Utility Tracking and Benchmarking Blog | WegoBlog

Last weekend, WegoWise took home both the 1st place and Crowd Favorite prizes at the Boston Cleanweb Hackathon. The event was, by all accounts, awesome, with twenty 
creative teams working non-stop for 29 hours “to create new web applications that address current energy and resource challenges”. 

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 one of our favorite beverages, looking at the good, bad, and delicious sides of it.  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.

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!

With spring upon us, many start looking forward to the fresh organic vegetables they’ll be soon seeing from farms in their area.  As the localvore movement has grown, demand for locally grown food has exploded, which has led to farmers and consumers partnering in what’s known as community supported agriculture (CSA). Before this year's harvest season begins, WegoWise is here to offer you an overview of this popular way to access local veggies.