Change the Margins

Courant Post-ings II

So stoked! Two fantastic articles came out this week about Margins! So far no bump in traffic from the Courant piece, but I'm hoping that people will curl up with their papers in their jammies over brunch and catch up on reading during the holiday weekend.

The Washington Post 
"The Small-Margin Movement", by Eviana Hartman, can be found here. The piece has an election year slant - very appropriate for a Washington paper. If you want to forward the article to others (please do!), here's the actual link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/
14/AR2008021403284.html?sub=new

You do have to sign in to read the article, but registration is free.

The Hartford Courant
"One Tiny Change Could Save Thousands of Trees" by Joann Klimkiewicz takes a look at the thrifty roots of the Margins campaign, as well as the campaign's goals. You can read it here.

To pass it along:
http://www.courant.com/features/lifestyle/hc-margins0214.
artfeb14,0,7335664.story

Courant Post-ings

The past few weeks have been very encouraging, as the Margins campaign continues to make its way out into the world. I was recently contacted by the Washington Post and the Hartford Courant about doing pieces on Margins.

Both pieces were supposed to come out this week. Not sure what's up yet with the Post, but many thanks to my friend Craig and his stepmom. She lives in Connecticut and found the article in the Courant (it's not online). She's sending me a copy and I'll post it as soon as I receive it.

I'm a little nervous about the pieces. I'm used to being the interviewER, not the interviewEE...hopefully, I said a few things that were either mildly coherent or entertaining and don't make me sound like a jackass.

I'm also curious to see the impact of print press vs. online press on the campaign. Over the past several months, every time there's been a mention of Margins online somewhere, the petition and site traffic have gotten a bump. I'm wondering if the same will hold true for print. If it's not as simple as clicking on a hyperlink to find out more about the campaign, will people actually make the extra effort to do so?

Candidates' Environmental Policies

You stayed up late.
You watched the map change from blue to red to purple to yellow back to purple back to yellow.
And this morning, at least for the Dems, nothing is much clearer, other than the fact that we have two fantastic candidate choices (and I'm not talking about John, Mitt or Mike).

GRIST has done a great job of summarizing the candidates' environmental policies, complete with interviews and audio bytes.
-Click here for the article.
-Click here for a chart that breaks it all down.

Friday EyeCandy: Big Trees

Been meaning to post these for awhile. Went to Big Sur for the first time this summer. Not to get too treehugger-ish about it, but the redwoods really do seem to possess some kind of ancient wisdom...

Even with the trees providing shade, it got pretty hot after we'd been hiking uphill for awhile, so I hung out for awhile inside this tree.

(Perspective)

Friday EyeCandy: Ferrell, Reilly & McKay's GREEN TEAM

Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and John C. Reilly's attempt to make the world a greener place...

Freaky Thinkin' Genius

Usually when the word "viral" pops up, I go running for a Z-pack from Dr. Goldberg. But when it comes to Margins, viral is what we crave. Thx to the following peeps/orgs for supporting Change the Margins. I've newly discovered Google Alerts, which is helping me to keep track of campaign mentions.

-Freakgirl.com: Change the Margins

-Allan Doyle's THINK blog: He's the Director of Technology at the MIT Museum - that sounds like a verrry cool job that I'd love to have in an alternate version of my life...

January/February issue of World Ark, a newsletter published by Heifer International, an organization dedicated to working with communities to end hunger and poverty and to care for the earth. They've put me up for their "Genius of the Month" award, which definitely makes me feel a LOT better about being the only person in my family who didn't go to grad school. Thanks to my dad who found the article randomly - he receives the publication because of his work with the non-profit org Prevent Child Abuse. While leafing through it he found the article and sent it my way. 

Glamour at Sundance

No Friday EyeCandy last week, as I was up in Park City at the Sundance Film Festival covering it for Documentary Magazine. While I was there, I got covered myself...by Glamour! Margins is going to be featured in their April 2008 issue as part of their Green Guide (not official title).

Hopefully, I didn't sound like a complete  idiot in the interview. The reporter didn't quite catch me at my best... runny nose + 7000 feet of altitude adjustment = a less than coherent Tamara. My body does NOT like the cold!

And speaking of Sundance...several docs up there dealt with environmental issues, and all shared the common themes of acting locally and beginning with small steps. Flow: For Love of Water dealt with  the looming water crisis. I'm familiar with water pollution issues, but learned a lot about the effects of H20 privatization - it scared the crap of out me. In Fields of Fuel, activist Josh Tickell advocates the use of biodiesel fuel, and uses it as the jumping off point to explore our dependence on oil and to showcase current solutions. Trouble the Water, a personal account of surviving Katrina, and I.O.U.S.A., about the national debt, are not directly about the environment, but you can't help but connect the dots once they are put in context.

If you want to see my Sundance coverage: www.documentary.org...all I'm sayin' is, there are pictures of Bono...

Friday EyeCandy: ERF

It's just no fun if it's all serious, all the time!

Luckily, Sludgie.com blogger/director Francis Stokes knows this and has decided to explore the lighter side of eco-terrorism in the trailer for his new web series ERF..."Some sleeper cells are sleepier than others."

Numbers

No, this is not about the television show where mathematicians solve crimes the FBI can't seem to wrap their heads around. Just wanted to let y'all know that I've posted updated facts & figures on the STATS page on the site. There's a lot more specific information about how much you'll save by changing margins, as well as updated general stats about the paper industry.

For those of you who are using the numbers to convince your companies or colleges that there's merit in instituting a Margins program, I've also cited where I've gotten the stats from at the bottom of the page. Feel free to check out the sources for additional info you may find helpful.

Green Architecture

I try to report on concrete positive results for the Margins campaign whenever possible. This in recently from Nick Cassidy, who heard the NPR story and brought the idea to his office at the State Architect’s Office in Ohio. He was recognized as "Employee of the Month" for the improvement. This quote is from the inner office communication that lauded his efforts:

"Another item, which was inspired by our own Nick Cassidy's initiative to narrow the margins of our paper documents, along with a few other efficiency strategies, has allowed us to reduce the number of pages in the consolidated document from 382 pages to 340, even with the addition of 7 pages in the Version Control Document. That's a whopping 12 percent less paper, impressions, energy, landfill space, printing time, etc."

I have no idea what the Version Control Document IS, but I'm all for the 12% cut in waste! According to Cassidy, there are a lot of forms used at State (gee, a government office that generates a lot of paperwork? What a surprise!), so this kind of change has the potential to have a sizeable impact.