Thank you to everyone that followed the link from our weekly email! We at Phoneraiser want to provide you with the best service possible. We think that part of this includes holding promotions and competitions that interest you and improve your fundraising. We are looking for ideas from you, our fundraising community, for new kinds of promotions. Ideally, these promotions would interest you and spur you to act. We want to provide promotions that motivate our partners to collect and send in more phones. This will have two effects. 1. Help you to raise more money. 2. Keep more potentially toxic cell phones out of our landfills. 

Some of the ideas that we have kicked around are:

• A monthly award of a $100 visa gift card to the organization that sends in the most phones.
• Providing coupons (either for an extra percentage or a dollar amount added to their next check) to the organizations that can answer quiz questions provided in our email
• Phoneraiser poster competitions for elementary age students. The best design wins a pizza party for that students class.

If you have an idea for a promotion or you like (or dislike) any of the ideas above, please leave us a comment by clicking on the comment link above.

Lately, a new trend has surfaced in computer design. Green Computing has taken the spotlight as the next big thing in business and consumer computing.

“Green” or “Eco” computing can describe a few different things. The main ideas behind eco/green-computing are making the actual computer out of environmentally friendly materials, designing the computer so that energy use is minimal, and using a green energy source.

Computer companies’ role in this is obviously going to be in the first two area, building a computer out of earth friendly materials (friendly during the build and at end of the computer’s life), and designing the computer so that it uses minimal electricity. Several companies have jumped into the fray by offering a wide range of computers that try to meet one or both of these criteria. Everex (cloudbook, gPC), Asus (eee PC), and OLPC (XO) have all released low power laptops and/or desktops. Dell recently debuted a concept computer that uses 70 percent less power and is built with a bamboo case. It will begin production later this year.

Pet’s tested for industrial chemicals are found to have higher levels of the chemicals than humans.¹ Amazing and a bit scary. Their low stature would seem to be a big cause of this problem. Other than that, it could be possible that their food supplies aren’t policed as well as humans.

If you would like tips on how to keep your pet’s exposure to chemicals at a minimum, visit http://www.petsfortheenvironment.org/takeaction/eddiestips/1.

From Engadget:

The team of scientists has created a white, fluorescent material which can be used to create white light, yet can be molded into a number of shapes….The combo can handle temperatures to 500 degrees Celsius, uses half the power of typical fluorescent lights, and will last longer than white LEDs due to heat resistance.

Cool stuff. Unfortunately, there source is subscription only. Good to see that lighting technology is advancing beyond potentially toxic cfl’s and even LED’s. It would be great if the construction process and composition of this material will is non-toxic (and it makes it out of the development phase).

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/17/researchers-create-silly-putty-lights-plan-on-making-dollar-bil/

From our weekly email:

This week’s green tip: Waiting in line in your car? Shut off your engine if you are in a drive-through. Running your engine while standing still gives you a effective mpg of 0, and exposes you to more toxic exhaust gases then if you were moving.

Let’s break this down. Fuel Efficiency, or your mpg, is computed by measuring how many miles you have traveled on one gallon of gas. If you are standing still while burning that gas, you are getting zero miles to the gallon. If you are stopped for more than 30 seconds, you use more gas idling than turning the car off and back on.¹ Besides costing you money and creating unneccesary pollutants, it can also be hazardous to your health.

CTA found that exposure to most auto pollutants, including volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and carbon monoxide (CO), is much higher inside vehicles than at the road side. VOCs and CO are linked to serious health problems–like respiratory infections and cancer–are known to shorten life. The highest exposure occurs when sitting in traffic congestion on highways or in a line-up of idling vehicles at a school or drive-through. From: http://www.hcdoes.org/airquality/Anti-Idling/idle.htm

Granted, reducing your exposure to exhaust gases by turning of your engine is much more effective if you are the only person in line. Even so, your car is still contributing to that cloud hanging around the McDonald’s drive through and it can only help you (and the environment) if you switch off the car.

