Using Shopping To Green A Business

Posted by arvind s grover Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:33:09 GMT

A video from Carrotmob on how they use local consumer power to encourage businesses to be more environmentally responsible. By combining their buying power, they managed to find a business willing to use a part of their profits for "greening" their store. One of the best parts of the videos is the thoughtful and playful video they put together explaining the event. Making it spreadable through the video-sharing site Vimeo helps them get even more attention through people like me, who want to see their work passed on. Godspeed Carrotmob, and thanks to Dean Shareski for pointing me to the video. Watch below.

Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.

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Tags: Carrotmob, DeanShareski, Vimeo, environment, green, consumer, collective, power

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Rob said about 1 hour later:

Now that’s what I call capitalism at work! Finally, someone trying to help business do environmentally friendly work!

Would love to find out what influences the CarrotMob folks had in their education that help “nudge” them in this direction. Not necessarily the environmental direction, but the critical thinking, problem solving direction!

Great problem solving and thinking skills! Like the store owner said, “Everyone wins!”

Thanks for the video!
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Alex Ragone said about 20 hours later:

Thanks for sharing, arvind. Yeah, I wonder what kind of motivation that we can give schools to change. What’s the carrot there? Hmmm.
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arvind said 1 day later:

Our world these days seems to be putting big businesses in the driver’s seat, but Carrotmob is trying to flip the relationship to give consumers a say in what they buy, who they shop from, etc. But until your average American is willing to wait while groups like Carrotmob tell you where to shop, I’m not sure how quickly change can happen. I’m also not convinced that Americans will inconvenience themselves to go to a farther-away store, for example. I hope I’m wrong though.

What I do love to see however, as Rob and Alex were getting at, is young people taking initiative to make change. And then using their ideas in conjunction with communication technologies to really get their message heard by a wide audience. Cheap, easy, effective – very intelligent.