Earth Hour 2010 Recap

With its 4^th year under its belt, Earth Hour welcomed another 34 countries, totalling 121 countries, turning to the dark side on Saturday night. The greatest result was not so much the energy saved, but the conversations that were held all around the world. According to WWF, the Earth Hour organizers, it’s all about awareness of the need to conserve energy on a daily basis.

 The AusPen community gets ‘conversations for conservation’. The AusPen is a conversation piece, whether in pitching the product to your office’s purchasing department, or in explaining the environmental, health and cost benefits to students and colleagues. Thanks to all the AusPen advocates for spreading the word and working for conservation.

Below: 13,870 icons and landmarks worldwide turned off their lights for Earth Hour 2010

[image credit WWF, Earth Hour]

Earth Hour 2010: Turn Out The Lights!

Congratulations to everyone who has already participated in Earth Hour today and to everyone living in cities with it still to hit; please remember to take part.

This is a pretty amazing initiative….last year over 4,000 cities in 88 countries officially embraced it by switching off. Well-known landmarks around the globe went dark, such as the Golden Gate Bridge, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the CN Tower in Toronto and Rome’s Colosseum.

So pour a glass of wine and enjoy the darkness on Saturday night.

5 Tips for Turning Administrators into AusPen Advocates

You’re gung-ho about using the eco-friendly AusPen dry-erase markers at your school, but the administrators who hold the purse strings are a little blasé. Here are 5 tips for turning even the most indifferent administrators into AusPen fans.

1. Outline the savings that the AusPen has to offer. At a per-marker cost of between 20 to 28 cents compared to 75 cents or more, using AusPen markers is about 70% cheaper than using disposable markers. Cha-ching.
2. Tell the administrators that the parents will love them! By using a non-toxic product, you will be removing the harmful chemical xylene from the air the students breathe. Parents love that (and staff will as well).
3. Paint the picture of a product that does not have to be continually re-ordered. One AusPen kit is the equivalent of 246 disposable markers. That’s staying power!
4. Think of the bragging rights. Schools that significantly reduce their waste and make efforts to go green add value to their environmental education programs and earn respect from their community.
5. Tell the administrators that the teachers will view the switch to a non-toxic marker as an act of respect for their work and concern for the quality of their workspace environment.

Bonus:

6.  You can just about guarantee that numbers of school days missed will drop. Children with asthma lead the way in school absenteeism as they struggle with indoor air challenges.

All the best with your powers of persuasion!

The ethical consumer speaks

March 11 was ‘bottled water free’ day. I was revisiting some of the astonishing bottled water stats– see below for some of my favourite ones.

 If bottled water is on the ethical consumer hit list, then so is the thirsty Hummer. GM announced that the China-manufactured Hummer brand will be discontinued. With an average of only 9 miles per gallon (mpg), the Hummer came to represent over-the-top consumerism in its gas guzzling and carbon spewing ways. Sales dropped from 71,000 in 2006 to only 9,000 in 2009.

 It’s the age of the ethical consumer. On occasion, we encounter AusPen clients who have chosen the AusPen markers single-mindedly for the cost savings (which are significant for a school or business), but usually they are driven to make changes in their consumer choices so they can tread lighter on the earth. Our thanks to you!

 These are some of my favourite water bottle stats, found at the ethical consumer blog:

• for every bottle you drink, TWO bottles are used to produce it.
• The energy cost of producing a plastic bottle is equal to filling ¼ of that bottle with crude oil.
• NOTHING about bottled water is different from tap water – except its cost.
• It is estimated that Canadian bottling plants receive, on average, one inspection every 3 to 5 years.
• The City of Toronto checks its tap water for bacteria every 4 to 6 hours.
• According to the Pacific Institute, 17 million barrels of oil were used to produce the 31.2 billion litres of bottled water consumed in the United States.

Go-to Green Sites

Our thanks from Ecosmart Products goes out to www.planetgreen.discovery.com and  www.treehugger.com for highlighting the AusPen refillable whiteboard markers in their ‘Where to get green office products’ article. These two fantastic websites are amongst our go-to sites for all things green.

Earth Day 2010

Earth Day 2010 is coming soon. It’s a great chance to reflect on the environmental movement and the discourse and social action that has evolved over the 40 years since the first Earth Day in 1970. When I was in high school discussions about the environment focused on the hole in the ozone (so everyone started to shelf aerosol spraycans). There was awareness about deforestation, so we were told to plant a tree (how does the average urban kid carry out that plan?). And our contribution on Earth Day was to pick up litter in a park. Hmm.

Looking now at the activities of schools across North America, it is obvious that this generation is being instilled with a deeper, more meaningful and proactive understanding of what caring for the earth means. Kids help carry out waste audits in their schools, run the recycling programs, care for their rooftop gardens, design energy-efficient buildings, urge administrators to buy eco-friendly school and cleaning products (like, ahem, the AusPen), etc. Schools themselves are modelling stewardship by earning environmental grants and honorary awards for their gold, silver or bronze levels of environmentalism. A network of Green Charter Schools has sprung up in the U.S., with school names like, The Growing Up Green School, The Urban Assembly School for Green Careers, and simply, The Green School.

Clearly the environmental cause dates back before 1970, but what’s interesting to reflect on is the shift over the 40 years from the treatment of the environment as a topic of study to that of an attitude permeating lifestyle choices and civic involvement.

We’re looking forward to celebrating Earth Day 2010 and seeing continued progression in the years ahead.

Before the Olympic spirit leaves us…

Last week we blogged about the recycled Vancouver 2010 medals, and how, by using scrap circuit board, they diverted significant waste from the landfill. We can now look forward to the next Olympics in London in 2012, where the Olympic Stadium has been built with 52 tons of guns and knives that were confiscated by London’s metropolitan’s police and melted down. I guess you can say that concerning their recycling efforts, they’re gunning it!