Case Study in Shifting Green Savings
Going green is a process. It begins with the organization’s commitment and progresses over several events or meetings. The incremental steps are critical for your staff and constituents’ to accept and embrace the changes as being the new “normal.” The more diverse in age and the longer the attendees have participated, the more slowly you may have to implement change.
Sudden unexplained changes in the “way we always do it” that have not been pre-introduced to your audience have the potential to cause resistance and blow back. The unhappy participants then consume staff time and energy providing explanations and having to sell the change one complaint at a time. Change may be difficult for staff and participants, but a well thought out plan for staggered implementation that has conceptual buy-in from the organization’s members has a better chance of being well received by the participants.
Begin going greener at your meetings with concepts and practices that people are accustomed to at home, at work or are commonly used in their community. Most of these are basic eco-etiquette such as recycling, saving energy, not wasting consumables. Some practices are a return to how we used to do things before the era of disposable everything. Remember how nice it was to have china coffee cups at meetings?
What are the costs and benefits of going green? The following table shows the green changes a 7,500 person, 4-day conference could take and the financial and ecological impacts.
Carbon calculations are from the www.carbonfund.org website
Traditional Practices | Green Practices | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pre-printed handouts | Posting electronic documents on the conference website | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
100 sessions x 15 pages x 200 attendees @ $0.05 per page Total Cost: $15,000
| 100 sessions @ $15 per session staff time Total Cost: $1,500
|
Traditional Practices | Green Practices | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Serving water in individual bottles | Serving tap water in thermal containers with compostable cups | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
7,500 attendees, 4 days, 3 bottles per day @ $2.50 per bottle Total Cost: $225,000 (90,000 bottles)
| 90,000 cups @ $0.13 ea. + staff time @ $800 Total Cost: $13,500
|
Traditional Practices | Green Practices | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Plastic plates, cups and utensils | Compositable paper plates, cups and utensils | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
7,500 attendees, 4 days, 1 meal, 2 breaks per day Total Cost: $14,500 (90,000 plates, cups)
| Unbleached paper plates, plant starch, cups & utensils Total Cost: $28,500
|
Green Rules of Thumb
Assumptions:
- For every kilowatt-hour (kWh) of energy consumed, 1.6 pounds of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere.
- For every therm, 11.7 pounds of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere.
- Electricity costs .106 per kWh
- Natural gas costs $1.21 per therm.
If You:
Plant 1 tree and over its 40 year lifespan it absorbs 1 ton of CO2.
www.climatecrisis.org
Preserve 1 acre of rain forest and stop the release of 80 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere compared to if it were slashed and burned.
Replace 1 75 watt, 1,000 hour life light bulb with a 20 watt, 10,000 hour CFL bulb and save 880 pounds of CO2.
www.energystar.gov
Use an Energy Star desktop computer and monitor and reduce emission of CO2 by 1274 pounds over the 4 year lifespan. Most of the savings come from the monitor.
www.energystar.gov
Adjust your thermostat down by 1 degree F in the winter or up by 1 degree F in the summer and reduce CO2 emissions by 500 pounds per year for each degree.
www.climatecrisis.org
Skip buying a second TV and save 2,700 pounds of CO2 from the TV not being manufactured.
www.energystar.gov
Turn down the temperature on your water heater to 120 degrees F and save 8,250 pounds of CO2 over its 15 year lifespan.
www.climatecrisis.org
Switch to paper that is made of 100% post consumer recycled material reduces CO2 emission by 288 pounds per year. This assumes that the average paper consumption is 273 pounds per year and that 1 ton of paper with a post consumer recycled content of 100% emits 2108 less pounds of CO2 equivalent than non-recycled paper.
www.papercalculator.com
Recycle all your newspaper waste will reduce your annual CO2 emissions by 184 pounds.
www.epa.gov/climatechange