You’ve started a green team and seven weeks later, your once ecstatic committee of cubicle warriors by day, green champions by night (a.k.a your green employees) begin to dwindle in numbers. Even the most eager employees look like they would prefer to be idling in traffic than be here listening to your green pitch.

Preston Koerner wrote a valuable article in Green Biz on how to prevent “green fatigue” and separate it from the “green noise” amongst customers in response to a recent commentary on eco-overload in the New York Times.

As Williams points out, fatigue, confusion and contradiction amongst customers is vivid in today’s advertising landscape. Canada’s Competition Bureau has even announced a crackdown on environmental claims in advertising and labelling. But, how can a leader stop green fatigue from stymieing the ongoing efforts of its staff? Here are the five S’s to keep sustainability flourishing from the inside out:

1. Shake things up

How can use of the hot-button, resource intensive “tools” at the office - like paper, packaging, energy and vehicles - lend themselves to more creative solutions? Here’s a few ideas to get the juices flowing:

Carpool Day
If you have a large enough green team with staff that commute from the suburbs:
i. Have staff write down their name and their neighbourhood on a piece of paper.
ii. Match up names into boxes according to neighborhoods;
iii. Do a weekly draw to see who carpools with whom and;
iv. Voila! Instant conversation between the Accountant and the Maketer, not to mention C02-reduced commuting.

Green intrapreneurs
Google allows its engineers to spend 20% of their working time on projects that they are passionate about. This has allowed employees to produce Google Suggest, AdSense for Content and Orkut. While 20% may not be feasible for some companies, try for 5% to start. It boosts employee moral, provides a sense of ownership and may just help create a recycling system that helps the whole company make green while going green.

2. Show honesty
Just when you have a product that has both positive and negative environmental attributes and you’re working to improve the negative attributes, you want to be upfront to employees about that office kitchen composting initiative that went south.

Say it like it is, find out why an initiative failed to get off the ground or just plain stunk (no pun intended), have a laugh and move on.

3. Scintillating conversation
Bring in a green speaker. It doesn’t need to be someone from Speaker’s. Call up the unlikely green heros you read about in your community paper that morning. I’m sure they would be thrilled to come and talk about how they donated solar paneled, hand-cranked internet-enabled $100 laptops to children in developing countries.

4. Step down
Finally, sometimes an idea deserves to die, if only momentarily. Let it. Sometimes, it’s time to delegate the green champion to best successor in your committee. Let go, if only to see your green team revive itself with new energy.

As echoed by Arthur D. Little: regulation, rising energy costs and increased consumer pressure on businesses are driving corporations to chose sustainable buying - and indeed, many start from a humble “green team” - to lower costs and build more valuable business practices.

Print green. Save a tree. And, look good while you’re at it. Learn how many trees, C02 emissions and waste water you can saving using Green Printer’s Eco-Calculator - with sources from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

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News byte: Why should we care about keeping our forests or more specifically, our rainforests anyway? What it costs says it well:

“Tropical rainforests help cool the planet by absorbing vast amounts of carbon dioxide and producing clouds that reflect sunlight and heat away from the earth. Experts say that between 25 and 30% of the world’s GHG emissions are the result of deforestation. The World Bank reports that 85% of Indonesia’s 3,014 million tons of CO2e emissions are caused by fires and deforestation, making it the third worst offender in the world for GHG emissions (behind China and the United States).”

Correction: Adsense for content was not produced by google engineers in their 20% free time. It was an acquisition of a Santa Monica-based firm. Orkut also arose from work outside the company.

“Don’t self-medicate—self-meditate” is one motto for this book (both online and off) on self-meditation which encourages us to reap the evergrowing array of benefits related to the practice of meditating.

Creatively drawn from spiritual practices from Zen, to yoga, Sufism, and insight meditation, this book touches meditation basics, mantras and koans, tips, and ideas. A pocket guide style book, it reminds us to practice our inner breath, that recharges us with energy and vitality. Often people believe the only way to enlightenment is in long drawn out meditation retreats, and while those are amazing, it really only takes time out to meditate a few minutes a day for the same health benefits.

From Amazon’s description

…hundreds and hundreds of meditation practices that can be done during the course of our daily lives. You don’t need to go to a mountain retreat, renounce meat, or walk through coals on the soles of your feet—here’s a meditation to have with a cup of tea….

Created by author Barbara Ann Kipfer, who also wrote 14,000 Things to Be Happy About, Instant Karma, The Wish List, Words of Wisdom, and more.

I own several of her books and will confess to reading them recently during long jury duty breaks, waiting in line and so on. The best part of these do it yourself meditations is that they are easy enough to remember when the going gets tough. My favorite spark of Barbara’s genius is in her happiness web tools which stream more of her wise sayings each time the pages are refreshed!

Editor’s note: Our friends at Low Impact Living point out 10 ways you can save energy this summer. This post was originally published on June 10th, 2008.

The heat of summer is coming, and that means many of us are about to crank up the AC, make an extra batch of ice, and generally burn energy like it’s our job. But we need all need to continue to try to conserve as much energy as possible to conserve resources and slow the march of global warming. And we get to save money at the same time–woo hoo to that!

Here are the ten things we can all do at home to cut our energy consumption. We start out nice and easy, then ramp up to some extra-credit methods at the end of the list for you Climate Crusaders.

1. Resist the urge to live in a refrigerator.

78 degrees is plenty cool in the house. Turn down the AC and get a programmable thermostat so you’re only cooling the house when you really need to.

2. Air dry your dishes and clothes.

The dryer and dish washer use a lot of energy– and the air does the drying job just as well. See some great clothes-drying racks here.

3. Take shorter showers and do not take baths.

Hot water heating is one of the major uses of energy in any home. Showers are the way to go– and keep ‘em short. Baths use much more water and heat than do baths (unless you’re taking 30 minute showers!).

4. Make sure you have energy-efficient lighting throughout your home.

Everyone has heard about compact fluorescent lights by now– but are you up to date on LED lights? Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have come a long way, baby, and they are often 10 times more efficient than compact fluorescents.

5. Ditch the beer fridge.

It’s amazing how many homes have two refrigerators. Please do not use more than one fridge. And if you have an old model, get a newer Energy Star model.

6. Use ceiling fans rather than AC.

They are much more energy-efficient and you can get very reasonably priced Energy Star models.

7. Get solar screens for your windows.

These screens cut 75% of the heat coming through your windows, but don’t impact your visibility. They are really great energy savers. See them here.

8. Plant trees!

Placing deciduous trees on the South side of your home is a great way to block summer heat, but keep the sun shining on your home in the winter when you need the warmth.

9. Spend one night each week in candlelight.

It’s romantic, fun and inspires new conversation. If you’ve got kids, how about turning off the TV one night and playing a board game by candlelight? Clue would be particularly spooky!

10. Use a solar oven for some cooking.

They really work! You don’t want that hot oven on in your house anyway. You can either buy a solar oven, or you can learn to make one yourself. It’s another fun summer activity to do with your kids.

** #11: For the truly hard core, here’s a great tip I learned in Africa.

If you don’t have or don’t use AC, at night you can wet a scarf or towel or sheet and lay it on your chest. The evaporative cooling effect will really do the trick for you. Sleep tight!

Photo Credit: m.gifford’s photostream via Flicker, Under Creative Commons License

A www.greenprinteronline.com dispatch

For all those days when you believe your green values aren’t aligned with your workplace but you can’t - or don’t want to - make the eco-entrepreneur step, here are some immediate action steps to try out at the office this Monday.

Remember: while many green teams start from humble beginnings, they can grow exponentially - pent up passion for green amongst employees can be powerful driving force.

For instance, one eco-savvy video games President started with an email blast to employees and 30 people (out of 90 staff) showed up for the first meeting.

Some useful tips to kickstart - and motivate - your office sustainability team:

1. Just get started no matter what! Find one passionate person to start the group and use money from savings to get the group going and moving forward.

