Orbitality

You can tell a lot about a person by looking at his trash. Empty pizza boxes and beer cans? He likes to relax after work. Box from a new HDTV? He likes to watch movies.
I live in a small suburban town. There are pizza boxes in our trash. There are even more beer cans. We like to drive to school and work, and a pedestrian draws many a curious stare.

But the trash of many households is changing on a massive scale. Newspapers are bundled. Plastic bottles are in blue recycling bags. There is a garbage revolution going on in dumpsters!

But not enough people recycle. Our town has a youth commission — a group of students that are passionate about community service. This year the project was to encourage the town to recycle.

Any modern community activism program needs a digital component. Its just so much more convenient to sign a pledge online than to drive (and hypocritically pollute). The concept of the “Going Green” website is very interesting. Residents who sign a green pledge have their houses light up green (with google maps and geocoding). There’s also a very spiff “green meter” made using OpenFlashChart.

One piece of literature that was the basis of the project was “Community Based Social Marketing” by Doug McKenzie-Mohr. It’s an almost disturbing book that details marketing (which are borderline propaganda) tactics that are useful in coercing people to recycle. One of the concepts he discusses is conformity — when a resident sees the whole map littered with green houses, he feels that he’s the only one that isn’t recycling. The green meter is a very visual indicator of how many people (that aren’t you) are recycling. Were it for anything but recycling, these tactics would even seem a bit shady. But I guess shady works, because the site worked up 40 pledges during launch week.

Ironically, the web server that’s hosting the website today dumps around a ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually. Maybe the forty people that have signed the green pledge so far can redeem my recycling vows? Maybe not.

I guess I’m taking a shorter shower today.

Tags: going green, recycling   Posted Uncategorized |