cheryl santa maria

A couple of years ago I attended a bridal shower where the dress code was eclectic and eccentric.

I was transfixed by one of the guests – she was absolutely stunning with long brown hair that cascaded down her back in loose curls.  White flowers were pinned to the top of her head in a crown-like fashion and she was wearing a gorgeous pink chiffon dress.

After tea and scones we started talking about one of my favourite topics – fashion.  The girl in the chiffon dress said that she only shopped in thrift and consignment stores.  She said that buying new clothes was socially irresponsible, terrible for the environment and unnecessarily expensive. I’d never thought about it before, but she had a point.

Inspired by her, and by fashion blogs like Liebe Marlene, My Vintage Secret and New Dress a Day , I’ve recently embraced the thrift ethic.  A growing portion of my wardrobe is now vintage, salvaged from thrift stores and garage sales.  I’m saving money, I love my quirky, not-of-H&M clothing and I’m doing the environment a favour.  For me, the decision to go thrift has been an all ’round win.

Many of us don’t stop to consider the impact that our purchases have on the environment but if the recent BP disaster has taught me anything it’s that we need to pay attention to the way that we shop.  After all, BP wouldn’t be drilling in the ocean if the public wasn’t demanding cheap and easy oil.

A recent article by David Suzuki for The Mark News provides some interesting points to consider.  In “Polluting Cruise Ships“, Suzuki explains that most cruise lines dump “food waste, oily bilge water, and solid waste” into the ocean, which can lead to the development of dead zones.  What’s more:

“A moderate-sized cruise ship on a one week voyage with 2,200 passengers and 800 crewmembers” can generate up to 210,000 gallons of human sewage, one million gallons of grey water (from sinks, baths, showers, laundry, and galleys), eight tons of garbage, more than 130 gallons of hazardous waste, and 25,000 gallons of oily bilge water.”

Consumers need to make more responsible choices.  While I am guilty of the occasional impulse buy I’m starting to question large companies before I decide to give them my money.  I try to make more affordable and environmentally sustainable product decisions, too.

We consumers have more power over the marketplace than we think.  When we collectively start shopping with the planet in mind companies will follow suit.  They wouldn’t have a choice really – at the end of the day we’re the ones who keep them in business.

Earlier this week a BP chairman announced that the company will suspend payouts for the remainder of the year and set aside $20-billion to help compensate victims of Gulf oil spill.  President Obama noted that the $20-billion isn’t “a cap” on the amount that will be paid out and that all affected parties will be compensated.

Except for the countless animals that have died as a result of our negligence, of course.  There’s no payout for those little critters.

President Obama has conceded that BP and its subsidaries have acted “recklessley” on the Gulf coast but noted that North America’s “oil addiction” is the larger problem.  Personally I’d love to place all the blame on the shoulders of evil corporate giants but Obama is right.  The North American lifestyle has necessitated off-shore oil drilling.  Consumers have demonstrated their insatiable need for fuel and most of us aren’t willing to pay higher prices for it, meaning that  environmentally sound methods of extraction won’t be implemented any time soon.

We Canadians need to pay special attention to the response efforts of BP and the safeguards it intends to impose.  Earlier this month BP Canada quietly began drilling in British Columbia’s Rocky Mountains,  a “controversial” project that has worried local residents.  According to Ryland Nelson from the environmental group Wildsight, BP’s new exploratory well, which will be drilled between Banff National Park and Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park (an area of 500 k.m. that spans from Alberta and Montana) is home to countless bears, wolverines, foxes and deer.

BP Canada has, of course, promised to preserve the pristine landscape, claiming that they went so far as to consult with local residents and indigenous groups for a period of three years  prior to drilling in an attempt to minimize environmental/economic risks.

Keep in mind however, that they sung similar praises when they began drilling in the Gulf.

We all know how that’s been unfolding.

[photo source]

A Toronto woman is suing Rogers Communications Inc. for $600,000 (CAD) after the company “bundled” her cellphone invoice with her husband’s Internet and telephone bills without her prior consent.  Gabriella Nagy’s invoice – which was delivered in a package addressed to her husband – provided evidence of an extramarital affair, leading to the breakdown of her marriage. Ms. Nagy is suing the company for breach of contract and invasion of privacy.

Apparently Nagy isn’t the only person who’s been burned by Rogers’ allegeded privacy breaches.  Since initiating her lawsuit in mid-May she claims that 12 others have come forward with similar stories and four of them have signed affidavits in support of the suit. 

