Are We Entering a New Era of Environmentalism?

If you're like me, you grew up at a time when environmentalism was always something to scoff at. It was an entire movement relegated to a very tiny portion of society--the treehugging activists bugging you outside of grocery stores, the barefoot hippies who thought minimizing waste meant not taking showers, or the unusual globetrotters trudging off in exotic lands attempting to conserve endangered rainforests.

What took me a long time to realize is that those rainforests in seemingly far off places actually touch my everyday life in pretty profound ways. The largest rainforest in the world is in South America, for example, and it produces more than 20% of the world's freshwater and oxygen alone. It's a pretty amazing number when you think about it, and it seems like everywhere you turn, from the the Congo to Mexico to Vietnam, rainforests throughout the world have the ability to affect our lives and our environments in very direct ways.

It's this idea that organizations like Conservation International have been trying to convey for generations, but it always seemed like something that only big organizations and NGOs could work to protect, not me.

These days, however, the green movement has a completely different type of momentum, and with the power of technology, the Internet, and social media, we have the ability to be closer to the people and places in most nooks and crannies around the world, in ways we've never experienced before. This is no truer than understanding how rainforests in Brazil can affect our everyday lives--but also for how our own, everyday actions can make an impact on those far off places.

Enter Team Earth.

Team Earth is a new initiative led by Conservation International focused on inspiring behavior change through collective action. It's, as they say, a team comprised of all of us--companies, schools, nonprofits, individuals--working together "to make our world a place of clean air, fresh water, plentiful resources, and a stable climate, today and far into the future."

S-squared

It's this idea of collectivity that seems so powerful. Sure, big organizations like this have always relied on corporations and/or individuals, but Team Earth seems to be placing equal power and equal responsibility on everyone this time. Companies like Starbucks and Dell and eBay are using their size and reach to incentivize action, but Team Earth is also issuing challenges to each and every one of as well to do our part, enabling individual action through a digital platform on its site and through social networks. It levels the playing field only in a way that social media can.

It's about smart, sustainable actions (call it "S-squared"), according to Team Earth, that each of us can accomplish in our daily lives. Actions that, when multiplied by our social networks, and the cross-section of people that make up Team Earth, will have a huge impact on the health of the planet we call home.

And, Team Earth looks at sustainability on a much more holistic scale. Their collective action challenges tackle five major issues that we're facing today, from climate change and waste to things like fresh water, food, and health. The proposition is simple. Do more of the good stuff, like using CFLs, and do less of the harmful stuff, like cut down on how much you drive or what you throw away.

Each action might make only seem to make a small difference, but as Team Earth is quick to remind everyone - you're part of a team.

By joining Team Earth members together, all of our actions and our friends' actions, and their friends' actions, and the actions of the hundreds of thousands of employees of our founding partner corporations add up together.

"That's when our ability to DO something really important explodes," says its Julie Blackwell, director of CI's Team Earth initiative.

In just a few weeks since its launch, Team Earth has already joined the conversation with hundreds of thousands of people, taking the challenge, all taking about what they could do more and do less of.

What can you do?

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Ashwin Seshagiri is a member of the eBay Green Team, who has partnered with Team Earth to protect an acre of forest for every person who takes the Green Team Challenge to reuse what exists in the world. To take the challenge, visit ebay.com/greenteam.