How Dell Gives Packaging a Sustainable Makeover

The attitude of many companies is changing when it comes to prioritizing “green” initiatives and focusing attention on sustainability in the supply chain. The effects of climate change are real, the consequences are serious, and businesses are recognizing ways in which they can help by reducing their carbon footprint.

At the same time, companies are striving to make their supply chains more efficient, and environmental efforts can prove key to increasing productivity. Sourcing materials, production, travel and waste management should all work in tandem with a company’s broader green initiatives to deliver the most effective results.

With the economic downturn, one might assume that companies would abandon their green initiatives in favor of cheaper alternatives but a PwC report released earlier this year, Sustainable Packaging: Myth or Reality, discovered quite the opposite. It found that sustainability investment has increased rather than decreased during the economic downturn, as companies are paying greater attention to the effective use of resources. Companies are more conscious of finding ways to make every aspect of their business more efficient from production to sourcing materials.

Packaging is a key part of this process. Any company which supplies physical equipment needs to consider packaging, and the efficiencies packaging can provide. It is now more feasible than ever to create packaging that is beneficial to the environment while also being valuable from a business perspective. Businesses can minimize the impact of business operations, while at the same time create new possibilities for customers to reduce their environmental impact.

Many different materials can be used as green alternatives to traditional packaging. One example of a natural material is bamboo, which is a rapidly renewable member of the grass family with tremendous tensile strength that serves as a great alternative to more commonly used molded paper pulp, foams and corrugate. In addition to being highly sustainable, bamboo also helps promote healthy soil and, when harvested correctly, doesn’t require replanting, making it an ideal renewable resource. Also, bamboo is the fastest-growing woody plant in the world and can grow up to 24 inches per day, so the material is practically always readily available, which is vital for large companies which often need substantial amounts of packaging.

Sustainability can also be built into all processes associated with the production of the bamboo. In our own experience for example, after it is harvested, the bamboo is mechanically pulped at a nearby facility. During this process, 70 percent of the water is reclaimed and used in the process (the other 30 percent is lost to vaporization). Nothing is poured out, and no toxic chemicals are used. If it’s sunny, the pulp is dried by the sun, reducing electricity use.

Another rather unusual source of a highly durable packaging solution is the humble and unassuming mushroom, which we at Dell are currently piloting as a packaging material for our servers. The mushroom bioscience is based on using common agricultural waste products: cotton hulls, rice hulls or wheat chaff are placed in a mold and injected with mushroom spawn. Five to ten days later, the mushroom root structure completes its growth, having used the energy residing in the sugars and carbohydrates of the agricultural waste instead of external energy sources such as petroleum. The final product looks and acts like Styrofoam, only this is organic, biodegradable and can be used as compost or mulch, which makes for easier and more environmentally-friendly disposal. In addition, this material is also surprisingly durable and tough.

More common alternative solutions can kickstart green packaging in your organization. Other options include: high-density polyethylene (HDPE), which is made using recycled-content plastics derived from recycled milk cartons and detergent bottles; molded paper pulp; lightweight air cushions that can be dramatically minimized before disposal. The alternatives are evolving practically every day.

The case of sourcing materials responsibly has become equally important when it comes to manufacturing your packaging. Every step of your packaging process presents an opportunity to minimize your carbon footprint. Sourcing materials locally and packaging locally by creating an “in-region” solution means that you cut down on the carbon you would emit if you were sending transporting materials back and forth over long distances. This could help you save on the overall costs of shipping materials, while also helping reduce carbon emissions in the long run.

Customers, governments and other stakeholders are paying more attention than ever to the sustainability and efficiency of the supply chain, and packaging is a pivotal part of this. Not only do these new alternatives offer the chance to reduce your carbon footprint but they can also contribute to substantial savings. Dell’s packaging strategy has eliminated 20 million pounds of packaging between 2008 and 2012 and also cut costs by more than $18 million, demonstrating that there are real and tangible benefits. With the rapid development of technology and alternative packaging solutions being studied constantly, these benefits have the potential to be far greater in the future for anyone who chooses to adopt a sustainable approach to packaging.

Peterson, a 2010 Black Hills High School graduate, for a time was a player without a home position. A fullback? No. At 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds, he didn’t fit the frame. Outside linebacker? Not quite. Inside linebacker? Bingo.

After two seasons marred by injuries and adjusting from offense to defense, Peterson was a cornerstone of the Midshipmen’s defense in 2012 as a junior — a season filled with everything from playing No. 1-ranked Notre Dame in Dublin, Ireland, to helping Navy win the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy, to playing in a bowl game televised on ESPN. It’s a journey Peterson described as “rewarding.”

Peterson, a 2010 Black Hills High School graduate, for a time was a player without a home position. A fullback? No. At 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds, he didn’t fit the frame. Outside linebacker? Not quite. Inside linebacker? Bingo.

After two seasons marred by injuries and adjusting from offense to defense, Peterson was a cornerstone of the Midshipmen’s defense in 2012 as a junior — a season filled with everything from playing No. 1-ranked Notre Dame in Dublin, Ireland, to helping Navy win the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy, to playing in a bowl game televised on ESPN. It’s a journey Peterson described as “rewarding.”

The Spirit Of New York’s Catskills

Before arriving at a new place we all carry the luggage of pre-conceptions. There are usually holes in this kit; we’re almost always wrong, at least to some extent, about our notions. My idea of the Catskills came from two very different periods, the live television run of the 1950s; and the Summer of Love in 1969, the year of Woodstock.

As a young boy I would run home from school every day to turn on the TV and drink in whatever show or movie was playing. It turned out all my favorite performers were veterans of the Catskills, Borscht Belt comedians, mostly Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews, who cut their teeth in the Catskills at resorts like Grossinger’s, Brickman’s and The Overlook. The catalogue is thick of the funnymen with Catskills cred who flickered in my living room: Woody Allen, Morey Amsterdam, Bea Arthur, Milton Berle, Shelley Berman, Joey Bishop, Mel Blanc, Mel Brooks, Lenny Bruce, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Red Buttons. Sid Caesar, Billy Crystal, Rodney Dangerfield, Phyllis Diller, Totie Fields, Shecky Greene, Buddy Hackett, Danny Kaye, Alan King, Robert Klein. Harvey Korman. Jerry Lewis. Richard Lewis, Chico and Harpo Marx, Jackie Mason, Zero Mostel, Carl Reiner, Don Rickles, Joan Rivers, Rowan & Martin, Mort Sahl, Soupy Sales, Dick Shawn, Allan Sherman, Phil Silvers, Arnold Stang, David Steinberg, Jerry Stiller, The Three Stooges, Jonathan Winters, Ed Wynn, Henny Youngman and on, as some above would say, ad libitum.

In August 1969 I was a river guide on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. My college sweetheart decided to go to Woodstock, but I couldn’t get away for the little music fest in the Catskills. So I was insanely jealous as the media rolled out declarations that it was a seismic cultural event, one of those generational revolutions that changes everything. But I was even more green-eyed when my girlfriend announced she met someone at Woodstock while they were both naked and tripping, and she was leaving with him to an Ashram in the Himalayans.
So, when I finally arrived in the Catskills I expected Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog, and an overkill of free love and recreational psychotropics.

Instead I found an unexampled rebellious spirit that stretches back to the 18th century, and is a connective tissue between Woodstock and the Borscht Belt, and a life-force that upholds today.

I first head straight back in history to Kingston, a little town on the Hudson that displayed early-on an independent spirit when it set up shop as New York’s first capital. It was the fall of 1777, a year after Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. A government on the run was being chased north from New York City by the British Army, who scorched everything in its path. In the algid air of February the government took up residence in the Ulster County Courthouse to create a formal state constitution. While the Assembly met in a local tavern, the Senate convened its first session in the old stone home of a sympathetic Dutch merchant. On October 16, British forces swarmed through and set fire to every house in town as punishment for Kingston’s role in supporting the Revolution. The razing didn’t snuff the spirit, though, or keep a colony intact, and today there are proud reenactments and displayed documents of the episodes that set a defining disposition in motion. Jacob Coiro, a local guide, resplendent in tricorn hat, shows me around the original stone house, now a museum, and says “The people here knew what they had. They looked around the Catskills and saw how beautiful it was, and it made them feel as if it belonged to them.”

All this energetic independence works up an appetite, so I stop at Dallas Hot Wieners on North Front Street, and order up a spicy dog drenched in the family secret sauce, an inverse correlation between flavor (long) and life expectancy.

From Kingston I find my way down NY Route 28 to The Emerson Resort in Mt. Tremper, home to the World’s Largest Kaleidoscope, a former 64-foot high barn silo turned tourist attraction. It takes chutzpah to name an inn after one of the most famous American literary figures, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who in 1836 wrote “Nature,” an essay inspired by the severe beauty of the area. The publication prompted the American Conservation Movement, which led to the establishment of the 600 square-mile Catskill Forest Preserve that surrounds the Emerson today.

