Tip of the Hat: Sprig Toys and Envirofit

All of us here at One Tribe Creative would like to send some congrats over to two of our clients who have received awards honoring their sustainable and socially-responsible practices.

First up, Fort Collins based start-up Sprig Toys, an eco-friendly toy company that utilizes recycled wood and reclaimed plastic to build their products, was presented with the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio 2009 Platinum Award and The National Parenting Center's 2009 Seal of Approval.

The Oppenheim Toy Portfolio was founded in 1989 as the only independent consumer review of children's media.

"Sprig vehicles deliver," announced Stephanie Oppenheim, of the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio, calling the toys "a new, truly green collection of vehicles that are just right for the preschool set."

On top of that, Sprig Toys will be featured in WIRED Magazine's store in New York City starting Nov. 21. If you find yourself in the big apple, get your little one a big Sprig rig.

Another client of ours, Envirofit, had their co-founder and vice president of operations, Tim Bauer, collect one of ten Rolex Awards for Enterprise for the company's work in developing countries.  

Bauer and Envirofit were selected out of 1,500 applicants in over 120 countries to receive the award which comes with a cool $100,000 check.  

Envirofit produces clean-burning indoor cooking ovens as well as two-stroke retrofit engines.

"On behalf of the entire team at Envirofit, I am honored to receive this award from Rolex," Bauer said in a statement. "Over 2.4 million people die each year from air pollution-attributed illnesses. Our plan is to use the Rolex Award to develop additional markets, thus increasing Envirofit's positive impact on lives and the environment to the greatest extent."

Congratulations!

Green Inventions of 2008

One Tribe Creative, Fort Collins CO - 

Time Magazine has released its Top 50 Inventions of 2008, and while there are your usual robots, invisibility cloaks, and pop-culture movements, over 20 percent of the inventions involve sustainability and the environment.  Here is a quick breakdown:

#7 - The Chevy Volt - Our normal car batteries are still too cavemanish to get us off gasoline completely, but the Chevy Volt's battery can provide up to 40 miles of driving a day.  Seeing as though 80% of Americans drive under 40 miles a day, it is a good start to a greener drive.

#11 -  Green Crude - Researchers at Arizona State University have been working on ridding carbon from petroleum by incorporating algae into the crude. These researchers might get Time Magazine credit, but I gotta give a shout out to Solix Biofuels and Blue Sun Biodiesel for working on this movement as well.

#25 - Thin Film Solar Panels - Currently most solar panels are baked up in batches.  Nanosolar, a San Diego based start-up has found a way to produce paper-thin solar panels that can be manufactured on a assembly-line-like printing press.  

#35 - Airborne Wind Power - Sky Windpower, yet another San Diego company on the list, is attempting to go top shelf into the Earth's atmosphere to harness the Superman-strength jet stream winds.  Sky Windpower has invented giant wind-turbine kites that can be placed into the troposphere to generate power.  Just watch out for those giant, commercial airplanes.

#37 - Smog-Eating Cement - While there is the phrase, "Smog is the reason for Los Angeles' beautiful sunsets," most people are against smog.  That is why Italian engineers have incorporated a photo-catalyzer (titanium dioxide for you Einstein types) into cement.  Using this cement in certain areas has yielded a 60 percent decrease in smog.

#41  - The Peraves Monotracer - This two-person vehicle might seem like it came straight-out of Minority Report or Doc Brown's lab, but this sustainable whip features wind-shield wipers, air conditioning and is energy-efficient: its BMW engine, goes from zero to 62 m.p.h. in 4.8 sec. (100 km/h), and gets about 65 m.p.g. (28 km/L).  

#46 - The Aptera Electric Car - George Jetson would be proud to roll up to Spacely's Sprockets in this ride.  All-electric (120 miles on a full charge) and quick (an acceleration of zero to 60 in under 10 seconds), the Apter Electric Car is a trailblazer on sustainable transportation.  

So what can we expect in 2009?  What do you want in 2009?  One Tribe Creative will continue to be on the lookout.

Social Responsibility and Sustainability: Who's walking the walk?

Step into any store, pick up a magazine, or surf the Internet, and bam! … eco-friendly advertising everywhere! “Green” is the most overused word in marketing today, associated with companies from petroleum to pet food. But are all of these companies socially responsible, committed to sustainable practices? Or are some just “greenwashing” their way to financial gains and goodwill?

It’s clear that an authentic, socially responsible company has a marketing edge. While the economy wavers, consumers are increasingly selective about where their money goes. They value sustainability — in fact, 67 percent of American consumers say that a company’s social responsibility is extremely influential in deciding to buy a product or service from that company (Fleishman-Hilliard/National Consumers League Study, 2007).

It’s also clear that stretching “green” truths is prevalent, causing consumers to be increasingly skeptical, not knowing whom they can trust to do the right thing. That’s why it’s critical that good organizations tell their stories right. If they don’t convincingly communicate their commitment to sustainability, they risk getting lost in the clamor of players vying for a piece of the “green” pie, or worse, being labeled a “greenwasher.”

Paul Jensen and One Tribe Creative believe social responsibility and sustainability are synonymous, with both built on a triple bottom line — environmental, social, and economic. “Advertising and marketing efforts should never exploit these ideals. There is a fine line between employing truly sustainable practices and falsely promoting environmental efforts to increase a fiscal bottom line,” Jensen says.

For those companies that have a real story to tell, One Tribe Creative stresses the importance of honesty, credibility and transparency in marketing and advertising. By telling the stories of its clients in this manner, One Tribe has helped them improve market share, turning global consumers into believers who actively support the companies’ products and services.

We have one planet and one chance. Let’s work together to write the story of a better world.

Grassroot Resilience

On Aug. 20, season-three Survivor winner Ethan Zohn began an epic journey called Dribble 2008. 

After playing professional soccer in Africa and seeing some close friends die from the AIDS epidemic consuming the continent, Ethan began Grassroots Soccer, an initiative that hosts soccer camps for the African youth to raise awareness of AIDS.

"To put it in a frame of reference, I lived and played soccer in Zimbabwe and witnessed what was happening firsthand with HIV/AIDS, had friends who got sick and died. I didn't know what to do at that time, so I came back to the States and got on Survivor and had a similar experience while I was playing Survivor in Kenya. So I used [the $1 million Survivor: Africa prize] to create Grassroot Soccer," Zohn said.

To help promote the initiative, the 35-year-old began a 550 mile, 100 day journey from Boston to Washington D.C. in which he would dribble a soccer ball from start to finish.

During the trek, Zohn hosts camps and interacts with the local communities to help spread the word.

"I really want to engage everyone in a fun, cool project where they can really feel they have a part in helping fight this horrible disease."

Everything was going swimmingly until Zohn tore his ACL and meniscus last week during a fundraising soccer match.

“Trust me, I’m upset. But I’ll be there every step of the way,” Zohn says. “Well, not every step. I’ll be in a car for part of it.”

His supporters have rallied behind him and are finishing the campaign.

"In Africa, we teach our kids about resilience, community, support and asking others for help. That's what Grassroot Soccer UNITED Dribble 2008 is all about—becoming one with the soccer community," explains Ethan Zohn, in his blog on the Grassroot Soccer UNITED Website. "And while I am certainly proud of making it 55 days and 279 miles, I'll be even more proud knowing and understanding that, when I cross that finish line in Washington D.C., it was our supporters who helped get me there. This is the moment to come together and use the power of soccer in the fight against AIDS."

Defying doctors orders, Zohn continues to dribble a little, but still needs everyone's support.

Join One Tribe Creative in showing your support for this survivor by visiting his site.

Girls Just Want to Have Social Change

Talk about telling a story well. This video was shared by Paul at One Tribe Creative's weekly meeting:

This amazing video is from The Girl Effect, an effort rooted in the Nike Foundation which strives to start the economic and social change brought about when girls have the opportunity to participate  in their society.

Why girls?  Because girls in the developing world have the largest opportunity to be agents of change, invest more in families than their counterparts, and as of now, do not have a voice in their regions.

