Health & Fitness
'Go Green' For a Day… or All the Way
People that act in the name of Earth Day are inspiring, but I'm just as excited about local organizations that wave the "Go green!" flag all year.
With Earth Day fast approaching on April 22nd, you’ve likely noticed that media, businesses, government and your children’s schools are talking a lot about protecting our planet. This annual spike in environmental consciousness is important because it exposes all of us to more high-quality information about sustainable practices than we likely had prior.
No question; the people that act in the name of Earth Day are inspiring, but I’m just as excited about local organizations that wave the “Go green!” flag all year. Through my role at Microsoft, I’ve had the privilege of working side-by-side with many of Palo Alto’s most forward thinking and committed environmental groups, including Acterra. I love Acterra’s approach to environmental activism, because the organization takes an admittedly large and complex problem – energy conservation – and distills it into manageable tips, tools and resources that anyone can use to help preserve our planet.
I learned a lot and changed some of my behavior by using one of Acterra’s services, its volunteer-driven Green@Home program. A free in-home audit, available to any local resident, Green@Home isolates ways homeowners can better reduce their energy consumption. Despite my best efforts to reduce my own carbon footprint, an Acterra volunteer showed me I could be doing better. And even cooler is how simple most of the environmental fixes they suggest are to implement.
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Acterra’s Green@Home audits are just one of many helpful services this
nonprofit provides to the community, this April 22nd…and all other 364 days of the year. You can even become an Acterra volunteer yourself, and help bring energy conservation solutions to your Palo Alto neighbors!
Some mark Earth Day with a singular green effort, which is great. But if you make simple and sustainable lifestyle choices like those proposed by Acterra, it will become the Earth Way. Just think, if everyone embraced the Earth Way, Earth Day could become a day of celebrating and recognizing our collective accomplishments!
