Happy New Us: Playing for Change; Peace Through Music.

Way to use the Internets, people! Here’s a viral video featuring musicians from around the world performing “Stand By Me.” The global musical collaboration was created by the Playing for Change Foundation , which recently released footage from its documentary, Playing for Change: Peace Through Music, to grow awareness around its core mission to connect the world through music.

The famous Ben E. King classic “Stand By Me” is the first of many independently produced songs to be released and ‘stars’ indy artists that span the globe. Other such classic remakes from the global project will be released as digital downloads, with a soundtrack and DVD of the film slated for release early next year. Proceeds from the project will go towards helping to “build schools, connect students, and inspire communities” across the globe – hopefully proving once again that yes, we can create change through music.

Thanks to fave site, TrendCentral.

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.

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.

Whole Foods + Other ‘Green’ Grocers Land on The Seafood Red List

Greenbiz.com breaks the news today that even our supposedly uber-green grocery stores came close to flunking Greenpeace’s recent exam on sustainable seafood. Grocers with big green reputations such as Whole Foods, Ahold USA and Harris Teeter failed to score more than four out of 10 possible points in the report: ‘Carting Away The Oceans: How Grocery Stores Are Empting The Seas.”

Wegmans, Wal-Mart and Target followed with three out of 10 points.

The RED LIST is a compilation of 22 fished and farmed species with the most significant environmental impacts. All grocers surveyed sold fish from the Red List, which includes certain tuna varieties, Atlantic halibut, orange roughy and Chilean Sea Bass.

Anyone who lives on the Monterey Peninsula in the spectacular shadow of the famed Monterey Bay Aquarium knows better. Some ten years ago, the Aquarium developed Seafood Watch, a program designed to create consumer awareness about the importance of buying seafood from sustainable sources.

All anyone at Safeway, Aldo, Kroger and Costco — the supermarkets that scored two out of 10 points – had to do was get out their mobiles and check the Aquarium’s online pocket Seafood Guide. Or maybe the grocers who scored a single point out of 10, including Trader Joe’s and Publix — might want to check out the Aquarium’s handy tips about how to ‘avoid items on the AVOID LIST.’

While apparently the authors of the report were somewhat upbeat about improvements in sustainability practices to come, inevitably what news like this does is increase consumer skepticism and ups complaints about greenwashing. These days, with a growing group of citizens making a tangible effort to green up their acts, there is an urgent need for transparency, not tricks.