Let's take a look at the facts:

• Today, more than 600 million girls live in the developing world. 
• More than one-quarter of the population in Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa are girls and young women ages 10 to 24.
• The total global population of girls 10 to 24 - already the largest in history - is expected to peak in the next decade.

By placing a girl in the middle of the story of what's wrong with the world, we can see the story of poverty, disease, and violence in a personal way.  We can then write a new story by giving the girl a voice and start impacting the world.  We have one planet and one chance.  Let's start the focus on one girl.

Gravitas at Gaviotas

In the mid-60s, a man named Paolo Lugari walked across the baron planes of the East Andes.  It was here, in the los llanos of Colombia, where Paolo expressed his vision of a sustainable community to a team of scientists, agronomists , engineers, and doctors.  

"They always put social experiments in the easiest, most fertile places. We wanted the hardest place. We figured if we could do it here, we could do it anywhere," Lugari said.

What Lugari set forth is now considered one of the most innovative and sustainable communities in the world, Gaviotas.

Gaviotas is at the center stage of the sustainability movement because of the revolutionary technological work the engineers have done.

Windmill Power that Works

After seeing the need for a mechanical device to pump water from the subterranean lakes below the ground to the dry landscape where Gaviotas is located, engineers went through a staggering 58 models of windmills to power the pumps to bring clean water up to the community before settling with a light-weight, efficient model.

"Civilization has been a permanent dialogue between human beings and water," Lugari said.

Thousands of these windmill-powered pumps have been installed around Colombia; with some even being called Gaviotas in the surrounding communities.

Revolutionary Inventions

Along with the windmills, Gaviotas has made groundbreaking strides in inventions.
 

The village has turned to the fermentation of their livestock's dung for the powering of their hospital.

Their cattle dung is placed in fermentation tanks that turn cow-pies into
methane power. This power is used to keep Gaviotas' 16-bed hospital powered. A Japanese architectural journal has named Gaviotas' hospital one of the 40 most important buildings in the world. 

Another crucial element that Gaviotas has implemented is their water dispersion program.  All water that is brought forth through their ingenious pumps is clean and safe to drink.  The community has used their ingenuity to come up with water-bottles that lock together much like Legos.  These water bottles link up and make for better stacking and reduce the waste of space.  They work so well that the community is filling the used bottles with dirt and are using them as actual building blocks

Forestation of los llanos

The soil that surrounds Gaviotas is extremely acidic and harsh on all plant life.  The community searched for a plant that could help their sustainability efforts, and they found it in tropical pine seedlings from Honduras.

These pine trees have sheltered indigenous plants from the harsh aspects of soil and is allowing them to flourish.

"Elsewhere they're tearing down the rain forest," Lugari says. "In los llanos, we're putting it back."

Gaviotas is continuing its pursuit to be an inspiration to other third-world communities and their effort to be self-sufficient and sustainable.  Something One Tribe Creative sees as one of the most important issues facing the world today

Be Unique. Be Homegrown. Be Local.

It seems that the biggest stories these days have to do with the sinking economy.   With Wall St. on the ropes and non-stop bickering taking place in Washington, Main St. seems to be in the back seat during these hard times.  However, there is one way that people can help the economy - staying local.

That is why Fort Collin's very own Be Local Coupon Book is this year's must-have booklet.  

Started three years ago by the Local Living Economy Project, the Be Local Coupon Book offers over $5,000 in savings (at a cost of only ten bucks) to the unique, sustainable, and homegrown organizations around Fort Collins.

The Local Living Economy Project realizes that the depths of human creativity and compassion start at a local level, and would like to see that human element grow.  They know that independent businesses are crucial for the local economy to flourish and would like to tell their stories.

The Be Local Coupon Book is part of Fort Collin's effort to reinvent commerce as a system of honorable, enlivening and equitable relationships within the community.  Numerous businesses in the booklet help Fort Collin's effort in sustainability and environmentally responsible practices. 

You can get yours at 40 outlets around the community, so be sure to get yours and help change the nation's economic story from the ground up!

If your city does not have a booklet dedicated to helping the local economy flourish and is looking for a similar voice, check out this demo site.