The World is Full of Mysteries

Ever notice how much mystery plays a part in our lives?

“Peek-a-boo! I see you!”

That innocent game we play with a baby is probably the child’s first conscious introduction to mysteries. When the blanket is up, where did mommy go? When it’s down, oh, there she is!

From that moment on, we are constantly engaged in solving mysteries.

Going to school allows us to find the answers to the mystery of:

• spelling
• arithmetic
• whether or not Susie likes Calvin

Mysteries are what fuels scientist’s curiosity:

• Are birds descendants of dinosaurs?
• Who built the giant statues of Easter Island?
• What can we do to save this species from extinction?

Many of us face personal issues to which we seek answers, such as those offered by unscrupulous marketers:

• “Learn the 10 Secrets the Pros Don’t Want You to Know!”
• “Lose 30lbs in 30 Days!”
• “Get Rich Using these 5 Easy Steps!”

We seek out and are entertained by mysteries in stories such as:

• Sherlock Holmes
• Indiana Jones
• Harry Potter

Why are Mysteries Important?

If you don’t think mysteries are important, let me ask you the following:

• Have you ever seen a movie where you start realizing what’s going to happen before it happens? Ruins the fun, right? That’s like telling people Darth Vader is Luke’s father before they saw Empire Strikes Back in 1980.
• Or how about seeing a magician do a trick that you’ve already seen before? The effect is not as…magical.
• Or why a woman wearing revealing clothing that much sexier than if she was simply nude?
• When you go see an Opera, Ballet, Musical, or Play at the theater, what if they didn’t have a drawn curtain?

We Love the Tease

Ever hear advice about writing a cover letter for your resume? Or how about a book proposal, or any proposal. What about the opening minutes of a TV show? The inside cover of a book jacket? Magazine cover? Promotional mailer?

They all feature something short, quick and easy to remember — to tease you into looking for more.

The best ones present a compelling mystery, one which you are eager to solve.

The Quest for Knowledge

• If fiction, we have the “MacGuffin”, what director Alfred Hitchcock referred to as an object or person — SOMETHING! — that is being chased after, sought after, and fought over. That continued searching is what the viewer of his films get hooked on.
• In Dashiell Hammet’s Maltese Falcon - detective Sam Spade is after the “black bird”, a supposedly jewel-encrusted statuette worth millions. His partner is murdered, and various parties are all after the falcon. What’s going to happen?
• J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings - how is Frodo and his band going to destroy the One Ring, in the face of overwhelming odds?

In real life, we have the quest for knowledge.

• Buddha, in the process of becoming the Buddha, sought to answer to why humans suffered
• Leonardo Da Vinci, the Wright Brothers, and other dreamers sought out the answers to flight.
• We each all have our goals, and often wonder how we are to achieve them.

Mysteries engage our minds, our imagination, and our creativity.

The Mystery of Blogging

It even applies to our blogging.

Why do we ultimately subscribe to someone’s RSS feed?

To find out what’s going to be written next.

Have a great weekend!

I leave you with the following inspirational video clip:

TEDTalks: J.J. Abrams: The Mystery Box

Jame’s post on PLR articles yesterday got me thinking. What’s wrong with the PLR articles?

Too Much Run-of-the-Mill Content

PLR articles or Private Label Rights articles, if you don’t already know (I didn’t), are pre-written content that a subscriber can use for his or her own blog. Ideally, the blogger using the article will dress up the content, add his or her own twist to it to avoid having the exact same content as someone else who might have signed up (read: paid) for the same batch of PLR articles.

According to James, though, the proliferation of these cheap, repackaged material that is sold to thousands, if not tens of thousands of bloggers looking for content (with “low” prices, so volume must be high to gain profits) to fill their blogs will overwhelm the internet as we know it, burying us in a flood of recycled content that is old, stale and regurgitated.

The Microstock Business Model

What James is describing sounds similar to what professional photographers are experiencing in recent years as well, specifically with stock photography.

With free photo sites like Flickr (which is great!) and multitudes of “penny” stock — or microstock — image companies, the past work of photographers sitting in the vaults of the giant stock image companies become less valuable. Certain new work undoubtedly is worth less as well due to increased competition. (Wikipedia entry on microstock photography)

Professional photographer John Harrington, in his Photo Business Blog, describes it best: who needs to license a picture of the White House when you can find (a free) one on Flickr that is just as good?

