Hasta La Gadget!

In this week’s edition of “Policlips Now,” we’re highlighting the best political clips you may have missed while you were working.

Whether it was Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) crude Bill Clinton joke during CPAC, or a senator throwing a snowball on the Senate floor, we’re rewinding the must-see happenings in politics.

Watch the video above.

In a country that prides itself on giving every American the right to exercise his or her free will, there are still plenty of limitations and restrictions we wish would, well, just go away.

To highlight how much easier (and delightful) the world would be with more versatility — and, to pour our frustrations out about the things that are not — we’ve partnered with U.S. Cellular to bring you this list of things we wish were more flexible.

Pay Day

Sometimes, we could really use an advance on our next paycheck. Unfortunately, our HR department doesn’t provide any kind of pay-ahead model for a big weekend sale at our favorite department store.

Post Office and Bank Hours

Even if we get out of work on time to mail that important document or open a savings account for our own, hard-earned money, there’s usually a long, twisted line of countless other individuals trying to fit this small window of time into their busy lives. We can’t even make it to happy hour — how are we supposed to finagle our way out of a late work night when the only reward is a lolli-pop?

Doctor’s Appointments

We almost always end up waiting anyway, yet we still adhere to the, “Please be on time” disclaimer receptionists remind us over the phone. If we’re going to be forced to hurry up and wait, all doctor’s offices should at least have Wi-Fi to accommodate the fact that we’re there during our lunch hour (which is really only 30 minutes).

Concert Ticket Sales

Monday at 10 a.m. is a perfectly appropriate time for company-wide meeting. However, it’s also when tickets go on sale for that sure-to-sell-out show we really, really need to go to. Maybe the boss won’t notice us pressing “refresh” every three seconds as he or she explains the company’s forecasts for next quarter.

Vacation Days

Planning to travel for your niece’s wedding, your parent’s anniversary and that relaxing beach getaway this year is quite the challenge when allotted just two weeks of vacation.

Parking Meters

Sometimes it feels like police officers are just waiting for the moment our meter expires to slap our car with a ticket. At least we can find some grace in the situation, as we’ve managed to avoid the tow trucks…for now.

Cafés That Only Offer Two Options: Tiny And Super Sized

Unlike our favorite pajama bottoms, coffee cups are NOT one size fits all. We’d love to see “medium” make a comeback.

Apartment Rental Leases

Wouldn’t it be amazing if getting out of your lease a few months months early wasn’t plagued with sacrificing your security deposit?

Work Hours

Working with doctor’s office and bank hours is even more difficult when you’re locked into a 9-to-5 job. It doesn’t make getting the kids to and from school any easier, either.

Gym Memberships

The whole reason you join a gym is to get in shape for one certain event (right?) — so getting locked into a year-long membership pretty much defeats the purpose. If you’re going to pay for the whole year, get your money’s worth: take full advantage of the water cooler, use all the hot water in the locker room, and heck, even dine in!

Flight Reservations

Oh, did you want to cancel your flight? Pay no attention to that hefty rebooking fee.

Return Policies

That sweater looked great in the dressing room…but as soon as we got home, it pretty much sprouted devil horns and added ten extra pounds to our reflection. It’s unwearable — but the return policy says, “Tough luck.”

All Pants — But Jeans, Specifically

Can Pajama Jeans just become acceptable to wear in public, already?

Wish a lot of things — like phone plans — were more flexible? U.S. Cellular believes that everyone deserves great prices on their wireless plan and offers that to everyone, not just families of four.

As we all know, the climate is warming. In fact, it’s doing so about 10 times faster than it ever has in the past 65 million years, and it’s easy to point fingers when looking for the perpetrators.

The good news is that we’re developing adaptive, inventive ways to mitigate climate change. And as it turns out, innovating for sustainability is good for business: According to McKinsey, the top three reasons companies address sustainability are to improve efficiency and lower costs, improve their reputation and meet their own business goals.

“We’re finding more and more that consumers are increasingly choosing brands that share their sense of purpose,” says Paige Francis, vice president of global marketing for Starwood Hotels and Resorts’ Element chain, the first LEED-certified hotel chain. She adds that growth momentum of eco-conscious business is “incredible” and “sustainability is no longer optional.”

Where some see a threat, others see a challenge and an opportunity, which is what successful companies do best. Brought to you in partnership with NRG, here are the inventive ways some of the world’s most powerful companies have embraced sustainability.

Hewlett Packard: Powers Data With Less Energy

Meg Whitman, HP’s executive officer, has spoken on several Climate Week NYC panels about economic growth and the environment, urging a culture of doing more with less.

