Upcoming Webinar: Learn Powerful Sustainable Business Tools

Forwarded to us from our friends at Interface / Bentley Prince Street:

JOIN OUR INAUGURAL WEBINAR SERIES: HOW SUSTAINABILITY IMPACTS YOUR BUSINESS

Hosted by InterfaceRAISE Managing Director Jim Hartzfeld, this webinar series will show you:

~How Interface became a world leader in sustainability
~How emerging challenges pose new business risks and opportunities
~How customers, shareholders, employees and the planet can benefit

Register For The First Webinar In Our Series

The Business Case for Sustainability: The Interface Story Featuring John Wells, CEO, Interface AmericasWednesday, September 1911 AM EDT

You'll learn:
~What sustainability is in the business context
~How Interface has turned sustainability into a competitive advantage
~Practical steps that every company can take to be more "green"

InterfaceRAISE is a strategic resource for sustainability education and guidance based on the dramatic metamorphosis of Interface, Inc., into a global sustainability pioneer.

Offsetting your Carbon Footprint through Renewable Energy Credits

2007 has been a watershed year for Guidance in terms of our environmental policy and the actions we’ve taken to reduce our impact on the environment. Guidance’s use of Renewable Energy Credits to offset the carbon emissions associated with our business activities led this Green Team member to wonder how I could become personally carbon neutral.

The website http://www.begreennow.com/, a unit of Green Mountain Energy, provides a great tool called the Carbon Calculator that makes it easy to calculate your own personal carbon footprint in five easy steps.

I was surprised to discover it will cost me less than well under $100 per year to purchase enough Renewable Energy Credits to become carbon neutral.

Want to calculate your personal carbon footprint and take steps to become carbon neutral?

Click on this link – http://www.begreennow.com/redoffset/begreenreduceofset_cal – then follow the five steps below.

1) You'll be prompted to enter your electricity usage. You can determine the number of kilowatt hours of electricity you use by looking at your electric bill. Enter your monthly usage and the Carbon Calculator will multiply that figure to arrive at your yearly usage.

2) The Carbon Calculator will ask you to enter information about the number of cars you drive, the makes and models, and number of miles you log each year. Your work commute has already been included in Guidance’s carbon emissions calculation, so you only need to calculate the miles you drive in your personal time.

3) You’ll be prompted to enter some information about your personal air travel for the year. Guidance has already included your business travel in calculating our company carbon footprint, so you’ll only need to enter your personal air travel here.

4) You’ll be asked to enter some information pertaining to the amount of natural gas you use. Here again, you can get this information from your monthly Gas Company bill.

5) Once you’ve entered all the information, click the button labeled “Offset my emissions”. The Carbon Calculator will calculate your total emissions and tell you how many Renewable Energy Credits you will need to purchase to become carbon neutral.

Nothin' But Sand

Guidance hit the beach on June 30th as the Green Team spent the morning cleaning up Mother's Beach in Venice.



The project was a joint effort between the Guidance Green Team, Heal the Bay, and local Boy Scout Troop 108.

A huge thank you to all of you who joined in the clean-up effort. It was great seeing familiar faces and meeting new people too.





Particularly satisfying was the number of children who participated, and we applaud the adults for setting an example and teaching them the importance of respecting our planet.



We most certainly made a difference and left the beach in a much cleaner state than we found it, and had fun and good food in the process!!

A few statistics from the event --

In total, we collected:

28 Band aids/bandages

29 Plastic grocery bags

44 Balloons/ribbons

49 Plastic straws/stirrers

101 Plastic bottle caps/rings

Plus countless cigarette butts, styrofoam pieces, broken glass, unidentifiable plastic and paper pieces, as well as 3 articles of clothing and a bar of soap!!

46 adults and children participated !!

75 hot dogs and 20 turkey dogs were consumed!!

And coming up next...

Our next outing will be a tree planting event with the Tree Musketeers!!

Dates will be announced soon, so keep checking back.

The 11th Hour

Coming to theatres this Friday August 17th is The 11th Hour, Leonardo diCaprio’s feature-length documentary about the impact humans are having on the earth and what the film’s producers refer to as the “environmental crisis.”

