The New Consumerism: Freecycle Registering 50,000 More Each Week Since Wall Street Crashed.

I’m an avid Freecycler. Not only am I saving money and helping the planet all in one fell swoop, I get to meet awesome and imaginative Freecyclers. A while back I posted an offer for the eleven (yes, 11) remote controls I somehow managed to accumulate. Sure enough, a guy wanted to take them all. I had to know — why on earth do you want all 11? Seems he is a night photographer who needs the tiny infrared chips.

Another Freecycler couldn’t use my beat-up bamboo chairs but gave me a carton of speckled eggs from her own chickens. Another loaded up my leftover lumber; she brought me wild blueberries, a great smile and a dose of neighborliness I sorely need.

Freecycling is all about serendipity. You never know who is going to turn up to pick up your treasures or offer up a treasure of their own. Recently we received a grand player piano — an unwieldly ancient bulwark of a thing that required three men to lift. The beauty came with a set of equally ancient piano rolls; the kind of thing only an early jazz lover would adore. It just so happens that my ex-husband is one of those jazz fanatics with a lust for 1920’s tunes. And it just so happens that my ex-husband is recovering from cancer and needs to pump those weak legs of his — which is how those piano rolls work. It takes powerful pumping to get them going.

The scoop on Freecycle:

Welcome! The Freecycle Network™ is made up of 4,617 groups with 6,030,000 members across the globe. It’s a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. It’s all about reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer (them’s good people). Membership is free. To sign up, find your community by entering it into the search box above or by clicking on “Browse Groups” above the search box. Have fun!

Business Week has a great article on this growing trend. Send it to your favorite AIG agent. Maybe he can Freecycle a few of those souvenirs he picked up at the St. Regis Resort the week we after we bailed them out.

Enjoy this post? Subscribe by email or by RSS to get more News from the Guru. Sign up here for more tips, trends, ideas and insights.

Sunday is Eco-Design Day. Introducing the All Electric MINI.

As many readers already know, Sunday is Eco-Design Day at the Guru of New blog. With the frenzy of eco-innovation underway, it’s usually tough to choose the perfect example of breakthrough design + technology.

But not this Sunday. The world’s coolest, cutest car is going all-electric. 500 all-electric MINI E will be available to select corporate and private customers as part of a pilot project in California, New York and New Jersey starting sometime in 2009. The MINI E is powered by a 150 kW (204 hp) electric motor fed by a high-performance rechargeable lithium-ion battery. The wiz-car can hit 62 mph in 8.5 seconds, cover about 150 miles with a full charge on a current charging station in 2.5 hours. The MINI E may be available in Europe as well. You can see it at the Los Angeles Auto Show starting on Sneak Preview night November 20, 2008 and running through Thanksgiving.

Thanks to Likecool.com.

Enjoy this post? Subscribe by email or by RSS to get more News from the Guru. Sign up here for more tips, trends, ideas and insights.

New From Seventh Generation: Create A Virtual Tree with Your Own Green-Friendly Ingredients.

Thanks to eco-focused company Seventh Generation and creative shop 180LA, now we can grow a veritable virtual forest and set it abloom with our favorite green-friendly ingredients.

The point of all this creativity is to emphasize the importance of knowing and showing what’s inside the products we use. Seventh Generation makes safe, non-toxic products for your home and family and their site is rich with widgets, tools and blogs like Ask Science Man and Inspired Protagonist in support of eco-education.

The virtual tree builder lets visitors select a tree shape and type in whatever ingredients they choose. The site then searches the internet for your choices and you can watch the tree bloom with branches that include images of your selected ingredients. You can then save your tree to a virtual forest, watch video clips detailing Seventh Gen’s manifesto and scan a label reading guide that includes downloadable widgets for your mobile devices. If you name your tree, Seventh Generation will send you coupons and special offers.

[
Guru’s Note: The essence of doing Usability Testing is to try to break the site. That’s why I couldn’t resist trying to break my virtual tree. So I entered ingredients like: Parabens, SLES, SLS, talc, phenonip and that old reliable Phthlates. I just wanted to see if they would let me build a toxic tree or if they would send me a Red Alert. It turns out: neither. The first time I tried it, I got a simple message saying: Ingredients not found. The second time, the tree just vanished, never to return.

