Tag Archives: marketing

Friday Cat Blogging – 16 December 2016

by GeraldoTimperley Posted on December 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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It’s that time of year again—when we beg our readers for tax-deductible donations to support our work.

But we’ve never been too much into doing things the way they’ve always been done. Case in point: Clara and Monika’s new piece that argues for investigating Donald Trump—and supporting MoJo—includes this appraisal of the media:

“Why was it only now, well past the election, that Trump is being pushed to address how we would deal with banks to which he is in debt, or foreign leaders who have a say over his company’s projects? Simply put: Math. Advertising pays fractions of a penny per click, which means that publishers have to pump out buckets of fast, cheap content to make ends meet, and that leaves little opportunity for serious investigation.

….In normal times, right now we’d be in the middle of the kind of routine end-of-year fundraising drive many nonprofits do in December (“We need to raise $250,000 by December 31!”). But these aren’t normal times. So enough with the marketing pitches. None of us needs to be motivated by some arbitrary fundraising goal. Covering Trump, and what he represents, will take everything we’ve got.”

Yep. Here’s a small sample of my headlines (from this week alone!). If you think pieces like this matter, I hope you’ll pitch in a few bucks to help us do it.

NBC NEWS: Putin Personally Directed Anti-Clicking Hacking
No, the Senate Will Not “Heavily Vet” Trump’s Cabinet Nominees
Chart of the Day: Republicans Sure Are Warming Up to Vladimir Putin
Working Class Hero Donald Trump Sure Has Been Good For Wall Street
Russia Ran the Most Epic Ratfucking Operation in History This Year
How Putin Got His Pet Game Show Host Elected President
Here is Rex Tillerson’s Awesome Record at ExxonMobil

And now, as your reward for reading this far (and donating to MoJo), here is Hopper enjoying herself in the garden earlier this week. And don’t forget: today is also Beethoven’s birthday. Let’s all listen to the 7th Symphony.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 16 December 2016

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Stop Trying to Feel Awesome All the Time, Says Millennial Whisperer

by MargherClifford Posted on September 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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“Personal development” blogger Mark Manson got his start shelling out dating advice back in the mid-2000s, when The Game was making waves. Like every other twentysomething of a certain demographic, Manson, who hails from Austin, Texas, was hoping to cash in as a digital nomad: He moved abroad, started a blog, and attempted to earn a living working on internet marketing startups.

HarperOne

But the promise of the young web was elusive, Manson soon discovered. The startups and the jobs they offered were “not sustainable—they’re not real careers,” he says. “If you start looking out 20 years in the future, you have no stability. I started to realize this, and around the same time, I realized that writing is the only thing I’m good at, the only thing I really love about my job.”

So Manson, who is now 32, resolved to focus on his writing. In 2012, while living in Colombia, he penned his first viral post, “10 Things Most Americans Don’t Know About America.” The post received thousands of shares and crashed his website, he says. Manson continued writing in his plain, off-the-cuff style, appealing to millennials with posts like “Stop Trying to Be Happy,” “Love is Not Enough,” and “In Defense of Being Average.”

Nowadays, his eponymous advice blog (tagline: “Some people say I’m an idiot. Other people say I saved their life. Read and decide for yourself”) commands about 2 million unique visitors a month and covers topics from love to the development of habits. I reached out to Manson to talk about his new book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, and naturally, to get a little advice.

Mother Jones: What’s up with the book title?

Mark Manson: It actually comes from a blog article I wrote a couple of years ago. I was just joking around with a friend about not giving a fuck, and I think at one point, I said, “Not giving a fuck: It’s not easy, it’s a very subtle art form.” I have a Google Doc, and every time I have an idea for an article, I pull up my phone and jot down ideas. It took me a year to actually write the book, and one day when I was feeling irreverent and ridiculous, I was like, all right, let’s talk about giving fucks, not giving fucks, and just went for it.

MJ: How would you summarize the key takeaways?

MM: The central message is that, in general, people have spent way too much time trying to feel good all the time. Instead they should focus on deciphering what’s important and what’s not. Because problems are inevitable, pain is inevitable, and the only really reliable way to persevere or deal with those problems and pain is to find a worthy cause or a worthy reason for dealing with it. A lot of the culture at large, and self-help material in general, has gone down this rabbit hole of “You can feel great all the time and you’re amazing. You’re a special snowflake who’s going to be the next big thing in the world.” I think that’s really led to a culturewide sense of entitlement and just kind of being detached from reality and from each other.

