Practically Green®: A great new tool for tracking sustainable living
My wife shot me an email a few days ago with a link to Practically Green, perhaps the most comprehensive online tool I have yet seen that measures sustainable lifestyle. In addition to measuring your lifestyle, the tool provides an easily understandable point system for measuring impact, a mechanism for tracking progress, integration with Facebook and Twitter, and a database of reputable products and services.
Practically Green helps you assess the sustainability of your lifestyle and offers tools to improve. The assessment tool takes about 5-10 minutes. For each action, you choose one of three answers—“I have DONE this, ADD to my plan, or DOES NOT APPLY to me.”
When I completed the assessment and registered, my score in each of four areas— energy, water, health, and “stuff”—displayed on a profile page along with my action plan and recommended actions for each. I scored a low score of Level 4 (fairly green) out of 10 with adjectives barely, lightly, and “sorta” green preceding my score, and pretty, solidly, adventurously, impressively, wicked, and superbly green yet ahead. My recommended action was to track my trash for one week with a link to a worksheet for tracking weekly home waste provided.
On the social side, “your groups” provides comparisons to members in your zip code, state, Facebook friends, country, and “everybody.” Here, you can track your progress with neighbors, friends, and other groups. Practically Green also awards badges for achievement and provides a daily blog email sign-up.
Practically Green is a project by popular mommy blogger Susan Hunt Stevens, also a Ph.D. candidate in sustainable design at Boston Architectural College.
Note: I put a link to the tool with caption, “Take The Quiz” on the top of my sidebar. My score is underneath and as I improve my score by taking actions, I will update it accordingly.
Posted on August 3, 2011, in Lifestyle and tagged assessment, green lifestyle, sustainable lifestyle. Bookmark the permalink. 5 Comments.
Excellent job! Your blog’s design matches your topic and is visually appealing. You have all of the necessary widgets/tools and even additional tools to navigate the site. Your posts look great and have been edited appropriately. Love the blog roll. You have lots of good links. I hope you keep on blogging. Good luck!
I took the green quiz and was shocked with I scored a level 6. I must admit, I could always do so much more. Do you find this quiz to a fair assessment of determining how green someone is?
First, the test is in beta. It says that on the page where you take it. Second, I thought my setting was about right for me—I have a long way to go. I plan to study the methodology more, though I think it is all relative. The best thing about the tool is that you can track it against yourself, neighbors, Facebook friends, etc., and soon perhaps, your blog subscribers.
Hey EcoCanyon, loved your review. Have been on Practically Green for months and agree that the secret sauce is the Facebook connection. It’s awesome to see how your friends are doing and love the alerts when they recommend products etc. I like the blog, too.
This is a great site, thanks so much for sharing!