While I don’t condone what Nagy has done, I think she has a soild case.  The fact that an established company like Rogers may have breached a client’s privacy suggests the need for more comprehensive, across-the-board legislation within Canada.  Should this case go to court, there is the potential that a new legal precedent could be set and it may affect how Canadians interact with businesses in the future.

Despite the fact that our country has defined privacy laws, companies have struggled with compliance.  In 2007  for example three Canadian giants – Winners, HomeSense and CIBC – admitted to security holes after more than 2 million Canadian credit card numbers were stolen from their databases.

It’s startling that the biggies can’t get security/privacy right.  If that’s the case, what are some of the smaller businesses doing?

I’ll be following Nagy’s closely.  It’ll be interesting to see how it all pans out.

BP CEO Tony Hayward is attempting to deflect blame for the disasterous April 20th oil rig explosion by placing all wrong-doing on Transocean.

“The [faulty] drilling rig was a Transocean drilling rig. It was their rig and their equipment that failed. Run by their people, their processes,” Hayward told Today Show anchor Merideth Vieira in an interview this past Monday.

“… It wasn’t our accident but we are absolutely responsible for the oil, for cleaning it up, and that’s what we intend to do.”

The statement, which was no doubt painstakingly put together by BP’s bottomless pit of lawyers and PR consultants, is likely “meant to provide a boundary for liability,” says Bob Bea, a Berkely engineering professor, in an interview with TPM. Although BP will be intrinsincly tied to this catastrophe in the eyes of the public, the company does stand to gain, or at least recoup, financially if responsibilty for the incident can be shared with a partner company. With estimated spending of of $5-6 million per day, the total cost of the clean up is expected to total in the billions, and it’s fair to assume that BP will try to divert at least some of the impending costs onto others. Another corporation that is likely watching this situation very closely is Cameron International Corp. – the Texas-based company that supplied the rig’s well head equipment.

At any rate this event is proving to be a PR disaster for British Petroleum, a company who, in 1999, re-branded themselves as environmentally-friendly (an act considered by some to be superficial “greenwashing”). The company’s slogan was changed to “Beyond Petroleum” and they became the first oil giant to confirm the link between the consumption of their product and global warming. BP also vowed to work towards cleaning up the environment and parter exclusively with similar-minded companies - like the now-beleagured Transocean who, coincidentally, has its own carefully-worded safety and environmental mandates.

Given the considerable investment that BP put into re-branding their image to “green” (estimated at over $400 million) the company should have set aside a little more for safety.   BP did not bother to take the precations that could have prevented this incident because they felt that it was “unlikely that an accidental surface or subsurface oil spill would occur.”

BP  continually downplayed any risk of drilling off the Gulf Coast, arguing that the 48 mile distance between the rig and the shore, combined with  “the response capabilities that would be implemented” in the event of a disaster meant that “no significant adverse impacts” were to be expected.

BP took a risky bet, and we will all pay the price for their loss. The “response capabilities” that the company promised are fledgling, to say the least. Despite the thousands of kind-hearted volunteers and teams of specialists that have been deployed to the area experts are still unable to contain the spill.  Bad weather and an impending hurricane season has added significant challenges to clean up and resuce efforts.

While BP has done the right thing by covering the costs of this unprecedented disaster, the entire incident would have been avoided had the companies in question implemented safeguards into their extremely risky – and potentially dangerous – business endeavours.

In a world that is addicted to oil, it is highly likely that BP will recoup the costs of the spill clean up. Their perception as an “environmentally conscious” organization, however, is finished.  Their public preception has also been irrevocably changed.

Perhaps this will serve as a wake-up call to all companies that choose to brand themselves under false pretenses.

I don’t know if it’s a character flaw, or some sort of loose wiring in my brain, or perhaps an indication of anti-social behaviour, but I’ve always had more empathy for animals than humans.

I struggle with the fact that I still eat meat, and I’m sure this makes me a hypocrite in some people’s books. The only reason I can continue to consume animals is because I’m far-removed from the food-to-table process; if I had to catch and kill my own meat, there is no way I would be eating it, thank you very much.

One thing I cannot remove myself from, however, is the BP oil spill.  The disaster – which is shaping up to be one of the worst the states has ever seen – is still polluting our waters. With an estimated 800,000 litres of crude oil being deposited into the Gulf Coast each day, the toxic, black sludge now covers an area the size of Jamaica.

There are an estimated 1 million birds living along the Gulf Coast, all of whom are in the midst of breeding season. The world’s most endangered sea turtle, the Kemp’s Ridley, also nests in the area. There are countless other species – like crustaceans, plankton, fish and insects – that also stand to perish.

Aside from the ecological implications of the spill, think for a minute about the human toll of this disaster.  Aside from the 11 people that died in the fiery, April 20th explosion (two days before citizens of the world celebrated “green initiatives” like reusable shopping bags and hybrid cars with Earth Day) the oil spill is proving to be disastrous for local fishermen. As dead sea turtles and oiled birds wash ashore, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been forced to ban all commercial fishing in the area for a minimum of 10 days – not that anyone would want to eat the surviving animals anyway. By many accounts, the marinated-in-sludge fish of the coast are now considered toxic.

The BP oil spill, then, is not only an issue that concerns tree-hugging, earth mother hippies. It’s something that affects us all.

It baffles me that people will watch films like Avatar and be moved to tears about the plundering of the land on a fictional world like Pandora, but will ignore a true ecological disaster when it is taking place in our very backyard.

I don’t like to take the moral high ground on things. In addition to being tacky, this approach to problem solving is utterly useless. Bearing that in mind, I would ask you kind readers to give what you can  to help clean up affected areas. After all – and here is my “holier than thou” uttering of the day: As capitalist consumers, we are the very reason that off-shore drilling – and, coincidentally, off-shore rig explosions – exist.

I don’t think Mother Earth needs our help. I don’t believe that we humans are capable of saving the planet, anyway. While it’s a good idea to curb littering and conserve energy, these things will do very little to stop, or even slow, global warming.

Our planet is strong and it will survive – long after humanity has disappeared. The animals that depend on the disastrously-polluted waters in the Gulf Coast however, are fragile and they urgently need our help. If you haven’t the funds or the time to contribute to this cause, you can still do a world of good by simply talking about this disaster. Keeping this story alive in our communities and raising awareness is also extremely useful.

So please, do what you can.

Helping those in need is always a worthy endeavor.

I first wrote and published this back in June.  It got some good reviews (read: my mom liked it) so I’m re-posting.

Hi Mom!

***

Ego kills everything.

It really, truly, does. Trust me on this one.

Ego obliterates all good intentions. Ego kills careers before they even start. Ego the reason we have bureaucracy. Ego is the reason some up-and-coming artists vanish into obscurity before reaching superstardom. Ego is the reason most managers are completely inept.

A little bit of ego is healthy. It’s important to know our talents and to develop them. But the moment a person starts believing they’re too important to do certain things is the moment things start to go downhill.

Why is that, you ask?

Well, people who think they’re too important to do the small things often hire other people to do them. Those people then hire other people to do the small things for them, and so on. What you wind up with is a bunch of different teams (or departments) working under the first, self-appointed Big Head. Everyone wanders around in their respective departments trying to find someone they’re superior to and they all share the work one person could handle perfectly well on their own.

There’s a difference between being too busy to do the small things and appointing yourself too important to do them. Being too busy is completely legitimate, but it’s a lot rarer than we’d like to think. We’ve all had managers whose sole purpose is to delegate their work onto other people, and have you ever tried to go through government channels? It can take months to get one document approved because that document has to sit on the desk of at least seven different people before it’s finalized and sent back to you. I think it’s pretty safe to argue that some (or maybe most?) of the people that employ entourages and personal assistants do it because their fragile ego needs constant fluffing – not because of their “busy” workload.

This doesn’t just happen in corporate America and in government. Big Heads everywhere are employing people to do ridiculous things. Puff Daddy (or whatever the hell he’s going by this week) has a Personal Umbrella Holder and Mariah Carey went out and got herself her very own Professional Drink Holder.

And what’s the end result?

Over time, a massive ego will slowly kill off all the good traits the Big Head once had – traits like personality, originality, and drive. And people with ego problems are known to attract sycophants.

Having a couple of admirers may sound nice at first, but it can and has been the end of so many promising people. Sycophants follow their Big Head around day and night (probably because they’re paid to do so) and tell them that everything they do is utter genius. It’s this constant, and often unjustified, praise that can lead a Big Head to believe they don’t need to maintain their integrity (have you seen what Spielberg and Lucas did to Indiana Jones?)or business sense (Conrad Black, I’m looking at you), or even basic social skills (oh hi there, Michael Jackson and Britney Spears).