MJ: So we should feel bad instead?

MM: Feeling good is nice, but the goal should be to find something meaningful and important.

MJ: But isn’t that what everyone is saying?

MM: Yeah, a lot of people, but it’s usually framed like, “You’ll feel really good if you find something meaningful.” It doesn’t work that way. The quality of your life is determined by how good your problems are, not how awesome you feel all the time. The whole point of the book is that self improvement isn’t about getting rid of pain. It’s about not giving a fuck about pain. That’s what growth is. It’s getting to the point where the pain you’re sustaining is a worthwhile thing to endure.

MJ: So how do you know which problem is the right one? For instance, a lot of people work really hard and suffer a lot—and they’re not satisfied.

MM: The quest here is to find better problems. A better problem is the one we have control over, that is pro-social and not antisocial. In a way, it’s about values. Good values are based in reality—they’re socially constructive and immediately controllable. Bad values are superstitious, socially destructive, and not immediate or controllable.

To use one of the facetious examples in the book: If the biggest problem in my life right now is that my favorite TV show got canceled, that’s a pretty poor reflection of my values and the quality of my life. That’s a poor thing to care about, it’s not controllable, it’s not immediate, it has no immediate effect on the people around me or the people I care about. The highest priorities in our life should be something that’s grounded in being constructive toward the people around us, and something that’s immediate and we have control over.

So if someone says they want to be a famous singer on TV, for example, it’s a poor value, because there’s so many factors that could influence that. The thing that will bring greater quality to life is something more controllable, more like, “I want to the best singer that I possibly can,” or “I want to move as many people as possible with my artwork as I can,” whether you’re singing in a coffee shop or onstage at Madison Square Garden.

MJ: That seems obvious. And yet I hadn’t really thought about it.

MM: Culturally speaking, we’re getting a bit lost. The side effect of all this marketing and consumerism is that we’re running into this constant state of distraction, and we don’t realize that a lot of the values that we end up adopting maybe aren’t even our own, or maybe were a little bit imposed on us through marketing messages and TV shows and movies.

I spent a lot of my early adulthood caring about a lot of things, and I was very upset when I discovered that they weren’t very important. I’ve watched a lot of my friends and my readers go through similar experiences. I think a lot of that comes with growing up with the internet and 500 channels on TV. We’re the first generation that grew up with this very distorted expectation of what the world is and what we should expect from it.

MJ: So what can we do?

MM: What needs to be done is a return to simplicity. The answer these days is not more, it’s less. It’s deciding what to cut off from our attention and our focus. There’s way more things out there than any single person people could pursue, way more opportunities and questions. I think the most important question is: What am I going to give up? What am I going to cut myself off from? What are the few things in my life that I am going to care about and focus on, understanding that I’m limited, and a lot of ideas so prevalent out there may not ever happen in my life? I think it’s a really hard thing to swallow.

MJ: So then it’s more like, “What do I actually want to give a fuck about?”

MM: Exactly. The not giving a fuck thing is actually just a silly tool to teach people to think about their values, about what are they choosing to find important in their life, and then finding a way to change those things.

MJ: But suppose I were to say, “Mark, I actually give a fuck about everything. What should I do?”

MM: I would tell you to prepare for a lot of disappointment, and it would really come down to how you react to that disappointment. It’s a process of letting go. Some people react by refusing to accept it. They give a fuck about everything and they’re constantly disappointed because nothing is living up to their expectations, but instead of accepting that their expectations are unrealistic, they blame groups of people and blame the government and blame everybody. What we have to get back to is that people are really limited and fallible. You need to choose the few things that you’re going to work really hard for, and accept the disappointment that comes with everything else.

It’s a very negative philosophy, but it makes people feel better because it relinquishes the pressure. If you think of your typical millennial, since that’s who most of my readers are, they have all these expectations. They went to a good school and they worked their asses off. They did an unpaid internship and they studied abroad and they want to have their amazing career and they want to get there faster than ever. And they want to make a certain amount of money and live in an awesome city, and it’s just, the pressure of having to care about everything weighs them down and creates a lot of unnecessary anxiety. Everything else will eventually come as a side effect: If you get good at a job, eventually you’ll get to live in a good city. If you get good at a skill, you’ll find a good job. If you find a skill that you care about and think is important, then you’ll naturally get good at it. Start at the beginning.

