I came across the Traffic & Marketing Design website today which is marketing and selling “world’s greenest business cards” as one of the products. It uses 100% post consumer paper and is produced in Canada. The ink is vegetable based. I like the idea and I think companies should consider these green business card options. However, I’m not convinced with some of the envirnemental benifits claimed as shown in the table below. The references included there were not useful in convincing me. I agree that no new trees are cut to make these business cards, but the water and energy savings as well as emission and waste reduction need to be further verified. Recycling paper is quite an energy intensive process which requires a lot of water and chemical; further, not all paper is recyclable and I would think that there is still solid waste associated with paper recycling process. Furthermore, the process energy and solid waste would all results in emissions. It would be more realistic and environmentally responsible for such comparison. Just my thought… what do you think?
Have you signed up for CBC’s one million acts of Green? This is a project on CBC with The Hour host George Stroumboulopoulos. Essentially this project is to help us realize that small things we do have big impacts! The website is pretty fancy, i’ll need to spend a little more time to look into it.
As of today, according to the website, there is a total acts of green of 1,641,800 and GHG emissions saved 92,382,927 kg!
Fiat has developed and launched “eco:Drive” computer application for some of their cars as a methodology for “monitoring and targeting” our driving style. Essentially it records data during a driving trip on a USB stick and analyzes our driving style - one can see how much GHG emissions has been created on a computer and so on. Altough not instaneous, I believe that this can help us reduce GHG and drive better! By the way, make sure you check out the eco:Drive website, there’re some driving tips!
From Car to PC in a USB
- Fiat
Of course, be cooler if it’s instaneous, like Prius’ energy monitor!
HI came across this “eco infographic” which demonstrate how we can change our lifestyles to mitigate and adapt to climate change. A lot of actions, not suprisingly, are easy to accomplish.
Standby power consumption from plugged in electronics, microwave, and other electrical equipment really uses a lot of power! For Canadians, eliminating standby power consumption would save a typical household 450 kilowatt-hours of electricity and $42 a year, or 4 per cent of the home’s total energy use, according to a 2008 report by Navigant Consulting Inc which is summarized in this Globe and Mail article. Pretty cool hey?
Some other interesting fact:
Canadians would cut five of the 6.3 terawatt-hours of standby power per year with more energy efficienct products
6 terawatt-h is enough to power all the homes New Brunswick
this will eliminate two megatonnes of greenhouse-gas emissions
And this is a pretty good movie illustrating how standby power, like a vampire, is sucking blood/money out of us!
Small Green Big Deal, shop to sustainability | flo | 
June 2, 2009 12:16 am | 
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