Green Options

Solar group purchasing program 1 Block Off the Grid (1BOG) just launched a new campaign in New Orleans.

1BOG works by grouping customers together into a sort of buying club. Then, after a rigorous selection process, they choose a solar installer who will provide the biggest discount and the best quality. The more people that sign up, the better the discount for anyone buying solar through the program.

If you aren’t familiar with 1 Block Off the Grid, what they do may be best explained by New York Times Magazine:

…in a cultural moment when many individuals aren’t feeling all that rugged, perhaps it makes sense that a company called 1BOG has put collective buying at the center of its business model. The name is derived from the phrase “one block off the grid,” a reference to the goal of rounding up groups of homeowners willing to install solar-power systems on their houses — removing the rough equivalent of one block from a city’s electrical grid.

Smart meters will have their own web pages that can be presented on social networks.

I’ve gotten a little leery about product posts lately (”seen on TV” products notwithstanding). Ultimately, with the number of new “green” products out there, such posts could easily become the sole focus of our work here… and I don’t think that’s the kind of content sustainablog readers want or expect. But, I do make exceptions, and was happy to do just that when Ecopreneurist’s Paul Smith approached me about writing a post on Ode magazine.

Why make an exception for Ode? It’s quickly become my favorite magazine… the first (and, so far, only) one I’ve subscribed to on Zinio. Ode’s not only focused on issues that matter to me — social, environmental, and economic change — but also on stories about people making a difference in these areas.

In short, there’s a lot of good news in Ode… and, more and more, we need that.

The Walt Disney Company claims to have a long history of environmental stewardship. But for years the company has been the very antithesis of of anything related to environmental awareness.

The very fact that it razed down acres of orange groves in Anaheim to build its first theme park filled with “plastic” fairy tales should speak for itself. Child health activists have been against the company’s use of toxic cleaning materials in their theme parks for the last three years; they even protested outside an annual shareholder meeting in Oakland, CA yesterday.

AT & T has partnered with One Economy and Meraki to bring free WI-FI internet to low income communities Sunnydale Housing Community, San Francisco’s largest low income housing project.