Direct Action

Find Your Lost (G)love

- Adam Clare

thanks AP!
A new website has the one goal of pairing up lost gloves with their owners. Losing your glove can make a happy day kinda sad, finding your lost glove can turn a sad day into a happy one.

Yahoo has an article on finding you lost gloves, and you can check the website at One Cold Hand.

Gooch, originally from Dallas, photographs each glove and puts the picture and information on her Web site, where people can report found gloves and request stickers. She hasn’t made any glove connections in the two weeks the site has been live, but it’s OK if that never happens, she said.

“It’s kind of whimsical and bittersweet,” Gooch said. “It makes you feel there’s this opportunity for benevolence.”

Gooch would love to see One Cold Hand projects sprout up in other cities. She’s working with two women in New York to start a similar effort there. They hope to have onecoldhand-nyc.com up and running soon.

Bible printed on FSC-Certified paper.

- Cam Proctor

The Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Daily Bible is printed on paper that includes recycled content and comes from forestlands certified by the Rainforest Alliance’s SmartWood program, the leading certifier of forestlands to FSC standards.

Kudos to Thomas Nelson, Domtar and Green Press Initiative for working together to achieve this important first in the publishing industry,” said Tensie Whelan, executive director of the Rainforest Alliance. “This is further evidence of the growing trend among publishers to improve their sourcing strategies and lessen their environmental impact by seeking out environmentally preferable papers.

Improve Your Self-Esteem and Save the Planet

- Adam Clare

Consumption in itself is bad for the planet, no matter how you cut it. Material things are generally made from finite resources (like how oil is made into plastic); so the less we buy the better we treat the planet.

This isn’t hard to do. In fact, it’s easier for people who have high self-esteem. Apprently, some new reseach is out that argues that the more confidence an individual has the less likely it is that they will buy material objects for comfort.

“By the time children reach early adolescence, and experience a decline in self-esteem, the stage is set for the use of material possessions as a coping strategy for feelings of low self-worth,” they write in the study, which will appear in the Journal of Consumer Research.

The paradox that findings such as these bring up, is that consumerism is good for the economy but bad for the individual. In the short run, it’s good for the economy when young people believe they need to buy an entirely new wardrobe every year, for example. But the hidden cost is much higher than the dollar amount. There are costs in happiness when people believe that their value is extrinsic. There are also environmental costs associated with widespread materialism.

I guess this can be further backed up by examples that billionaires don’t like spending their money.

Spiral Island: Built on Empty Bottles

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Spiral Island may just be the island of the future and not only because it has its own website. Richie Sowa has taken thousands of empty bottles (think water bottles, milk jugs) and put them into big nets, then attached the nets to a platform, then to other platforms. All these platforms are covered in soil and plants, thus making the coolest island ever.

An environmentalist to the core, Sowa is also an artist and a musician. More than just the universal dream of an island retreat, Spiral Island is also his vision for low-impact sustainable living. The next version of the island will be built to withstand more treacherous weather than the first and will also be located in a more sheltered part of Mexico’s waters.

What’s The Point?

- Adam Clare

The Point is an online community that is geared to changing the world when they reach “the tipping point,” that is to say when a movement has enough people embracing its ideas then it’s time to act. The thing with this point is that participants decided when that tipping point is and act only once that point is reached.

The Point is a groundbreaking way to use the Internet that helps groups of like-minded people get things done. How? No one is obligated to do anything unless a campaign reaches its “tipping point.” At the tipping point, everyone springs into action, knowing they have the numbers to make a difference.

Think of how often you confront this problem – you want to know what everyone else is doing before you decide what you are going to do. Voting, complaining to your phone company, contributing to a group purchase or charity, standing up to your boss, boycotting a company, planning a party – the list is endless. On The Point, all action is contingent on its effectiveness.

Via TechCrunch

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