green

Lesson #16:Going Green

I'm taking it a bit easier this week, hanging out in Wisconsin with my folks for a few days before the home stretch on our way to Hyderabad for the Tech4Society event.

So the topic and content for today's post comes to us from my partner in crime, volunteer extraordinaire, Adrian Ash.

Adrian is a volunteer member of our Tech4Society staff and her expertise lies in the field of sustainability. As such, she prepared a really fantastic presentation for us last week of her recommendations for how Ashoka can make our event in Hyderabad greener and more earth-friendly. I thought her presentation was so well-done that I wanted to share it with you here.

I think when you are planning a giant event with lots of people flying half-way across the world, "going green" is of course a complicated and sometimes futile effort. What I like about Adrian's recommendations though is her focus on what we can do and also on what guests themselves can do to make the event greener.

The Toronto Zoo recently launched an online Twitter campaign in its quest to save polar bears from the melting Arctic Sea ice. To date, 25% of the Arctic Sea ice has disappeared and soon, our polar bears will have no more home to live.

The campaign named "Polar Tweets" aims to encourage more people to tweet something environmentally friendly to spread awareness. Above is an image from the campaign website showing a polar bear struggling to stay on the ice berg. The ice berg grows in terms of tag quantity and quality as more people tweet about environmental topics. 

When the website was first launched, there was barely enough tweets for the polar bear to stand on and today, it looks like we have a giant iceberg in the making! So what are you waiting for? Start tweeting with a purpose today. If you're lost about what to tweet, visit Polar Tweets and use their convenient "Tweet" function which will recommend you environmental tweets. 

An easy and meaningful way to contribute to the environment :) 

By Su Yuen, CHIN (suyuen@gmail.com)