On Cancelling On-Running Cyclon membership
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On Cancelling On-Running Cyclon membership

Byrichard

On-Running, is ideal, in theory, but sub-optimal in reality. The biggest issue I found with On-Running CloudNeo shoes is that they are seasonal running shoes. If it’s icy or wet you’re going to slip and slide all over the place. If you’re a former snowboarder and cyclist you will recover, but if you’re not used to slipping and sliding you will fall. As a result of this I got shoes a month or two ago but never used them because it was either rainy, or cold.

Imagine having a pair of shoes that you pay 35 CHF per month for, but that can’t be used for 4-6 months per year. That’s a lot of money for shoes that are dormant due to not being well suited to the running environment.

My second grudge with on-running is that they encourage you to think “Oh, you should, but you don’t have to return the shoes that are warn out”. The cost if you don’t return shoes is 100 CHF. If you have warn out shoes with the sole peeling off with the first pair then that is appalling customer service. If a shoe is degrading 100 CHF is very expensive for an unusable pair of shoes.

Comfort

The shoes were comfortable when running, at first but eventually they began to feel like crap. The shoes lasted three months with my use before starting to fall apart. The sole fell off. I felt that the toe box was uncomfortable when wearing them after several weeks of use, especially with walking. I find that on-running shoes in general are not comfortable walking shoes.

Cancellation process

I cancelled my subscription today. I haven’t used the replacement shoes at all, due to the unfriendly weather and badly suited grip for winter Switzerland. As a result I am stuck with a connundrum. Do I return shoes that are perfectly fine, to be recycled, to avoid paying 100 CHF on top of the 35 CHF per month I paid for several months, or do I pay 100 CHF? I think the answer is obvious. Return the shoes.

Idealisticly

Idealisticly, once you cancel the membership you should be given the option of running the shoes until they need to be recycled, and return them then. The first pair I had were worth the 105 CHF I paid. The second pair were worthless due to snow, ice and wet roads making the second pair unusuable for months. They’re still new. I haven’t removed any of the packaging from the shoes yet. I could use them for three months, and then send them to be recycled out of contract. I have paid for them. I just never got to use them due to them not being designed for a Swiss winter, despite being Swiss shoes.

And Finally

I really like the idea of a shoe subscription where shoes are recycled after their useful life is over. I liked running in them and during the summer months they were a pleasure to use, for running. For walking they’re sub-optimal, especially for longer walks.

What I would like with the Cyclon program is an option to suspend the plan while the conditions are not good for the shoes. When it’s raining, snowing, and the ground is frozen these shoes are dangerous. When it’s warm and sunny the shoes are great. Sending them back is easy, and the process is convenient.

In my opinion on-running need to make Cloudneo shoes that are usable in winter, and comfortable for walking, and I will renew my subscription.

Avoiding Rush Hour Recycling

Avoiding Rush Hour Recycling

Byrichard

On Monday, Wednesday and Friday the recycling centre is open from 1600-2000 or so, which is great if you’re working and want to go after work. The drawback to going at this time is that the one for local villages is down a narrow road where cars can barely pass each other. If you go at rush hour traffic you have commuters, and you have people heading to recycle.


When I had the scooter I would often go with that, because with a scooter it’s easy to go down a narrow road despite cars coming towards you. In a car you need to be careful that the mirrors on your car don’t hit the car coming the opposite way. There are two issues. The first is that the road was narrowed to slow down traffic. The second is that a road that should have no commuter traffic does have commuter traffic. Ideally this would be a one way road system.


If I go at 8 in the morning on a Saturday I miss the rush hour commuters, and I also miss all the people who can’t find the motivation to head to a recycling centre at 8 on a saturday morning. I used to be one of those people. I changed because I found that traffic is more fluid and because it’s quieter.


I find it hard to motivate myself to go and recycle. If it’s raining I use that as an excuse. If it’s sunny I use that as an excuse. If I have just finished my walk as it opens I use that as an excuse not to go.


I have been recycling for two or three decades or more, so the process of sorting recycling is normal. I’ve been recycling glass, aluminium, electronics, grass, paper and other things for a long time. It’s an ordinary part of life. It’s taking things to recycle that I find annoying. That’s why I wait until the car is full to go. I feel that it makes more sense to go when the journey is justified, rather than weekly.


I have started to keep recycling by the car. In so doing the excuse of having to run up and down stairs 3-6 times to take things from home to the car is taken care of. I just need to load the car and go. It’s important to remove key excuses.


