It's not easy going green

A great article in the Wall Street Journal looks at the City of Boulder's efforts to reduce it's environmental footprint.

From the Wall Street Journal:

BOULDER, Colo.—This spring, city contractors will fan out across this well-to-do college town to unscrew light bulbs in thousands of homes and replace them with more energy-efficient models, at taxpayer expense.

City officials never dreamed they'd have to play nanny when they set out in 2006 to make Boulder a role model in the fight against global warming. The cause seemed like a natural fit in a place where residents tend to be politically liberal and passionate about the great outdoors.

Instead, as Congress considers how to encourage Americans to conserve more energy, Boulder stands as a cautionary tale about the limits of good intentions.

Read the full article here.

National Bike Convention?

In addition to the mass amounts of people walking the streets of Denver during the convention last week, there were also a lot of bikes.

A Boulder nonprofit cycling group called BikesBelong had several stations dispersed throughout downtown Denver, offering 1000 bikes for use during the week. Interested persons just had to present an ID and were provided with a bike, helmet and lock for the day.

Besides providing a transportation outlet in a city where cabs are hard to come by, the bike system provided additional benefits:

• A unique way to site see.
  
• A healthier way (from both an individual and global perspective) to get people where they needed to be.

The group will also be at the convention in St. Paul this week. Check out their website to find out more: http://www.bikesbelong.org/

Planes, Trains and Automobiles... Oh My!

I am an ETC who manages the CTR at LNT.

In a world without the three-letter acronyms, this actually means that I am serving as the Employee Transportation Coordinator (ETC), who will be working toward managing a Commute Trip Reduction (CTR) program for Leave No Trace (Leave No Trace).

Why? As one internal environmental initiative, the staff at the Center is partnering with GO Boulder and the City of Boulder to reduce the cost and carbon footprint of our operations by reducing vehicle trips and changing our employee behavior. In a town where 53 percent of its residents drive alone to work, and 80 percent of individuals who commute in to the town drive alone, a corporate carbon footprint is a big deal. Reducing employee dependence on vehicles is the key, but how varies from business to business.

To find out the answers for Leave No Trace, the staff is undertaking an internal assessment this week to qualify & quantify their personal behaviors & transportation patterns. Once individual responses are compiled, GO Boulder will be able to offer strategies that are available in our area, and conducive to our workplace's culture, like a pool bike program for errands during the day, teleworking, or Eco Passes for the bus system.

We'll keep you posted on what we find out, and where we will go next!