What if your plastic shopping bag or the ring pull tab from your Coke can could help pay for a child’s education?

Recycle for a Cause, a campaign launched in the UAE, allows for just that kind of wonder—turning your trash into treasure.

How so?

Plastic bags and ring pull tabs collected from the community are sent to the Philippines and used to create and sell high quality merchandise as a source of livelihood for Filipino families in poverty.

The Recycle for a Cause campaign has been launched by Abu Dhabi Cause Connect (ADCC) in support of the Philippine Community Fund (PFC), which helps to provide shelter, food and education for children who are rescued from living on dump sites. PCF is a UK registered charity that works to free Filipino children and their families from the effects of poverty. The Recycle for a Cause product line alone provides employment for over Read more…

What does climate change mean to you? In the UK it often feels like a series of scientific debates and middle class people wondering if we’ll have a thriving wine industry in 30 years.

For many children in the developing world, though, it means destruction, death, poverty and no chance to go to school. Climate change is happening now and it is the most vulnerable children in countries not responsible for messing with our climate that are paying the price.

UNICEF – Climate kid shows you how children will have to adapt if we do nothing.

The World’s governments know all about the challenge of climate change. At the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009 developed countries promised to raise an extra $100 billion a year by 2020 for developing countries for climate change. This money is to be evenly split between trying to prevent further rises in global temperatures and helping to adapt Read more…

Sports have always been an important part of my life.

Whether it’s basketball, baseball, tennis, football, swimming, running or soccer, I’ve always been involved in sports in some aspect or the other.

Playing sports has kept me fit and out of trouble. It’s taught me individual (strength, perseverance) & team (interpersonal, collaboration) skills.

Most importantly, sports have taught me responsibility.

My actions (big or small), always have an impact on myself, teammates and the game. By being accountable, it’s forced me to always strive to become better.

Better World

Nike is a brand that’s synonymous with sports.

Seek high performance in any sport, and you’ll find a Nike product that is specifically designed to help you do better.

In recent years however, Nike has opened up its “better” focus towards positively impacting society, and the environment.

Earlier this year, Nike launched its corporate responsibility micro-site “Nike: Better World” with one mission: Make the world better through sport.

Start of by Read more…

New revolutionary eco-friendly dinnerware – Made from leaves and water. That is it!

Did you know?

40 billion plastic utensils are used every year in the USA alone
730 thousand tons of styrofoam and plastic plates and cups (710 thousand tons were styrofoam)
73 billion mostly styrofoam cups and plates being thrown away every year in USA
64 billion paper cups and plates being thrown away every year in USA
Styrofoam- More than 5,000 years to decompose!

How can we enable people to make small changes to their day to day life?

This is was the driving force behind GreenTally

We have developed 100% Biodegradable and Compostable dinnerware including plates, bowls, serving plates, utensils etc.  We realize that there are many choices when it comes to biodegradable and compostable products. We feel that our products are unique such that they are made from fallen leaves. No trees are ever cut down.

As part of natural process, sheaths from palm trees Read more…

Minnesota is kicking our butt.

No, I’m not talking ice hockey or the fact that they have 10,000 lakes – yes, it’s not just their state motto. Rather, I’m talking about their killer support for their environment – hey, they have 10,000 lakes to keep pristine remember?

But seriously, Minnesota is leaving many of us far behind in the dust when it comes to supporting the environment through workplace giving. What’s that you ask? Workplace giving is just that – where employees in companies, cities, counties, universities, or any organization can give to charities through their workplace, usually via payroll deduction.

For decades, the United Way has been the biggest player on the block. But more recently, other groups, called federations, have joined in looking for an equal piece of the workplace giving pie, representing other nonprofit sectors including the environment.

EarthShare is the granddaddy of environmental federations and has 19 state affiliates across Read more…

It’s been a hard day’s work in school and all you want to do is kick the soccer ball around with your friends.

The Copa America and Women’s World Cup games are in full flow and your favourite teams are raring to go. Passion is in the air. You can smell it. You can breathe it.

And now you want to play it.

After a tough win on the dusty field it’s time to do some reading. But you live in a poor neighbourhood and you do not have any electricity at home to read your favourite book. Not only that, you are limited in what you can do at home due to this damning unavailability of a reliable source for electric power.

But that’s fine, because now you have the sOccket.

Half Soccer Ball. Half Power Generator.

sOccket is an eco-friendly portable generator built into a soccer ball.

25% of all kids worldwide do not have Read more…

I want you to act out.

I promise you won’t get in trouble. I can also promise you won’t be the only one. In fact you will be joining hundreds of millions of people in 184 countries around the world.

I’m talking about a global movement known simply as Earth Day.

It was created in 1970 by a U.S. Senator, after he witnessed the devastation of the 1969 California oil spill. He wanted to leverage the emerging awareness of air and water pollution and combine it with the social energy created by the anti-war movement to force environmental protection onto the national political agenda. And so on the 22nd of April, 1970, 20 million Americans participated in massive coast-to-coast rallies to bring attention to conversation and force political leaders to listen to their concerns.

And it worked.

The first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Read more…

First, imagine a Minnesota winter

Now imagine that same winter with inadequate heat in your home and inadequate income to improve the situation. Imagine facing the choice of either heating your home or feeding your family. This is called fuel poverty.

Many families in the northern US face dilemmas like this every winter, a situation that promises to get worse as heating fuel prices continue to rise. Energy assistance programs such as LIHEAP provide essential help, but they are not a long-term solution and basically amount to an additional subsidy for fossil fuels. Low income families, meanwhile, face the same issues next year with already inadequate income and even higher fuel prices.

A Vision for the Long Term Sustainability

Jason Edens (known affectionately as “J”), founder and executive director of the Rural Renewable Energy Alliance (RREAL) envisioned a longer term, more sustainable, more empowering solution to the problem of fuel poverty.

RREAL is Read more…