More than a quarter of our staff commute to work by walking, biking, or taking a bus. We keep a compost bucket in the office. We take regular “trash walks” during business hours to pick up litter in our area. When we’re away from the office (as we all are these days), we make sure to turn down the heat or air conditioning depending on the season. And if anybody leaves the light on in a conference room, they are promptly tarred and feathered (in a fun metaphorical way of course). Other green items in the works are purchasing toilet paper made from recycled fibers, installing air hand dryers to take the place of paper (our electricity comes exclusively from green sources), and using all-natural cleaning products.

Hardly a day goes by without some team member telling us all about some new way they discovered to help save the planet. Chelsea is converting to a no-plastic lifestyle. Jesse regularly donates to The Fruit Tree Planting Foundation. Becky rarely walks a beach without relieving it of some litter. Sabrina repurposes glass jars as plant pots, leftover containers, and desk organizers (reusing > recycling). Violet brings her own containers shopping and chooses bulk over prepackaged products. Rob keeps more than fifteen thriving plants in a 295 square foot apartment. Steve hoofs it to work every day from the East End. And we all guilt one another about all the things that we should be doing but aren't.

How green can we be? Can we go all the way, so that our activities as a digital agency have no negative impact on the environment whatsoever? We can certainly try! But in the interim we've decided to offset our carbon footprint by first measuring it and then purchasing so-called "carbon credits" from such providers as Terrapass. The money spent on these credits is used to fund a variety of projects intended to compensate for carbon emissions such as forest management and wind power.

When Steve was assigned the task of calculating the amount of carbon produced by a busy agency as a direct consequence of its day to day operations, he figured he would Google up a calculator or two, punch in some numbers, and call it a day. But he quickly realized that the calculators he was finding had two problems: they didn't allow for enough detail and didn't cover the electricity used for iBec's web hosting, a major part of our business. He therefore decided to do his own calculations. You may want to read Steve's full report on his efforts and use his calculations as a starting point for your own.