All Shades of Green

A random walk through the green blogosphere.

It would be a shame if your aren't familiar with the term blogger by now! The term Green needs a bit of an explanation here. I have no special attraction to that color (or any other color for that matter). I am in no way affiliated to political parties named after this color or religious groups symbolized by the color. It just so happens that vegetation (meaning trees, shrubs, bushes and such) which is (and hopefully will be) widely prevalent on this here earth, comes mainly in motley shades of green. It turns out that such vegetation is a VERY important link in the web maintaining all the other life forms.

Therefore Green is the epithet applied to all things (even remotely) associated with the protection/preservation of the natural environment. Ergo the following hodge podge definition:

Green blogger (noun adjective combo!) Homo sapien privileged enough to access the world wide web, using their spare time to write about environmental issues, sustainability, green lifestyle, environmental activism, sustainable energy etc.

Not surprisingly, I found out that the crop of bloggers writing about all things related to the natural environment also come in all shades of green.

I am just starting out as a blogger and wanted to find out other blogs related to topics of interest to me. In my search for green bloggers, I first came across GreenThinkers [GT]. I liked their idea that their blog is a place or forum to think is discuss "all things green". Next I came across Sustainablog, by Jeff. It is a nice blog that has links to many other green bloggers. While posts on GT tend to be small interesting bits pointing out to green events happening around the world or in the green blogosphere, Jeff's post on Sustainablog are more involved and detailed. Jeff posts on many aspects of the environmental movement. For a while I was just following the posts on these two blogs.

Then one day, I came across a post on Sustainablog about the Starbucks challenge, presented jointly by greenLA girl[GLG] and city hippy. So I visited these blogs to find out more. GLG's blog is mostly about fair trade & organic movement and ethical consumerism. City Hippy describes his blog as "The diary of our struggle to live a green and fair life." I found these blogs to be really interesting. Inspired by them I took the Starbucks challenge myself. I found that collaborative efforts like the challenge, promoted through blogs to be really effective. The Starbucks challenge generated a substantial response from bloggers all over. Eventually Starbucks also took notice of it. You can read the details on GLG's blog post.

Ethical consumerism is a new term that I encountered on these blogs. Some blogs post regularly on "ethical consumerism" basically about 'how you can make choices as a consumer which will be consistent with the objective of preserving the natural environment'. City Hippy's posts are many times related to this. Another blog TreeHugger that I now follow fairly regularly also posts on this. LazyEnvironmentalist is a blog that is dedicated solely to ethical consumerism.

There are many more green blogs out there focused specifically on specific issues. Like the alternative energy blog or the Greenpeace blog (which has really amazing posts from their ongoing campaigns). I plan to follow some of them (depending on how much time I can spend).

But overall, I think my first foray in the green blogosphere has been really productive. I have learned a lot and found out that the world "live" web has a lot more to offer than simply hot air from a bunch of people working their keyboards.

Technorati Tags: Green, Sustainable, Environment, Starbucks Challenge, Green blogs, Green bloggers