2. Don’t turn people off by being a preacher. Instead support people for what they are doing. Find common ground. Keep it light, fun and inspiring

3. Once you start more ideas will follow. It’s always about learning.

4. Focus on the low hanging fruit first. Look at energy consumption and purchasing. For instance, it’s easy to switch over to a green office supplies company. Get your hands on easy to understand paper purchasing guides (”what does “tree free” paper look like anyway? Can I trust the FSC certification?”) from pros such as Monadnock. If it’s not easy, then it’s not fun and it’s not sustainable. Start with the easy stuff.

5. Concentrate on employee engagement activities that will promote behaviour change – things people can easily do at work at home or commuting like:

• cheeky reminders to turn out the lights as well as turn computer and/or monitors off when not in use;
• consider eco-friendly waterless printing;
• have numbers or contact people to who employees can report leaking taps and toilets immediately;
• reduce disposable food choices from coffee cups to take out green purchasing;
• recycled paper products;
• emphasize the four key areas to promote behaviour change including energy efficiency, transportation options, water reduction, recycling;
• show stats and tangible, monetary energy savings like Seventh Generation did in their cold-water promotion;
• post cool links like this one by Greenupgrader or PlantABillion.org Billion Tree Campaign from Nature Conservancy in an internal Green Team forum or list-serve to remind people what this effort is all for when motivation wanes;
• consider new kinds of cool products on the market, like this award winning paper by Neenha, which uses green energy and manufactures many brands carrying the Green-E, Green Seal and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification;
• show how good of a job you are doing to your employees visually - companies like Visible Strategies can help and;
• why not have your business donate money to bring green textbooks to local elementary and high schools? It’s a unique way to show your commitment to going green in your community and to motivate employees.

6. Last, but not least, reward good behavior with prizes, special events or speaker series and games.

Above all, keep your expectations in check. Green teams should prepare for the ebb and flow of interest. So, keep up the friendly competition and bring outside people or groups of interest in to help keep up the motivation.

Save trees, time and money the eco-friendly way with our recycled paper, sustainable printing methods and eco-calculator with Green Printer - more details at www.greenprinteronline.com. Now, wasn’t that easy?

You may have heard about folks out there who describe themselves as “hypermilers”. What is that, you might ask? Well, it’s basically just someone who gets more out of a gallon of gas than the rest of us. Not a little more, though, but A LOT more - hypermilers can often nearly double the EPA listed mileage for a given car. One of the leaders in the hypermiler movement, Wayne Gerdes, can get nearly 60 mpg out of his 2005 Honda Accord (EPA est 34 mpg), and once got 127 mpg out of a Prius (EPA est 42 mpg)!

We all can learn from what they do, for their tips range from things we all should be doing anyway all the way up to the downright crazy / illegal things that it takes to get up into the mileage stratosphere.

Some of the easier hypermiling tips and tricks are:

1. driving the speed limit,
2. making sure your car is tuned and well-lubricated with tires inflated at all times,
3. performing very gradual stops and starts (or picking routes that don’t require them at all), and
4. not using air conditioning.

What about some of the more aggressive tactics?

• Pulling in behind 18-wheelers or other large vehicles and “draft” behind them, much as a NASCAR driver will do before passing for the lead. The problem is, this usually puts you in the truck driver’s blind spot (dumb) and also requires you to tailgate (illegal);
• Driving much slower than the speed limit, risking fines for impeding traffic;
• Over-inflating tires (reduces surface area in contact with road but increases risk of blowout);
• Riding with one set of tires on the white lane markers (reduces friction but risks having a cyclist as a hood ornament);
• Shifting into neutral and turning off the car when coasting (dangerous, because it eliminates power steering and brakes), or
• Choosing not to drive in areas or at times of high winds (???).

Clearly, this stuff takes practice, planning, a bit of OCD, and a certain propensity to push the boundaries of legality and safety. Of course, the argument is that saving $ and the planet make it all worthwhile.

For anyone interested in reading more, here are a few good links with tips and descriptions of the hypermiling tricks:

• Edmunds.com has a good summary of the key techniques

• A pretty comprehensive list of hypermiling techniques (on, of all things, a credit card comparison site!);
• And, last but certainly not least, the place where it all started, the online forum CleanMPG. This particular post is the motherlode of hypermiling info, and this link shows photos of the many of the devices and technologies that hypermilers employ.

