Let there be Light

There are ghosts haunting Venture’s office. They’re about five feet tall and shrouded in a white crepe-like material. Sometimes they even glow.

The ghosts are our funky floor lamps, which, while aesthetically pleasing, are an environmental downer. Each funky floor lamp currently uses three 60-watt incandescent light bulbs. That’s a total of 40 incandescent bulbs gobbling up electricity when more efficient 7-watt compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) can do the job.

According to a Natural Resources Canada website, replacing one 60-watt standard bulb with a 15-watt CFL in each of Canada's 12 million households would save up to $73 million a year and reduce greenhouse emissions by approximately 397,000 tonnes. So why do we have all these incandescent bulbs in our office? We can only plead ignorance.

Jeremy Miles, an energy auditor with ATCO EnergySense, drove up from Calgary to give me a crash course on light bulbs (see my next blog for more energy-saving advice from Jeremy). He explained that not all CFLs are created equal. Some use a heat-producing magnetic coil, while others have electronic ballasts that produce more lumens (light) per watt (power).

“It boils down to one factor: you have x-number of watts going in, and x-number of lumens coming out,” Miles says. So look for a bulb that produces a high number of lumens for a low number of watts (this rating is referred to as lm/W or lumens per watt). If the lm/W ratio isn’t on the package, the bulb may not be particularly environmentally friendly; Miles recommends going to the company’s website.

We found a bulb that puts out 800 lumens for 13 watts of power and comes in three colours: warm white, soft white and cool white. That pleased the graphic designers, who had seen the CFLs of old and worried that current versions were equally ugly.

“CFLs have come a long way,” Miles says. “They can look as good as incandescents. If you really like the look of an incandescent, like when you’re displaying a product or artwork, there are custom CFLs that come in virtually every conceivable colour rendition.” (Basically, this means that the colour of light is determined by its wavelength and is measured on the Kelvin scale. A lamp with a low colour temperature – 2700K – will look “warm;” a lamp with a high colour temperature – 4,200K – will be “cool.”)

So let there be light. When we’re burning the emission-free midnight oil to produce the next issue of the magazine, we’ll need it.

Vampire Slayer

As you walk through your office, chances are your path is marked by various electronic devices and appliances which bear the faint glow of a “standby” light. These ready to operate appliances act as energy vampires, silently sucking up power when they’re not in use.
Everyone at Alberta Venture turns off and unplugs any unnecessary electronic appliances. But we thought it would still be fun to find out how much it cost to power our favourite office items, when left on and unattended to. Using an energy meter over a 24 hour period we came up with the following tallies.

Cost to Power
Photocopier = $0.78
Printer = $1.04
Computer CPU = $1.19

Two Wheels Good?

So in a fit of… spontaneity? ecosensitivity? insanity?... back in May, I proposed to the editorial and design team that we approach our Green Issue with an eye to our internal activities. Rather than simply reporting on the external world around, we should live our recommendations, a case of doing what we say. I challenged the staff to consider how we could be more conscious of our consumption as we produced the August issue. And more importantly, what would be the financial and product impact of more ecologically friendly choices?

And like many of my ideas, it promptly spiraled out of my control and became a company-wide crusade to reduce our corporate footprint. It even became an opportunity for individuals to consider their personal consumption patterns – though that was undoubtedly the most contentious element of this experience. Overall, I think it has been a useful activity, that has made us question some of our choices and provided a platform for extended discussions, debates and some bonding over a common cause.

Until, that is, Dan and Tracey proposed that I give up driving to my various business meetings and lunch appointments. I had already brought a pair of more sensible shoes into the office, to allow me to walk to more meetings. But for those meetings that my schedule (and physical activity level) dictated were outside walking distance, I was still hopping into my van and driving over. So Dan and Tracey decided I should give the tandem bike a try.

