Today I’m kicking off what I hope will be a long-ish series of blog posts on how anyone can be “green” without requiring big changes to their lifestyles or habits. My goal is to minimize preachy-ness and maximize “do-ability.” Here’s the first, enjoy.

Use Kijiji to keep stuff out of landfills.

Executive Summary

Someone out there wants your cast offs, and Kijiji is a great way to connect the dots locally. Instead of throwing out or recycling old electronics, old magazines, worn out clothes, or whatever, post it on Kijiji for free.

Someone will want it, and will come and get it. Because its local, its fast and doesn’t require shipping. It takes an instant, and keeps whatever you’re getting rid of out of the land fill and in circulation.

Where Did This Idea Come From?

If you don’t believe my assertion that someone wants whatever you’re getting rid of, consider this example.

This past summer, both my weedeater and leafblower died (the weedeater in spectacular fashion, glowing cherry red and smoking). These are pretty inexpensive appliances that could not be repaired economically. I googled around to see if there was a “dead appliance drop off” – but couldn’t find anything. I checked with Home Depot to see if they’d send things back to the manufacturer to be refurbished – no dice. At the end of the day, the only option that I could figure out was to put them in the trash, which felt pretty wrong.

So, I figured that someone out there could use these for spare parts, an art installation, or fix them up. I rifled them up on Kijiji in about 30 seconds – just a single line of text describing the two very dead yard tools, and a price of “free.” Within half an hour, I had 9 emails. After a quick phone call, a dude in minivan from in my neighborhood pulled up and took them off my hands. He wanted them because he was taking a course in small engine repair, and needed broken things to fix – perfect.

How Do I Do It?

• Go to http://kijiji.ca. Note the “.ca” – the .com goes to eBay classifieds for the United States.
• Once you’re at Kijiji.ca, its going to ask where you are. Click your province and city.
• Once you’ve selected your location, hit “post a classified ad” immediately under the Kijiji logo. Pick a category, and on the next page, enter some information about the item, and your done.
• There’s a bunch of different “premium listing” options that you can ignore. If you’re feeling fancy, upload some pictures of whatever it is.
• You don’t need an account to post a listing, but it does speed things up. Kijiji does not make your email address public – it will let buyers send you an email via a web form without letting them know who they’re sending it to. I’ve never been hassled or spammed.
• Phone numbers will be made public if you enter them. I don’t bother entering mine as I prefer the unobtrusiveness of email and privacy that Kijiji adds to it.
• For address, I just put in my postal code.

Here’s an example – I just posted an old monitor that I don’t need. I’ll post back what ends up happening to it.

Samsung 15 inch flat panel LCD monitor

I’m sure there’s lots of other options beyond Kijiji – check out Freecycle, for example (though the site appeared to be down or at least painfully slow as of today, and is more complicated to make use of than Kijiji).

Anyway – there you have it. A simple way to start off a greener 2011. If you put anything up, post in the comments.

The authors offer a scenario in which Apple suddenly decides not to pursue profit maximization, dumps the oft-criticized Foxconn, and decides to pursue a model of corporate responsibility and patriotic we’re-in-it-togetherness. It’s true that U.S. workers fetch about 10 times as much as Chinese workers, and the manufacturing costs would rise to $68 per phone from about $6.50 per phone. But if Apple sold the phones at an average of $500 (already the asking price for some models), they say, it would still clear a 50% profit margin. [FastCompany]

Hmm – a few things to think about here. First point: who owns Apple, and thus who benefits from Apple seeking lower-cost manufacturing? Well – shareholders – both individuals and funds – who I’m willing to bet are largely American. Point two: Apple doesn’t exist in a competitive vacuum. If they chose a cost structure that was far out of sync with the industry as a whole, their attractiveness to investors would drop proportionately and take share price with it.

So effectively, repatriating manufacturing would be a transfer mechanism – a voluntary non-government tax if you will, redistributing wealth from one group (shareholders, 401K’s, etc.) to another group (factory workers).  I don’t know – is this a good thing?

