Tag / make change happen

by Nathan Coumbe

Use your plastic bottle for good

Did you know that more than 90% of the plastic we “recycle” ends up in landfills anyway? Despite what we think of as our best efforts, that revelation makes it all feel pointless…

But there is a way you can take your plastic bottles and put them to good use, even if they don’t get “recycled” in the traditional way we think about it. 

Make an Ecobrick—a used plastic bottle filled with all types of micro-plastics we consume every day. Things like:

  • Candy bar wrappers
  • Plastic wrap on frozen pizzas
  • Bags from chopped vegetables

It’s a great way to efficiently reuse all the little plastic we deal with every day. And these Ecobricks can be used all over the world to build things like raised gardens, play parks, and even solid walls for houses!

Check out this guide to learn how to make them yourself, and give your plastic bottles a second life.

by Nathan Coumbe

Inconvenience sells

I was leaving the gym this morning when I started checking my pockets for my car keys. 

Then I thought, “Why don’t women’s clothes have pockets?”

Since I see the world through the lens of marketing, I came up with a theory:

Maybe women’s clothes don’t have pockets so industrialists could sell more purses. 

Before there were purses, there were pockets in everything. You needed to be able to carry your stuff around with you.

I’m sure that didn’t sit well with the people who made and sold purses. When presented with a fancy new bag, I’m sure customers thought, “Why do I need a heavy, expensive bag to carry my stuff when I have pockets?”

But if you get rid of the pockets, you make things inconvenient. You’ve created a new need—the need to have something to carry your stuff around in.  

(Let’s not even get started on all the accessories sold simply to carry around in a purse…)

If this is true, it goes to prove a great (potentially immoral) marketing point:

If you don’t have a problem, make one up, then sell the solution. 

Marketers do this to us all the time. We need to be aware of it.

Are you actually being inconvenienced, or did a sly marketer make it that way?

by Nathan Coumbe

Only with Action Can You Hope to Make a Difference

No one ever got paid for an idea alone. Only those who came up with an idea, or took someone else’s, and acted upon it have made a difference worth anything.

“I have more respect for the fellow with a single idea who gets there than for the fellow with a thousand ideas who does nothing.”

—Thomas Edison

I have dozens of ideas pop into my head each day when I’m taking a shower, walking at the park, or driving in silence. Not one has generated anything for me or anyone else except those I showed to the world. 

Better to have one idea and the will to act upon it than 1,000 ideas and procrastinate.

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