Here at R29, we love being green. It’s something we believe is at the heart of responsibility in this world. We have been tracking our recycling, print usage, and carbon footprint for several years now, and in doing so have found that one area we could improve upon is electricity usage.

For example, the average American household uses 908 kWh per month of electricity (source). The average household in Illinois uses less than that – about 728 kWh per month. Last year our average monthly usage was 1,856.5 kWh (and the year before that was even higher). Now, granted, we have more employees with more electricity demand than a household has, but we don’t think we necessarily need more than double the amount of electricity, do we?

There’s only one way to find out.

In order to do that, we recently purchased an electricity monitor to help us in this endeavor. If we can get real-time feedback on our electricity usage, it will be easier to change our habits and reduce electricity waste (and money!). Current Cost made it easy to get up and running with monitoring our electricity usage, which we’ve been doing for about the past 2.5 weeks. Our electricity usage data is automatically uploaded to the web every 5 minutes for us to view. Each day’s chart has been overlaid in the image above to give you the average idea of how our power usage goes. In the past two and a half weeks, so far we’ve learned:

1. Our programmable thermostat is indeed working (we weren’t so sure)
2. It seems most of the spikes in energy occur because of the air conditioning
3. We have about 600 watts of power always on. If we could eliminate that 600 watts, we could save about $560 per year (although we can’t completely eliminate it, we could reduce it if we find what’s causing the drain)

And so we begin our journey into electrical awareness and reducing our consumption. Will you join us?

• View our live electricity usage any time here
• Consider joining us in our endeavor – we’d love to hear how your office is reducing electricity usage.

Earth Day 2011 is tomorrow! We all are grateful for our planet; consider pledging an act of green at the Billion Acts of Green campaign. As a design firm, one green act to incorporate in your projects is calculating the impact of your print projects. Check out Neenah’s Eco paper calculator here. Or, pre-empt your paper choice with a greener option by doing a super quick search on your favorite brands here.

Looking for some green entertainment? This year is DisneyNature is releasing their third annual Earth Day film: African Cats. Disney will donate a portion of the proceeds to savannah preservation where the movie was filmed.

This year’s Earth Day nearly falls on the one-year anniversary of the BP Gulf Oil disaster, which was yesterday, April 20th. One year later, the communities are still struggling to rebound after the devastating disaster.  Here is a great collection of recent photos from the region. BP is suing Transocean, the operator of the rig that exploded. But, on a positive note, all the fishing waters have been reopened, and life is slowly returning to a more normal state.

How do you celebrate Earth Day? Any green news or tips we’re missing? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Also, you can find out more about what Rule29 is doing to be green here.

Welcome to our 2010 installment of all things green at Rule29! If you haven’t been following along our green progress for the year, please check out our Green Thumb page for monthly reports on recycling and print usage.

We are happy to not only report our successes but be transparent about our challenges. The graphic above represents our little R29 forest that we’ve started over the past two years. So far in our tracking, we’ve saved 39 trees due to choosing responsible papers from our friends at Neenah and Appleton Coated. In 2010 alone, we calculated that we saved 13 trees, which amounts to 4,596 pounds of wood! While that may not seem like much compared to a whole forest, 6 of you readers would have all the oxygen you need for an entire year due to those 13 trees. So breathe easy.

Here is the full report:

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A few months ago I was sitting on a plane, having already perused SkyMall twice, convinced I had to have five quirky new gadgets that I didn’t need. But before things got carried away, I put SkyMall down and reached for the National Geographic, looking for something more interesting and perhaps enlightening.

And, even though I honestly didn’t expect it, that’s what I found.

Electricity. I take it for granted. When I flip the switch, I expect instant light. When I wake my computer up, I expect its screen to cast that cool hue across the room. When I plug in the coffee maker in the morning, I don’t even consider the possibility of there not being enough electricity to power up my morning brew.

But I have to admit, I have no idea how electricity gets from point A to point B (or where or what point A even is). All I know is that I pay the bill, so it better be there. Which brings up an important point. In this digital age, why do they still have to pay someone to go out to your house and visually read that meter? Doesn’t that seem a little… pre-internet?

The article brought up the fact that meters are still the same basic technology that existed in the 1920s. And the grid that supplies all of our power hasn’t changed much since the ’60s. And we are pushing it to its limits.

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Recently I read a article titled “How Green Is My Sneaker“. In short, it was about a software tool that has been developed to measure the carbon footprint of products—from the harvesting of raw materials to end-of-life disposal. Soon, an Eco Index is going to be instituted, meaning companies will display the eco-value of their products on their packaging. It will stand for a multitude of things—it gives the manufacturer a way to look at environment and human-rights impact when designing their product, and it will help shoppers compare how green different garments are. There are only a few companies that are taking the stand to show us their ratings, including Adidas, Brooks Sports, Columbia Sportswear, Levi Strauss, Nike, Patagonia, REI, Target, and Timberland. No luxury companies are involved, so trying to find the rating on that pair of Pradas probably will not happen any time soon.

Although this eco index will not be ready for the public just yet, it kicks off a new beginning towards an eco-fashion future. This is really exciting when you think about the fact that the average American population sends 23.8 billion pounds of clothing and textile waste to landfills each year, and according to the Textile Recycling Organization 95% of that is recyclable. I also was reading that ILO estimates that there are 128 million child labourers between the ages of 5 and 17 worldwide, 126 million of whom are engaged in hazardous work, and 73 million of whom are younger than 10. That statistic is ridiculous, I sit and think of my young nieces and nephews and it makes my stomach sick.

Yet, like anything, there are always drawbacks.

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