Guru’s Note #2: Given my proclivity toward playing with widgets, especially do-gooder green widgets, and given the sudden profusion of such things, I’ve decided it’s time to cry foul. Shouldn’t there be some point to these Gidgets (green widgets) beyond being semi-engaging and merely seeming green? When I heard about Seventh Generation’s new tool, I thought it would really be a tool . . . that is, something that would help me find healthier household products. I thought that when I entered my favorite ingredients in my Virtual Tree, the tree would be ‘blooming’ not just with pictures of orange slices and olive oil, but with actual products created from those ingredients. I thought I could find out about new products and maybe even order them. I was even ready to accept a tree ablaze with only Seventh Generation products. But instead, nada. Thanks to my choice of favorite green ingredients, the Guru of New Tree was laden with glossy graphics of Lemon Drop Martinis and Mai Tais decorated with Hibiscus petals.

Enjoy this post? Subscribe by email or by RSS to get more News from the Guru. Sign up here for more tips, trends, ideas and insights.

Wiki Launches The New Wikia Green

Do we need another green site?

Wiki Founder Jimmy Wales seems to think so.

Wikia Green launched last week, with the mission of creating a valuable resource for all things green and is based on the wildly successful Wiki platform.

‘A dynamic new ecology resource’, the site is already rich in consumer-generated-content with some 600 posted articles which span the green spectrum: lifestyle, travel, activism, how-to guides, climate change and technology.

According to sexy, sustainable style partner ecofabulous.com, the site was created by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley. Wikia Green was the love child born when Wales met Al Gore, just before Gore received his Nobel Prize. After researching existing green resources, Wales realized that information about green topics was scattered and often overly scientific. Wikia Green took shape from his desire to unite the passion of the green community into one highly accessible resource.

Enjoy this post? Subscribe by email or by RSS to get more News from the Guru. Sign up here for more tips, trends, ideas and insights.

Japan Goes Uber-Eco with New Zero Emissions House.

Is GW soaking his feet in a fuel-cell powered foot bath, as Honda’s Asimo humanoid robot serves him green tea?

With the eyes of the world on all things eco at the G8 Summit in northern Japan, this week is the perfect time for Japan’s tech innovators to dazzle us with their most droolworthy green gizmos. And droolworthy they absolutely are, ranging from Sanyo’s Aqua waterless washer to Sharp’s solar-powered TV to Mitsubishi’s human-sensing air conditioner to Honda’s gracious tea-bot. But stealing a bit of their thunder is where the eco-gadgets are displayed — in the new Zero Emissions House.

The 200 million yen, 2152 square foot, one-story house has been built near the Summit and will be moved to another area afterwards, where the general public can gawk at the high-priced, high tech appliances in the Japan-style uber-eco home. The house is powered by a wind-turbine generator and a photovoltaic generation system and sports a rooftop vegetation system plus solar panels.

Zero and low emission houses have been sprouting up around the world, including one in the UK, where the first one went up last June.

Enjoy this post? Subscribe by email or by RSS to get more News from the Guru. Sign up here for more tips, trends, ideas and insights.

Should Pizza Go Green? Pizza Fusion, America’s Eco-Friendly Restaurant Chain, Opens San Diego’s First LEED Certified Restaurant.

Can restaurants make some green by going green? Rapidly expanding franchise, Pizza Fusion, is showing the industry that making sustainability the mission can pay off. Founded in 2006 by two Florida entrepreneurs, Pizza Fusion’s Saving the Earth, One Pizza At A Time message translates into 70 franchises sold in about a year, with 10 store openings and another 15 planned by year’s end.

First stop in California: San Diego. Then Santa Monica, Thousand Oaks, and Temecula.

Pizza Fusion takes a holistic approach to their eco-friendly practices, by delivering their organic menu in company owned hybrids, building only LEED certified restaurants, and offsetting 100% of their power consumption.

And it gets greener:

Pizza Fusion’s LEED certified restaurants reduce water waste by 40 percent and electricity consumption by 20 percent annually. Overall, a Pizza Fusion store uses 30 percent less energy than a typical pizza restaurant. (Restaurants in the U.S. are power-hungry; gobbling up some 33% of total consumption among retail businesses.)

The restaurants feature a number of unique, eco-efficient products, techniques and designs, including eliminating the use of water heaters and air heating units by recycling heat from their ovens to warm their water and the restaurants themselves. Food containers are made from 100 percent corn starch and utensils are made from 100 percent potatoes.

Other eco-elements:

Countertops made from 100% recycled detergent bottles
Bamboo flooring
30% recaptured industrial concrete
Ceiling panels made from 74% recycled aluminum cans and 24% post industrial metals
USG Gypsum Board made from pre-used drywall
Insulation made from recycled blue jeans,
Ceiling baffles made from recycled composite board
Low voltage and low heat lighting
Seat cushions made with soybean oil
Furniture made from reclaimed wood
100 percent post consumer toilet paper in their bathrooms.

And oh yes, the food:   Pizza Fusion restaurants “proudly serve up delicious, gourmet pizza in its purest form - untainted by artificial additives, like preservatives, growth hormones, pesticides, nitrates and trans fats (to name a few). While we’re famous for our pizza, our 75% organic menu features an eclectic variety of gourmet sandwiches, salads, desserts, beer and wine. Additionally, we proudly offer health conscious alternatives for our friends with selective diets and food allergies, such as our delicious gluten-free pizza, brownies and beer and our tasty vegan selections.”

They even give customers 25 cents off their meals for every pizza box returned for recycling.

Enjoy this post? Subscribe by email or by RSS to get more News from the Guru. Sign up here for more tips, trends, ideas and insights.

The New York City Waterfalls Public Art Spectacular Opens With A Splash.

Chicago has its cows. San Francisco has its cable cars. Las Vegas has its . . . well, you know.

As of yesterday, New York has its waterfalls.

New York City Waterfalls, the ambitious new $15.5 million project presented by The Public Art Fund and Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, is splashing its way across all five boroughs, bringing new energy and (hopefully) lots of cash into the city. The man-made falls tower 90 to 120 feet high in four sites across the East River’s shores:

Beneath the Brooklyn Bridge,
Manhattan’s Pier 35
Between Brooklyn’s Piers 4 and 5
On the northern end of Governor’s Island.

The Waterfalls, which draw water from the river at 35,000 gallons per minute, run from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. every other day through Oct. 13. They will all be visible from South Street Seaport and the Staten Island ferry. Maps, podcasts and more information on viewing these new ‘natural’ wonders are available at NYCWaterfalls.org.

And never fear, Carbon Cops. They will operate on electricity run by renewable resources.

Enjoy this post? Subscribe by email or by RSS to get more News from the Guru. Sign up here for more tips, trends, ideas and insights.

Are The Carbon Cops coming? Will We Be Dragged Off to Carbon Rehab?

41% of Britons think the Carbon Cops are coming.

25% think ‘repeat offenders’ will be shipped off to Carbon Rehab and forced to take Carbon Addiction classes.

So reports Reuters in an article about a recent survey conducted by the Energy Saving Trust, an organization set up to help people kick the carbon habit.

“The UK’s perception is that by 2050 we could have the sort of draconian infringements on our civil liberties that have been highlighted in our research. This need not be the case,” said EST chief Philip Sellwood said in the Reuters article.

Note: I’ve been waving this green flag for a while now.  Do you want your product to be the plastic bag of the future?  It’s either abide by our new millennium’s mantra — Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Or expect a visit from the Carbon Offset Police enforcing that fourth R: Regulate.

I will undoubtedly be the first to be taken away in (hemp) chains.  Convicted of cheeseburger, paper towel and Crystal Geyser addiction.

 

Enjoy this post? Subscribe by email or by RSS to get more News from the Guru. Sign up here for more tips, trends, ideas and insights.

Going Bananas Over Dole Organic’s Marketing Savvy.

I always love it when I get a new food project.  I get to wax eloquent with phrases like farmers-market-fresh and sun-plumped perfect. I get to invent new blends, flavors and colors. I get to nose around in my stockpile of ingredients and decide whether they should be mulled, cold-pressed or frappe’d.

But all of this is wimpy indeed — mere puffery, in fact — when compared to the way in which Dole has masterfully re-tooled its Organics line, giving it new life and a compelling new story to tell.  In an era when our favorite veggies suddenly turn villainous, made in China means made with mercury and lead, and no one is really sure what ‘green’ means anymore, Dole has taken not just the eco road but the ethical one as well.

The story: Dole Organic lets consumers “travel to the origin of each organic product”.  By typing in a fruit sticker’s three-digit Farm Code on Dole Organic’s website, customers can find the story behind their banana. Each farm’s section on the website includes background info, shows photos of the crops and workers and tells consumers more about the origin of Dole’s organic products.  You can even use Google Earth to get a closer look at the community.  A new Carbon Compensation 2008 chart is available as well.

I typed in code 698 and here’s what I got:   

Farm Name: La Gloria and Las Palmas

Las Palmas Farm and La Gloria Farm belongs to Andrés Altamirano, a member of VRAM group. La Gloria farm has 20 hectares of organic bananas and 20 hectares of organic cocoa. The farm is located in Machala, Province of El Oro in Ecuador. The farm is been certified by BCS Öko Garantie since 2005. Mr. Altamirano as well as his partners of VRAM group is commited with the improvement of the organic farming.  Las Palmas farm has 25 hectares in third year of conversion to organic, next January 2008 the farm will be certified as organic and will start exporting its organic fruit with Dole Organic Program too.