Just as James sees PLR articles as a bad business practice, Harrington also finds the microstock model lacking as well. The once almighty Getty Images bought one of the larger microstock companies, iStockPhoto, and consequently shot themselves in the foot, according to Harrington. Why pay $200 when you can pay $1 for the “same” image? (Getty was recently sold to a private company, so we will see if doing so will mean a shift in focus back to doing what’s beneficial to their content providers — the photographers instead of what shareholders want — the bottom line.)

What’s Wrong with the Microstock Business Model?

I bet in the beginning, the early adopter photographers who put up their images on sites like Shutterstock, which currently pays 25 cents per download, made off pretty well. On this particular stock site, it pays 25 cents to the photographer for each of his/her image that is downloaded, so it states if your image gets downloaded 2000 times, you get $500. Sounds good, right?

Well, it is if you, the image-creator, were on a roster of only several hundred photographers, and you had at least a few dozen top-selling images: $500 x 20 images per month = pretty good money!

However, the site mentions these stats as of today:

• 3,141,584 royalty-free stock photos
• 36,756 new stock photos added this week
• 91,940 photographers

Over 90 thousand photographers. And over 3 million images. Seems like a lot of great choices for the end users: tons of high-quality, royalty-free photos at low, low prices. But how is it for the content creator — the photographer? Of 3 million images, how many are “top-selling”? One must realize that if the supply far, far outweighs demand, the likelihood of anyone having a top-selling images becomes marginally better than winning the lottery.

How many images does the photographer need to have that sell? Would they get enough payment to make a decent living? If not, they’ll have to do something else instead of creative great images, wouldn’t they?

Who actually makes the money here? Hint: the middle-man (remember it’s a numbers game.)

PLR Articles is the Microstock of Professional Writing

I believe Jame’s sentiments about PLR articles is the same as what I’ve described about the microstock business model. The people that truly profit from PLR articlers are the ones selling them — the middle men/women who promise writers hefty pay-out for their well-researched, well-written content. Those content-providing writers who got into the game first are sure to do well, just like those early-entry stock photographers, but as more and more dive in, the result will most likely mirror what’s happened with stock photography — writers would have to write more and more content to generate the same income, most likely resulting in poorer work, and devaluing the overall web experience.

What Will Happen?

While James may be going for the dramatic flare when he says the influx of run-of-the-mill, repeated content will CRASH the internet, I have to think that while the internet will most likely survive, the writing landscape will undoubtedly change.

According to Technorati’s State of the Live Web report (April 2007),

• approximately 120,000 new blogs are create each day, or 1.4 per second
• bloggers write 1.5 million posts per day, or 17 posts per second

Mind-boggling, er…rather, mind-bloggling when you think about it.

What will happen in the end, I think, will be up to us, the bloggers who care about what we want to say, and ultimately who care about our readers.

Already, I see some hints of things to come, but I’ll save that for a future post. Thanks for reading!

photo by Saudalf

I was a D&D junkie.

Actually, I lied. I was never obsessed with playing the games, but was more of a fantasy genre fan. The few games I did play were fun, but they ultimately gave way to way “cooler” computer games like, um…Telengard and Infocom text-based games like Zork.

Some five or 10 years later, I found myself playing games like Baldur’s Gate — now there was a RPG game!

Anyway, these days, with the popularity of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and Harry Potter, I wanted to talk about one aspect that all role-playing games seem to share.

Character Attributes

Whether on paper or on a computer game, determining your character’s attributes was always one of the first things you do. The attributes describe the various skills and abilities of your character. In D&D, the attributes are:

• Strength - physical strength, comes in handy when you’re a Fighter
• Dexterity - hand-eye coordination, adroitness, etc., requirements for a Thief
• Intelligence - learning and retaining knowledge, critical thinking, crucial to spell-casting Wizards
• Wisdom - ability to make good decisions, common sense, comprehension, usually tied to spiritualism in D&D, represented by Clerics
• Constitution - physical endurance, health, toughness, enabling survival
• Charisma - level of personality, attractiveness, persuasiveness, almost a throw-away attribute when I played, but seems to be utilized more in computer RPGs.

How high certain attributes were helped determine the way a character makes his or her way through the role-playing world.

