Tomorrow, June 25, is bike to work day in Colorado. Here’s some interesting stats to chew on as employees struggle with $4 gas and the snow industry struggles with some seriously crazy weather. Tons of companies around the country and industry are going to four day work weeks, encouraging telecommuting and carpooling. What are you doing to improve these stats?

1. 14: million Americans that take public transportation daily. (source: American Public Transportation Association)
2. 40: percentage of US reliance on foreign oil would decrease if one in ten Americans used public transportation daily. (source: American Public Transportation Association)
3. 79: the number of times safer that riding a bus is over riding in your own automobile. (source: Center for Transportation Excellence)
4. 855: the millions of gallons saved (equal to 45 million barrels of oil) from people taking public transportation each year. This is roughly the energy needed to power ¼ of all American homes annually. (source: Center for Transportation Excellence)
5. 20 percent: If one in five Americans used public transportation daily, the carbon monoxide emissions saved would be greater than the combined emissions from all chemical manufacturing and metal processing industries. (source: American Public Transportation Association)

Case Study: when REI was measuring their impact on the environment, they were concerned about the freight of the products from overseas manufacturers to their stores. They learned, though, that their FAR greater impact was their employees commuting to work every day.

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Tools/Links:
Know the impact of your commute to work (or play!). Use these calculators to find out how much it costs you in dollars and in impact on the environment by driving solo in your car, plane… or boat.
Commuting Dollar Cost Calculator: http://www.commutesolutions.com/howmuch.html
Commuting Cost + Emissions Calculator: http://rideshare.511.org/calculator/

Or use this one for your car travel, plane travel & home energy use impact: http://www.terrapass.com/carbon-footprint-calculator/

The one Jylle sent this week even tells you the difference between the different aircraft: http://www2.icao.int/public/cfmapps/carbonoffset/carbon_calculator.cfm#

This tool has all of the above AND will calculate the emissions from your boat: http://www.cleanairconservancy.org/calculator.php

If you are interested, use all of them and check out the difference in the number they calculate. Know that they are all estimates, and some of them are trying to get you to buy offsets to reduce your impact.

Tags: alternative transportation, commute, green, oil, oil costs

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 9:55 am and is filed under NEWS. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.