Employers Not Doing Their Part

Employees in the leisure industry are keen to shrink their workplace emissions but need more support to do so, according to new research carried out by Carbon Trust. The results are similar to what has been found in other industries by other surveys - employees don’t think their employers do enough.

It found that 63% of employees wanted to cut emissions but need more guidance and empowerment. Just 18% thought their company was doing enough to cut its emissions and 71% said that their employer made no attempt encourage them to consider different ways of lowering their carbon footprint.

Hugh Jones, solutions director at the Carbon Trust, said: “Our research shows that those in workplaces where a ‘Carbon Champion’ has been appointed say it encouraged more action to reduce emissions. You can put in a new energy-efficient boiler, or install low-energy light bulbs, and those will make a difference, but many of the measures that will have the biggest impact and achieve the greatest savings require buy-in across your workforce.

“In the current economic climate it’s never been more important for all businesses, of all sizes, to act on climate change. With savings of up to 20 per cent to be made on energy bills through no cost or cost effective measures it makes perfect business sense to empower employees to do their bit both at work and at home.

“You need your teams to think twice before printing documents, to turn off their PCs and lights at the end of the day, to participate enthusiastically in recycling schemes and to consider the carbon footprints of the method of travel they use and the products they source.”

[Source: Carbon Trust]

Carbon Neutral Search Engine

Most of us (according to the latest statistics) use Google to search. In fact, 80% of all visitors which arrive to this site via a search engine, use Google. However if a search engine offered to give you the same results as Google but also offset your search, would you use that instead? That’s the premise behind the Carbon Neutral Search Engine, who have paid for a sponsored review of their service.

The Carbon Neutral Search Engine was developed by a company called fooke limited in the UK, launching in October 2007. Searches made on their Google powered search engine are offset the emissions generated through online search queries. How do they do this? They have calculated (for UK users) that when taking account the energy used by the search engine and by the user’s computer that 17.57g of carbon are emitted. Because this will vary massively by country they offset each search query by a minimum of 300g via offsetters Climate Care and Carbon Fund (see later). The home page shows the exact emissions offset to date.

So what’s it like to use? Well, as you can see it’s all black, I assume as a way to save a tiny bit of power on certain LCD monitors (there’s an LCD Monitor Search link in the top left of the page), and works pretty much exactly the same way as Google does.

So how do they pay for this offsetting? Well the results that are displayed show Google Adwords ads, they same as they would on Google itself. However any clicks on the ads make money on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis for the Carbon Neutral Search Engine, through the program Google Adsense. I have no problem with that, it’s the fundamental basis that most websites make money, but in this case the profits are going towards carbon offsetting schemes rather than to the advertisers.

As you can see above, the Google referral ad (for Google Adsense) is on the large side, with some adverts below it, followed by the same search results you get in Google (I checked!).

As mentioned they use Climate Care and the Carbon Fund to provide their offsetting. According to the site “Climate Care is a leading offsetting organisation in the United Kingdom and through investing in renewable technology, energy efficiency and reforestation has offset a total of 1m tonnes since they were founded in 1998. They continue to grow through partnerships with leading international brands including British Airways, Land Rover and Grant Thornton. Carbon Fund is also a leading US non profit carbon offsetting company, offsetting over 1m tonnes from 400 companies and 100 000 individuals.”

If the search engine is a success, they also also plan to develop small scale renewable energy projects within the UK, which is an honourable goal for any company.

Personally I think it works great, provides the same functionality as Google and it’s simplistic with no pop-ups or crowded with adverts or links to other sites (besides the ones your searching for of course…). Soon they will be launching a browser plugin (both Firefox and Internet Explorer) to increase ease of use, but for now check out the Carbon Neutral Search Engine.

If you would like a review of your site or product please see the advertise page or contact us.

Would You Use A “Green Facebook”?

OpenEco.org is a new global on-line community from Sun Microsystems that provides free, easy-to-use tools to help participants assess, track, and compare energy performance, share proven best practices to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and encourage sustainable innovation.

According to their website, “GHG analysis is done primarily using proprietary tools and often requires significant investments in consulting services. Not only does this discourage many organizations from assessing their GHG impacts, but it also means that analysis results are rarely shared outside an individual organization. Sun believes that working together in communities and sharing tools and information between organizations can maximize our chances of success in facing our environmental challenges.”

It will be interesting to see how much it is used, if your company is using it, please share your experiences with us.

[Via: Green Options]

Could You Live Without Toilet Paper?

Once again the BBC have an interesting article on a family in New York trying to live without toilet paper, shampoo or other toiletries.

No Impact Man, or Colin Beavan as he’s known, is trying to reduce the amount of toiletries his family uses as part of the latest stage of his involvement in environmentally friendly or sustainable projects around the city.

The first stage of the one-year experiment was to reduce rubbish. The family buys only second-hand goods and takes a hamper to the market. Food is bought every other day from the nearby farmers’ market on Union Square, and put in the hamper without wrapping. The family then stopped using all carbon-producing transport, so they now walk or cycle. They then shut down electricity in the flat - no more dishwasher, fridge or washing machine.

Now they are trying to reduce the amount of water they use, from the 80-100 gallons (303-379 litres) a day used by the average American, down to seven!! The average European uses about 150 litres or water a day, not because they wash less(!) but due to having smaller gardens, small bathrooms, smaller washing machines and so on.

Not everyone wants to go to these extremes, but could you manage it? I’m not sure I could…

24 Goes Carbon Neutral

Adam has written a review of the sixth season on the TV show 24, and it now turns out that 24 is also going green!

How are they doing this? “They want to be the first television show to cut their emissions low enough to be carbon neutral. The show will be taking important steps to clean up their sets and make them more efficient. Their generators ran on electricity in previous seasons, and their vehicles ran on regular diesel. They will now correct this by using bio-diesel fuel to power vehicles and generators instead. This will decrease emissions on their vehicles up to 5% and their generators up to 100%, which will be a significant change.

They also hope to incorporate more hybrid vehicles into their sets as well. They will be purchasing their energy from various renewable wind, water, and solar sources. And they will be rewiring the stage to use electric power instead of diesel-generated power.”

[Via: AboutMyPlanet]