At The Daily Record, reporters rotate coverage on weekends. Typically, Saturday is the busier of the two days as more groups plan events on the last day of the week as opposed to the first day.
But, this past Saturday was a little bit different. The only thing happening was the Wooster Chess Club Chessathon, a 24-hour fundraiser for the club. Because nothing else was going on Saturday, I asked my editor if I could go out around midnight instead of Saturday morning.
I received the green light, and I headed to the Wooster High School library, and I arrived around 11 p.m. Friday.
At this time, eight people remained: Club adviser Dennis Helmuth, siblings William and Maggie Snyder, Connor Stermer, Chad Courtemanche, Evan Miller, Liam Pea and Gabe Noe.
I caught them in the midst of one of Helmuth's mini-tournaments. Maggie was out, so I asked if she wanted to play a game.
It was the first time I had ever played with a clock. I was not used to it at all. I wasted a lot of time making my move and just sitting there. Maggie, and later Gabe and Evan, would kind of give a tilt of their head in the direction of the clock, politely reminding me I needed to hit it, signifying I have made my move.
I can't recall when I learned to play chess, but it was in the early 1970s. By the time we moved to Jacksonville, I know I was playing friends there in the game.
I was never a great player, but I held my own. I probably have won about half of my games. I briefly studied a couple of openings and defenses, but what they were now escapes me. I just remember one of them was rather unorthodox.
Helmuth told me whoever plays white has a slight advantage. However, I never like playing white. I much prefer to play black, react to what is going on and look for opportunities to pounce.
In all three games I played Friday night/Saturday morning, I asked if it was OK to play black. Maggie, Nate and Evan all said OK.
In my games against Maggie and Nate, they had me on the ropes early. I had not played in years, and I had no game plan, other than to not get embarrassed by these sixth-graders. Except for a couple of missteps late in the game, I would have lost to Maggie and Nate. I ended up prevailing.
Evan was the highest rated of the three players with an 850. Maggie was rated in the mid-300s, however, her recent success in a tournament will likely lead to a higher rating, Helmuth said. Gabe does not have a rating because he has not yet played in a tournament.
Though Maggie and Gabe are rated lower, I think they got the better of me early on.
Evan and I started out fairly even, and then I got the upper hand. Being ahead, I started trading pieces. We traded queens and rooks and I was wiping out pawns and it looked like I was on easy street.
It only looked that way.
Evan continued fighting. He ran a pawn across the board to get his queen back. I felt deflated and defeated.
But, I was going to fight to the finish. I had a knight and my king, and Evan had a queen and a king. Evan miscalculated a move, allowing my knight to capture his queen. The game ended in a draw.
When I sat down for my first game, I asked Maggie to take it easy on me. Helmuth said she better not. No one did.
It was a fun evening. I was amazed that even though there was a range of ages (students were in sixth to 12th grade), everyone got along well.
When I talked to sports writer Mike Plant about the kids and how well they did, he replied, "Makes you feel good about our future, doesn't it?"
Indeed.
Reporter Bobby Warren can be reached at 330-287-1639 or bwarren@the-daily-record.com. He is @BobbyWarrenTDR on Twitter.
sign out Welcome,
(edit)Every day, millions of e-commerce packages are delivered around the world. That number has only grown in recent months with the COVID-19 pandemic’s boost to online shopping.
Those millions of packages come in packaging, much of which ends up in landfills.
Modern companies must be environmentally focused, which not only means creating recyclable packaging that can actually be recycled, but following through on programs to ensure boxes and bubble mailers end up in recycling plants, not landfills.
Amazon alone shipped 415 million packages in July 2020. That means 415 million bubble mailers and boxes. A large issue is simply the massive quantity of packaging. But aside from that, the materials aren’t compatible with most recycling systems and many people don’t have access to recycling.
In recent years, Amazon has moved away from shipping in cardboard boxes to packaging items in lightweight mailers, which take up less space in delivery trucks and planes. Amazon actually created a fully recyclable mailer, but the majority of its packages are still sent in the blue plastic bubble mailers. Although the majority of mailers are recyclable, they aren’t sortable in most recycling systems and tend to get caught in the machinery. When that happens, the entire recycling operation has to shut down so the mailer can be removed and the machinery can be cleaned.
So while plastic mailers are technically recyclable, they need to be recycled separately so that they don’t gum up recycling systems. Amazon has taken the first step to create packaging that can be recycled, but it has left much of the burden of actually sorting and recycling items to cities and recycling centers.
Another issue arises with packaging materials that some recycling services don’t accept. Amazon points customers to a website to find drop-off recycling centers that take the plastic film of its mailers. But once again, Amazon is putting the burden on actually recycling items to customers. The goal of all companies should be to make their customers’ lives easier, not to make them work harder. Forcing customers to find a place and drop off their old packaging is definitely making their lives harder.
E-commerce retailers, especially Amazon, need to take responsibility for the planet by creating more sustainable packaging. The simplest solution is to make all packaging recyclable in a manner that can work with existing recycling tools. Another option is moving away from throwaway packaging altogether and instead using reuse and refill systems.
Amazon has taken a few steps, including Frustration-Free Packaging that doesn’t use unnecessary shipping boxes. Customers can opt in to FFP for certain items. Since 2008, the program has eliminated more than 1.18 billion shipping boxes.
Creating new packaging is expensive and a cost that most e-commerce companies don’t want (or can’t afford) to take on. Earlier this year, Jeff Bezos announced that he was donating $10 billion to his new organization Earth Fund to fight climate change. What about taking that $10 billion and putting it towards eliminating one of the biggest contributors to trash: Amazon packages.
It’s not enough to just say they are environmentally conscious—companies must follow through and ensure their green efforts are actually effective. E-commerce companies need to re-evaluate their materials to create recyclable packaging that can actually be recycled without placing the burden on customers.
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