This is the first of many posts outlining tips and resources for successful fundraising with Phoneraiser. I hope you find them useful!

Phoneraiser has recently released the Phoneraiser video series on youtube. Cell phone fundraising is a foreign idea to many people. If you need to educate a board or other members of your organization on what a Phoneraiser is and how it can help your organization raise much needed cash, you can show them a video or all the videos from our Phoneraiser Video Series.

Our first video describes how Phoneraiser works and is a great introductory video for anyone who knows very little about cell phone recycling fundraisers.

The second video in the Phoneraiser series explains how to hold a successful Phoneraiser campaign. This video is helpful for anyone who has just signed up with Phoneraiser and needs help with the next step in their campaign.

Our third video covers Phoneraiser’s philosophy. You can view Phoneraiser staff in their native habitat and also learn about Phoneraiser’s take on service and the environment.

From our weekly email:

This week’s green tip: Save water when you shower. One person can use almost 11,000 gallons a year if they take a 15 minute shower every day. New shower heads that beat the federally regulated 2.5 gallons per minute are available and deliver enough pressure. Visit our blog at www.phoneraiser.wordpress.com to see the shower heads and find out other tips on reducing water use.

I found the shower heads referenced above by thumbing through my newly arrived copy of Readymade magazine. They reviewed 3 shower heads that beat the EPA Efficiency Standards. They also reviewed a fourth shower head that matches the standard while filtering out chlorine and other chemicals from the water. It also uses magnets and other fancy methods to “increas(e) hydration by 115% over tap water, moisturizing your hair and skin without the residue of lotions”.¹ The reviewers at Readymade didn’t notice any difference in the moisture of their skin and hair during the review period, but they did find out that the other water sipping shower heads were plenty strong and well designed. You can read the review in the free digital April/May edition (pg. 22).

If you don’t want to buy a new shower head, but still want to save water while participating in the daily cleaning ritual, you can always take a shorter shower. To find out how much water you will save you can visit the federal governments water usage calculator. While there you can estimate just your shower water usage or go whole hog and calculate how much water you use in a full day.

Additionally, you can save water by simply reducing the water flow from your hot or cold water faucets to regulate temperature instead of increasing the flow. For example, if you need hotter water, decrease the cold water in the mix instead of increasing the hot.

Just wanted to give a little press to one of the commentors on our last thread. Molly Day wrote:

Hi -
Thanks for the lead on Terracycle. I’m raising compost worms to give away on Earth Day in Muskogee Oklahoma.
My goal is to give away 200 kits to try to spread the word to more people, especially young gardeners who don’t think about food scraps and landfills.

She has posted an update on the program at her blog, All the Dirt on Gardening. Check it out and if you are in the area and have kids. This would be a great chance to teach them something green.

If you are a gardener, you probably already know that worm “castings” or vermicompost is a “nutrient-rich, natural fertilizer and soil conditioner”¹. What is it exactly? Well, as the title of this post hints at, it is basically worm poop. That’s right. It’s refuse from our wiggly little friends. The best thing about vermicompost is that it is completely natural and uses organic material such as kitchen waste (coffee grounds, moldy bread, leftovers, etc.) or even, in the case of commercial operations, brewery jetsam.

At the forefront of commercially available worm casting products is a company called Terracycle. It was started by a young guy by the name of Tom Szaky. While attending Princeton, he noticed his friend running a vermicomposting bin to create fertilizer for plants. He and his friends decided to recreate this on a large scale. After initial funding issues, they finally were able to get their company up and running. As a testament to their business savvy and great products, they are still around. And since they are committed to being a sustainable organization, they package all their fertilizers in used soda bottles.

If you want to learn more about vermicomposting or would like to build your own setup, visit this wikipedia article. You can learn more about terracycle and find places to purchase their goods by visiting their site, www.terracycle.net.