Um, am I the last person on the planet to find out about Carrotmob? This ecolitical group out of San Fran has figured out how to effect change by mobilizing conscious consumers to dangle a metaphoric carrot before businesses to motivate them into sustainability rather than stick-beating them into it. Watch the video for the full deets but basically, they get a group of people (or a ‘Carrotmob’) to spend all their consumer dollars at the store that agrees to allocate the highest percentage of their ‘Carrotmob day’ proceeds to greening their business i.e. energy retrofits, facility upgrades, recycling programs etc. The idea is that these people are going to shop anyway, and they don’t care where, so by rewarding the greenest business, they are ‘voting’ with their consumer dollars in a corporate sustainability election. How great it that? The concept, while still a microcosm, is scalable and what I think could be the start of an important paradigm shift. Watch the video and let me know what you think. For more info on Carrotmob check out their website: http://carrotmob.org/
