Green Route Denver

A new resource has arrived in Denver. Green Route Denver is a map that showcases businesses and organizations that are green. The map is distributed in downtown Denver retail locations and also available via PDF download on their site.

The organization also offers guided tours of organizations. See website for more details.

]]> http://eco-officiency.com/wordpress/2010/03/green-route-denver-a-map-of-denver-green-businesses/feed/ 0 http://eco-officiency.com/wordpress/2010/03/carbon-offsets-for-work-travel/ http://eco-officiency.com/wordpress/2010/03/carbon-offsets-for-work-travel/#comments Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:00:58 +0000 officiency http://eco-officiency.com/wordpress/?p=143 Starting to wonder how much impact all that work travel is having?  The average American commutes 20 miles a day, that’s about 5,000 miles a year, resulting in just over 2 tons of CO2.
Consider purchasing carbon offsets to counteract the carbon dioxide emissions of driving or flying home to meetings and conferences.  A carbon offset for the entire year’s worth of commuting emissions could cost as little as $45. According to the Colorado Carbon Fund, a Carbon Offset means “neutralize,” “balance,” or “cancel out.” Carbon offsets counteract these activities by funding projects to compensate for CO2 emissions occurring at another source.  These offsets help fund projects that reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Though there are many organizations that offer Carbon Offsets, the Colorado Carbon Fund and Aspen’s Canary Tags are two great providers that use the proceeds for projects in Colorado.

For more ideas on how to reduce environmental impact with business travel, see the article entitled What you Must Know about Flying Green by Patti Prairie CEO of Brighter Planet.

The 2010 Sustainable Opportunities Summit and Expo features 19 panel sessions and 70 speakers. The Expo opens to the general public on March 2 with over 100 exhibitors featuring the Rocky Mountain cleantech industry. Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper will provide opening Summit remarks on “Denver, Gateway to Regional Sustainability” on Wednesday, March 3. Colorado Governor Bill Ritter will open Summit activities on March 4th.

The City of Denver will join CORE and the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado in co-hosting the Sustainable Opportunities Summit and Expo. The Summit brings together business leaders, investors and luminaries in academia and government to exchange ideas and demonstrate the competitive advantages available through a strategy based on proactive sustainable business practices.

• Use green cleaning supplies. Make sure cleaning supplies are non-toxic and eco-friendly. Seventh Generation and All Green have a great line of cleaning products.
  
• Turn off lights. Ask your janitorial staff to turn off all lights upon leaving the building. This supports accountability with this simple energy saving action.
• Provide recycling and waste data. In order to improve recycling and waste management it is important to get data from your janitorial staff on the usage of receptacles along with rate of recycling. Make sure your janitorial staff is managing waste responsibly.
  

• Lower Cost
• More Efficient Use of Time
• More Reliable
• Environmentally Responsible
• Security

How it works:

Sending: When sending faxes, you log in to the fax website and upload the document. If the document is already a file on your hard drive, you simply upload it like an e-mail attachment. If you only have a hard copy, you’ll need to scan it, save it, then upload it. On the receiving end, the recipient will get a paper hard copy, just like you had sent it via traditional fax (unless they too have an online fax).

Receiving: When receiving incoming faxes, rather than a paper print out, you get an e-mail with an attachment. If you need to print it you can, otherwise you can just save it to the appropriate folder on your hard drive.

All those unwanted faxes, just hit delete – no need to save them to your desktop, waste paper. Need another reason? Most spam fax comes through whether you want it to or not, that means it gets printed, and you have to pay for the paper.

One more material that we can keep out of the landfill!

We will have more success with our commitments if we are as specific as we can be to the action and behavior we would like to change. Instead of committing to just purchasing less, make a firm dollar commitment.  Based on what you usually spend on ‘luxury’ or ‘disposable’ items, make a dollar commitment to spend only $200 for the year, or whatever amount makes sense for you and your family. Then, determine how you are going to track your commitment and have some way to measure it. With the example of purchasing less, you would know by the amount of money you spend.

This year,  I have committed to driving less and my goal is to reduce my usual 12,000 miles per year down to 9,000 miles for the year. Although that doesn’t seem to be a lot, that is essentially not driving my car 3 months out of the entire year! My plan is to use a combination of alternative transportation methods such as my bike, the bus and try to carpool more often. How will I know if I am successful? Well, I will track my miles monthly and the goal is to reduce each month by 250 miles. I’ll keep you posted on my progress during the year.

Again,  make your new resolution a specific action and determine the way you will track it. When you do this, the likelihood of success will go up dramatically.

Share with me what your green commitment will be for the year.

Benefits of LED lights:

• 90% more energy efficient – saving you money on the utility bill
• When one bulb goes out, the others stay lit
• Unlike incandescent bulbs, LEDs are cool to the touch
• LEDs are more durable and less likely to break
• Pricewise, LEDs cost about five times as much as incandescents upfront. But their life span is 50,000 hours, instead of 1,000-2,000 hours for incandescents. That means if you lit the LEDs for 45 days each year, 24 hours a day, it would take 46 years for them to dim.

For more information visit this site on Holiday Lights:

For more information on climate change visit these websites:

Carbon Disclosure Project

Climate Wire

Climate Ark

Extreme Ice Survey