MJ: How do people respond to this advice?

MM: The most common thing I get from people is a sense of relief. People who come to self-improvement content are generally the type of people who are very hard on themselves and constantly feel a need to prove that they’re awesome and that their life is awesome. So when they come around and see something that’s like, “Hey, you don’t need to prove anything; it’s not going to work anyway”—even though it’s a negative message, they kind of feel relief. My goal is never to give algorithmic advice, but to explain the principles and a little bit of the framework, so people can decide for themselves. Because deciding for themselves is the most important thing people can do—it’s often the problem in the first place.

MJ: How did you come up with this stuff?

MM: I’m a recovered self-help junkie. I’ve always been a bookworm, so I’ve been reading about this stuff since I was a teenager. I guess it’s a classic case of what was a hobby through most of my life ended up becoming my profession, even if it wasn’t designed that way. That, and I’ve screwed up. There’s really no better teacher than your own screwups.

MJ: Where do you turn when you feel lost or in need of help?

MM: I have a great support network. My fiancée is amazing. I have some friends who are insanely intelligent and who are willing to keep me in check, and I have my family. Books are great, but for most people, if you’re going through hard times, step No. 1 should be friends and family and people close to you.

MJ: Your last chapter, fittingly, is about death. Why did you choose to write about that?

MM: Because the whole book is about people trying to avoid their problems, and death is the ultimate problem we try to avoid. There are entire religions about coming to terms with death and becoming more comfortable. To use that famous Steve Jobs YouTube video, when you think about death, it’s the only thing that kind of puts everything else in perspective. It is the only kind of objective yardstick for being able to recognize the values in one’s own life, and what they’re worth. So I think it’s important to think about it, and for people to imagine their own death, because it makes self discovery that much easier—even though it’s unpleasant.

MJ: So, um, how many times did you use the F-word in your book?

MM: Ha! I have no idea. A lot! Probably a couple hundred. The editor struck a few of them, because they were definitely gratuitous.

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Stop Trying to Feel Awesome All the Time, Says Millennial Whisperer

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Coffee Pod Sales Will Soon Surpass Regular and Instant Coffee

by JeannaEdmonson1 Posted on September 12, 2016

Theyre calling it the Clooney effect. Single-use coffee pods are flying off supermarket shelves at a faster rate than ever before, possibly aided by actor George Clooneys persuasive good looks in European Nespresso advertisements since 2006 and, more recently, in the United States.

Kantar Worldpanelrecently announced that coffee pod sales of brands such as Nespresso, Tassimo, and Dolce Gusto (owned by Nescaf) willsoon overtake standard roast and ground coffee after an increase of 29.5 per cent over the last 12 months, bringing sales to 137.5 million. During the same period, sales of roast and ground varieties rose by only 2.5 per cent to 167 million.(The Telegraph) In its report, based on data from 986 million households across 35 countries, Kantar goes on to explain that the global market has expanded 16 percent in the past year, with particularly strong growth in France and Spain.

Photo Credit: Daniel Lobo/Flickr

This is sad news for those of us who wish that more sustainable consumer practices would infiltrate the mainstream. There is nothing green about coffee pods, no matter what the manufacturers tell you. The recycling claims aremostly bogus, as the used pods are a mix of plastic, aluminum foil, and coffee grounds that must be separated by hand in order for recycling to occur. It remains, as Lloyd wrote earlier, design for unsustainability, regardless of how manufacturers want to spin it.

Shipping pods across the country to make the world’s most expensive compost out of the coffee and lawn chairs out of the plastic doesn’t make a lot of sense. As for the people who try to separate the components themselves, there are not that many of them; if they are willing to do that, they probably have the time and energy to make a real pot of coffee.

Change did seem imminent. Earlier this year thecity of Hamburg, Germany, banned the purchase of all coffee pods using council money in an attempt to reduce waste. A YouTube video called Kill the K-Cup got many others thinking about where their used pods end up long after the cup of coffee has been finished. Even the Keurig cup inventor hasexpressed regretat unleashing such an environmental nightmare into the world. And yet, Kantar reveals that sales continue to climb, likely due to the sheer convenience of having to do nothing but press a button.

