Frequent Questions regarding EPA's Facts and Figures about Materials, Waste and Recycling. Ceurstemont, Sandrine. "Chicken plastic and wine leather - giving waste new life." Horizon. It’s thought that over 3.6 billion plastic toothbrushes are thrown away every year worldwide, with roughly 80% of which very sadly end up in our oceans, or washed up on a beach somewhere. Wage per Hour: I think I spent approximately 10 hours on process improvements for BCC over the year and approximately 10 hours on customer support, so the hourly wage is on the order of $1,000. So I decided last year that I was finally going to bite the bullet and outsource front-line customer support. We will tend to get this question a lot, so we’re going to add it to the standard procedures document. I figure Nick is likely to eventually achieve results which more than pay for his efforts in perpetuity, and it also gives us the opportunity to work together on BCC (which is low-risk for me), get a good working relationship and base of shared knowledge, and then start systematically applying that to higher-leverage opportunities like e.g. Appointment Reminder.

Another great place to start living a more plastic free life is with your morning cup of coffee. Great. If you feel in the future that you absolutely know the right answer, you don’t need to have me tell it to you. You might need to actually make a CS dashboard if you don’t have one already. One to two a year seems to be a good fit for the amount of bandwidth I have available for software companies which I don’t own, considering folks typically want my advice a lot more than they want my wee little checkbook. I experimented more in 2013 with delivery of productized consulting in a variety of form factors, including writing a book on conversion optimization (technically written back in 2012 but released in the last weeks of it), continuing to sell the course on lifecycle emails which I released last year, developing a new course on software conversion optimization, and running a few online workshops through partnerships with other software entrepreneurs. I’d normally think that’s likely a loser from a conversion optimization perspective, but the stats apparently disagree with me: conversion to the free trial increased from 15% to 19.5%. That’s not a hugely useful result in and of itself, given that that page doesn’t get the volume to justify huge amounts of effort, but repeatable processes which collect wins like that are worthwhile for me.

Outsourcing A/B testing has also been a qualified win, mostly in that rather than spending my own time doing conversion optimization for BCC (a huge win historically - e.g. 60% more sales last year as a direct result of it), that happens without having me in the loop, and I’m freed up to work on more important projects. As you can see, neither the Bingo Card Creator CS operation nor outsourcing it was particularly complicated. Outsourcing front-line support has been a long time coming to Bingo Card Creator. Bingo Card Creator was in maintenance mode for the entire year. Bingo Card Creator’s traffic has fallen substantially this year, including large declines in organic search and AdWords traffic. Traffic and accordingly sales declined by about a quarter. This is the direct cause of BCC’s substantial decline in sales. The good news is that despite my only sporadic ability to move forward on the business, sales doubled. My statement of principles is so that Sugar, or any VA I later bring into the company, understands "who we are" despite not being in the trenches with me since 2006. The standard procedures tells her how to operate the systems (our backend, Snappy, etc) that she has to use to do her job, how to write in the company voice, how to answer our most common questions, how to get help from me when she can’t answer a question, and how to help evolve the standard procedures document.

Reusable straws made entirely from silicone have the added benefit of being even more maneuverable, like these "super-flexible" silicone straws that Penn told us about. The side pockets even make it possible to even organize the garbage. My only substantial work on it was spinning up two processes to allow me to work even less, to whit, transitioning front-line customer support from myself to a virtual assistant (the illustrious Sugar from Pepper VA Services, without whom I’d have long-since lost my sanity) and hiring Nick Disabato to run A/B tests every month so I wouldn’t be tempted to do it myself. I used to genuinely love responding to customer emails every day. Rated 5 out of 5 by pc84 from Need a Tropical Vacay Love this bag! This car garbage urban outfitters straw round bag can be hung on a seat. It's no surprise that the foods most often purchased by consumers, like milk, eggs, cheese and meat, can be found at the back of the grocery store. This bag is simple as they come - the soft, deconstructed design is crafted from Raffia, and this bag can easily be rolled up and packed for your warm weather trips (that is a major plus!).