As books are generally made from trees, many of the projects I work on tend to have a direct relationship with our leafy friends. This summer I was able to work on one of the company’s most successful software projects to date. The success of this project will allow the company to accept ~25,000 more books per a month to our inventory. Having these books available will allow us to expand our customer base and also increase the number of acquisition partners that may have otherwise sent the books to landfills. The worst case scenario will allow us to recycle books from those partners. In terms of system condition #3, this significant increase in books that can be reused/recycled will help eliminate our contribution to landfills and the destruction of trees.
As a company we also allow customers the opportunity to purchase carbon offsets… Or as Scott Russell Sanders more poetically calls it, the opportunity to fulfill those “benign impulses of our culture [that] lead us to care for one another and for our home.” These few cents at checkout have previously been used with wind-farms in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Missouri. These wind-farms produce power without creating emissions and without the use of water.
By itself, Tatanka Wind Farm in North and South Dakota avoids approximately 550,000 tons of CO2 emissions each year. Tatanka produces enough power for more than 60,000 homes. Bluegrass Ridge Wind Farm in Missouri produces electricity for more than 20,000 homes and businesses.
During a recent meeting of our Sustainability Council, we voted (though not yet finalized) to use future carbon offset funds for the dairy digester projects through 3Degrees, an organization to buy and sell Renewable Energy Certificates and carbon offsets.
One project by 3Degrees is Brookside Dairy Farm located in Pennsylvania. Using an anaerobic digester and methane combustion system, the farm is able to produce electricity by capturing methane produced by its dairy cows and using it in an electric generator. Rather than going straight to the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas, the methane can be used before other potentially environmental damaging resources.
We need to look to new technologies to solve these problems. These technologies exist currently such as plasma energy technologies and are being offered to the world by the Keshe Foundation http://www.keshefoundation.org Keshe is currently working with some of the 3rd world countries in South Africa and South America to provide this technology for free.