Coffee capsules have helped create the holy grail of marketing: a new category combining the indulgence of caf culture with the convenience and speed of the capsules.

Nespresso advertises on a historic building in Turin, Italy. Photo Credit: Lloyd Alter

This, despite the fact that pods are ridiculously expensive compared to high quality beans. Pods can work out to cost between 30 and 50 dollars per pound, which is a vast difference from the $16 I shell out every couple weeks for a pound of fairtrade, shade-grown beans.The Telegraph citesKantar analyst Ed John: An average cup of regular instant coffee costs only 2 pence (3 U.S. cents). A caf-style instant is 17p (23) while the fastest growing sectorpodscost an average of 31p (41) per cup.

Pods makes no sense for any reason other than convenience, and even that could be argued: its not that difficult to boil water and push down a French press. But, like so many other environmentally destructive practices, people need to be willing to put in a tiny bit more effort in order to lessen their footprint significantly and yet, Kantars findings show that people really dont seem to care. How sad.

Written by Katherine Martinko.This post originally appeared onTreeHugger.

Photo Credit: Tim Lossen/Flickr

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Coffee Pod Sales Will Soon Surpass Regular and Instant Coffee

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Olympians Are Selling Sugar Water to Kids

by JoelWalter Posted on August 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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Back in 2012, just ahead of the summer Olympics in London and the associated advertising blitz, the prestigious UK medical journal BMJ issued a scathing takedown of sports drinks, ably summarized for Mother Jones by health writer David Tuller. Takeaway: The colorful fluids are utterly unnecessary for restoring electrolytes after exercise, but do contain unhealthy jolts of sugar.

Four years later, beverage giants are once again using Olympians’ beauty and grit to market these supposed elixirs—this time, to children. Above, see tennis wizard Serena Williams, sprint champ Usain Bolt, and NBA star Paul George picturesquely working out with a charismatic kid in an Olympics-focused ad for Pepsi’s flagship sports drink Gatorade. And here‘s boxer Shakur Stevenson doing the same for Coca-Cola’s Powerade. Expect to see these ads and many more during the broadcast of this year’s Olympics, which open in Rio de Janeiro Friday.

And it’s easy to see why the industry is investing heavily in this massively watched sports spectacle. According to the industry tracker Beverage Marketing Corporation, US carbonated soda consumption fell 1.5 percent in 2015, the eleventh straight year of decline. But sports drink volumes raced ahead by a (relatively) Usain Bolt-like 5.5 percent. In short, people are turning away from sugary carbonated drinks because they know they’re unhealthy—and turning to sports drinks, which are associated with lean, athletic bodies, but are also quite sugary.

Over at The Washington Post, Casey Seidenberg notes that the sports drinks’ success is drawing new brands into the market. Honest Tea (also owned by Coca Cola) and upstart Greater Than have rolled out “healthier sports drinks that are lower in sugar and free of artificial food colorings.” While less sugary than Gatorade, etc, these products are equally unnecessary, Seidenberg writes; like adults, “kids and teens rarely, if ever, lose enough electrolytes during their athletic endeavors to require extra replenishment.” She adds: “Sodium is the most common electrolyte lost in sweat, yet most Americans get more than enough sodium from their diets.”

She subjected her sons and their friends to a blind taste test pitting Gatorade and Powerade against new-wave products from Honest Tea and Greater Than, as well as a glass of water and a piece of fruit, which, as she shows, provides just as much hydration as—and several times more potassium (a non-sodium electrolyte) than—most sports drinks, with zero added sugar.

“To my dismay (but not to my surprise), the kids blindly chose Powerade and Gatorade as their favorites,” she writes.” After all, these varieties are the sweetest and the most chemically engineered to cause consumers to come back for more.” As for water and fruit, she found that her experiment subjects “prefer a sports drink” but agree that the combination “satisfies when thirsty or hungry after a game.” If only influential athletes like basketball giant LeBron James would dump their sports-drink deals deal get behind that solution.

