The Daily Scoop

We're saluting commuters for Earth Day

It' rush hour in Boston, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. and thousands of commuters are standing around waiting for the next train. In honor of Earth Week, we thought we'd thank them for using public transportation in our second "Salute Your Commute" event. As they step off the trains, we're handing them our Stonyfield Light Smoothies and some coupons for free products.

In these perilous days of rising gas prices and, even scarier, global warming and climate change, we wanted to recognize the workers in some of our largest cities who use public transportation rather than adding yet another car to the road. We're hoping, before the week is through, to hand out more than 75,000 Smoothies. We tip our lids to the nation's commuters!

Some transportation facts and figures:

*According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, one lane of interstate highway can accommodate 2,500 cars per hour, while one lane of rail can accommodate 40,000 passengers per hour.
*A bus with as few as seven passengers is more fuel-efficient, in terms of passenger miles per gallon, than the average single occupant vehicle used for commuting;
*A typical household spends nearly 20 percent of its income on driving costs – more than it spends on food;
*For every 1,000 carpools formed, 20 tons of smog-forming emissions would be reduced over the course of a year;
*Traffic now exceeds road capacity in more than half of the nation’s 50 largest urban areas.

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Happy Birthday, Earth Day! Friday is the 35th annual Earth Day. Check out some Earth Day tips and a sing-along song for children.

Not to mention Season Affective Disorder...

A senior member of the U.S. House's Energy and Commerce Committee wants to give Americans a few more hours of daylight in the winter months to save energy. The idea is simple--the more daylight we have, the less electricity we use, so the Energy Bill currently being crafted and debated in Washington now features a possible two-month extension of Daylight Savings Time. The proposal would have it start the last Sunday in March and end on the last Sunday in November. The two-month extension would save the equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil a day, apparently. The House will vote on the full measure sometime over the next few weeks. Is this a good idea? Should we shed more light on the problem of high energy costs in this country?