Making Your Intern Carbon Neutral

We've got interns coming out of our ears this time of year.  Every manager has like 3 or 4 nieces or nephews that "need work experience".   They usually dump them back in our bullpen area because none of them are good enough to get the staples right or make coffee.  So rather than just have them sit and browse YouTube, I'm planning on having them pitch in to our carbon neutral GIS quest.

The Pedal-A-Watt Stationary Bike Power Generator is perfect for interns.  This is what got me thinking:

"The average rider will produce between 150 and 200 watts"

If I can get like 10  interns peddling at the same time, I'll be able to power my workstation, plotter and possibly the server.  So now I have to round up as many interns as I can for my plan.   No one likes the back conference room (it smells like burnt popcorn and rat pee) so I stick them there and run some extension cords out to our cubes.  I'll have to find some carbon neutral Red Bull, but I'm sure there is some available.

Looking toward methane

I swear I work with a bunch of animals so maybe Methane collection and combustion might be a good way to gain power from a source that might otherwise get lost into the atmosphere.  I'm not a very smart person (I graduated from a state college that had to admit anyone who graduated high school) so I can't really tell how much power I'll get from methane combustion, but this page has lots of fancy formulas.  I can only assume that means lots of power.

Off to make bean casserole for the pot luck.

Power source

My company to is trying to offset our emissions by planting trees and buying credits on the Chicago Climate Exchange.  That is all fine and dandy, but what can I do with my GIS workflow to improve my own carbon neutral goal.  Well I'm thinking I can run my workstation via solar power.  That way I won't be using coal powerplants to perform my GIS analysis.
The biggest problem I see is that I work in a cubical in the middle of a floor in a windowless office.  I need a promotion I guess to get window access and thus become carbon neutral.  I'm making a note in my Outlook to ensure I bring this up next review.

The Quest for Carbon Neutral GIS

Being carbon neutral is the big rage these days.  My company is trying to be carbon neutral so I figured I'd attempt to change my GIS workflow to be as carbon neutral as possible.  

This is my quest to limit my carbon output into the world as I use GIS.