Playing cards had not yet entered my mind.

So imagine my amused surprise the other day when, while shopping for a new deck of quality cards for bridge (my husband had even requested a plastic set), I stumbled across Bicycle’s new (launched in 2008) line of Eco Edition Playing Cards.

While there is almost certainly a good level of bandwagon-jumping greenwashing going on here, there is still much good to say about these cards.  According to Bicycle:

Our playing cards are crafted from sustainable forest paper, starch-based laminating glue and vegetable-based printing inks.  This pack of cards is recyclable.

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Are you pleased with your baby bodycare products?  One excellent source for natural bodycare and greener baby products is UK-based Ethical Superstore.

Says Ethical Superstore: “Grow up green with products that are ethically better for your baby and better for the planet, too…We’ve also got great books for green parents, organic baby food, natural bodycare, organic cotton clothing, soft toys and games.”

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The Natural Resources Defense Council and Eco Consulting published this month a very valuable report on the energy use of game consoles and we can use them more effectively to save energy (and thus reduce our contribution to global warming). You can see the full report here.

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• 3-day yoga retreat + airfare
• $750 in Gaiam & Visa® gift cards
• 3-month Gaiam Yoga Club membership + 1GB iPod Shuffle®
• Gaiam yoga DVD collection

“Learning and remembering yoga pose names has never been more fun! See how many yoga poses you can match to their names in 2 minutes and enter for a chance to win fabulous prizes! Whether you’re new to yoga or an advanced yogi, you’ll have fun giving those brain cells a quick yoga workout. New poses every time you play!”

This is a fun educational game for anyone interested in learning more about yoga.

Recently, browsing around the “Ecosphere” I also read

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STEP 1: Gather matching materials. For my matches, I used leftover paint chips from our playroom makeover (I am totally not the only one with leftover paint chips!). I cut each paint chip into two identical pairs, and used decorative scissors to cut away any writing–this will be a color matching game. For other kinds of matching games, you could make color/color word pairs, pairs of family or friends from surplus photos, alphabet pairs using cut-outs from magazines, color pairs made from painting or coloring on used typing paper, etc.

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Solar power, wind power, carbon credits.

It’s not what you expect in a board game, but the eco-friendly game Earthopoly focuses on the environment, teaching kids to go green while playing a game.

Earthopoly is an eco-friendly toy educating kids about climate change, conservation, and taking care of the Earth. A take-off on the standard Monopoly (which is all about the money…) with an environmental focus, children collect carbon credits and trade them in for clean air, increasing property values through recycling and reducing.

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There are games and puzzles, coloring pages and support material for educators.  You can even get ring tones! The call to action is also handle with aplomb and humor.  And when called to shop for branded items, Hippoworks smartly teams up with Wildlife Works to deliver its characters on organic, fair-trade eco tees. 

You can grab the code to put these smart cartoonlets on your own site or sign up to have them delivered to your inbox.  Start with “Extinction Sucks,”  it’s a great one to forward on to your friends and has a t-shirt to match it!

You can feel good about viewing Hippoworks; their webserver is powered by “wind, sun and poop!”

THE TEN PROJECT

www.thetenproject.org

THE PROJECT’S AIM

To distribute a game in 2010 to every single ten-year-old living in the ten most influential mega-cities of the future, to inspire them to create a ten-year plan for redesigning their world into one that will be sustainable and worth inheriting in 2020.

THE GAME’S AIM

As the game Monopoly prepared previous generations for capitalism, this game aims to make lucrative sustainability second nature to the children of a new world in which biology and economics are inextricably linked. The game aims to do this by exciting its players into creating a ten year plan for sustainability problem solving, empowering them as a connected global network, and alerting them to their major role in this next crucial ten years of human civilization.

(Statistics quoted are courtesy of the UN, N.A.T.O., and WHO)

WHY SUSTAINABILITY IS VITAL

IPCC reports reveal that the world has reached a state of emergency, and that during the next ten years we must bring to fruition the monumental advances in Green Technology, social innovation and human compassion that have already begun, if we are to survive. The TEN Project focuses on the positive outcome of this critical age of change, particularly in the vibrant mega-cities of the future.

WHY THE MEGA-CITIES ARE VITAL

51% of all humans now live in cities. In seven years, Lagos Nigeria will be the third largest city in the world, after only Mumbai and Tokyo. We are building the equivalent of a city the size of Seattle (0.6 million) every four to seven days.

