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These Come From Trees …. Promote Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

I saw this sticker on a paper towel dispenser and wanted to know more about it.  It seems this was a grass roots effort that seems to work.  From their website … ” … From our field testing, each sticker deployed saves about a tree’s worth of paper (~100 lbs.) a year. Crazy, isn’t it?” and saves about 29% per year in paper.

The idea is to use what you need but not more … many folks grab lots of paper towels (same for napkins) and toss most unused into a trash can.

According to the blog site there are over 10,000 of these at Starbucks and 10,000 at McDondald.  A typical coffee shop or fast food restaurant can use 1000 – 2000 lbs of paper towels a year.  I saw “mine” at a local Starbucks (I ask for my coffee in a reusable ceramic mug or my reusable thermos !)

If you are looking for a way to green your office or work site consider buying a few … !

 Be Green and make a difference.

Via:  These Come From Trees Blog LINK

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Posted by Green Dude on March 16, 2011 05:13 AM | Permalink|

Category: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

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The government should do more to help motorists reduce their transport fuel use, shadow energy secretary Meg Hillier has said.

As fuel prices look set to rise once again after the March Budget and as the Middle East unrest pushes up the price of oil, drivers could be forced to cut down on their driving habits.

However, Ms Hillier noted that using other forms of transport or using an electric car would avoid these issues.

“We can’t just keep talking about the price of petrol; we actually have to have answers about how we help people reduce the use of petrol,” she said, adding: “We’re already seeing more electric cars coming forward, probably more needs to be done there.”

According to BBC reports, while fuel costs are already at record levels, with unleaded petrol at an average 129p a litre, the price could increase to 140p per litre owing to movements in the price of oil on the stock market.

Posted by Emily Thomas

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Hundreds of global brands have pledged to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and end their part in deforestation.

Members of the Consumer Goods Forum, which represents a $2.8 trillion (£1.8 trillion) industry, made the announcement on the first day of the climate summit in Cancun, Mexico (November 29th).

The group will work to achieve zero net deforestation by 2020 by sustainably sourcing materials.

It also pledged to phase-out hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants – greenhouse gases more potent than carbon dioxide – from 2015.

By 2015, the forum claimed that HFC emissions will represent 9-19 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, although they have a small impact today.

Welcoming the move, Amy Larkin, director of solutions at Greenpeace, commented: “The Consumer Goods Forum commitment to eliminate these potent greenhouse gases shows what corporations can do when they band together for the benefit of the global environment.”

Environmental leaders throughout the world are meeting to discuss climate change issues and commitments at the UN summit until December 10th.

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Read more on The Norwich Bulletin

World Environment Day, 2008
Today, June 5th is World Environment Day, as established by the United Nations in 1972 to “stimulate worldwide awareness of the environment and enhance political attention and action” Further, from the official website: “On this World Environment Day, let us examine the state of our environment. Let us consider carefully the actions which each of us must take, and then address ourselves to our …

Read more on Boston Globe

Competition to reduce on-campus energy usage
If you turn your lights off and put your computer on sleep mode, you could win a pizza or an ice cream party and possibly more for your residence hall through an energy-conservation contest Nov. 1 through Nov. 19….

Read more on The BG News

See Also:Earth & ClimateGlobal WarmingClimateAir PollutionEnvironmental IssuesAir QualityEnvironmental PolicyReferenceConsensus of scientists regarding global warmingSmokeCombustionCarbon cycle

The Princeton University researchers assessed the climatic contribution of “carbonaceous aerosols,” fine particulates emitted into the atmosphere and commonly known as soot. Soot is produced by the incomplete combustion of organic matter and comes from a variety of sources, ranging from diesel engines and coal combustion to biomass cook stoves, crop burning and wildfires.

Soot has complex effects on the global climate when airborne or deposited on snow. It has two main components: black carbon and organic carbon. Black carbon is dark and absorbs radiation, thus warming the atmosphere; organic carbon is light colored and reflective, so tends to have a cooling effect. Their effects on climate are complicated, in part because they depend on how they are mixed with other particles in the atmosphere, and in part because both types of aerosols can cool the climate through their effects on cloud formation. Black carbon also warms the Earth’s surface when it is falls out of the atmosphere and lands on snow or ice, darkening it.