Do you have a dream? Are you working towards some sort of goal?

Think about that dream long and hard before you begin your journey.  Do you want to be successful?

If so,  never, ever forget this:

You aren’t as important as you’d like to think you are.

You actually aren’t important at all in the grand scheme of things, and you never, ever will be.

Now keep that thought with you day and night, and you’ll do just fine.

Promise.

This is an interesting concept by Robert Kiyosaki. In his book Cash flow Quadrant: Rich Dad’s Guide to Financial Freedom,  Kiyosaki argues that there are only four types of jobs.

There was a time, not long ago, that I regularly attended professional development seminars. The quadrant was almost always mentioned. It’s an interesting theory and if you aren’t familiar with it you’re in luck, because I’m going to summarize it here.

The Quadrant

According to Kiyosaki, every working individual has a place within the quadrant, which looks like this:

The left side is considered to be the “unfavourable” side. Most of us start out on the left, but the idea is to get to the right side as quickly as possible. While it’s possible to get rich working for a company or owning a business, wealth accumulation is far easier as a business owner or investor because these people employ money-earning systems.  Lefties tend to do all of the work themselves, thereby relying on the less-efficient individual to make money.

Employee

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If you work for someone else, you have the fine distinction of being an employee. While there are some plus points to working for another (i.e., you don’t need to invest your own money to grow the company and you’ll likely have an established client base/corporate identity) being an employee is one of the riskiest ways to make money. For starters, employees are always at the whim of their employers. Throw into the mix the current economic downturn and the explosion of outsourcing in corporate America and it’s a wonder that any of us are still working.  Another downside is the fact that the earning potential of an employee is essentially capped. A salaried employee generally knows how much money (and how much vacation time) he or she will earn in a coming year, regardless of how many extra hours are put in. While a few extra bucks may be made via raises and bonuses, it’s nearly impossible for an employee to double his or her salary working for the same company, in the same position, within a year.

According to Kiyosaki, this is the worst place to be on the quadrant.  Employees have very little control over their earning power and their job security.

Self-Employed

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Being self-employed is a definite step up from being an employee.  Self-employed individuals have far more freedom over their work conditions, their clients and their time. With a little hard work income can double in a few short months. Of course, the opposite can happen as well- most small businesses fail within the first five years – but the rewards of being self-employed truly outweigh the risks.

Doctors, lawyers who act as sole practitioners, some farmers, contractors, consultants … all of these people are self-employed. While this lot tends to make more money than the average employee, this type of job has its limitations. If a sole practitioner decides to take a three week vacation, he or she will not make any money during that time. The salary that these individuals earn is dependent on the hours the individual puts in, meaning that the self-employed often work many more hours than salaried employees.

Business Owner

[photo credit]

Business owners are different from the self-employed in that they earn money through a system that requires very little maintenance. Consider the owner of a McDonald’s restaurant. An individual can purchase a franchise and then hire staff to run the business. If the business owner decides to take a vacation, or is unable to work for a long period of time, the system will continue to generate income. While some business maintenance is required, business owners have to work far less than those on the left side of the quadrant and, because they often employ multiple systems, have far more job security and a practically limitless earning potential.

Investor

[photo credit]

This is the be-all, end-all of money making schemes. An investor puts his or her money to work in investment funds and lives off of the interest. There’s a catch, though. Investors need a boat-load of money to invest – ideally, millions.  While most people won’t be able to reach this status, it’s fun to fantasize about it.

Think about it: 10 Million dollars invested in a fund that yields an 8% return will garner $800,000/year in interest.

I could live quite nicely off of that, how about you?

If you make the leap from the left side to the right, help a lady out – I’d love to hear how you’ve done it …

Here we are less than two weeks into October and the shops have already begun shoveling Christmas down our throats. 

Fearing a less-than-fruitful holiday shopping season, major retailers like Wal-Mart are rolling out the Christmas trees ahead of schedule in hopes that their festive decorations and miniscule price cuts will get people back into stores, buying useless crap that will end up in a Goodwill donation bin in a few months’ time.

Speaking of useless crap, the Christmas toy of the season has been announced.  Allow me to introduce you to Zhu Zhu, the curious-looking toy hamster:

Zhu Zhus do just about everything a real hamster does – from scurrying through a hamster maze (sold separately for around $30.00) to running on a hamster wheel (sold separately for another $30.00) to sliding down a hamster slide (sold seperately for another – you guessed it – $30.00).

