SBC Member Community

Favorites

Sustainability Books

forks over knifes

Favorite Gurus

no human idols on this mind

Favorite Quotes

I rather have my mind open by wonder then closed by believes

Favorite Movies

Last of the Mohicans

Favorite Music

Music is my favorite, regardless the source

Joseph Fischer

Background Story

Raised in Valparaiso and Santiago the Chile from 1959 till 1977, my fondest childhood memories in Valparaiso were of jumping of and running around the tin rooftop of old buildings and houses with my friends, pretending we were detectives in pursuit …. and ditching school at a very young age to ride with the fishermen at the Valparaiso’s Puerto, and help them unload the daily catch. I developed a very inquisitive mind from a very early age, and my mom developed an anxiety syndrome because of me! In Santiago I attended various schools since we had to move often as we could only afford to rent rooms at people’s homes until my mom was able to buy her own apartment during Allende’s short presidential term. A desire to travel the world and learn from different cultures was often seasoned with thoughts of my absent father whom I fantasized would one day call for me to live with him somewhere in Europe. (The truth is that my dad was living in France courtesy of Amnesty international from 1975 on following a two year incarceration by the Pinochet regime for being in Pablo Neruda’s and Volodia Teitelboim’s Communist party circle) And so it was that from a very young age I understood that the only way people could accomplish plural and collective causes was by unity and respect and always had a soft spot for the underdog and underpaid but hard working laborers. Disappointment over the Chilean Army torturing, slaughtering, and breaking families apart under the pretense of eradicating Communism made the future seem bleak for me in Chile, so In 1977 I returned to Israel. As an Israeli citizen, I was drafted during the time Begin and Sadat made peace, and part of my military duties at the time was to arrest and evacuate protesters from Yamit in the coasts of the Sinai desert, and also was involved during the first conflict with Ashaf in Northern Lebanon which kept me busy till 1984, by then my wife at the time decided that we needed a break and wanted to visit her parents in California. On my second day, of arrival to L.A. I enrolled in Fairfax High for ESL, that led to a job as a driver for a local print shop….and then many jobs in different industries. In the 90s I got hired by GE for a sales position – which started the path of a successful Sales carreer. By 1997 my work on the toner cartridges recycling industry together with a couple of friends made a $160k investment flourish into a 30million dollar company… regrettably the “Cinderella” story and the American Dream were not drafted the way I expected and since I had not signed a partnership agreement in the beginning, there was not much to argue with my friends when it was time to get a share of what I thought was rightfully mine… so I left that company while staying in the same industry helping other companies become more credible and once again got the chance to travel the world representing US recycled made products in all but two continents until the beginning of 2011 when I decided to start my own company providing green alternatives to offices, and educating people about Zero Waste mentality, and how to make a good living yet helping minimize our carbon footprint and follow companies that want to create products that are full circle from the moment they go to the consumer, all the way back to their recycling facilities to create the same products. And all this came to place with the love and support of my bride and three girls, plus the encouragement of two best friends. I believe that by helping our local and micro economies we could eventually turn the tide on the need for cheap foreign labor, lower the entitlements and start creating a culture of producers that want to help the environment and at the same time create wealth that will be distributed locally. That’s the reason for my wanting to get some sort of publicity to get my project going…I dream of a lot of communities like mine, mobilizing their residents to do the same, and at the same time getting a little bit educated on the subject and what we can do together with local business, and finally incite kids to seek careers in the environment fields and business that thrive with it Best regards and thank you for the opportunity to bore you with my story (my wife says that I should write a book about my life…but I consider myself an average Joe) Joseph Fischer 818 567-4400 818 731-6433 yosi@fhofficesystems.com www.fhofficesystems.com

Referrals Sought

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Location

Burbank

Business/Job

f and h office systems

Sustainable Cause(s)

nationwide free recycling programs for the office