Well over a billion people live in resourceful slums and vibrant squatter communities, full of social and economic prosperity, innovation, and hope. In 2010 a global taskforce will distribute the game to every single ten year old in the following ten mega-cities: Lagos, Mumbai, Karachi, Dhaka, Mexico City, São Paulo, Jakarta, Tokyo, Shanghai, New York.

The effectiveness of such a global taskforce was proven by the eradication of Smallpox, which killed more people than all the wars, violence, natural disasters, AIDS and all the other infectious diseases of civilization added together. It was finally defeated in 1979 against all odds, by 150,000 volunteers who were mobilised (without cheap telephony and the internet) and inoculated over a billion households until they succeeded.

THE TARGET AGE GROUP

Over the age of about eight and before puberty, the child’s innovative capacities are boundless. They are not yet educated out of their creativity, their ideals are still flexible and they have a natural understanding of the transforming world (such as computers). More than one third of the world is under the age of fifteen, and they are becoming ever more connected, and they are every nation’s most valuable natural resource.

50% of the entire world population already owns a cell phone. OLPC are distributing millions of ‘$100’ wi-fi laptops to the world’s poorest children, with staggering results. The Project’s game will empower its players as they connect to form a global network.

THE FUTURE

We are hurtling toward a future no one can predict. Yet one thing is certain: our capacity to mend is as powerful as our capacity to break. Mass-extinction, bio-weapons, uncontrollable disease and the horror of climate crisis, are on one side of the coin. On the other is a powerfully connected society of problem solvers on the streets and in the labs of the world’s cities.
KEY POINTS OF THE GAME DESIGN BRIEF:

1) Must be cheap and self-maintaining, require minimal interface. A short form/ SMS game type would be practical and take advantage of rapid cell phone connectivity in squatter cities. The web, cell phone SMS, word of mouth and creating visual clues in the urban environment, might all be equally effective ways for the players to interconnect within the game. In this way the game environment could become the real environment of the player’s city. Instead of using elaborate graphics in a virtual world, the very fabric of urban life could become the game landscape. (This is also more practicable for areas without computer access).

2) For children in squatter cities who might have no community access to internet or other electronic media, periodic unofficial ‘social connector’ stations might be set up on a word of mouth basis for that particular community, each with periodic contact to practical nearby internet access in another part of the city. Gamers on a rotation suggested by the game itself could be responsible for these.

3) Must enable the children to keep track of and share each other’s ideas, scores and creations, across the global community. Regardless of the simplicity of the game’s interface, it must create a global video gaming community that crosses cultural boundaries as effectively as if it were a ‘Massively Multiplayer Online Game’ (MMOG). It must have networking, collaborative and web-based elements.

4) Must be able to develop and grow in complexity with the child, and maintain its appeal and functionality throughout a ten-year period.

5) Must inspire children to workshop a personal and a social ten year plan for surviving the current ecological emergency (short-term radical solutions to get us through the critical moment); as well as a long-term sustainable world that will never again forget how to maintain its own lifeline, its planet/world/environment.

6) Must not have anything to do with their schooling or come across as an educational tool, but be action-based, and fun enough to compete (or even integrate) with their current popular activities. It must be fashionable and at least as much fun as stealing cars, sniffing glue, skateboarding, playing play-station etc.

7) Despite operating above and without requiring literacy, the game will need still to demonstrate, however subtly, the following three key points… a) That technology is a biological system with its own evolution. b) That the onus is on us to ensure that system works properly (makes all species including our own happy, healthy and prosperous as opposed to miserable, diseased and extinct). c) That technology is sustainable for itself and in context to all biological systems, and how important it is to re-evaluate the things we think we need to make us happy in light of what is actually sustainable.
THE TWO-YEAR DESIGN PROCESS:
It is an ambitious design brief, but as an open source design project, a heavily networked global team of ten thousand voluntary designers (amateur and professional) will have two years to ponder the game (from January 2008 to December 2009).

Child psychologists, teachers, counselors, game designers, large corporations such as Sony Inc., and successful recruitment organizations (e.g. The Military) will be offered corporate sponsorship or other incentives in exchange for knowledge about how to captivate children’s imaginations, and possibly even promotion for recruiting volunteers.

The best ideas will be consolidated on the TEN Project website, where they will be instantly accessible for revision by everyone involved. Minimal game summaries will be encouraged at this point rather than over-complicated descriptions. The website will then divide into separate design branches for multiple cultures and tastes modifications, and the most successful ideas to emerge will be rigorously tested for appeal on children in multiple cultural, consumer and stylistic contexts.

