Every time you ship something, whether it’s a box of cookies or a great big couch, it creates a ripple effect that is felt all around the world.We’re partnering with Shiply to offer you our best green shipping tips so when you do need to ship something, you can do it with the least impact possible.

Where do all the impacts come from?

√ Shipping requires fossil fuels like coal, gas and oil to actually transport your item. Any time you burn fossil fuels you get air pollution. In fact, there’s a dirty air impact all along the transportation route.

√ Burning coal, gas and oil also emits carbon dioxide, which floats up into the atmosphere and creates a big blanket of CO2 that is causing our planet to heat up in the threat known as climate change.

√ Shipping requires packaging, too. In addition to the shipping box itself, there’s the stuff you pack in the box to protect your item.

In many cases, the “stuffing” is foam “peanuts” that are actually made of polystyrene, a chemical compound that is toxic to manufacture and almost indestructible.

Unlike paper, which will disintegrate quickly in the elements, packing foam stays around forever and ever. It breaks into tiny little pieces that pollute our lakes and rivers, then gets eaten by the fish we later eat for dinner.

It creates ugly trash.

It just doesn’t go away.

Shiply is doing its part by helping truck and van drivers fill up their empty vehicles with deliveries along their existing routes, thus reducing the number of empty vehicles running on the road.

To date, Shiply estimates it has saved over 33 million unnecessary truck miles.

This equates to around 11.7m kg of CO2, the same as you flying from London to New York 19,311 times.

You can use a company like Shiply that makes sure every shipping trip is full. But you can also do this:

Best Green Shipping Tips

• Choose snail mail, not air mail – Shipping overland by truck or rail uses far less fuel and emits far less carbon dioxide than rush shipping that has to be done overnight by air. Get organized so that you don’t save your shipping deadlines to the last minute!

• Buy carbon offsets. To compensate for the carbon dioxide impact of the shipping method you choose, you can buy something called a carbon “offset.” The offset is a small amount of money, usually not more than a few dollars, you voluntarily contribute to a project that is helping to develop wind and solar projects – neither of which emits CO2. Many companies make it easy for you to buy carbon offsets when you ship with them.

• Combine packages into a single shipping box. If you have to ship several things to the same address, put them in the same box. You’ll minimize the total amount of packaging you’ll use and save money on shipping costs, too. NOTE: Keep this in mind for holiday shipping in particular.

• Use reusable and recyclable packaging. Choose boxes and mailing envelopes made from recycled cardboard and paper (hint: it will usually be brown; padded envelopes will be stuffed with pulverized paper and possibly fabric, not plastic). If you need filler to cushion the package, crumble up old newspapers or junk mail.

• Reuse and recycle packaging. Open shipping boxes and mailing envelopes carefully so you can use them again; usually, all you’ll need to do is put on a new mailing and shipping label. If you receive a package that’s filled with foam peanuts, take them to a nearby shipping center and ask if they can be recycled.
• Work with a company that economizes its routes and fills up empty trucks. The most eco companies will do what Shiply does and fill up trucks along their routes to save gas.

• Reduce how much you ship. As with anything that has to do with the environment, buying/using/consuming less is the number one way to reduce impact.

You can learn more about Shiply’s system here.

NOTE: Sponsors enable us to provide you with great ideas that will help you green your lifestyle at no additional cost to you. Our editorial opinion remains our own. Thanks.

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Eco-friendly. It’s such a buzz word in the world of business these days. But the truth is, many people talk the talk but don’t really walk the walk – simply because they’re don’t know how to get started.

If this sounds like you, take a minute to read this post. With the help of sponsor CityDocs, I’ve pulled together 10 simple ways your enterprise can become a more eco-friendly company.

1) Switch to a Paper Free Office

Just think for a second about the amount of work that goes into making one single piece of paper. The pollution caused by logging. The fumes from factories. The toll that transportation takes on the atmosphere. So, why not do your bit to help reduce the reliance on paper, by switching to a paper-free office? There are many computer programs and systems that can help, plus the Cloud now provides invaluable backup for vital documents.

Don’t Miss: 5 Ways to Reduce Waste Office Paper

2) Outsource Your Printing

Even if you go paperless, you may still need some office printing done for annual reports, event planning, and other special documents. Why not outsource the process to an external company that has the machines capable of getting the job done with minimum waste? Working with a professional printer could also potentially save energy, depending on the size of the job.  Remember to print on both sides of a sheet of paper; print on recycled paper; avoid wasting extra sheets of paper within the job; and printing only the copies you need.

3) Encourage Cycling, Mass Transit, Carpooling, and Telework

Shrink your company’s carbon footprint by encouraging employees to get to work someway other than by their own individual vehicles. Can employees car pool? Use the bus or subway system? Why not encourage staff members to pick up a bike instead? You could even introduce a company scheme whereby you help staff members purchase their bikes, or set up some company accounts so employees can take advantage of local bike-sharing solutions. Of course, letting employees work from home a couple of days a week will also significantly cut down on the amount of oil and gas they need for transportation.

This Can Help: 5 Ways to Cut Costs by Shrinking Your Carbon Footprint

4) Install Recycling Bins

Every business, even the most eco-conscious, will have piles of rubbish to dispose of every day. Most of this rubbish will simply go into a bin, and then get taken away in one swirled mess, including food, paper, cans and plastic. If you install specific recycling bins for separate trash items, though, you’ll be amazed by how many staff members use them. At the very least separate office paper from other trash. If possible, arrange for food waste to be picked up and composted by a community composting program.

5) Create a Company Green Purchasing Club

Especially during the summer growing season, many farmers offer buying clubs to employers to encourage employees to buy locally grown organic food. The farmers will take orders in advance and then deliver the food in bags and boxes to the office so employees can easily take them home.

6) Change Those Lightbulbs!

The trouble with traditional lightbulbs is that they consume a lot of energy and don’t last very long, so you have to keep replacing them. Replace them with high-performance compact fluorescents or even better LEDs. They’ll save significantly more energy and money, and it will be years before you have to replace them.

Good Tips Here: How to Pick the Best Energy-Efficient Light Bulbs

7) Green Web Hosting

Web hosting is an area you probably don’t associate with environmental damage, however the amount of energy used by hosting companies is astronomical! Green web hosting companies use renewable energy and carbon offsets to minimize energy use, while still being competitively priced.

8) Share Office Space or Run a Virtual Office

Do you need your own physical office space and all the resources required to maintain it? Or can you share space with a like-minded company? Perhaps you don’t need office space at all, but can run a virtual operation.

9) Use Environmentally Friendly Cleansers

What do you use to keep your office clean and tidy? Most commercial cleansers rely on some combination of chemicals that can actually make people quite sick – from headaches and dizziness to nausea and worse. Replace conventional products with those that are fragrance-free and non-toxic. Most surfaces can be cleaned with warm water and simple, biodegradable, fragrance-free liquid soap.

Try Green Spring Cleaning with Plant-Based Cleansers

10) Educate Others

While your business might be environmentally friendly, the homes of many staff members probably aren’t. Try to spread your enthusiasm by educating staff members about the small things they can do. This won’t impact your business directly, but it will certainly help the world as a whole!

Do you have any tips yourself to be a more ethical company? Let us know in the comments.

The post 10 Ways to Become an Eco Friendly Company appeared first on Big Green Purse.

What can you actually do to stop climate change? World leaders are meeting this week in Paris to address climate change on a global scale. At Big Green Purse, we focus on what we ALL can do at home and in our communities.

One important step we can take is to embrace the science. There is now near unanimous consensus that climate change is happening. Scientists know burning fossil fuels like coal and oil releases carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. That CO2 creates a gaseous blanket that traps heat between the upper atmosphere and the Earth, causing our planet to heat up. Scientists also agree that nations must transition to fuel from renewable energy sources in order to stop climate change.

Second, we need to switch from coal and oil to energy that comes from the sun, the wind, and other renewable energy resources. Already, the renewable energy industry is growing faster than almost any other industry in the U.S. But we can do more, by purchasing wind power through our local utility company, by installing solar collectors on our rooftops, or by joining community power plans that promote solar and wind.

Third, we can help stop climate change by saving energy at home. Insulating our homes, using energy-saving light bulbs and appliances, using a programmable thermostat, these are all measures within our reach.

Ready to get started?

Climate Change: What It Is, Why It Matters

Top 10 reasons to take climate change seriously

Climate change impacts on our health, our homes, our families, and our future

How climate change makes poison ivy worse

Why climate change matters to women

How You Can Help Stop Climate Change

10 ways to reduce the climate change impact of your house

Save energy, stop climate change, save money

Cool roofs save energy & money, help fight climate change

Carbon offsets shrink your carbon footprint

One way to solve climate change: clean cook stoves

Best electronics create least e-waste, climate change

6 things you need to know about the Clean Power Plan

5 sure-fire ways to lower your energy costs

The post What Can You Do to Stop Climate Change? appeared first on Big Green Purse.

Here’s another in our occasional series on traveling the eco-friendly way. If you have a destination you’d like us to explore, please let us know.

Venice holidays bring to mind rich cultural history, beautiful scenery, and romantic attractions. But a holiday in this fabled city takes its toll. Over 50,000 people visit its squares and canals every day during the height of the tourist season, threatening both the built environment and the area’s famous lagoons. Why not plan an eco-vacation to Venice, Italy and lower your carbon footprint in this unique UNESCO World Heritage Site? Here’s how to get started.

Choose youth hostels and self-catering accommodations. These types of accommodations generally use much less energy than a typical hotel. Plus, they allow you to cook your own meals, so you can take advantage of food stands and farmers markets to buy delicious local food.

Locate near public transportation hubs. From trains to buses to water taxis, public transportation in Venice gives you plenty of ways to get around without driving your own car. Websites for most accommodations should indicate how close they are to public transportation; you should be able to find lodging within 15 minutes of a bus stop or water taxi stand.

Rent a bike. Though it is actually illegal to bicycle in historic Venice, you can enjoy the surrounding countryside on two wheels. Plenty of websites offer guided tours, or you can contact a local bicycle rental shop when you arrive. On one popular trip, you would take a water taxi from St. Mark’s Square to the island of Lido, rent a bike there, and ride along the Murazzi, a 5km stone breakwater that dates back to the 18^th century. To rent your bike, say Noleggio bici.

Recharge your phone and other electronics via solar energy. Rather than find an electrical outlet whenever you need a charge, use a compact solar charger to repower your mobile devices.

Bring your own reusable water bottle and shopping bag. It’s not unusual to see plastic bags and water bottles floating in the canals alongside the gondolas. All of this plastic will eventually end up in the Adriatic Sea, where it will add to the epidemic of microplastic that’s polluting the world’s oceans. Bring your own reusable water bottle, preferably one that comes with its own filter, and you’ll have good drinking water whenever you need it. Carry a reusable shopping bag, too, which you can use for groceries, souvenirs, or anything else you’d otherwise put in a throwaway bag. One that collapses into a little sac is ideal, since you can easily tuck it away in a pocket, purse, or backpack when you’re not using it.

Fly direct, and offset your energy use with carbon credits. In all likelihood, you will take a plane to Italy, which will burn a LOT of fuel. Offset the carbon emissions from your trip by buying carbon credits that will be used to support development of renewable energy like solar and wind. Flying non-stop rather than taking several planes is also more fuel efficient.

Other ideas? How do you minimize your environmental impact when you travel? Please share!

 This is a sponsored post.

The post How to Plan Your Eco-Vacation to Venice, Italy appeared first on Big Green Purse.

Unless you’re walking or bicycling to your holiday destination, you’ll be using some form of transportation that burns a fossil fuel. Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, where it forms a big warm gaseous blanket that hovers over the earth, creating something called the greenhouse effect. This greenhouse effect is causing climate change, which is one of the reasons why we have so many extreme weather events (like Superstorm Sandy, Hurricane Katrina, and perhaps the unusually early cold weather and snowfall that have already hit much of the U.S. this year).

It’s pretty hard to go day-to-day and not burn any fossil fuels, but it’s especially hard when we’re trying to get somewhere, since transportation depends so heavily on carbon-heavy oil. That’s true for you electric car drivers, too, since your electricity is ultimately coming from a utility that probably uses coal, another carbon-intense fuel, to generate power.

Even when you’ve done everything else you can to cut back on the amount of fuel you use, you’re probably still using some energy that ultimately releases carbon into the atmosphere That’s your carbon footprint. The beauty of carbon offsets is that they help compensate for the carbon you emit by supporting projects and technologies that absorb or capture carbon and other greenhouse gases elsewhere on the planet. In other words, when you support an offset project, it helps shrink your own carbon footprint while reducing the build-up of more climate change gases in the atmosphere.

What Are Carbon Offsets Anyway?

Specifically, a carbon offset is a certificate representing the reduction of one metric ton (2,205 lbs) of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. These emissions are the principal cause of climate change. In an offset project, every ton of emissions reduced results in the creation of one carbon offset. Carbon offset projects can be very expensive to build and maintain. Project developers sell offsets to people like you and me, as wll as to cities and big companies, to finance the projects.

TerraPass funds a portfolio of projects throughout the United States which are all verified and validated under stringent standards. In addition to the environmental benefits from their projects, they also support local communities by providing additional jobs and funds to rural areas; helping to improve air and water quality; and delivering renewable energy to the grid. (You can see their project portfolio here.)

Some projects involve forestry management, which helps forests sequester (i.e. keep, rather than release) more carbon. Others help communities build wind farms to reduce the need to burn fossil fuels. A dairy farm can install an anaerobic digester to capture and destroy methane, another greenhouse gas, that would otherwise be released when animal manure decomposes. This graphic explains carbon offsets perfectly.

What Do Carbon Offsets Cost?

Projects like building a windmill or managing a forest sound expensive, don’t they? And they are, which is why the project developer sells offsets: to help finance their construction and operation. But the beauty of the offset approach is that no one person pays for it all. In fact, because so many people are buying offsets, the price to any one person is really affordable.

For the holidays, TerraPass is offering consumers the chance to shrink their carbon footprint by buying Arcata Community Forest Carbon Offsets. With the purchase of a Holiday Forest gift, you will support the City of Arcata’s community forest located in California. The forest absorbs and stores approximately 2,500 more metric tons (mT) of C02 a year than neighboring forests, or the equivalent of taking 550 cars off the road each year. The purchase of carbon offsets is a critical component of the funding for the management of the forest, which is completely self-funded with no reliance on tax-payer dollars.

How Big Is Your Carbon Footprint?

You can figure out how big your own carbon footprint is by using the TerraPass Carbon Footprint Calculator here. (It only took me a few minutes to calculate mine.)

Once you know how big your footprint is, here are a few ways you can shrink it:

For $13.12, you can shrink your footprint by 1 mT (metric ton), which is equivalent to 2,205 pounds of emitted carbon dioxide.

You might not think that’s much, but it’s equivalent to:

* 5 Homes decorated with lights for the holidays
* 2,381 miles driven by an average passenger vehicle
* 113 gallons of gasoline consumed (the average car holds 12 gallons, so you could offset ten fill ups with just $13.12)

If you want to do more, for $59.50, you could offset 4.5mT of emitted carbon dioxide, or 10,000 lbs.

That’s equivalent to:

* 175 holiday dinners, or
* 1 passenger vehicle off the road, or
* More than half of the electricity your home uses for one year, or
* 15 holiday shopping trips, or
* 4 to 5 flights of 4+ hours, or
* 10,800 miles driven by an average passenger vehicle

Wow!

True Confessions

One year for Christmas, my husband figured out my carbon footprint and then bought me carbon offsets as a present. I’m not kidding! And you know what? I loved it! I really did.

Next Steps

At the very least, I recommend you calculate your carbon footprint. Even if you’ve already taken a lot of steps to save energy, an offset can help you do a little more.

And you know what, even if your footprint is teeny tiny, you might still want to support one of TerraPass’ offset projects because they’re so inspiring.

Take a look. And let me know what you do, ok?

The post Use Carbon Offsets to Shrink Your Carbon Footprint This Holiday Season appeared first on Big Green Purse.