Is it called twittering? twitting? tweeting? Either way, using Twitter is a lot of fun, and a great way to stay up to date while away from the computer. People have been following their friends on Twitter for a couple of years now, and it’s such a cool tool that we thought Carbonrally should get in on the action.

Now you can follow Carbonrally on Twitter and get updates directly to your phone via SMS. We’ll keep you up to date with new challenge releases, new website features, and other special announcements. Now you don’t need to check your email to see what’s new at Carbonrally.

Go to Twitter, login, search for Carbonrally, and click “follow”. And don’t forget to turn on SMS messaging to your mobile device.

And while you’re at it, set up your Twitter account so you can “tweet” from your phone. Then you can let your Carbonrally teammates & friends know whenever you’ve successfully biked instead of driven, used a re-usable coffee mug, chosen tap water over bottled, or other Carbonrally-related musings. Positive reinforcement is a good thing, you know?

Rally On!

Huge thanks to fellow rallyer Michelle Slatalla of the New York Times for her recent piece about her trials and tribulations getting a Rally team going in her family. For a great read and some hilarious details, take a look at her Cyberfamilias article that ran in NYT’s Styles section last week. There’s even a quote from another top rallyer Trogg.

Michelle highlighted the importance of saving money as another big motivator for taking challenges. She crunched some numbers associated with Sheets to the Wind and Top-off The Tires, and that has inspired us to add more $$ information to challenges that can help all of us save money. Thanks for the idea, Michelle, and for spreading the news of Carbonrally far and wide…

You’ve probably been hearing the words Life Cycle and Life Cycle Assessment more and more in the past few months. That’s because Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is increasingly recognized as the most complete way to measure the environmental impact of a product or service. At Carbonrally, LCA is at the core of the way we think about our Carbon Challenges and calculate our CO2 numbers.

What is an LCA? According to the EPA,

LCA is a technique to assess the total environmental impact associated with a product, process, or service, by:

* compiling an inventory of relevant energy and material inputs and environmental releases;
* evaluating the potential environmental impacts associated with identified inputs and releases;
* interpreting the results to help you make a more informed decision.

But as you can probably tell, actually doing a complete LCA is difficult. As the name implies, LCAs are comprehensive, and encompass raw materials extraction, manufacturing, transportation, use, maintenance and re-use or disposal. The sheer volume of data required for a complete LCA makes them expensive and time-consuming. LCAs can include hundreds of inputs and sometimes thousands of choices about which data to use and how deeply to dig into the dozens of processes that go into the life cycle of a product. One might even ask: what is the LCA of an LCA? As you can imagine, such complexity opens LCAs up to lots of debate and scrutiny.

Take, for example, the question of locally-grown versus imported food. Local-food advocates suggest that besides tasting better, local foods have a lower environmental impact than imported foods because they don’t travel as far, and therefore less fossil fuel is used in taking the food from farm to table.

But expand the LCA of local and imported foods to include on-the-farm inputs such as fertilizer and feed, and the picture can look quite different. Research by scientists at Lincoln University in New Zealand compared the LCAs of apples, onions, dairy and lamb – either locally grown in the UK or imported to the UK from New Zealand.

The scientists found that local efficiencies in New Zealand (such as rich pasture land) make food imported from New Zealand to the U.K. less energy- and CO2-intensive than U.K. grown food. And that includes the plane ticket.

According to James E. McWilliams, author of “A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America”, More complete LCAs such as this one give us the chance to refine our…sustainability strategy by revealing hidden energy and environmental costs in the life cycle.

But others claim that the New Zealand LCA was flawed and biased – arguing that some of the measures used by the scientists were inappropriate. As you can see, there is plenty to disagree about when it comes to such large and complex studies.

Still, the concept of LCA is a powerful one. In theory, the LCA can give a more complete picture of the CO2 and energy impact of practically anything. At Carbonrally, whenever possible, we use existing LCA studies and concepts to calculate the impact of items such as bottles of spring water and farm-raised beef. But we have to admit that, in absence of full LCA studies to support our challenges, we sometimes need to make some conservative assumptions about the CO2 associated with some aspect of the challenge.

