Green Living Online: Three Communities Dedicated to the Green Cause

There are more than 82 million mothers in the U.S. alone. With that kind of demographic united under a single cause, there's nothing that couldn't be fought for. While people continue to band together online to date, talk politics, or lose weight, one group has decided to pull together the massive "mommy" demographic for a purpose: to fight global warming.

EcoMom Alliance is not the only online community dedicated to greener living, but it is one of the newest communities to make an enormous splash just within a few weeks of launching. Whether you get into the online "green" communities to learn new ways of reducing your carbon footprint, or to toss ideas around with like-minded people, the Internet has a home for you.

EcoMom Alliance

Fight global warming. Unite with other mothers who want to see a brighter future for their children. Learn the "10 First Steps for a Sustainable Future" ... and do it all from the comfort of your computer chair.

One of the most beautiful things about the Internet is the way it has allowed us to participate in causes, work toward change, and generally connect with other people who share our interests and beliefs without seriously changing the way we live our daily lives. After all, being a mother and working a full-time job is hard enough. Try stuffing weekly meetings that you have to drive to, not mentioning the whole babysitter issue, and you've got something way too difficult to maintain.

The call of the California-based EcoMom Alliance has garnered attention from ABC news, and their membership rolls even list stars like Robin Wright Penn. As a group, they're asking mothers to take steps toward a sustainable future, including swapping traditional light bulbs for energy-efficient compact fluorescent ones, driving less, and buying local, fair trade and organic products. They encourage mothers to have One Night Off - an idea borrowed from the Austrailian Conservation Foundations "Cool the Globe" initiative - where a single night each week all the lights, televisions, appliances, and other energy-wasting devices are unplugged.

Enabling global change starts from the home, and with a group of mothers who amount to about 2.1 trillion U.S. dollars in spending each year, the EcoMom Alliance has tapped into a group with real power. They're currently training women to lead EcoMom events worldwide, and readying an official EcoMom seal of approval for commercial products. And they're taking it global, too, with members around the globe from the United States to Austrailia, Hungary, England, France and Brazil at last count.

Sound like a group you could get involved with? It's easy to do. Just hit their website and click the "Join Now" button. From there, you can apply to become an EcoMom Leader, view the podcasts, find programs to work with, and support the effort to fight global warming.

Greenopolis

"Learn. Act. Reward. Together." The motto of Greenopolis, it's an outlook that defines this community which boasts of members who help eachother live in a more earth-friendly way.

Think of Greenopolis as a way to visually understand how "green" you're living, and to visually improve on your green lifestyle habits. After registering on Greenopolis, you complete a brief survey that actually shows you how your current way of living is affecting the world around you, and then you receive a badge. As you continue participating on the site, helping other members and generally working together to help the environment, you get points and your badge will change color. This shows you're becoming more environmentally responsible, and when Greenopolis is out of beta you'll even be able to use those points toward sustainable products.

Seriously, this is a community for everyone. Coming into the community, you're not expected to be some sign-toting, ballot-rocking, environmentalist fanatic. You can be Average Joe or Jane, and that's fine. The idea is to learn about the environment, to learn how the products we use and the actions we take impacts the world, and then to take personal steps toward making it all greener.

If this sounds like the community for you, give it a shot! Sign up on their website and fill out the survey. Then, you can customize your profile with your own avatar and start earning points by connecting with other members.

Green Thing

Launched in October (as I write this, their website proudly displays that the Green Thing is 164 days old), this online community aims to inspire people to "do the green thing". We're talking fun challenges and monthly tasks - a simple, straightforward green thing to do that will help combat climate change.

Like Greenopolis, the Green Thing relies on members to report back with what they're doing in order to gauge the impact their group is making. Unlike Greenopolis, the focus is on the group, not the individual. Match's Green Thing is "Go Easy On The Meat", to make it less of a habit and more of a treat. Members list the number of times they've chosen something other than meat to eat, when and how, and Green Thing displays an estimate of how many tons of CO2 have been saved. At the end of each month, Green Thing announces the total reduction in CO2 realized by the community as a whole.

Green Thing makes it pretty fun, too. Instead of just focusing on the cut-and-dry of it, they feature both professional and amateur writers, designers, directions and artists that supply "things" around the month's theme. In line with March's Green Thing, for example, members can view "The Meat Aversion Podcast" (which is actually some seriously effective aversion therapy!), or listen to the rather amusing "Eazy On Da Meat" mp3.

Everyone wants to do their part, but the stereotypical crunchy-granola treesitter isn't in most of us. We have regular lives to lead, and doing our part for the environment can seem much to difficult, confusing, or downright futile to make a habit of. Green Thing tries to get past all that, completely avoiding "the tree-hugging thing, the guilt thing, the scientific thing, or the world-is-at-an-end thing". Instead, the Green Thing is meant to be "an easy thing, a fun thing, a creative thing and a community thing". It's for the rest of us, those who want to do our part but haven't found our way to do it yet.

An easy community to be involved with, you can join the Green Thing at their website and start making your own lifestyle more sustainable.