It also takes chutzpah and spirit to rebuild after burning, as did the early citizens of Kingston. In 2005 the Emerson burned down (like so many of the Catskills resorts), but rather than pack up and withdraw, the owners rebuilt with a vengeance, inserting a giant Rajasthani door as an entrance to the spa, outfitting the suites with stone fireplaces and Zen touches and effecting a mash-up of Asian and Appalachian sensibilities that seems to work, though Emerson would likely head down the seam of light that is Esopus Creek rather than check-in.

I take dinner then at the fittingly-named Phoenix Restaurant, and meet Michael Brothers, the head chef, who is so passionate about creating meals from local ingredients he practically leaps over to my table to tell me so. He says passion is the spirit he shares with his patrons, as most are pursuing such when they come here, be it art, agriculture, Buddhism (the Zen Mountain Monastery is down the road), comedy, nature… “whatever it is, they go for it full force.”

I head out the next morning to the town of Woodstock, which didn’t host the eponymous 1969 music Festival, as it turned down the initial permit application. The rock event was actually held 60 miles away at Max Yasgur’s Farm in the town of Bethel. Nonetheless, Woodstock has become the meme for generational liberation through music and art, though it is today a rather chic high-end gallery and café mecca. Nonetheless a pungent whiff of those high times remains, along with some stringy ponytails and shops hawking tie-dies and old LPs.

I chance up with local historian Richard Heppner, who wrote the book Remembering Woodstock, which recounts the town’s early history of wintry hardships, courageous settlers and rebellious farmers who set the stage for a saga of spirited and creative personalities. He tells me how, too, the spirit of the land began to take on meaning after the Civil War. “It was then Woodstockers began to realize they could earn money from what people saw in the land and felt in the land rather than exploiting it through quarrying, tanning or timbering.” It was a time when folks sought sanctuary from the heat, dust and asperities of the city and looked to the vital portal and pure waters and air of the Catskills. This was also about the time Woodstock played host to the brotherhood of Hudson River School painters, such as Thomas Cole, Frederic Church and Jasper Cropsey, the sublime watercolorists who turned brooding landscapes into rock stars. “Today you can almost feel that same sense the artists felt when they first came here. It was like seeing the South Pacific for the first time.”

Richard directs me to up the road to the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony. In 1902 a wealthy Englishman, Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, poked around these parts looking for the ideal spot to create a utopian community where all the arts would come together, painting, sculpture, music, metalwork even furniture making. The result: a 300-acre sylvan spread that has drawn thousands of independent-spirited artists and craftspeople. Isadora Duncan danced here; Bob Dylan lived here in the ’60s and early ’70s; Joanne Woodward performed at the theater. Byrdcliffe is the oldest continuing arts colony in America.

I find Matthew Leaycraft, executive director of Bydcliffe, who tells me “the spirit of artistic expression began here, and it continues. It’s extremely vibrant and alive today.” He talks a bit about how the Catskills became a place to retreat for inspiration. “There’s a certain kind of purity that comes from contact with the natural world. It lifts you up into your highest plane, and becomes a refuge where people can find the beauty within. It’s profoundly restorative.”

With a light snow falling I head over for a bite at the Phoenicia Diner — not to be confused with the Phoenix Restaurant at the Emerson; rebirth seems to be a popular theme throughout the Catskills — and order up the Arnold Bennett Skillet, smoked trout, parmesan cheese, crème fraiche and scrambled eggs, with, of course, de rigueur for a true diner, a cup of joe. The owner, Michael Cioffi, plops down on the bench next to me and tells me he is from Brooklyn, where he had a hard time finding authentically locally grown produce and meats. (They were mostly trucked in, sometimes from the Catskills.) He went on a quest to find a place where he could serve food in a diner that he would want to eat and landed here.

His menu offers up Wild Hive Farm polenta, a grass-fed burger, a prosciutto sandwich with brie, apples and arugula, and, my favorite for health nuts, house-made beer battered onion rings. His is the first menu I’ve encountered that offers up the practical regional advice: “If you are camping, you can protect your food from local black bears by suspending it on a rope between two trees.” As Michael gets up to greet another patron he tells me he aspires to a diner that is a destination, an eatery that transcends his current motto, “Come for the mountains, stay for the food!”

