Shrinking Your Environmental Footprint

We’ve all heard or read about the serious threat to our way of life posed by environmental

degradation, including the acidification of the oceans, the warming of the global climate system, and the loss of biodiversity. In recent years, warnings issued by organizations like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have grown increasingly dire. The consensus among experts, and a growing number of world leaders, is that we need to get our collective act together if we intend to leave a decent, livable planet to our grandchildren.

There is no one, single “magic bullet” that can address all of those problems simultaneously. In order to answer the challenge, we will need to combine our skills of cooperation with our capacity for prudent, individual decision-making. And the workplace happens to be a venue where personal initiative and collaborative effort both come to the fore.

If you’re concerned about your business’s impact on the environment, but worry about the cost or difficulty of implementing more eco-friendly alternatives, fear not: there are some simple, inexpensive techniques you can try that can make a positive difference.

Invest in new lightbulbs and energy-efficient appliances.

Replace your old, incandescent bulbs with LED bulbs, and make sure the office refrigerator, microwave, and dishwasher are all certified energy-efficient and built to last. Another advantage of the pursuit of energy efficiency (besides the environmental dimension) is the money you stand to save on your electricity bill.

Conduct regular checks of your office’s heating system to ensure that air is able to flow freely through the vents.

Turn out those lights!

Instruct the last person to leave the office in the evening to turn out the lights, and make sure all of the office computers are switched off. The same advice applies to rooms not currently in use, and chargers for cell phones and other gadgets that continue to sip electricity even when the device is fully charged. Unplug these when they’re not needed.

If possible, try scheduling “work from home” days.

One of the primary sources of vehicular pollution in our society is the daily commute to-and-from work—cars, trucks, and buses idling at stoplights and sitting in traffic. Instead, encourage your team to work from home if they can. With the communications technology available today, there is often no need for professionals to congregate in a single location in order to keep in contact with each other and get work done.

Reuse, recycle, and compost.

Many municipalities have citywide recycling programs, and some (like Vancouver, B.C.) have municipal composting programs. By separating recyclable items and organic materials from garbage, you’ll save space in your waste receptacles, conserve energy and, ultimately, contribute to the diminution of landfills and refuse processed at incinerators.

If you have a lot of old documents with text on only one side, conserve paper by writing on the other side. Set aside a trove of defunct, one-sided documents for this purpose.

Order paper products made from recycled material.

A wide variety of paper products made from recycled materials—including plates, napkins, paper towels, toilet paper, tissues, and document sheets—are available for purchase in stationery stores and through wholesale distributors. Whenever possible, try to order such products, particularly if they are compostable.

If your work is finished early, go home.

Many businesses operate on the basis of set hours, like the stereotypical “9 to 5”. But unless there’s a good reason for you to remain at work throughout the allotted time period, you’re better off shutting down your computer, cutting the lights, and heading home. You may even profit from the opportunity to beat the evening rush, which will save you fuel (better for both the environment and your bank account), and spare you frustration.

Spend some of your free time enjoying the natural world you’ve helped to preserve!

How to Become a Morning Person

We’ve all met people who seem consistently chipper early in the morning, and experience no observable loss of vigour or enthusiasm during the day.

For some, this comes quite naturally. Many habitual early-risers have the built-in ability to get up early and still maintain an adequate energy level without resorting to copious infusions of caffeine. If this description sounds like you, then you’re probably a morning person. Good for you!

Others are less fortunate. If you find you need to drag yourself out of bed in the morning, and feel an urge to whack away at the snooze-bar on your alarm clock (possibly dislodging a few items from your bedside table in the process), then you’re likely not a morning person. Maybe you’re a night owl. Or perhaps you just enjoy getting an ample nightly amount of shut-eye.

To be sure, old habits die hard. If you’re a non-morning person who has recently embarked upon a career path that will require you to get up much earlier than you’re used to, or if you’d just like to increase your productivity early in the day, then you’ll need to adjust your routine. Changes in sleep patterns are not always easy to stomach—but there are some practical steps you can follow to ease the transition.

In any case, the key is to ensure you go to bed early enough to still get a healthy amount of sleep; experts recommend about eight hours for most adults.