2010 POINT-TO-POINT DISTRIBUTION PROGRAM:
The distribution targets of the game are every bit as ambitious as its design, but the globally conscious and philanthropic community that grows daily cannot be underestimated. Abundant and popular web 2.0 sites, which allow for an intermesh of discussion and social networking can be used to amass a vast team. This will operate in a decentralized fashion with a common directive. A million volunteers will be needed to personally deliver the game to ten million children of around ten years old across the globe.

The game will not insist on any proof of age, and its target figures allow for the fact that the game will very likely be played initially by eight to eleven year olds. By targeting every child of this age bracket in each of the target cities, the TEN Project hopes to make a significant impact on those cities, and in the way this growing generation, en masse, thinks about economics, sustainable city living and the future.

The cities were chosen based on having the highest ten-year-old populations in the world, with the exception of Shanghai and New York, which are included to complete the picture of global influence represented by this top-ten list of tomorrow’s mega-cities.

The numbers of children in the target age group for each city are:

Lagos (1,500,000), Mumbai (1,400,000), Karachi (1,300,000), Dhaka (1,200,000), Mexico City (1,000,000), São Paulo (900,000), Jakarta (800,000), Tokyo (800,000), Shanghai (600,000), New York (600,000)

The TEN Project is a way of maximizing the promises and staying ten steps ahead of the threats of this accelerating world in our race toward the sustainability of a future no one can predict.

—-

Sign up for participation in whatever capacity you like, however small, by emailing us at thetenproject@gmail.com

Any comments or suggestions whatsoever about the project concept, alternative name suggestions or the wording of the brochure would also be greatly appreciated at the above email.

Xeko doesn’t just talk the eco-talk, though: it walks the eco-walk. All of the playing cards are made of recycled stock and printed with soy inks. In addition, players are encouraged to return their card wrappers to the company and earn Green Star points, which can be traded for free downloads. Furthermore, four percent of profits are donated to Conservation International for work to save the hotspots. What are hotspots? Hotspots provide the setting for Xeko missions, and are "the most threatened and species-rich places on Earth."

Currently numbered at 34, the hotspots contain 75 percent of the
planet’s most threatened mammals, birds and amphibians while covering
just 2.3 percent of the Earth’s surface. An estimated 50 percent of all
vascular plants and 42 percent of land vertebrates exist only in these
hotspots.

I found Xeko somewhat confusing to play, but I have never been one to enjoy games with complex rules (I don’t even know how to play chess). Players begin by matching their species cards to the hotspot card. If two species come into conflict, the players have a turf war. The species with the highest energy number wins, but boost cards can be played to increase your species’ energy number. There are other cards, too, like Xeko cards, that also come into play in the game. The game ends when one player runs out of cards; eco-points are totaled then to see who wins the game. I had to modify the rules and simplify the scoring to play the game with my six-year-old daughter. She enjoyed playing the game and asked to play over and over again. The game is definitely geared for older children, and I could see it as a fun way to learn about different ecosystems, such as Madagascar and Indonesia, in a science classroom.

Besides confusing directions, I dislike the fact that Xeko is a competitive game. I would like to see an eco-game along the same lines that was cooperative in nature. Part of why there are hotspots on our planet has to do with the competitive nature of business. The only way ecosystems will be protected is through cooperative effort, thus I feel the game should reflect this aspect of conservation.

Along with our Xeko game, we were given the cutest plush hairy-eared dwarf lemur. The lemur is made of soysilk, a material made from the proteins in soy. The hairy-eared dwarf lemur (Allocebus trichotis) was discovered in 1875 and considered extinct until 1966. It lives near Mananara, Madagascar, and its current population is estimated between 100 and 1000. It is listed as endangered due to deforestations and local inhabitants eating them. I hope the folks at Xeko will continue producing soysilk plush toys of rare creatures to accompany their trading card games. Endangered species toys are a great way to introduce young children to the diversity of our planet. I would also like Xeko to develop similar games for younger children.

Editor's note: EcoGeek.org's "EcoGeek of the Week" interview series is a relatively new feature over there, but we've been impressed with the subjects they lined up. When Head EcoGeek Hank Green asked us if we'd like to run the feature, we happily obliged."EcoGeek of the Week" appears every Tuesday at EcoGeek.org… and now also at Green Options.

Just because I love the actual world doesn't mean I'm not a pretty big fan of virtual worlds as well. Some have said that actively seeking out fake worlds to explore and enjoy is be a symptom of alienation from or even disdain for the environment. But I can't help but feel that's absolute crap.

