Friday, September 22, 2006

Clink!

So the beautiful Mrs THIT is in also beautiful (as I remember it) North Bay visiting with family (including wiener dog), leaving me El Casa Del Treehugger to myself for a couple of nights.

That means that I get to go a little nutty. Yeah, you know what I'm talking 'bout! Ordering pizza and watching Battlestar Galactica DVD's.

All right, so we all have our levels of craziness and mine is not particularly high. Whatever puts a smile on your face, right?

I was out of port (typically my drink of choice...is that stuff organic? Doubt it...Could it be made organic? Will investigate...) so I took a stroll to the liquor store on my lunch break, don't you know. While browsing the various bottles of wine on the shelves, and like 91% of the people there, pretending that I could actually tell one from the other by a category other than the price tag, I came across the following charmer:


"Cat's Phee on a Gooseberry Bush". Yes, right. I don't know if anyone's ever referred to that and started their sentence with "Boy I could really go for..." but I had to admit that it was somewhat eye-catching.

More so for me was a white circle on the label which stated "Helping the OSPCA To Provide Creature Comfort".

Ah? Indeed? Flip t other side of bottle...

"A contribution from the sale of this wine is donated to Ontario SPCA to help protect all animals from abuse and neglect."

Boy howdy. A cheap buzz WHILE treehugging, eating pizza and watching my favourite sci-fi show? Are you kidding me? Sold!

I picked up a different one though called Tom Cat, but same basic idea. As stated before, I'm fascinated by how many options there are to make small differences that, with enough participation and/or repetition can become big differences.

Which leads me to an idea I had last weekend.


Picture the above lit over my head.

To illustrate this epiphany, I need to refer back to a couple of things. Anyone who knows us, who reads this thing semi-regularly, also knows that...

a) We've bought a house from Tamarack Homes, who uses their Energy Star building practices as a selling point.
b) I'm a sucker for the compact fluorescent lights.

Does anyone remember my post about Project Porchlight? Simply put, in their own words: "The campaign's goal is to bring together business, community groups and volunteers to deliver one free compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) to every household in Canada."

Does anyone see where I'm going with this? I wrote to Project Porchlight and asked whether, if called upon, they'd be able to provide Tamarack with one light bulb for every new home. Their answer was positive.

I then wrote to Tamarack to ask whether they'd be open to delivering that bulb. They don't even have to make it part of construction; they can include it in the gift basket that new homeowners get upon taking possession. They can also use this partnership as a marketing tool.

So far Tamarack's answer has been silence.

That's okay. I'm halfway there. I'm not known for having a great deal of patience, but that doesn't mean I can't be persistent when I get an idea in my head.

Pack a lunch, Tamarack, this could take a while... ;-)

No comments: