GOOD Water Decisions

A friend posted this great diagram about the water impacts of such things as coffee vs. tea (coffee uses much more water), beef versus salad, and from GOOD, "the integrated media platform for people who want to live well and do good."
Here's how GOOD introduced the diagram:

As we become more and more aware that we may be using water at an unsustainable pace, the idea of water footprints—the amount of water an individual uses—is becoming more common.

Water footprints can be hard to calculate, depending on how far up the chain of production you go, since everything you eat and buy used some water to produce (to feed cows for beef, for example, or to use in the factory that made your cell phone.

With our latest Transparency, we give you some examples of how much water is used in some of your daily activities, so that you can begin calculate your footprint and try to reduce your gallons.

To help put things in perspective, think about this: your standard trash barrel holds 32 gallons and a mid-sized passenger car—if pumped full of water—has room for a little more than 800 gallons. So, the difference in the amount of water it takes to produce a pound of chicken and a pound of beef is enough to fill almost two whole cars.

The diagram was created through a collaboration between GOOD and Fogelson-Lubliner. SOURCES: Department of Energy; H2OConserve; IEEE Spectrum; The Water Footprint Network

Attention Online Green Marketers

In a jargon-laden press release, Westlake Village-based ValueClick Media unveiled a new Earth Day sponsorship package to "connect green marketers with environmentally conscious consumers through exclusive access to highly relevant content in the weeks and days leading up to Earth Day on April 22."

Can anyone decipher what this means: "The sponsorship includes a high percentage share of voice on a custom eco-friendly shopping micro-site within Become.com in the days leading up to Earth Day, including a featured merchant logo, product listings, center hero image and content integration."

Not being an eco-marketer, this is obviously not written for me, but even so, it seems to include a lot of nonsensical terminology. Translation anyone?

Sun Valley CNG Fueling Station Opens

Being stuck behind a school bus belching toxic diesel fumes may become a thing of the past for those in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The second-largest school district in the country today had a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of a Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) fueling station in Sun Valley.

The station is the second for the district; the first opened in 2001 in the South Bay.

Currently the LAUSD has 40 CNG-powered school buses operating out of the Sun Valley transportation hub. It plans to add another 60.
With 172 CNG buses, the LAUSD boasts the largest such fleet in the state thanks in part to funding from the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

“As we replace our aging buses with new safe, energy-efficient, and lower-emission school buses, we will also continue to build infrastructures that support our greening efforts,” said Transportation Branch Director Enrique Boull’t.