To round out my little winter visit to the Catskills I head over to Hunter Mountain, highest peak in the county, and host to the fastest, longest and highest Zipline Canopy Tour in North America — and the second-largest zipline in the world. It is more than four miles long and reaches speeds of up to 50 miles per hour. Movement is life; velocity is spirit, and here, all troubles are left off the ground. This is the spirit of fierce exhilaration. Brad Morse, the owner of NY Zipline Adventure Tours, tells me “The spirit of the Catskills has to do with adventure, the outdoors, the beauty of the mountains. When you zipline 600 feet off the ground, you get a perspective of what spirit is really about.”

Sake hits a new high

There’s a difference between premium sake and the harsh, additive-heavy rotgut, served mostly piping hot at every sushi joint in town. Like craft beer (sake’s production is similar to beer brewing), premium sake is made in smaller batches, renouncing mechanization for a more old-school approach. It is this handmade, high quality drink—mostly consumed cold that embodies the tireless Japanese work ethic.

Akita prefecture is located in the northwest quadrant of Honshu Island, an area renowned for its beautiful rugged landscape and its high quality rice grain. Rice, of course, is one of sake’s main ingredients, and because of Akita’s rice farming reputation, many declare this region’s sakes to be some of the best in the nation. How good are Akita’s sakes? Each winter, westerners get one chance to judge for themselves on a five-day educational tour of Akita’s craft sake breweries.

The tour is conducted in English and features a lecture with John Gauntner, one of the most highly regarded sake experts in the world. Having a glimpse into these kuras (breweries) is a rare treat, as they are normally closed to the public.

Akita’s cool climate and longer winters are also major factors in the region’s belief they are ‘bishuoukoku’ (Empire of Beautiful Sake). The cold allows for optimum brewing conditions during fall and winter—the traditional time sake is produced. Kuras here tend to brew at lower temperatures for much longer ferment times than other regions, resulting in sake that is rich, full-bodied, yet delicate.

Gauntner and Etsuko Nakamura, tour guide and organizer, accompany us to Saiya Shuzo brewery, makers of the sake-line romantically coined, Yuki no Bosha (Cabin in the Snow). The brewery is located in Yuri Honjo, along Akita’s western edge, overlooking the Sea of Japan.

When we arrive it’s a sunny winter’s day, but the 12-foot high snowdrifts between buildings and along the roadside tell of a different tale from days past. Toji, Toichi Takahashi, has been with Saiya Shuzo for over 40 years and has amassed awards virtually every year he’s been in charge. Takahashi-san’s sake has the honour of winning the most gold medals in annual competitions out of any Akita brewery.

An informative talk with Gauntner and toji eventually leads us on a brewery walkabout of every detailed step in the sake-making process.

To prepare, we don hairnets, white lab coats and rubber boots for our journey into the sake inner sanctum—truly, we look like a motley bunch of nutty professors.

Kurabito manually wash rice; time rice steeping with a stopwatch; create a form of malting by hand-mixing mold-inoculated rice in a hot, sauna-like cedar room; and shovel steamed rice by hand—all to ensure that rice doesn’t get cracked or damaged which can inhibit fermentation and lead to an inferior product.

This care and attention continues to the sake’s eventual pressing, sometimes through centuries-old methods with the mash inserted into long, narrow cotton bags, allowing gravity to separate the clear liquid from solids. This traditional form of pressing makes what is called shizuku-style sake. It’s some of the most expensive and exquisite sake one can ever taste due to its low yield and delicate flavour profile.

Shizuku is rarely done, but we were fortunate to catch several breweries pressing it for the upcoming annual spring sake competitions, and even sampled a few. Batches are pressed three times—the second pressing considered the best. Moriya Koichi, toji of Asamai Shuzo, makers of Ama no To (Heaven’s Door), uses a fish analogy for pressing: “You have the head, the middle and the tail. The most delicious part is in the middle—this is the same for pressing sake.”

Many of the brewing complexes are historically significant, dating back to when the kuras were first established. Hinomaru Jozo, a brewery we visited in the town of Yokote, was started in 1689. Akita Seishu, the last stop on our tour, was founded in 1865.

Each tour ended with a comprehensive tasting. We were able to try many sakes, some made specifically for locals and unavailable in Tokyo or abroad. Many breweries shared their lunches with us: homemade pickles, sashimi and grilled fish marinated with the brewery’s own sake kasu—the solids left from pressing sake. Nothing ever gets wasted in the sake-making process.

