Often, here on EarthPM, even though we’re intentionally very project-centric, people ask us about how they – as individuals – are doing, and how they personally could do better to ‘green up’.

This posting is just a simple link to a new survey put out by Philips NV which helps you determine your “energy color” based on a set of questions which are accompanied by stunning photographs and slick sound effects.

http://www.asimpleswitch.com/b2c/survey/intake

On the site, you’ll find some interesting facts about your own personal consumption that will probably surprise you, and that you could extrapolate to your project work as well.  Consider this (from the above site):

“How much water is needed to make one cup of coffee? You might say anything from 30-50 milliliters for an espresso to, let’s say, up to half a liter for a supersized latte. While it’s true that this could very well be the amount of liquid that ends up in the cup, the actual number of liters (yes, plural) used to brew precisely one standard cup of coffee is a staggering 140. Hard to believe? Perhaps, but ever so true.

This is how it’s calculated: it costs roughly 21,000 litres of water to produce 1 kilo of roasted coffee. A standard 125 ml cup of coffee requires 7 grams of roasted coffee, so that single ‘cuppa’ costs 140 litres of water to make. And it’s not just coffee that takes a lot of water to produce, the same goes for other stuff we eat or need. Rice: 3,400 litres for 1 kilo. Cotton: 2,700 litres for 1 cotton shirt. Beef: 15,500 litres for 1 kilo. If you didn’t know it already, you’ve just learned something about the size of our water footprint. We’re not walking this planet leaving Cinderella-sized footprints; we’re leaving marks that would make Godzilla’s seem petite.”

So visit the site,  get your own personal color reading, and enjoy the wealth of information available on the site as well.  It may not be directly project related, but we bet you can make at least one discovery if you spend some time looking at your own energy usage!