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CNET)
Even if the people in your life are spoiled, you don't need to turn to coal as a holiday gift. Instead, you can stuff stockings with gift cards that send cash in their honor to a worthy cause.
Changing the Present lets you make charitable contributions in the name of a loved one. Unlike other do-good gifting services (see below), you and your giftees can set up personal profiles that specify favorite causes. Plus, Changing the Present's Stupid Gifts Hall of Shame could be a destination in its own right (although I think fake vomit makes a fine present).
The list of causes runs the gamut from Aging to Women--with the environment, microcredit, and 28 others in between. For example, you could pay $160 to send a laptop to a child on the wrong side of the digital divide, or $15 to clear 10 meters of landmines--then deduct it from your taxes come April. Your loved one gets a recycled paper gift card to show off his or her passive selflessness.
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Kiva)
While it connects with hundreds of nonprofit organizations, Changing the Present doesn't yet hook up to GuideStar or another database that would let you add just about any 501(c)3 group to the roster. The site plans to expand its listings, although at this point, for instance, I only found three Illinois organizations.
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Heifer)
If ecological cleanup and human rights protections are high on your wish lists, check out these other gifting Web sites:
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Seva)
- Alternative Gifts International can send clean water, wheelchairs, and doctors to villages on the other side of the planet.
- Heifer International's gift cards enable you to send honeybees, bunnies, chicks or big mammals like llamas and cows to rural families who need a hand to sustain their way of living.
- Seva means service in Sanskrit. Purchasing Seva gift cards in the name of a friend or family member can help fight child blindness and fund development projects for Indian, Native American, Latin American, and other communities.
- Through Modest Needs, you can offer a no-strings help to U.S. strangers who are having trouble paying paying medical bills and other vital expenses.
- Want to help, but you need the money back? Kiva microloans connect you with people in Eastern Europe, South America, Asia, and Africa who are looking to borrow funds for their small businesses.
There are many online calculators for assessing how your lifestyle pollutes the planet; environmental nonprofits sponsor most of them, such as the Earth Day Network's Ecological Footprint Quiz. But learning about the downstream effects of your driving, computing, and shopping can give you guilt to last. Once you feel like the sky is falling, what are you supposed to do about it?
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BeGreen.com)
Entrepreneurs bent on spreading sustainability have created Web sites to capitalize on either your guilt, survival instinct, or nobility--whatever the personal motivation may be--by letting you examine the ecological impact of your way of life. Then, you can plunk down matching penance cash to fund clean energy efforts intended to cut down on carbon emissions and combat global warming.
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OffsetMyLife.com)
Among the various carbon pay-up plans, Be Green incorporates social networking. This project of Green Mountain Energy lets you set up a personal page to show off your progress. It quizzes you about your use of energy and transportation, draws a chart of your carbon consumption, and then lets you buy certificates that send cash to wind and solar energy or reforesting projects. My chart (above, right) reflects how I've given up my car this year but have indulged in many plane trips. I'm supposed to pay $195 to enter the pearly gates of carbon neutrality. Be Green remains in beta testing, so it's currently short on user profiles.
Offset My Life beta gets a little more specific. Not only does it calculate carbon emissions from your jet-setting, it even adds up how much your coffee-drinking, TV-watching, Web-surfing, and UPS-shipping habits might contribute to climate change. The Web 2.0 angle is its invitation for you to add your own offsets and get a commission when someone pays up (anyone up for a chocolate offset?). A business edition is in the works.
TerraPass was one of the original carbon offsetting services, which have been winning corporate allies, as seen in Travelocity's partnership with the Conservation Fund. Along the same lines, Sustainable Travel seeks to remedy the blight caused by your flight. The Sioux-owned NativeEnergy helps you to finance wind and solar energy services. Conservation International lets you give offset gift cards, such as $10 to make up for a cross-country road trip.
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Fivelimes.com)
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Alonovo.com)
In the market for a laptop bag made of recycled soda bottles or a solar-powered iPod charger? You could spend hours searching online for boutiques that stock those green goods. Or you could go straight to Five Limes, a social-shopping site linking to stores that hawk ecofriendly products, such as Green Home for nontoxic bedding, BTC Elements for organic blue jeans, and Green Office for recycled-paper Post-Its. Five Limes is "something like an Angie's List for green products," as Sustainablog puts it. Five Limes saves a history of your activities to tailor search results accordingly and to help you hook up with other users.
Shoppers get to rate the quality and sustainability (see graphic above left) of stuff for sale with up to five limes--or you can toss a lemon at junk. The ratings at the Alonovo marketplace are far more thorough and customizable (right). But unlike Alonovo, which offers a broad swath of products, both green (Fair Trade coffee) and ungreen (leaf blowers), Five Limes focuses exclusively on the burgeoning market serving consumers who care about Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (aka LOHAS). Once you locate the perfect bamboo-fabric sweater, Five Limes takes you to the merchant to pay. Vendors can feed their products for free to the site, which takes a cut of referred purchases.
Five Limes is still a work in progress; for example, a search for LED only retrieved one $28.99 lightbulb that's supposed to last a decade. Some of the sites Five Limes links to offer products still in development or that you can't buy yet in the United States, such as USB-rechargeable batteries. Still, the Web 2.0, social-networking aspect is ideal for niche communities, in this case for ecofriendly shoppers looking to make transactions, forge relationships, and pool their resources to attract broader attention.
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