For instance, strength is the ability that allows one to prevail in physical combat. A character belonging to the Fighter class must possess a high degree of strength. A thief must possess a high degree of dexterity in order to ply his “trade”, and to dodge projectile weapons.

In the end, the application of attributes in the D&D gameplay can be seen as a extremely souped-up version of “rock, paper, scissors”. Add in (modifiable) randomness from dice rolls, a basic plot, and some imagination, and many hours can be whiled away.

Character Alignment

Alignment in D&D describes a character’s morality in nine possible ways:

• Lawful Good
• Neutral Good
• Chaotic Good
• Lawful Neutral
• Neutral
• Chaotic Neutral
• Lawful Evil
• Neutral Evil
• Chaotic Evil

There are two axes to alignment: Good — Neutral — Evil, and Lawful — Neutral — Chaotic

Good implies altruism, respect for life, sacrifice for others, etc., while Evil is the opposite. Lawful implies abiding law and order, while Chaotic means total freedom, anarchy.

How Attributes Apply in the Real World

In the games, your characters would have attributes that are higher than normal mortals, with a score of 9 as average, all the way up to 18. Different attributes would be higher depending on the class of character, e.g. fighter, wizard, thief, etc. Spells and magical items might boost any one of the attributes beyond 18, or even curse a character and “permanently” lower an attribute.

Let’s see how it would work with people in the real world:

• Police Officers and Firefighters - they ideally fall into the Lawful Good alignment. Inspectors would need high Intelligence to solve crimes, while your city’s Bravest need good Strength and Constitution scores to fight fires.
• Politicians - They would have high Charisma scores in order to get elected, and perhaps even some Intelligence, although it seems like sometimes that’s an afterthought. JFK, Ronald Reagan, even the “Governator” all have high Charisma. Not surprisingly, a couple were actors! Some politicians will be Lawful, but some are Chaotic. Despotic dictators would have a Chaotic Evil alignment. Many politicians, it would seem, have low Wisdom.
• Elite Athletes - Depending on the sports, we would expect to see high attribute levels in Strength, Dexterity and/or Constitution. In the NFL, linemen would have high Strength, while receivers have high Dexterity, etc. Someone like Terrell Owens would have high Dexterity and Constitution, but his show-y antics and brash personality indicates low Wisdom, while his disregard and disrespect for many indicate a Chaotic Neutral alignment.
• Scientists - Some of the best thinkers in the world would have high intelligence scores, such as Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin. Stephen Hawking also comes to mind, but he would also have a lower Charisma score.
• Actors and other Celebrities - these usually have high Charisma. In the case of Britney or Lindsey, their recent personal problems show low Wisdom, as well as a shift to Chaotic Neutral alignment.
• “Psychics”, TV Evangelists, and the like - they all exhibit high Charisma as well, with the ability to read, persuade and influence people, especially people who have lower Intelligence and Wisdom.
• Bloggers - good bloggers would also have high Intelligence, and perhaps Wisdom, in order to build and maintain an ongoing blog with remarkable content. By the nature of the medium, they could have average physical Charisma and still be very successful.

Charisma Important in Real Life

While in the games I played, Charisma was never that big of a deal. My characters usually used all the other skills to get through the game, and when I was divvying out points from my allotted pool to each attribute, I would usually not give any to Charisma (unless I wanted to be a Paladin).

In real life, however, it would seem that having high Charisma helps a lot. As we can see, many profession depends on it. Indeed, Charisma is one of the things that gets you job prospects such as by networking with friends, and then even through the job interview process itself. If a supervisor had to choose between two equally skilled competent workers to promote, she would probably choose the one with higher Charisma (ability to get along with others, to talk, to be a team player, etc.)

Of course, we also need our Intelligence and Wisdom, and depending on the job, Strength, Dexterity and Constitution in varying degrees. And we all have these attributes, and can work on improving many of them.

I just find it interesting to start looking at people in the way sometimes, just as a little exercise in character analysis, and a little bit for fun.

It Starts at Home

When I hear about crimes — white collar, blue collar, whatever-color-collar — this first thing that comes to mind is how were these perpetrators raised? How were they as kids? What was life like at home then?

Certainly, they may have made mistakes as an adult/young adult that really set them on a wrong path — failure to foresee consequences of an action (see my post on alternate time-lines).

However, I bet a majority had detrimental habits that were instilled during childhood.

In fact, sometimes we do get those back-stories, and often we hear that the parents had no clue that their children were troubled.

To me, that’s shocking.

I hope I have SOME clue to how my kids emotional growth is developing.

A Disconnect Between Parents and Children

I know times are so much different than say the stereotypical nuclear family of the 1950’s. Today, because often both parents work and the media (cable/satellite TV, internet) and technology (computer, cellphones) are so pervasive, it is so easy to have a disconnect between parents and their kids. Parents are too tired when they come home, and kids are too busy in their little own world of video games, mySpace, etc. Interactions between them boil down to simple yes-no questions and answers.

One the the things I think is important is to talk to the kids and understand how they’re growing, especially emotionally and intellectually.

I try to find out as much as possible without being too nosy, and use regular utilize a topic to explain a appropriate principle. Thus far, these are the ones that have come up fairly often:

7 Principles I’m Trying to Instill in My Kids

1. Respectful Communication - Kids have motormouths that run a mile a minute, and when they talk, the speech is frequently filled with um’s and an’then’s. When that happens I always ask them to slow down. I also require them to stop talking when their mother or I am talking to them — sometimes I will ask them, “What did I just say?” to see if they were listening. I explain that they should wait to talk until they have understood what was told to them, and I want them to look me in the eye when they talk, not stare off somewhere.
2. Attitude is Everything - I will get more upset over a bad, whiny attitude than I will over something “bad” that they did.
3. Saying “I’m Sorry” - I do not want to hear excuses for everything. If you did something wrong, take responsibility for it. Know that everyone makes mistakes, and if you made a one, apologize, fix the problem if needed, and move on.
4. Keeping Promises - The reason to keep promises now is to become trustworthy. A few years from now, you’ll want to do things like go out on your own, stay out late, learn to drive, etc. If you’re not trustworthy by then, I will not let you do those things.
5. Anything worthwhile comes from hard work and effort - All the things that you want right now (toys, video games) require money. Money requires hard work. Right now, the older one is earning “stars” each week, a minimum of five, to get a Nintendo DS if he earns five or more stars for six straight weeks.
6. Learn to See the Bigger Picture - We use examples to see if the kids will see the bigger picture, in order for them to learn the concept of long-term gains. For instance, we normally ask that they read 60 minutes, and then they get to play video games for 60 minutes. Sometimes we’ll offer them 30 extra minutes of playing time if they read for just 15 minutes more.
7. What the Opposite of Love Is - As a kid what the antonym of love is, and he’ll probably say hate. However, I explain that the opposite of love is selfishness, thinking and caring only about yourself, not being sensitive to other people’s feelings, not sharing toys, not saying hi or thank you. Basically, you can squeeze a lot of negative qualities into that definition, in order to show how good love is. That way, we avoid the abstract concept of hate and demonstrate what love is.

I don’t know how successful my strategy will be, but I’m hoping some of these will eventually rub off on them and serve them well throughout their lives.

At the least, down the road, I want to be able to look back and be able to say, I was involved in my children’s upbringing, that I did my best, and I did have SOME clue to what they were doing.

If you have kids, or are around kids a lot, let me know what other principles I may have missed.

Or, if the kids are all grown up, how did they turn out?

photo by Mats Gullikstad

Catherine’s post and a recent one by James reminded me of recent thoughts on customer service.

It’s a Numbers Game

I say that the main reason we experience poor customer service is because it’s a numbers game.

So, what are the numbers and who is this game’s players?

The numbers are those following the dollar sign, namely profits. And the players are the shareholders who own equity in these companies. In an effort to show continued growth, company bean counters are ordered to cut costs, and the resulting emphasis on sales and profits mean that things like customer service often gets de-emphasized.

In a country with over 300 million people, these companies know that any disgruntled customer will be easily replaced by another unsuspecting one. The lure? Low prices. And I mean really low. So low that each item itself must have a very low profit margin. Which means everything must be sold in huge quantities in order for the company to show adequate profits.

An Example: Best Buy

A year or two ago, I bought a DVD box set of a movie trilogy (Back to the Future, if you must know) from my local Best Buy. However, once I got home and put in the first disc, I realized I had mistakenly bought the pan-and-scan version instead of the widescreen version (always preferable, imho).

When I went back to the store to request an exchange, the person at the return counter gave me a bunch of reasons why I can’t return it, e.g. it was already opened, etc. Mind you, I went in to EXCHANGE it for the widescreen version — it wasn’t like I was somehow pirating the video and RETURNING it. Anyway, after a polite conversation with a supervisor, I got my widescreen box. Still, the experience left a sour taste in my mouth.

Now, will I shop at Best Buy again?

Sadly, yes. But, not if I can help it.

As long as I and millions of others have that same attitude, then, I don’t see how a big chain will improve their customer service. There’s just no incentive. Companies like Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and the like know that their low prices will inevitably draw you back (like, $30 for a DVD player?).

The Solution to Bad Customer Service

However, we’re not completely at the mercy of these companies.

• Try a different store branch - sometimes a different branch of a store will have more caring employees (see below for an example)
• Try a different store - instead of Best Buy, try Circuit City, or Fry’s.
• Try a local store - you may have to pay more, but the service can be better (see below)
• Shop online - there are a lot of alternatives online, but stick to the well-known retailers, and check www.resellerratings.com if you have any doubts

You’ll notice the one thing in common to these alternatives: Voice your displeasure by spending your money elsewhere.

The Importance of People

Through it all, the most important thing to remember is that the kind of people running your local whatever-store makes a big difference in the kind of customer service you may experience.

Even a different branch of the same store, for instance.

Union Bank is one institution I deal with on behalf of a non-profit organization for which I volunteer. I’ve had to call their 800 number on several occasions, and the experience is often less than stellar. In the East Bay, they have a physical branch I’ve visited. It has mediocre to poor customer service, depending certain alignments of the celestial bodies.

But the branch in South San Francisco is superb. I attribute this solely to the VP there, Laura, who seems to have the enthusiasm of 10 people. The other employees there are also very helpful, no doubt because Laura had a hand in their hiring, I’m sure.

You Get What You Pay For

This saying is true when it comes to customer service. For those places that sell cheaply priced goods, how much of that profit goes into employee salaries, product exchanges and returns and replacements, employee educational programs, and advancement opportunities and other incentives?

It seems like stores that have slightly higher prices are more apt to have better customer service, and of course, in high-end boutiques or luxury car dealerships, excellent service is de rigeur.

Caring About People, Not Profits

But whether it’s a low-end or high-end business, the key to good customer service is that a business owner needs to care about his or her customers, and also needs to hire people who also care about customer service. The businesses that are successful (in a good, tell-about-them-to-your-friends-kind-of-way) are the ones who care more about acquiring and keeping loyal customers, rather than caring only about short-term profits.

That’s how I want to be treated, and that’s how I treat my clients.

Take care of your customers, and the profits will come.

I’m not talking about hitting the lottery, or cashing out on stock options, I’m talking about being an average Joe or Joy, one who either works for someone, or who runs a small business.

My Idea of a Perfect Life

It is one where I:

1. Have a profession that I truly enjoy - a job that is stimulating, creative, and pays a little bit more than enough. I do not require vast wealth, just enough to live on, and to save for retirement.
2. Spend plenty of time with my kids - to show them the simple pleasures in life, the wonder of our world, the diversity of our culture, and that there’s more to life than TV and video games.
3. Periodically travel - to enrich my own experience of the world and its peoples.
4. Leave a positive stamp behind - what’s my legacy, will I leave this world a better place than when I entered it, how will people remember me? I hope that this blog will become something worth reading down the line.
5. Am fit in body and in mind - a healthy mind and body go hand in hand. Coupled with a good personal and professional accomplishments, I’d say that makes a perfect life.

Where I am

For me, I’ve only (partially) accomplished number 1.

I happen to be self-employed, and enjoy my chosen profession very, very much. It’s my fourth year in business, and I am not yet at the level I want (or need) to be, but certainly a lot farther along than what I originally conceived because I gained a business partner in second year.

I am working towards that first plateau almost every day of the week.

Which, of course, puts the rest of the list on the back burner. It’s not that I don’t do any of 2-5, but rather not I don’t do them in the amount I want — something about not enough time in the day…excuses, I know.