I could take my walking loop by the recycling centre but people tend to mount the pavement where I’d be walking. I prefer not to go there by foot. The other option is to recycle things on the mornings when I shop. I could easily turn up five to ten minutes early, recycle some things, and shop.


I have a modular system. If you order things from online shops or other online stores you get boxes. I use these boxes to store PET bottles, glass and more. I wait until they’re full, and then I place them by the car. It’s my way of recycling cardboard boxes, before recycling them. If I use plastic containers, or paper shopping bags I need to bring them back up, after I’ve been to the recycling centre. By using boxes that need to be recycled anyway I have a convenient, modular system, for trips to recycle.


Although it could be seen as lazy not to go every single week I am one person, not two to four people. I generate half to a quarter of what others produce in recycling so it makes sense to go half, or a quarter as often as others. I also save petrol and wear and tear on the car. By going once every few weeks I help reduce congestion around the recycling centre, especially by going at 8am on a Saturday, when others prefer to sleep.

The Shoe Subscription – On Running

The Shoe Subscription – On Running

Byrichard

Yesterday I switched from the trail gloves I have been wearing since May for some new ones. The old shoes are still wearable, for indoor activities or for road trips but they have reached their limit.

Just a Worn Sole

The only thing wrong with these shoes is that the sole, where my heel pushes the ground has worn through. It no longer provides support for my heel, especially for long walks. As a result I feel the pressing need to swap shoes. The top is still fine and the back of the shoe is still fine. It’s only the sole that has worn through. The material on top is fine. The laces are fine. If I wasn’t walking eight to ten kilometres a day I would keep them in service because they’re fine. They lasted for around five or six months through ninety activities, whether walking, hiking, or running. I am happy with them.

I am so happy with them that if I could get a subscription to trail gloves I would. I walked 668 kilometres without problems.

CloudNeo

On Running is a Swiss company that makes shoes, clothing, and accessories, for a number of sports, such as running, hiking and more. They have a subscription offer that replaces shoes every six months or so. The subscription costs 35 Swiss Francs per Month and you get new shoes when the old ones are worn out. The shoes are made to be environmentally friendly, and recycled, in house, rather than externally. In so doing they promote the Cloud Neo as shoes that you never own, you just wear them out, send them back, get a new pair.

A quick search and I find that shoes are meant to be thrown in the bin, if single, or recycled, if as a pair, rather than recycled and I hate this idea. All shoes, when ground up, can be recycled and turned into new shoes or other products. The shoes themselves are increasingly made from recycled materials, so it makes sense to reuse the material again.

How it Works

With Cloud Neo you begin your subscription, get a pair of shoes, make sure they’re the right size, and if they are not send them back, and if they are you wear them for ninety days. After ninety days you check them for signs of wear and tear, and when they need to be replaced, you send in your old shoes and a new pair will be sent to you. The old shoes are cleaned, ground up, and turned into new shoes. To simplify the process the shoes are not dyed.

Price

You have less than a month to try the shoes, and decide whether to send them back or not. You then have six months where you’re locked into the contract. After that you can terminate the contract within a month, as is the case with most monthly contracts. I calculated that it would cost 210 CHF minimum and 420 CHF per year. The question is whether you would require enough shoes for the subscription to amortise itself.

If this option existed for Merrel trail gloves I would take it without hesitation. In this case I hesitate because I don’t know the brand, I don’t know the shoes and I don’t know the feel. I saw that I can get a pair of shoes from this brand for 129 CHF from Galaxus, to test the feel, before committing to six months or more.

And Finally

If Decathlon or Merrel offered a shoe subscription I would sign up. I need shoes every few months because of all my walking, and knowing that the shoes are recycled and reused would be pleasant. If I already used On shoes, then it could make sense as I would save money. At the moment this deal would cost me more than I spend at the moment. The shoes I have now should last until next summer, as long as they are not too cold in winter.

Earth Day – Some Simple Acts
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Earth Day – Some Simple Acts

Byrichard

Today is Earth Day, as Google, Moleskine and other companies are reminding us of. Earth Day is an opportunity to think about how to reduce our carbon footprint and ecological impact. 


Sigg recently began to sell aluminium water bottles that are made entirely from recycled aluminium. Instead of encouraging us to recycle our old bottles, they have skipped a step, and now make their bottles from recycled aluminium directly. 


It takes five uses of a recycled Sigg water bottle for the carbon footprint to be offset. Amortising the cost of a bottle takes about 30 litres, so theoretically thirty days if you drink one litre per day.  


Sportstracker, a sports tracking app that I have been using for a decade and a half or more tells me that I have walked 22hrs, cycled almost 8hrs, nordic walked 2hrs28 and run one hour. 


It says that I have saved almost 5kg of CO2. It would be more if it counted cycling as commuting. I can’t control what is considered for that calculation. 


I would love to see a shift away from car culture, to bike and walking culture. I would love to see people walk and cycle more, and for cars to behave more courteously, towards pedestrians and cyclists. 


In theory people should be quiet from 22:00 onwards but unfortunately this isn’t the case. We always hear about how we should stop eating meat and driving cars but I’d like some effort to be made to stop people from being nocturnal. Specifically I would like the cost of alcohol consumption and smoking on balconies at night to be tackled. Being social at night, rather than during the day, means more energy being wasted for lighting, to prepare alcoholic beverages, to keep them cool and more. Think also, of the carbon footprint of every cigarette, from the tobacco that is smoked to the filter that needs to be disposed of, the supply chain and more. 


It seems paradoxical that festival goers and other forms of altermondialistes are nocturnal, given that being nocturnal requires so much energy, and light pollution. 


The La Dole Webcam shows the seriousness of the problem with light pollution at this moment in time. Review the night time images of the sky over the Léman


And Finally


Cycling and walking are fun. Moving away from automatically taking the car, would improve our quality of life. Driving, in traffic, is unpleasant. Water bottles are now made from recycled aluminium to start with, rather than after use. Coffee capsules are made from seaweed rather than plastic or aluminium. Progress is being made to help the environment, but more can be done. 

Rivella in a Sigg Bottle

Rivella in a Sigg Bottle

Byrichard

For months, or even years, I have seen adverts for the Rivella Unlimited Bottle. it is a competition that you can play, and if you win the competition you get a Sigg Rivella bottle that you can get refilled anywhere for free. I thought the idea of putting Rivella into any reusable bottle was absurd and messy so I didn’t try. Today I did.


As I poured the Rivella from a half litre rivella bottle into the Half litre sigg bottle I was afraid that it may overflow and I was careful not to lose too much gas. Eventually the transfer from plastic to metal was complete so I went on my daily walk. I wasn’t thirsty during the walk so it was air cooled by the ambient air temperature. It is currently 6°c according to the Apple weather app via an apple watch. It is fridge temperature outdoors, so perfect for such an experiment.


I drank it when I got home, and it seemed fine. In summer, or if you store rivella in a bottle that has been opened for too long it will ferment. If you try this experiment drink it within a few hours. Rivella quickly starts to ferment so it is an unforgiving drink for slow drinkers.


Coop and other shopping centres often have PET and other forms of recycling nearby so if you buy some rivella, or another drink, you can transfer the drink from one container to the other, and the bottle is recycled within minutes of being bought, and you are then free to walk with the drink in a container appropriate for hiking. Of course aluminium does not crush down into a compact shape once you finish your drink, but at least it can be used for another drink after a quick rinse, or proper wash.


Before I leave you, another use case is restaurants. Restaurants. I often go to restaurants, order a coke, get it in a plastic bottle, and then hike with what remains. If I have an empty sigg bottle I can take whatever is left in the sigg bottle, and leave the bottle with the restaurant, especially if it is glass. It removes the rush of trying to finish a bottle before you leave, or vice versa.


Recycling PET and capsules is not an issue, in Switzerland, as recycling centres can be found anywhere, but there is a justification in walking away with a drink you bought, in a container you own, rather than one you will recycle, when the next opportunity presents itself.

JavaScript Patterns, A Skipped Walk And A New Purchase.

JavaScript Patterns, A Skipped Walk And A New Purchase.

Byrichard

Today I found a course about JavaScript patterns on Linkedin. I have been following course after course about Ruby, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, Angular, React, EcmaScript, CSS and more, but most of them tell you how to do things. I watched plenty of their explanations and I managed to copy the code and get it to work but when they said “challenge time” I was usually lost.


I listened to the JavaScript Jabber podcast and in several episodes they described design patterns. In all of my learning I have learned how to read and copy code. By learning about programme patterns I will learn to structure code correctly. With these notes I will have a blueprint from which to work.


The Skipped Walk


The drawback to recycling being open at certain times of days, on certain days, is that you don’t get an opportunity to go when you want to go. You have to go when the system wants. For this reason I have not been on my daily walk today. I feel tired and lazy anyway. I skip my daily walk once every few months, so missing one day is not the end of the world.


