It was a busy weekend for the EOS Alliance team! Over at Maple School Natural area, 160 plants were given a new home by volunteers from the Garfield High School Key Club. It was a wet workday but all the effort paid off and we want to send a big ?Thank You? to everyone who stopped by and helped make that green space a little bit greener.Meanwhile, up in Wallingford a much smaller group was gathering to learn about do-it-yourself weatherization projects that every homeowner can undertake.

It was a busy weekend for the EOS Alliance team! Over at Maple School Natural area, 160 plants were given a new home by volunteers from the Garfield High School Key Club. It was a wet workday but all the effort paid off and we want to send a big “Thank You” to everyone who stopped by and helped make that green space a little bit greener.

The salmon is an inconic species for Washington. They are not only a key species in the natural heritage of the Pacific Northwest, but are essential to the continued health of their ecosystem as they “fuel” the natural environment. So how could I say “no” to the opportunity to become a Salmon Steward at Carkeek Park in Seattle?

Over the last two weeks EOS Alliance Sustainability Team members have been in homes all across Seattle learning the ropes of BPI energy auditing. We've learned how to operate blower doors, manometers, and furnaces under the tutelage of energy auditing expert Bruce Minturn.

This past Friday was a big day for us at EOS. The Building Performance Inspection course was wrapping up and we had a 100% pass rate for the students taking the certification exam, including our eight AmeriCorps members taking the exam that day. In the afternoon, we were joined by US Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Senator Patty Murray, and Washington state energy leaders for a roundtable discussion. The roundtable discussed possibilities for energy investments in the state, including pump hydro power, which stores excess power from wind turbines in the potential energy of water.

“In the case of China, [climate change plans] so ambitious that it could well become the front-runner in the fight to address climate change. The big question mark is the U.S.”

In recent years global warming and carbon footprints have been a hot topic in the news. Global warming is “an increase in the earth's atmospheric and oceanic temperatures widely predicted to occur due to an increase in the greenhouse effect resulting especially from pollution” (http://www.mdbc.gov.au/subs/The_River/glossary.html), and a carbon footprint is “the total set of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused directly and indirectly by an individual, organization, event or product (UK Carbon Trust 2008).

Hello, and welcome to the new EOS Alliance blog!We will be using this space to provide regular updates and news about the programs and services offered by EOS Alliance (including our professional training programs and our Sustainability Team's projects), thoughts and commentary on environmental issues, links to useful resources, and just general information about environmental sustainability and all things green.  Feel free to leave comments, check us out at www.eosalliance.org, and follow us on Facebook

To celebrate the United Way of King County's 17th Annual Day of Caring this past Friday, the EOS AmeriCorps Sustainability team joined forces with Notre Dame Seattle AmeriCorps members for a restoration work party. The Volunteers worked in the Maple School Natural Area removing invasive English Ivy and Blackberry, then finished up the day mulching their respective zones in preparation for planting new plants. November 7th, Green Seattle Day, the volunteers will be returning to plant native species in the zones that have been previously mulched.