image by Noël Zia Lee

Started earlier this year in San Francisco, Carrotmob is a community event that brings consumers and stores together to help businesses go greener. The event operates as a reverse boycott, where shoppers spend money at a specific business which has committed to spend a percentage of the day’s proceeds on improving its energy efficiency in lighting, heating, cooling, refrigeration, etc.

What really drew me to the Carrotmob model is the way that it brings members of a community together to effect real, grass-roots-level change. Of course individual lifestyle choices are important—we all need to be more mindful and less wasteful—but changing our lifestyles can only get us so far. Deeper changes are required, and we must come together to make them. Carrotmob seems to me like a really fun and positive way to do this.

For the last few months our small, volunteer team has been working to bring Carrotmob to NYC and I’m very happy to announce that the first New York Carrotmob event will be taking place on Sunday, December 14th, from 12-3 pm at Tarzian Hardware in Park Slope, Brooklyn (193 7th Avenue, between 2nd and 3rd Street). Tarzian has committed to spending 22% of the day’s revenues on eco-improvements!

The process of planning this event has been fairly challenging on several fronts. At first we struggled with trying to find a store to participate. A Carrotmob event doesn’t require much from a store besides its commitment to put a certain amount of money aside to make energy improvements, but we still encountered lots of resistance. In this economy, many store owners wouldn’t even consider it.

Also, we started out approaching bodegas and small grocery stores, which, in New York City, are often owned by non-English speaking immigrants. So it was difficult to get across the gist of what Carrotmob is. It’s a very new idea, and it’s actually pretty hard to describe succinctly! We came up with a few different formats for flyers which seemed to help a bit, but really we needed to talk for a few minutes to communicate it clearly.

Which brings us to the next obstacle: my broken ankle. When we started the process of planning this event, I was fully mobile and we all thought my neighborhood (Park Slope) was a good fit for it, so we decided to focus there. Then I went and hurt myself, and, as it turns out, I am the only member of the planning team who actually lives in Park Slope. So other team members had to schlep to the neighborhood on weekends to try to talk to store owners. This made it difficult to be as tenacious as we needed to be in talking to the owners several times.

Throughout all this, our team kept in touch on the phone and over email, but as the weeks dragged on and we still didn’t have a store or a date, our enthusiasm began to wane. Our team shrank from seven people down to four.

But these kind of obstacles are par for the course, and the good news is that the event is now on the schedule and we are raring to go. Tarzian Hardware is a great partner—they sell holiday decorations, housewares, and lots of other stuff beyond what you’d expect to find at a hardware store. You’d be hard pressed not to find something you need there. There will also be local charities on hand to accept donations from folks who want to support the event by buying a few extra items.

Right now, our focus is on getting the word out about the event—we’re contacting environmental groups, green bloggers, mothers’ meetups, everyone we can think of. We are hoping to see lots of different people coming together to be part of the solution in a positive way.

We also could use some help in finding an energy efficiency expert to come to Tarzian, look over their facility, and advise them on how to spend the money that will be coming in on the 14th. Do you know anyone like this? If so, please contact me!

If you are in the New York area, or if you know people who are, please pass along the word—check out http://www.carrotmobnyc.com for details.