Now they didn’t know it, but I’ve been vaguely bike-phobic since I broke my wrist. I tried bike riding once after my wrist healed and almost undid the healing process when I wiped out. Being an inordinately clumsy human being, cycling has always been a challenge to me. On top of that, I’m a tad bit of a control fiend – so abdicating my capacity to steer things by sitting on the back of a bike didn’t make me feel more eager to jump on.

Conversely, I am quite sure that having Dan ferry me around downtown Edmonton on Big Blue is as close to being chauffeured about as I’m ever going to get. And since I had encouraged everyone to be innovative in their thinking, I couldn’t very well put the kibosh to this idea. Turns out – it was a blast. The weather was hot but the restaurant wasn’t so far that I was rendered unfit to be in civilized company. Someone we passed shouted in delight, “Look at the tandem bike!” and I laughed out loud. Dan was respectful of my jumpiness and eased up to the red lights. The only thing I was concerned about, in retrospect, is that he didn’t offer me a helmet. I haven’t checked to make sure he’s not the beneficiary of my company insurance – perhaps I should do so before I get on the back of Big Blue again.

Ruth Kelly

Publisher and intrepid urban tandem cyclist

Bicycles Built for Twosomes

I have a tandem bike. It's about 40 years old, very heavy, and blue (hence its name: Big Blue). One of the unsung uses of a tandem is that they can be ridden by one person -- and then used to ferry others around.

Yesterday morning I rode Big Blue to work by myself. My boss, publisher Ruth Kelly, had a lunch meeting at a downtown restaurant. She wore sensible shoes, put her notebook in a shoulder bag, and hopped aboard Big Blue for a ride to her appointment. Normally she drives, I think. (Normally she doesn't ride bikes to meetings, I know.) We made it there without crashing -- although when I steered us down the wrong street and stopped a block away from the restaurant, she hopped off and said, "That's OK, I can walk the rest of the way." She didn't ask for a ride back to the office, either.

At the end of the day, another colleague, production manager Vanlee Robblee, needed a ride home. She lives five blocks away from me and typically drives. It was sunny, 30 C out, and we headed south through downtown and across the High Level Bridge -- faster than the cars stuck in rush-hour traffic.

Along the way, Vanlee and I talked about her recent move to her new production manager role, her husband's new job, and the new magazine our company is launching in September under my editorship(http://www.unlimitedmagazine.com/). In short, we connected a little bit, which is another wonderful attribute of tandems: they foster communication between two people, because you're sitting just a few inches apart for the duration of the ride and need to know which way your biking partner is leaning to make the smoother. As a bonus, tandems also draw smiles from passersby.

Good for the environment, good for the soul -- a city full of tandem bikes would do us wonders.

Black is the New Green, More Green PC tips

A quick google search of "green + computing + screensaver" turns up this link from the University of Ohio's Ecology and Energy Conservation Committee: Energy Saving Tips for PC's

I was looking for some data to support the idea that powersave/sleep mode is more energy-efficient than screen savers. UofO's Green Guide is more comprehensive, debunking some commonly held myths regarding PCs and power use.

For example:
Myth: Turning off your computer uses more energy than leaving it on.
Truth: The surge of power used by a CPU to boot up is far less than the energy used by the unit when left on for over 3 minutes.

They provide instructions on how to reset your screensaver to a mostly black background for a number of Windows platforms, or how to set powersave mode.

So, to answer my question, according to the Energy Star website, "Spending a large portion of time in Sleep and Off Modes not only saves energy, but also helps computer monitor equipment run cooler and last longer."

Marketing Green

In the August issue of Alberta Venture, you'll find a suscription insert for our new publication Unlimted. The insert was printed on FSC-certified paper and in the future we will print all outside marketing material on this environmentally friendly paper. Look for FSC invitations, nomination forms and media kits in your mailboxes.

Composting Martha Stewart Style

I can't believe I'm only learning about composting now. Everyone is doing it, even the domestic queen helfself Martha Stewart.

