5 Energy-Efficient Ways To help
Make You And Your Home Healthier
Looking for ways to make your home healthier? Why not start in the kitchen, one of the
biggest "resource hogs" in your home, according to the Low Impact Living website.
From the electricity used to power your appliances to the non-recyclable, landfill-bound
packaging your throw away, your kitchen is ripe for a green renovation.
Low Impact Living has put together a list of things you can do in your kitchen to lower
your environmental impact and make your home healthier in the process:
- Opt for energy-saving appliances.
You can greatly reduce your power and
water usage and your greenhouse gas
production by using ENERGY STAR
appliances. ENERGY STAR appliances can
save as much as 50% of your energy and
water use, and can cut
your carbon "footprint"
by over 1,000 pounds,
compared to standard
appliances. (Carbon
footprint is a measure
of the impact human
activities have on the
environment in terms
of the amount of green
house gases produced,
measured in uni ts
of carbon dioxide.)
For a list of ENERGY STAR-qualified
products, visit www.EnergyStar.gov.
- Use compact fluorescent lighting.
Compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) use
at least 2/3 less energy than standard
incandescent bulbs to provide the same
amount of light, and they last up to 10 times
longer. If every American home replaced just
one light bulb with an ENERGY STAR CFL
bulb, we would save enough energy to light more than 2.5 million homes for a year and
prevent greenhouse gases equivalent
to the emissions of nearly 800,000 cars!
- Recycle and re-use.
Instead of
collecting more and more plastic grocery
bags each time you go to the store,
consider using sturdy
reusable sacks. Many
grocery stores now
offer their own for
purchase. Also re-use
plastic sandwich or
freezer bags when
possible.
- Eat organic,
locally grown food.
Not only is eating
organic healthy for
you and your family, it keeps chemicals
from running off into our oceans and
rivers from non-organic farms. Eating
food grown locally – like from farmers’
markets – means tons of carbon dioxide
are not released into the atmosphere in the
process of transporting food to you.
- Use "green" cleaners.
Replace harmful
chemicals with non-toxic, organic dish
soap, detergents and other cleaners to
protect yourself and your family.
Dear San Diego Law Firm & Optimal Realty & Loans Clients:
SDLF & Optimal Realty & Loans would like to take the time to thank all of your for your
business over the past years.
The Southern California firestorms a few months ago devastated people’s lives. Over a million people were evacuated in San Diego County alone, some with 5 minutes to spare, and over 1,000 families lost their homes. Even if not directly affected by the fires, everyone seems to know someone who lost their home or who was displaced. It is amazing though how tragic times like these bring out the most courageous acts of love and kindness from those who want to help. The human spirit always prevails and rebuilding begins.
Here at Optimal Realty and Loans, we want to help victims of the firestorms in any way that we can. We have renovation and constructions loans available and can work with insurance companies to coordinate rebuilding efforts. Rentals are available for those who need a temporary place to call home.
We have well-established relationships with companies who also want to help with a variety of services. The escrow and title companies that we are aligned with will provide 50% off of their services in a transaction and will replace homeowner’s documents for free.
If you need help with any of these services, call us today. We are here to help you even long after the smoke is gone.
Our thoughts are with all of you at this time.
San Diego Law Firm & Optimal Realty & Loans
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"Hours of Service"
Under the FMLA
To be eligible for leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave
Act (FMLA), an employee must have been employed by the employer for the
preceding 12 months, and the employee must have put in at least 1,250 "hours of service" during that time. Neither the FMLA nor the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) defines "hours of service." When a hospital determined that
a nurse it employed was about seven hours short of the 1,250 hours threshold, and therefore denied the nurse FMLA leave in connection with her surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome, the circumstances required a federal appellate court to construe the proper meaning of "hours of service." Both sides agreed that, in terms of actual hours spent on the job, the nurse came up just short of the FMLA threshold. But the facts were not that cut and dried. Under a "Weekender"
compensation program devised by the hospital to provide an incentive for
nurses to work undesirable weekend
shifts, for every two week period
during which the nurse worked 48
weekend hours, she was paid as if
she had worked 68 hours instead.
If the hospital had calculated the
nurse’s hours in her first year using the
"bonus hours" in addition to the hours
the nurse was at work, she would
have been eligible for FMLA leave.
The court upheld the hospital’s decision
and declined to find it liable under the
FMLA. While the legislation itself
provided little guidance for the court,
an FMLA regulation on the subject of
the requirement of 1,250 hours does
state that "any accurate accounting of actual hours worked under FLSA’s principles may be used." Another
regulation states that "all hours are hours worked which the employee is required to give his employer." In
this case, the court reasoned that
the bonus hours for which the nurse
received extra compensation could not
count as "hours of service" because
she was not required to "give" them
to her employer, but rather could
spend that time for her own purposes.
The nurse argued to no avail that
her case should have had the same
outcome as another case decided
by the same court, in which the court
held that an employee’s "hours of
service" under the FMLA did include
some hours not actually worked.
In that case, however, the employee requested FMLA leave after successfully suing for wrongful termination and obtaining a
remedy that included full service credit and back pay for the hours she would have worked but for the termination. Thus, the
employee could use these hours that would have been worked in calculating FMLA eligibility.
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