10-20-08

Meet (the new) Green Thing

Green Thing (massive disclaimer, I work with the team and have been doing a spot of digital comms around this) has relaunched it’s website. And, not only that, there’s an amazing new creature (just check it out!) and seven different incarnations of it staring in a brand new film to mark the occasion.

‘Meet Green Thing‘ is a brand new film launched on the new site, explaining the whole new Green Thing and the seven things you can do to lead a greener life.

Meet Green Thing from Green Thing on Vimeo.

1. You get from A to B without any C when you Walk The Walk
2. It’s delicious but it causes more CO2 than cars so go Easy On The Meat
3. Resist the urge to buy the latest and Stick With What You Got
4. Turn down the central heating and turn up the Human Heat
5. The art of wasting nothing and using up everything: All-Consuming
6. Instead of jetting your way around the world, Stay Grounded
7. Don’t leave it on or even put it on, Plug Out

Here’s the semi-official blurb about Green Thing, just so you know.

Green Thing is a public service that inspires people to lead a greener life. With the help of brilliant videos and inspiring stories etc. from creative people and community members around the world, Green Thing focuses on seven things you can do – and enjoy doing. Join people from 171 countries doing their green things and making a difference.

Green Thing is for people who want to live greener lives, but haven’t yet found a way to do it. E.g. whilst most people are aware of climate change, a tiny fraction have actually changed their behaviour. It’s powered by creativity. Green Thing believes that great creativity can inspire people to do things they otherwise wouldn’t consider and is working with a growing community of artists, writers, musicians, film directors to make doing each month’s green thing entertaining.

Green Thing is endorsed by many respected environmental thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic including: Nobel Peace laureate, Professor Wangari Maathai and Cathy Zoi, CEO of Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection. Green Thing’s goal is to create people-powered sustainability. By helping as many people as possible in as many countries as possible to be greener. Green Thing will use this people power to get governments and businesses to take fast action to do the green thing too – thereby helping prevent climate change.

And here’s the details of the people behind the film and the new Green Thing creature:

- It was designed by Andrew Rae
- Andrew used to do a BBC animation programme called Monkey Dust
- Animation is done by Tom Baker
- The voice of the creature is Aaron Willmer, art director and ex Karmarama
- Background music is an original composition for Green Thing by musician and composer Marc Folan – called ‘Almost Green’ (!)
- Sound effects are with thanks to Freesound
- Story and creative direction type stuff – Naresh Ramchandani (Green Thing co-starter)

So, go and do the Green Thing !

03-29-08

Google UK, now in black (today only)

Google in the UK has “turned its lights out” today in support of Earth hour. Nice. But the best thing, Blackle is most definitely put in its place for once and all.

As to why we don’t do this permanently – it saves no energy; modern displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display. However, you can do something to reduce the energy consumption of your home PC by joining the Climate Savers Computing Initiative.

Does look quite good in black, though it shows up every last piece of stuff on my nice new screen.

03-05-08

Honda: Plant this letter/20 years left

As with I suspect most people I’m suffering from a slight bit of green overload. Not that I don’t think it’s important (it is), it’s just everywhere and my brain is doing the natural thing and starting to filter. Amongst all the noise though comes this from Honda/Inferno. A really simple idea that does the job well – a letter containing embedded seeds that you are supposed to plant. I reckon if I received it I might just go plant it. Or at least look at it rather than whack it (ironically) in the recycling bin. If you look at the comments (as I just have done) – looks like it’s not a completely original idea but never the less, it caught my interest.

Oh and while we’re on the subject of the future of the planet, you might want to read this. ‘Climate science maverick’ James Lovelock encouraging us to ‘Enjoy life while you can’ [via PR Blogger]. He basically says that we’ve got 20 years “before it hits the fan”. And he’s the guy that predicted lots of things that have since become true . . . eek.

02-12-08

Live hugging and other green things

Been meaning to write about Do The Green Thing for ages and now the guys over there have given me a really good reason to.

Right now, there’s some Do The Green Thing people cooped up in a cold room waiting for people like you and me to go there and give them ‘hugs’. Using a live webcam and a simple chat and ‘big hug button’ interface, you can interact live and see what happens when you type things and press the button. One of those ideas that often comes up in brainstorms – do something live on the web with a webcam and chat – but never ever gets executed. So, really nice to see someone actually doing at and committing to doing it well. When I went in there activity was actually pretty high, judging by the amount of chat going on and they were definitely live because I asked them!

The whole point of the thing is to tie into this month’s Green Thing of using body warmth which you’ll find out all about if you go check out the site.

There’s also a Flash Hug on Valentine’s Day and an active Facebook group too. Here’s the details for the Flash Hug:

February’s Green Thing is: Use Body Warmth (and turn your heating down a bit or off for a bit).

Come to Soho Square* at 1.30pm on Valentine’s Day and be part of the world’s first Body Warmth Flash Hug.

The plan: turn the heating down or off for a bit in your homes or offices, come to Soho Square at lunchtime, hug some beautiful people (or some of the Green Thing team) then go back to your unheated homes and offices with a huge body warmth boost.

Really like the look and feel of Do The Green Thing and it’s great to see a continuous flow of good stuff coming from DTGT HQ. Now I (and you!) just need to go do it this month and every month.

Disclaimer – I know some of the people at DTGT as I used to work with them at Zopa

07-25-07

Blackle

Looks as though this launched a while back, but just been sent it and thought I’d share just in case you hadn’t seen it. Nice idea. We are becoming more accountable for every single aspect of our lives. Displaying white pixels joins the list.

“When your screen is white – Eg; an empty word page, or the Google page, your computer consumes 74 watts, and when it’s black it consumes only 59 watts. Mark Ontkush wrote an article about the energy saving that would be achieved if Google had a black screen, taking in account the huge number of page views, according to his calculations, 750 mega watts/hour per year would be saved. In a response to this article Google created a black version of its search engine, called Blackle, with the exact same functions as the white version, but with lower energy consumption”

05-25-07

Wonder what happens to all the turf?

And all the animals that temporarily set up home there?

On a related note . . . there should be much more of this in London. Everyone likes green stuff. Especially in grey places.

04-19-07

Yahoo! to go fully carbon neutral by end of 2007

Not the first but still a pretty major commitment by Yahoo!.

Slightly better news than being sued or announcing bad results.

02-27-07

Honda Civic GX nudges Toyota Prius off top green spot

Celebrities around the world will need to have a rethink. The ACEE has published the Top 12 greenest vehicles of 2007 and the Prius isn’t top. Some good news for Honda as it fights to defend its decision to go without sponsored branding on its latest F1 car as being based on its desire to bring global warming issues to the forefront of F1, rather than because the sponsor pulled out at the last minute, which thelondonpaper is claiming tonight.

And, if you’re not planning on changing your car sometime soon, there’s plenty you can be getting on with to do your bit towards sorting out this rather big problem the world is having to deal with this year.

Thanks Treehugger.

PS – I’m only a few days in on this so bear with me if you’re thinking WTF. I’m finding my groove here.

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