Our advice? When looking at an LCA for a given product or service, dig deep. Look around for competing assessments and professional critiques of the LCA in question. The EPA and Wikipedia both have good overviews of the methodology behind LCA, and the ISO 14000 standard provides lots of info on what goes into the products and services we use.

One good rule of thumb is that the true impact of a product or service is probably higher than any LCA assesses it to be. Of course, if you want to be sure you’re lowering your own impact you can simply reduce the amount you consume, which is what we often advocate here on Carbonrally.

Head spinning yet? If not, tune-in to the Carbonarally blog soon for a primer on Embodied Energy – a related concept that’s being applied to – among other things – alternative energy devices such as windmills and solar panels.

Rally on!

You don’t need a ‘68 Impala & gold Daytons to be a lowrider. This week we’re challenging our Rallyers to save gasoline – and lower their CO2 impact by a whopping 133.9 lbs per month – by being a little cooler behind the wheel.

Here are a few facts that might surprise you:

• Transportation is the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, and is the largest end-use source of CO2. Source
• Fuel Efficiency peaks at around 60mph – and every 5 mph over 60 lowers efficiency by an average of 5%. Source
• Aggressive Driving means bursts of engine speed that can can lower fuel efficiency by 33% on the highway and 5% in the city. Source
  
  So we challenge you to not only take it 5 mph slower on the highway, but also mellow out on the surface roads. You can take this challenge, view our CO2 calculation, and more at our Lowrider Challenge Page.
  
  Think driving slowly makes you look like a grandma? No way Jose. Whoever drives the bad machine pictured above ain’t no leadfoot. She’s a lowrider.

Hi. We’re excited to announce a few new features that will hopefully make the site more fun and easy to use. We’d also like to thank many of you for your ideas and feedback that have led us to these new features. If you have a minute, please check these out….

• Invitation-only Teams. Team leaders now have an option to make their team invitation-only. Read more
  
  
• Opt-in for special news and alerts. There is a new email preference to opt-in for Carbonrally special news and alerts. We encourage people to select this option if they want to receive important news from Carbonrally from time to time.
  
  
• Mapping all locations. We were previously only mapping the top 100 locations, but now all locations are on the map of the United States. So, if you want to view your city and your neighboring cities, have a look at the Total CO2 Impact Map.
  
  
• More flexibility when inviting people. When inviting people individually or inviting to your team, the list of email addresses may be one to each line (good when copying list from spreadsheets), separatedsemi-colons or commas. Of course, you can still access your friends’ email addresses using the Get addresses from my address book button.
  
  
• Search Carbonrally. You may now search the Carbonrally site to find certain rallyers, teams, suggestions, and tips. Look for the search box on the left side of each page.
  
  
• Delete comments on team page. Team leaders may now delete comments from their Team Page.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about these features or anything else at feedback@carbonrally.com

We don’t like to toot our own horn, but if somebody toots one for us, we don’t complain. So we’re honored to be included in Time Magazine’s 50 Best Websites of 2008.

We’re in great company, too. One of my favorite sites on the list is Free Rice, a word quiz site that donates 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program for every correct answer you get. As of yet they don’t keep track of individual scores, but I suspect our Rallyers could generate a lot of rice!

Another site that piqued my interest was Kiva, a site that lets you lend money – through established and ethical microlenders – to entrepreneurs in third-world countries. Never heard of microlending? Check out the FAQ at the Grameen Foundation, the Nobel Prize-winning bank that started it all.

Finally, The Nest. TIME claims the site is aimed at “newly wedded yuppie couples”, but all I know is that The Nest is home to some hard-core Rallyers. The Eco-Friendly Nesties’ fifteen members have saved nearly a half ton of CO2 so far.

Rally On!

We spend a lot of time tinkering in Carbonrally’s “engine room”, making small adjustments in hopes of improving the site. Today we are making two such adjustments. Like most changes, these are inspired by feedback from you.

