Page 11 - Business Facts

Do you have an awesome idea? The Awesome Foundation awards $1000 to each month’s most brilliant idea!

The Awesome Foundation was founded in Boston in 2009, but it’s a wordwide network of people. They are devoted to “forwarding the interest of awesomeness in the universe.” They distribute a series of $1,000 grants to projects and their creators. They give the grants with no strings attached and no claim or ownership over the projects. Money is pooled between 10 “micro-trustees” focused on a specific interest within their cell group or geographic location. The money is given in cash or check up front.

The foundation has grown since its humble beginnings to encompass cell groups world wide working to influence positive change projects that effect the ecosystem and more. The neat thing about the foundation is that you don’t have to be rich to partake in it and make a difference. The money given can be specified towards an area of your own interest, too. To make the world a little more awesome one month at a time, check out The Awesome Foundation.

The CEO of Red Lobster was fired over an all you can eat promotion, because he underestimated American gluttony!

Red Lobster ran a promotion for about a month that boasted all you can eat Alaskan snow crab legs. The food chain wasn’t expecting for Americans to pack away so many pounds of crab legs. The chain was being eaten out of house and home. It was so bad that the original price of $20 for the all you can eat platter was raised by up to $5 more.

The company was none too pleased with losing money over the promotion. They removed the CEO from her chair. Officially they are saying it had nothing to do with the promotion debacle, but unofficially it looks to be the precise reason. Unlucky timing plagued the promotion, too. While patrons were eating more than expected, wholesale prices on the crab legs rose, too. Patrons were eating thirds, fourths, and fifth servings. Needless to say, there won’t be any promotions that cheap on crab legs any time soon for Red Lobster.

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Israel has strict laws against too-skinny models!

Israel has taken a stand against the pressures of the fashion industry. They passed a law that all models have to have a body mass index of 18.5 or more to be legally hired. Male and female models must have doctor’s consent stating they are not underweight with a BMI of at least 18.5. The law also bans people that are visibly too thin to model and the use of photo manipulation to make models appear thinner. They are working to reinvent the definition and ideals of beauty to something realistic and healthy. Anorexia and bulimia are extremely serious and dangerous diseases.

The laws Israel has placed on models and the fashion industry to adhere to are a major step toward improvement and expecting more from our society. The fashion industry demands a perfection that doesn’t exist and as a result, a dangerous ideal for beauty and thinness has developed in the modeling industry. Two anorexic South American models died in 2006 and as a result, India and Italy also banned underweight models from the catwalk. Our hats are off to India, Italy, and Israel for taking a stand.

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If India changed its agricultural techniques, the rice they produce could feed an additional 400 million people! How?

India is the second largest producer of rice in the entire world, right behind China. India produces 120.6 million tons of rice every single year, while China brings in a whopping 197.2 million tons. However, India could be producing an additional 100 million tons every year, enough to feed 400 million people. The techniques that India is using to produce rice are outdated, and they are beginning to fall behind on the global scale of rice production.

India is only 45% as productive as China is, and 60% as productive as Indonesia, a country who only produces 60 million tons of rice annually. If India were to adopt the techniques of Indonesia and China, farmers could be making US$50 billion! That’s insane! Learn more about this in the source

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A Subaru Production Plant throws out less garbage in 1 year than a family of 4 does in 1 day! How?

Prepare to feel really awful about how much garbage you throw out every day. You may look in your garage and find a few items that you regard as scrap metal, so you just take them down to the dump to sit in a big pile of garbage. Well, if Subaru can find a way to use that same type of metal over and over again, you should be able to find a better way to dispose of it.

There is a Subaru plant in Lafayette, Indiana that has become the first auto manufacturing plant to not have any waste! They have achieved a zero landfill status by recycling 99.3% of its steel, plastic, wood, and other materials that they have. The other 0.7% of materials is sent to Indianapolis to be burned to help generate steam! In 2006, the plant recycled 11,411 tons of steel, as well as 1,537 tons of cardboard and paper!

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