Delivery to the door, without the eco-guilt
Feeling a bit guilty about all the harmful emissions coming from the delivery truck that’s bringing your new yoga mat? What about those organic cotton pajamas you just ordered?
Broomfield-based Gaiam Inc. has the answer.
The online retailer and lifestyle media company, which emphasizes environmental and spiritual balance, offers a “sustainable shipping” option that allows customers to pay extra to cancel out the emissions generated by their purchases.
The company’s “Go Zero” shipping option allows customers to donate a minimum of $2 to help the Conservation Fund plant trees.
Doing so allows a customer to “erase the environmental impact of shipping your Gaiam order, and do something simple yet significant to help slow global warming,” according to Gaiam’s website.
The site boasts that the newly planted tree will “absorb more than one ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere” over its lifetime. That’s enough to offset the emissions resulting from shipping a 200-pound package from Los Angeles to New York, according to the site.
A filmmaker’s pitch for cellphone courtesy
The ubiquitous cellphone is getting a frown from none other than Academy Award-winning filmmaker Sydney Pollack.
Next time you’re at the movies, you’re likely to see Pollack in a movie trailer promoting, of all things, silence. In the advertisement, Pollack, who directed “Tootsie” and “Out of Africa,” addresses a man talking on his cellphone.
With more than a hint of sarcasm, Pollack says, “Oh, I’m sorry – is my directing interfering with your phone call? How rude of me!”
The message: We won’t interrupt your phone calls. Please don’t interrupt our movies. Silence your cellphones.
Pollack saw the light on cellphone rudeness after his cellphone rang when he was in front of a live audience, doing an interview. Pollack took the call but said he was embarrassed.
Cingular Wireless made the movie spot after hearing from moviegoers in a survey that 97 percent would turn off their phones if they got a reminder. Nearly one-third of the survey participants admitted their phones had gone off at the movies.
Where the jobs are for new college grads
Recent college grads with itchy feet, take note: A desire to ramble can help you find a job. CollegeGrad.com found more than 65,000 entry-level jobs available in the 25 cities that make up its top cities for entry- level jobs this year.
Denver, which ranked 10th, had more than 2,500 positions available for rookies fresh out of college, said the website, a job- search Internet page. The list, at www.collegegrad.com/topcities, includes links to job postings. New York City, which topped the list, had more than 9,000 entry-level jobs, while No. 2 Chicago had more than 4,000.
“Entry-level job seekers should take note of cities with hot job markets and consider possible options in those areas,” said Brian Krueger, president of CollegeGrad.com. “Being willing to relocate can open up significant opportunities that may not be available in their hometown.”
Charity begins with your own ‘foundation’
If Warren Buffett’s $30 billion-plus gift to charity last month made your annual $50 contribution to PBS feel a little puny, take heart.
Even if you’re merely affluent, you can have your own charitable “foundation,” and, unlike Buffett, you can even name it after yourself.
The tool you’ll want is known as a donor-advised fund. You set up a fund and contribute cash or other assets, such as stocks and bonds. You take a tax deduction the year you make the contribution, but you can distribute the assets to charity when and as you see fit.
In the meantime, you can invest those assets so they grow tax-free in the fund, giving you even more money to donate when the time is right. Fidelity runs the largest donor-advised fund, but T. Rowe Price, Vanguard and Schwab also have them. All require a minimum deposit of $10,000 and charge less than 1 percent of assets each year in fees.
Sick of that sofa? Shop at Sotheby’s
If you are not prepared to spend the $135 million Ronald Lauder recently plunked down for a Klimt picture, summer is the time to shop the auctions.
Sotheby’s Holdings, Christie’s International and Doyle in New York are mounting sales this week stocked with art, antiques and furnishings to suit many tastes, styles and pocketbooks. Prices start in the low hundreds and top out in the low thousands.
Christie’s two-day “House Sale” on Tuesday and Wednesday includes many artworks by artists who might not be household names but are wall-worthy. If name recognition is paramount, an autographed Andy Warhol poster with a sultry Marilyn Monroe is estimated to fetch up to $1,500.
Sotheby’s “Arcade” sale Thursday includes artworks once owned by Muriel and Philip Berman, collectors whose Henry Moore sculptures fetched millions at Sotheby’s in 2004.
FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
