From Barely Green to Practically Green?

related articles

Leading a green life is not always the easiest thing to do, especially when we face so many decisions about the best way to take care of our planet: What products should I get? Should I focus more on energy or water use? Why is it important? How do I do it? And especially, how much do my actions matter?

Practically Green is an online service created by Susan Hunt Stevens that facilitates our day-to-day decisions about being green. The site has lined up an editorial director who is familiar to readers of The Daily Green: Author and our Ask an Organic Mom blogger Alexandra Zissu.

Stevens has been in the digital media world for over 13 years, most recently as the general manager of Boston.com. However, her work in the environmental field kicked off quite recently. Frustrated with the lack of accessible information and the amount of green-washing she encountered after her son was diagnosed with serious food and environmental allergies, Stevens decided that there had to be an easier way to learn more about our environment and how to treat it. She based her idea on the LEED rating system, convinced that she could assess environmental actions with points and help people understand how much of a difference their actions make and help them prioritize between those with the biggest positive impact. Little by little Practically Green began to take shape and it finally launched on Mother's Day 2010 as the perfect online educational tool for green living.

"The green movement is part of a huge cultural change that is likely to be happening during the next decade," Sarah Finnie Robinson, Director of Social Programming, said, "We hope this is a way to encourage people to take part in those changes."

To start using Practically Green, first log on and take the quiz. After answering basic questions based on your daily green actions, the website will produce an assessment and classify you from barely green, to solidly green, and maybe all the way to superbly green. Then, it will come up with a manageable action plan based on your results in order to help you take the necessary steps to climb up the green ladder.

Contrary to most ecological footprint calculators and quizzes, the Practically Green quiz measures your impact on a personal level instead of in terms of your entire household. For example, it never asks you how many cars are in your driveway, but rather what kind of car you drive. This helps people adjust their lifestyles in terms of their own personal green living since it allows them to direct and choose their own green actions based on the assigned points.

The Practically Green points system is designed to distinguish an action's impact in relation to how an average person lives and tell people how much of a positive or negative impact their individual actions have. This influences people to make greener choices by simplifying their decision-making process.

"Our goal is to make it clear to people which choices are high-impact, which are medium-impact, and which are good to do, but hard to measure," Susan Hunts Stevens, founder and CEO of Practically Green, said, "We don't want people to have to understand the intricacies of lifecycle assessments or carbon measurements. For example, it's really surprising to people that being a vegetarian can be as high-impact as upgrading your windows or other home energy upgrades."

Using Practically Green is neither a hardship nor a burden, but rather about making green living easier and accessible through the use of a motivational and inspirational tool. It shines for being funny, smart, and practical, but never preachy. It allows people to take the next step in green living and simplifies the process by providing quick and easy answers.

Apart from making green living easier, Stevens also found a way to offer positive support and recognition for individual actions. Practically Green awards different badges to users for greening their lifestyles. This alongside their integration with Facebook and Twitter not only calls for a bit of green and friendly competition among friends, but also a big amount of inspiration to do more for our planet.

"Everybody comes to the green journey in their own way," Robinson said, "Practically Green gives you the next step so that you can keep on going."

COMMENTS ()