SteriPEN Adventurer Opti


Years ago I walked up a mountain. We reached over 3000m. For that hike, as it was expeted to be a long hike I took three litres oI found walking with three litres of water so tiring because I am not used to being at that altitude. By the end of the walk I decided to find a way to filter water while hiking.


For weeks and months I studied options and I finally settled on one option, then a second, and then a third, etc. I then enjoyed using the Katadyn BeFree the most. On day hikes anything more is overkill.


The drawback: in Switzerland most water sources are below animals and humans. This means that water sources can contain viruses. For this reason it is a risk to drink the water. The solution is to get rid of those viruses. Water filtration systems do not do this. They remove bacteria, protozoa etc. You could boil the water but that takes time and that adds weight. You can use water filtration tablettes but that takes time to act, and adds taste to the water.


The lightweight solution is a device like the SteriPen Adventure Opti. They are light to carry, can filter about 50 litres of water in between battery changes, and last for 8000 litres, in theory. In practice you might lose, break or otherwise find its life shortened.


I found the steripen for 30CHF and they usually cost 90-110CHF. 100 tablettes cost 23 CHF to filter water.


Recycling Without A Mask
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Recycling Without A Mask

Byrichard

Yesterday I went to recycle. Two weeks ago when I went, everyone was wearing a mask. Yesterday when I went all the masks are gone. I was the only person wearing one. Within the last day or two the Swiss government has told people that they can walk around without a mask, and enjoy summer. They said this at the same time as there was an increase of new COVID-19 cases. Today the number of new infections has clearly started to rise. This is true of England, France, Spain and other countries.


European leaders decided to relax COVID restrictions just at the time when countries like Switzerland were getting within easy reach of COVID-zero. COVID-zero would mean zero infections for two weeks in a row. This would give us back real freedoms. Unfortunately, the Swiss government, and others, do not care about eradicating the disease. They care about not being booted out of power.


On the RTS website, written in French they wrote that the Delta variant is increasing quite strongly.


After weeks of new cases per day dropping the number of new cases has started to increase again.


https://twitter.com/mvankerkhove/status/1412330474014490625
WHO information about the increase in new cases globally and by region.


For weeks now I have been tweeting the pandemic isn’t over, as I see people behave as if it was. It is frustrating to see how people feel that the pandemic can be turned off from one day to the next. Maria Van Kerkhove tweeted: The Pandemic is not over, Be Smart, Play safe.


https://twitter.com/mvankerkhove/status/1412330488367357953


The pandemic, that I thought would be over in June 2020 is alive and well in July 2021 and people, who could have learned lessons from the last 470 days of pandemic seemed to have learned nothing. Add to this that governments are not bothered with eradicating the virus, and we are in a bizarre scenario, where people falling sick is acceptable. We are in an absurd scenario.

Day 64 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – “When I’m 64”
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Day 64 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – “When I’m 64”

Byrichard

Earlier today or yesterday at some point I was thinking of the song When I’m 64, and that I should share it. I’m not 64. Quarantine hasn’t aged me so drastically. I felt the need to make that joke.


Recycling


For the first time in two months I went to the recycling centre today. For at least two months I cleaned everything that could be recycled and sorted it into the correct bag. I was waiting for an auspicious time to take all this stuff to the recycle centre and today was that day.


I still spent more time waiting in the car, to get into the recycling centre, than actually in the centre. I’m organised with recycling so that it takes me seconds rather than minutes. I need to improve my paper recycling habits so that I can take seconds, as I do with everything else. Years ago I used to be disorganised about how I sorted things. I became systematic because I wanted to make the process almost instantaneous and it works.


Post Pandemic Spring Clean


Some writers or journalists were encouraging people to spring clean at the height of the pandemic but this made no sense to me. Why would you want to generate more rubbish and more things to recycle when going to recycle would take hours rather than minutes?


It feels nice to have finally got plastic, aluminium, PET, Glass and other things back under control. The next stage is to “turn the home into a museum” stage. It’s my way of saying “cleaning a place so that you can no longer tell that someone lives there.”


In a few weeks the idea of having guests may no longer be an alien concept so we might as well be ready.


Those Who are Alone and Want To Do Something Social, and Those Who Are Not, but Behave cruelly.


On social Media and Activities websites you see that there are two types of people. Those who are desperate to do something social, after two months of solitude, and those who are cruel and make it clear that they want to exclude people. It’s cruel because self-isolation and solitude are hard. I’m impatient for the chance to go hiking with people, of cycling with people, of shaking hands, or even simply having a conversation at a normal distance.


The Number of New infections in Switzerland faceplanting.


Although faceplanting is not an academic term it does reflect how impatient I am for the pandemic to be over so that I can get back to having a life in the physical world. By physical I mean handshakes and riding in the same car as someone else. It’s been at least 64 days since I did either.


Web Mastering


At the moment my biggest investment of time is working on my website. I’m making sure that I understand the bits of CSS that I am learning and applying them to page after page. It may be time consuming and repetitive but the goal is to learn, and master new skills. Repetition is my friend.


It’s also a way of working on a new portfolio while considering another career pivot. If the pessimists are right and we still have months of solitude and self-isolation then web mastering is a good direction to take.


And Finally


It’s easy to feel down for several hours a day during a pandemic and we need to find methods by which to stay sane and to stay stable. I believe that to a large extent I have but this is fragile.


We don’t know whether we will be able to socialise this summer. If we can’t then we have to survive another winter of solitude.


Take a look at the legacy part of my website. My Weathering page will make you dream of hiking.


If you have pictures of mountains outside of Europe I’d be interested. Leave a comment below

A Plastic Ocean – Recycle more
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A Plastic Ocean – Recycle more

Byrichard

A Plastic Ocean is an excellent documentary detailing the problems and threats caused by plastics entering water systems and eventually reaching the seas and oceans. This documentary starts with a team trying to film whales. When they finally do find the whales off the coast of Sri Lanka they notice that there is a film of oil and plastic build up miles from the shore. They say that this bit of ocean should be clean as the beaches had been unused for years. They suspect that the plastic had been freed after heavy rains flushed them out to sea.

I went to the Graduate institute to watch this film last night and the crowd was already well informed. When one speaker asked, “Did you know that the Plastic Ocean problem was this serious” at least half of the room, if not more raised their hand. When people were asked about the zero waste movement at least a third of people raised their hand. The auditorium was filled to capacity.

Plastic and snorkeling

When I was snorkeling in Spain a few  weeks ago I was looking for fish and I saw a few small fish. In the past I had been scuba diving in these waters and surfaced to be surrounded by jellyfish. If you’re stung by a jelly fish you don’t need to use urine. Olive oil and seawater will calm the inflamation. I thought that I saw a jellyfish but as I swam closer I saw that it was a transparent plastic bag floating near the surface. I grabbed the bag and I placed it in my semi-drysuit sleeve and eventually swam back to come out of the water. As I walked back from the activity I picked up a second plastic bag and threw them away. If these bags were left in the Mediterranean then sea turtles and other animals might eat them.

Environmental impact

When plastics reach the ocean seventy percent sinks to the bottom of the sea and can remain there for centuries. What does not sink is degraded by the sun but it is broken up, rather than broken down. What this means is that you go from plastic sheets to plastic pellets and these plastic pellets outnumber krill and plankton by a ratio of two to one. This means that sea birds, fish and other animals higher up the food chain ingest plastic and it accumulates. Seabirds and whales ingest so much plastic that it fills their stomachs and they eventually die of starvation.

Everyday Recycling

It is at this moment that I am so happy to live in a canton where you can recycle PET in one container and all other plastics in another. This means that almost all of the plastic I use on a daily basis is recycled. It can be re-used for bags, car doors and more permanent uses.

 

Recycling is a simple and intuitive habit to have. My generation learned to recycle as children and we have kept up this habit for decades. It is so normal that we feel uneasy at festivals and events where we don’t have bins for PET, Aluminium and other products. In some cases I keep aluminium or PET bottles on me until I find a place where I can recycle them. I enjoy that at Swiss train stations you can now recycle paper, PET, Aluminium and other rubbish.

The advantage of recycling loops is that we use the primary material more than once. It means that we don’t need to waste energy and money on extracting oil and other primary materials. We simply recycle the materials. The concept of closed circuits was discussed.

An Environmentally Friendly Hike

If this post has inspired you to do more for the environment there is a wehike event organised by the Summit Foundation .

This is a hike inaugurating the partnership between WeHike and Summit Foundation, a Swiss ecological non-profit. The Foundation’s mission is to reduce the environmental impact of human activities -leisure activities in particular- in high-traffic locations like ski areas, by raising awareness and proposing concrete solutions. To this end, WeHike supports the Summit Foundation’s objectives by promoting and organising environmentally-aware hikes and waste collection & recycling operations in high mountains.

This is a two day hike near Les Diablerets.

A plastic Ocean is available to watch on Netflix and from other sources. It is worth watching as it will affect how you use plastic in future.