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Olympians Are Selling Sugar Water to Kids

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Here’s Why OxyContin Is So Damn Addictive

by GrettaRupert Posted on May 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Why has OxyContin become the poster child for opioid abuse? The LA Times has a long investigative piece today which suggests that a big part of the blame should be laid at the feet of Purdue Pharma, the makers of the drug. When OxyContin was launched, it was billed as a painkiller that would last 12 hours—longer than morphine and other opioids. That 12-hour dosing schedule was critical to its success. Without it, Oxy didn’t have much benefit. Unfortunately, it turned out that it wore off sooner for a lot of people:

Experts said that when there are gaps in the effect of a narcotic like OxyContin, patients can suffer body aches, nausea, anxiety and other symptoms of withdrawal. When the agony is relieved by the next dose, it creates a cycle of pain and euphoria that fosters addiction, they said.

OxyContin taken at 12-hour intervals could be “the perfect recipe for addiction,” said Theodore J. Cicero, a neuropharmacologist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and a leading researcher on how opioids affect the brain.

Patients in whom the drug doesn’t last 12 hours can suffer both a return of their underlying pain and “the beginning stages of acute withdrawal,” Cicero said. “That becomes a very powerful motivator for people to take more drugs.”

But Purdue refused to accept shorter dosing schedules, since that would eliminate its strongest competitive advantage. Instead, they launched a blitz aimed at doctors, telling them to stick with the 12-hour dosing but to prescribe larger amounts. Sometimes this worked and sometimes it didn’t, and when it didn’t it increased the chances of addiction:

In the real world practice of medicine, some doctors turned away from OxyContin entirely. San Francisco public health clinics stopped dispensing the painkiller in 2005, based in part on feedback from patients who said it wore off after eight hours. The clinics switched to generic morphine, which has a similar duration and costs a lot less.

“What I had come to see was the lack of evidence that it was any better than morphine,” Dr. Mitchell Katz, then head of the San Francisco public health department, said in an interview.

The whole piece is worth a read. Purdue has known from the start that 12-hour dosing didn’t work for a significant number of patients, but they relentlessly focused their marketing in that direction anyway. Why? Because without it, Oxy wouldn’t be a moneymaker. As for the danger this posed, that was mostly suppressed by keeping documents under seal in court cases “in order to protect trade secrets.” Welcome to the American pharmaceutical industry.

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Here’s Why OxyContin Is So Damn Addictive

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Do Lucky People Feel Better About Paying Taxes?

by LupeGovanvcuuf Posted on April 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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Robert Frank thinks that we can get rich people to support higher taxes by reminding them of how lucky they are:

Underestimating the importance of luck is [] a totally understandable tendency….Most highly successful people are very talented and hardworking, after all, and when they construct the narratives of their own lives, the most readily available memories are the difficult problems they’ve been solving every day for decades. Less salient are the sporadic external events that also invariably matter, like the mentor who helped you during a rough patch in 11th grade or the promotion you got because a more qualified colleague had to turn it down to care for an ill spouse.

….I’ve seen even brief discussions of the link between success and luck temper the outrage many wealthy people feel about taxes….In my own recent conversations with highly successful people, I’ve seen opinions change on the spot. Many who seem never to have considered the possibility that their success stemmed from factors other than their own talent and effort are often surprisingly willing to rethink. In many instances, even brief reflection stimulates them to recall specific examples of good breaks they’ve enjoyed along the way.

I’ve long wondered how it is that so many people are completely clueless about how lucky they are. Off the top of my head, here’s the story of my life:

I was born in the richest state in the richest country in the richest era of human history. I was born white, male, straight, and healthy. I was born with a high IQ and an even temper. My parents loved me and took care of me. We weren’t rich, but I never wanted for anything important. I attended good quality state schools free of charge for 17 years. I never had any catastrophic money problems after I left home. By a rather unlikely chance, I ended up marrying the most wonderful person in the world. I had a great mentor at one job who helped me make an improbable move into high-tech marketing. Later I found myself working for a guy I happened to click with, and ended up vice president of marketing. Our company eventually got acquired and I made a bunch of money. After I left, I just happened to start blogging as a hobby right at the time blogging became big. A couple of years later I got a call out of the blue asking if I wanted to blog for pay. A few years after that I got another call out of the blue and ended up at MoJo.

There’s more, but that’s enough for now. And of course, recently I’ve had some bad luck. But even that hasn’t been so bad. Thanks to all the good luck I had before, I’ve received hundreds of thousands of dollars of top-notch medical treatment at practically no cost.

Does any of this mean I didn’t work hard and diligently? Of course not. But lots of people work hard and diligently. In fact, most people do. If I had worked hard and diligently but been born in a small village in Pakistan, I’d be…living in a small village in Pakistan right now. All the hard work and diligence in the world wouldn’t have done much of anything for me.

I can easily believe that most people give short shrift to all this stuff. Hell, I’ve known people who were smug about their real estate acumen because they happened to buy a house in 2002, and then cried about their terrible luck when they failed to sell it in 2007. We all like to fool ourselves into believing that good things are due to our smarts while bad things are all down to bad luck. But for most of us, there’s an awful lot of good luck involved in our lives too.

But here’s the thing I’m interested in: is it really true that pointing this out to a rich person is likely to turn them into a tax-loving supporter of the welfare state? That hasn’t been my experience, but then, I’ve never gone whole hog on the luck argument. Maybe it works! But if it does, we liberals have sure been remarkably negligent for the past few decades. This is a pretty easy argument to make, after all.

So: has anyone (other than Robert Frank) tried this? Ideally with a rich person, but even an upper-middle-class Republican will do. Did it work? Inquiring minds want to know.

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Do Lucky People Feel Better About Paying Taxes?

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Recycling Batteries Is Easy With The Big Green Box

by Sam185909217 Posted on April 18, 2016

When it comes to recycling, Americans are much more likely to take the green route with household items like aluminum cans and plastic bottles than they are with electronics. In fact, only 31 percent of people recycle single-use batteries, while more than 70 percent recycle steel, plastic and paper items, according to a poll conducted by Ipsos Marketing on behalf of Call2Recycle. Why the disparity when it comes to recycling batteries? Let’s take a look at one simple solution.

Recycling batteries, in a box

Tossing a milk jug into a blue bin is easier than hunting down an electronics recycler … or at least that was true until The Big Green Box began.

The Big Green Box is a convenient way to make sure batteries are properly managed at the end of their life.  Call it recycling batteries, in a box.

A program from Retriev Technologies, a company that offers environmentally sound battery recycling, The Big Green Box involves just three steps for recycling batteries: buy it, fill it, ship it. Here’s how it works:

Buy it. Purchase the Big Green Box at a low flat rate (prices start at $63). It will be shipped to your home or office and will come completely assembled. Place it wherever is most convenient for you or your co-workers/employees to toss used batteries.
Fill it. Inside the Big Green Box, you’ll find a set of plastic bags. As batteries and other electronic devices are used up, simply place the individual items in a separate bag — the bags prevent unintentional discharges or short circuits — and set them inside the box.
Ship it. Once your Big Green Box is full, or a year has passed since placing the first item into the box, drop it off at your local FedEx location or call 1-800-Go-FedEx to have your box picked up from your home or place of business for no charge. The batteries will end up at an EPA-permitted facility for proper end-of-life management.

Bunches of batteries

Although the box is one-size-fits-all, recycling batteries is not. Retriev Technologies has processes in place for all the following:

Alkaline batteries: Alkaline batteries are made primarily of zinc, manganese dioxide and steel, all of which can be made into new products. The batteries are shredded to separate the steel casing from the zinc and manganese active materials.
NiCd and NiMH batteries: Nickel Cadmium (NiCd) and Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH) batteries include nickel, cadmium (in NiCd only) and iron. Cadmium is a hazardous substance that can cause serious bodily harm if not properly captured, so Retriev uses a pyrometallurgical process for component separation.
Lithium ion batteries: Li-Ion batteries typically consist of cobalt and copper and may have nickel, aluminum and iron. The batteries are processed through an automated crusher, which operates under a liquid solution to prevent fugitive emissions and to reduce the reactivity of the processed batteries. The result is a metal-enriched liquid and metal solids, which can be reused in new products.
Lithium metal batteries: These highly reactive batteries are pre-treated using a proprietary cryogenic process to lessen their reactivity and to allow for further processing. They then go through an automated crusher that results in metal solids and lithium-enriched liquid.
Lead acid batteries: These batteries primarily consist of lead metal and plastic casings. The lead plates are removed from the plastic casing using an automated physical separation technology; the lead is eventually reused in new batteries and the plastic goes to recyclers to incorporate into new products.

In addition to batteries, The Big Green Box is designed to take small portable electronics such as cellphones, MP3 players, tablets, handheld power tools and miniature laptops or computers.

Order your very own box here, and do your part to make recycling batteries just as convenient as any other kind of recycling.

