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I know that one of our contributors is Chris Ward, the Creative Director of Sports Relief and Comic Relief.. But that won’t stop me from saying “well done” to the whole team there and everybody who took part. The show was fantastic and they raised over £20m (including a £5.5m single donation from a mystery person!) which will make a big difference.
Ok, so it feels like every other web launch these days is environmentally flavoured. It is THE big thing. So it was only a metter of time beofre someone married the wiki model to the growing green phenomenon. And here it is… Playgreen is the green wiki that encourages all visitors to improve the knowledge of how to make a difference to our planet. “Together we are building the biggest book on green living”, says the homepage. And it could well turn into that if they attract enough people willing to contribute.
On Web of Conscience, we focus on people and technology that make a difference to the world. But I have been thinking recently that making a difference to the world is not just about helping others, it is also about making the world a better place for ourselves as individuals. The happier and healthier we all are, the more positive energy we will have to put into making the world better.
I have been inspired by many people in thinking about ensuring I am happy first and foremost, but the most recent source of inspiration has been Zen Habits and especially his post on Making Today Your Personal Miracle. The main thought in this post is one of looking at your own life and being thankful. This will first make you happy anyway, but also focus your mind on the things you may want to work on changing to make you even happier.
The Independent has a good story about Green.tv’s increase in popularity. Ade Thomas, founder of the environmental broadband channel, has been hard at work on this project for years, and cannot be accused of jumping on the green bandwagon.
Green.tv uses very high production standards to create environment-flavoured programmes, in fact, I believe that the majority of their progamming is in HD. They also host content created by other brands and content creators in this space. A must visit for anybody who is passionate about this subject.
Oprah has a new show that is coming out on abc (Oprah’s Big Giveaway) where she sends out 10 ordinary people across the US with a load of cash that they have to give away. Every week, the public vote off the person that the viewers perceive to be the least philanthropic.
So, is philanthropy the new trendy thing in the US? Or is it genuine?
I am sure that this is not the last footprint calculator we will feature here. This one is backed by WWF and supported by The Independent. It is really very easy to use – you just answer around 10 simple questions about travel, food, consumption, etc and then it tells you how many planets would be needed to support your lifestyle. It also tells you if you are under or over the UK average.
The killer is air travel. Everything else I do takes me well under the UK average, but the fact that I fly a fair bit to the US for work and a fair bit to Europe for leisure negates all the good things I do and means that I am really not helping the planet. I have cut down US trips by making them longer and taking in many more meetings in one trip, but it is difficult to cut them out completely when the company has at least 40% of its business in the US!
Discovery Channel (owners of TreeHugger.com) have created a new interactive tool called EarthLive that helps you track the state of the planet in a Google Earth kind of way.
You can use this interactive globe either to find environmental news (illustrated as red push pins) or to see how specific ecological events affected the world (in terms of sea temperature, rainfall, etc…). It’s a great way of using an interface we are getting used to (thanks to Google) and adding many layers of depth.
TreeHugger have a post detailing a recent survey that shows that Brits care more about animal welfare than climate change. Which, when you think about it, makes no sense. Animals will suffer (as will humans) from the effects of climate change, so those Brits who care so much about animals (and good on them) should make sure they focus their energies and ideas on the biggest threat to animals – climate change.
Here’s a really great take on fund raising for worthwhile causes. It’s a website/community called Greedy Or Needy – where users make a wish (which is labelled as needy if it is considered a good deed, or greedy if it is a bit more of a selfish wish), the community then votes (1 to 5 stars) and at the end of each week, the top wishes (both greedy and needy) are granted up to $100 each.
What I like about this concept is that it’s fun and it plays on the human natural tendency to want to do good AND be a bit selfish all in one place.
This site is kind of similar to the Greenopolis concept: (i) join up, (ii) learn about what you can do to reduce your carbon footprint, and (iii) do it thanks to your friends/groups/communities.
Make Me Sustainable does allow you to sign up as an individual or a business or a family – which is a nice take on things – but the main difference for me is that this site has a great carbon footprint manager. There are loads of carbon calculators online, but this one is much more usable and motivational as you can see the effect your changes are having on your footprint.