Rounding out the sake excursions, we were fortunate to enjoy a performance of traditional minyo folksingers who played the shamisen, a three-stringed guitar-like instrument, and tried our hand at soba noodle-making. Each evening featured an elaborate dinner paired with the sakes generously provided by the breweries we visited.

The food was incredible: fresh sea urchin, charcoal grilled sweetfish, the local rustic chunky-style miso, and kiritanpo—an Akita specialty, consisting of pounded rice molded onto a skewer which is then toasted—hearty and delicious.

We also visited Tsurunoyu Onsen—a hot spring retreat, tucked away in the mountains near Tazawako, a popular ski area. This onsen is famous for the much-touted health benefits of its milky-white sulphuric water.

Snow gently drifted down as we basked in the buoyant heat, steam dancing around us. A bit of sake shared in the onsen allowed us to elegantly elucidate how our Akita adventures and especially how Japan’s national drink is truly a beacon for what the nation continually strives for: pure unabashed and uncompromising perfection.

Search Engine Optimization Norway is pleased to announce the addition of several new Norwegian SEO services that include video promotions, press release promotions, Norwegian article writing.

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According to the company, Norwegian SEO improves inbound marketing by attracting visitors that are already interested in clients’ products and services, making search results more relevant and increasing the likelihood of conversion.

According to Search Engine Optimization Norway their new SEO services include professionally written Norwegian articles and distribution, social bookmarking, PPC ad management, facebook promotions, and press release promotions.

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Hyundai’s BlueLink car technology focuses on the cloud

There are a lot of altered approaches that carmakers can crop if accepting the latest abstruse updates to their vehicles.

Some of them absorb upgrades aural the vehicle, and others – like so abundant tech being these canicule – is all in the cloud.

Hyundai, which has started to appear in contempo years as a added austere adversary in the U.S. car market, is putting their eggs mostly in the billow bassinet – accurately through their BlueLink service, which I afresh had the adventitious to analysis out if I collection a 2012 Hyundai Azera.

I’ll let you apperceive what the arrangement is, what it can do, and how it measures up adjoin added carmakers’ tech features.

If you had to analyze BlueLink to something abroad you adeptness know, it would apparently be OnStar. This isn’t just about “infotainment”, which is the focus of some car tech systems. In layman’s terms, you basically accept anyone far away, accessible with the blow of a button, to advice you get breadth you charge to go or apprentice advice that will advice you get breadth you are traveling with as little agitation as possible.

The arrangement does not crave you to accept a smartphone affiliated to a vehicle. It’s anchored into the car and you are interacting with a computer that accesses advice accidentally – or in the cloud.

One different access that Hyundai is demography is to accommodate several methods of accessing the assorted articles that BlueLink provides.

First, there is the button in the vehicle. Just hit it, and you can allege with the BlueLink affiliation and do a array of things. There is a Aeronautics advantage that allows you to allege the address, again the avenue is downloaded to your touchscreen in the foreground of the vehicle. I occasionally had some agitation accepting the aeronautics via BlueLink to plan appropriately every time, but usually it accepted me. You can aswell ask the computer for abstracts on any accidents in the area, which can advice accumulate you out of cartage tie-ups, and you can ask about restaurants and added businesses in the area, again accept the computer forward the routes to your computer. The in-car BlueLink button and articulation ascendancy absolutely helps you accumulate your easily off the touchscreen or your smartphone, and works actual able-bodied added than accessory hiccups.

Instead of tethering your book to your phone’s abstracts plan, you may wish to accede acrimonious up a adaptable hotspot from your bounded wireless carrier.

A committed adaptable hotspot can crop bigger after-effects than tethering your phone’s abstracts connection. For starters, it’s generally faster and added reliable than a tethered phone’s connection. And admitting tethering can cesspool a phone’s array quickly, adaptable hotspots frequently bear abounding hours of array life.

I use the Novatel Wireless MiFi 4510L for Verizon LTE, which offers continued array life, accomplished abstracts speeds, and a solid connection–unlike my Galaxy Nexus phone.

Though the MiFi 4510L absent out in PCWorld’s hotspot tests to the Samsung 4G LTE Adaptable Hotspot, the capital advantage of the MiFi 4510L is its adeptness to accumulate its affiliation while moving. The Samsung 4G LTE is speedier if you’re sitting still, but, in my hands-on experience, the MiFi 4510L maintained a solid affiliation on a 9-hour drive to Vegas.