Apparently the shops are having trouble keeping Zhu Zhus on the shelf and it’s only a matter of time before they start fetching hundreds of dollars on ebay. At $20-$60 a pop for the hamster alone (sixty bucks will get you a “collector’s edition” Zhu Zhu) the cheapest Zhu Zhu is about four times more expensive than a living, breathing hamster - but perhaps it’s a good thing that Zhu Zhu enthusiasts aren’t buying the real deal. Anybody stupid enough drop over a hundred bucks on a Zhu Zhu plus accessories shouldn’t be trusted with a live animal (or a child for that matter, but I’ll save that rant for another day).

Once upon a time, Christmas was a joyous celebration (or so I’ve been told). Now, thanks to over-commercialization, layoffs,  extreme bullying and bone-crushing debt  have come to define the season above everything else.

Sigh.

Hold on to your reindeers, friends. Xmas 2009 is shaping up to be a looong and bumpy ride.

The nuts in the health food industry are an innovative bunch. Their business – which is almost completely based on fear - changes its marketing tactics every few years and it continues to generate billions of dollars in profits.

No wonder they always look so smug.

Organic foods have been around since the 1990s but they didn’t become a booming business until a few years ago. In 2008 organics generated over $20 billion dollars in sales and they show no sign of slowing down, as the industry is projected to increase by 18 per cent this year.

The Health Nuts say that going organic is very important. Not only will it improve our state of well-being but it will also save our lives.

According to one organic website:

“Organic foods are spared the application of potentially harmful long-lasting insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and fertilizers. Many EPA-approved pesticides were registered long before extensive research linked these chemicals to cancer and other diseases. Currently the EPA considers 60% of all herbicides, 90% of all fungicides and 30% of all insecticides to be potentially cancer-causing.”

I decided to research organics. I looked up some of the chemicals commonly found in our foods and in our household products and I read about the effects they can have on the human body.

It was terrifying.

I embarked on an organic mission. I bought an organic body wash ($6.99 for a 250 ml bottle vs. $6.99 for a 500 ml bottle of chemically-enhanced wash), organic shampoo and conditioner (it smells awful – or natural, as the bottle puts it – and it leaves my hair feeling greasy) and I replaced my makeup foundation with one that’s chemical-free (it has the consistency of concrete and it’s about two shades lighter than my natural skin).

A half pint of organic blueberries, a few carrots and litre of milk ate up nearly a third of my weekly grocery budget.

If I keep this up I’ll never be able to afford meat again but I don’t think I want to buy meat anymore. The Health Nuts say that the cheap stuff – which is all I can afford – is full of nasty hormones and chemicals.

“Good” meat costs double.

As I sit at home and munch on my carrots I imagine what a chemical-free me would look like.

Would I be healthier, happier and beautiful – like the people in the advertisements?

Or would going organic have absolutely no physical effect on me and only serve to drain me of my already-limited income?

When I consider fact that food safety is heavily regulated in North America and that today’s food – chemicals, recalls and all – is still far safer than the food our great-grandparents ate, I’d place my money on the latter.

Faced with the possibility of an LCBO strike, Ontarians went into a buying frenzy last night as they swarmed stores and emptied shelves in a scene that many patrons would later describe as “chaos.” LCBO parking lots across the province were filled to the brim as people crammed into outlets, filling their baskets and crates. The lineups at the checkouts curled around the stores, with many people waiting for up to an hour and a half to pay for their goods.

“Every customer had a basket, and every basket was filled with at least two hundred dollars worth of alcohol,” a caller to CFRB’s John Moore Show said. “I can’t believe people are willing to spend that much money in this economy … it really says something about people’s priorities.”

Umm … indeed.

Even if  a strike were to happen, Ontario would not go completely dry. The Beer Store, Vineyard Estates, The Wine Rack, the province’s estimated 125 wineries, as well as all bars and restaurants with liqour licenses would continue to serve booze.

But that didn’t stop people from going half way to crazy and making a collective $60 million dollars worth of purchases for the day – an all time record for the LCBO.

So, Ontarians are drunks, apparently.  And it also appears that we like to jump the gun. It turns out that yesterday’s mass hysteria was just a tad premature.

For the time being, the province’s 608 stores have decided to remain open and the strike deadline, originally set for today at 12:01 a.m., has been extended indefinitely.

Not that it really matters anymore, anyway.

By the sounds of it we Ontarians now have enough booze in our basements to keep us liquored up until 2015 at least.