Socially Responsible Credit Cards?

Say what you want about the evils of credit cards, many people can't avoid them. So if you can't afford to live without them why not do some good (or at least less bad) when you "charge it"? Co-op America's Real Money article "Responsible Credit Cards" lists the banks to avoid getting credit cards from for a variety of environmental/social reasons as well as cards from groups that are trying to do some good with the fees they collect.

Get the details HERE.

News Roundup

Some more recent articles worth reading in the Christian Science Monitor:

New Alternative Fuel: Chocolate!

Is Bioplastic a Viable Alternative to "Paper or Plastic"?

Person-To-Person Lending: Internet Based Microloans Helping Internationally.

How Much Advertisers Pay For Your Attention

Good Magazine has put together this nice little video showing the actual costs of some of the myriad ads you can encounter in NYC everyday. Of course their own magazine is filled with ads, so perhaps this isn't meant to be a critique after all...




Thanks Mica! Via 5min

Pennies and Dimes

This is a video I created for the band Gaskets for their recently released Loose Change album/DVD, it's created entirely with public domain footage from the Prelinger Archive. and made under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. Here's Teddy Blanks, one half of the duo, with the story behind the song/video:

“Pennies and Dimes” is a song that was written when I was close to graduating college and entering what people call the ‘real world’. It deals with my own anxieties about the prospect of making a living as well as some of the frustrations I had with corporate consumer culture, informed by many of the ideas discussed in the “Design Rebels” class I took with Noah. It seemed fitting that Noah direct the video. He expertly cut together a hilarious selection of economic cartoons and food packaging assembly-line footage into an ironically optimistic visual accompaniment to an overtly cynical song.

Socially Conscious Design Grants

Sappi is once again accepting applications for its Ideas That Matter program.
Winning designers get a piece of a million dollars to create social/environmental related projects (the only catch is that you can't use the money to pay yourself). Entry deadline is May 21st. More information and applications can be found here.