What is MuseGreen?

Lorraine: tips, tools and commentary on living a green life by 5 regular women who simply want nothing more than to let the planet rest a little easier, for everybody’s sake.

Marjorie: The words and ideas of 5 strong, smart, eco-oriented women and a place for people to learn, share, play and donate to help the Earth.

Trish: MuseGreen is a forum for change, providing a place for people to learn, share & shop. Connecting you to the Earth, its people, its power.

Vivienne: A place for me to share my discoveries, questions and concerns about all things green. It’s my way of contributing to the environmental movement - making my voice heard.

Gaia: MuseGreen is a place for five friends to play around with ways to get out of what Wendell Berry calls the “cheap-energy mind” in hopes of inspiring others to do the same.

What is the backstory of MuseGreen? How’d you all come together on this?
Well, I was on a flight back from the UK, flicking aimlessly through the 500 channels on my in-flight tv when I came across the movie The 11th Hour. Being a bit of an eco-diva it was one that had been on my watch list for a while, so I tuned in….and, well, that was all there was to it. I wanted to get off the plane, do something right then and there. I felt I just had to do something to at least try and inform people, motivate people, to take stock of what the hell we’re doing and change our behavior. Obviously this is completely ridiculous. Nobody’s going to listen to some mad mother ranting about climate change. If it doesn’t affect them in their day-to-day lives then it’s obviously blown out of proportion, right?
Well, it just grated on me for weeks. Trying to find a way to reach people, people in my own community, my neighbors, my peers, who are still living large like there’s no tomorrow.
Then it dawned on me that it didn’t need to be a one-women crusade. Marjorie, who is very well versed in the environmental space, needed no persuading to join me and become my partner. We then approached Trish, Gaia and Vivienne, 3 of our dearest friends, all of whom have been committed to making great environmental choices in their daily lives for a long time now and, about 10 seconds into our 30 second pitch, MuseGreen was born. Obviously, that was the easy bit! What came next was very tough on all of us, trying to get the site up in record time while also holding down day jobs, children, homework, husbands… just life in general, really. But it’s been worth every 12 hour day!

MuseGreen is fundamentally a blog, but it’s much more than that, right?
Well – yes, that’s correct. It is first and foremost a blog and for that we are truly thankful to the WordPress gods! It is how we can connect, how we share our hopes, fears, loves, dreams, our opinions – whether controversial or not – it’s all open for debate. It’s a great vehicle to communicate and stir up the pot.
However, once the blog was in place, that wasn’t enough for us. We didn’t want to just talk about issues in the vain hope that somebody may actually act on them – we wanted to influence, to engage people enough so that their actions would result in something magical happening, no matter how small, that would make this planet a little bit better. Sounds pious, I know, but that’s when we decided to introduce The Lounge – a side of the site geared towards audience participation – from playing our environmentally friendly quizzes and games to submitting your own articles.

There is a charitable aspect to MuseGreen, as well. How does that work?
Yes, this is the best bit! This is what we really feel passionate about. We offer several ways in which people’s actions can directly benefit the planet. No gimmicks, no points, no prizes, it’s not about you, it’s about the global ‘us’.
We have chosen several fabulous causes that we support and donate money to. They include Project Green Hands (whose vision is to create and nurture a society that will develop a deep culture of care towards the environment and keep this planet livable for future generations), The Children’s Nature Institute (hands-on, nature-based environmental education programs tailored specifically to young children) and various special ocean causes such as those run by the Monterey Bay Aquarium (saving the sea otter and restoring Northern California coastline). It’s all about our trees, our oceans, our children, our future.
The ways in which people can contribute is rather simple. Firstly, and a complete no-brainer if you ask me, is to buy from our online store. If you absolutely have to shop, then why not shop and benefit the planet without even trying? We donate 2% of the proceeds from every purchase directly to the above causes. It’s powered by Amazon and features just about anything you could ever need. We even have a European version, too.
Secondly, we have implemented two environmental quizzes that let you pit your eco-wits while at the same time donating to our causes. They are the ‘Sow Much for the Planet’ game and the ‘Sea Change‘ game. One helps to sustain the planet’s natural air conditioning: trees, and the other supports our oceans. We’ll even keep your all-time score if you so wish and then throw a little eco-something your way every so often just as a thank you for participating.
Thirdly, we love to hear from our readers, so if they submit an article and we publish it, then we will donate on their behalf for that too. There are brilliant, funny, interesting people out there so if somebody has something great to say then we are all for promoting it.

But you’re also trying to monetize it and build a business out of it, yes?
All the goodwill in the world doesn’t belie the fact that somehow we must generate the income to pay for all this. If it were up to us, we’d give it all away, but then that wouldn’t help sustain what could be a great motivator for change.
Right now, we are able to donate to our causes due to the revenues we get from our shopping and advertising activities. Our blood, sweat and tears are all gratis, of course, as it’s all for the greater good. But without shopping activity or click-throughs on our selected ads we’d have no funds to donate. It’s not ideal, but without an investor to help this is how we have to provide our support at this time. That’s why we really want to encourage people to at least shop with us, if nothing else!
Going forward we would love to attract enough activity to draw in the bigger advertisers and hence generate enough revenue to take this to the next level. There are so many things we could do, as technology has no bounds. We just need to keep up the momentum and find a few companies that want to help us help the Earth.

Are there any social media features within MuseGreen (social networking, photo sharing), and how are you using social media to market the brand? How?
Alas, not so much on our site. We are currently working on our member area but that was secondary to getting the site up and running, and as we don’t require membership, it was thought to be a lower priority. Having said that though, the five of us are completely hooked on the social networking scene outside of our site and would love to somehow integrate it onto MuseGreen.
We use Twitter a lot to get our message across and to also learn from like-minded and quite frankly, very smart people!. We just love that medium! Pure genius, but so simple.

What’s next for MuseGreen?
So Pandora’s box has been opened! We have so many great things in line for MuseGreen. We are definitely going to expand the site to encourage the involvement of children a lot more, as they truly are the future of this planet and they’re so receptive to new ideas and doing the right thing. We also have some fabulous (& maybe rather different) eco-shopping choices coming online very soon that we are very excited about and hope that will appeal to those people interested in making good green choices that also benefit the planet in the form of charitable donations.
We feel that it’s all about empowering people to make good choices, to raise their head a little bit and recognize that they are part of the bigger picture. The MuseGreen team has lots of ideas in the pipeline to try and get that message across!