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.

These days being “green” is really a must in some way, shape or form. We are all trying our best to be responsible outside of just marketing that we are. However, like us, you may often find yourself lacking the time and energy to research the latest green opportunities and developments. So we’ve compiled a quick list of our favorite green tools to share:

• MEASURE UP: Steps to a greener studio
• CHOOSE WISELY: Find the greenest paper for your project
• VALUABLE SPACE: Make the most of that press sheet
• HOT OFF THE PRESS: Locate a green printer in your area
• CALCULATE: Discover the impact of your latest print project
• VOCAB TEST: Terms and green certifications/logos explained

Do you have any more resources to share? Let us know in the comments!

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:

Read the rest of the entry >

We weren’t completely sure, so we tried some new things in 2009 to improve our overall sustainability. We’d like to share the strides made during 2009 and our goals for 2010.

If you haven’t been over to our Green Thumb page yet, we’ve been tracking our monthly progress on green goals such as recycling and paper usage. We’re happy to report the final progress (seen in the graphic above).

As you can see, we came close to most of our goals. We did a little research an learned that we recycled enough aluminum to power a TV 24/7 for over 100 days. By partnering with our clients to choose recycled paper on which to print their materials, we saved 26 trees, which would provide enough oxygen for 14 people for a whole year. The water saved was also enough for a year’s worth of drinking water for 66 people. (data via our friends @NeenahPaper) For more details, check out our Green Thumb page.

Read the rest of the entry >

How are you doing on your 2009 resolutions? (Sorry for bringing it up). If you remember, in January we started setting some goals for our environmental standards around the office. We’ve been keeping track of our progress here so you can see how we’re doing. We still have quite a bit of work to do in one month, but I think we will make it.

We’ve been surprised by some of the results of our efforts. For starters, it’s become almost second nature to incorporate new habits such as recycling and tracking the results. It really isn’t as hard as we thought it would be — so give it a try. Also, our clients have embraced our green stance and have been excited to incorporate responsible printing and design practices into their identity. Thirdly, our efforts have been noticed. The good folks over at Appleton featured us in their September Utopia publication. We were surprised and honored.

Don’t forget to check out our Green Thumb section, Designers Accord, and our profiles on Core77 and CSBA for more on our green stance. Look forward to a full report in January with our progress, fun facts, and helpful hints.