And today I've got someone who very likely agrees with me, and he happens to be one of the biggest gamers in the world. Scott Cronce is the Chief Technology Officer of Electronic Arts. Scott's worked on dozens of video games over the last two decades and when I noticed his name pop up on the EcoGeek mailing list (don't you want to join too) I had to get in touch with him.

I was excited to learn that he's an even bigger EcoGeek than I am, and was happy to oblige us with an interview.

EcoGeek: CTO of Electronic Arts eh? That sounds a lot like "Head of Video Games for the Entire World." What are your responsibilities with EA?

Scott Cronce: This October I’ll celebrate my 19th anniversary at Electronic Arts. In 1988 I joined EA as a Technical Director for the simulations group were I was very fortunate to work on many types of games from military simulations to a little group of games we now call EA Sports. Over the years my responsibilities grew from project level to company level technology management. During console transitions I also have the extra fun of heading up our engineering efforts on new game machines. As EA grew I had ‘title creep’ to the point where it would no longer fit on a standard business card without multiple abbreviations.

EG: Do you think there's an interplay between the virtual worlds of gaming and the actual world of environmentalism.

SC: As a game play mechanic, of course there is. Just like in the real word, the virtual world is made up of resources to manage. A game designer can use elements of adverse environmental effects to balance out game play.

EG: When and how did you end up as an EcoGeek?

SC: It was mainly by accident but was accelerated by the California Energy crisis. My interests in the latest and greatest technology long ago earned me the title of ‘alpha geek’. For example, I ordered my Segway off Amazon the day they went on sale. At the time I didn’t consider it an Eco purchase, just a really cool toy. I have a strange desire to constantly beta test anything electronic, much to my wife’s dismay. I live in California and we went through a period huge increases in our energy bills. All those gadgets were starting to cost me upwards of $800 a month. Before that I never really paid much attention to my energy usage. I wasn’t about to stop using all those cool toys, it just meant I had another problem that I was sure could be solved by technology. I think it’s very natural progression for people to go from gadget geek to EcoGeek.

EG: Do you have any personal environmental achievements that you think are particularly awesome.

SC: I think I got a little obsessed with my electricity usage. I filled up my roof top with 56-220w solar panels. It finally dawned on me how big the system was when my Solar company put pictures of the array on their website in industrial section. I guess I went a little overboard. We then changed out our gas components to electric and swapped out all our incandesce lights for compact fluorescent. I was amazed how high tech they had become, I could even get dimmable ones! Next came the electric scooter, what a great way to get around town. Not satisfied with my new electric hobby, I hunted for an electric car that I could use for my 45 mile round trip commute. I found a 1995 U.S. Electricar (basically a Geo) that had just enough range to get me to work. After a 10hr charge I was ready to drive it back home again. It was fun but not that practical. I was then lucky enough to find a 2002 Toyota RAV4 EV. Now that’s a real electric car. With its 120 mile range It not only became my daily computer but my main car. My wife liked it so much that I found another one for her. We still have our gas car as backup but rarely need to use it. I haven’t needed to by gas since last December. It’s really a shame that consumers can’t walk into a dealership today and buy an EV. Maybe companies like Tesla Motors will change that.

EG: Do you think EA might get in on the current environmental craze in any way?

SC: There are many more people like myself at EA. I think you’d be surprised to see how many hybrids are in our parking lots and how many employees are environmentally active. As a corporation we have always been very environmentally conscious. Our games are pure entertainment. We have had many games were some environmental element to them but we haven’t made one entirely themed on the environment. Maybe in today’s heightened awareness we’ll have more opportunities to do more.

EG: What makes you hopeful for our world's environmental future?

SC: We have a history of reversing and rectifying problems we have caused to the environment so I see no reason why we won’t continue. What gives me extra hope today is the extent of investment I’m now seeing put into green technologies. That means there is actual money to be made. We are going to see big boom in new ideas and technologies over the next few years.

EG: What do you think are the best ideas and innovations we've got to save the world.

SC: That’s a hard one. I’ll stay away from miracle inventions and instead just deploy the ones we already know work. To start with I’d like to see all new construction use solar (like thin film shingles). We could drastically cut down energy costs for the average home owner while eliminating the need to build new power plants. I’d like to see us bring back the plug in electric car. We have thousands of homemade plug in hybrids now, sure would be great if a consumer could buy a new one. Nonprofit organizations like www.pluginamerica.com are staring to make some headway, I just wish auto manufactures along with local and federal government agencies would help.