Earth Day at AOL

This morning AOL employees were treated to a re-usable green bag on our chairs, along with a note wishing a Happy Earth Day 2009. Also of note, on the internal employee website, it says that AOL recycled 150 tons of materials last year and won the Green IT Data Center award for greenest internet data center.

AOL also launched a Green toolbar for your browser today. Download it at
http://toolbar.aol.com/green/

So Happy Earth Day everyone, plant a tree, clean a stream, change a bulb or use reusable bags. Then, don't just do it today, do it everyday!

Volunteer to clean a creek

I have attached some pictures in the picture gallery on the right side of the page to show the area where we are going to clean up on Sunday May 17. After taking a close up tour of the area, I am very glad we decided to do this, and excited to help clean up this area. As you can see from the before pictures, the area is full of trash, old tires, construction debris, etc.. From walking the trails made by some animals (I could see some deer tracks and maybe something else), the animal inhabitants of the area will be glad to see this stuff out of there!

So, I encourage everyone to look into volunteering and helping clean up the environment.

Dulles Greene Clean Up Day May 17

I will be coordinating a clean up of a stream and stormwater run-off area in Herndon, Virginia on Sunday May 17 from 10 AM to 1 PM. I have been driving past this site for some time now, and it as now become my mission for the spring to clean up the area and remove the trash, debris and other stuff floating in the storm water run-off area and lining the creek that feeds into it.

Here is a map of the area, and I will post some before (and then after) pictures of the site as well.

We will be coordinating this effort through Fairfax County and the Alice Ferguson Foundation, and they will be providing the bags, gloves and other clean up materials.

http://www.fergusonfoundation.org/index.html

Please join us if you are in the Northern Virginia area

Green Tech

Working in the Internet technology sector, I wanted to highlight a couple of companies that are putting their best foot forward for Green tech. Of course, Google is putting alot of effort, money and resources behind coming up with green technologies including helping the make the "smart grid" a reality. By creating an "energy Internet" all of your appliances and electronics can talk to the network and the electric utility, and turn on and off depending on energy consumption and pricing factors.

Article Here

AOL is also doing its part as well. AOL is a finalist for the Uptime Institute's 2009 Green Enterprise IT (GEIT) Awards for Data Center Energy Efficiency Improvement. The 2009 GEIT Awards program honors organizations that have distinguished themselves by reducing energy consumption in their data centers and beyond. GEIT Award finalists have gone beyond instituting established industry best practices to implement cutting-edge green IT systems. The Institute introduced the GEIT Awards program in 2008 to create institutional awareness that IT energy efficiency can enhance bottom-line profitability while meaningfully reducing overall corporate carbon footprint.

Article Here

One Household at a time

I finally just finished reading last week's Washington Post Magazine cover story "Can One Household Save the Planet?" by Liza Mundy, and I hope that people read it and realize it is harder than you might think to change behavior that has been engrained in us from childhood. But that it is also well worth it and imperative that we all make an effort to do the things that are in our control to help get energy consumption under control. If we start by doing these small daily things like change to CFL's, unplug un-needed vampire electricity drainers, and make our homes more energy efficient, they all start to have a daily impact, as more and more of us do it, but as we all start changing behaviors, energy conservation becomes closer to the front of our minds instead of in the back of our minds. And the change can become infectious, as we get friends, family, neighbors to start doing their part, and most important, we begin to instill these behaviors in our children from day one, and they will grow up and take up where we leave off.


See article here

Paper or Plastic Part 2: New tax on bags proposed in DC

I heard this AM on the news that Washington DC is considering taxing all shoppers that get a paper or plastic bag at grocery, convenience and other stores in the District. The 5 cent tax would go to help clean up the very dirty Anacostia River. While I generally support this to a) help clean up our local waterways, and b) to help promote the use of re-usable bags, alot of people may not bring their re-usable bags with them for an un-planned small purchase at the local CVS or Rite Aide, buying another re-usable bag is just more waste, so would force many to pay the tax anyway.

How about getting some more R/D on better ways to make a bag for practical use that is not so harmful on the environment, and in the mean time, along with a modified tax on paper and plastic bags, offer a 2 or 3 cent recycling bounty for plastic bags collected, just as some states do for bottles and cans?

Article Here

The Night The Lights Went Out in Vegas

On March 28 at 8:30 PM, many cities across the country will turn out the lights in honor of Earth Hour, including Sin City. 74 cities in 62 countries will participate this year, but none are as symbolic as Las Vegas. For all its glamor and over-the-top night life, it is refreshing to hear that the strip will look very different on this day (at least for an hour).

We can all do our part as well, so on March 28, 8:30 PM, turn off those lights, and get a candle or two ready to join a symbolic hand across the world.

Article Here