Written by: Adrienne Brookbanks
The Centre for Women’s Business Research says that the environmental friendliness of a product has a moderate to major influence on the purchasing habits of 77% of women decision-makers in business, which shows that green consumerism amongst the female gender is huge. While this may not be groundbreaking news, the number of women who are launching new business ventures to capitalise on these statistics is definitely making waves.
Many women are tech-savvy entrepreneurs and many women are environmentalists, but a niche group of women have taken their eco-minded internet start-ups to new heights over the past few years. liveeco takes a look at some of the female eco internet warriors that have either created remarkable internet businesses, or have helped multi-billion dollar enterprises promote green living online.
Deirdre Bounds
Most parents of young children will be familiar with the scenario that Deirdre Bounds – founder of Parties Around the World – found herself in when cleaning up after her son’s birthday party: tables full of gifts that her son would (probably) not really appreciate and never use.
While convention leads people to come bearing gifts if they are invited to a kiddie’s party, many parents have told one another to ‘really not buy gifts this year’. As an alternative to buying unused gifts (and contributing to waste), Deirdre came up with the Parties Around the World concept – an initiative that helps kids learn more about their environments and the earth, while simultaneously raising money for charity.
How it works: The next time you host a party, you can set up a dedicated party page on www.partiesaroundtheworld.com, invite guests and ask them to donate to a charity. This is a great way to introduce your child to causes in the wider world that they may be interested in – and helps them channel that support in a way they understand.
Stephanie and Sharon Banfield
According to the Banfield sisters, over one and a half billion tampons and sanitary products are thrown away in the UK alone each year. Instead of contributing to overflowing landfills or pollution from our sewage systems into oceans, Stephanie and Sharon set up Pink Robin, a website that markets ecologically friendly alternatives to women’s hygiene products.
Pink Robin promotes everything from washable cloth pads to natracare disposables and products for teens. While many women are (understandably) sceptical about reusable sanitary products, the Banfield sisters say that many of their customers have completely changed their mind about these products.
Tessa Hill
Tessa and William Hill created continued with Kids for Saving the Earth (KSE) after their son, Clinton, founded the website before losing his life to cancer when he was 11 years old. KSE influences environmental legislation, has given speeches at the United Nations and has organised a number of green initiatives for schools.
Christina Page
In 2007, Christina Page joined the team at Yahoo! to act as the first director of the company’s climate and energy strategy. Christina oversees Yahoo!’s data centre design efficiency, clean tech and climate initiatives, while providing technical support to the company’s all-volunteer Green Team (an employee group that harnesses the collective energy of Yahoo’s around the world to reduce their carbon footprint).
In an interview with Mother Jones, Page said it was her job to ensure that Yahoo! was carbon neutral by the end of 2007, making her a ‘carbon bean counter’. “First and foremost, my job involves looking for opportunities around energy efficiency and increased sustainability throughout the operation. It also includes measuring our footprint, using the WRI [World Resources Institute] greenhouse gas protocol to look at our facilities globally, our air travel globally, and our employee commuting globally, and find ways to mitigate that, the footprint that we´ve got. So that´s my job—sort of the carbon bean counter in terms of where our impact is and where the leverage points are,” said Page.
Besides keeping the company carbon neutral for the past few years, Page has also been in charge of developing outlets like green autos post (a section dedicated to green cars in their huge “Autos” directories of cars), Freecycle (a nonprofit movement of people who are giving – and getting – stuff for free by reusing and keeping good stuff out of landfills) and 18Seconds.org, a CFL initiative that encourages people to use energy saving light bulbs.
And of course our very own founder and editor-in-chief –
Nikki Seegers
Nikki started liveeco to show people that is is possible to be green and gorgeous. “I have always had ‘a passion for fashion’, the environment, as well as online, and thought what better way to combine all three and have a job that I love – so I started liveeco!” liveeco shows you that a fashion forward, trendy, chic lifestyle can be an eco-friendly one as well. “I think that South African’s have been a bit slow to embrace green living but in the last year or so there has been substantial growth in this industry, especially online, in SA so the future is looking positive. The green market is the fastest growing consumer market in first world economies so hopefully SA will follow suit in the not too distant future. I think there is still room for massive growth in this market in SA, especially within the fashion industry,” says Nikki.
The liveeco team