•  Simplify your morning routine—before you retire for the night.

Lay out your clothes, organize your lunch and snacks for the following day, and pack anything else you need in your luggage/briefcase/backpack. The last thing you want in the morning is to squander precious minutes hunting around for important items, or (even worse) realizing you’ve forgotten something after you’ve left for work.

•  To fall asleep sooner, power down and cut the lights.

Several years ago, I spent some time volunteering in a village in rural Costa Rica. In that community, as in many parts of Central America, locals both go to bed and rise quite a bit earlier than I was accustomed to in Canada. This is partly because farmers in pastoral areas are obliged to begin their work early in the day. But it’s also a function of the day-night cycle in regions near the equator, where the duration of daylight hours varies little over the course of a year.

One factor that I believe facilitated my quick transition to the Costa Rican sleep pattern, was that the community where I stayed had little noise at night (apart from a few animal sounds), and was relatively dark after the sun set—just after 8:00 PM. There were no streetlights, and few appliances or television sets.

There is a useful lesson here for those of us who live in cities and industrialized areas: if you’d like to go to sleep and wake up earlier more easily, try to isolate yourself from bright lights and noisy appliances at least half an hour before your intended bedtime. Reading with a nightlight or listening to some gentle music before bed is okay—but watching TV or checking e-mails immediately before you hit the hay might interfere with your ability to fall asleep.

•  Find an alarm clock that works for you.

The archetypal alarm clock jars the sleeper into consciousness with a strident “beep, beep, beep”. But that high-pitched hectoring is not for everyone, and it doesn’t exactly launch the day on a pleasant note.

Fortunately, a wide range of alternatives are now available, including daylight simulators that gradually brighten, and high-tech alarms that slowly entice you into a state of wakefulness with gentle tones. There are also various apps available for your smartphone.

•  Suppress the urge to hit the snooze bar.

Waking up once is hard enough. Trying to wake up twice in the space of ten minutes (or three times in the space of twenty minutes, as the case may be) can actually disrupt your circadian rhythms, and leave you feeling sluggish and discombobulated. Furthermore, if you stay in bed long enough to allow yourself to slip into a deeper sleep stage, you’ll likely find it even harder to get up on your next attempt.

•  Leave yourself plenty of time for a wholesome breakfast—at least twenty minutes.

A balanced breakfast that includes fruits and vegetables, proteins, and complex carbohydrates will allow you to maintain peak performance throughout the day, and help you avoid some of the negative consequences associated with quick (but not necessarily healthy) breakfast options—including heartburn, an upset stomach, or an energy level that wanes by the mid-afternoon.

Career Path for an MBA in Canada

It's best to begin with the good news. Overall, on the global level, the Canadian economy is in much stronger shape than the American economy. That having been stated, life is still rather difficult at a grass roots' level, especially if you are a recent graduate of a fine university, clutching the license to a successful career – your MBA.

This is not to say that an MBA degree is unimportant. Just the contrary! It is a degree well worth pursuing, especially if your career vision is targeted in the business or financial sectors. Unfortunately, though, the current employment market is not the most promising for new MBA's. In the finance sector, traditionally the major MBA employment sector, career centres for MBA graduates report a decline in finance jobs ranging from 6% - 16%. In addition, graduate schools have reported a drop of on-campus recruitment of at least 10%. Furthermore, graduates seeking internships have encountered a serious reduction in available placements. Back to the good news, the dip in salaries in Canada was slight, compared to the major drop in 2002. Estimates are that salaries will return to the pre-recession level by late 2010 or 2011. However, if you can't secure a position, the salary is irrelevant.

Recruitment has been on the rise in some sectors, though. More positions requiring MBA's have become available in government, health care, non-profit, and energy. While these sectors comprise a relatively small percentage of all available jobs, it may cause new graduates to begin thinking in different career directions, away from the traditional employment sectors. Also, a growing number of recent grads have turned to entrepreneurial endeavours, as have many Canadians who have been unable to find employment.

Some graduates have begun looking for foreign employment, although the prospects abroad are also not very encouraging. For most, though, they will weather the storm in Canada, hoping for better times down the road because, when all is said and done, there's no place like home.

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