Green Options

Why Carrotmob?

When I first heard about Carrotmob, I knew I had to get involved. I was living in Chapel Hill, NC at the time, so I became a fan on Facebook, hoping I’d wind up in San Francisco by the time they did another one. I didn’t realize at the time that it was something I could start in my town!

Then when I heard Steve Newcomb (CEO of Virgance, which owns Carrotmob) speak at Sustainable Brands ’09, I was even more determined to get involved. I started following Carrotmob on Twitter, so when Brent tweeted that he was looking for a summer intern, I jumped on it.

Editor’s Note: Carrotmob is a form of consumer activism that invites businesses to compete in order to win a mob of customers. But everyone wins, because the extra money the winner makes goes toward things like improving their energy efficiency. Usually the business who promises the largest percentage of revenue from the event wins, but this Carrotmob was done a little differently. Each contestant explained what they’d do if they won, and what they were currently doing around sustainability, and the general public voted, actually choosing the one who had already shown the greatest commitment to sustainability. Epicenter wanted to get some feedback from the public around what type of to-go containers to use.

What is the most sustainable type of take-out packaging?

Ah yes, the burning question that keeps many an environmentalist tossing and turning well into the night. On the one hand, PLA, aka “polylactic acid” comes from plants, not petroleum, so it must be good, right? But which plants does it come from? And what part of the plant? Is it waste being upcycled? Is it replacing food crops? It must be good, right, it’s not petroleum!?

Epicenter Café, being a very conscientious Carrotmob winner, wants to be sure they make the right choice. They also want your input, sage readers. So I present to you the options, because even the Green Café Network does not take an official stance on this ever-evolving topic. There is an increasing array of options for eco to-go containers.

The folks behind Carrotmob continue to demonstrate the power of using your dollars to vote for environmental change, and they’re starting to get some press as well.

The first Carrotmob “reverse boycott” started with a convenience store in San Francisco.  The store owner out-competed a few dozen other businesses by pledging to use 22% of the profits from one day to make his store greener (in this case by installing energy efficient lighting and other green improvements).  Carrotmobbers flooded his store on the appointed day and left the store owner with $9,200, enough to make multiple energy efficient improvements as well as having the best sales day all year.

Carrotmob and their “reverse boycott” system works like this:

• Businesses are contacted and asked how much they would like to bid in order to win over consumers during one massive shopping day.
• Using social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter, and other fancy technology, members are asked to vote which store they would like to select.
• One day is selected and the store is “mobbed” with consumers who show up and buy goods they would have purchased anyways - food, beverages, hardware, etc.
• The store is mobbed with consumers who in the process of flexing their food (or goods & services) dollars, bring the store lots of money.
• The store uses the percentage of those sales they pledged to make their business greener and more environmentally friendly, while helping their bottom line AND gaining significant goodwill in the community.

The English language has a wonderful way of evolving with major or minor events in the economic, social and political history of man. Following the release of words like “Mompreneur” and “Ecopreneur”, the latest buzzword that is floating around the business and economic sphere is “Obamapreneur.” While it is clear that all “Preneur” roads lead to a noble business mission but what the heck is an Obamapreneur?

A Park Slope hardware store has pledged to spend 22% of Sunday’s revenue to make their store more energy efficient.

They have not made this pledge because of a mandate, a threat of punishment or an altrusitic love of the environment. Tarzian Hardware wants to make a direct profit.

This is because the Carrotmob is arriving in New York City. Started by Brent Schulkin in San Francisco, Carrotmob is a reverse boycott where similar businesses compete to see who will go the furthest to green themselves up. The winner is rewarded with a “mob”-hundreds of customers who arrive on the same day to buy up the store in order to support greener business.

Hold a sale on high-end vodka? Give away free samples of your latest bourbon shipment?

These could work. But for Kansas City’s World of Spirits, the answer is committing revenue to greening the store… really.

Yep, the Carrotmob has come to town… remember them? Started in San Francisco, Carrotmob is an activist organization dedicated to greening business.  Rather than using traditional, “stick” tactics (protesting, street theater, etc.), Carrotmob offers a “carrot” to businesses that commit to greening themselves: as they put it, “Carrotmob organizes consumers to make purchases that give financial rewards to those businesses who agree to make socially beneficial choices.” Though the organization is new, they’ve already been quite successful: their first event resulted in about five times the normal revenue for K&D Market on 16th St. in San Francisco.

In Kansas City’s choice, this involved approaching fifteen Midtown businesses with a proposal: “We’ll bring a mob of paying customers, if you commit the highest percentage of revenue to going green.” A bidding war broke out, and World of Spirits won by committing 24% of the revenue from its “mob event” towards making the business more energy efficient. Take a look: