Conservation tips

Weekend driving can still emit tons of carbon (pun intended) By: Lauren Rosenberg TerraPass offsets all emissions generated from all employee travel and commutes to our headquarters in downtown San Francisco each year. Most of us are carbon footprinting geeks, always eager to calculate our personal carbon footprints, from activities like weekend driving, flying, and home energy use, to make… read more →

We seem to have an obsession here on combating “vampire power” (or at least writing about it in the past but it looks like we might run out of things to say soon*. *Well... as soon as this gets developed since it’s still only a product in concept. The PumPing Tap is a spring-loaded electrical socket that physically ejects a… read more →

Call me (Mrs.) Scrooge, but the holiday season (that is to say, the commercialization of the holidays) gets me a little bit crankypants because of the way everything is referred to as a “tradition.” Especially when some of these traditions have real environmental impacts. First, you’ve got the tree. For those who are behind the times on the “live vs.… read more →

I spent the earlier part of last week attending a conference for university sustainability officers. The annual AASHE (Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education) conference attracts over 2,000 people, a mid-sized gathering. Like many other conferences, AASHE has an “Expo” - a place for sponsors to showcase their products. This year, as I came back from it,… read more →

We’ve written posts before about how cooking in large quantities can help you save energy. This time, we’ve decided to look into what to do with leftover food scraps. From infused vodka (see, greening doesn’t have to be a fun killer!) to bath soaks, reuse anything from peels to meat scraps to make economical and environmentally conscience use of any… read more →

We asked for readers to raise topics that they’ve been struggling with, and this week, the focus is on recycling, particularly on improving recycling programs in certain states. Footprint reader Katie wrote: >I'm in Pennsylvania and I want to read some discussion about ideas to fire people up about taking the time to recycle -- and for companies and hotels… read more →

I’ve had an aversion to Styrofoam for a long time. Many years ago at a summer camp, I went on a nature conservancy walk in Pennsylvania (about 20 minutes outside of State College) where the main lesson of the day was that trash doesn’t just disappear - it stays around for a very, very long time. On this particular walk,… read more →