Strong Employee Backgrounds

When you start hiring employees you notice quite a diverse selection of backgrounds, especially when they’re coming in from all over a large metropolitan area like New York City. The 5 boroughs of Manhattan, Queens, Bronx, Staten Island, and Brooklyn each have their own unique population subset that produces some very high quality candidate, albeit mixed in with an enormous volume of duds.

One of the employees we recently hired had an interesting background as a hood cleaner. If you’ve never heard of that before, it’s the person you call to sanitize a restaurant or commercial kitchen’s range hoods over the ovens in the cooking area. He was responsible for hood cleaning in Queens. Restaurant owners would call in and he and his crew would handle everything from cleaning the vent hoods to grease trap installation, all in preparation for the restaurant’s New York State health inspection. We ended up hiring that employee because he’s a hard-worker and had a strong background.

After about a week of work, it was clear we made a great choice, so we started to look for other people with a background in hood cleaning. It’s tough to find people who are willing to change careers, but so far, we’ve seen tremendous success coming from this subset of people, mostly from Queens county.

Sustainable Living Eco-Friendly Tips

With the growing awareness on climate change, sustainable living emerges as an eco-friendly lifestyle. People are getting on board with this new and alternative way of living that is much less harmful for the environment and aims to protect and sustain our ecosystem and natural resources. While government policies will surely boost the thrust towards environmental conservation and environmental protection, there are simple ways that you can still contribute to the cause on your own. Every little effort towards sustainable living counts! Sometimes it’s riding a horse instead of a car – consider it.

Eco-Friendly tip no. 1: Reduce, reduce, reduce

There is a reason why reducing comes first – it calls for a more responsible and conscious consumption of precious resources. Use less energy, conserve water, stop buying unnecessary stuff which are most probably factory-manufactured, and reduce your waste by switching your disposables to multiple use objects such as handkerchiefs instead of tissues, tin water bottles instead of the cheap plastic ones, canvas shopping bags instead of plastic bags, reusable cloths instead of paper towels, and so on.

Eco-Friendly tip no. 2: Skip the packaging

This sustainable living tip may be difficult to do as almost everything these days comes in packaging. If you can, skip the packaging. Shop at farmers markets and bring your own basket just like in the old days. There are also a lot of packaging-free stores cropping up, so take advantage of these and research the nearest ones in your location. Better yet, grow your own food organically or make your own products if you have the time and resources. Not only will you be eco-friendly, you will be saving bucks, too!

Eco-Friendly tip no. 3: Reuse, re-purpose, or recycle packaging

If it cannot be helped, reuse, re-purpose, or recycle packaging. It used to be that the sole purpose of packaging is to protect the goods inside; but now, packaging is another way of selling the product to the consumers, which means that the packaging has become more elaborate and has improved in design. And so, you may not want to throw away packaging easily and you may either reuse it or re-purpose it. For example, a beautiful shoe-box can now store other things, too.

Eco-Friendly tip no. 4: Shop locally

Online shopping is all the rage now because it is convenient to do shopping at home than going out and interacting with a probably cranky salesperson. But the downside of online shopping is the amount of packaging used and the amount of fuel burned just to get that product delivered at your doorstep. The best solution is to try to shop locally, especially for goods that are readily available at your local shops. And support small businesses as well instead of shopping at huge retailers to keep the economy healthy. Make online shopping your last resort instead of your first option.

Eco-Friendly tip no. 5: Carpool, public transport, biking, horse, or walking are the best way to go

Owning a car is one of the necessities of modern day living. But cars consume such a big amount of fuel and can also be a big contributor to the pressing problem of pollution. Minimize your carbon footprint and fuel consumption by carpooling with several other people, using the public transport more often (especially if your city’s transit system is safe and efficient), by biking (which is also a good way of getting exercise), and by walking (given that it is within reasonable distance). Horses are also an option if you have one.