Marth Stewart Living
http://www.marthastewart.com/portal/site/mslo/menuitem.3a0656639de62ad593598e10d373a0a0/?vgnextoid=e3c276ecfd22f010VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&rsc=related

GardenGuides.com
http://www.gardenguides.com/how-to/tipstechniques/planning/compost.asp

Clean Calgary Association
http://cleancalgary.org/index.php/store/product/C58/58

Composting 101

These days my breakfast consists of avocado spread on toast. I'm always in a hurry so I prepare it at work. But since we've begun composting, I never know what I can throw in the container. Does anyone know anything about composting avocados? My first instinct is that they are too fatty to throw in there and will probably stink up the place? Does anyone know a good website that has a list of things I can compost. I found something, but it wasn't very extensive.

Banana Skins - Yes. Decompose rapidly; can help to activate a slow compost; loaded with plant nutrients
Citrus Fruits - Yes. Shred rinds; bury in compost to discourage fruit flies
Coffee Grounds - Yes. Good earthworm food; use directly on many plants; compost shredded filters, too
Corn Cobs - Yes. Shred; adds both fibre and nutrients to compost; good mulch; slow to break down
Dairy Products - No. Fats seal off air from compost; odours attract pests
Eggshells - Yes. Dry and crush first; good earthworm food; slow to break down; help neutralize acidity; as mulch, may discourage slugs
Fish - Maybe. Odours and pests are problems with fresh or smoked fish, but dried fishmeal is fine
Seafood Shells - Yes. Crush or grind very finely; break down very slowly; reduce acidity; good mulch
Soup - Maybe. Vegetable, yes; do not use soups with cream or meat-based broths to avoid odours and pests; read abels on canned soups.

Don't give me that crap

We all do it. Every time we flush the toilet we waste water. The ol’ crapper uses 5 – 15 litres of water every time it’s visited. But it doesn’t have to. When a toilet is flushed, the tank drains and refills. Most of the water being used isn’t needed for a decent flush. Placing a weighted pop bottle into the tank reduces the amount of water being used, since the space the bottle takes up would normally be flushed down the drain.

Armed with that knowledge, I set out to make our office a little greener. The end result: each of our toilets now uses 1 – 2 litres less water. Here’s how I did it.

1) Fill the bottom third of a pop bottle with gravel, then water
2) Cap it
3) Carefully lift the lid off the toilet tank
4) Place the bottle or bottles at either end of the tank. Make sure they’re not near the rubber flapper, or the float so they don’t jam up the flushing process
5) Place the lid back on. You’re done

An Interview with a Co-Worker

Sex: Male
Title: Production Technician
What was different about your morning commute today?
I rode a bike instead of driving my car.
How long did it take you to get to work?
15 minutes
How long does it normally take by car?
15 minutes
What was the advantage of biking to work?
My co-workers didn't bug me about being environmentally unsound. Umm, Umm, Ummm, Ummm, err, err…I didn't have to walk four blocks from where I park car.
What was the disadvantage?
I realized that I'm going to have to buy a backpack. You can't cycle while holding onto your lunch and a backup driver.
Will you do this again?
Yes, I intend to.

*Even though it rained the day after this interview, our man still Schwinned it to work.

If google is your homepage...

...try "earthle". Powered by the google search engine, the creators have built an all-black search page that they calculate will allow a user that switches to save 750 MW per year.

From their "about us" section

In a January 2007 blog, Mark Ontkush, a leading expert in "green" computing calculated the following:

"Take at look at Google, who gets about 200 million queries a day. Let's assume each query is displayed for about 10 seconds; that means Google is running for about 550,000 hours every day on some desktop. Assuming that users run Google in full screen mode, the shift to a black background will save a total of 15 (74-59) watts. That turns into a global savings of 8.3 Megawatt-hours per day, or about 3000 Megawatt-hours a year. Now take into account that about 25 percent of the are CRTs, and at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, that's $75,000, a goodly amount of energy and dollars for changing a few color codes."