We’d love to know what you do to improve your gas mileage - please leave some comments!

Want to Become a Hypermiler or Learn About Eco-Modding? Read on…

• How to Get 70 MPG Out of a Honda Civic
• Get 120 MPG Out of Your Prius (Plug It In)
• Hypermilers and Nickels Out the Window
• 100+ EcoDriving Tips to get Better Mileage in Your Car
• 100 Tips for “Hypermiling”

Image source: CleanMPG.com Photo Gallery

Citing green hotels, coconut oil fuel for airlines and even recyclable golf tees, executives in one of the world’s largest industries say they are urgently trying to shrink tourism’s oversized environmental footprint.

But with global travel projected to keep soaring, and those very leaders still eager to expand their own ventures, some doubt such efforts can significantly lessen global warming and other ecological woes.

“There are no simple solutions,” Anna Pollack, head of a British tourism consultancy, told a two-day conference which ended Wednesday. “Tourism is both a victim of and a contributor to climate change.”

Online you can read the a lot guides about how to reduce global warming. As you can see travel is only a little part of the main causes of global warming.

Below, I list of useful guides. You can use to reduce global warming.

Global warming refers to the Earth’s air and oceans gradually heating up to a point that disrupts balance, a problem that is continually getting worse. It sounds like a problem too massive for any one individual to take on, but it really isn’t. Combining any few of these suggestions can make more of a dramatic effect than most people understand. The goal is to emit less carbon dioxide into the atmospher

The part of Global warming caused by travel, is especially the ecotourism, practiced in remote destination. It’s so because it requires the use of air travel to land is those countries.

Some times ago an airline company used to travel with biofuel.

IN February, on a chilly, clear Sunday morning, Sir Richard Branson, president of Virgin Atlantic, along with the co-sponsors Boeing and GE Aviation, lured more than 200 journalists to a hangar at Heathrow Airport near London to witness what they said was airline history. Over flutes of Champagne and plates of mini-bagels filled with salmon, everyone’s eyes were fixed on a 747 as it took off on the world’s first biofuel demonstration flight.

Never mind that only one of the plane’s engines used biofuel, and that was about 25 percent mixed with standard kerosene jet fuel. It was still significant, given that air travel is the fastest-growing source of global greenhouse gases, and the race to find an alternative to kerosene is now crucial. The biofuel used — a combination of coconut and babassu (a Brazilian tree) oil, which Mr. Branson pretended to drink that day like an island cocktail from a coconut shell — worked in this very small test. But even its developers, Imperium Renewables, are aware it could never become a substitute for what John Plaza, president and chief executive of Imperium, another sponsor, says is the 87 billion gallons of fuel needed each year to fly the world’s airline fleet.

“This is just a first-generation product,” Mr. Plaza said. “But the test was meaningful in that it showed that a biofuel was viable with the infrastructure in a commercial jet.” Imperium created the fuel from oils harvested from existing plantations, but Mr. Plaza said he believed that algae was the fuel of the future. “You would only need the landmass of West Virginia,” he said, “to make enough fuel to replace aviation’s demand for kerosene.”

So I’m not scared about the future, because change is happened. I think that most airlines will become more green so traveling in foreign countries will be less environmental damaging.

In last week’s Sunday New York Times Magazine (4.20.08), Pollan wrote a provocative essay, “Why Bother? Looking for a few good reasons to go green.” In it, he wrestles with those lurking questions about our everyday choices to stave off global warming. Some excerpts:

Let’s say I do bother, big time. I turn my life upside-down…, but what would be the point when I know full well that halfway around the world there lives my evil twin, some carbon-footprint doppelgänger in Shanghai or Chongqing who has just bought his first car (Chinese car ownership is where ours was back in 1918), is eager to swallow every bite of meat I forswear and who’s positively itching to replace every last pound of CO2 I’m struggling no longer to emit. So what exactly would I have to show for all my trouble?

He looks at the reasons we find for not doing anything: “There are so many stories we can tell ourselves to justify doing nothing,” he writes.

And yet, he resoundingly concludes that those little things are worth the bother.

Why? …. The Big Problem is nothing more or less than the sum total of countless little everyday choices, most of them made by us…

If you do bother, you will set an example for other people. If enough other people bother, each one influencing yet another in a chain reaction of behavioral change…. Driving an S.U.V. or eating a 24-ounce steak or illuminating your McMansion like an airport runway at night might come to be regarded as outrages to human conscience.

Yes, you can make a difference. Pollan asks us to start with planting a garden. There are many more ways you can reduce your carbon footprint, of course. One is to choose food thoughtfully. Here are tips that will not only help the health of the planet but make you healthier, too.

Guidelines for choosing foods thoughtfully

We’ve never had such a variety or abundance of food to choose from. And now we hear about our “food print.” Do we buy cherry tomatoes from Mexico or tomatoes grown locally in a hothouse? Do we get the Granny Smiths from the farmers’ market or the supermarket? Is organic produce healthier for us and the planet?

These are very complex issues that require analysis of many criteria, including the energy used in producing and transporting the food, as well as the type of soil and methods of raising the food. Despite the complexities, there are some general guidelines you can follow that are good for you and the planet.

Eat less meat (eat low on the food chain). Your doctor may have advised you to limit your consumption of red meat because of its unhealthy saturated fat content, particularly corn-fed animals. (Milk, meat and eggs from grass-fed animals are both lower in saturated fats and contain higher levels of heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids.)

There are environmental reasons, too. Raising food animals contributes substantially to climate change because a meat-based diet requires more land, energy and water than a plant-based one.

Pollan sums up this principle in his book In Defense of Food: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” (Read an interview with the author in a New York Times blog.)

Eating less meat and more grains and vegetables helps reduce:

• the need to convert forests or grasslands to pasturelands,
• the amount of corn grown for feed (which lessens the amount of fossil fuels used to grow the corn), and
• greenhouse gas emissions from manure (see Farm Animals and Methane).

Buying local may be, but is not always, climate-friendly. We often hear about the benefits of eating locally grown fruits and vegetables, and there are many. They include:

• Less transit, less oil (maybe). The average American meal travels 1,500 miles meal travels from field to mouth — so locally grown foods often (but not always) use much less oil in transport than the foods that make up a conventional American meal. For example, if the state of Iowa shifted just 10 percent of fruits and vegetables from conventional to regional or local food systems, it would reduce CO₂ emissions by about 7 million pounds, according to the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture.
• Better tasting than produce shipped from afar. Locally grown fruits and vegetables can be picked at peak ripeness and may be higher in nutrients. Spinach, for example, loses nutrients at certain temperatures and after several days in storage.

So buyer beware: Use common sense and ask lots of questions when purchasing items.

Things to watch for:

• Energy-intensive local production (such as tomatoes grown in a hothouse that requires energy for heating) may produce more global warming pollution than efficiently producing and shipping foods from farther away.
• Differences in transportation methods—by ship or plane, for example—can also cause greenhouse gas emissions to differ widely even when a food is transported the same distance (see Food Miles: Is Local Always Better?).

Choose less-processed foods. Heavily processed foods tend to be low in fiber and high in fat and sugar. They often contain lots of dyes, colorings, and preservatives that aren’t great for your health. And all that processing uses a lot of energy.

Getting your food from field to table requires multiple steps, including processing the whole food into a refined product, which then may be used as an ingredient in another food product. Still more energy is needed to package and ship the final product to retailers.

More steps in processing generally means more intensive energy use. Take a bottle of ketchup. Tracking a common brand of ketchup sold in Sweden through the 50-plus steps to produce it revealed steep energy and environmental costs, particularly from the processing and packaging steps.

Avoid heavily packaged foods and buy in bulk. Processing and packaging together take nearly a quarter of the energy used in food production. Choose minimally packaged foods or those in the biggest containers available. Fresh fruits and vegetables, of course, are usually not packaged at all (shun those Styrofoam containers!), and they are healthy choices.

Buying organic has benefits, too. Whether growing organic food versus conventionally grown food produces less global warming pollution overall is hotly debated, and the jury is still out. How much the soil is tilled, how much greenhouse gas the soil retains or releases, what type of food is raised (fruits and vegetables, grains, milk or chickens) — these are some factors that must be considered. Still, there are clear pluses for your health and for the environment.

