Are You a Creative Citizen?

PG: What motivated you to build Creative Citizen?

What motivated me to build Creative Citizen was that there weren't solutions that were available to us. The difficulty was that people did not have an opportunity to reach those solutions. Whether it was because there wasn't the technology available or they didn't have the time to really research stuff or the education or the access. What we recognized was that there needed to be a software tool available to the world to aggregate, disseminate and learn about all of the amazing solutions that were out there. From the cool little products that can save you money on your utility bills, to the little habit changes you can make that save you resources and help you and your family live more healthy lives. There was really no end to the available solutions. Yet, they were so disaggregated and hard to sift through. It was the crux of why we created Creative Citizens.

How did you get into this line of work?

Frankly, I saw the facts about the environmental crisis, and I realized that there was no other way. The idea of, sort of, retiring off in the hills and enjoying my life was not available. We have a real crisis on our hands. The planet needs to align together and really needs to start moving forward in this regard. While I could have gone off and taken a cushy law job or similar corporate role, I realized that somebody needs to do this work and fortunately the community of green business people and non-profits is so strong and always growing that I believe that we will do the work. We have the tools and the talent to truly perpetuate the change that is literally vital for the health and the long-term well being of our species.

What's the single most important thing Creative Citizen users can do for the environment?

There are a lot of different answers to that, but the best thing that anybody can do for the environment, right now is to transition to a plant-based diet. The numbers are extremely clear that the meat industry is absolutely terrible on the environment in terms of emissions that result, the water used, the food used; it's a very abusive industry to the environment. When Albert Einstein said that the number-one way the human species can survive and thrive on this planet is to transition to a plant-based diet. That's pretty powerful information and it's something that we shouldn't overlook. We as Americans are very comfortable with eating meat. And I'm personally from Chicago, so I grew up to be a very dedicated meat eater. The more I read about it, the more I realized that it can almost overwhelm all the other things you can do to be green just by being a vegetarian or a vegan.

At Creative Citizen there are six different creative solutions available for you to transition into that route. The first one is eat less beef, then eat no beef but you eat the chicken and the other stuff, then become a pescatarian where you are not eating any poultry or beef and eventually become vegetarian and then vegan. We don't believe in telling people that they need to immediately become a vegetarian. We're giving them a path to reducing their meat intake as a significant benefit to the environment. That's not for everybody. There are definitely people who simply cannot go without meat because of different conditions in their bodies. The thing is to reduce the usage of cars and other carbon-burning transportation methods. So tapping into the public transportation that is already available, biking carpooling, walking. These things have great immediate effects.

When you couple that with working with organizations like Greenworld.org where you can actually plant trees, not only do you save emissions because you've decided to drive less, but then you plant more trees and you end up actually being carbon negative in your life. That's the next step for environmentalism. It's to help people get to a point where they are doing so much good that it goes beyond just their own footprint. They have a negative footprint. I think it's a beautiful vision that this country and the world could come to in the near future.

What's the most novel solution that someone has suggested on Creative Citizens

The fun one that I always like to talk about when I speak at events and stuff is the one that somebody posted that?s titled "Pee Outside." And the reality is that it's a pretty darn good solution. The typical toilet flushes 1.6 gallons of water per flush, not to mention we?re really urinating in potable water which fundamentally makes no sense. But your plants like it too. If that's possible for you, if you have a yard or whatever the case may be, it's a pretty novel solution, and it saves a lot of water.

What's the most practical solution that someone has posted on the site?

There are so many that I don't even know when to start. There are so many simple things like buying a clean canteen. If you have a bottle of water every day, just one. Most people have more than one. You're going to save 365 bottles every year. That's a lot of bottles. If you sat on a couch and were surrounded by 365 bottles of water you would be pretty shocked and appalled at what didn?t seem like a lot of waste but was. You buy one clean canteen and you knock all those out. Things like printing on both sides of the paper and printing on scrap paper. I get so many mailings that I try to cancel, yet they still send to me. I save all the stuff that has a blank on the other side of the paper. There are literally an infinite amount of things you can do. When you look around and appreciate the power that is in every action, there's almost always a better and more efficient way to do it that yields results for you and the planet.

How does a solution get sponsored on Creative Citizen

Actually, those are for companies who want to really get the word out about their product and not get lost in the masses of solutions. There are over 600 solutions currently available, and if you?ve got a really novel product that saves lots of energy or water or emissions or waste or money, you want it to get to the top of the pack. So what we do with sponsored solutions is say, 'OK, companies, come on in. Tell us what you're doing and more people will reach information about your product. It will be on the main page there and it will be rotating through the sponsored solutions widget.

And at the same time it does a great service for the movement, because if the company is actually green washing or has some areas that they really need to work on for them to have a really green product. The community is going to offer them feedback that helps them get there. It will act as a forum to help companies that are doing their best but maybe have some work to do.

On the flipside, if new green companies come out and have really incredible products that are truly green and the people really love, the community can provide that feedback right there on the site and help disseminate the product information out to all their people inside and out of the community. We've built in a tremendous amount of social media tools. You can instantly send it out to your Twitter or Digg or Facebook or any of the other services to really help to proliferate new solutions whether they are products, habits or services.

How does the site deal with lame tips, like don't wear socks? Which is not that great or useful of a tip. Do the users of the site push that bad tip down the ladder and push the good tips up? Is there a ranking system?

That's exactly right. What we did not want to do was to be heavy-handed or judgmental about solutions. Of course, it's important that people are not getting a bunch of lame solutions that don't really work for them right off the bat. This is part of the process of having a user-generated site. As you alluded to personally, the more people that adopt a solution, the higher it becomes in terms of browsability, and it will be on the featured solutions column. The cream of the crop will rise to the top as a function of our system.

The stuff that is lame will not only fall to the bottom, but people will comment on there. 'I'm not sure that's really a green solution and here's why.' That moment actually when it is a lame solution it's really important to the movement because some of the most important information is disconfirming information. So people can say, 'I heard that was green, but nope. I see on Creative Citizen that it's actually not that green. I shouldn't feel guilty for not doing it or waste my time trying to do it.' It's a really important process to help people sift through what really is green and what isn't.

Is there any great benefit, besides bragging rights, for making the top of the citizen chart?

Yeah. We are going to be launching some wonderful rewards and recognition for the top citizens. Right now, the top citizens are judged by their contributions to the community rather than the savings that they yield. We didn't want to have someone who drives a Hummer and has 14 homes but has solar panels have a higher greenage score than those who were doing hundreds of things but can't afford solar. The metric is based on the contribution to the community. The amount of solutions that have been posted, adopted, edited or commented on. People really get recognized for how much they are contributing to the growth of the knowledge base and creative solutions in general.

Anything else you'd like to add?

Creative Citizen is people's environmental file folder, their showcase for green. They can send the link to their profile to their friends and family to show all the ways that they are green, which really entices others to follow in their footsteps and creates a dialogue around "what is really green." It's also a great way to show people how you walk the walk. Check out our top user.