Great Green Sites

courtesy of brighterplanet.com

Brighter Planet is an Environmental Startup Company in Vermont that is working on practical solutions to climate change.  Instead of preaching that we should all recycle our bathroom waste (gross!) they are looking for ways we persnickety Americans can fight climate change, well, without really trying too hard.

Their main product is a Bank of America credit card bearing the Brighter Planet logo.  And instead of earning frequent flyer miles (remind me to tell you how much pollution air planes produce), your purchases earn points towards the purchase of carbon offsets.  By George I think they’ve got it!  That is brilliant!  I love to shop.  I love to earn free stuff by shopping.  And I want to help the environment.  If I can do all that by shopping, I’m so going shopping tomorrow!

Here’s how the credit card works

• Earn 1 EarthSmart point for every $1 spent in net retail purchases.
• Points are automatically redeemed monthly to help fund renewable energy projects.
• Every 1,000 points will fund an estimated 1 ton of carbon offsets.
• Every 1,000 points is roughly equivalent to taking a car off the road for 2,000 miles, or powering and heating/cooling your home for a month.

How’d I learn about Brighter Planet?  Well I read this guy’s blog called No Impact Man who mentioned that we should read and support a site called 350.org (getting the word out that scientists say we need to get our carbon count to around 350 ppm to be safe.  We’re at 387 now) so I did.  After I registered, I got this cool badge for my blog (see right margin) and later the great folks over at Brighter Planet (they sponsor 350.org) sent me a nice certificate saying how much carbon my blog had offset which made me feel something like a rock star.

Later when I contacted Brighter Planet asking if they’d participate in a charity blog-off their CEO promptly wrote and emailed a very cool guest post which you can read here.

So, in summary, I think this company is worth supporting.  I hope you’ll join me in doing so.  And if you are one of those i-only-pay-cash-for-my-crap people, well, pass the company on to somebody else who isn’t as financially astute as you.