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.