Experience with Low Carbon Diet?

This might be helpful. Arlington County, Virginia has rolled out the Car-Free Diet with a slogan of 'Loose 2,000 lbs in a day' (by leaving your car at home). This has been very successful in reaching the community and the website helps you calculate carbon reductions, calories burned, financial savings, etc. http://www.carfreediet.com/
This past Tuesday there was a kick off Car-Free Diet Expo for the campaign. Info here: http://commuter.typepad.com/commuterpageblog/2008/01/car-free-diet-e.html

Adam Segel-Moss, LEED AP

Green Building Outreach Coordinator, Fresh AIRE
Arlington County Department of Environmental Services
Utilities and Environmental Policy Division
2100 Clarendon - Suite 710,
Arlington, VA 22201
OFFICE 703.228.3066
FAX 703.228.7134
EMAIL [email protected]

Our agency has developed a "Start the Low Carbon Diet" campaign for our region. It focuses on transportation, but you could include other agencies to increase/strengthen your messaging. Some of the barriers we were addressing in a fun way were the "all or nothing" approach people were giving us as excuses to getting out of their cars and driving less. We rolled this campaign out in Jan. when people are thinking about resolutions. We have partnered up with local agencies to provide "Diet Tips" including our transit agency and air pollution control district. We increase our enrollment on average 5 people per day. We have print, radio and a $150 VISA card we are giving away. Additionally, once people are in the system we have a way to continue a conversation with them. We are now having conversations with Farmers' Market to incorporate the miles/food and looking at linking up with local gyms to expand on the message. Here's more: http://rideshare.org/cm/about/low-carbondiet.html
 

Lisa Quinn

SLO Regional Rideshare
[email protected]
805-781-4462

Sarah -

I am running a Sustainable Living Program in Berkeley, CA. I have been using the both the Low Carbon Diet and Green Team Project (www.greenteamproject.org) as structured programs that empower individuals to make small changes in their lives and live sustainably. The Low Carbon Diet is a great program in that it provides participants with a very concrete structure for behavior change. It encourages people to form groups ("Ecoteams") and meet four times to follow the guide. It's very user-friendly. I think that the biggest flaw in the program is that there are only 22 actions, so some important eco-actions are missing (for example, the first edition doesn't even mention eating less meat or bringing your own water bottle). Thus it is pretty simplistic but it's a great launching point to discuss sustainability issues, and you can make it fun and non-judgmental. I'm working with many groups to organize groups, including governmental agencies, church groups, synogogues, the City of Berkeley, non-profits, UC Berkeley and more. It's a great way to get the "mainstream" stated about learning about carbon reduction activities. The Green Team Project is a much more comprehensive program that is similar in nature; participants meet for a series of 7 meetings and focus on a number of topics (water, transportation, chemicals/food, energy, community and waste). I think that this program appeals to a more advanced crowd, but is much more comprehensive and holistic than the Low Carbon Diet. If you are interested in learning about either program (and especially if you live in the Bay Area) you can email me directly. The Low Carbon Diet founder David Gershon is also very accessible. He leads a tele-training session each month for people interested in becoming facilitators (look on their website: www.empowermentinstitute.net).

Susan Silber
[email protected]

Hi Susan, and Sarah -

I'm doing a lot of work these days in agri-food and wellness, including research into the following topics: - going green - are consumer attitudes and concerns about the environment actually affecting their food choices and purchases, specifically fresh produce? Included in this secondary research, is an exploration of: o defining 'green' o sustainability o 'buy local' o Organic I'm very interested in learning more about the programs you've referenced, Susan. (Green Team Project and Low Carbon Diet). Any thoughts/insights/information sources related to the above mentioned topics would also be greatly appreciated! Sarah - the research study I'm working on will be completed soon, and I'll check to see when I might be able to share it. The findings will be presented in Calgary in May, but there may be parts I could share with you before it 'goes public' - would you be interested? There is information related to consumer motivators regarding food choices and the environment. Let me know . . .

Thanks,
Tracy
Tracy Lamb

David Gershon conducted the pilot program with research in Portland, Or. This program and research is summarized in the essay "Changing the World One Household at a Time: Portland's 30-day Program to Lose 5,000 Pounds", published in Susanne C. Moser and Lisa Dilling's Creating a Climate for Change, a collection of essays and research on sustainability programs. Hope this helps.

Dave

David M. Hoza

David Hoza
United States

I would reccomend the Empowerment Institutes Low Carbon Diet. It is a good length - 30 days is about the upper limit you will be able to engage most people I think. The Saskatchewan Environmental Society just finished a pilot study with both the Low Carbon Diet and the Green Living Handbook (also by David Gershon). We found the Green Living Handbook not as useful - the program was too long and in depth - this coming from a group of people who are already environmentally-minded, so the chance of engaging people who don't necessarily think about their footprint might be difficult. Our wrap up session on Monday concluded that people need to be able to directly compare and measure change, and this is where the Low Carbon Diet was strong. We also though the Green Living Handbook seemed to be aimed more at kids.

Alina Siegfried
Water Issues Coordinator
Saskatchewan Environmental Society
Canada
www.environmentalsociety.ca

We are working with a health professional (and medical student) audience in the UK and have developed an education tool called "Carbon Addict" - presenting high carbon lifestyles as a medical dependence syndrome. The site uses humour and cartoon illustrations to introduce the health complications of carbon use, and the opportunities for health professionals to help patients make changes. We are planning to pilot its use in medical training in the coming year.

http://www.carbonaddict.org

Frances Mortimer
Medical Director
The Campaign for Greener Healthcare
United Kingdom

The City of Davis ran a pilot program for the LCD in October 2008 and we are currently strategizing on ways to scale-up the program to reach 500 households by December 2009 and 1,500 households by end of Spring 2010 (pledged CO2 reduction of 3000+ metric tons). I agree with all of the comments mentioned above - the strong points of this program are the accountability amongst participants as well as the metric built into the program.

Another program to consider which is similar to the Green Team Project is the Northwest Earth Institute (though, I can not recal if it is specific for the Northwest U.S. region or not) http://www.nwei.org/.

Kim Vincent
Sustainability Intern
City of Davis
United States