You are here: Home / Archives for Green Travel

Rollin’ in the green: Sustainability at our Mid Year Meeting

July 18, 2011 by Leave a Comment

A fact that we all know is true is that all hotels, whether one star or six stars have giant environmental footprints. I’ll explain more about this as we go.

But first, let’s fly to Phoenix.

As most sales conferences go, the last thing most people are ever thinking about is environmentally friendly practices. Everyone, except for Softchoice’s amazing event planning team that is. Why am so excited about the events team thinking about being green during mid-year? Because they actually pulled it off! How, you ask? By hooking up with one of the greenest resorts , the events team was able to put together an incredible environmentally friendly conference.

The Sheraton Wildhorse Pass & Spa is famous for it’s sustainability practices and exceptional quality. The meetings and banquet rooms are designed for the highest levels of efficiency depending on the kind of event you are hosting.  Some of the green iniatives the hotel had in place were:

  • Air-conditioning in meeting rooms is determined by the status of the room, meaning that when they are not in use, the A/C is  not on.
  • The facility does a lot to reduce overall waste, but not having plastic cups or paper cups on site and using glasses instead. [Read more...]
Filed Under: Reducing Energy, Reducing Waste Tagged With: , ,

Clean Air Commute Challenge Day 5: Adventures on the TTC

June 17, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Congratulations Softchoice! We have reached the fifth and final day of the Clean Air Commute Challenge and we have done very well! Today we’re going to go over the most infamous yet the most popular way of  commuting in the city of Toronto: The TTC. 

It’s rough and tough, all over the media, and people complain about it more than anything in this city. However, the TTC gets us from point A to point B and back seven days a week. It moves millions. Drivers work to ensure passenger safety and work as a team to keep passengers fully aware of any delays and problems. With an operation so large, it’s no doubt that there will be problems.  Today we talked to Adam Wolfson, Jay Lee, and Heather Reilly about their adventures on TTC.

Adam takes the TTC everyday for approximately 30 minutes to work each way which comes to about 300 minutes a week!  “I don’t really enjoy much about the TTC to be honest, but the fact that it’s an environmentally friendly way to travel around the city makes it well worth it.”

Heather takes the TTC daily as well and thinks it carries some benefits for it’s riders. “The expense of a monthly TTC metropass is much less than the total cost I would have had with a car: parking costs at my apartment, car lease payment, insurance, gas and maintenance costs for a car,” she says. “If you’re able to commit to public transit or carpooling to get to and from work, it’s an easy way to make an environmental impact and help lower the amount of pollution a single car can emit.”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Reducing Carbon Tagged With: , , , ,

Softchoice 2010 Air Travel

January 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The Air miles traveled by Softchoice employees for business in 2010 was 3,493,134.5 miles. This is a slight increase from previous year by 809,317 miles or 10.36%.  The reason for the increase of travel is due in part of the economy recovering in 2010 from the recession. The Air travel is well below the 2009 amount of 7,808,933 miles and is still a reduction of 55.27% from 2009.

To help to reduce the need to travel, Softchoice lunched two new video conference systems. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Reducing Carbon Tagged With: , , ,

Charging Stations Offered in Parking Garages

September 9, 2010 by Leave a Comment

InterPark, a company with many parking garages across the U.S. has begun installing charging stations for electric powered cars in 12 of their locations.  Currently all of the 12 locations are in the city of Chicago but they plan to roll out more down the road.  There has been a back and forth on the reasons why this hasn’t happened until now. The public were saying that they were waiting until the infrastructure of charging stations was built and the companies were saying they were waiting until people buy the cars.  Well we should wait no further, InterPark has made the first step.  In fact, they are allowing you to charge up for free through the rest of the year.  As a promotion they are also giving away a lease on a Tesla Roadster, a high performance electric sports car, leases on a few Toyota Prius’ as well as many other things.

This isn’t only happening in Chicago, companies all over are implementing charging stations.  Check out this picture of how the parking in San Francisco has come along.

Here are some great green commute facts from InterPark.

FACT: One-in-four American adults say they would likely consider a reasonably priced plug-in car the next time they purchase, according to Consumer Reports.
FACT: Currently, 96% of U.S. transportation is fueled by petroleum.
FACT: For the rest of 2010, home charging station installation costs get a federal tax credit of 50-percent up to a $2,000 max.
FACT: There will be “No Charge to Charge” for the rest of 2010 at an InterPark downtown Chicago facility that has a charging station.

So now that the infrasturcture has begun being built maybe it is time we all considered a green car on our next car purchase.

http://www.plugin.com/2010/09/charging-stations-being-installed-in-12-interpark-garages/

Filed Under: Reducing Carbon Tagged With: , , ,

Go green with your trip to the market

August 10, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Recently I have re-discovered google maps. One amazing function I wasn’t aware of was to plot various points and create your own map in “My Maps”.

One of the first things that came to mind was plotting out my trip to the market. If I have various things to do around the city I can go onto google maps, plot then out, measure the distance of my bike route and even discover new businesses that are along the way.

Once you have all your favorite spots plotted out you’ll never have get a home and think, why didn’t I think to stop off there? Not only that but if you drive a car, you can discover ways to reduce your distance traveled. Even use this tool to plot out your company’s supply chain. I have used it to plot Softchoice’s distribution partners in order to better understand which are closest to our customers.

Filed Under: Reducing Carbon Tagged With: , , , ,