Grow a Mo for Movember

Not strictly to do with the environment, but growing a moustache/mustache may err save on shaving products or something. Anyway, Movember is an international even where men get involved in raising money for prostrate cancer by growing a moustache.

I (Adam) have joined in with this and I am 16 days in – you have a clean shave on the 1st. The latest picture of me is below but you can check out how it’s going at http://uk.movember.com/mospace/291540/ and also sponsor me too. Smiling makes me look even weirder…

nvohk Crowd Funding Clothing Company Goes Live

The eco clothing company that is managed by it’s members, nvohk, has gone live today. Previously we’ve written about the company here, but in brief members will contribute $50 in annual membership dues to…

• Receive regular business updates and provide ongoing feedback via message boards
• Help make major business decisions including logo design, product designs, advertising, sponsored athletes and musicians, etc.
• Members will be invited via email to login to nvohk.com and read about specific business decisions on the table. Members will then vote on their preferred outcome. when members reach a consensus of 60%+ (active votes), the decision will be executed via nvohk’s management.
• Earn reward points based on 35% of net profits (1 to 1 ratio of dollars to points)
• Identify and select beneficiaries for corporate charitable donations (10% of net profits to environmental charities)

I will be signing up and plan to keep you all updated on the progress of the company and how well things are going. You can join up too for $50 if the idea and terms appeal to you.

Green Wedding Presents

We’ve previously talked about green wedding dresses, but you can obviously also get green wedding presents.

Whilst buying a green wedding present isn’t difficult, sometimes I don’t really want to buy more “stuff” for the happy couple. That’s why I think Changing the Present is a good idea. To be more precise they offer charitable wedding gifts/lists, not green ones, but many of the gifts are green. Couples can choose from a full range of over 1,000 charitable gifts from $2 to $5,000 from hundreds of leading nonprofits, such as plant 40 trees, protect wildlife, and educate little kiddies.

It looks like a great idea to me, so please let me know if you’ve used it or have any other ideas for green gifts (wedding or otherwise).

UK’s First Non-Profit Price Comparison Site Launches

We’ve previously talked about donating to charity whilst you search, however you can now donate to charity whilst you compare prices.

NeverGreedy is a non-profit price comparison site that tries to make it simple for consumers to reduce the environmental impact of their online purchases while saving money. When you buy a product (not just search for one) via the NeverGreedy site, retailers pay NeverGreedy a commission. 80% of this is then donated to projects that promote sustainable environments and livelihoods around the world through technology and education.

Currently they have over 1,000 retailers to choose from (in the UK only at the moment), including Amazon, John Lewis, M&S, British Airways, Dell, Apple, HMV and The Body Shop as well as the main UK Gas, Electric, Telephone and Broadband suppliers.

According to themselves, NeverGreedy is:
- An effective yet simple first step in reducing the impact of online shopping.
- Unique in donating 80% of all revenue generated.
- An effective way for consumers to signal to retailers that the environment is important.
- A new way for ethical and eco friendly retailers to promote themselves and their products.

Examples of how NeverGreedy works.
i) A £829 Apple laptop is purchased via NeverGreedy, earning 2.5% or £20.73 in commission.
ii) A person signs up for 12-month contract with BT Broadband via NeverGreedy, earning £30 in commission.
iii) A £79.95 kids toy from John Lewis is purchased via NeverGreedy, earning 5% or £4 in commission.

The final donations for the above examples would be i) £16.58, ii) £24 & iii) £3.20.

This money would then donated to a project that would use the money to conserve land / plant trees (nearly 1 acre could be purchased for the combined total of the above three examples).

If you’ve tried NeverGreedy then why not let us know what you think?

Donate To Charity Whilst You Search

Gavin, over at Green Options has a great article on the top 15 charity search engines.

This is done mainly by providing a portion of the advertising revenue they receive to charity or green projects. The sites he has listed are:

- Goodsearch
- Everyclick
- Searchgive
- Ripple
- Magic Taxi
- Search Kindly
- GoodTree
- Catch Tomorrow
- Lookie
- Rectifi
- Clicks For Cancer
- Charity Café
- Oblatoo
- The Green Spider
- ClicksCount

To find out how each site helps take a look at Green Options for more details. If you know of any others, please add them below.

Green Cooking News

BBC Good Food magazine has lots of good “green” food and kitchen news and advice.

Innocent drinks have been trying to work out the carbon footprint of their (admittedly delicious) smoothies. In collaboration with the Carbon Trust and the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management, Innocent have found that transporting it’s Mango and Passion Fruit smoothie resultd in relatively low emissions but creating the packaging caused much higher emissions.

Kitchen gadgets can obviously be a major source of energy consumptiopn, but some are more efficient than others. The following examples all use one unit of electricity:
- Mixing a cake a week in a mixer for one year.
- Cooking 1.3kg of chips in a deep-fat fryer.
- Blending over 400 litres of soup.
- Grinding over 90kg of coffee in a coffee mill.
- Boiling 6.8 litres (12 pints) of water in a kettle.

Over 6.7m tonnes of food waste is generated by households each year (costing around £250-£400) and around 50% of this is still edible. A few tips to reduce your food waste:

• Plan meals ahead so you don’t buy food that you won’t use.
• Use-by dates are a huge reason for waste so try to plan ahead.
• Don’t buy too much at once, just because you’re in the store. You can always go back again int he (unlikely) event you need more.
• Set your fridge to be between 1 and 5C so food keeps as best it can.
• Use leftovers creatively or better still, don’t make too much in the first place.
• Compost as much leftovers and scraps as you can.

[Via: BBC Good Food]

The Charity Meme – A Worthwhile Link Train

Whilst we’ve been tagged a couple of times before by other bloggers, we don’t always participate. However when Shaun at Hobo SEO tagged me for this “link train” it was finally a worthwhile one. It’s a charity link train, the idea is to help these charities rank high in Google for keywords and this is achieved simply by the type of anchor text links on this page. “Anchor text” is the text used in a hyperlink, such as “disaster relief” below. This is aimed at improving their rankings in the search results, in the first case for someone searching on “disaster relief” and so on.

• American Red Cross – disaster relief
• Raleigh Rescue Mission – homeless raleigh
• SOS Children’s Villages – sponsor a child
• Samaritan’s Purse – emergency relief programs
• St. Jude Children’s Hospital – cancer research
• Medecins Sans Frontieres / Doctors Without Borders – Humanitarian Relief
• American Red Cross – Emergency Preparedness
• AMREF – African Medical & Research Foundation – African Health Development
• DOROT – Programs for Elderly
• Feed the Children – Protect Children
• Service International – Disaster Relief
• Pujols Family Foundation – Children with Down Syndrome
• National Alliance to End Homelessness – Homelessness
• The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research – Parkinson’s Research
• Ronald McDonald Care Mobile Program – Child Healthcare
• Aids Research Alliance – Aids Research
• Wildlife Conservation Society – Wildlife Protection
• Cancer Research Institute – Cancer Research
• Second Harvest – End Hunger
• AARP Foundation – Helping Senior Citizens
• The Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity – Polish Charity
• CPR For Schools Across Poland – CPR Training
• Program of Insulin Pumps in Diabetic Children Therapy – Insulin Pumps For Children
• Non-invasive Neonatal Breathing Support – Infant Flow
• Program of Universal Neonatal Hearing Screenings – Neonatal Hearing
• Ardgowan Hospice – Lymphoedema Clinic
• Cancer Research UK – Cancer Charity
• Childline – Free advice for children
• World Wildlife Fund – Save the environment
• Friends Of the Earth – Solve environmental problems
• Groundwork – Improve my community

The rules are simple, copy the list of charities and links (grab it from whomever tags you) and add your 5 favorite charities or non-profit organizations to the end (link to their sites with anchor text of the causes they champion). Of course finish things off by tagging 5 other webmasters/bloggers and then publishing the post or the webpage.

The meme was started over at SEO Refugee by Skitzoo.

I’ve tagged a couple of people who have taken the time to comment on Life Goggles or who I have found their site of interest:

1. Eco Kev
2. Adnan
3. Brendon
4. Yaro
5. Tyler