Crowdsourcing Green Product Reviews

Many green websites provide recommendations for one, ten or maybe a thousand products.   However, the American consumer must make hundreds of consumption choices a year.  Currently, most consumers consider at most whether the product is well reviewed and whether the price is in their budget.  More concerned consumers, may try to investigate a products impact on the environment, how it was manufactured, or whether there are greener alternatives.  In most cases, making an educated, green decision is challenging at best.

Greentodew will provide a platform for crowdsourcing green product reviews.  Similar to yelp, but with an environmental twist — each product, invention or process will be reviewed from multiple perspectives by multiple users.

Green scores will be calculated based on multiple factors.  Reviewer scores will be normalized when possible.  Rater reliability will be determined for the reviewers who have scored a sufficient number of items.

Our first step is setup up a crowdsourcing database that can help us accumulate the information we need to rate multiple products.

Here we go!

Climate Reality Training Here I come!!!

I am so thrilled to announce that I will be attending Al Gore’s Climate Reality Training in Chicago at the end of July.  What better place and time could there be to get a grip on the reality of our situation than Chicago at the end of July!

Despite the hot and muggy weather, my focus is going to be on what we can each do to make this situation better for all of us and for our planet.  So if you have an idea that you would like me to include in my grand list — please comment below and I will take the best ideas with me to this amazing event.

Camping in Canada

This summer we are planning a grand trip around the Great Lakes.  I haven’t been to Canada in years and I am looking forward to taking Shoshana to see where her great grandparents lived in Toronto.  We will travel from DC to Niagra and on to Toronto.  After a day or two in Toronto we will travel to Bruce National Park in Ontario for three nights of camping and hiking at this very popular and reportedly beautiful location.   From Bruce we will take the ferry to South Baymouth and then continue on to Mackinac Island if I can make the schedule work out.  The next day we will travel to Chicago for a weekend with my family.  On our way home we will spend several days at one of my favorite campgrounds — Warren Dunes State Park.  And then at long last we will head home.

The tentative Route:

Reservations at Bruce National Park and at Warren Dunes State Park.

Ferry From Bruce to Baymouth

Ferry to Mackinac Island

Green Clean (Hands that is!) … and cheaper too!

We’ve been very pleased with buying Method unscented hand soap in bulk on Amazon — it does not contain triclosan, but does work well in soap dispensers.  I like the idea of Dr. Bronners, but I find that it gunks up soap dispensers and we often end up with soap on our clothes instead of our hands.  I recently purchased two foaming soap dispensers and these work well with Method gel soap and make it last a really long time!

The soap:  (scented or unscented)

The dispenser:  (Also available at Sur La Table and in multiple colors…)

I’ve been looking for a greener, unscented, inexpensive solution and this is the first time I’ve found something that accomplished all of these things….

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