The Bad Air Sponge

In 1972, Syd Weisberg, a chemist and founder of PortionPac, a Chicago-based cleaning supply manufacturer, published “Know It Like It Is,” a pamphlet that summarized his views on pollution of various kinds and showed him worried about looming environmental collapse.

“Man has created forces which are hostile to his well being. He must understand how these forces have arisen and how they can be controlled,” Weisberg wrote in the introduction. “Unless he alters his conduct and practices in accordance with this understanding, he may come to a gasping halt.”

While some of the concerns in the pamphlet ring oddly more than 30 years since its initial publication (”If city noises continue to rise at one decibel a year, everyone will be stone deaf by the year 2000,” Weisberg wrote), other concerns expressed in it-about global warming, for example-are now broadly-recognized issues. The pamphlet says the company would follow Weisberg’s philosophy in “every phase of our product, program and system.”

Few companies distribute environmental manifestos. But PortionPac does, as if it were an environmental activist passing out literature outside a university dormitory. The company tries to integrate environmental values into its business operations. It has contracted with Hunter Lovins, a founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, one of the nation’s foremost think tanks on “natural capitalism.” Lovins said PortionPac is winning new business because of its environmental standards.

“PortionPac is ahead of the game,” in terms of environmental sustainability, Lovins said. “They’ve always been innovative.”

PortionPac is a 44-year-old privately-owned firm that makes concentrated cleaning supplies and sells them to elementary schools, hospitals, prisons, government buildings and other institutions from an unassuming building at 400 N. Ashland. They employ 51 people. Their products cover the gamut for institutional needs. There is a line of cleaning solutions for mopping, scrubbing, stripping and finishing floors, a solution for cleaning toilet bowls and pots and pans, polishing glass, and freshening the air.

Each product comes in a polyethylene sleeve customers’ janitorial staff mix with water to create the cleaning product. The company has about 30 service techs who train staff to use the product correctly. Each concentrate is color coded to an instruction sheet and one sleeve is used for each mix, keeping the usage simple and waste to a minimum.

By concentrating the solution-the company says their formulations are more than 10 times more concentrated than competitors-and packing them in sleeves instead of ready-to-use spray bottles or jugs, PortionPac keeps chemicals and other waste of out landfills.

By the company’s estimate, one case of its glass cleaner saves 56 pounds of cardboard and 100 pounds of plastic versus pre-filled, ready-to-use bottles of the same product.

“Instead of using a bottle that’s filled with 31 ounces of water and one ounce of chemical, you put the packet in the bottle and reuse the bottle,” said Burt Klein, the company’s chief of operations.

“You use each bottle 500 times, easy. You’re not making the solution, or transporting the bottle. You’re not transporting water, not heating and cooling storage space or using space to store it,” Klein said. “That’s the concept and the beauty of it.”

While the actual concentrated goo sold by PortionPac is certified by Green Seal, a non-profit group that labels products according to environmental impact, Marvin Klein, a co-founder and president of the company (and Burt’s father), said the object is to sell only what a customer needs. PortionPac, Marvin Klein said, actually wants customers to use less of its product, not more. To that end, its sales staff is not paid by a commission on how much cleaning product they sell. No chemical, he said, is safe.

“We absolutely can’t stand to see chemicals going into the waste stream,” he said. “The point is every chemical that goes into the waste stream is pollution down the line. There are no safe chemicals. The object is to use our products correctly and use as little as possible.”

PortionPac tries to build environmental values into its operations in other ways too. Burt Klein said they are purchasing carbon offsets for company cars, for example.

At their headquarters, every effort has been made to create a pleasant working environment. During a recent tour, enough sun came through the winter gray to light a glass atrium and paintings, sculpture and plants that filled the red brick space.

In the warehouse and area where the concentrates are mixed, the company uses radiant heat fixtures that turn on and off. There is natural lighting, and small lamps provide spot lighting for workers. Stacks of cardboard, wood and metal are neatly placed throughout the shop, waiting to be recycled or reused. An oasis of plants sits in the middle of the mixing area.

“The company is not just about the stuff that is made,” Burt Klein said.

Marvin Klein, the company president, sees expanding opportunities for PortionPac, especially now that more and more individuals and businesses are demanding environmentally-friendly products. Klein said the company used to hide its environmental sensibility. He recalled being literally carried from a room once during a sales call in the south.

“I started talking like an environmentalist. They thought I was crazy,” he said. “I was talking about the whole concept of using things properly and the impact you have on rivers and streams.”

That attitude is changing.

“We think the demand for an environmentally-friendly product will grow rapidly,” Klein said. “We have one of the most practical systems in the world that can make a change in a basic and huge industry.”

The UC Irvine Health Education Center and the Student Taskforce Advocating Reducing Tobacco (START) hosted Smoke-Free Kiss, an event aimed both at helping smokers quit their addiction and preventing non-smokers from picking up the habit. Booths for the event were set up on Ring Mall in front of Humanities Hall on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14 and activities for the event lasted from noon to 3 p.m.

Activities featured a round of questions posed by START volunteers to passers-by and a free drawing with a prize of a bouquet of flowers and a $25 gift certificate to Islands Restaurant.

According to Jasmine Blackburn, the manager of Student Development and Tobacco at the Health Education Center, presenting smoking awareness through such carefree activities is more welcoming to students than showing them a photograph of a cancerous lung.

“I think [the activities are] more effective. … You get a lot of the scare tactics when you’re in grade school [and] high school,” Blackburn said.

Smoking policy at UCI was a key topic addressed by volunteers at the event. According to a 2005 student survey conducted by the Health Education Center, 94 percent of 302 students opted for some form of tobacco-related policy change on campus. According to Blackburn, START is currently working toward making the courtyard of the Student Center smoke-free.

Alice Wang, a first-year public health policy major who also volunteered at the event, compiled a list of questions to ask students in the hopes of informing them of the effects of tobacco. Such questions targeted the effects that tobacco has on pregnant women and the number of students smoking on college campuses.

According to Wang, the Smoke-Free Kiss Event was helpful because of its ability to inform smokers in a non-hostile way.

“I think it’s good that they’re relating it to love and kisses instead of condemning people for smoking,” Wang said.

During the event, two information packets were handed out to those who passed the Smoke-Free Kiss booths.

The first packet functioned as a quit kit for smokers and included a pamphlet titled “Becoming a Former Smoker.” The pamphlet included a list of how smokers could begin to quit their addiction, such as identifying the costs and benefits of being smoke-free as well as setting a start date to stop smoking.

The packet also included different objects intended to satisfy some of the cravings that smokers may get, such as a packet of Extra spearmint gum, a rubber band and an air freshener.

The gum is intended to address oral cravings, which would otherwise be satisfied by puffing on a cigarette; the rubber band gives smokers something to fiddle with in their hands; the air freshener replaces the smell of burning nicotine with a minty scent.

The second packet contained fewer items, bearing such gifts as stress balls so that students, who begin smoking because they are stressed out, can find other ways to relieve stress. The packet for non-smokers also came with a pink piece of paper containing the message “From this care package you are affirming the recipient’s decision to stay smoke-free or encouraging the recipient’s decision to quit smoking.”

Blackburn also suggested two services provided by the Health Education Center Smokers to smokers interested in quitting. The first service is a one-on-one series of meetings in which smokers meet with Health Education Center representatives and are able to talk about their smoking habits in a private atmosphere.

The scheduling of the sessions is particularly flexible since there are no restrictions on when they take place and smokers can plan to quit smoking without rearranging their schedules. The second service is for those who may not be ready to enter a one-on-one session. This program allows smokers to attend quit-smoking classes with other smokers. Classes are held on the first and third Wednesday of every month in the Health Education Center.

According to Blackburn, this is the third year that Smoke-Free Kiss was held on campus and volunteers at the event were able to distribute 180 packets. This year also marks a change in how the event was presented with less emphasis on activities and more attention was given to spreading facts about smoking. While this decision had some consequences, the change in policy also allowed more information to be distributed.

“We didn’t sell as many [raffling] tickets … but it was more informative,” Blackburn said.

THE jury in the trial of four people accused in connection with the murder of an elderly woman, dumping her body near Thame and then setting fire to it, today heard from the two friends of hers who first alerted the police to her disappearance. They heard too, how the woman accused of murdering 94 year-old, Mrs Thea Zaudy, told two of her alleged accomplices that a suitcase they carried around the London tube contained wet blankets.

Oxford Crown Court also heard Queen’s Council for the Prosecution describe how evidence would show that Jolanta Kalinowsica, her son, Adrian Lis and his girlfriend, Monilca Sienkievicv, used Mrs Zaudy’s Debit card to spend around £4,000 in an hour on electrical goods, paid for diesel fuel for the car alleged to have been used to transport the body to Thame, and bought a ring can of petrol also using the card which they are alleged to have used to set fire to Mrs Zaudy’s body.

