Image via This Is Reality
DCL
By now, most everyone's seen The Meatrix, the Story of Stuff, and some of the other videos that have gone viral and (hopefully) spread a message that sunk in with its viewers.
But there are so many clever, creative, and compelling campaigns out there, focusing on a range of specific and important
Here are seven that have caught our attention recently.
Lego Art
World-renowned Lego artist Sean Kenney took the message of endangered species to kids a few months ago by designing an entire exhibit, "Creatures of Habitat: A Gazillion-Piece Animal Adventure," at the Philadelphia Zoo. Kenney spent more than a year and used about 95,000 Legos to sculpt endangered birds, frogs, tamarins, and a polar bear.
And this Lego-built monkey was on hand to welcome guests at a celebrated flower show in London that opened this week. The Hampton Court Palace flower show has shifted gears this year, putting more emphasis on local food, sustainable gardens, bee-friendly gardening, and the increasing "grow your own" movement.
"Clean Coal"
The Coen brothers teamed up with The Reality Campaign about to produce a satirical video about how clean "clean coal" really is. (although it's not the only great video campaign dispelling the myth of clean coal).
Stop Gibe 3
The Gibe 3 Dam in Ethiopia is $1.4 billion away from completion. If finished, it will be, at 240 meters high, the largest dam in Africa and will feed a 1,800 MW hydroelectric power station
So International Rivers, Survival International, Friends of lake Turkana and several other organizations have organized the Stop Gibe 3 petition, asking the world to help stop construction of the dam and prevent the damage it would inflict on communities that depend on the health of an already fragile ecosystem. Groups like No Water No Life are working to raise awareness about watershed degradation and to educate the public about sustainable management of water resources.
Ocean of plastic
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch seems to shock most people when they first learn about it, but it's a relative few who make serious changes to lessen the impact of our plastic habit. (Although some certainly do, like Beth Terry and her quest to live without plastic.)
We loved (in that sad, don't-want-to-look kind of way)Chris Jordan's photos of the effects of this plastic pollution on wildlife.
Doing more with less (on)
Then there's the power of nudity: from naked cyclists protesting the cultural (and street) dominance of cars over bikes, to PETA activists infamous for staging naked animal rights campaigns, naked protests have, if nothing else, grabbed attention all around the world.
Ban the Phone Book
TreeHugger breaks down the big picture of how much waste our phone book habit creates, despite how little people really use them anymore. Check out this statistic from the Say No to Phonebooks campaign: "5 million trees are cut down each year to create the white pages phone book and that taxpayers are spending $17 million each year to have these books recycled? Even more surprising is that almost 75% of consumers are completely unaware of the environmental and financial impact in printing, delivering and recycling these books."
