Thursday, April 29, 2010

Carrot Mob!

This semester we have learned a lot about policy approaches and challenges in regard to the environment. It seems awfully slow moving, eh? Is anyone else frustrated that our national government doesn't seem to be doing much about climate change?
Here is an idea about a way to create change without trying to go through the government, and it is very easy to do! The idea is called Carrot Mob, and it first started in San Francisco. The idea is that businesses have a lot of power and influence and we can use consumerism to change business practices.
In this experiment, this guy (couldn't find his name) asked 20 different nearby liquor stores how much percentage of profits they would put towards their store's sustainability if he could bring a large number of buyers to that store for one day. Some stores bid 10%, some 20%, and the highest and winning bidder agreed to donate 22% of one day's profit. They advertised for this one day for everyone to buy their alcohol and goods at this store. The outcome was double what was expected and the store made over 9,000 bucks in a few hours. The percentage towards sustainability was enough to completely redo the lighting system in the store.
The idea here is that consumers have a lot of power. This is a way that every individual can make a difference by making a small adjustment to your lifestyle- simply pay attention to where you buy your products. Carrot Mob has spread all around the country and now throughout the world. It's the opposite of a boycott, and it can really have a huge effect. Please check out the youtube video because its hilarious (he makes it rain with money in the lq store) and you will get a better idea of what this is about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUz0kM1u_jk (if this link doesn't work youtube carrotmob makes it rain)

www.carrotmob.org

10 comments:

  1. I love the Carrot Mob idea, but it seems like the level of organization and effort necessary to make it work would only be efficient in the case of large businesses. Is this a part-time volunteer thing or a full time non profit?

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  2. This does prove that the consumer does have a lot of power, but more importantly is proves that consumers actually care about environmental issues and sustainable practices. The Carrot mob idea is good and all, but if all it does is prove that corporations' profit increases if part goes to sustainable practices, then the whole carrot mob thing can be bypassed completely if corporations just had similar advertising on their own.

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  3. Carrot mob seems like a great idea. It seems to show that individuals can simply react to incentives that better themselves and the environment simultaneously.

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  4. This seems like an interesting counter to boycotting. Providing incentives rather than punishment. The organizational work seems exhaustive though. I wonder how hard it is to achieve these results.

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  5. I would imagine that as this becomes a more persuasive factor in business, some will begin to use the CARROT MOB for morally questionable gains. There seems to always be someone out there to ruin these kind of progressive ideas...

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  6. I think this could definitely work. As Food Inc reminds us, we, as consumers, vote three times a day. If we can get Wal Mart to sell organic food, we can do anything.

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  7. I like this idea a lot too-I just worry about the businesses who don't actually care about sustainability and use "greenwashing" as their method (this is a deceptive form of green marketing.) I agree that there needs to be firm organization in order to keep checks on the businesses that utilize sources like Carrot Mob.

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  8. This carrot mob seems to be extremely effective. People always talk about change but getting some people together and actually making it happen is great. This idea should be spread around more.

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  9. I think this is a very cool idea to motivate companies to become more sustainable. By working from the bottom up we as consumers can absolutely make change. If people stop buying goods or shopping at places that are not eco friendly they will be forced to either change their ways or close. I also think this idea is cool because if it is done at a large enough scale it will force the market to shift to only environmentally friendly products and eventually bring the prices of these types of products down to the normal market prices of the current non-envro. friendly products.

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  10. This concept is the truth, every time you spend money on anything, you are voting that you approve the product in its entirety (as far as the producer is concerned). Every dollar spent is a "Yes" vote. The real president of this country (or the real decider of everything) is still George Washington, on those dollar bills

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