3 Proposals

 

Proposal #1) Business Hours

As I was shopping in my favorite local grocery store today, I saw a notice that they have changed their business hours from 7:00 am - 10:00 pm to 8:00 am - 8:00 pm. I imagine the economy is hitting them hard and this is an attempt on their part to control operating costs.

And it got me to thinking. How much of a difference would it make to our lives if we implemented a plan to reduce the business hours of the nation? What would our country look like if we were not all working and shopping and traveling 24/7? How much energy would we save? How many pollutants would we reduce? How much more time could we spend with our families? Could factories eliminate their late shifts and put more people to work in the daylight hours in buildings that are currently sitting idle?

I don't know if this is a good idea or not, it's just a thought. In the past, when facing times of crisis, we have enacted all sorts of measures requiring sacrifice. A few  that most readily spring to my mind are the 55 mile an hour speed limit (oil crisis of 1973) ration stamps and victory gardens (WWII) and daylight savings time (various origins, including some from WWII). 

It strikes me that we have mostly tried to sail through our current crisis with our lives unchanged and no sacrifices made. I find it hard to believe that we are going to be able to simply "shop" our way out of this one and settle into economic prosperity by osmosis.

   

Proposal # 2) 24 Hour Emergency Radio station and Internet Alert System.

Emergencies. They happen. 

When I was a kid, there was no such thing as dialing 911. As a result, you spent a lot of time being quizzed by adults about things like the phone number for the local fire station and the phone number for the local police. And, of course, every locality had its own numbers and they were all 7 digits long. Not exactly expedient in a crisis.

I find our current emergency alert system to be woefully inadequate in the modern world. We're still using sirens from 40-60 years ago. And what happens after the sirens go off? Where do you go for more information? Especially if you are driving in an unfamiliar locality or are at home with no power? And the alerts that come over the TV when a storm is coming? Useless to us. We watch almost no TV that is happening in real time. We are usually either watching netflix or something prerecorded.

Example A) We were driving to Minneapolis during the summer of 2009 when tornados began hitting the areas within 2 hours of the city. We got an emergency alert over our car radio telling us which counties were being effected. Trouble is - we didn't even know what county we were driving in! It's not as thought they put that info on the road signs every 5 miles or so. Not only that, after the alert, the station just went back to its regular programming. We surfed all over the dial and could not find any good information.

Example B) In the recent blizzard we lost power for 6 hours or so. We were also stuck in our house, hemmed in by 4 foot drifts. Without power, we could not access the internet or the television to find out what was going on. I did find a radio that ran on batteries, but, again, all I found was regular programming with an occasional news item that was, at best, vague about the situation

Radio - I would like to see a 24 hour emergency radio station that covers all kinds of emergencies - weather, terrorism, you name it. It should be the same frequency all across the country. Maybe 91.1 to make things simpler. To keep the information specific, each state could run their own station. When there is a crisis, the nature of the crisis should be clearly and repeatedly stated along with information about which roads and highways fall within the area of the storm or chemical spill or whatever. With today's technology, how hard would this be? And if there are stations already using that frequency for commercial programming, how hard would it be to get them to change by one number? Give them a tax break for migrating their signal and cover the costs of changing their logos and such. Even in a power outage, families can access radio stations if they have a battery powered radio. Which everyone should just have anyway. Like flashlights and smoke detectors.

The internet. We need an emergency alert system for the internet just like the one used for TV. It could be a little flashing lightning bolt that blinks in the corner of your screen when there is an alert of any kind. You would click on it and be taken to a site with full information on the crisis - what is happening, who is affected - and what to do next. And since the internet is delivered to us by phone providers for the most part, phone companies could be in charge of keeping the alerts specific to the area in question.

Proposal # 3 Recycling containers

My city has mandatory recycling. I have to separate out all my plastic, glass, and metal and put it in special blue bags to be picked up every week on garbage day. We also recycle all newspaper, scrap paper, chipboard (like cereal boxes) and corrugated cardboard. 

This is great. I am a big fan of recycling.

The problem is that when I am out and about in the city, there are no trash cans anywhere for recycling. Only cans for garbage. 

I would like to see dual garbage cans - with one side for recyclables and one side for non recyclables - everywhere there is a public trash can in my city. Whenever a municipality mandates recycling, it should be across the board all the way. Not just in my house. 

I've seen these dual trash cans in other cities so I know they exist. Eventually, I'd love to see them all over the country, not just in a few forward thinking communities.

So there you have it - 3 of my proposals to change the world!

Of course, I'm not holding my breath.

Comments

[sandra]

We have a recycling program as well. We just received notice that we can only put out one bag of garbage now instead of the previous two. (any more than one bag and we will have to pay to have the extra bag of garbage picked up.) Our schools have recycling bins and the malls have recycling bins. I've seen them in McDonald's too...one for paper, plastic, etc.

[anne hambrock]

See - that's exactly what I'm talking about!

I think my community has only pretended to embrace recycling.

[towel warmer]

The more I try to understand this economic crisis, the more confused i get. At the store I am working at Black Friday was a hit last year, but not this year though, i was slow comparatively