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Reversing and eliminating climate change
It’s Way Easier to be Vegan (and way more worth it) Than You Imagine
And it all comes down to transitioning to veganism in a way that works for you
It’s sometimes funny being a male who is vegan. My wife is not vegan, which works as she’s not a big meat, dairy, nor egg eater anyway, and when we go somewhere and get burgers (I get a vegan one and she does not), our server often brings her the vegan burger and brings me the big meaty burger as if she must be the one who’s vegan because she’s a woman and I must be meat eater because all men love the taste of meat and enjoy hunting and carnage (The hunting and carnage part may be an Idaho thing as being I don’t remember being given the meat dish often in New York). And I freaking love being a vegan. Out of all of the choices and decisions that I have made in my 36 years on the planet, hence probably upwards of a few million decisions and choices, choosing to be vegan seven years ago was and still is one of the best choices that I have ever made.
A lot of people ask me, βWhy did you become vegan?β Some people are genuinely curious, some people are perplexed and others are thinking why the heck would you do that. Each personβs reaction is fine and none of them bother me in the slightest. I am vegan, I am fβing thrilled about my choice, I will be vegan for life, and my goal is not to convince you to be vegan or tell you how bad you are for eating meat, dairy, or eggs (fish is meat by the way, I wonβt expand on why in this blog post and if you ask me I will be glad to share why fish is meat).
To answer the question of why I chose to be vegan, is quite easy for me. I chose to be vegan for my health. I have a really long explanation as to what lead me to make this choice and I will leave it at this β I donβt know about you and Iβve never heard of anyone getting cancer, having a heart attack, or having diabetes because they ate too many vegetables and I donβt ever expect to run into someone who has.
A lot of people think being vegan is hard and scary and trust me when I say that it is not. Prior to being vegan I ate meat, eggs, or dairy at least once a day if not twice a day. I experimented with being vegetarian when I was 24 and I did not succeed at all. Transitioning to veganism was easy for me and here is how I did it:
I created a plan that was designed to hav me reduce my meat, dairy, and egg consumption slowly and increase my potato, bean, leafy green, fruit and vegetable consumption slowly as well.
I started off by eating meat, egg, or dairy products once a day for a week. That wasnβt too hard at all and then I scaled back so that I was eating one total serving from the meat, dairy, and egg group 5 days of the week. I stuck with this for about 3 to 4 weeks and once this became easy, I scaled back and consumed one total serving from the meat, dairy, and egg group 3 days of the week. I pretty much cut out dairy at this point and did this for another 4 or 5 weeks. I then scaled back and consumed one total serving from the meat, dairy, and egg group 2 days of the week. I did this for two weeks and once again it was easy. The next step in my plan was designed to have one day fo the week where I consumed either meat or eggs once and doing this two days a week was so easy that I skipped the once time a week part of the plan and completely gave up milk, dairy and eggs.
And here I am 7 years later. One thing that may have helped me is that I have never and will never deny (to myself or others) that things like bacon smell amazing, or ice cream tastes amazing and what I tell myself and others is that I choose not to eat these foods. A lot of people think that vegans suffer and being a vegan is pure suffering. I am here to tell you that it is not. I eat vegan fake meat substitutes once, maybe twice a week. I eat tofu maybe 6 times a year. I dislike seitan. I donβt eat fake eggs and I have plenty of great food to choose from.
And if you do choose to be vegan, you will need to be prepared for the following things.
