Celsias, one of the more more authoritative blogs on climate change, has launched a revamped version of its site that aims to encourage corporations to be more transparent with their eco-friendly projects. The site will continue to offer articles on climate change, and is also trying to foster a community of individual activists looking to create their own “green” projects and goals.
The new community action portion of the site is separated into three sections: Actions, Projects, and Organizations. In the Actions section, users can create a group around doing something simple to help the environment (for example ““Choose products with less packaging”). Members can pledge to participate in each action, and the most popular (and hopefully the most worthwhile) actions rise to the top of the list. The Projects section offers a number more well-defined goals. Here, individuals and companies can list their eco-friendly activities, along with contact information for other members that would like to get involved.
Finally, the Organizations section offers large companies a place to showcase their “Green” undertakings. Celsias CEO Nicholas Lewis says that this is not a place for companies to hawk their eco-friendly products (you won’t see any Prius ads here). Rather, it is a place for them to keep members of the community updated on projects that might not otherwise get a lot of press.
One potential problem with this setup is that Celsias will be charging companies that want to appear under the Organizations section. This might work once this portion of the Celsias community is well-established, but for the time being companies may balk at fees. On the other hand, corporations are looking for a way to promote their “greenness”, and a public showcase may be a better idea than each of them creating their own green social network.
Celsias sees competition from countless other sites in the green community, including WiserEarth, Edenbee, and TreeHugger.