“[W]e still say a lot less than what we are capable of,” Shelley Zimmer, HP’s environmental leadership program manager, stated. “There’s always the concern about greenwashing and not wanting to over-promise.”

HP used its edge in all things data-driven to create the Moonshot, a high-volume server that uses up to 90 percent less energy than current data center servers, or 1.5 watts per chip on average compared with the 20 watts per chips leading servers use. HP also boasts that the Moonshot costs 77 percent less than a traditional server environment – all essentials for a manufacturer that ships 3.5 products per second.

Furthermore, HP is reducing emissions by 40 percent from 2010 to 2020 in each component of business, including operations, transportation, supply and product chains, and hit its goal of 20 percent carbon reduction for 2011. At HP’s California recycling facility, valuable metals are extracted from old computers, and at its closed-loop recycling system in Canada, inkjet cartridges are manufactured from post-consumer plastics.

Samsung Electronics: Creators Of The Sustainable Smartphone

Sustainability is a no-nonsense business at Samsung: It has three environmental policy councils, managed by the top executive suite (the CEO, CFO and HR head). The eco-product council biannually reports about the development of high-efficiency products; the environmental safety strategy council discusses the company’s environmental safety and healthcare issues; and Samsung’s climate change working group makes decisions on practical tasks to cope with climate change. The groups meet two or more times per year, as they would for a financial report.

Samsung has kept its promise to develop high-efficiency products. In 2013, environmental IT solutions consultant TCO Development gave Samsung’s Galaxy S4 the first-ever sustainable smartphone certificate, meaning it was manufactured in compliance with international and United Nations ethics and environmental safety conventions; it uses power efficiently; and it is free from hazardous, hard-to-recycle materials such as nickel, beryllium and mercury.

Waste Management: Turning Garbage Into Treasure

Despite what most people assume about waste when it’s thrown into the garbage or recycling bins, it doesn’t just “go away.” Garbage is sent to landfills or processing plants through companies like Waste Management, Inc., (WM), North America’s largest recycler.

In 2012, WM managed 12 million tons of recyclables. By 202, that number is expected to increase by 20 million tons, which is a lot of material to handle. Among WM’s approaches to keeping garbage out of the streets and in recycling rotation is its e-cycling program, which taps into the $5 billion-a-year market of reused phones, batteries, laptops and other manufactured products.

“Sustainability is unique to every business,” says Tom Carpenter, head of sustainability services for WM. “Other companies look at [energy efficient] solutions along various pieces of the supply chain, but we look within all of those spaces: We measure the emissions from our fleet, our energy, waste, and carbon footprints, and educate customers to decrease their footprint of waste materials.”

When it’s not possible to reduce, WM reuses methane and C02 gas from decomposing waste to power 470,000 homes, saving 2.5 million tons of coal every year. The company’s Landfill Habitats sites turn landfill caps into protected, biodiverse ecosystems, community bike and athletic parks, and golf courses. To date, there are 116 Habitat sites preserving 28,000 acres.

Coca-Cola Company: The Gift Of Water

The famous bottler has a presence in 200 countries with 500 beverage brands, including Coca-Cola, Sprite, Schweppes, and Simply Juices. From 2005 to 2013, the company replenished 68 percent of the water it used in finished beverages through 509 community water partnerships in 100 countries, benefiting nearly 2 million people.

Coca-Cola’s corporate goal is to replenish all of its water use by 2020.

In the meantime, Coke has initiatives to improve watersheds, increase access to water and sanitation, provide water for productive use, and educate communities about water issues in countries around the world where their products have a presence.

Two small examples are when the company installed solar-powered water pumps in Uzbekistan and gravity rainwater collection systems on school roofs in Bangladesh’s Baunibad district.

Also, you may have seen or used Coca Cola Co.’s PlantBottles, fully recyclable PET plastic vessels made partially from sugarcane ethanol. In 2010, they eliminated almost 30,000 metric tons of carbon over traditional PET bottle manufacturing.

Johnson & Johnson: Building A Greener Lab

The Solar Energy Industries Association named Johnson & Johnson as one of its top companies with solar capacity.

The pharmaceutical company built a state-of-the-art, 185,000-square-foot LEED-certified laboratory in La Jolla, California. The lab’s features include a combined heat and power cogeneration system that reduces CO2 greenhouse gas emissions by about what 285 cars produce in one year. According to Johnson & Johnson, the lab saves enough natural gas annually to heat 765 small homes.

The building’s design conserves about 11 million gallons of water per year through low-flow restroom fixtures, re-circulated cooling water, recycled air-conditioning condensation and reduced water flow toward landscaping projects.

The lab design is aligned with Johnson & Johnson’s Healthy Future 2015 initiative, which strives for a 20 percent reduction in CO2 emissions and a 50 percent increase in renewable and clean-tech energy.

Tim Hortons: A Refined Relationship To Coffee Farmers

You may not think of a fast-food chain as the pinnacle of elegant product design, but the beauty is behind the scenes at Tim Hortons.

Nearly 70 percent of the trash from Tim Horton cafés’ is composed of organic, recyclable materials like coffee grounds, with only 10 percent of the rest ending up in a landfill.

The company focuses on communities where its coffee comes from, as well: its Coffee Certification Pillar was built on the philosophies of Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance and other coffee-sustainability watchdogs to create a program that cares for the economic, social and environmental well-being of coffee farming communities, as well as the welfare of the aboriginal peoples living around them. There is no fee for certification in the Coffee Partnership, whereas other famous certifications can cost thousands of dollars.

Nissan: Working Toward A Truly Zero-Emissions Car

Nissan calculated that in order to meet the U.N.’s framework on climate change reduction, carmakers would have to reduce CO2 emissions from new vehicles by 90 percent of 2000 levels by mid-century. In order to do its part, Nissan is using more renewable energy, increasing the storage ability of its lithium-ion batteries, and plans to reduce C02 emissions from corporate activities by 80 percent by 2050.

It also has a new electric car, the LEAF — but can it truly be a zero-emissions vehicle if it’s mass-manufactured?

“It’s zero emission, but if too much CO2 is emitted during the vehicle’s production, we cannot call it a sustainable car,” stated Hidetoshi Kadota, LEAF chief vehicle engineer.

Now, a quarter of the LEAF’s building materials are made from recycled steel, copper, aluminum and plastic. You can also read about the engineering of its nifty, highly efficient new battery here.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts: Sustainable Luxury

Do you want to stay green while relaxing at a hotel, without resorting to an expensive eco-lodge? You don’t need to lose sleep to reduce your carbon footprint on the road. In fact, you can do it at one of Starwood’s 14 Element hotels in the U.S. and abroad.

“Element hotels are powered by 100 percent renewable energy, by each hotel purchasing Renewable Energy Credits through its local utility,” Paige Francis says. “Additionally, we have designed each property to be equipped with an energy management system to minimize the hotel’s use of energy. Essentially the system is able to detect when rooms are not occupied using sensors, and adjusts energy consumption accordingly by turning off power to certain outlets [while also slightly adjusting temperature settings].”

During meals, the hotel sticks to silverware instead of using disposable plastic and paper utensils, and places recycling bins in each room. At bath time, guests use a dispenser for shampoo and soap rather than mini-bottles, saving 20,000 of them yearly from cosmetic bag clutter.

Element hotels have also taken care of details you may not know are terrible for the environment. For example, carpets are one of the top emitters of toxic particles within homes. Element’s carpets and carpet cushions are fully recycled, and art is mounted with bases made from recycled tires. The wall paint is low in volatile organic compounds (VOC), kitchen appliances are Energy Star–rated, and there are cell phone chargers in the gym powered by stationary bikes. They’ve thought of it all.

Unilever: Keeping An Eye On Deforestation

Unless you live under a rock, you probably own one or more Unilever products — and soy is Unilever’s number one commodity in the U.S. Americans consume 60 percent of the company’s total global soy production, according to Jonathan Atwood, Unilever’s vice president of sustainable living. Deforestation contributes up to 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and soy is one of the top cash crops contributing to this statistic.

“In order to ensure we meet our 2020 goal of 100 percent sustainably sourced raw materials, we recognized the need to transform our soy sourcing,” Atwood says. “When we began the Sustainable Soy Program over two years ago, there wasn’t any sustainable soy within the U.S.”

Unilever began with one supplier and introduced sustainable soy into the Hellman’s brand; now it’s on track to revamp all of its products by 2017, three years ahead of schedule.

Atwood says, “Globally, the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan is focused on three key goals by 2020: Help more than one billion people improve their health and well-being, halve the environmental footprint of our products and source 100 percent of the agricultural raw materials sustainably.”

It’s just a small part of Unilever’s targets, which are to increase national recycling rates and, ambitiously, to power all of its U.S. operations using renewable energy by 2020.

Starbucks: Recycling Where It’s Impossible

Seattle-based Starbucks is now using renewable energy options in more than half of stores globally, and will cover 100 percent by the end of this year, in addition to making all their cups fully recyclable.

For example, in Chicago, where the recycling infrastructure is inefficient at best, Starbucks is privately collecting recyclable cups from its own stores in order to process them into napkins for its national chains.

Starbucks is also getting experimental with its in-store sustainability applications, with plans to reduce water use by 25 percent by the end of the year, and it’s already built its first LEED-certified store in the company’s hometown.