Take up to 3 New Challenges a week

We’ve noticed that some people take as many 10 challenges when they first come to the site. This commitment to action is awesome, but we’ve found that some gung-ho rallyers are less likely to stick with the Rally after their big splash. So, in keeping with our mission of “Small Actions, Big Impact”, we are implementing a change that asks people to limit their new challenge commitments to 3 per week. This will not impact any of your repeatable challenges. You can always repeat a previously accepted challenge.

Change up to 45 Lightbulbs

The lightbulb challenge “Change a Few Bulbs” continues to be very popular. In fact, some people are changing all the bulbs in their house, and then changing bulbs in their friends’ houses too. Right on!

Claiming personal CO2 credit for bulbs changed by friends, however, is starting to wreak havoc on the score system. We’ve seen cases where folks accepted the challenge 80+ times. At 3 bulbs per challenge, that adds over 240 bulbs worth of CO2 credit to a single account. For this reason, we have created a limit of 15 acceptances for this challenge. This number is based on EPA estimates that an average US house has 45 lightbulbs. If you’d like your friends’ actions included in the Rally numbers, please encourage them join us!

Big up to Kristin Appenbrink for adding Carbonrally to her list of easy and fun ways to green our lifestyles. Her blog at Real Simple is focused on quick ways to keep your house organized and efficient. So if you’ve just moved in or you’re looking for simple green ways to beautify your environs, check it out!

Ever wondered how much CO2 emissions are generated to make & deliver a soft drink? We were inspired to explore this question after reading Jennifer Wilkin’s recent article on bottled beverages.

We went looking for some good numbers, and here’s what we found:

*The processing, bottling, and transport of one gallon of bottled water requires the equivalent energy of burning 0.25 gallons of crude oil. It’s roughly the same for soda and sports drinks. source

*Burning one gallon of crude oil releases 21.7 lbs of CO2 into Earth’s atmosphere. source

When you consider how many soft drinks are consumed by an average American, the numbers get pretty big. We found that:

*The average American drinks 1.1 gallons of soda or sports drinks per week. source

So, the soft drink consumption of an average American results in 6 pounds of CO2 emissions per week and over 300 pounds per year.



Interested in a Carbonrally challenge? Declare you beverage independence. Avoid bottled soda, tea, and sports drinks for one month and reduce your CO2 emissions by 25.7 lbs.

Carbonrally got rocked by hard rock band OTEP over the weekend: the band’s Rally team is the largest team formed to date – and went from 1 to close to 200 members in less than 48 hours! Expect big things from fans of this band from L.A., who are now touring to support the release of their new LP The Ascension.

We hope their national tour spreads the word about climate change, and the power of many people working together to stop it. You can listen to OTEP’s music, or check up on the OTEP Rally team’s progress. Keep it coming!

We all know that the Royal Acorns and Lime Aids are virtually unstoppable. Now they are spreading the Rally across the world through a big article and picture in Time Magazine this week. Just tremendous. Congratulations to all the climate warriors at Oak Knoll School and thanks for leading the way!

Love those CO2 numbers….

Photo: Bill Cramer / Wonderful Machine for TIME

Congratulations to our top three recruiters in April. These folks really know how to spread the Rally virus! We are proud to announce them as winners of our Earth Day Recruiting Competition .

It’s not surprising that these highly sociable rallyers are also leaders of three rapidly growing teams. And, they are having a significant impact on CO2…. their teams have already eliminated a combined total of 2 TONS of CO2 in just a few months. So, hats off to you:

Mike Pesa-Fallon of Brooklyn, NY – Team leader of the Brooklyn Law School Environmental Law Society

BFF Team Coach of King of Prussia, PA – Team leader of Beyond.com Friends and Family. (pretty cool to see somebody in a company setting up a “company friends” team!)

Sean B of Virginia Beach, VA – Team leader of Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center.

We’ll be sending 6 of our organic Carbonrally shopping totes to each winner so they can continue to spread the word while shopping at their local grocery store.

If you are interested in becoming a top recruiter, please read this article to learn more about Carbonrally recruiting tools.

Do you have friends who might be ready to join the Rally? If so, Earth Day (April 22) is the perfect reason to get them on board.

So far, each of us has eliminated an average of 130 pounds of CO2 in Carbonrally, and we’re just getting started… imagine if we get thousands more people following in our footsteps!

In honor of Earth Day we are introducing a new competition category to see who can best spread the word about our community. We’ve deployed a new Leaderboard that tracks top recruiters, and also added some upgraded tools to make recruiting easier and more fun.

Prizes? Heck Yeah! The top three recruiters on April 30 will each receive 6 of our organic shopping totes. Why so many? To share with friends!

Here’s some more detail about our new recruiting tools:

• We now keep track of how people join Carbonrally. If they join as a result of your invitation or your web badge, then you get a recruiting credit! This credit is shown on the lower section of the Leaderboard and also on your personal profile. This tracking works with all the recruiting methods listed below.

• Upgraded Friends Invitations. On you’re MY CARBON page, clicking on the “Invite Friends to Carbonrally” button brings you to our upgraded invitation form. Here you can quickly import addresses from your Outlook, Yahoo, Gmail, and AOL accounts. You can also manually enter email addresses (must be separated with commas). Each of your friends will receive an individual email from Carbonrally on your behalf.

• Upgraded Team Invitations. If you are on a team, go to MY TEAM page. Here, the “Invite Friends to Team” button brings you to an upgraded invitation form. It has the same new features as the Friends Invitations except that the link brings people directly to your team so that they can join it.

• Note about invitations: to help us maintain our good standing with the Spam Lords, please only send invitations to people you know.

• Upgraded Web Badges. You will now see Carbonrally web badges available in the lower left of your My Carbon Page and Team Page. These badges can be posted on your personal webpages, blog, or anyplace else where javascript works. When somebody enters Carbonrally through a badge, and signs up, you will receive recruiting credit.

• If you are already using a Carbonrally badge on your blog or website, don’t worry. They have all been upgraded automatically.

• Note for Company Teams: Your team badge is not designed to recruit people to your team. For company teams, folks should rely on Team Invitations to recruit new members.

Have questions? Please post them as a comment below. Thanks.

We’re proud to be mentioned in last week’s article by Marilyn Gardner – Eco Office: Greening the American Workplace .

Carbonrally is described with several other innovative strategies to help employees in the fight against global warming.

Thanks Marilyn!

Please join us in congratulating our leading Rallyers for February!

After just two months in the Rally, The Redwoods Group has climbed to the top of the Leaderboard for February, beating out over 100 teams to reduce the most CO2 for the month. This award also marks a significant milestone for Carbonrally, as the Redwoods Group is the first company team to secure the top position. The Redwoods Group is an innovative insurance firm based in Durham, NC. They have won numerous awards for social responsibility and sustainability, and we are honored to have them participating in our community. Their efforts in Carbonrally are part of a broader initiative in their company called Serve Earth. Our admiration goes out to their team of 44 Rallyers, and to their leader Kathryn. Together, they eliminated 1.85 TONS of CO2 in February, and 3.7 tons since they joined. Thanks for showing us the way.

Our top individual prize goes to Joanie of the Casto Travel team. Joanie reduced her personal CO2 emissions by over 1 TON in February. Wow. She’s taken many types of challenges, but her huge impact came through changing more than 50 lightbulbs over to compact fluorescents. Each of those bulbs is responsible for reducing CO2 by 0.7 pounds every day. As you can see, the impact of these bulbs really adds-up over time.

We’ll be in touch with Joanie and Kathryn to arrange delivery of our official Carbonrally organic grocery totes.

Please note that the Leaderboard shows the top performers for the last 30-day period. So, it’s really anybody’s game this month! Check out Prizes soon for an update on categories and prizes for February’s top performers.