While striving to bring light to the inspiring actions being taken within the sustainability arena, we here at Working for Green are also taking steps to lower our own environmental impact. We are aiming to green two
areas of our lives: Our seven team members’ lifestyles and our Santa Monica office.

The first step in greening our team members is to establish a baseline measurement of everybody’s ecological footprints. So our staff of seven (unfortunately we could not include our four-legged friends)
has each taken this fast and simple online footprint quiz, to reveal a whopping ecological footprint average of 4.74 planets!

We obviously have some work to do!

So in order to reduce this number, we have decided to adopt one new environmentally responsible behavior every month as identified by our sustainability coordinator. We will first be given a brief overview of
each action and learn about its relativism to environmental issues that we are facing as a globe today. We will then take a verbal commitment to adopt the action. We will each share our experiences at our weekly staff meetings. Our goal is to see a reduction in our average eco-footprint score in approximately six-months time.

Greening an office or work space has many possibilities, and the sooner you start in the game the more options you will have for choosing eco-friendly materials. Every day, more and more furnishings and/or building materials are becoming available in eco-friendly options and at competitive prices. One great online resource for learning about and/or acquiring green furnishings and materials is greensage.com. So if you are building an office or a work space from the ground up, begin to make a list of all of the products and supplies that you will be needing and then search the Internet for the most eco-friendly options of these products. To learn about the various toxins that are present in everyday products, visit ewg.org

Since our Working for Green office space is already in place, we have to accept our VOC-emitting painted walls and carpeting, but focus on the plenty of other exciting items that we can look forward to improving.

So stay tuned for ongoing news from the front lines of our office and team greening challenge!

We have compiled a list of items that we are tackling green this month:

A. In our Santa Monica office:

1. Switch to a green phone company that contributes to social and environmental improvement projects and organizations;
2. Sign up for a free energy audit from our utility company
   1. In the meantime, test overhead fluorescent bulbs to see if they are energy-efficient T8’s or energy-hungry T12’s;
   2. Change desk lamps from incandescent lamps to CFL’s. According to this comparative table, CFL lamps will use one-third the amount of energy as the conventional incandescent lamps.
3. Check to see if we have access to our office air filters. If so:
   1. Change these filters regularly
   2. Instill a regular-changing program on office calendar
4. Gain access to building’s janitorial services to promote the use of
   ecologically friendly cleaning products using cleaning recipes provided
   by the City of L.A’s Clean LA program, aptly titled Alternative Household Products (under Household Hazardous Waste).
5. Purchase bulk food items for the office (coffee sugar, creamer, other condiments);
6. Replace all paper napkins with cloth napkins that each employee will bring in for themselves;
7. Take advantage of the windows for natural lighting and air flow;
8. Get indoor plants that have been shown to reduce indoor air quality
   (EPA: Indoor air pollution as 1 of top 5 public health threats in
   America): Areca or butterfly palm (Chrysalidocarpus lutescens),
   Mother-in-Law’s Tongue (Sansevieria trifasciata) and Money Plant (Epipremnum aureum)
9. Office supplies:
   1. Purchase 100% post consumer content printer paper
   2. Switch to refillable printer ink;
   3. Purchase and use smart power strips for all electrical equipment
   4. Download ecofont to use 20% less ink during printing.
   5. Set-up three recycling bins for:
      1. Paper
      2. Bottles and Cans
      3. Plastic bottle caps (we checked Earth911 and learned that our city
         does not accept or recycle plastic bottle caps. So we are collecting
         and dropping them off at a local Aveda store or Whole Foods Store).
10. Set up a vermiculture bin for food scraps;
11. Use more paper clips and fewer staples;
12. Opt out of all junk mail and catalogs;
13. Opt for using natural lights from windows;
14. Opt for using paper clips instead of staples.

B. When traveling for video shoots, we will be targeting these areas:

1. Aim to stay only in green hotels, i.e. hotelmetro.com
2. Choose a carbon offset program to offset the greenhouse gas emissions from our air and car travels:
   1. The most important factor to weigh when choosing a carbon-offset
      organization is to look for a third-party certification.
   2. In addition, you should choose a carbon-offset organization based
      on the different projects that your offsets will contribute to. To view
      side-by-side comparisons of the various prices, go here.
   3. We are considering using Carbonfund.org because it supports
      domestic and international renewable energy, energy efficiency and
      reforestation projects and because it has been third-party certified
      and is competitively priced.