Now that carbon footprinting and corporate transparency are here to stay, it’s likely that more marketers will soon come up with their own seed to spoon stories and labels. Enquiring minds now urgently want to know: Where the heck did my dinner come from? Who grew it? How did it get to my local Safeway? What kind of footprint did it leave behind?

And the ultimate question of all: Which is worse? Carbon or calories?

Enjoy this post? Subscribe by email or by RSS to get more News from the Guru. Sign up here for more tips, trends, ideas and insights.

Just When You Thought It Was Eco-OK To Run That Online Media Campaign …

We calculated our carbon footprint for all those red-eyes we flew to London, the SUVs we rented, the hotel rooms where we showered for 20-minutes and requested extra Egyptian cotton towels.  We even tossed in the methane from the cheeseburgers we devoured after Brett was intercepted in overtime.

And while our eco-sins are piling up like so many plastic bottles imprinted with 7’s, it didn’t occur to us until this very moment that we marketers need to calculate the environmental impact of our online media campaigns.  We felt so virtuous switching from treeware to those flashing banners and Facebook fan pages.

But now, a company called imc2 has launched Clear Sky Digital Media, a free tool that allows marketers to calculate and then offset the carbon footprint of their online media campaigns. The tool converts an online media buy into a kilowatt hour measure of the energy necessary to support its delivery. This measure is translated into carbon emissions and then used to determine the cost of buying offset credits.

Initially, I tried to calculate the carbon footprint of this blog but was quickly disheartened by the quantity of 0.0’s that appeared. Then I fantasized I was Chief Media Buyer for The Plastic Bags of America account, deep into planning the launch of a major online campaign featuring user-generated videos showing off the many healthy uses of recycled plastic bags. I picked the dimensions, selected high traffic sites like Yahoo, MSN, and AOL, then added the number of expected impressions. In seconds, Clear Sky not only calculated the carbon cost of the proposed campaign but told me how much it would cost me in green credits to offset. In this case, my Healthy Plastics campaign would create about 10 metric tons of carbon — and cost around $127 to offset.

So why do we need this new tool? Isn’t switching from forest to server farm virtuous enough? After all, an average issue of Time magazine is responsible for a quarter-pound of greenhouse gas emissions, while newsprint consumption alone is some 9.2 million tons per year. Electronics have got to be greener, yes?

Apparently Clear Sky’s mission is to simply persuade us to re-think all of our energy consumption and to start an industry-wide conversation about sustainability. Although currently not as devastating as dead trees, electronic media is having a growing impact on the environment. It’s already running neck and neck with air travel, each accounting for an estimated 2% of the world’s carbon emissions.

imc2 has raised some interesting issues — and here’s another one: Should the candidates in this year’s Presidential Election be required to calculate (and offset) the carbon emitted as a result of their campaigns? Imagine what it might cost to offset only the $45 million the money-making machine known as Barack Obama raised in the month of February alone and then spent aggressively on TV ads, particularly in Texas. A Presidential campaign carbon offset could be a significant energy investment windfall.

Enjoy this post? Subscribe by email or by RSS to get more News from the Guru. Sign up here for more tips, trends, ideas and insights.

Next Page »

• Find Me

  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

• Recent Articles

  • The Big Three That’s *Not* Asking for Money and Why They Should Go to Washington Instead.
  • As Venice Sinks, It’s Time To Surf.
  • Introducing The Newest Member of the Social Networking Hall of Shame.
  • Trend 3: The Return of Girly Glam.
  • The OMG! Gift for Holiday 2008: The Keyboard for Blondes

• Recent Comments

  • Tateski: I want to surf St. Marks Square too!
  • admin: I love Peter Kim — he’s a genius and his many link lists are the secret weapon behind many of my...
  • Shannon Kmak: “Tools” are being created all over the web to measure your social media...
  • Steve Martinez: If the chicken says - the sky is falling, the sky is falling, it only creates panic. I don’t...
  • maria: this doll is stupid and shouyld be banned for good

• Categories

  • cute
  • eco & sustainability
  • education
  • entertainment
  • fashion & beauty
  • financial services
  • food & beverage
  • gaming
  • government
  • health & wellness
  • homes & housing
  • lifestyle & leisure
  • marketing & advertising
  • media & publishing
  • New Stuff
  • non-profit/social cause
  • Parenting and children
  • politics
  • retail
  • small business
  • social media
  • sports
  • style & design
  • Technology
  • telecom/mobile
  • tourism & travel
  • Transportation
  • trends + cool hunting
  • Uncategorized
  • Women
  • work

• Archives

  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • August 2007
  • June 2007