The health benefits of going organic include:

• Organic foods are grown without synthetic pesticides and fertilizers so you reduce your exposure to hazardous chemicals.
• Organic produce is often richer in nutrients and antioxidants, evidence suggests.

The ecological upsides of growing food organically include:

• Less pollution. Fertilizer and pesticide runoff pollutes rivers and streams and washes into bays and ocean, causing oxygen-starved dead zones where fish can’t live.
• Less energy consumed to produce chemicals. A hefty chunk of energy goes into producing agricultural pesticides and fertilizers, by some estimates as much as 40 percent of the energy used in the food system.
• More biodiversity. Using natural methods to enrich the soil and control pests promotes more variety of organisms.

You also help spur demand for organic foods by buying them. This in turn prods farmers to grow food without harsh chemicals. All your food choices together can have a profound effect on your carbon footprint, as much as the type of car you drive.

More things you can do

• Get more tips for a healthy, low-carbon life.
• Learn more about how your diet can affect global warming.

If the five easy steps in this video are not enough for you, then take a look at this list from Seoul’s 2008 Earth Day organizers of ten more ways to go green, Korean style.

1. Shop only for things you need
2. Create less trash
3. Eat when you are hungry, not when you’re bored
4. Try a vegetarian diet
5. Eat less “ready-made” food
6. Showering only when you need to
7. Do laundry only when you need to
8. Don’t drive a car
9. Use less electricity
10. Tell others about environmentally conscious lifestyles

Links from the video:

Roots & Shoots, USA

Roots & Shoots, Korea

ImaginePeace.or.kr

Beautiful Store

Links to Korean environmental and social interest organizations:

LOHAS Korea

Green Korea United

Friends of Asia

Come join the discussion!

All entrepreneurs are interested in saving money and operating efficiently.

Eco-entrepreneurs also want to do so in a way that benefits the planet.

Perhaps because our companies’ missions, products and services are creatively and often elegantly eco, we find unique ways of doing that.

Take a look at some of Green Options ecopreneurs’ ideas on how to create an eco-office!

Tip o’ the Day: Please Consider the Environment Before Printing This Email

Make The Move To The Green Office

Switch off your PC when not using it

Daily Tip: Easy Steps Towards a Greener Office

7 easy tree-lovin’ office tips to cut out deforestation’s 25% contribution to global warming

What other tips do you have to share? Post your comment here or grab a journal and start publishing your own insights

He also readily admits, with a signature askew smile and hearty laugh, that “being an academic is possibly the worst possible preparation for the business world,” and endorses a strong marketing presence in any renewable energy start up because the engineers “can’t seem to understand why somebody wouldn’t want this marvelous invention!”

It’s 7:52pm Wednesday night at the venture capital-esque forum put on by the VEF on CEO War Stories.

MacDonald just finished sharing the Day4 Energy IPO success story and divulged his peak oil predictions (”2012-2015 if you are a pessimist”). Question period is on.

The bean counters in the crowd ask about share dilution to which both MacDonald and fellow panelist Richard MacKellar, former CEO of Brightside Technologies (bought by Dell Inc.) answer “significant” and “don’t expect to get majority ownership in the renewable energy business — it’s just not possible.”

From the back, a keen, 20-something engineering Ph.D candidate piques with the question to the former MIT professor, “where do you see renewable energy going?”

MacDonald straights up and says that, “I won’t recognize the renewable energy technologies my grandchildren will be using … they will renewable energy systems, hybrids of wind, solar, thermal and others.”

He stresses that renewable energy products typically share one of two characteristics: they are either intermittent (like wind) or they are highly localised (like wave energy).

“Look,” MacDonald booms, “solar turns off at night!” much to the crowd’s amusement. “And, believe it or not, wind and solar complement each other; it’s windier during the cooler months and hotter in the hotter months.”

Sage advice. But how to put it into practice?

“Remember,” ends MacDonald, “start-ups require two times as much time and three times as much money or vice versa than you imagined. Be there for the long haul. And hire the best.”

Image source: http://timblair.net | Lights out for Sydney, Australia 2007

An http://greenprinteronline.com dispatch. 

