Fiji is normally the focus of our social development projects, but today we’d like to share an exciting opportunity to help children in the United States – and to have a great time!

You and a guest will travel to Los Angeles with ‘NSYNC star Chris Kirkpatrick to watch a taping of Dancing With The Stars. Roundtrip airfare, hotel, car service, and dinner with Mr. Kirkpatrick are all included.

Proceeds will go to the Chris Kirkpatrick Foundation, a non-profit organization which provides underprivileged children with access to proper healthcare and education through scholarships.

If you are interested in helping children by taking a trip to Los Angeles with an ‘NSYNC star, don’t hesitate – there are only two days left to place bids! Click here to place yours today.

In September I went home to visit my mom for the first time in six months. I was a bit surprised when she told me that I absolutely must join her at an interfaith meeting being held at a church across town. With only a day and a half at home, I hadn”t expected to spend Saturday morning with a new church group.

As usual, mom knew best. The meeting was hosted by a church (I won”t mention the name in the merits of privacy but they should feel free to chime in!) whose members had spearheaded the effort to calculate their collective carbon footprint. They started with electricity usage and converted these kWh into greenhouse gas equivalents (which you can try here). Next, they looked at emissions from their parishioners” travel to services. To do this, the green group asked church members to volunteer their home addresses; these were used to create a map of the area with thumb-tacks showing where people commuted from. For those who chose not to provide a home address, the average distance of the sample group was used. By taking the total distance traveled by all members and dividing by the average car”s fuel efficiency the faith group calculated the amount of gasoline used. Their final step was to translate this amount of gasoline into carbon dioxide (which you can do here).

Needless to say, I was impressed. They had gone beyond examining the church”s stand alone emissions to include the environmental impact of the parishioner”s travel to church as well.

As it turns out, my mom had brought me there to offer advice on carbon footprinting. Trying to do my part, I suggested they take an entire life cycle look at their operations. That is, in installing new patio doors, what type of wood was used? Was it certified sustainable? Where was it shipped from? How will this affect the insulation of the building? Throughout the morning, other members with a wide range of expertise educated us on topics including wave energy, waste vegetable oil as a diesel substitute, Equal Exchange Coffee, compostable packaged goods and the carbon footprint of meat.

It was refreshing to see a small but very diverse group coming together to address local environmental stewardship. Political debates about the effectiveness of a carbon cap-and-trade program versus a tax and other issues related to climate change could take years to settle. In the meantime, we need to act – and this is something that people across many faiths recognize. As Gandhi said, “When the people lead the leaders will follow.” The Interfaith group is planning a second meeting this Winter – I may have to take another trip home.

On October 6, the Wall Street Journal published a fascinating article titled “Six Products, Six Carbon Footprints.” Among other things, it reported lifecycle carbon footprints for these consumer products: milk, beer, detergent, a fleece jacket, hiking boots, and a Prius.

The footprint analyses found that transportation often represents only a small percentage of a product’s carbon footprint. Factors like raw materials production (e.g., raising cows for milk, making packaging) and usage (e.g., refrigeration for perishable products, driving a car) play a much larger role.

This is consistent with the studies I wrote about earlier this year in “Debunking the Food Miles Myth,” which showed that the ways in which a product is made, grown, packaged, etc. have an impact on its carbon footprint that often outweighs mere transportation distances.

It’s encouraging to see other companies taking action to measure and report their products’ lifecycle carbon emissions. In brief, here are the footprints. (For your reference, the carbon footprint of a 1L bottle of FIJI Water is 1.3 pounds CO2eq, or 573 grams.)

• Half-gallon of milk from Aurora Organic Dairy: 7.2 pounds CO2eq
• Six-pack of beer from Fat Tire Amber Ale: 7 pounds CO2eq
• Laundry detergent from Tesco: 31 pounds CO2eq
• Fleece jacket from Patagonia: 66 pounds CO2eq
• Pair of hiking boots from Timberland: 121 pounds CO2eq
• Toyota Prius: 97,000 pounds CO2eq

And…

• Transparency about a product’s full carbon impact: Priceless

Sorry, I had to do that. I’m a sucker for those MasterCard commercials. But seriously, we at FIJI Water think it’s fantastic that all of these companies are not only measuring their products’ footprints, but also sharing them with the public.

On September 22, Oracle Corporation awarded FIJI Water an “Empower the Green Enterprise” award. This award recognizes customers who are using Oracle products to support green business practices and sustainability initiatives.

The winners were selected by a panel of seven judges, including three sustainability experts: Cody Sisco, manager of Advisory Services at Business for Social Responsibility (BSR); Daniel Esty, green thought leader and co-author of Green to Gold; and Mike Sweeney, executive director of The Nature Conservancy’s California chapter.

FIJI’s IT team has been hard at work finding ways to make our software and hardware systems greener. In May 2008, the team reconfigured our enterprise software systems – using a tool called Oracle VM – so that we could put them all on one physical machine. This achievement reduced the need for extra hardware and cabling, physical space, and electricity, and we now use 8 CPU boxes where we once used 32. This work, along with replacement of old servers with energy-efficient ones, resulted in data center energy savings of 20% for production servers and 59% for test servers. There are also financial benefits; the energy bill for our hosted servers has dropped by about two-thirds.

In addition, the IT team has used Oracle’s auto-notification features to eliminate paper usage for invoices and purchase orders in our Fiji offices. This will help us avoid printing about 12,000 pages per year. While the direct impact of this change is relatively small – equivalent to saving one tree – we believe every bit makes a difference.

“Global businesses recognize that environmental responsibility is good business,” said Oracle Chairman, Jeff Henley. “Whether green projects are driven by an organization’s desire to protect the environment, reduce costs, produce eco-friendly goods to meet growing consumer demand, or comply with increasing levels of government regulation, the results can be both good for the environment and good for business. Oracle’s ‘Empower the Green Enterprise’ awards showcase the success of environmental IT initiatives and the tangible business benefits our customers across the world are realizing by pursuing green practices.”

Other award recipients included: Alcoa, Australian Vintage Limited, BT, Dell, Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, Ingersoll-Rand, Intercall, Interface, Motorola, National Ignition Facility & Photon Service, Novartis International AG, PG&E, Standard Parking, Sun and Supervalu.