Very appropriate that during Plastic-free July, my fabulous wife / co-founder Kim Graham-Nye’s recent TEDxSydney talk goes live.
I am thrilled to share this message with everyone wanting to end plastic waste (hint…it starts by not making things out of plastic!!!).
Please share with your networks.
We are drowning in this stuff but we have the solutions.
Visy’s ‘toxic’ plastic waste will be returned to Australia from the Indonesian city of Batam after Indonesian authorities put their foot down.
— Read on www.smh.com.au/world/asia/visy-recycling-behind-toxic-plastic-waste-container-in-indonesia-20190703-p523s0.html
That’s right kids. Recycling isn’t the answer. It’s actually “downcycling” because the result is material of a lesser value that will ultimately be landfilled.
We are the only species in earth that creates waste. And waste is simply the result of lazy design. We are better than this people!
It’s been a busy few weeks since landing back in Oz from the UK. While Kim has remained in London I have been solo-parenting and working from Sydney.
The kids may have rickets given their exclusively Coco Pops derived diet under my household leadership.
Kim headed to NY last weekend to speak at the UN’s Youth Assembly addressing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. She was also a judge for an impact start-up competition and met some amazing young entrepreneurs from all over the world. There were in fact 1,000 delegates from 100 countries.
Kim made an interesting and somewhat uncomfortable observation after learning about these fantastic young entrepreneurs.
In these rapidly changing times, we have the tendency to mistake what we believe is much-valued wisdom with a limited Fixed Mindset that forecloses on possibility.
When we started gDiapers in 2005, we came into it with “beginner mind” as we had no experience in Consumer Goods, fundraising, team building, moving to America-ing and indeed parenting as we had just become parents too. The beginner minds is also known as a “Growth Mindset“. Without it we would have never gotten the business off the ground.
It strikes me that a Fixed Mindset probably comes with age. And as we are now older – 48 (!), maybe we have slipped in our way of thinking. That is a dangerous thing given just how fast the world is now changing. Just when you think you know it all, you realize you don’t. Or you don’t realize you don’t and live a life of unknown unknowns in the famous words of Donald Rumsfeld. (Remember those simpler times of just lying about going to war? Good times. Hit the link – my favorite press conference).
Food for thought.
A great article in the New York Times about distracted parenting. I am so guilty of this and Kim is so good about attempting to manage me. (I don’t think I am at the level shown in this photo though…!) It’s a 24/7 job. I promise I’ll do better. There. It’s in writing. My 3 followers are witnesses. Keep me honest will you?
NPR tells us the answer this morning…
A middle-income, two-parent family will
spend $222,360, on average, to raise a baby born in 2009, according to a
government estimate released today.
Yes, a number like that screams false precision. Still,
some of the broad outlines that go into the estimate are pretty
interesting:
Researchers
broke household income into three levels: Less than $56,670; $56,670 to
$98,120; and more than $98,120.
People
in the lower-income group spend 25 percent of their before-tax income on
a child; those in the middle-income group spend 16 percent; and those
in the higher-income group spend 12 percent. But in absolute terms,
spending increases with income.
The
figures are adjusted for inflation, and costs are calculated through
age 17.
I more than most recognize the contentious topics related to parenting given the business I am in. As I cruise around the interverse, the proliferation of Mummy and Daddy blogs astound me. And the ability to post comments anonymously offers a potent mix for folks to judge like there's no tomorrow.
Kim and I are vehemently for choice in everything. I don't think we have one friend back in Sydney who uses gDiapers. And that is fine by us. We're still friends! Your choice in diapers is so personal. gDiapers isn't for everyone. Parents are all busy and we have a million choices to make about child-rearing so why contribute to it all with yet more judgments? We strongly advocate the "whatever floats your boat" approach to life. We think breastfeeding is great. It worked for us but we know it doesn't work for everyone. As someone says in the article below, better a happy parent using formula than a guilt-ridden one trying in vein to get their milk to come in. Just feed the kid!
So with that tee up, the Motherlode in the New York Times dropped a grenade into the parenting debate with the topic of potty training. The 63 comments are insightful about how vociferous we are about this particular subject!
For the record, our 5 year old son still has the odd accident…ugh.
I follow Peter on Dailymile. He has done some terrific videos looking at foot strike of varying shoes. These are Vibrams and to make them work you need to be hitting the deck with your fore foot or mid-sole – opposite to regular runners that promote the heel – toe action.
Forefoot Strike in Vibram Fivefingers – Super Slow Motion from Runblogger on Vimeo.
Anterior view of a running foot strike in Vibram Fivefingers KSO shoes on asphalt filmed at 300fps with a Casio Exilim EX-F1 digital camera – slowed down further in Virtualdub. Contact is initially made on the forefoot, and you can clearly see the ankle pronate after initial contact is made. Courtesy of http://www.runblogger.com.
My name is Jason Graham-Nye and I have a running shoe problem. Step One done. Eleven to go.
After my first marathon in Sydney 10 years ago, I had hip issues and gave the game away. We moved to the US in 2005 to Portland – the home of US Track & Field. I was wooed back into running as a way to manage the insanity of launching a start up. Despite both Adidas and Nike being headquartered here, I had shoe issues. Pictured are the three pairs I have raced in recently. The gardening shoes on the right have done 3 marathons. The Vivo's (in the middle) just ran Eugene Marathon. And the K Swiss Australiana's did a 12 km race 3 weeks ago.
And yet, I have a dicky achilles so I am seeing my podiatrist (an ex US Track & Field star) to figure it out. Judging by the look on Kim's face, I don't think a new pair of runners is in my near future.
the early years 