Kalinowsica, the Prosecution alleged, denies the charges against her, and has said that she had permission from Mrs Zaudy to use her Debit card, in repayment for a loan she, Kalinowsica had made to Mrs Zaudy for card-playing debts.
Three friends of Mrs Zaudy’s all attested that as far as they knew, she only played bridge “for pennies” and was not short of money.

Other evidence heard in court to day revolved around how tidy or otherwise Mrs Zaudy was (two friends who went into the flat after she had disappeared, both remarked on how unusually tidy it was how it smelled strongly of air-freshener), and whether Mrs Zaudy was able to walk around without her walking stick (it was seen still in the flat by the two concerned friends who went in there when they had not heard from her for several days).

Council for the Defence in questioning Mrs Zaudy’s friends tried to infer that in view of her age and that she wore incontinence pads, she and her flat would have smelled of urine so necessitating the use of air freshener. Both witnesses denied that to be the case, saying she was always neat and tidy and was never unpleasant to be close to.

The court heard a recording of a personal alarm message received from Mrs Zaudy’s home, on the day she was supposed to have been murdered (July 11, 2024), where a voice can be heard to say something about cleaning - a message which was dismissed as a false alarm by the system’s monitoring centre.

The case will continue tomorrow when the court will hear and see evidence of mobile phone tracking, CCTV, Oyster card usage and other DVD evidence which helped to track the movements of the three defendants. The fourth defendant, Lukasz Gajda, was alleged to have picked up the other three with Mrs Zaudy’s body in a canvas suitcase, in his car and driven them all to Milton Common, Near Thame.

For many area residents, the daily commute is such an accepted routine that the question is less “Do you have one?” than “How long is it?” Some extreme commuters even bypass complaining about their two-hour drives and brag instead about unrecognizable Zip codes and double-digit acreage.

But even regular old stuck-on-the-highway commuters can use a little help with cool car stuff for their homes away from home.

To keep the road rage at bay, start off with the right ambiance, the sweet smell of a fresh-brewed cuppa joe from an Accoutrements air freshener. Hang it from your rearview mirror and keep on truckin’.

If the family ride is also a movable office, throw your laptop and files into Go Office’s Auto Exec Mobile Desk. Just strap a seat belt around it and roll out. For the iPod and BlackBerry, there’s Organize.com’s Cell Phone Cup. It fits handily into a console cup holder.

Since everyone knows stoplights are really timed grooming opportunities, why not stash your makeup in Secco’s stylish “On the Road” model, made from recycled car tire rubber? If there’s time, plug RoadPro’s 12-volt curling iron into the lighter socket for a quick defuzz before the 9 a.m. meeting. (We are not encouraging all you car-bound flossers, tooth brushers and nose inspectors. We can see you, so just stop.)

And for those who want a better view, Brookstone’s got your sentimental streak covered with its three-inch digital picture frame for a slideshow of family photos that can be mounted on the dashboard. It’ll be a reminder of what’s waiting for the tired road warrior back at home.

- Jill Hudson Neal

A criminalist testified Wednesday about household items prosecutors say were part of a plot to cannibalize a 10-year-old girl.Kevin Underwood, 28, is being tried on first-degree murder charges in the killing of his neighbor, Jamie Rose Bolin. Prosecutors allege Underwood had a plot to rape and torture the little girl before consuming her flesh.

Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation criminalist Jolene Russell testified Wednesday that the apartment had a strong odor of cleaning solution and air freshener when she went inside.

Pill bottles containing the antidepressant Lexipro were found inside the apartment, she said.

Defense attorneys have said they plan to call witnesses who will testify about Underwood’s use of the drug and that he often appeared detached from reality.

Prosecutors allege Underwood, a quiet grocery store stocker with no prior criminal record, used a pet rat to lure Jamie into his apartment after she arrived home from school on April 12, 2006.

Once inside, prosecutors say Underwood sneaked up behind the girl while she was watching television, beat her over the head with a wooden cutting board and then suffocated her while she fought for her life.

Jamie’s body was found two days later in a plastic tub in Underwood’s apartment. The girl’s head had nearly been cut off.

Defense attorneys have not disputed that Underwood killed the girl, but have said they will try to persuade the jury to spare Underwood’s life. Attorney Matthew Haire described the defendant as a “very troubled, reclusive young man.”