profit tech career, she kindly pointed me to these local organizations and offer to put me in touch with her contacts there if I wanted.

OICW - Menlo Park, CA - They assist folks with training on computer equipment to prepare them for jobs and provide ESL classes. They also work with youth to take them in for after school programs.

OTX West - Oakland, CA - They refurbish old computers and "sell" them to people who volunteer with them by providing points for volunteer hours toward refurbished computers (very interesting concept). They also provide computers for schools and do computer literacy classes.

Updates: Thanksgiving, concerts, science fiction, volunteering

An update on some of my recent exploits:

Well, the major disruption in our lives lately is that the landlord kicked us out of our apartment for the last two days to fumigate our building. We only got a week's notice, and we also had to remove all food, toiletries, houseplants, and valuables from our apartment. When we returned yesterday morning, I took a shower only to discover that the hot water had been turned off. Yikes!!! Talk about motivation to move out! Other news:

Planning a lunch get-together with some of my former co-workers; looking forward to catching up.

Spent Thanksgiving on the central coast with R. and her family. Had a delicious dinner there, spent quality time with their charming and tireless kiddies, helped them put up Christmas lights, and even got a deluxe car wash and wax by F.!

Went to a recital by mezzo-soprano Malin Fritz at Stanford.

It's been a long while since I indulged my taste for science fiction, so I picked up The Year's Best Science Fiction anthology from 2005 at the library and have been staying up late to devour its 652 pages. Great writing, but disturbingly, all of the stories are dire and gloomy. Even the one funny story I've encountered so far is black humor. Authors in 2005 don't seem to be imagining a bright future for us.

I resigned my volunteer position as a Project Leader for Hand On Bay Area. This decision has been nagging at me since last fall. In recent years, it's become a toss-up about whether the sense of reward outweighed the small frustrations and the time investment. But sometimes you receive signs about what choice to make and when to make it. The recent leadership transition and ensuing disorganization at Bread of Life where I coordinate a volunteer team was a clear sign to me that it's time to move on and reclaim that time and energy to invest in a new nonprofit career.