What about you? Do you think my basic criteria is too simple? What are your ideas of a perfect life? Are you living it?

photo by Ken McCown

When They’re Automatic Faucets

Has this happened to you?

You go into a restroom at a department store, or a movie theater, or airport, and inside you find the sinks all sport the new “automatic” faucets that dispense water when you move your hands underneath the spigot.

In theory.

They’re more trouble than they’re worth

You can be sure that more often than not, when you wave your hand under one, nothing happens except for the slight physical exertion from the concert effort of a number of muscles in your upper body, arm and hand. You can hear the sound of a pin drop because there’s no water!

Then you move to the next faucet — okay, that one works.

Now to the paper towel dispenser. Automatic again. And of the three there, one doesn’t work. Oh, look here, there’s a manual paper dispenser — that’s why there’s three, they forgot/didn’t have time to take one down.

And have you ever sat on an autoflushing toilet? Don’t get me started.

Get rid of the Gadget-y Plumbing

I would like to see these modern “conveniences” done away with.

• They run on electricity or batteries - thus, another waste of energy — what happens when there’s a blackout — and if it’s batteries, more waste to add to our landfills when they run out of juice, which, in my experience, is often
• They are not convenient - is it too much trouble to simply flick the lever of a normal faucet? Or how about installing the foot activated switches you find in hospital rooms?
• We have enough digital gadgets in our lives - really, the restroom should be the last bastion of analog devices.

Okay, end of rant. Have a great weekend!

• “Love doesn’t make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.” –Franklin P. Jones
• “At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.” –Plato
• “Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.” –Robert Frost
• “Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” –C.S. Lewis
• “If you have it [Love], you don’t need to have anything else, and if you don’t have it, it doesn’t matter much what else you have.” –Sir James M. Barrie
• “Love is a friendship set to music.” –E. Joseph Cossman
• “Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.” –Albert Einstein
• “A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.” –Ingrid Bergman
• “Love at first sight is easy to understand; it’s when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.” –Amy Bloom
• “The first duty of love is to listen.” –Paul Tillich

Here’s my own:

February 14th should only serve as a reminder that there are 364 other days in the year when you should say “I love you.”

Have a wonderful day.

That’s what you say at a party if you:

• Work as an IRS auditor
• Work for the FBI, the NSA, or the DEA
• Make daily rounds on city streets as a TCO, Traffic Control Officer, aka “parking ticket/meter maid”
• Send young men and women to war
• Are a politician about to be recalled
• Used to pump iron and have an Austrian accent

(okay, I admit it, this is another post inspired by a comment on Barbara’s site)

Anything else?

We often think that we need to drive less, or buy a more fuel-efficient automobile to lessen our dependence on fossil fuels. At least that’s the general rhetoric we hear from pundits.

Of course, I’m all for conserving our resources, so I have nothing against driving less, and using less gas. (I even encourage efficient driving.)

However, I’m wondering how many people know that another all too convenient consumer product comes from oil.

Plastic.

Plastic Comes from Oil

It’s true that recently, there are plastics made from organic materials (such as the Biobags that are made from corn, mentioned in my composting post) but the vast majority of plastic still comes from petroleum.

Therefore, if we really want to conserve our oil supply, we should each do our part to dump as little plastic into our landfills as possible, since dumping plastic is like dumping oil.

Here’s how:

• Ask for paper instead of plastic - when possible, of course. Here in San Francisco, the city Council passed an ordinance requiring paper bags be used by stores over a certain size.
  
• Better yet, bring your own (reusable canvas bag)
• Recycle as much as possible (instead of dumping it in the trash) - trash goes to landfills, recycling goes to recycling centers.
• Take packaging into consideration when making a purchase - meaning, decide if there’s an alternative product that uses less packaging, or use material that can be recycled easily (like paper).
• Buy less stuff - probably worth an entire post to discuss this.
• Consider buying recycled products - such as those by Recycline, found at stores like Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe’s, these include items like toothbrushes and razors, to cups and plates, to name a few, all made from recycled plastic. Plus, they can be recycled as well.

Plastic Consumption in Perspective

If you’re still not convinced that buying less and recycling plastic is a good idea, here’s a link to artist Chris Jordan’s photographic work. He has a series of photographs depicting the amount of stuff we (in the United States) use, and a lot of the stuff is made from plastic.

It really puts things in perspective.