- You will be cooking more
- You will have to plan ahead
- You will need to research places to eat in advance
- Starch is your friend (I know that the is counterintuitive to almost every piece of dietary advice and starch is your friend when youβre vegan)
- Fat is also your friend
- Protein is mostly overrated (Unless you are a highly level athlete or workout intensely four or more times per week)
- People are going to ask you a lot of questions
- You will need to buy and keep a jar of nutritional yeast in your refrigerator at all times (Nutritional yeast is the vegan B vitamin source and B vitamins are not something that you need to get every day)
- You will definitely be gassy for the first few months
- Food tastes better when youβre vegan (This is so true)
- You will need to pay better attention to your body as your body will tell you exactly what you need when you are vegan and you will want to listen to it
- And most importantly β As long as you eat a balanced diet of leafy greens, beans, fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, other fat sources (think avocados and coconuts), starches and steer clear of eating too many processed foods your health will reach extraordinary levels (I havenβt had a Primary Care Physician since 2010 and the last time that I got blood work done was 2014. In that visit the Doctor that I saw said that my blood work was the best that she had EVER SEEN in her 10+ year Medical career)
Being vegan takes some experimenting upfront and is difficult at times. The difficulty is worth it though when your health is skyrocketing, you feel great almost all of the time and you know that you are doing the right thing fr you mind and body.
Sharing My Goal
Sustainability has been the focus of my life since 2012
Climate change has been at the heart of Pure Love Sustainability Inc. since before I decided to start this business. In 2012, a few friends and I restored an illegal garbage dump site that had existed for at least 40 years in our neighborhood in the Bronx (New York City) and turned the space into an organic flower farm that we named Pure Love Organic Farms.
An untold story of the farm is that our desire to grow organic flowers and have an organic farm came from our passion to make a difference in the health of the planet. It is why Pure Love Organic Farms used USDA approved organic flower bulbs, added compost to our soil and used only OMRI approved organic soil amendments because conventionally grown flowers (vegetables too) are typically coated with a pesticide, herbicide, fungicide or chemical fertilizer, and even if a conventional seed was not coated with these chemical materials, conventional seeds like had a pesticide, herbicide, fungicide or chemical fertilizer used on them and we were unwilling to add any chemicals to our soil.
During our second year on the farm we learned about the sequestering carbon from the air into the soil and how we could train our soil o be able to store carbon and we set out to make Pure Love Organic Farms, a carbon sequestration hotbed.
During some intense work over the summer of 2013, I applied for a job with a Toronto-based startup company in the environmental technology space that made a food waste digestion machine that they sold to hotels, restaurants, commercial kitchens, stadiums, grocery stores, and any food producer that broke their food waste down onsite over and over again until the food waste became very small particles or water. The small food waste particles and water would leave a screen at the bottom of the machine and ultimately get sent to the local aster water treatment plant to be recycled for new water. It was an amazing process and after working my first 10 clients, I realized that commercial business are the challnenge when it comes to climate change. As I had a client that literally generated 2,500 pounds (1.25 tons) of food waste every time that they had a major banquet or event and let’s just say that this client hosted all of the event for the White House and other major NGO’s, non-profits and the such so they constantly produced massive volumes of food waste that would have been sent to the landfill to rot and emit methane and CO2 gases into the atmosphere.
In 2015, I started looking at the possibility of bringing the concept of Pure Love Organic Farms elsewhere and creating new acres of organic, sustainable produce farmland from “unusable land” like we had at our farm in the Bronx. I started searching throughout the country for cities that had more affordable land (yes it would make much more sense to have this business outside of a city and I am a true city boy at heart having been born and raised in NYC and having lived there for 33 years before moving to Boise) and one day a strong thought came across my mind to check out Boise, ID.
I looked at land prices in and near Boise and saw that they were fairly affordable and decided to book a four day trip to Boise in August 2015, knowing nothing about the city besides BSU and its blue turf field and that potatoes were grown here (an incorrect assumption on my part) and I fell in love with Boise over my 4 days of being here as the nature, people and cool vibe of the city won me over.
Shortly after that trip I decided that I would be living in Boise in 2017 and would create Pure Love sustainability Inc. in Boise to restore the health of “unusable land” and rent it to young produce farmers at prices that were more affordable than they could buy land for.
Although, I did not meet my 2017 goal, my fiancee (now wife) and I moved to Boise in Jan. 2018.
