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The Wattson is a great gizmo that lets you measure energy use in your home. Just plug it in and see how much money you're burning by having everything on stand-by, and the house lit up like a Christmas tree.
Makes the need to do something very tangible. And the fact it looks quite cool is an added bonus.
Thanks to Russell, who has got one and is giving it a try (why not ask him how it's going).
A nice idea about being nice...
"Being nice costs nothing, so why is that Londoners so rarely take the time to see and acknowledge the people who share their city? On public transport, in the supermarket, walking down the street, we often hang our heads and avoid eye contact...we can be slow to acknowledge our fellow Londoners as people...just like us...But we can change, we can make London into the open and friendly city it should be, and that is what Niceties-Tokens is all about. Niceties-Tokens is a campaign to make London a nicer place to live. The concept is very simple. It isn't about rewarding niceness; it's about engaging and acknowledging others. The tokens themselves are just that, tokens that are passed from person to person, carrying their message with them. Recipients are directed to this website where they are invited to record their part in the token's journey in a logbook. We now have almost 1,000 niceties tokens in existence. Each token has potential to be passed round hundreds of people, spreading the niceness message."
It's been around for about a year, and I haven't yet received a token, so I don't know if it's taken off (or maybe I'm just not looking like I deserve one!). Anyone out there been on the receiving end?
But I do think being nice is a nice thing.
(Originally found: PSFK)
As it says on the website...
"A year of living generously is an online experiment based on a shared hunch that looking after this planet and its people is what we are all here for and that if many of us can make small changes in our everyday choices then over time we can make a big difference for everyone. The hunch is this. That the gap between rich and poor in our world should not be the way it is, that we only have one planet to share and that there is more to life than how much stuff we can pile up. It all started when a few of us began wondering what a community of people could achieve if they acted together to live more generously in the world? Maybe the Internet could connect us as we started to make those small everyday changes… and maybe keeping in touch with others might show us that the cumulative effect of our small lifestyle choices is more influential than we could imagine."
A bit like the Nag, Generous has been running far longer. Since September 04 in fact. And currently some 1568 individuals and 858 households are engaged in just under 9000 different actions from around 100 different possibilities. These range from taking your own bags shopping to become an organ donor; shopping local to turning off the water when brushing your teeth.
It's free to sign up (obviously). And every month you'll be sent a couple of suggested actions you can commit to do.
It's that easy to save the world.
Hot on the heels of bloggers for Burma, comes bloggers for the environment. And rather ironically, given it's what this site is meant to be about, I nearly missed it!
The basic idea is that, for one day only, we blog about the environment and what we can do to make a difference.
Rather than write something new, I'm afraid I will have to be a bit lazy (work commitments, and all that), and instead suggest you have a little wander around this blog, as there are already a few ideas hanging around.
Go on, you know you want to ;-)
As someone who often makes unplanned calls on his mobile, I think this is such a good idea (although the technological reality may be more complex than this solution suggest).
Given that it's often the first number in your address book that gets called when you forget to lock your phone, A Blind Call is specially designed to be that number (unless you have an aardvark in there).
Sit on your phone and call the number by mistake, and a proportion of the call charge goes to charity.
Simple but clever.
(thanks to Adverblog)
Well, probably not yet. But on October 4th some 14,402 bloggers committed to doing their little bit for change, by parking their usual topics and blogging for Burma instead.
Maybe not up there with the marching monks, but still pretty good for a project that was only live for 7 days - the power of word of mouth or what!
Together with over 100,000 unique visitors to the site, it's just a little bit of extra pressure that will hopefully help to make a difference in that oppressed country.
Not a particularly small thing. In fact it's pretty significant. But it seemed worthy of inclusion here nonetheless.
For all that they are gas guzzlers, apparently more than 60% of all Porsche cars ever made are still on the road. That's pretty impressive sustainability in our age of disposability.
Think what the world would be like if (perishables aside, obviously), 60% of everything we'd ever bought was still in use, whether by us or someone else.
Sounds good to me.
So the moral is, if you're making stuff, make like Porsche, and MAKE IT LAST. And if you're using stuff, whether a Porsche or a plastic bag, DON'T JUST DUMP IT - REUSE IT.
(Thanks to Ben for pointing out this great factiod, and for a presentation on how design can make an envornmental difference that is well worth a read).
Look here to find out more.
Kate Humble, presenter of many BBC wildlife shows, has come up with a great new idea (along with others I'm sure).
The thinking behind Stuff Your Rucksack is very simple: people who go travelling (of the roughing it, backpacking variety), often go to places off the beaten track with many people in need, and small, local charities trying to help them.
But because these organisations are small, they tend to fall under the radar of national Government and (inter)national NGOs. Which is where you rucksack comes in.
Needs are registered on the site, and travellers can then match these with where they are heading, and stuff their bags accordingly.
It's all very, very new, so there's not much on the site currently. But definitely something to encourage and support.
For nearly 15 years I have been selling fairtrade products (from Traidcraft, the UK's original and biggest fairtrade wholesaler) at the church I go to, and to family and friends.
First, this was a case of helping out others; more recently I have been buying stock in myself. And it's something I have really enjoyed doing, particularly being involved at a stage when the reaction of most people was 'fair what?' And when you couldn't find fairtrade products in your local supermarkets for love or money.
Over the last 18 months though, things have been changing. People 'understand' (kind of) the idea, and 'get' that in some way fairly traded products are good and right, even if they don't buy them all the time. And now most categories in your local Tesco have some things to offer (where fairtrade options are a possibility). As a consequence, I've seen my direct sales plummet, to the point where I can't afford to do it any longer.
I could argue with people that it is still better to buy from Traidcraft - as a charity, all their profits are reinvested in third world development, a double whammy in terms of the impact you have, whereas Tesco's profits just go on keeping their share holders fat and happy.
But instead I've decided to call it a day, and see it as a job well done, where my little bit helped kick start a society wide behaviour change that's been a long time coming.
Just have to ask 'what next' now!?
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