Category: Direct Action

Mottainai Furoshiki

In Japan the Minster of the Environment has started a neat way to raise awareness about wastefulness.

“Ms Yuriko Koike, Minister of the Environment, has created the “Mottainai Furoshiki” as a symbol of Japanese culture to reduce waste. Furoshiki is a Japanese traditional wrapping cloth which is used repeatedly in a stylish way. (The utilization of this “Mottainai Furoshiki” will contribute to reducing household waste from plastic bags.) The Minister presented the “Mottainai Furoshiki” at the Senior Officials Meeting on the 3R Initiative held in Tokyo, Japan on March 6-8, 2006″

Thanks Allison Belisle!

Corporations and Society

noradawn wrote us to tell us about corporate social responsibility (CSR):

“Are corporate giants waking up? The increase of public demand for more sustainable and socially responsible practices is causing the giants of the business world to reevaluate how they do things and start implementing new practices. In essence, doing what they can to save the world. This practice commonly called CSR is being seen more and more in giants such as Wal-Mart, Levi & Strauss, and Hasbro to name a few.

The trend was started by smaller, socially and environmentally aware companies such as Tom’s of maine toothpaste and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, who pioneered this concept…and wound up having incredible growth rates. In turn, this caused the larger companies to turn their heads to see what they were doing right from a business perspective. As a result, it looks like it is the new trend that is emerging, and the corporate giants…many of whom have more capital than some entire countries- are the ones with the dollars and cents to really help in making a big difference.”

For more on CSR this noradawn suggests this good article on CSR.

Thanks noradawn for sharing this!

Psiphon Fights Censorship

Earlier this year we covered that Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto was creating some software called Psiphon that lets people bypass firewalls. Psiphone is designed to let people access sites that are blocked for censorship reasons like in China where there is a lot of online censorship.

“psiphon is a censorship circumvention solution that allows users to access blocked sites in countries where the Internet is censored. psiphon turns a regular home computer into a personal, encrypted server capable of retrieving and displaying web pages anywhere.”

Primer on Consumption

This book should be on every environmentalists Christmas list…..although it might change your views on this jolly time of year. To every person who spends more time shopping this season than spending time with their family, I say the booklet Consume This – Buying That Matters is for them. The Canadian Centre for Pollution Prevention (C2P2), through the support of the Ontario Trillium Foundation, has developed this booklet to teach youth on the topic of sustainable consumption. The 40-page booklets teaches youth to understand that where, how, when and what the consume has an impact on the environment, empowering youth to make environmentally friendly choices. The book outlines simple ways to reduce personal environmental impacts and participate in sustainable comsumption activities.

Visit the C2P2 website to download a FREE electronic version. Although I strongly suggest memorizing the electronic copy, full colour printed copies can be ordered using the online order form on the website or by calling 1-800-667-9790, or e-mail info@c2p2online.com. The booklet is printed by an EcoLogo Certified printer on 50% post consumer paper with vegetable based inks