Archive for the ‘Abroad’ Category
How to make recycling work
Living in Germany for 3.5 months now has made me realize a few things. Focusing on the greener part of me, is how to make recycling work. It is a very simple solution that has yet to take on in the US. Pay people to recycle.
In Germany (and maybe this exists in the rest of Europe), you are able to bring your bottles (water bottles, beer bottles, and other plastic and glass bottles) to the grocery to get some money back. This is such an easy thing to do and is great pocket change. With the price of water being so low in the first place, you almost make back 1/2 of what you spend for the water in the first place.
I know that in certain states in the US this exists, but it really should become more prevalent. One solution that I have come across is to eliminate the consumer effort needed. RecycleBank provides you with a bin and a barcode to put on your recycling bin. Then when collected, the collectors scan the code and reward you based on the size of your bin and therefore the amount of material that is in it. This weight is converted to points and then to dollars.
In the long run it may slightly drive up the price of goods, but isn’t that a small price to pay to give people an incentive to recycle and to save our world?
Some peanuts while you wait
I don’t love this new design, but I think it is better than the last, until I can get a custom design and logo up and running.
I had been in the US for a week and then in Barcelona for a few days so posts have been lite. I’ll be getting back on track this week…
Me, a travel agent
<Begin frustration> To put it bluntly, I had a rather crappy week of work. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t mind the 4 days work week (well 3.5 days for me since I went in after Linds left on Tuesday), but what I did just sucked.
As part of a workshop I am planning in Barcelona at the end on April, I spent the week booking hotels and planning the event. I wouldn’t have minded this if I had started planning from the beginning — I would have been down with it 5 weeks ago. Rather a colleague of mine had been in charge of booking everything and we can just say that he never finished it, so it fell onto my plate.
It is so inefficient for me to have to spend a week of my time planning hotels and conference space, when it literally could have been done 5 weeks ago and in much less time. I also found out that on the European teams, not only do I have to plan the bookings, I have to essentially “hand-hold” everyone to make sure they book their flights, hotels rooms, the proper number of nights, how they are getting from the airport to the hotel, etc. No one likes to travel without the proper information, but it seems ridiculous, this level of guidance. </End Frustration>
Lindsay’s visit - Monday (4 of 4)
Linds did a great write-up of our weekend in Hamburg so no reason for me to be original. Here are some excerpts from her ‘diary’…
Today (Monday) was a pretty emotional day. We woke up early and took an hour train ride from Hamburg to Cella and then a 15 minute taxi ride to Bergen-Belsen. Bergen-Belsen for those of you who don’t know because I didn’t know anything about it, was the concentration camp where Anne Frank, and sister died after they were found in hiding. Originally Bergen-Belsen was started as a POW camp where the Soviets were held. Here they experienced horrible conditions, basically no food and no showers but worked menial jobs for eventually a small wage. Once the war started getting worse and was taking longer than the Nazi’s wanted, Bergen-Belsen became a concentration camp in 1941. This was considered an exchange camp. It meant that “VIPs” were held here and were traded for Nazi soldiers that were captured. However, as time went on, it became more of a typical concentration camp. Many Jews from Auschwitz were transported here and many people from Bergen-Belsen were transported to Auschwitz. These 2 camps apparently had a “good relationship.” Approximately 52,000 Jews were killed here before its liberation on April 15th, 1945, one day before Pesach. This was an extremely eerie experience.
After a quiet train ride back to Hamburg, Adam and I went straight to dinner and then just got back a little while ago. I packed up my stuff so that tomorrow morning we can go out and maybe do something quickly before I have to catch my flight.
