Individual Action (Or Inaction!) For Good

From WikiForGood

1 Around The House
2 Climate Chanage
3 Collaborative Divorce
4 Open Source Projects
5 Kindness Movement
6 Lifestyle For Good
7 Micro Credit
8 Nonviolent Communication
9 Slowness Movement
10 Product Labels For Good Wiki
11 Click to Donate

Around The House

Yellowpagesgoesgreen.org eliminate the unsolicited delivery of Yellow and White Pages phone books! Over 500 million of these directories are printed every year. That is nearly two books for every person in the country! These directories produce a staggering amount of waste, not only in terms of misused natural resources but also in filling of valuable landfill space.

To produce 500 million books: 19 million trees need to be harvested; 1.6 billion pounds of paper are wasted; 7.2 million barrels of oil are misspent in their processing (not including the wasted gas used for their delivery to your doorstep); 268,000 cubic yards of landfill are taken up; 3.2 billion kilowatt hours of electricity are squandered

The cost associated with the delivery and disposal of these books is exorbitant. Unfortunately, these unsolicited costs fall heavily on consumers. Why are we paying for something that was delivered to our homes and offices that we did not ask for? Sign up to stop receiving them! It's like the no call list for telemarketers.

6 ingredients for a green, clean home (Apr 3, 2008) -- learn how to replace toxic cleaners with baking soda, borax, lemon juice, salt, olive oil and white vinegar.

Climate Chanage

Keep Winter Cool provides advice from the Natural Resources Defense Council on things you can do to prevent global warming.

Collaborative Divorce

Collaborative Divorce In a collaborative divorce, the parties strive to reach a fair settlement through a series of meetings, sometimes called joint sessions, between the two parties and their lawyers, and sometimes other neutral experts. The primary focus of the four-way meetings or joint sessions is to identify the priorities, goals, needs and interests of the parties, and help them progress towards and create a settlement that is consistent with their priorities, goals, needs, and interests. The parties make their own decisions based on their own standards. (Via wikipedia)

Open Source Projects

Open Source For Good Distributed Computing and Distributed Human Brain Power

Kindness Movement

Pay It Forward is a viral social movement encouraging random acts of kindness.

Lifestyle For Good

Why Facebook is more important to the environment than solar panels (June 20, 2009) Conspicuous Expression -- is replacing conspicuous consumption: The growth of social networks indicates a fundamental shift in patterns of human behavior. The unsustainable practice of ever-increasing consumption of physical goods, and expressing oneself through what one purchases and displays, is being replaced by increasing consumption of virtual goods through virtual channels. This is good news for the sustainability of our economy.

The Quantified Self is a blog about a growing movement to keep track personal statistics, such as how you spend your time, your mood, your sleep patters, your babies sleep patterns, your exercise stats etc. Communities have sprung to share the data.

Responsibility Project This is an interesting web project funded by Liberty Mutual. It seems to provide a forum for short films and discussions about ethics in every day life. See what you think.

New American Dream-- When it comes to getting more of what matters, New American Dream can help. They offer resources that make it easier to live consciously and buy wisely.

Zunafish allows you to swap your old CD's, books, DVD's and VHS tapes for ones you want, over the internet, for a dollar each.

Ecoreality is in the process of developing an ecovillage in the South Gulf Islands of British Columbia, Canada. The ecovillage will be a model of sustainable development and will feature public outreach and education as included goals. --Jan^email 23:02, 15 April 2006 (PDT)

The EcoMom Alliance is a non-profit, 501(c)3 organization inspiring and empowering mothers to help reduce the climate crisis and create a sustainable future. In the process, we also help to alleviate the isolation and overextension so common among mothers in contemporary society.

Micro Credit

Kiva.org allows you to lend as little as $25 to entrepreneurs in the developing world. You can select your borrower from the on-line profiles, and also see who else has lent to your borrower.

Nonviolent Communication

Nonviolent Communication (NVC) NVC can dramatically improve your relationships by helping you focus your attention on:

Empathic understanding of others without compromising your own values, and
Expressing your real feelings and needs openly and honestly, yet without blame or criticism

NVC guides us to reframe how we express ourselves, how we hear others and resolve conflicts by focusing on what we are observing, feeling, needing, and requesting.

Slowness Movement

Slow Food Movement

In Praise of Slowness by Carl Honore

Workaholics Anonymous "Workaholics Anonymous is a fellowship of individuals who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problems and help others to recover from workaholism."

Product Labels For Good Wiki

According to an article in the New York Times (March 19, 2006), "As many as 137 food labels, from "salmon safe" to "ozone friendly," try to appeal to socially conscious consumers. Let's list and explain those labels on this wiki! Plus we can cover labels for products other than food. The following UK-based web site provides explanations of a number of labels in a non-wiki format.

Click to Donate

There are many sites where you can make free donations. Free? How does that work? You know how you watch TV and you don't have to pay for the shows? That's because the businesses pay for them by having commercials. It's the same idea behind free donations. You go to a site that has free donations and click a button. Then you are taken to a page where you see ads. You do not have to buy or sign up for anything, just like you don't have to buy from businesses that pay for commercials on TV.

Here are some good sites:

Aggregate:

http://www.dailyvisits.com/daily.html has about 50 "Click To Donate Free" charity and humanitarian sites listed, with descriptions and explanations. It's been adding more recently, every week or so, and says that even more will be added.

Environment: