• Santa Cruz County Bike Week Celebrates its 21st Anniversary

• Green Business Program Certifies its 100th Business and welcomes the City of Santa Cruz as a Program Partner

• Folding bikes on buses can help you GREEN your commute

• City of Santa Cruz Launches Climate Action Team Program
  

• Attention Local Businesses!  Interested in reducing your carbon footprint? Try Ecology Action’s Transportation Membership Services

• Special Event Recycling & Litter Abatement Program is a Sucess

• Ecology Action and it's RightLights program partner, Progressive Lighting & Energy Solutions, Slashes Cow Palace's Annual Energy Costs by Nearly $240,000

Help Ecology Action continue to provide innovative programs that benefit our environment by making a tax deductible donation now!

Santa Cruz County Bike Week Celebrates its 21st Anniversary
To commemorate the 21st birthday of Bike Week, thousands of Santa Cruz County residents jumped on their two-wheelers to join the festivities.  With a wide assortment of events such as the Watsonville Commuter Challenge, Bike to Work/School Day and Rail and Trail Day, new and experienced cyclists were able to enjoy an assortment of activities helping promote the use of pedal power.  Highlights of the week included over 5,000 bicyclists on Bike to Work/School Day (the highest number of participants in the history of the event), over 500 participants on the Rail and Trail Day and a triumph for the cyclist in the Watsonville Commuter Race.  With over 6,000 participants throughout the week, Santa Cruz County cyclists prevented 34,000 Pounds of CO2  from entering the atmosphere.  Nice work!  

Thank you to all of our sponsors and volunteers for helping make this Bike Week another success.  For more information, visit us on the web at  www.bike2work.com

Green Business Program Certifies its 100th Business and welcomes the City of Santa Cruz as a Program Partner
This year the Monterey Bay Area Green Business Program certified its 100th business and the City of Santa Cruz became a program partner, enabling Ecology Action to be officially certified as a Monterey Bay Area Green Business. We are so proud to be part of this program that we wanted to share with you some amazing waste reduction results and encourage you to frequent Certified Green Businesses whenever possible. 

Collectively since inception, Green Businesses have:

• saved an estimated 14 million gallons of water
• reduced hazardous material and hazardous waste generation by 11,000 pounds
• reduced air pollution by 300,000 pounds
• diverted the equivalent of 180 refuse trucks, or 122,000 cubic feet of garbage from the landfill 
• reduced power demand and usage by 489 kW and 2.8 million kWh respectively via energy efficiency retrofits; or enough electricity to power 477 average American homes.  
• reduced CO2 emissions by 3.1 million pounds (via lighting and refrigeration retrofits)

For more information on how to become a Certified Green Business, or to find a Green Business near you, visit montereybaygreenbusiness.org

Folding bikes on buses can help you GREEN your commute
Santa Cruz County residents are eligible to receive up to $200 off the cost of a folding bike plus savings of up to $70 on two monthly bus passes (Metro and HWY 17) by attending a 2-hour bicycle safety training class.  Our next class will be held on Thursday, June 19th from 6-8 PM at the Ecology Action Annex Office (223 River Street).  Call Ecology Action at 426-5925 ext. 128 to sign up for a class (space is limited). 

For more information click here.

City of Santa Cruz Launches Climate Action Team Program
Contributed by guest author Collette Streight 

The City of Santa Cruz’s new Climate Action Teams Program empowers residents to significantly reduce their annual carbon dioxide emissions. The program uses David Gershon’s book Low Carbon Diet: A 30 Day Program to Lose 5,000 Pounds to give people a simple, straight-forward, and fun way to become part of the climate change solution by making specific changes in their daily lives.

Teams of five to eight people work together over the course of approximately one month to calculate their current carbon emissions, create action plans to reduce them, report on actions taken, and support one another to reach their goals. According to Gershon, the typical American household generates 55,000 lbs of carbon dioxide annually. While the goal of the Climate Action Teams Program is to support each person in reducing this amount by 10%, Gershon’s book includes many options for people wanting to go further in their emission reduction efforts. 

The program is available to all residents of the City. To find out how to participate in a team or to form and lead teams of your own, visit our website at www.30x20.org or contact program coordinator Collette Streight at cstreight@yahoo.com. 

Attention Local Businesses!  Interested in reducing your carbon footprint? Try Ecology Action’s Transportation Membership Services
The Sustainable Transportation Group of Ecology Action can help your business reduce its carbon footprint.  For a small fee, employees of member businesses are eligible to receive zero percent interest bicycle loans (for up to $750), discounts on bus passes and free taxi rides home in the event of an emergency.  By joining this inexpensive program, you can help encourage commute alternatives and help reduce traffic congestion, air pollution and parking shortages. 

For more information on how to join click here.

• Diversion of an estimated 114 tons of recyclables, including approximately 591,726 CRV beverage containers.
• Creation of a Special Event Recycling Plan replicable throughout the Monterey Bay Area
  
• Creation of a Special Event Resource Kit for special event promoters and venue managers
  
• Creation of a team of expert staff to be able to provide services to special event managers as needed during the project term and into the future.
• Collaboration with existing litter abatement efforts to collect additional recyclables from special event impacted roadways and implement permanent solutions.
• The program delivered valuable away-from-home recycling opportunities to over 280,000 visitors from around the state, helping to maximize concurrent statewide recycling efforts.

Read the full program report  here.
 

Read the rest of this article here.