Author: Adam Clare

Transition From Knowing About Earth Day to Acting to Help the Earth

Today is Earth Day which is a day that calls people to be conscious of the environment and find ways to help or protect nature. It’s a great intuitive that has been around since 1970 and it’s impact continues to grow. One issue that a lot of environmental organizations run into is transitioning people’s knowledge of negative environmental behaviour into direct action.

This where a new web service called Rallyware can potentially help out. It looks alright and is one of many initiatives we’ve seen attempt this – hopefully this service will be a great success.

According to Rallyware CEO both small and large environmental organizations miss out on important business goals because they don’t engage their online supporters, fans and followers with these four easy steps:

STEP #1: CREATE BITE-SIZED TASKS
Create small, easy-to-accomplish offline tasks that must be checked off on the way to a bigger offline goal.

STEP #2: TRACK PROGRESS ONLINE
Even though actions are occurring offline, online tracking allows everyone to know in real-time how they are performing.

STEP #3: CREATE INCENTIVES
Motivate your supporters with physical rewards, status upgrades, and peer recognition for a job well done.

STEP #4: ENGAGE AGAIN
Because the support of a follower or fan erodes with inactivity, always have the next set of tasks ready to go.

Rallyware’s website
Earth Day Canada
Earth Day on Wikipedia

Reduce Your Wardrobe

It’s easy to acquire clothes nowadays and the consumerist society which we have created encourages us to continually update our clothes for the latest fad. This can be expensive and it has a negative impact on the environment. Reducing your wardrobe to only needed and fashionable items can reduce stress, but it’s hard to get accomplish. Luckily, Becoming Minimalist has a great guide!

  1. Embrace the idea of one. When one can be enough, embrace it – one black dress, one swimsuit, one winter coat, one black belt, one pair of black shoes, one pair of sneakers, one handbag… insert your own based on your occupation, lifestyle, or climate.
  2. Donate, sell, recycle, discard. Depending on the size of one’s existing wardrobe, an initial paring down won’t take long. Make a few piles – donate, sell, or recycle. Start with the clothes that you no longer wear. You’ll be surprised how much you can remove.

Read more here.

Emergency Shelter Packaged Like a Coffee Cup

Reaction Call to Action from Reaction on Vimeo.

Reaction is a new company which recently crowd funded enough money to send a boatload of housing to help refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria. The company makes Exo shelters which are stackable and easily shippable emergency shelters that can be deployed to areas suffering a disaster. The design was created as a reaction to what the designer saw during Hurricane Katrina.

Eight years after his initial idea, he has come up with the Exo Housing Unit, which consists of a floor plate and an upper shell. The portable pieces can be transported easily; just one truck can carry over 20 units. Once at the disaster location, the shelter can be simply set-up by placing the shell on top of the floor plate. At $5,000, Exo shelters are also notably cheaper than the $20,000 trailers used for shelter during Katrina, according to Fast Company.

With the design finished, the company is now in production stage and can begin answering the multiple requests they have received for their shelters from around the world. First, they plan on sending their shelters to Syria in an effort to help some of the 7 million people who have been displaced due to civil unrest.

Read more here.

Thanks to Kathryn!

Ecosia: A Search Engine That Plants Trees

Ecosia is a search engine that is trying to make the world better. Every time you search the net on their site a good percentage of ad revenue is used to pay for planting trees in Brazil. Their goal is one million new trees in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest by August 2014 (as of posting they are at 219,695 trees planted).

It’s another Google competitor with a good focus. There is also Duck Duck Go which prides itself on its privacy policies as a reaction to Google’s pervasive reach.

Hopefully Ecosia and Duck Duck Go will encourage other Google competitors or perhaps even Google itself will modify its operations.