Oh, and let’s not ignore this very cool store made of refurbished shipping containers.

NRG believes that corporate sustainability is not only the right ethical choice, but the right economical one, too. Learn more about the economics of going green through Generation Change, a partnership between NRG and the Huffington Post.

Pioneer has unveiled their newest portable Blu-ray writer ‘BDR-SX06JM’ for Mac. Measuring W135mm x D135mm x H18mm and weighing 280 grams, this slot-loading Blu-ray writer features a durable magnesium casing, a USB 3.0 connection interface and a 4MB of buffer memory, and comes bundled with the latest Mac application software ‘Toast 12 HD/BD plugin’ (in addition to writing data to the BD/DVD/CD, allows you to create a BD/DVD video).

Performance-wise, the BDR-XS06JM promises to provide write speeds of up to 6x for BD-R (SL/DL). Supporting Mac OS X 10.6-10.10 operating system, the Pioneer BDR-XS06JM is scheduled to go on sale from early March, however, there’s no word on pricing yet. [Product Page]

A Presidential Veto is a momentous event, and President Obama has only chosen to exercise this power three times. That being said, the President’s recent veto of the Keystone Pipeline Bill was a subdued affair, operating in stark contrast to the mock signing ceremony held by the Republicans weeks ago. The Keystone Pipeline, still popular among Americans though decreasingly so, has become a politicized lightning rod simultaneously illustrating progress and obstructionism, environmentalism and energy independence, left and right. The pipeline seems to address everyone on a different level, but this is what I hear: the President is speaking the Millennial’s language.

Obama speaking our language doesn’t necessarily mean iMessages full of emojis, though his recent experiment with a “selfie-stick” suggests that it may not be far behind; instead we are seeing an Executive that is acting on our issues. For all that we have left to do, Millennials have become the “labeled” generation.

We are the “9/11 Generation,” raised in a period of national uncertainty and two simultaneous land wars in Asia. Even we see ourselves as the “lazy generation,” despite our goals and ambitions. Other nicknames for our cohort include: We Generation, Generation Net, and the Global Generation.

With all of these nicknames in tow, Millennials find ourselves at an interesting crossroads. We are about to become the most populous generation in the nation, yet as our oldest approach their mid-30’s, descriptive representation in government is hard to find. So while our voices often fall on often-deaf ears, let’s move past what we may be and talk about what we are.

We are indebted; four in ten households headed by an adult younger than 40 have some student debt, with the median amount being about $13,000. Many of us entered the workforce at a time of economic crisis or recovery while holding more debt and less wealth than our parents. Even still, we are hearing from Governors who want to deeply cut spending on public education.

We are sensible; we may not be the “Sandy Hook” generation, but we have watched gun violence infiltrate the schools of our younger brothers and sisters and 83 percent of us favor background checks before anyone can purchase a firearm. Yet in April of 2013 we watched the Senate vote down a proposal for near-universal background checks.

And finally, we are conscious; two-thirds of Millennials believe that the earth is warming, and 75 percent of those believe that human activity is causing it. We are the generation that has seen and understood the connection between superstorms like Katrina and Sandy and global warming. We are the generation that will be forced to confront oceans that are warmer and higher, droughts that are longer and more intense, and other yet to be seen effects of climate change. We are the generation that must move past pipelines and fossil fuels. On this topic, we have a President that is stepping up.

According to a 2014 study by Harstad, student debt, gun control, and clean energy are among the issues that Millennials find most persuasive. These issues are more likely than any other to get us to the polls and voting for particular candidates. When candidates talk about issues like healthcare and gridlock, we tune out. When candidates talk about background checks, reducing the cost of education, and increasing renewable energy, we pay attention; this fall there wasn’t much to listen to.

The veto of the Keystone Pipeline is about more than special interests and partisan politics, it is a promise to the younger generation that the government is done mortgaging our future. Fossil fuels are the energy solutions of the past, and for all that we are we will not be another pipeline generation. The President once again has chosen to listen to us instead of simply labeling us, following a strategy similar to that which got him elected president, twice.

For all of our labels, us Millennials still have most of our lives ahead of us. Our legacy is not set in stone, and who knows what they will be calling us when we are beginning to depart this planet we are so desperate to defend. The rejection of the Keystone Pipeline is a marching order to a new direction for our generation. We must be the ones who perfect solar technology and better batteries, who enact policies to promote wind and solar, and who discover cutting edge technology to carry us into a cleaner, brighter future. Most politicians may refuse to speak our language now, but soon we will be most politicians. Who knows, maybe by 2050 we will come to be known as “The Renewable Generation.”