I ran across another cool site this morning called The Virtual Forest. It is an initiative to educate the masses on reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions and support conservation efforts efforts in Brazil. It has a nifty questionnaire you can fill out to get energy saving ideas. Basically you fill out all the information about your activities and energy usage and they email you a report with all the ways you specifically can improve. I really liked the suggestions too. For instance my report told me I should start using a pressure cooker and dusting off my light bulbs so they will work more efficiently. I hadn’t even thought about these two particular energy savers. For each successfully completed questionnaire, one euro is donated to Accion Natura.
After the survey you have the opportunity to tell friends about it and have them do the survey to which is where I think the virtual forest comes in. In addition to the tips to help you save 25% in your energy consumption, you will have the opportunity, together with another person who also completes the questionnaire, of having a tree on one of their Second Life virtual world islands. They have some videos of the virtual worlds being created by over 10,000 participants. Your virtual tree can also be turned into a real tree. I LOVE how creative these companies are getting to get their message out.
I wrote about MyAbodo earlier this week (a virtual green house) and and now you can plant virtual trees, which really made me want to plant some real trees. I have been looking out my windows scoping for places for new trees. I need some fruit trees. :) But first…I have to go clean my light bulbs.
