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