Reflections for October 23 Class Jeld-Wen

The salesman who gave us a presentation at the Jeld-Wen showroom was very well spoken and provided an array of different sustainability practices their company uses. After everything was said and done, I must say I don't think I was quite sold. Our guide kept on telling the class they used all recycled materials, but a fellow blogger (Ms. Lindsey Weller) brought up the issue that their recycling went to a limited extent. After the transfer of ownership, they would take no responsibility of disposing the product. Their windows and doors would still most likely end up in landfills, majority of them non-biodegradable. They advertise under the banner of recycled materials when really what they do is not waste any of the raw materials they extract. There was no mention of actually using materials from former plastics or wood from waste materials beyond their own. They also use the quote 'walking softly on the Earth' on their website which I feel is a false statement. Their windows and doors still contain PVC's and their Auralast wood doesn't decay. How is creating a product that will take hundreds or more years to return back the Earth a 'soft' impact?

I do commend them for their initiatives on trying to be as sustainable as possible. Long lasting windows and doors will reduce the amount of waste and perhaps save those who can afford them some money in the long run. I just feel that we need to be smart consumers by analyzing if a company's procedures are as green as they make them out to be.

Giving Back to the Grid

Finally, an incentive for me to go to the gym. I've always had reservations about going. Mainly, because I could never piece together why I needed to spend so much money at a facility that consumes so much energy just so I could burn a bit off. All that energy expended by hundreds of thousands of people at gyms just ends up being lost everyday. The most logical thing to do would be to harness this energy people are PAYING to get rid of. Capturing the energy we burn is a more sustainable way to work out, but also more economically feasible for the gyms who would save on electricity bills. In turn that should slash prices on gym fees for customers too. Personally, I think this would put back some of the fun into a grueling work out. Knowing that I could contribute back into the system would motive myself and I'm sure many health conscious environmentally conscious folks to get active at the gym. Perhaps one day we can have this technology in our homes getting everyone to participate in a bit of physical activity on a regular basis. A reduction in North American obesity and energy consumption, talk about killing two birds with one stone.

The inventor, Lucien Gambaroto also makes a few important points about individuals and their ability to contribute at all levels. We don't have to be inventors or government officials to make changes in our environment. Each and every one of us has the ability to enforce change and we have to take responsibility for the decisions we make. As consumers we can choose to support services who are finding alternative ways to fuel themselves. We can write letters to government, invent our own source of energy, and even something as simple as educating others is contributing on some level. 

Creativity is key when solving any problem and luckily its a resource that is in abundance in the human population. I have a theory that if we have enough brain power and creativity to inflict so much damage to the Earth, there is certainly enough brain power and creativity to fix it.