Editor’s Note: Earth911 partners with many industries, manufacturers and organizations to support its Recycling Directory, the largest in the nation, which is provided to consumers at no cost. Retriev Technologies is one of these partners.

About
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Haley Shapley

Haley Shapley is based in Seattle, where recycling is just as cool as Macklemore, walking in the rain without an umbrella, and eating locally sourced food. She writes for a wide range of national and regional publications, covering everything from sustainability and health to travel and retail.

Latest posts by Haley Shapley (see all)

Recycling Batteries Is Easy With The Big Green Box – April 18, 2016
Make A Difference: Donate Your Computer Through InterConnection – March 24, 2016
Retriev Technologies Gives Old Batteries New Life – March 10, 2016

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Recycling Batteries Is Easy With The Big Green Box

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Keep it Local on Small Business Saturday + 5 Reasons to Support Local Businesses

by DeanneEddie Posted on November 27, 2015

Started as an antidote to the chaos known as Black Friday in 2010, Small Business Saturday falls on the Saturday after Thanksgiving (for 2015 it is November 28). Small Business Saturday offers shoppers and diners a pleasant respite from the big-box madness of the holiday shopping season, and encourages shoppers to think small when it comes to purchases for the season.

Small Business Saturday, started by the credit card company American Express, helps to boost local economies by encouraging patrons to support local, neighborhood stores and interact with their community. For many of the same reasons that shopping at the farmer’s markets lets you know where your food is coming from, ‘shopping small’ allows you to meet your local business owners and help keep small businesses alive in your community.

Shopping small this Saturday (and every day) can have a pretty big impact in your community. Here’s how:

1. More local money will be kept in the local economy: For every $100 you spend at locally owned businesses, $68 will stay in the community, according to a 2004 study byCivic Economics. But in comparison, if you spend $100 at a national chain, $43 stays in the community. Despite what some national chains would have you believe, big box stores are often quite bad for small businesses in communities, and many cities are starting to limit big-box stores.

2. You have a direct impact on job creation in your community: Even though big-box stores make big promises of job creation, the reality is that they often have a net decrease of jobs in the community and a net negative affect on thelocal economics due to the overall jobs decrease. A study reported by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance shows that across over 3,000 US counties, the opening of a Wal-Mart store led to a net loss of 150 retail jobs on average, suggesting that a new Wal-Mart job replaces approximately 1.4 workers at other stores.

3. Share the love of what makes your community unique: Unless you love the idea of a United States of Generica, supporting your local small cafes, handmade goods stores, hardware stores, and boutiques is the way to keep your community interesting and unique, and allowing it to become a destination for other shoppers. Local businesses keep local communities thriving, so take advantage of supporting your neighbors AND building your community’s growth! And don’t forget to ‘eat small‘ on Small Business Saturday too, by choosing locally-run eateries and supporting local food producers, farmers, brewers and makers.

4. You support innovation and entrepreneurship: Support the creative, individualistic, innovative artists, thinkers, and makers in your town by buying their wares. Starting a business is pretty difficult, and having the support of your local community can make or break a new business.

5. Nurture your Neighbors: Your local business owners are neighbors, friends, fellow shoppers, have kids in the same schools, and care about your community in the same way. Get to know them learn about their business, their life and grow a welcoming, supportive community in the process.

American Express has supported the campaign from the beginning, and continues to encourage shoppers to ‘shop small’ all year round, although it’s perhaps most important this time of year, as big-box stores fight among themselves to have the earliest opening hours, the longest sale, and even pre-Black Friday sales.

Small businesses don’t often have the marketing budget to compete with these stores, so Amex offers free Small Business Saturday marketing materials to brick-and-mortar (ie: not online) businesses, along with free listings in their ShopSmall.com listings, even if you’re not a Amex-accepting businesses (though you will have to register your name). Check out Small Business Saturday on Facebook to learn more.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Keep it Local on Small Business Saturday + 5 Reasons to Support Local Businesses

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Conservative Group Blasts the Pope: "Paganism" Has "Entered the Church"

by Jesus44Ccz Posted on September 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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A leading group of climate change skeptics is concerned that paganism is creeping into the Catholic Church. That was the message delivered by Gene Koprowski, director of marketing at the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, at a press conference in Philadelphia Thursday.

