Utility Tracking and Benchmarking Blog | WegoBlog

A vegetarian diet is a great way to eat lower on the food chain and reduce your carbon footprint.  Though I’ve always known that cutting meat out of my diet decreases a person's carbon footprint, I never knew by how large of a factor.  It turns out that becoming a vegetarian can have quite a large environmental impact!  A University of Chicago report, Diet, Energy, and Global Warming, compares the carbon footprint of consuming meat to that of driving different cars.  The authors concluded that a person who consumes red meat with 35% of the calories from animal sources (which includes cheese and eggs), when compared to a vegetarian, contributes an additional GHG burden equal to the difference in GHG emissions of driving an SUV as opposed to driving a Camry.  This difference contributes to 6% of the total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions!

Whether you want to be a more informed citizen or just want to kill some time before 5 on a Friday afternoon, WegoWise has got you covered. This week we take a look at some ways to green your home and office.  So peruse our best links, give us some feedback and be sure to share some of the info you just gleaned with other interested parties at the parties you are hopefully attending this weekend. Brought to you by Dan, Nate, Sean, Lily, Catherine, and Casey.

It is hard to think of the music industry and musicians as being green – especially when musicians travel from city to city on large buses, use tons of lighting and other visual effects, and their attendees consume large amounts of food and drink that in most cases, ends up in a landfill.  Additionally, the music industry is the second dirtiest industry in the world, which, according to Leslie Uppinghouse, the production manager of Austin’s South by Southwest festival, is surpassed only by the construction industry.  Every year, tour buses contribute approximately 150,000 tons of carbon emissions, a stadium performance can contribute anywhere from 500 to 1,000 tons of carbon emissions, and a midsize venue uses 470,000 plastic cups, 200,000 napkins, and 600 lightbulbs.  That is a lot of waste!

With Boston recently ranked as #1 Safest Biking and Walking City in the nation, we decided that in celebration we would revisit one of our most popular blog topics: the Hubway bicycle sharing program.  Launched on July 29, 2011 with 60 stations and 600 bicycles, thousands of Boston residents and tourists ditched their dirty driving habits, grabbed a helmet, and joined the movement to turn Boston into one of the healthiest cities in the country.  In just five months after its launch, Hubway members took over 142,000 trips across Boston - enough miles to travel from Boston to Los Angeles and back 23 times! These 142,000 trips eliminated 11% of vehicle trips and 42% of public transit trips. 

Whether you want to be a more informed citizen or just want to kill some time before 5 on a Friday afternoon, WegoWise has got you covered. This week we take a look at ways you can make your home (and bike!) green.  So peruse our best links, give us some feedback and be sure to share some of the info you just gleaned with other interested parties at the parties you are hopefully attending this weekend. Brought to you by Dan, Nate, Sean, Lily, Catherine, and Casey.

Typically, when people hear that their neighbor wants to install a wind turbine, they shudder as they think of a loud, large, bird-killing machine towering over the trees and obstructing the view from their back porch.  However, this doesn’t have to be the case.  Vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs) are a promising solution to moving towards renewable energy in residential areas, be it rural, suburban, or even urban. 

Battery-powered, electric vehicles are a promising solution to concerns over air pollution, peak oil, achieving energy independence, and climate change. But can our power grid support the increasing market of EVs?  With annual sales predicted to reach nearly 360,000 by 2017, many are concerned that the grid cannot support the additional demand.  However, the answer to the question is actually yes, our power grid can support the adoption of electric vehicles into the light duty car market.  What remains unclear is whether local distribution transformers will be able to handle the additional power load.

Living in a multi-family building significantly reduces an individual’s ecological footprint: less energy is needed for heating and cooling, less land and fewer resources are used to accommodate more people, and shared recreational areas use less water and maintenance resources than single family homes.  In 2001, the EPA found that a two-bedroom condo in a building with less than four units uses 13% less energy than a two-bedroom house.  This is equivalent to 79 gallons of gasoline!

Now that you’ve purchased your more environmentally friendly live Christmas tree instead of an artificial tree (see our December 8th blog post for the reasons behind this choice), it’s time to pull out that dusty box of lights and see which strands are still working.  Are some strands dead?  Don’t throw them out, recycle them!