The Carrot Project

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Phil@permacultureguild.org

Hi Jonathon

Been following your work for some time with regards to ethical consumption and love what you do. The Carrot Mob events are a great initiative.

I coordinate the Ethical Consumer Group, a community group based in Australia, set up to help facilitate more sustainable purchasing practices for the everyday consumer. We produce an annual pocket buying guide - 'The Guide to Ethical Supermarket Shopping', and now a 'ShopEthical' iphone app. We also run 'Shopping with a Conscience' public workshops and supermarket tours, and monthly 'meal & movie’ nights. See more at our website www.ethical.org.au

I've been meaning to get involved with the 'international ECIS collaboration' online forum for some time, but been strapped for time. Now however may be a time to link up. Be great to catch up with you generally and also talk about possibilities for collaboration in the future.

I'm traveling to Ireland for a mate's wedding next month and will spend a week in the UK. Be great to catch up if you're available in London during the week of the 12th July to the 17th July – ideally at the start of that week.

Let me know your thoughts and availability.

Cheers, Nick

--
Nick Ray

nick@.ethical.org.au Ethical Consumer Group www.ethical.org.au 0417 114 492

I wasn’t really sure what to call this, but it seems to work. Basically, I like to give people actual things as gifts, gift cards just seem kind of half-assed. But I don’t like paying for shipping, and sometimes feel a bit of guilt about shipping large items.

So here’s the idea. You go to walmart.com (or whatever) and actually purchase a product. What you get is a coupon that you send to the recipient (or even deliver it via email), and they take it to their local store and redeem it for the product that you wanted to give them. You could even “wrap” the gift by not actually indicating what it is on the card. In a perfect world I’d be able to pay their local sales tax and what not as well.

The closest thing I’ve encountered to this is on itunes where you can buy an album for someone, and they are sent a link to download it. I know its’ a bit more complex for something you actually hold in your hand, but I’m sure that at least the big parts of this are possible (and even quite simple). Is anyone aware of companies that offer a service like this?

I just got a warning about re-posting data when clicking the back button to return to the Home >> Feedback page. I’m not quite sure how this happened but I probably posted feedback, then clicked on some other link, then clicked the back button. Maybe this page doesn’t do a Post/Redirect/Get (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post/Redirect/Get). Can this be implemented for all site post operations?

I suggest that links that leave CP, to a manufacturer’s website for example, be visually different from internal links. A style that places a small icon next to the link (like Wikipedia) works well. This gives users an opportunity to decide whether they want to open in a new window/tab or to follow the link at all in cases where they’re at work or some other sensitive environment.

This thought came to mind when I clicked on a product’s “more information” link and was taken to a manufacturer’s musical website (Nespresso). Another option may be to relabel that link “manufacturer’s website”, or something similar

There are a couple small mistakes on http://www.carrotproject.com/category/running-shoes/learnings/sweat-sucks/

1) “sweating sytem”

2) “Monitoring for abuses is absolutely necessary, but, alone, it imposes on tightly budgeted factories, who often work for multiple companies, have to comply with several different codes of conduct, and merely shift things around before planned inspections.” Something seems off, grammatically.

I reset my password and everything. It still says something doesn’t match! I am a young farmer trying to research loans and grants and this is frustrating.

I’m always a fan of a good infographic - this one did not disappoint: NewScientist.com

The concentration of food/beverage sector representatives in the lower left is especially interesting. Also interesting that most other sectors appear to be “greener” (bristle) than perceived.

Full Article

There seems to be a big gap between “experts” and the great unwashed (i.e. me). It seems the only thing I contribute is to say whether or not I trust an expert.. though there doesn’t seem to be much to help me know whether I should trust them or not, so I guess I should do this rating quite casually?

Yet there’s no apparent opportunity for me to contribute my expert opinion on something, or bring some of my own research into the site.

I’ve not spent long poking around so perhaps I just haven’t understood yet, but here’s my first impression anyway :)

Found a price comparison of some different liquids that we consume (not necessarily imbibe) every day.

