Wallet Mouth

Green ≠ white only

I didn’t anticipate just how long the line would be to get into the San Francisco Green Festival yesterday, but I was still able to catch some of Paul Hawken’s talk. (I recently finished The Ecology of Commerce, and I’m awed by how eloquently he writes about the relationship between business and the environment.)

Hawken ended his speech by saying that the key to the environmental movement’s success is community, and that “there can be no green movement until there is a brown movement, a yellow movement, a red movement, a copper movement.”

That made me think immediately of a new site that recently came to my attention: Black Brown Green is focused on integrating people of color with the environmental movement (while not excluding whites). There are still a couple of holes in the site—it plans to announce itself formally to the public on Dec. 1—but it promises to be a good resource for tips on how to make our daily lives more sustainable, discussion forums, and articles and videos about green issues as they relate to people of color.

Half-baked idea; call me when it’s done

More than one person has pointed me to this BoingBoing post about Actics, the self-described “ethical community for companies and individuals” that provides “a new way to live your ethical values through feedback,” so I perused the site with interest. It’s a concept with potential, but it needs work.

Granted, Actics is still in beta, but basically all you can do right now is read members’ takes on concepts like environmentalism, integrity, and charity (ho-hum statements like “Walk whenever possible,” “Pursue what matters in a meaningful way,” and “Enjoy helping others”), as well as how they support those values through their actions. You can also check out how people are rated by others in the community. Everyone starts with a neutral 50 percent; members can rate one another to nudge that number up or down, and can also give feedback on how to be more ethical.

What’s not clear to me is why Actics throws people and companies together in the same pot of stew. I’m far more interested in reading (and potentially generating) feedback and ratings on companies than individuals. And so far there are a lot more people than businesses on Actics. Then again, I suppose there’s value in knowing something about the folks who are rating and giving feedback to companies. But Actics should emphasize the people-vs.-business differentiation on its front page.

Another improvement would be the ability to search companies by business type. That way, someone looking for, say, an ethical graphic design firm could find some options and read about each one’s values to see who fits the bill.

Another question I have is whether Actics is preaching to the choir; after all, any company that joins must already think of itself as ethical to some extent. What about all the others outside the fold? Will Actics membership—and the potential to be highly rated on the network—become enough of a competitive differentiator that it will motivate less enlightened businesses to clean up their act and join?

I hope the answer is yes.