Tag: environment

Tags: collective purchasing, environment, social market, sustainability, technology for change, web 2.0, Web-native projects for social change, Add more tags...,

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1Bog: alias, 1 Block Off the Grid. Solar energy at it best. Collective purchasing for green home improvements at its best. Social markets an entrepreneurship meet green living, this meeting happening on the Web.

 

 

 

1Bog is run by Virgance,  a successful Bay Area "incubator" that builds and owns "social enterprises, preparing them for Tier 1 venture capital investment" (Virgance.com).

As a combination of "activism and capitalism" Virgance, founded by Steve Newcombe, a successful "serial entrepreneur", and Brent Schulkin, activist and filmmaker, is at present working on 4 projects, ranging from a network of environmental blogs to a project empowering sustainable consumers and a very tasty Facebook preview of what is defined "the American Idol of social change" (more soon).

 

 

1Bog appears to have all it takes to be a winning model: it is about connecting entreprises to individuals and individuals among themselves, and using the Web to do so; it is about about an environmental and surely a demand-growing issue, or rather "good" like that of green improvements, specifically solar energy; it is about constructing a "social market" and generally harvesting the benefits of a transparent market encounter around a sustainable "good"; it is finally about generating a critical mass.

 

 

 

It all starts from Post Code and e-mail. Subsequently, when enough homeowners interested in green improvements are aggregated, 1Bog "uses collective bargaining power to negotiate group discounts and group financing options on their behalf", launching a request for proposal to screened installers. The aims are thus becoming visible:making the process of buying solar panels easier, cheaper and safer while creating a market for partners in the solar industry.

 

The rest of the equation is composed by a rich set of information and practical solutions to problems associated to the costly process of greening our lives: the site area dedicated to solar financing provides with a good set of solutions including suggested partners, municipal contracts, home equity and even peer-to-peer lending through Lending Club.

 

If you want to visualize some of the activity going on check the section on solar cities. If you want to learn more about solar, check the solar university. The Blog is also quite up to date and an interesting "volunteering" page suggests way of being helpful, starting from "volunteer 5 minutes". All pretty nicely crafted, including the funny "About" slideshow.

Tags: africa, environment, philanthropy 2.0, social change, tree planting, Web-native projects for social change, Add more tags...,

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The goal in its simplest formulation: planting 100,000 trees by the end of 2009. This is Tree-Nation , a multicultural, Barcelona-based venture, in a line..

It will soon sound like a constant tune across our reviews of Web-native projects for social change: I like simple goals of change or, rather, I like the simplification of those to the public eye that the Web is able to encourage.

I am not trying to make the case for every world's most complex problem to be reduced to a bunch of links and clicks: I am rather saying that attaching rich information to social change goals and allowing them to be manipulated online could increase our ability to crumble, repackage and distribute their parts into something more affordable, approachable, flexible and, why not, likeable.

 

 

Imagine a giant 8 million-trees heart in Niger. A wonderful, utopian challenge..

Now consider the same trees one by one, create packages of them costing from 7 to 200 dollars, allow Web users to choose one or more of them through a seamless Web platform; give them a sophisticated mapping system where they can place their trees as if they were actually planting them, reflecting real land configuration and finally allow users to attach a message or an inscription to every tree planted: what you have is one of Tree-Nation's projects.

Other declared goals involve desertification fighting, water protection, CO2 offsets and poverty alleviation, specifically in Niger.