Green Options

Mokugift was inspired by Marion Cotillard (2007 Oscar) to launch a program that enables actors, musicians and athletes to inform, inspire and empower fans to plant trees with them. Mokugift has found a base within the hip hop community that has always been environmentally conscious.

Online, ecopreneurs should explore partnership models with low barriers. Lowering the barrier, increases the breadth of partnerships that can be experimented with. Relationship can be deepened and customized once traction is proven.

June 5th is United Nations World Environment Day. The U.N. Environment Programme has setup a twitter campaign called ‘twitter for trees’. All you have to do is ‘follow’ http://twitter.com/unepandyou and they will plant a tree. The goal is to get 100,000 followers by June 5th. That plants 100,000 trees, so lets get started!

Mobile phone service, kajeet, innovates by rewarding customers for choosing refurbished phones by planting trees. Win-win for kajeet, customers, and our planet.

Mokugift is sponsoring 3rd Whale’s “Greenest Person On The Planet” contest, a search for the greenest person on the planet (Latin America, North America, Asia, Europe, Africa, Oceana)

The purpose of mokugift is to make make tree planting easy and affordable. Making that mission a reality isn’t as easy as the concept.

In addition to learning from and being inspired by other ecopreneurs, Ecopreneurist is a great place to reach out for partnerships. I encourage other ecopreneurs to contribute here.

“Go Green.”   It may have started out as a catchy slogan, but people everywhere are realizing it’s not just a nice idea, or even an option.  It’s necessary to preserve our way of life.  Businesses are not only heeding this message and providing ground-breaking support, they’re keying into the profitability factor as well.  Helping the environment, simply put, can have an immediate ROI.

“Consumers are thinking about it, and therefore retailers think they need to think about it as well,” said Mary Brett Whitfield, senior vice president at consultant TNS Retail Forward.
“Retailers have woken up to the idea that not only is this going to be good from a public-relations perspective but also from a profitability perspective“.

Public awareness of global warming is at an all time high.  People are looking for ways to make the world a better place.  In fact, “83% of Americans would choose products and services with environmental benefits over similar non-environmental alternatives.”

Businesses are noticing this trend, and stepping in to provide their customers with the resources and the opportunity.  As The Wall Street Journal’s Livemint.com notes,

“ …for the corporate world, “green” can be a mantra with a dual advantage: it’s the right thing to adopt, not just as an environmentally responsible entity, but also — more important — as a profitable proposition”.

I’m Krates Ng, cofounder of mokugift. I’m delighted to become an occasional contributor here on Ecopreneurist.

I have always considered myself environmental. I care. I drive a hybrid car. I recycle religiously. I minimize the use of electricity, paper and water. I even cut down the amount of meat I eat (started with no meat 2 nights a week) with the intent to reduce the amount of live stock it takes to support our lives.

However, I hadn’t thought about pairing business with the environmental initiatives until we started mokugift the end of 2007. In this post, I’ll write about how we transformed from entrepreneur to a ecopreneur.