The EcoAction Teams calculator is designed to engage households in energy and resource conservation. It is an interactive tool which fosters friendly competition and has been the basis for partnership building between Earth Day Canada and municipalities, community groups, institutions, companies and not-for-profit organizations across the country. Most importantly, the EcoAction Teams calculator demonstrates just how important the actions of one person are when viewed within the context of a larger group effort. what are our objectives?

what does our calculator do? Measures the results of positive behaviour change (Does not measure your ecological footprint) Promotes resource conservation in five key areas: energy, water, waste, transportation and making better consumer choices Calculator provides personalized reports so participants can compare their own efforts with: –their own actions on previous visits –their personal potential –the average savings of participants in their province –their teams average savings.

what standards/technologies are used? EAT calculator is designed exclusively for web access. Participants can access level one of the calculator where only their postal code and municipality name is tracked. Participants who sign-up to use the full calculator are required to enter an address. The EAT Calculator is designed with Microsofts.NET suite of tools in Visual Studio. It is comprised of Active Server Pages (.aspx) with a Microsoft SQL database backend. The programming language used for development is Visual Basic. The use of these tools and technologies makes the backend coding and logic for the calculator readily extensible and portable. User database resides on a dedicated Microsoft SQL 2008 server at our hosting company, NetNation.

The calculators equations are based on a mix of provincial coefficients and averages, user baseline information (e.g. number of people in household), and optional user detailed information (e.g. litres of water used in a year by household, money spent on water in previous year). The user provides additional simple baseline information relevant to the question (e.g. estimated number of showers taken in household per week for an action about installing a low-flow shower head), before the calculator can measure the direct impact of the green action in a number of measurements… Note: sample provincial average sources include: average household energy consumption by end-use and mode (NRCAN), per capita residential water use (Environment Canada), residential waste statistics (Stats Can), provincial Greenhouse gas factors and electricity rates (NRCAN) which coefficients are used?

The calculator measures individual and collective savings and potential savings: GHGs saved (kilograms) energy saved (kilowatt hours) water saved (litres) waste reduced (kilograms) transportation fuel reduced (litres) dollars saved what does the calculator measure?

Team membership is growing faster than overall membership and a variety of community-based groups have joined! Groups participating as teams include: Faith-based groups Youth groups Workplaces key audience: community groups The EcoAction Teams program helps young people make a real difference by doing simple things and sharing their success with others committed to helping our Earth. -Thomas Howard, YEA!, Newfoundland and Labrador Kathryn Cullen is a member of Fairlawn United Church Green Action, a faith-based team in Toronto. She was one of 11 winners of our national EcoAction Teams Storytelling Contest by telling us about her groups environmental activities.

EAT Municipal Partners Calgary, AB Grande Prairie, AB Sylvan Lake, AB Vernon, BC Moncton, NB Town of Blue Mountains, ON Waterloo, ON Alberta Environment (prov) key audience: municipalities Town of Blue Mountains Our EcoAction Team To help us reduce our Greenhouse Gas Emissions, The Blue Mountains has declared itself as an EcoAction Team, part of a community based program of Earth Day Canada. Providing three levels of action for us to reduce our energy and water use, waste production, and greenhouse gas emissions, Earth Day Canada helps us through active participation and online results tracking, to easily and significantly reduce our environmental impact. To learn more about Earth Day Canadas EcoAction Team initiative or to participate in our goal to reduce our Community Greenhouse Gas Emissions, please visit their website…

Cheryl Gudz x 106 thank you!