Designers Against Climate Change - Blog Action Day

Todays is Blog Action Day and the subject is Climate Change.

For graphic designers concerned about doing their part to help the environment, there's no better resource than Re-nourish. The site has been around for several years, but it's recently been revamped and features lots of new user-friendly resources & articles about all aspects of working sustainably for designers at every level.

The site is so well respected that it's even been nominated for a Cooper-Hewitt People's Choice Design Award. Please take a moment to sign up and vote for it HERE and show the world that designers are taking the environment seriously!

Save The Date: 24 October - An International Day of Climate Action

350 introduces a day of international climate action: 24 October...

Mini-Refugee Camps Sprouting Up in Germany

German artist Hermann Josef Hack, founder of the Global Brainstorming Project, has started setting up miniature refugee camps in public spaces to bring attention to the people already suffering from the effects of climate change. 500 tiny tents have already been on display in Berlin (shown) and are moving on to Leipzig and Dresden later this month.

To Carbon Offset or Not To Carbon Offset

I've been debating the merits of carbon offsets and whether they are really helping to encourage greener living, or just encouraging people to throw money at a problem rather than acting differently (especially as I have been reviewing green hosting options). So I was happy to discover an article about just this topic in the current issue of Mother Jones (May/June), "Practical Values: Paying for My Hot Air" :

Because air travel is my biggest vice, I started by plugging a year's worth of flights into various online travel calculators. The cost of redemption for 34,000 air miles: $168, according to NativeEnergy; $160.89 per MyClimate; or $64.95 on TerraPass. When I added up my total carbon footprint (air travel, auto, and home energy), the price tags ranged from $180 to $408 per year. Why would anyone spend $408 when she could choose a $180 offset instead?

"As a tendency, the cheaper the program, the more likely it is that the quality is not very good," says Wolfgang Strasdas, who recently completed a study on carbon offsets for the International Ecotourism Society. Strasdas judged carbon-offset companies on three main factors: how credible they are, how they spend your money, and how they calculate emissions. The latter accounts for the major discrepancies in price, especially regarding air travel.

Read the entire article (along with a handy carbon offset comparison chart) here.