What would you recommend giving as rewards?
There are two kinds of campaigns. The first is one that is aiming to produce something that may be useful to potential contributors – such as Charlie Jones’ Permaculture Ukulele Musical Project.
These kinds of campaigns are aiming to raise funds from the actual consumers of their products, and I would highly recommend that they give that product as a reward, at or below the retail value. It is these types of campaigns that sometimes achieve hundreds of contributions, and potentially go way over their stated goal!
The second kind of campaign is one that provides or benefits the community, or the person posting the campaign, such as raising money for tuition. The primary motivation for people giving to these campaigns is not to for a reward, but to help make the campaign successful. For these, it makes more sense to give something of symbolic value, as a way of thanking a person for their contribution. (Source)
Category Archives: eco-friendly products
Kickstart Pump
Help fund this foot powered irrigation pump by pledging here to contribute to the project.
Daniel Schnitzer: Inventing is the Easy Part
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C-LY9Qlr_0[/youtube]
Africa Pivots
If you missed Pivot East, there’s some interesting things coming out of Kenya- a recent IPO48 competition winner, a farming tool for connecting buyers with crops seems awfully useful.
Desert Manufacturing
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/25401444[/vimeo]
Solar-sintering aims to raise questions about the future of manufacturing and triggers dreams of the full utilisation of the production potential of the world’s most efficient energy resource – the sun. Whilst not providing definitive answers, this experiment aims to provide a point of departure for fresh thinking. :Read on:
Martin Azua : Bios Urn
The Bios Urn project reintroduces the human being to the natural circle of life. It is the profaine ritual of regeneration and the return to nature. Bios is a mortuary urn made from biodegradable materials: coconut shell, compacted peat and cellulose. Inside it contains the seed of a tree. Once the urn is planted, the seed germinates and begins to grow. The seed can be changed for a different type of seed or plant more adequate to the chosen planting place, if need be. (Source)
Coke Bottle Light
Lighting up a home
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0_4qFrxw_4[/youtube]
Bicycle Phone Charger
They have turned a bicycle into a mobile phone charger – ride your bike for a few kilometers, which most villagers do anyway, and your phone is charged.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p20hxRVj5c[/youtube]
June Energy
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_tGo3Ik3E8[/youtube]
Around the world, there are shortages of food and clean drinking water, but what you may not realize is that there is also a shortage of light for those dark nights in electricity-less areas. A group of students from the University of Michigan have come up with a solution: Emerald, a portable solar panel-powered device that provides 100 lumens of light and power for your electronics.
These engineering students founded the start-up company June Energy. One of the students, Abdrahamane Traoré, comes from Mali where he grew up doing his homework with a kerosene lamp in a poor village. The kerosene lamp doesn’t provide sufficient lighting–only about 60 lumens of light–and can be bad for health. Plus you have to continuously buy kerosene fuel for it which can get expensive.
Emerald will provide 100 lumens of light, a USB charging dock, cell phone ports, and a number of adapters. The device charges in only three hours in full sunlight. It can charge a smartphone in the same time it takes to charge by an outlet, and the device can provide light for eight full hours. The students hope to get the price to under $20. (Source)
Shooting for the Sun
From his childhood in segregated Mobile, Alabama, to his run-ins with a nay-saying scientific establishment, the engineer Lonnie Johnson has never paid much heed to those who told him what he could and couldn’t accomplish. Best known for creating the state-of-the-art Super Soaker squirt gun, Johnson believes he now holds the key to affordable solar power.