My green award

As you know I hate to toot my own horn around here. But I'm pretty sure I'm going to be winning a big award. Like, a County award, or maybe a Library award, or even some kind of Green award. It's pretty exciting. I feel very humbled by all the awards I'll be getting for the amazing thing I've been doing.

So you want to know what's up?

I've been saving the library I work at a ton of money. A ton. They love it when you do stuff like this, which is why I'm almost certainly going to get an award, or a commendation, or something like that that involves a plaque. I'll admit I'm pretty excited about the plaque. I'm pretty sure someone just nominated me for one. I tried to keep my uniquely good work to myself, but at some point a person, me, in this particular instance, just has to say "You have got to hear about the amazing thing I've been doing!" And from there it sort of leaks out, no matter how much I want to simply enjoy the private satisfaction of it all.

The trick to my amazing innovation is attributable, of course, to synergy. I'm a big believer in synergy. I know it's a fancy word, but I'm pretty sure it just comes down to if I have to carry this here and this over there, why don't I take both of them with me at once. Synergy. I'm all over that synergy stuff.

So being the supply procurer for my library, and also being responsible for the bus schedules, has made me often wonder: how can I get these two jobs to work together for the benefit of my library? Synergy. I asked myself: What are the touchpoints of these two activities?

There are two: people send me stuff, and rubber bands.

As for the bus schedules, the transit system sends me as many as I want as often as I want at no cost to the library. With supplies, I get sent stuff, but it costs money. The bus schedules come in little stacks held together by rubber bands. Every year or so, from supplies, I need to order a bag of rubber bands. I think you can see where this is heading, but only because I laid it all out for you. From scratch it was much harder to figure out. This is why I will be getting the semi-prestigious award.

So yes, my library no longer ever has to purchase rubber bands. I simply order several boxes of bus schedules, discard the schedules, and pile the rubber bands together in their special place in the supply cabinet. The reason I might get a Green award is not simply from recycling the schedules, which we do as a matter of course, but more importantly because I have gone from a system where we used new, packaged rubber bands to one now where all of our rubber bands are entirely repurposed from previous uses, namely to hold together stacks of bus schedules. And so my library now uses entirely free, post consumer rubber bands.

I know! I wonder if my plaque is here yet.