The event, which Heartland had billed as a challenge to Pope Francis’ “views on global warming and the nature of capitalism,” was recorded by the liberal group American Bridge. Talking Points Memo first reported on the video Friday. You can watch an excerpt above.

The pope, who is visiting the United States next week, has called on policymakers to take action to control climate change and has criticized the excesses of free market capitalism. According to Koprowski, when Heartland staffers first began reading news stories about the pope speaking out on climate, they were “shocked that the pope was buying into this left-wing political craze that is global warming.” So in April, Heartland sent a delegation of climate skeptics to Rome to offer a “prebuttal” to a Vatican climate summit in an attempt to change the pope’s mind.

“When the Vatican leapt into the controversy on climate science, we were initially under the impression that His Holiness was a victim of bad advice from bad advisers,” Koprowski said Thursday. “There were people from the UN who were population control advocates. There were people from other left-wing groups who were advising the pontiff.”

But Koprowski said that after the pope released his landmark encyclical calling for action on climate change, he began to suspect that “something more may be afoot.” Koprowski then invoked pagan rituals and “nature worship” that he said were “seeping into the Church” during the Middle Ages, adding: “I’m wondering, as a scholar, if pagan forms are returning to the Church this day.”

Koprowski concluded: “I would say, contrary to some of the criticism, that this is not communism that has entered the church. It’s, rather, paganism.”

Heartland and Koprowski did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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Conservative Group Blasts the Pope: "Paganism" Has "Entered the Church"

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Nerds and Hacks Unite! You Have Nothing to Lose Except Your Chains.

by IsabellASV Posted on August 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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David Roberts has a long post at Vox about tech nerds and their disdain for politics. He highlights one particular tech nerd who describes both major parties as “a bunch of dumb people saying dumb things,” and jumps off from there:

There are two broad narratives about politics that can be glimpsed between the lines here. Both are, in the argot of the day, problematic.

The first, which is extremely common in the nerd community, is a distaste for government and politics….a sense that government is big, bloated, slow-moving, and inefficient, that politicians are dimwits and panderers, and that real progress comes from private innovation, not government mandates. None of which is facially unreasonable.

The second is the conception of politics as a contest of two mirror-image political philosophies, with mirror-image extremes and a common center, which is where sensible, independent-minded people congregate.

There’s about 4,400 more words than this, so click the link if you want to immerse yourself.

But I have a little different take on all this. The truth is that politics and tech are the same thing: inventing a product that appeals to people and then marketing the hell out of it. Back in the dark ages, this was a little more obvious. Steve Wozniak invented, Steve Jobs sold. It was so common for tech companies to be started by two people, one engineer and one salesman, that it was practically a cliche.

The modern tech community has lost a bit of that. Oh, they all chatter about social media and going viral and so forth. As long as the marketing is actually just some excuse for talking about cool new tech, they’re happy to immerse themselves in it. But actually selling their product? Meh. The truly great ideas rise to the top without any of that Mad Men crap. Anyway, the marketing department will handle the dull routine of advertising and….well, whatever it is they do.

Politics, by contrast, leans the other way. Inventing new stuff helps, but the real art is in selling your ideas to the public and convincing your fellow politicians to back you. It’s all messy and annoying, especially if you’re not very socially adept, but it’s the way human beings get things done.

Well, it’s one of the ways. Because Roberts only tells half the story. As much as most tech nerds disdain the messy humanness of politics, it’s equally true that most politicians disdain the eye-rolling naivete of tech nerds. You wanna get something done, kid? Watch the master at work.

In politics, you have the wonks and the hacks—and it’s the hacks who rule. In tech, you have the nerds and the salesmen—and it’s the nerds who rule. There are always exceptions, but that’s the general shape of the river.

But guess what? The most successful nerds have always been the ones who are also willing to figure out what makes people tick. And the most successful politicians have been the ones who are willing to marry themselves to policy solutions that fit their time and place. That doesn’t mean that nerds have to slap backs (Bill Gates never did) or that successful politicians have to immerse themselves in white papers (Ronald Reagan never did), but wonks and hacks and nerds and salesmen all need each other. The political hacks and the tech nerds need to get together and get messy. And more important: they have to genuinely respect each other. When that happens, you have a very, very powerful combination. So get to work.

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Nerds and Hacks Unite! You Have Nothing to Lose Except Your Chains.

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