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Have They Really Found a Way to Monetize Social Media AND Save the Planet?

Derrick Mains, CEO of GreeNurture.com

The guy is built on hummus. He radiates enthusiasm. His perpetual energy is apparently generated from his drive for sustainability. Derrick’s imposing, but gracious, presence lit up the patio at Pita Jungle yesterday as we met for the first time over lunch.

Derrick Mains isn’t just an inspired green CEO. He’s a movement. And his mission manifests itself through a new website GreenNurture.com, although “website” is really too shallow a term for his project. GreenNuture is a first-of-its-kind combination of social media on an enterprise platform to generate conversation and micro eco-actions that help build sustainability in large organizations.

The concept of GreenNurture parallels the “Personal Sustainability Project,” Adam Werbach describes in his book, “Strategy for Sustainability.” Essentially, it’s a principle that encourages employees to take many small, thoughtful “green” steps that create sustainability as a whole for their company.

It’s funny, I asked Derrick if he had met Adam, since his program is such a beautiful enterprise offshoot of PSP. He said he hadn’t, but he’s pretty sure he passed him in the hallway at Walmart, while working with the retail giant to adopt GreeNurture. So I’m guessing Mr. Werbach doesn’t know Derrick either: Talk about two green battleships passing in the night.

GreenNurture makes it easy to launch a trackable sustainability campaign that quickly engages employees. Participants earn credits every time they make a suggestion through the platform, or comment on another employee’s recommendation. The more they converse and act upon sustainability within their company, the more rewards each participant earns, and presumably the more efficient the operation runs. GreenNurture has partnered with RecycleBank.com where participants redeem their rewards for free, or discounted, products or services at over 2,400 local and national retailers and brands.

We just launched our GreenNurture campaign at Park&Co

It was easy. I spent about 20 minutes setting up our profile and creating our internal sustainability campaign. Our team members will each receive a campaign launch email that will describe how they will participate. I will document our progress for the next 30 days and give you an insight as to how well GreenNurture works for us.

Our GreenNurture Goals are Simple and Doable

1. Reduce consumption of office supplies by 10%
2. Reduce our energy use by 10%
3. Reduce the use of our color copier (are greatest operational expense) by 10%

Our overall goals are to save money, increase camaraderie with the staff, and do our part to be Earth-wise citizens.

I’ll ask our staff to share their assessment of the program within the comments in my blog.

I also invite you to try GreenNurture and let us know how it works for you. The first 30 days are free, as the program is still in beta. I’m sure Derrick and his team will welcome your feedback as well.