MakeMeSustainable Introduces Community-Oriented Toolset for Energy Management and Environmental Change

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Niche social networking has taken off over the past year as a way of aligning and mobilizing individuals and groups around shared interests and goals

Boston, MA (PRWEB) July 2, 2007

MakeMeSustainable, a pioneer of actions-based environmental change and a provider of carbon and energy management tools, today announced the launch of MakeMeSustainable.com, an online community of individuals, groups and local businesses. The site offers a comprehensive toolset for managing carbon and energy consumption, including advanced social networking capabilities for tracking and sharing experiences in real time.

MakeMeSustainable is a gathering place for sustainable, long-term engagement that reflects the reality of the environmental crisis we currently face. Users follow a simple three-step process of carbon calculation, actions-based reduction, and long-term community engagement. The site also dispels the myth that 'going green' involves a financial sacrifice by providing carbon and energy reducing actions that save consumers and businesses money.

"MakeMeSustainable is more than a carbon footprint calculator or a social networking site, it's about something much bigger. It's about all of us taking our collective knowledge and desire to make a difference and spreading it as far as we can" said CEO and co-founder Benjamin Brown. "Our tools make it possible for anyone to translate how we feel about the environment into what we do about the environment."

MakeMeSustainable provides a holistic process for individuals, groups, and local businesses to take steps to reduce their environmental impact and control their financial energy budget. The site maintains a focus on ecologically responsible habits and small-scale changes, representing a reduce-first approach in which carbon offsetting is the last step. MakeMeSustainable's Carbon and Energy Portfolio Manager includes:

• Environmental Impact Calculation: A user's first step to reducing her impact is understanding the size of her initial footprint. This footprint breaks down past and future carbon impacts and depicts each user's subsequent reductions, contextualizing these reductions in terms of an everyday metric. The Carbon Calculator incorporates the specifics of the user's energy consumption to estimate a user's carbon footprint summing a user's carbon emissions from electricity, heating, transportation and air travel.
• Taking Action to Reduce the Initial Footprint: After calculating her initial impact, a user selects actions to start reducing her environmental footprint. MakeMeSustainable has developed the Sustainable Action Previewer, which observes the long-term carbon and financial savings associated with chosen actions and implements them in three stages: preview, pledge, and perform. Subsequently, a user can utilize the Carbon and Energy Manager to track energy consumption and financial costs over time, in real time.
• Sharing and Encouraging the Community: MakeMeSustainable developed the site's community networking tools in order to empower each user to become a catalyst and leader for environmental change. Users can share their success, invite others to take action, and create sustainable groups. MakeMeSustainable believes that the observed aggregation of carbon reductions will spark collective action and progress as users begin to see themselves as an integral part of a larger, environmentally active community.

"Niche social networking has taken off over the past year as a way of aligning and mobilizing individuals and groups around shared interests and goals" said COO and co-founder David Delcourt. "Combined with our robust energy management tools, we see the site as a powerful way of expanding community and increasing overall awareness of environmental issues. But perhaps most importantly, MakeMeSustainable shows us that being green is something that can fit into your everyday life as well as your pocketbook."

The MakeMeSustainable site includes energy efficient and renewable energy products available through affiliates Energy Federation Incorporated and NativeEnergy. Activities on the site are guaranteed by the MakeMeSustainable Total Transparency Pledge. MakeMeSustainable informs users of the underlying factors related to product offerings, including data assumptions, sources, and links. MakeMeSustainable also discloses its corporate affiliations and any commissions received from user purchases through those affiliates.

"We know that social networks can create strong incentives for positive social and environmental change," said Tom Boucher, CEO and President of NativeEnergy, "so we are extremely excited that MakeMeSustainable members have the ability to offset the emissions they can't reduce by helping to build new renewable energy projects with our unique 'helpbuild' offset programs."

The site is officially open to the public. Individuals, groups and local businesses can sign-up and create an account at http://www.makemesustainable.com

About MakeMeSustainable:
MakeMeSustainable is a catalyst for change, empowering individuals to reduce their environmental impact by connecting how we feel about our environment with how we choose to behave. The company provides industry-leading energy management tools that allow users to fully understand their carbon footprint and begin taking actions to decrease their environmental impact and financial costs. MakeMeSustainable also seeks to foster the growth of communities concerned with the environment and the rising cost of energy, helping individuals encourage their friends, and family to be a part of this growing movement for change. To learn more about the company, visit http://www.makemesustainable.com

Copyright ® 2007 MakeMeSustainable, LLC. All Rights Reserved. MakeMeSustainable is a trademark of MakeMeSustainable, LLC. All other trademarks, trade names, or company names referenced herein are used for identification only and are the property of their respective owners.

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