Mark Onthkush inspired us to create Earthle.com and do our part to help make the world a more environmentally friendly place.

I wonder whether google has considered modifying their own signature look to drive traffic back to their own landing page (if indeed the new site has had an impact).

One Less Car off the Streets

Okay, I've got another one for the commuting challenge. Our accountant has decided to leave her car at home one day a week for one month. Three cheers for the bean counter.

The Paper Chase

I wanted my first post regarding the August issue of Alberta Venture to be all about the paper we will be printing it on. Obviously, our "green" issue will be printed on recycled paper, as are the subscription insert cards running inside. I know the paper will be "My Connection" which is supplied by the company Myllykoski


The paper comes in two variations, each has 85% or more recycled content. Once I know for sure which version, I'll share more detail about the paper. Choosing to print on recycled paper stock, for a magazine, is a complicated issue. First of all, the paper is not cheaper because of its source, ("it's made out of trash, therefore it must be cheaper than virgin paper). Secondly while there is a wide variety of paper available with recycled content, not all of it is suitable for printing a magazine on, and it may not all be available through my/your printing company. (And don't get me started about misconceptions that the paper will look "dull" coupled with the known problems with ink absorption on the press.) Our printer has been helpful in sourcing some options for us and we've narrowed it down to My Connection. More to come when we have the details.

How to Save $700 a Year, or Check the Pressure of Your Tires

It's not easy being green. One of the initiatives that I've been trying to organize is some sort of commuting challenge, a way for us to reduce the amount of emissions produced commuting to and from work.

So far, the only people who have gone green are Vanlee and Noemi. Once a week Vanlee will be biking to work with Dan on his tandem. Noemi will be walking or riding her bike to work everyday. Three cheers for Vanlee and Noemi. Dan doesn't get any shout outs cause he's been biking to work forever. (I'm kinda thinking that we should get special t-shirts printed up for them that say something like "Coming in August…The Green Issue…albertaventure.com)

Many people in the office have told me that that because of the nature of their job and personal commitments, they are unable to seek an alternative, eco-friendly way to get to work. But you know me, I'm not a quitter. This issue isn't dead yet. If you can't reduce your driving at least change the way you drive.

Here are some driving tips from the City of Calgary's Climate change department, yes they think its such an important issue that they created a department to tackle the problem.
http://content.calgary.ca/CCA/City+Hall/Business+Units/Environmental+Management/Climate+Change/Reduced+Vehicle+Idling/Reduced+Vehicle+Idling.htm

* More than 10 seconds of idling uses more fuel than turning your engine off and restarting it again. So if you stop for more than 10 seconds, except in traffic, turn off your engine.
* Excessive idling can cause engine damage.
* Check your tire pressure on a regular basis. One tire underinflated by 8 PSI reduces the life of your tire by 15,000 km. Also, one underflated tire increases your fuel consumption by 634 litres per year. I worked that out to just over $700 a year. I know I don't have that kind of money to throw away.

If anyone in the office is interested in reducing your carbon footprint, please contact me so I can calculate your carbon reductions. Each week I'll post our reductions on the blog.

It's Not Easy Being Green

At 10 a.m. on Monday morning I’ve already fished two yoghurt containers, a sandwich bag and half a newspaper from the garbage can in the office lunchroom. As I contemplate reaching into the congealed mess to pull out a suspiciously yellow milk carton, I wonder if I’ve gone too far.

It’s become my personal mission to see that no more recyclable material ends up in the office trash. As part of Alberta Venture’s mission to go green, we're placing bricks in toilet bowls, forming carpools and designating “heatless lunch” days. I’m on trash duty.

It started when we called in Garry Spotowski from the City of Edmonton’s waste management division to help reduce the amount of garbage we send to the landfill. Spotowski volunteered to perform a “waste audit” on our office, something he hasn’t done since the early 1990s when the Edmonton landfill was filling up fast and the city dispatched employees to help businesses reduce their trash output.

After taking a tour of our trash, he says that for the most part, we’re on the right track. We already have separate recycling bins for cardboard, plastic, bottles and cans. We have a box by the photocopier where we keep scrap paper that we use to make notepads. Everyone has a recycling bin at their desk.

But Spotowski says there’s still a lot we can do better, like using printer paper with a higher percentage of post-consumer recycled content. Spotowski also recommended a worm compost for our coffee grounds, apple cores and other organic material. No, it doesn’t smell. In fact, Spotowski says his compost resides in a nice wooden box in his living room, and no one can tell what it is.

If we can keep the ham sandwiches and paper towels to a minimum, the compost should turn into excellent fertilizer for the plants we’re going to buy that will improve the office air quality. Except that some people weren’t so keen about worms in the kitchen. As a compromise, now we have an ice cream bucket for organics that a co-worker has agreed to take home and empty into her home compost.

And here’s where I come in: to try to stop recyclables from going into the garbage, on Friday I collected individual garbage cans from under people’s desks, leaving one in every third office. The theory? If people have to get up to put something in the garbage, maybe they’ll stop and think about whether it can go in the recycling instead.

It wasn’t easy. Some people were really reluctant to part with their garbage. And when I arrived on Monday, I discovered that the weekend cleaning service had taken my neat pile of contraband trash cans and redistributed them back to every desk. So here’s the first lesson we learned: when going green, make sure everyone knows about it.

Lesson two? It can take some convincing to get everyone on the green band wagon. It helps if everyone knows why you want to take away their trash cans, and I hope we can distribute more information that will convince the skeptics to give the worms a chance. And maybe when the people who have refused to give up their garbage can see me, up to my elbows in orange peels and coffee grounds digging out their recyclables, they’ll come around. I’ll keep you posted.

Until then, I guess I’ll be dumpster diving. It’s like a wise frog puppet once said – it’s not easy being green.

Stay tuned for more tips from Garry Spotowski on how to reduce your production of trash in our August issue.

How to Save a Tree in Two Easy Steps, or Don't Become a Statistic

I've never been your average kinda person and the following certainly proves it. According to the Gartner Group and those paper-loving folks at HP, the average daily web user prints 28 pages daily. I checked my garbarge bin, oops I mean recycling bin, and I've only used four pages today, way below average.

I just ran around and changed the print settings for all of the editorial computers. All print jobs will automatically print double-sided. Eight editors will save, on average, 126 pages each day.

Don't become a statistic. To cut down on your paper use, change your default settings to print double-sided.

Directions for PCs
Man this is so easy, but makes a huge difference.
1.Go into your computer's control panel and select printers and faxes.
2.Select your printer. Select finishes and change to double-sided.

Our Green Adventure

For more than a year now, we at Alberta Venture have been planning to publish a themed "green issue" in August. But it was only as we began to plan and assign this issue a few weeks ago that our publisher, Ruth Kelly, made the deceptively obvious proposal that we actually green up our act (or at least attempt to do so) as a company for this special publication. And if those changes prove painless, especially beneficial to the environment, accretive to our bottom line or some combination of the three, we'd want to make them permanent.
Welcome, then, to our company blog as we muddle through the process of improving our environmental practices. As a first act, the AV editors got together and brainstormed a few ideas: adjusting the default settings on all our computers to double-sided printing, taking inventory of our garbage (we already recycle paper, but perhaps we could compost those coffee grounds), invite some experts in areas such as energy use and toxics to give us a green audit, to calculate the number of kilometres each of us drive to work each week and issue a "commuting challenge" to other company departments to see who could reduce their total the most.
Right off the bat it was obvious that to make a meaningful impact we would have to involve all the other departments of the company (advertising sales, circulation, design/production, marketing/events), especially as these in many cases have a greater environmental impact to begin with than we wordsmiths do. Secondly, we have to arm ourselves with more information as to what we're doing now and how we can improve it.
But we're off. Look for more posts in the weeks to come from Venturites as we actually turn talk into action.