It is a challenge to raise money for non-profits and this is particularly true if you are a non-profit that deals with consumption and you are serious about sticking to your mission (www.newdream.org).  We work hard to rid the world of junk mail so we could hardly feel great about sending out a flurry of letters asking for operating funds.  Likewise, we are unlikely to send out membership premiums because one of the reasons that folks join our organization is that they fundamentally believe that they already have too much stuff.  Yes, renewable energy devices as membership premiums sound nice but most are made in China so that would unlikely give us much joy in knowing that we were enabling that much too long supply route.  And then we switched to thinking about things--yes stuff--that once purchased reduced consumption of resources.  These are un-products.

Some of these unproducts are obvious like stainless steel water bottles that reduce the need for the use of bottled water and the associated waste stream of plastic bottles.  But there are others such as canvas shopping bags which save the need to harvest forests of trees so we can carry our groceries home.  (Although you can reuse both paper and plastic fairly effectively--not using them in the first place makes a lot of sense.

There are also some less obvious ones.  Memberships to something like Zipcars or some other similar car sharing program would qualify as an un-product.  And fewer cars on the road and more strategic use of those cars would be a good thing.  If you have to cruise Main Street, use your bike or even walk.

So these are three un-products.  I would be interested in hearing from other Greenopolis folks what other un-products might be on their minds.  Let me know. 

Bob Ferris

http://bob-ferris.blogspot.com/

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