Why garden organicaly?
Life in a healthy garden is a strong tapestry of many strands, woven together, interacting to keep any one organism from dominating and causing problems, says Jeff Cox, columnist for Organic Gardening magazine, host of the PBS television series Your Organic Garden and Grow It!, and author of 13 books on organic gardening and landscaping. As there is in the American Constitution, he says, there’s a system of checks and balances.

Given this perspective, it becomes obvious why poisonous chemicals, whether fertilizers, fungicides, insecticides, or herbicides, wreak such havoc in a tightly knit system. These chemicals tear apart nature’s carefully constructed and balanced web of life. Suddenly certain creatures are released from predation and begin to multiply unchecked. What was once merely a happy player in the garden becomes a problem.

But organic gardening is not just about gardening without chemicals. The organic approach is to maximize the diversity of life in the garden. The more kinds of creatures that inhabit a system—whether garden, farm, or rain forest—the healthier it is. Each creature has an ecological role to play. Microorganisms decay fungus strands. Fungus helps disassemble the fallen leaves. Ladybugs eat aphids. Birds eat ladybugs.

Mice eat birds’ eggs. Foxes keep mice in check. And finally, when the foxes die, microorganisms break down their bodies.

The Phoenix-based is a full-service real estate brokerage firm that specializes in providing property management, development, sales and leasing services to owners of medical care facilities. They manage more than 400,000 square feet of medical office space and have found that changing lighting fixtures can reduce operational costs and save energy.

By replacing incandescent light fixtures with fluorescent fixtures and fluorescent retrofit kits, the DevMan Company has been able to significantly reduce the operational costs of lighting and cooling the buildings it manages. A fluorescent flood light fixture, for example, has a much longer life span -lasting up to five times longer than incandescent flood lights. This not only saves the cost of replacement lamps, it also saves the labor and maintenance costs of replacing them. In areas where light fixtures are hard to reach, such as exterior lighting on second and third floors, maintenance costs can be high if a scissor lift or other equipment must be rented to change the bulbs.

Fluorescent lamps also use less energy, yet generate the same amount of light. In addition, they burn cooler, thus reducing inside air conditioning needs which are significant in medical facilities where more lighting usually is required, or in warm climates where air conditioning is a must.
Upgrading existing fluorescent fixtures with new technology, such as electronic ballasts, also can reduce energy usage. The electronic ballasts generate less heat which gives them a longer life span and also lowers air conditioning costs. Fluorescent flood lamps for exterior and interior lighting are available as a complete individual system containing an aluminized glass reflector, a ballast adapter and a fluorescent lamp. These preassembled units simply screw into any standard incandescent socket, making installation easy.

In addition to general office lighting, the DevMan Company is in the process of retrofitting all indoor “exit” signs to fluorescent bulbs to achieve additional savings. Since these signs stay on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the savings are expected to be significant.

“In our experience, we have generally recaptured our investment in the new, more expensive lighting fixtures in the first year. Savings in future years are expected to be significant. A recent retrofit of an 1,800 square foot medical suite which had an inordinate amount of incandescent flood lights, for example, will yield savings of about $1,500 per year,” said William E. Molloy, DevMan partner.

Reynolds Metals Company, headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, is one of the world’s largest fully-integrated aluminum producers. Reynolds pioneered the 12-ounce aluminum can in 1963 and consumer recycling of aluminum a few years later. Their recycling effort pays the public for their aluminum cans, then Reynolds melts the cans for use in new products. This process conserves natural resources and energy while forming a partnership with the American people to protect the nation’s countryside from unsightly litter.

Reynolds opened the first of its own nationwide network of consumer recycling centers in California in 1968. To date, Reynolds has recycled more than 120 billion aluminum cans and has paid out more than $1.4 billion for metal that might otherwise be littering the nation’s highways or loading up landfills. Recycling aluminum from cans and other sources saves 95 percent of the energy required to make aluminum from bauxite ore, conserving not only electricity, but also raw materials.

The beauty of Reynold’s system, which operates more than 625 recycling centers and 100 automatic can recycling machines, as well as 26 processing plants across the country, is multifold: it prevents litter, reduces pressure on the landfills, rewards recycling with cash, conserves energy and preserves raw materials. The company’s recycling program saves Reynolds hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

What’s in it for Reynolds?
Reynolds has enjoyed tremendous corporate savings, and since 1968, also has generated consumer good will by paying $1.4 billion to the public for cans returned for recycling.

“Recycling in many ways was the first and easiest area to make an impact.”
Werner Braum
North America Senior Vice President Ramada International Hotels & Resorts

“Recycling works because it’s based on a cherished American principle: free enterprise.”
William 0. Bourke
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Reynolds Metals Company

“Recycling makes you feel good about yourself; like when you leave the blood bank.”
Carole Newman Speedy Print, Inc.

Most Americans grew up considering the United States to be the land of abundance. Perhaps that’s why, until recently, they never gave much thought to throwing things away. With a cavalier attitude of “there’s always more where that came from,” our disposable society manages to send 450 million cubic yards of trash to the landfill every year. That’s enough garbage to bury 26,000 football fields in a layer of garbage ten feet deep. According to the Waste Recyclers Council, that’s enough trash to keep 50,000 trucks working daily to remove the refuse Americans toss away. An increasing awareness of the impact of trash on our environment, along with a severe and long lasting economic recession, has forced many Americans and most business owners to think twice about trash.

Most of what is found in the garbage bin at a business, as well as at home, can be salvaged, recycled and put to use, if these valuable materials can be intercepted before they reach the landfill. The most common resources businesses recycle today include paper, aluminum, glass, plastic and rubber tires. Some businesses have been successful in recycling oils, solvents, packaging materials, food, landscape debris and wood.

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