ah. awsome

Earth Hour draws fewer Kiwis

Fewer New Zealanders switched off their lights for Earth Hour last night than last year.

National power grid operator Transpower reported power consumption was down 2 percent for the World Wide Fund for Nature-sponsored climate change awareness event, compared to the 3.5 percent savings recorded last year.

Those on the West Coast apparently signalled the greatest awareness and saved the most, totalling 13 percent.

Canterbury saved 8 percent, Wellington used 4 percent less and Auckland 1 percent.

Otago-Southland, Otago-Southland Northland, Bay of Plenty and Taranaki registered no difference.

The hour, which took place between 8.30pm and 9.30pm last night, was the fourth of the annual awareness days to take place.

Kiwi landmarks including Auckland's Sky Tower, Wellington's Beehive, Paeroa's L&P bottle and Te Puke's giant Kiwifruit all turned off their lights, along with other places of note including the Pyramids, Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Acropolis.

The government of Tuvalu turned off power for the whole of the low-lying country

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3517903/Earth-Hour-draws-fewer-Kiwis

interesting read in stuff today, that earth hour is on the decline in NZ, possible theoretical reasons in my opinion, that the one individual making a difference thing isnt sinking in, earth hour would only succeed collectively, and the one individual probably doesn't see the instant results as a direct result from their participation, so the direct consequence of their actions isnt really seen.

also earth hour has a lot of critics, but this could be because earth hour is the largest profile eco campaign

The critics’ main beef: turning off the lights for an hour and thinking that it’ll make a difference is a joke. All it is is happy hour and the hype is not sustainable. This is not a carbon neutral event, because the debris and emissions created by the euphoria could prove more harmful than the damage it seeks to prevent. Can’t the money be used to do really meaningful activities like neighborhood recycling centers. Anyone remember Live Earth 2007? Why so quiet now?

http://damiensden.wordpress.com/2009/03/27/earth-hour-supporters-vs-critics/

Surfrider Foundation Europe

Poster campaign i found a wile ago and forgot about,

now that i look back on it, and after research and discussions with our group, i ask my self, this is successful, does it communicate to me? does it intrigue? does it have a call to action? will i change my ways because of this poster?

i think this is a well thought out idea but for me, this type of awareness is over done, we are aware i think, we have seen this type of approach before. so overall i don't think it is too successful, it doesn't do anything for me, i think this is kind of where our group was headed to on a light variation, kind of like why inst it working? and what will?

Surfrider Foundation Europe

A poster campaign for the Association and Foundation Surfrider whose goal defense, preservation and sustainable coastal management. A baseline impactante thought by agency Young & Rubicam.All on beautiful pictures of Ben Stockley.

Eco-Design

Eco-Design (Hardcover)
~ Silvia Barbero (Author), Brunella Cozzo (Author), Paola Tamborrini (Author)

okay so i found this book in Gordan Harris, really new so i cant find the pictures and examples anywhere else but i thought id share, this book is basically a collection of really innovation and smart sustainable ideas and case studies, in terms of awareness, call to action, actual sustainable design, this book covers a very broad range as it was split up into categories such as furniture, interactive graphics etc

obviously i was drawn to the graphic design side, while there were case studies i had seen before a couple of them were really new and i hadn't seen before, these two caught my eye:

1- How much does it weigh?

basically it was like a guerrilla campaign around the city with bright yellow and black signs, strategically positioned under or on top of objects 'how much does it weigh?' with some smaller type under it explaining the economic impact of the object, for instance say a jersey it'll say how like it need 100kgs of water to manufacture one piece of clothing (completely made that up)

but because it was like everywhere, it had an impact.

while i'm quite a cynic of this awareness side of sustainability, (i think we are way over saturated with sustainability info that we become desensitized and switch off) this campaign was pretty different so it did have a good effect.

2- Roma water bottles Map

In Rome there are 2500 hundred drinking fountains, which are free and safe to drink from, this idea has the map of the location of the fountain printed directly onto the water bottle of the user, which in turn would have the bottle be reused over and over again.

example of the map

i really think this idea would be so effective and yet it is so simply

again i tried so hard to find pictures and more info of the examples but to no avail, think maybe the book is too new ?

Fun Theory

in my opinion, this is a genius idea which incorporates user interactivity to achieve a sustainable outcome.

the simplicity of it yet the effectiveness of the campaign is clearly successful, between our group, i think this touches on the angle that we want to pursue, the reasoning behind the success of these campaign, the motivation, the psychological reasoning to be attracted to these schemes.

Nokia’s giant digital billboard

so I talked about this to my group, its basically a giant billboard rigged to a crane, shaped like an arrow, and depending on user input vis mobile phones the giant arrow billboard with rotate and point to your location along with some sort of description,

the thing that is really interesting about this for me, is the total usability angle of it, its like the whole campaign depends on this type of user input and interactivity, and it totally succeeds.

it will be interesting to think about how to make a spin off of this idea with major project in mind, more specifically sustainability, like having a totally user driven system to achieve something

the vid is defiantly worth checking out

The World's Biggest Signpost from adghost on Vimeo.

First Post

testing

video works

pictures works too