This isn’t sourced as well as I’d like, but I think it’s making a general point about fixing prices, marketing, and artificial scarcity.

There has been a lot of news noise over the past couple of weeks about how the global warmings have been discredited because of emails that proved scientists had manipulated data.

Do any of you crunchy people know a source of level-headed “facts” or “scientific data” about this?

I have been experimenting with vertical gardens outdoors for the past couple of summers to maximize my crop yield. Vertical gardens have recently become rather trendy in cities where growing space is limited. However, Those without rooftop apartments have found themselves looking for other outlets. I recently stumbled on this site: http://our.windowfarms.org/ They say why not grow your vertical garden indoors and use recycled materials to reduce waste and cost. Now of course you don’t need to live in a city to supplement your own diet with your own grown food, but either way this looks like a crunchy way to continue your garden even in the winter months. Here at Bard College, our cafeteria supports local farms, to stimulate our local economy as well as reduce the distance and cost that it takes to purchase produce. Now I’m thinking that we could easily start growing our own vertical garden here and reduce that commute even further by having our own winter veggie garden. Vertical gardens are a great way to utilize space and experiment with a variety of crops in a confined space. Not only do your crops taste just as good, but sometimes you get some cross pollination, and get an even tastier yield.

Just saw this post on slashdot:

Save the Planet, Eat Your Dog

Of course, like any good slashdot reader, I didn’t RTFA, but I’m guessing that Jake will find this concept so inflammatory that he will, and then tell me why it’s totally wrong.

How’s that for flame-bait?

Hi there,

Congratulations on the Carrot Project, it sounds very promising. I would more deeply look into it if I could write a blog post about it (on http://hyveup.tv, Social Media-focused, I barely make 10K hits/month). I am asking for a permission, and I totally understand if you want to keep blinders closed for now.

Thank you for letting me know,

Xavier

We have a really old fridge, and the condenser motor is on its’ last legs. We could probably get it fixed, but it seems it would be better to spend a little extra money and get a more modern model.

Probably a decent opportunity to identify a crunchy company, refrigerators use a decent amount of energy and they are pretty material-intensive. This Page seems to be a good place to start, and I’d imagine some of the information applies to all types of appliances. Need to find more about their manufacturing processes though.

So, what do you guys know about refrigerators?

I remember hearing in college about how LED lights were going to replace incancesdents. Here’s a good example.

As Wiley suggested in the “Behind the Music” blog comments — online music stores and their relative crunchiness. Not as certain about crunchiness metrics, I know payouts to artists would be a big one. We pay 91% (or 75% of direct sales on our site) but I don’t think I can disclose that info for some of the stores we work with. Here are some stores to start with (with links, if applicable, to about pages which might give some indication of crunchiness):

pretty soggy:

iTunes

Napster

Rhapsody

Amazon

Zune

chewy:

Spotify

7digital

crunchy:

eMusic

CD Baby

Amie Street

Hi,

For when dishwasher products are a category:

I just came across a great suggestion for an alternative to phosphate-containing dishwasher rinse aid- white vinegar. It might not even be that crunchy.

http://www.grist.org/article/2009-06-17-ask-umbra-rinse-aids/

Hey crunchy people - I’m looking to purchase:

a.) a large computer monitor, 20+ inches

2.) a smaller form factor computer - something the size profile of a Mac Mini

Would love to know what the Carrot Project community would have to say about the products out there on the market.

not sure if anyone suggested this yet. But I’m a fiend for tea. I don’t know if it would count as “greenwashing” or not but this seems to be an area where words like “fair trade” and “all natural” get thrown around pretty liberally. I don’t know much about the farming process but I’d like to know more about it. It doesn’t seem like it’d be as hard on the land as some other kinds of farming but I don’t really have anything to base that on.

Not sure how popular a category it would be, but for things I’d like to see it falls right behind toilet paper and beer (from those listed on the main page).