While I waited until the mid 1990s to buy a cell phone for the first time, I know that I have been through at least five or six cell phones since I bought the first one. The average life of a cell phone is 1.5 years, but I probably keep mine 2-3 years. I’m not into the latest and greatest as you can see from my current cell phone pictured here. Sorry, Rex, I hope I'm not too embarrassing by not owning an iPhone.

If you have a drawer full of old cell phones, here’s a link to the Keep America Beautiful Wipe Out Wireless Waste program. I’ve always donated my old cell phones to organizations that can reuse them or recycle them. Let’s keep them out of the landfills and the waterways.

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July 20, 2008

Although other Hammock employees have traveled to Italy and Israel this summer, we're in New Mexico. Here's a picture of me wearing my Hammock tee in the Petroglyph National Park. Being a nature lover, I saw jack rabbits, road runners and lizards in the park.

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June 20, 2008

While I had first heard of Gruff during the 90s, I had not seen him around the Quad plants whenever I visited. Last spring I learned that Gruff is still around after all these years and is always ready to bleat about recycling.

Barbara: When I’m at Sussex on press checks for MyBusiness magazine, I notice containers for plastic, aluminum, glass and paper. What do you recycle in the corporate offices at Quad?

Gruff: Magazines, catalogs, newspapers, direct mail, cardboard, manila folders, Post-it notes, mail cardboard packaging, copier and all other paper and envelopes. Stuff I like to eat.

Barbara: What else do you recycle in the corporate offices?

Gruff: Toner cartridges from Dell and HP, Styrofoam packing peanuts, CDs, disks and tapes; all kinds of batteries. Stuff that I can’t eat.

Barbara: What about recycling in the printing and manufacturing areas?

Gruff: Quad recycles 98.5% of all solid waste generated in our plants, including paper, plastic strapping, wood, metal and computers. We divert more than 300,000 tons of material away from landfills annually, except for the paper I eat before it’s recycled. Since I’m getting up in goat years, I now mostly eat just the healthy entrees in the cafeteria.

Barbara: Quad runs a 24/7 operation like most printing plants. This must use lots of energy.

Gruff: We’ve reduced energy consumption 36% per printed page since the mid-1990s, saving enough energy to power approximately 21,000 single-family homes. Unfortunately, no one has figured out how many goat barns we could power on Quad’s efficiencies.

Barbara: As the green corporate spokesgoat for a major company, what advice can you give our readers?

Gruff: Long ago, I established these GOLDEN RULES OF RECYCLING for Quad employees:

1. Do not place trash with recyclables.
2. Do not place recyclables in the trash.
3. Do not mix together different types of recyclables unless noted otherwise.

Barbara: Thanks, Gruff, I hope to see you in Sussex soon. I like the button with your logo, Be a Gruff, Recycle Stuff.

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June 18, 2008

As everyone around Hammock Inc. is aware (sometimes painfully), I am passionate about preventing litter. I generate so little trash that I don't have a trash can in my office.

I recently attended a Metro Beautification and Environment Commission retreat. Here are some of the highlights:

Shawn Bible, the Beautification Coordinator for TDOT, was one of our speakers. I learned that TDOT spends over $6 million of taxpayers’ money each year to pick up litter off highways. And the streets are still a mess!

There is going to be a revival of the Adopt-A-Highway program in Tennessee. This is a program where a civic group adopts a couple of miles of highway to clean up three or four times a year. I see a great Team Hammock opportunity here.

Shawn spoke about how billboards are a multimillion dollar business and won’t go away. If you find them annoying, just live with it.

Tennesseans can also apply for grants to beautify highways in the Tennessee Roadscape Program.

Edith W. Heller, our state leader for Keep Tennessee Beautiful, spoke about how KTnB.org is the gold standard among states in the Keep America Beautiful program. Every county in Tennessee participated in the Great American Cleanup last year. No other state had every county participate. Over 25% of the citizens of Tennessee were part of a Great American Cleanup group, too. Around 25% of Hammock Inc. employees participated in an event in May.

From Ms. Heller's talk, I learned that a group is working to reduce the amount of cigarette litter (butts) in downtown Nashville.

The worst litterers are between 18-34 years old. This is a horrible statistic. Luckily, KTnB.org utilizes social media tools to target this group.

After the retreat, I’m encouraged that much is being done with school programs to discourage children from becoming litterers. I learned that there are lots of groups who care and who are working to solve the problem. Unfortunately, I hate that my tax dollars are going to clean up someone else’s trash.

One of the greatest things I learned was that Tennessee passed a litter law last summer, TCA 39-14-5. Officer Kevin Kennett of the Litter Patrol of the Tennessee Highway Patrol, also spoke to us.

The Tennessee litter law is online at www.ktnb.org/educationalresources.

Officer Kennett went over a few highlights of this law:

1. Getting caught tossing a cigarette butt up to five pounds of litter is punishable by a $50 fine and 40-hours of community service.

2. Criminal littering is tossing anything from 5-8 pounds on the roadways. The fines are more.

3. Aggravated criminal littering is 10 pounds or more. And the fines are even more.

I learned that 30% of the litter on our roadways is deliberate littering. Joe Smoo eats lunch in his car and tosses the McDonald’s bag out the window.

Now, 70% of littering comes from trash blowing out of open bed pick ups that over 40% of Tennesseans drive. In Tennessee, “motor vehicle{s}…shall be required to have such materials in an enclosed space or fully covered by a tarpaulin.” Officer Kennett is working with local police officers to make sure that this law is enforced. There is also a law that there must be 4" of clearance in the truck bed. Thus, loose litter must be contained within the back of the truck and covered by a tarp.

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This news comes from the Quad website:

(June 17, 2008) Building on its role as a leader in environmentally sound printing practices, Quad/Graphics now has certifications from the world's three leading forest management programs: the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).

Quad/Graphics was the first national commercial printer to receive chain-of-custody certification from the FSC in 2004 and, now, with the SFI and PEFC certifications, Quad/Graphics vastly expands the pool of forest-certified paper suppliers from which its clients can choose.

"We are proud to receive these key certifications in all 10 of our core printing plants," said Joel Quadracci, President & CEO of Quad/Graphics. "This achievement affirms our efforts to support internationally recognized, science-based standards for best practices in forest management. It also offers important benefits to our customers by opening the door to new, worldwide networks of forest-certified suppliers."

QuadGraphics prints MyBusiness magazine for the National Federation of Independent Business.

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June 10, 2008

And what does that mean? According to this entry on whattheythink.com,

PEFC certification provides an assurance mechanism to purchasers of wood and paper products that they are promoting the sustainable management of forests.

Semper Fi and American Spirit, published by Hammock Inc., are printed at Brown Printing.

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May 21, 2008

Above is an illustration from the postal document E8-8621 about the addressing changes for periodicals and other automated flat mail. The new address changes take effect March 29, 2009.

I find it somewhat confusing as the address appears to be upside down on the front cover of the magazine. My understanding is that with the equipment recently purchased by the United States Post Office, the address is actually right side up and correct for the equipment. Visually, it's upside down for the reader, not the postman.

I contacted Sean Stiewe, our postal service representative at QuadGraphics, and asked him if I had interpreted the rules correctly. Sean replied, "It looks that way as of right now, I am waiting to see how Quad is going to handle this with the post office. I will look further into this for you."

Currently, the delivery address is right side up on the front cover. We'll keep you posted on this issue as March 2009 nears.

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May 16, 2008

Here a news item from America Business Media about publisher's letters mailed with periodicals:

In addition to the [postal] pricing changes, there is one content rule change affecting the periodicals class: a modification to the "loose enclosures" rule change to permit the enclosure of unbound "publisher's letters" with a periodical.

As many ABM members may know, there are very strict rules covering loose enclosures in bound publications, and if you run afoul of those rules, the enclosure is treated as a separate Standard mail piece (unless you mark it as or can talk USPS into treating it as a "ride-along" piece). Therefore, a "publisher's letter" dealing with issues such as frequency or content of the publication has been deemed to be a publisher's own advertising and thus not a permissible Periodicals insert. Through the Periodicals Advisory Group (in which ABM and several members are active participants), the industry and the Postal Service reached a reasonable resolution.

According to the USPS's new ruling, "mailers are now entitled to include a publisher's printed letter, including facsimile signature, as a permissible loose enclosure with a Periodicals publication, provided the printed letter is limited to the publisher promoting the publication; or announcing or describing changes to the publication (e.g. title, format, frequency, terms or conditions of a subscription); or other business of the publication, as long as the printed letter includes no other advertising for the publisher or any other party."

Because there were immediate concerns about whether mentioning a Web site would be considered permissible "other business of the publication," or impermissible "advertising," David Straus, ABM's Washington counsel, obtained clarification from the Postal Service for ABM members.

According to that clarification, there are four typical scenarios in which a Web site might be mentioned:

1) Visit our Web site at www.XXX.com

2) www.XXX.com

3) "Go to www.XXX.com to subscribe or renew your subscription"

4.) "Visit www.XXX.com to see our other products or services"

The Postal Service now says that options 1, 2 and 3 may be included in the letter, while option 4 may not. There would first have to be a publisher's letter, of course, about the publication, then 1 or 2 would be ignored as innocuous. Scenario 3 would be considered related, while 4 would be advertising for other business of the publisher.

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May 15, 2008

Each year between March 1 and May 31, Keep American Beautiful sponsors the Great American Clean Up to encourage community involvement in keeping America Beautiful.

According to the kab.org website:

In 2007, Great American Cleanup volunteers collected 200 million pounds of litter and debris; planted 4.6 million trees, flowers and bulbs; cleaned 178,000 miles or roads, streets and highways; and diverted more than 70.6 million plastic (PET) bottles and more than 2.2 million scrap tires from the waste stream.

This Saturday, May 17, some of us from Hammock Inc. have volunteered to clean up along McCrory Lane and Charlotte Pike in western Davidson County.

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May 14, 2008

My mother didn't want her children going through life with nicknames. Her son Charles wasn't Charlie; Deborah wasn't Debbie, and I wasn't Barbie, Barb or Babs. In my 30s, I had one close friend who called me Barb, a practice I neither criticized or encouraged. I ignored it as we drifted apart.

When I joined Hammock Inc. in 1999, I began to travel to printing plants in Wisconsin and Minnesota regularly. In the Midwest, I quickly learned, everyone named Barbara is Barb. Although I am the client, no one at the plants ever asked before posting a sign:

Welcome
Barb Mathieson
to (insert name of printer here).

This week, I traveled to QuadGraphics to press check MyBusiness magazine. The chauffeur, who drove me from the airport to the Quad Plant to pick up my car, told me that the car reserved for me had my name on the dashboard:

Yes, it did. It had my exclusive Midwestern name, Barb.

Editor's Note: If an abrupt monosyllable nickname isn't bad enough, I recently read that Barbara is included in those names of women who are "of a certain age." No one under forty is named Barbara, unless you're my coworker Barbara Logan, who was named after her mother: a woman, of course, of a certain age.

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