Sustainability On-Line
Center for Sustainable Economy has teamed up with award-winning web developer Kinga Dow Productions and other non-profit partners to provide interactive tools for government, business, and educators seeking to utilize the vast power of the web to promote sustainable decision making and advance environmental education.
We offer four major categories of on-line solutions:
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Footprint calculators for promoting green products
Businesses can promote the environmental benefits of their products by demonstrating to existing and potential customers how energy, water, forests, fisheries, and other resources can be saved by choosing their products over less sustainable products offered by their competitors. CSE can develop on-line calculators capable of quantifying these savings in a scientific manner. Customers can use the on-line tools to research these benefits and compare the environmental impacts of various choices. For example, see our Fiber Footprint Calculator used to demonstrate the benefits of purchasing organic or sustainably produced cotton over traditional cotton:
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Sustainability challenges for branches, franchises, or chains
One creative way to promote sustainability for organizations with multiple branches, franchises, or chains is to offer sustainability competitions or challenges that utilize CSE’s on-line calculators to document the beneficial effects of initiatives to reduce water, energy, and resource consumption. Companies can offer rewards to outlets with the best sustainability scores. Scoring systems can be broad – focusing on multiple aspects of a company’s ecological footprint – or narrow, and focus on one aspect like carbon emissions. Recently, CSE developed an on-line carbon footprint calculator for our client Interfaith Power and Light that serves as a basis for a carbon footprint challenge amongst member congregations throughout the U.S.:
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On-line courses and interactive lesson plans
Increasingly, educators at the K-12 and University levels are interested in tools for environmental education including on-line courses or course modules, interactive lesson plans, and customized calculators. CSE works with educators to develop and refine these tools for classroom use. Recently, Kinga Dow Productions worked with California State University and Redefining Progress to create an on-line energy footprint course complete with energy conversion calculators, informative graphs and figures, and links to important scientific studies and sources of data:
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Sustainability reporting and company green pages
In today’s world of growing environmental awareness, an increasing number of both private and public sector institutions are preparing regular reports documenting their progress in meeting quantifiable goals for economic, environmental, and social sustainability. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) hosts an on-line portal and grading system for these. CSE and Kinga Dow Productions can help businesses, schools, and non-profit organizations prepare attractive, GRI compliant sustainability reports rich with meaningful analyses and trends of key indicators. We also prepare green pages within existing websites as a tool for disseminating these reports and summarizing key findings:
