Who is Farhan Lalji?

Let’s recap here, fuel prices are going up and up and up. People want to have a work-life balance. The internet has revolutionised the way people communicate. So why do we need to be in the same place to work together? We don’t.

Sure being in the same room as people you work with adds value, it means you’re able to socialise, you’re able to learn more about people and trust people. But how many people do you actually work that closely with? Is it enough to justify large rents in metropolitan locations? Not to mention a lot of times meeting with people or conversations get in the way of productivity.

I’ve worked virtually with lots of folks in past jobs and in my present job. I find getting together once a week with some, once a month with others, and once a quarter with others is enough to build rapport and through the telephone, instant messaging, email, desktop conferencing, video conferencing and other tools we don’t need to be in the same office as each other to work together effectively. I like working from home. I probably should do it more; I bet I’d be more effective.

So my prediction for the near future is that we’ll see a lot more virtual working, a lot more working from home and lot more smaller offices. This will potentially mean fewer meetings, less distractions and a drop in our collective foot prints. Not to mention a healthier bottom line as you don’t have to pay for large offices.

Both are banning disposable plastic bags! Whole foods has an initiative to get rid of disposable plastic bags by Earth Day 2008 and China is banning free plastic bags and moving to reusable cloth bags.  Good environmental and economic policy if you ask me.

I think this is very cool. As someone who hoards bags we can reuse, actually as someone married to someone who hoards reusable bags, I’m pretty excited about this step. Now let’s do something about Polystyrene!

Three things I’m thinking about today:

1. It’s kind of crazy that if you build an exceptional brand that gets engrained into people, it’s hard for a competitor to overtake you, no matter how much better the experience is.
Inspiration: the fact that Mapquest still dominates the US mapping market

2. Investment into public transport is only half the battle against climate change and carbon emissions, people need to stop seeing cars as status symbols and more as big polluters.
Inspiration: the new Tata nano and the fact that so many Indians are going to enter as car owners.

3. Standard of living doesn’t equal quality of life, it seems like the more we have the less time we have to enjoy it.
Inspiration (joint):
a) this story I heard about a fisherman who meets a capitalist, and the capitalist says “Why you should sell your fish”
and the fisherman says “Why?”
Capitalist says “Because then you’ll have lots of money and you can build a company selling fish.”
Fisherman says “But why would I want that?”
Capitalist says “Because you can make lots of money.”
Fisherman says “But why would I want that?”
Capitalist says “So then you can retire.”
Fisherman says “But what would I do then?”
Capitalist says “I don’t know… fish?”
b)The story of stuff, it’s a bit long - 20 mins plus a bit of loading time - but definitely worth watching.

I got a couple of slices of toast this morning from our café. I also had sushi for lunch down the road. The food was great, the packaging sucked.

I hate polystyrene packaging. Hate it. I get that it’s cheap and that for packaging cheap is good. But the fact that it takes forever to decompose (if it ever does) and that the environmental concerns around it are vast, to me means that it’s just not a viable product in the earth’s long run. Not only that but the alternatives are just nicer, a paper plate or paper container is not only classier but food, for some unknown to me reason, just tastes better.

So why do places, like Yoshino at the Japan centre, continue to serve there goods in polystyrene? If McDonalds can eliminate its polystyrene containers, why can’t others?

Obviously it’s about the bottom line and maximizing the bottom line. But when commerce acts in a way that’s against the greater good government needs to step in. Some have, some cities in the US have had bans on Polystyrene for nearly 20 years, why has the rest of the world taken so long to catch up?

Personally, I would love to see the UN step in, or heck even the EU or any other multilateral group, call for a ban on Polystyrene. Anyone know someone I can email about this?

UPDATE : Thanks to Natasja, I managed to find a ban polystyrene petition on the PM’s site. Please join me at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/banpolystyrene/

And I’ve created a facebook group calling for the ban, please join!