“Because of uncertainties in these many effects, and because of differences in whether and how these effects get incorporated into various models, past studies of soot’s contribution to global warming have ranged widely,” said Robert Kopp, a post-doctoral researcher jointly in Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs and its Department of Geosciences. “We took several key studies, put them all on a common footing, and assessed what emerged.”

Using four sets of highly cited but disparate studies that span the range of past estimates, Kopp and Denise Mauzerall, associate professor of environmental engineering and international affairs, attempted to reconcile and standardize the results into one, common global metric.

Their best estimate indicates that eliminating soot pollution from “contained combustion” sources such as diesel engines and poorly-controlled coal sources would provide the world with an additional eight years (with an uncertainty range of about one to 15 years) to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Conversely, if these sources of carbonaceous aerosols continued at levels seen in the 1990s, more aggressive reductions in carbon dioxide emissions than previously recognized would need to occur for the world to meet the goal of avoiding “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

“Unfortunately, most climate change mitigation scenarios used in policy contexts have focused exclusively on heat-trapping gases,” Mauzerall said. “This means those eight years aren’t actually eight years we can gain by cutting soot emissions; rather, our results suggest that we need to accelerate carbon dioxide emissions by about eight years relative to these scenarios if we don’t also act to reduce soot emissions.”

Not all soot emissions have the same effect on climate. Effects can vary depending on both where the emissions take place and what sources they come from. Black carbon that can travel to the Arctic and heat Arctic ice during the spring and summer months, for instance, has a stronger warming effect than soot confined to lower latitudes. Further, different soot sources have different ratios of light-absorbing black carbon to light-reflecting particles like organic carbon and sulfate; sources that emit a greater amount of black carbon generally have a greater warming effect. Reducing emissions from low-sulfur diesel engines and industrial coal therefore has clearer benefits for the global climate than reducing emissions from sources such as biomass cookstoves and crop burning.

“But effects on global climate aren’t the only reason to reduce soot emissions,” Mauzerall cautioned. “The public health case for reducing emissions of fine particles, including soot, is unequivocal, and aerosol pollution can have significant regional climate effects. For instance, soot pollution from India and China that is transported to the Himalayan glaciers can enhance glacier melting and hence influence water supplies in India, China and Bangladesh — potentially contributing to increased flooding in some regions in the short-term and reduced water availability in the longer term .”

Whereas carbon dioxide emissions tend to increase with income, some of the largest soot sources are in middle-income countries. In 1996, for example, China and India are believed to have accounted for about 40 percent of global black carbon emissions.

“Because some of the largest sources are in middle-income countries, and because the co-benefits of soot emission reductions can be felt quickly locally, black carbon reductions could serve as a catalyst for engaging these countries in climate change mitigation efforts,” Mauzerall suggested.

The wide range in the study’s estimate of the soot contribution to warming emphasizes the need for further research. “There’s a great deal of uncertainty remaining, both in the inventories of aerosols emissions and in the physical processes — particularly those involving cloud formation — by which aerosols affect climate,” said Kopp, who is currently a AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow in Washington, D.C.

The study just published in PNAS grew out of a fall 2008 Woodrow Wilson School graduate policy workshop that was led by Mauzerall and for which Kopp provided technical expertise. 

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Fleets could reduce their fuel consumption and cut down on carbon dioxide emissions by making simple changes to their vans.

According to recent research conducted by TNO and CE Delft on behalf of Transport and Environment, new vans could be up to 16 per cent more fuel efficient and ten per cheaper to buy.

These reductions could be achieved simply by using smaller engines and reversing the amount of fuel needed by the vehicles.

The news comes as the Toyota Hybrid Synergy Drive has been named Green Engine of the Year for 2010.

Toyota has claimed that this is the fourth time in five years that the engine has been awarded the prize.

Auris Hybrid is one of Toyota’s models to feature the engine.

Singing the car’s praises, the judges said that the vehicle is “the essence of mechanical, electric and electrical ingenuity in one affordable package”.

They added that it is “still the best green technology available on the market – reliable and durable, with very low real life carbon dioxide emissions

Posted by Fiona Smith

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