Tony Blairs “cool Britannia,”epitomized by hedge fund managers, Russian oligarchs and media stars, offered little to the working and middle classes. Despite its proletarian roots, New Labour, as London Mayor Boris Johnson acidly notes, has presided over that which has become the most socially immobile society in Europe.

via The Future Of Americas Working Class | Newgeography.com.

A very interesting perspective on how economic growth in the post-millennial western world is defined by a hollowing out of the middle, the consolidation of the super-wealthy, and the growth of a large, working-poor class. And, all of it is wrapped up neatly in a bow of complete social immobility.

It might be cliche to sound the call of the “rich get richer while the poor get poorer,” or it might be anti-conservative to suggest that there’s a policy agenda that should speak to mobility. But, having spent time in places like Bangladesh, Indonesia, or Mexico, I can attest to the value of social mobility. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the notion of “freedom” to which we vigilantly cling as conservatives is best reflected by social mobility, or “opportunity.” The freedom to take risks and strive for a greater future, the freedom to take risks, fall flat on one’s face, and be able to pick themselves up again. Each of these freedoms is dependent on access to capital, healthcare, and education, and a social net to some degree – making the each of these – capital, health, education, and welfare – fundamentally conservative values, in as much as they support the most conservative value of all – freedom of social mobility.

There’s a fine line, of course, between creating a state in which social mobility is a driving force, and creating a welfare state. Britain appears to be struggling to find that balance, with immigration and the widely available dole wreaking havoc on their social contract.

Perhaps worse that the effects of immigration and welfare policy, however, is the corrosive dissolution of manufacturing industries. This is something that I’ve observed in my travels. The Middle Class, as we know it, is the product of reasonably well-paid manufacturing jobs – a class of employment that drove our economies through the fifties, up until the late eighties. Countries that have never had such an industrial leg up on creating a middle class inevitably stagnate at an equilibrium comprised of a wealthy elite and impoverished masses. That’s where our western economies are headed today – the loss of those jobs is corrosive to our social contract and mobility. When the middle class can no longer afford to perpetuate itself, you’re left with Bangladesh, or Rio de Janeiro.

That’s not to say that western cities are going to turn into Rio over night – though some might argue that its happening already (see: Safer in Baghdad than Chicago). Regardless, I believe as conservatives we have an obligation to forward a policy agenda that cognizant of the value of small government, but also not forgetful of the “freedoms” on which our continued success, failures, happiness, and mobility are dependent.

However, analysts note the inflation data come with a caveat as the Winter Olympics in Vancouver drove up prices in some key categories.

The consumer price data, combined with robust retail sales figures for January, has likely set off alarm bells at the Bank of Canada, economists say, as to whether the central bank can keep its conditional pledge to maintain its target rate at 0.25% until July.

via Inflation surprise spurs rate speculation.

These “electronic defects” apparently discriminate against the elderly, just as the sudden acceleration of Audis and GM autos did before them. In the 24 cases where driver age was reported or readily inferred, the drivers included those of the ages 60, 61, 63, 66, 68, 71, 72, 72, 77, 79, 83, 85, 89…

via Theodore H. Frank: I am not afraid of my Toyota Prius | Washington Examiner.

For anyone who’s not sure that the whole Toyota boondoggle is an episode of Government Motors-sponsored political theatre, read the above article.

Taiwan-based optical disc drive (ODD) maker Lite-On IT's factory in southern China is running short of about 800-1,000 workers, about 10% of its regular personnel, due to a prevailing labor shortage in the region and eastern China, according to the company.

via Lite-On IT China factory facing labor shortage.

The message that comes out of it is that were finally paying for the hollowing out of our economies. When many of the decent paying, non-professional jobs have fled to cheaper climes, well how about that – many of the non-professional people – like the article’s Ms. Eisen – no longer have anything to do – much less anything to do that can afford them a lifestyle considered more than impoverished.

Structural unemployment is an economic construct that accounts for the fact that we’ll never have 100% unemployment – there will always be a percentage of people that are unsatisfied with their options and looking for a while; people moving between cities and taking time to get established, etc. I think now that there’s a new component: people without the skills to work in our hollowed out “service” economies. While they may eventually be retrained or whathaveyou, in the meantime, I believe policy-makers need to account for a much higher level of structural unemployment on a permanent basis. That will be reflected in social assistance, food stamp programs, housing, child support, and adult education programs.

Canada, I think, won’t feel it as badly when averaged across the nation – we have a robust resource sector to fall back on, ideally positioned to serve Asia’s growth, and keep Canadians as hewers of wood and water (or whatever the turn of phrase is) for some time. But there’s an important policy implication here anyway: a healthy economy allows productive participation at many skill levels, which depends upon nurturing productive and valuable industries. When we let industries get hollowed out, and rationalize the acceptability of the act by pointing to our “service” sector, were really putting all of our economic eggs in one very vulnerable basket.

Remember: we can’t all deliver pizza to each other.

(Yes,  I know I’ve harped on this before. I am unrepentant in my belief in the “rightness” of using policy-levers to shape long-term trends)

Large companies are increasingly owned by institutional investors who crave swift profits, a feat often achieved by cutting payroll. The declining influence of unions has made it easier for employers to shift work to part-time and temporary employees. Factory work and even white-collar jobs have moved in recent years to low-cost countries in Asia and Latin America. Automation has helped manufacturing cut 5.6 million jobs since 2000 — the sort of jobs that once provided lower-skilled workers with middle-class paychecks.

via The New Poor – Despite Signs of Recovery, Long-Term Unemployment Rises – Series – NYTimes.com.

So what’s the problem in Greece?

Years of unrestrained spending, cheap lending and failure to implement financial reforms left Greece badly exposed when the global economic downturn struck. This whisked away a curtain of partly fiddled statistics to reveal debt levels and deficits that exceeded limits set by the eurozone.

via Q&A: Greece’s financial crisis explained – CNN.com.

Right now, its implicit that our choice of internet provider (Shaw) doesn’t impact our choice of, for example, news source – i.e.: I can open either the Globe and Mail or the National Post websites (or the BBC, Al Jazeera, etc.), and any will open with comparable speed. The proponents of network neutrality argue that if this “equal treatment” assumption isn’t codified into regulation, providers like Shaw are going to eventually seek to monetize their ability to control the traffic that they deliver – to consumer’s detriment. For example – what if Microsoft offered to pay Shaw XX million dollars to make Bing the only search engine available to Shaw customers at a certain price point?

Image Credit: AppleInsider

As we get to know some of these chemicals better, we discover that they should not be trusted. Health Canada is proposing concentration limits for two common shampoo ingredients, siloxanes D4 and D5, aka, Octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane and Decamethylcyclopentasiloxane, respectively. D4 and D5 did make hair easier to dry, silky soft, and easier to work with. Also handy when making plastics and paint. Sometimes you need a little D4 or D5. Sometimes you need a lot. But Health Canada suspects that D4 and D5 are affecting fish and aquatic organisms. But, oh, how hair shines. [Salon]

Salon breaks down the toxic soup that costs the world’s consumers $40 billion every year – shampoo. Your shampoo, to be blunt, is full of crap. Crap that you pay for, crap that may well be poisoning you, and crap that certainly enters the water table and does who knows what. Hippy alarmism? Or common sense? I’m on the common sense side today – my pocket book is a shambles, and the more I look at what I spend on, the less of it I think I actually need.

“There are two types of ingredients in shampoo. One type cleans your hair. The other type strokes your emotions. I’m holding a bottle of Pantene Pro V, one of the world’s most popular shampoos. Of the 22 ingredients in this bottle of shampoo, three clean hair. The rest are in the bottle not for the hair, but for the psychology of the person using the shampoo. At least two-thirds of this bottle, by volume, was put there just to make me feel good.” [Salon]