Earth Hour is tonight, March 29th from 8 to 9 pm. The idea is to turn off the lights as a symbolic gesture that us citizens, business owners, uber-corporations (hello, Google’s black screen, hello McDonalds in Toronto saving 10 000 kilowatt hours) local governments and non-profit groups are taking climate change seriously.

Despite gripes that Earth Hour falls on the NCAA basketball regional, it’s lights out for over 23 major cities worldwide like Toronto and Bangkok.

Globally, landmarks like Sydney Opera House, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco’s Alcatraz prison and Chicago’s Sears Tower are also included in the event.

It’s been dubbed a WWF led “spread of soft fascism” and “a new-age, tooth-fairy delusion” by global warming skeptics (wow, they still exist?) and it has four million strong Facebook group following.

Whatever the goal behind WWF’s Earth Hour, it’s a positive message spurring many unexpected and inspiring actions like the {4 One Earth I Will} initiative in Vancouver, where local residents make a visual pledge to take action on climate change.

What’s more interesting than the beaten “soft fascism” idea is that with climate change becoming the new religion, Earth Hour has all reminisces of a vigil - a “ritual devotion observed on the eve of a holy day”.

For citizen groups, businesses, governments and your neighbors, it’s more than just sitting in the dark, it sends a message that “yes we take climate change seriously”.

So, keeping in line with the theme of buying local to reduce emissions, us Vancouverites at Green Printer want to give kudos to local businesses for flicking off, including:

1. Telus

2. BC Hydro

3. Small Energy Group - tracking the energy usage

4. Raincity Grill

5. Better Business Bureau of Vancouver Island

6. Jawl Properties Ltd.

7. Orion Homes Ltd.

8. Morguard Investments Ltd

And, it’s not just business, its entire communities too, who are taking action.

The 170 residents in the northern B.C., Canada town of Hartley Bay are taking Earth Hour’s mandate a step further and turning off their power generator for the hour. “No heat. Not lights. No nothing,” said Hartley Bay Coun. Cameron Hill, a member of the Gitga’at First Nation.

Save trees, time and money the climate friendly way with our recycled paper, sustainable printing methods and eco-calculator with Green Printer - more details at http://greenprinteronline.com. Now, wasn’t that easy?

1.Don’t think of things as being “off limits.” Some things haven’t changed since childhood. When we tell ourselves we can’t have it, it often makes us want it more. Remember that each meal you consume is a choice, and you will feel empowered to pursue the best choice possible.

2. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. I often hear people say “I could never be vegan because I couldn’t give up cheese.” Or bacon, or ice cream, or some other food. OK, so then give up everything but that. The Veggie Police will not come and arrest you if you indulge in a sustainably raised piece of fish every now and then.

3. Go veggie when you’re dining out. One commenter on my last post said she knows where her food comes form when she cooks at home, but not necessarily when she’s in a restaurant. Try eating vegetarian for your next meal away from home.

4. Go veggie when you’re cooking at home. On the other hand, depending where you live, it may be difficult to find vegetarian dishes at some dining establishments. Or you may find yourself in a social situation with few options. So go veggie at home, where you control the menu, and omni when you’re out.

5. Do it with a buddy. I had always thought veganism would be too difficult, until I met my vegan husband. But having someone who knew the best places in town to eat, helped me learn nutritional information, and happily tried my new recipes certainly helped my transition.

6. Join a group. Many cities and towns have vegetarian societies or groups that have meetups. Do a Google search for one in your area. I also recently learned of Vegifide — a vegetarian social networking site where you’ll find no shortage of advice and support.

7. Stick with what’s comfortable. If words like tempeh or quinoa scare you, then go for the things you already like that are vegetarian, like pasta dishes, black bean burritos, or hummus. I was once a tofu-phobe, and now I can’t get enough of it. Your tastes also change over time.

8. If you can’t cut it out, cut down the quantity. If you really want meat with your potatoes, cook only a small portion, but pile on the side dishes. Every little change helps.