While I have not gotten to work on creation new acres of organic, sustainable produce farmland and renting these acres to young farmers at prices that are more affordable than buying land (I may come back to this business in the future) I started to see huge opportunities to build Boise as the most sustainable city in the U.S. and a model city that other cities in the country look to when they are creating their sustainability plans.
I truly believe that we have what it takes and that we can make huge difference when it comes to being the leading city in the sustainability movement due to Boise’s size and rapidly growing population and I am committed working hard to make this happen. This has been my goal for much of the time that I have lived in Boise and yet, I have not shared with with many people as I have been afraid to be held accountable to this and today (09/30/2019), the universe told me that it is time to share this with the world. So let’s make it happen Boise, we have a lot of actions to take and I will be sharing more of the actions that we can take from here forward.
The 5 Most Valuable Things That I Have Learned Since Starting My Business
And no, they have nothing to do with selling techniques, marketing strategies, networking effectiveness, profit margins, or any of the things that you may think that you need to know before you can start a business.
2019 has been a big year of learning and the source of much of what I have learned has come from starting my business, Pure Love Sustainability Inc. Running a business has been way harder than I imagined – way harder. I moved to Boise, ID from NYC, I had no connections where I lived, I needed to develop a service that my customers wanted, I needed to become proficient at social media marketing, I had to test to see what people would pay for my service and had to figure out how to be a salesperson, implementer, designer, planner, marketer, networker, accountant and more in order to be successful.
While many of these things are challenging in their own rights (implementing and designing solutions come naturally to me, the rest do not), the biggest things that I had to learn was to believe in myself, to trust myself and to be ok with failure. These are the real challenges to me in starting a business. I am nowhere near perfect at any of these things and here is what I have seen in my business.
I know that not everyone may experience these challenges and I know that some people have success off of the bat in their business, and for those of us who are struggling with these things, I offer a message of hope as I have struggled tremendously with the business and I am just now starting to see my efforts pay off 10 months into the business. I still have more work to do and am still working my butt off to make it happen and the following things have moved the needle for me as I was about to quit after 9 months because I was so frustrated, disappointed, beaten down, and defeated after working so hard and producing very few tangible results in that time.
I am starting to see that it all comes down to your mindset and with that said, here is what I have learned over the last month in my business that has helped me start to succeed:
- What you tell yourself is what you get
I have wanted to start my sustainability consulting business, Pure Love Sustainability Inc. since 2015 and I was too afraid to do so. Over the last 4 years, I paid two business coaches almost $10,000 in total with the hope that they could help me to work through my fears of starting the business and get into action and I finally started Pure Love Sustainability Inc. in October 2018.
I started the business because I got laid off from my job and the coach that I was working with said something to the effect of, “Being an employee is not the right move for you and you will continue to produce the same results. It’s time to control your fate and start Pure Love Sustainability Inc.” I listened to him and we went to work on starting the business. After taking close to two months to work through some of the fears that I had about starting the business I got into action and starting having consultations with clients. A few clients hired me to work for them and I made some money. But, I barely made any money and was so afraid of messing up that I often messed up. After 8 months of doing things the way that I was doing them, I realized that I had only made a few thousand dollars and couldn’t continue doing things the way that I was doing them. Thankfully, I realized that my fear was causing me to not be successful and realized that what was behind my fear was a conversation that I cannot do it (be successful in my own business) and I kept on trying to prove to myself that I could not do it. I saw that trying to prove to myself that I cannot do it led me to convince myself that I cannot do it.
I worked through this fear and realized that I can do it and once I started believe that I could do this, the results that I wanted started happening in unexpected ways from unexpected sources.
2. Leave the panic at home
I don’t know about you and I am someone who panics when they feel like they don’t know what to do. I would call people in panic, send panicked emails and cause myself to get so panicked that I paralyzed myself. I am also someone who is used to winging it and winging it does not work when you own your own business. I realized that winging it was causing me to make mistakes and appear unprofessional to my clients and I started to make sure that I planned my work in advance. This helped alleviate some of the panic that I was facing and not all of it. What I am realizing that I need to do is not communicate with my clients or a prospective client until the panic has settled as when I panic, it leaves other people feeling panicked.
3. Stop doing it on your own
Ah the American ideal of doing it on your own and being self-made. I can’t speak for everyone and in my experience, the worst idea ever for a business owner is to do it on your own. From the age of 22 on, I have had powerful and extremely successful people tell me that I have to stop doing it on my own. It would have been wise to listen to them and I took that piece of advice as a challenge because when people told me to stop doing it on my own, I interpreted that to mean that the person who was telling me that was weak and incapable and I made it a personal mission to prove to all of the successful people that told me this that I am stronger than you, tougher than you and more capable to you and I will do it all on my own.
I’m a stubborn a-hole and my stubbornness hurt me so much in this business. For the first 8 months I did everything on my own and wasn’t willing to have anyone help me. I had to prove to others that I could make it on my own and man did I fail. I failed hard, I failed strong, I failed so much. It took a lot and I finally started to let people help me and I also quickly saw how foolish I was to try to do it on my own. I have three awesome people on my team whom I am looking to launch a residential recycling campaign with, have partnered with a school and am about to partner with another school to kickstart the work that I tried so hard to do, but couldn’t do on my own.
4. Stop downplaying your accomplishments
I hate to say it, but I used to be someone who thought that anyone could accomplish the things that I have accomplished. I thought that what I did was nothing special and that I had no real abilities or skills. You could call this humility and I have been praised many times for my humility and this was not humility, this was actually lack of confidence, lack of belief in myself, and an inability to see how great I am. It’s weird for me to say it and I also call this the curse of being gifted. I am really smart, my IQ is 130, I started reading when I was 4, I was so far ahead of my class in elementary school that my teachers wouldn’t call on me (which frustrated the hell out of me), I never studied for a test until 7th grade, figured out a proven trick to squaring numbers on my own, and I remember seeing the world differently since I was six years old and taking a test for a gifted program at my Schoo. Actually the teacher of the gifted program was amazed at how differently I saw the same images that the other students that were taking the test for the gifted program saw. Which made a lot of things easy for me and extremely high expectations came with my intelligence. After not living up to them a number of times, I started to feel like a failure and starting to think that I had nothing of value to offer to the world. Yes, I still succeeded in life and I would always downplay my accomplishments because I felt like I did nothing special and that anyone could do what I did.
I also saw how this really hurt me as a business owner as I would be so humble that people would think I had nothing special to offer them and I lost a lot of business because I did not properly present my value to my clients. I had to do a lot of work on this and I now see that I have done amazing things in the world and I communicate them to my clients and my clients are responding to me in a very different way.
5. Just because you failed does not mean that you are a failure
I’m hard on myself. Actually I’m really hard on myself. I hate letting people down and am someone who quickly gets down on myself when I fail and I have failed a lot in the past 10 months. When I fail a lot, I start to take my failures as evidence that I am not good enough. Well I tricked myself into believing that I was not good enough and almost quit my business for good in July. I am so glad that I have been able to separate a failing at something from convincing myself that I am a failure and am now in a place where I am creating opportunities from situations that I perceived to be failures.
While this article may make it sound like I have it all figured out now and that I am crushing it, honestly I am not and I am starting to produce some of the results that I want for the first-time since starting this business. I am still struggle with my doubts and fears and probably will for quite some time and working through these five things has opened up the space for me to attain greater success. We all have our own individual challenges that we need to overcome to succeed in our business. The last thing that I will leave you with is that working through your fears, doubts and worries is difficult, scary and confronting and it is worth it.
A Solutions-Based Approach to Climate Change
Focusing on the problems that climate change is causing often paralyzes people and stops them from taking action. Focusing on solutions provides opportunities for people to get into action.
I would like to talk with you about how it is more effective to communicate about climate change from a solutions-based perspective than it is to communicate about climate change from a problem-based perspective. So much of what we are currently hearing about climate change talks about the problems – polar ice caps melting, the rainforest in South America is on fire, the challenges that we’re having with reducing CO2 emissions below the acceptable level, the fact that we may only have twelve years left before climate change runs a devastating impact over the planet runs devastating impacts over the planet, and more dominate the talks about climate change. Yet with all of this information, why are we not taking any action. Is the information incorrect? Do people just not care? Or is something else going on here?
All this information is true and it’s valid. And so much of the focus with climate change has been on you. You are the problem. You’re the problem. You’re the problem. You’re the problem. You’re the problem. You’re the problem. You’re the problem and Iβm the problem too. Let’s think about this from a different perspectiveΒ So if we are talking about everybody is the problem, sheβs the problem, heβs the problem. Yes it is accurate that climate change is a man-made problem and at some level we are all contributing to climate change in our own way. Here’s the thing though. There’s no one person that’s responsible for climate change and there is no one company that’s responsible for climate change.
A lot of climate change has come as a result of CO2 emissions, methane emissions, and greenhouse gas emissions and for so long we didn’t know how harmful all these things were. The U.S. built its economy around the principle that we have all the resources and because we have all the resources we can just keep on wasting them. This has been the model of economics since Adam Smith wrote his book, βThe Wealth of Nations.β in the late 1800βs. With this said, this model doesn’t work anymore and it’s clear that that doesn’t work anymore. Global warming is showing us that there no question that the extraction/use/burn/slash/destroy/blow up model of our economic principles doesn’t work anymore.Β
Business are definitely equally or possibly more responsible for climate change and coming at climate change from a blame someone else model that is solely focused on the problems that are happening starts to create a situation whereΒ we don’t know what to focus on. There are so many problems happening! There are so many issues happening! What do I do? Aaaagggghhhhhhh!!!!!
There are so many things happening all of which are catastrophic potentially. I get that. And yes it’s very very easy to run around run around and feel like you need to go crazy because of all of the problems that are happening in the world. Yes they’re all happening. Yes they’re all catastrophic. But one when the focus is on a new problem every day it becomes very tough for you to focus your energy on anything. And here’s the thing – in my opinion, to be able to solve climate change we need each human being out there in the world focusing their energy on one or two solutions to climate change that they can implement easily, quickly, and effectively and engage another 10 people to join them on this on their work of reducing the environmental impacts that they are committed to reducing in the world.
So if your passion is solar, then pursue solar solutions. If you are passionate about reducing the amount of food waste that gets sent to landfill,then go work on that. If you are passionate about reducing agricultureβs impact on climate change, then go work on that.Β
Find another 10 people who are passionate about what you are passionate about and start a community-based project. Letβs look at agriculture as an example. Agriculture is the largest emitter of methane and carbon dioxide emissions and also one of the largest emitters of nitrous oxide which happens when nitrogen interacts with the soil and produces a harmful chemical called nitrous oxide that is 300 times more dangerous than methane emissions and carbon dioxide emissions for the environment. What if you could collectively work with farmers in your area to use organic practices and biofuels that can significantly reduce their methane, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions?
We all need to be taking focused clear action to reverse climate change and global warming. The action that one person takes may be completely different than that actions that another person takes and that’s fine, as long as we are all taking some action on a daily basis to reverse and eliminate the impacts of climate change from being as catastrophic and devastating as they can be. If everybody is focusing on one or two areas that they can put their time, energy, and effort into then that is a huge win for the planet.
When it comes down to the finger pointing the blaming the etc etc. Think about it like this. I’d imagine that a lot of us have worked in companies and/or departments that weren’t perfect. Actually, I’d imagine that every single one of ushas worked in a company or department where things weren’t perfect and I can imagine that every single one of us has been blamed for causing a problem at work. And when we are the problem, when we are the cause, we frequently get mentally paralyzed
Think about if this was happening every day in your work environment, βJohn what did you do wrong. Sarah what did you do wrong. Courtney what did you do wrong. Michael what did you do wrong. Caitlin what did you do wrong.β And your day to day job becomes a finger pointing process. Wouldnβt you get paralyzed and start to not take action because we feel so badly about ourselves being the problem, being the reason why this didn’t work, and being the reason why this failedMentally it’s very common for us to get paralyzed mentally when we feel we are the problem. So it’s the same thing when it comes to climate change. When you’re the problem and you’re the problem and I’m the problem and she’s the problem then we get paralyzed and we decide not to take action because by doing nothing we donβt have to deal with the guilt of being the problem and we hope that we can scathe by unnoticed to live another day.
Rather than focusing on the problem or problems, letβs focus on the solution and talking with others about the solutions to climate change. This is something that I’ve been experimenting with lately when I have been talking to people about climate change. I used to focus on the polar ice caps are melting. I used to focus on greenhouse gas emissions are at this level. I used to focus on food waste having such a huge impact on climate change and now I am looking at it from a solutions-based perspective. People know these things. People are well aware that carbon emissions are at a level that is not safe anymore for human beings and at a level we’ve never seen it that before. People are well aware that we are wasting too much food. People are well aware that there are too many cars, buses, and trucks on the roads submitting methane gas into the environment.
Look, we know this. Knowledge is valuable and without clear solutions that people can take action on, not much is going to happen. I also know that a lot of people are going to want to participate in something and not everybody is going to take that initiative. Not everybody is going to lead a project in your community and a lot of people want a path they can follow. If you approach somebody and you say βHi Rita, I am really concerned right now about the amount of food waste that we’re producing in our city and here’s a solution that I have to itβ you have just opened up an opportunity for Rita to step into it rather than another problem for her to deal with. Rita may start to see that she can participate in something that can help her solve a problem. If you say to Rita, βI have a solution and here’s my solution. I’d like to start a community composting program. Would that be something you’d be interested in?β You have now offered Rita an opportunity to participate by focusing on a solution.
Rita may yes, Rita may say no, Rita might come back and say, βHey Michael you know I’d love to get a proposal from you. I think this is something we’d be interested inβ or Rita might come back and say, βHey you know I don’t think we can start a community composting program as it is going to be too expensive this year and we have been talking about some ideas to bring in more sustainable practices. Can you help us with that by providing a different solution?β
And if you said to Rita, βYou know, I’m really concerned about our environmental impact as a company and as you’ve seen manufacturing companies have one of the highest environmental impacts because we use a lot of electricity and we are we have an assembly line which uses power 24 hours a day. You know we’re causing a lot of problems here?β You may get a defensive response from Rita or shut Rita dow
There are a lot of people out there who want to do something about climate change. There’s actually been a very interesting study done showing that shows where everybody stands on climate change. And it showed that about 15 percent of people are 100 percent yes, I want to do something about climate change. I am passionate about this. I love this. Tell me more. I want get to work!
About 30 percent of people believe in climate change. They think that it’s a problem but aren’t really going to be taking a lot of action. They might sign a petition, they might go out and rally some support to at least engage people, and they may talk to a few people, but they might not take action on their own. There’s another 30 percent of people that are kind of iffy about climate change. They think it’s real but they’re not sure how it’s going to impact their lives. They’re not sure they can do anything about it. They’re really not taking action, but could be moved to action if an opportunity arises. And then there’s another 15 percent of people that are going to deny climate change and global warming and will fight with everything theyβve got to deny climate change. It’s ok, truly as denying climate change is part of their identity and you shouldn’t spend your time trying to convince them that climate change is real.
Itβs much better to focus on the 30 percent of people that believe that climate change is real and will take small action and the 30 percent of people that won’t may take action if you can provide a solution that they can jump in to. These are the people that may go from being somebody who’s on the fence or somebody who’s taking small actions to somebody who’s taking big actions because you have something for them to do.Β
So let’s start focusing on solutions and if you are unsure about how to solve the issues that you are concerned about reach out to me as I would love to help you, or your company get into action to reduce your impact on climate change and global warming.
Michael Forman is the founder of Pure Love Sustainability Inc, a sustainability company that is focused on reversing and eliminating climate change.. Our website is www.purelovesustainabilityinc.com and our Facebook page is also Pure Love Sustainability Inc. I am also always available via email at purelovesustainabilityinc@gmail.com.
I look forward to having more in-depth conversations with you about climate change and how we can have effective conversations with people about how we can start taking action and moving forward and getting getting work done here.
The Fashion Industry and Climate Change
The fashion industry produces more methane and carbon dioxide than the aviation and transportation industries combined and is the industry with the second largest contribution to climate change after agriculture.
On Friday August 9th I presented at the Project Green Boise Sustainability Summit for Teachers about the impact that fashion has on our global water resources and climate change. The aim of this two-day summit for Boise and West Ada School District Teachers is to provide lesson plans and lessons that teacher can use to bring sustainability education into their classrooms, and to provide teachers with the knowledge that they need to educate their students on climate change and the sustainability challenges that we will be facing in the future.
My presentation focused on Fashionβs Impact on Global Water Resources. Research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and from Fashion Industry magazines show that fashion is one of the most unspoken of and most impactful industries in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, carbon emissions, and water use as it takes 10,000 gallons of water to harvest the volume of raw cotton that is needed to develop one pair of jeans and another 750 gallons of water to produce the same pair of jeans (https://unfccc.int/news/un-helps-fashion-industry-shift-to-low-carbon). Eventhough fashion is not my background, I was inspired to learn more about fashion’s impact on claim change after attending a Project Drawdown workshop in Boise and hearing a documentary filmmaker talk about the work that he is doing documenting nine Boise high school students to learn about how they believe climate change will affect their lives.
These students were very concerned about fashion and its impact on global warming and after researching fashion’s impact on climate change. I started to see that educating students on the environmental impacts of the fashion industry may put enough pressure on the fashion industry to cut its carbon emissions and resource use, while also creating students who are global citizens that take action to inspire new solutions and actions towards reversing climate change.
The Fashion industry also contributes to climate change as conventionally produced cotton, of which 99% of the worldβs cotton is conventional produced and is typically fertilized with nitrous oxide (https://www.commonobjective.co/article/can-fashion-stop-climate-change). Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas that is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Our goal at Pure Love Sustainability Inc. is to reverse and eliminate climate change and is determined to educate and inspire and lead movements where students, adults, communities, businesses and local governments take action to reduce their carbon footprint and their impact on the planet.
For more information about Pure Love Sustainability Inc. and the work that they do to reverse climate change, please either visit our website or email me directly.
Michael Forman
Founder
Pure Love Sustainability inc.
Boise, ID 83712
(208)584-1492
purelovesustainabilityinc@gmail.com
I am a Highly Accomplished Sustainability Professional
And I’m no longer going to hide this for fear of making people feel bad or because I am worried about being too self-promotional
Being a business owner is scary. In my experience, it takes a willingness to constantly step outside of your comfort zone, a willingness to put yourself out there over and over again without knowing if you will produce results, a willingness to try new things that you had not been open to prior to being a business owner, a desire to learn new skills so you can attract customers and putting your heart on the line over and over again.
One of the new things that I am doing as a business owner, which is way out of my comfort zone, is writing my own press kit. Writing is well within my comfort zone and something that I do extremely well, what is outside of my comfort zone is self-promotion. I have had a disdain for self-promotion for quite some time, partially because I feel like talking about my accomplishments makes other feel like they are not doing enough and partially because I downplay my accomplishments at almost every chance that I get.
I am typically really good at producing results and producing them quickly and for almost all of my life I have thought that the things that I have accomplished require no special skill, no talent, and are things that anyone can do.
To make this a real example – I have worked with over 60 hotels, restaurants, commercial kitchens, stadiums and grocery stores in 7 different cities and states to help them divert over 5,000 tons of food waste from the landfill and prevent 4.2 gigaton of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere and until 2 months ago I would never share that I produced these results with people. I have also helped these same 60+ clients cumulatively reduce their waste hauling bills by over $600,000. I also conducted food waste audits, labor audits, designed and presented ROI reports to my clients and have trained over 1,000 kitchen staff members of the clients that I have worked with.
Yet all I would tell people about the work that I have done in this realm that I was working with over 60 hotel, restaurant, grocery store, commercial kitchen and stadium clients throughout the country to help them reduce the amount of food waste that they send to landfill. I would hide my accomplishments because I thought that I did nothing special and produced nothing out of the ordinary and 2 months ago I realized that I have done amazing work that not everyone could do successfully. I also had no prior experience in this field, created the food waste audit and labor audit processes and reports from scratch with zero outside influence.
My previous uncomfortability with self-promotion has kept me from reaching my business goals and while I have worked through some of this fear over the last few months, the thing that is pushing me over the edge is having to write a press kit. As I learned from a friend who has been in PR for 15 years, a press kit is just a massive self-promotional package where you talk about your accomplishments, speaking engagements that you’ve had, breakthrough results that your business has produced and more. I was so uncomfortable doing this and I committed to going past my fears and writing the press kit. It took a few tries and not quitting and the work has been worth it as I already am more comfortable talking about the work that I have done and am less afraid to share it with people.
If you were just as scared as I was about self-promotion I highly recommend that you write a press kit. It will push you past your comfort zone, which is so crucial for a business owner. I have been pushed so far out of my comfort zone in founding and marketing Pure Love Sustainability Inc. It honestly has been tough and it also has been worth more than its weight in gold.
Michael Forman is the founder of Pure Love Sustainability Inc. Michael Forman is a native of New York City who moved to Boise in Jan. 2018 because he wanted to be able to help Boise citizens, communities, businesses, organizations and local governments reduce their environmental impact and reduce their impact on climate change. You can schedule a food waste audit and/or energy-efficiency audit for your home, business, building or food establishment with Michael by either calling (208)584-1492 or sending an email to purelovesustainabilityinc@gmail.com
Is there a place for spiritual healing in politics
I’m going with something different today. There’s a lot of crazy s*** happening in America today and very few people in “positions of power” are addressing the inequality that has happened in our society for decades. While I did not watch the Democratic Presidential debates — partially because I don’t own a tv and partially because I decided to do other things that evening — I read the recaps on CNN and MSNBC and there is one candidate who is speaking to the inequality that exists in society. This candidate is also really winning me over, although I know that they have no chance of winning, because this candidate is talking about healing the divides in our country and is addressing real issues that are continually swept under the rug.
This candidate is not Bernie Sanders, is not Joe Biden, is not Kamala Harris, nor Elizabeth Warren, it’s actually Marianne Williamson. Here are some things to know about Marianne Williamson:
She’s Oprah’s spiritual advisor. Whether that means anything to you or not is your opinion and at the very least it means that she’s connected to Oprah who is one of, if not, the most powerful woman in the world.
Millions of people look to Marianne Williamson to guide their lives and help them do the spiritual work to live the lives that they want to lead.
In her early 20’s she foundedΒ Project Angel Food, a volunteer food delivery program that serves home-bound people withΒ HIV/AIDSΒ and other life-threatening illnesses.
She is also the co-founder of theΒ Peace Alliance, a nonprofit grassroots education and advocacy organization supporting peace-building projects.
Marianne Williamson is a powerful woman who creates and leads massive, life-altering and society-altering work. She is bringing a spirituality, compassion and healing to politics, all of which are needed and missing. I know that she has zero chance of winning and it’s sad that she has zero chance of winning because her fresh, self-expressed, compassionate platform could lead to intergenerational and intersocietal healing which could break down the structures that keep most people stuck where they are and prevent only the top 1% of all Americans from benefitting.