If you didn’t know, diCaprio isn’t just a talented actor, but also a passionate environmentalist who is using his Hollywood clout to draw attention to environmental issues.

Despite the use of the word crisis, The 11th Hour’s media kit emphasizes the film does not paint a doomsday scenario, but rather attempts to offer "hope and solutions." Featuring a slate of prominent environmental activists and thought leaders, the film’s message is that “the time for action is NOW” and “most of the solutions are available now.”

As a documentary, The 11th Hour will be opening in limited release, with only two threatres in Los Angeles showing the film this weekend. If you’re interested in seeing it, here’s some info on theatres and showtimes.

The Landmark - 10850 West Pico Blvd (Across from the Westside Pavillion)

Showtimes: The film will be playing this Friday, Saturday,
and Sunday at 12:10pm, 2:30pm, 5pm, 7:30pm, 10pm each day

The ArcLight - 6360 W Sunset Blvd (between Vine and Ivar)

Showtimes: The film will be playing this Friday, Saturday,
and Sunday at 11am, 2:10pm, 4:50pm, 7:30pm, 10:20pm each day

For more information about the film, visit The 11th Hour website at www.11thhouraction.com.

Instant Messaging for a Good Cause

Members of the Guidance Green Committee recently became aware of a really cool initiative ongoing at Microsoft that makes it easy to contribute to your favorite social and environmental causes.

Tied to Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger, the “I’M INITIATIVE” gives a percentage of the ad proceeds from your instant messages to the cause of your choice. Since starting the initiative in March 2007, Microsoft has raised more than $35,000 for these worthy causes.

Here’s how it works:

• Make sure you’re using Microsoft Windows Live Messenger version 8.1. If you’re not currently using version 8.1 you can download it here.
  
• From your Contacts window, click the arrow next to your name and select "Options".
  
• Next to your name, type one of the following codes (including the asterisk) for the cause you'd like to support, and click OK.

To select American Red Cross code = *red+u
To select Boys & Girls Clubs of America code = *bgca
To select Humane Society of the United States code = *hsus
To select National AIDS Fund code = *naf
To select National MS Society code = *mssoc
To select ninemillion.org code = *9mil
To select Sierra Club code = *sierra
To select StopGlobalWarming.org code = *help
To select Susan G. Komen for the Cure code = *komen
To select U.S. Fund for UNICEF code = *UNICEF

It’s that simple.

So take five minutes today to choose an organization to support and add it to your Windows Live Messenger. If you’re not currently using Windows Live Messenger, you can download it by clicking the banner below.

Guidance Achieves Carbon Neutrality

Guidance is excited to announce that we have achieved a goal we set for ourselves in early 2007 to achieve carbon neutrality by 2009. We did it – a full eighteen months earlier than expected!

For 2007, Guidance’s purchase of renewable energy credits offset 100% of the carbon emissions associated with our business activities. The renewable energy source derives from wind and biomass production facilities.

Our commitment to utilizing renewable energy credits helps avoid over 99 metric tons – or 219,000 pounds -- of CO2 per year, which has the equivalent impact of not driving over 243,000 miles.

We are extremely proud to have reached this important milestone and will continue to look for other ways to lessen the impact our activities have on the environment. Our environmental policy, published as a Declaration, details the many ways in which we are working to reduce or eliminate our impact on the environment.

Acknowledgement and thanks goes out to Green Mountain Energy Company who worked with us to calculate our carbon footprint and secure the renewable energy credits to offset our carbon emissions.

Tree Musketeers: How the Provisor's spent a Saturday

My son Alex and I took a Saturday and participated in the Tree Musketeers "Trees to the Sea" event off the Imperial Highway median. The objective on that day was to spread mulch across a two mile section of the median; the mulch helps the trees by preventing weeds and trapping moisture. It was a hot day and a messy job, but our team spread 1000's of pounds of wood chips (mulch).

Alex felt great helping out and we met some very friendly people.



Tree Musketeers is a non-profit organization with a mission to help young people become leaders of environmental and social change in the Earth's Communities. For more information you can visit their Web site at http://www.treemusketeers.org/