This spring I worked with several students and staff in creating a “Responsible Consumption Working Group” on campus.  The idea of it was born out of a talk I gave last fall for an event students organized on “responsible consumption,” and there was enough interest in the concept that we decided to create this group to actually work on testing out and implementing the idea in our lives.

Our organizing question has been whether or not we can come up with innovative new strategies to make buying more environmentally and socially responsible products easier and more fun.  Some of the ideas we have been testing out have included picking out our own issues we want to research but then meeting monthly to compare notes, sharing our results with each other online, and deciding to research and make a decision on what to do about product category within a specified amount of time.  So far we’ve made some great progress, and our group was recently featured in the Davidson Journal, Davidson College’s alumni magazine (http://davidsonjournal.davidson.edu/?p=2385).  We plan to continue our work this fall — stay tuned and get in touch if you are interested in joining us!