9. Sneak it in. I switched to soy milk long before I went vegan simply because it lasted so much longer in my fridge! If you’re using it for baking, in mashed potatoes, or other dishes in smaller quantities, you won’t taste the difference. Same thing goes for butter — try cooking with olive oil or margarine instead.

10. Go at your own pace. Nobody says you have to go cold turkey (or in this case, I suppose it should be cold Tofurkey). Start with one vegetarian day a week, then ease into two or three, etc. It’ll only get easier as you go. Set goals for yourself. And when you reach them, reward yourself with a veggie meal in a great restaurant! (If you’re in the SF or NY area I can make a few suggestions.)

If you have any tips or questions on incorporating more veggie options into your diet, I’d love to hear from you in the comments. You can also check out the recent discussion in the Green Options Forum on Green Health, Food, and Lifestyle.

Image source | www.jiinjoo.com

An http://greenprinteronline.com dispatch.
When asked: how “green” are you, the brains behind accounting, IT and architectural firms who, kudos to them – both the closet greens or eco-warriors who proudly bear their eco-badge on their sleeve – jump up to say that they are helping their clients drive sustainability solutions.

Even lawyers are realizing their impact on their environment. No seriously, lawyers are sharp enough to know that using all that virgin paper cannot be good to the environment.

But when it comes to driving internal sustainability initiatives? Many still respond by: “we recycle”. Period.

A challenge? Entrepreneurs and businesses see opportunity to market and sell to the hot, relatively economically resistant and (not so new) marketing target market: the professional services market.

I say “not so new” because it relates to green business to business marketing.

But, the fact is, getting all professional partners to agree to a sustainability policy – let along all those brilliant minds in one room – is no easy task.

For other emerging trends about marketing to consumers and companies buying into the sustainability lifestyle, David B. Bohl makes a very interesting case for tracking trends in the luxury travel industry. Bohl suggests that trends that may start out in the luxury market have a habit of making their way into other demographic markets as well.

“Like luxury travelers, other consumers realize that not only is time money, but money is time. And we’re willing to spend our money on time.”

The opportunities
1. Make your pitch.
Happier and more productive employees. Willard, author of The NEXT Sustainability Wave: Building Boardroom Buy-In estimated that productively – which went up 10.50% amongst companies that adopted sustainability practices – is the biggest financial benefit of “going green” and ultimately creating a more socially vibrant workplace (think: the three “pillars” of sustainability).

2. Then, it’s about values.
“People want to work for companies that have strong values and care about sustainability,” says Madeline Turnock, vice president of Hill & Knowlton, a public-relations consultancy in Portland, Oregon.

3. Win through showing simple actions, never words.
It can start with something as simple as paper and move towards energy use, carpooling and retrofitting.

Paper
Forest Ethics estimated that largely due to deforestation, junk mail manufacturing creates as much greenhouse gas emissions annually as 3.7 million cars. Corporations and SMEs, I’m betting, are getting their fair share of junk mail every day. So, the EcoEco tireless creatives behind the Red Dot Campaign point us in the right direction and we at Green Printer use recycled paper exclusively (with the funky Eco-Calculator, of course) and print with dry offset printing - the eco-friendly choice.

Carpooling
Make it fun – sign up the dry humoured Accountant and mile-a-minue Marketing Manager in a car. You can also go more organized and still be green(er) with potentially less conflict by signing on to Car Share or Zip Cars.

Retrofitting, insulation, smart energy controls and more
Home ideas fit for the office – and WWF’s the Good Life measures it in terms of actual kilograms per year of greenhouse gases reduced.

Environmental action teams
Action teams that are actually fun to be a part of (think: setting up a cool “water cooler” spot where staff can have fun raiding the company’s locally sourced and healthy “junk food” rack), letter writing parties to get green laws legislated and even “change through challenge” as pointed out by Marilyn Gardner of the Christian Science Monitor on the always sharp Vancouver Green Business Journal.

Worth quoting in the article is Patricia Bjerrisgaard, a senior director at Business Objects, a software firm in Vancouver, British Columbia, who suggests that people also want to work for companies that ask for their green ideas.

“Anytime employees make a suggestion and vote on it, and the company acts on it, that’s really powerful in terms of building pride in the workplace”.

We’re in.