Dear {FIRST NAME },
For those of you following the American election today, here’s some alternative reading and authentic good News! 🙂
We’ve put together this special Novemeber bulletin (going out to our full trainer network) as we’re super excited to launch a major new system– to you guys first!
Our new AES plastic offset system is online!
It is a new way for us and others to quantify and increase our green impact on the planet! Its been under development for the past year and connects directly to the new concepts of plastic sequestration we’ve been sharing with you.
Let me explain how it works and what it means…
As you know every time an ecobrick is authenticated on GoBrik Brikcoins are generated. A quarter of those Brikcoins go the central reserve. By using our total GEA expenses from the past year vs all the Brikcoins generated in that year, we’re now able to put a price on all the authenticated, ecobricked sequestered plastic (AES Plastic) represented by those Brikcoins. Basically, its a price for the work of sequestering a kg plastic. The price for 2020 works out to be 3.43 USD per Kg of AES plastic.
Our new offset system, lets people buy the plastic represented by these Brikcoins at this price. It is a way to support an exact amount of plastic being sequestered. Its a way for people to use cash to balance their plastic consumption. This is called « offsetting ».
Decreasing our grey, and increasing our green impact is the reason we’re all here after all. Its why we are ecobricking and GEA trainers. It/s also the mission of the GEA. This ties in directly to our Plastic Transition Ratio concept of moving beyond zero waste (100%) to regenerativity (200%). Already we have over a dozen trainers with PTRs beyond 1000%! Our new offset amplifies this intention and mission.
There are several other reasons why this is a big step forward for us all.
First, selling AES plastic offsets marks our final step out of the reliance paradigm. By this I mean, we no longer need to rely on charity, donations, grants, etc for funds. Rather than people giving us charity money to do our work, we can now offer our work as a service/product that people can buy. This enables a full equitable energy exchange.
It’s been obvious for a long time that our work is valuable ecologically ( this is why people donated to us!). However, now for the first time we can quantify the service we are offering (into Kgs of sequestered plastic). By comparing our service to our past years budget costs we can put an exact price on each Kg.
Second, one of our long-held concerns about raising funds, is its the intrinsic connection to the petro-capital economy. In other words, there’s a direct correlation between having money, spending money and furthering and growing the very petro-capital economy at the root of plastic pollution (just think about when you spend money– there’s a 99 in 100 chance that it involves a petro-powered or plastic wrapped service/product).
However, by formulating our plastic offset credits as an ecological service that counters this dynamic– we provide thecrucial buffer between the GEA (with our mandate of solving plastic pollution) and the capital economy (with its bias of creating plastic and CO2). In other words, the more offsets we sell, less plastic goes to industry and to the biosphere– while more ecological value is created.
It’s essentially a means of extracting energy from the petro-capital economy to nurture plastic transition movement. Essentially we can now take energy from the old paradigm and use it build a new one!
Finally, with these last barriers removed, the doors are now wide open for the GEA to generate abundant capital and put it to good, greening use. With clean capital access, we can move forward to fund, accelerate and amplify all of our initiatives that are already removing plastic and accelerating plastic transition:
- To provide full salaries for trainers commited to GEA Circle work.
- To hire developers, staff and contractors for our app and sites. To direct our own research and development into regenerative technologies.
- To further develop the intellectual theory and philosophy behind regenerative principles and concepts.
- To fund our own Earth and Ecobrick builds.
- To build our own showcase food forest play parks, EarthHomes and regenerative communities– just like you see in our vision landscape!
The stars are the limit for our Earth Enterprise. In fact, seeing the way that profit-enterprises are destroying the earth to reach the stars, expanding and growing our enterprise is more important than ever.
That said, it begins with small, mandalic steps that others can follow.
One of the great things, about the PTR (and upcoming Ayyew score that were working on) is that it helps quantify our impact so that others can follow our example as trainers.
Personally, my ecobricking is at about 0.4 Kg a month. However, I have been purchasing offset credits every month using my personal funds to pay critical monthly GEA bills (about 300$/month). In addition I have been forgoing the GEA Core Team Honorarium of 600$ a month. At the current figure of 3.43$ per Kg this works out to 265.4Kg of plastic/month sequestered. Compared to my household plastic consumption of 0.6Kg per month, my currently monthly PTR would be 44216%.
Half a dozen other trainers are doing likewise! They too have been using the system to buy offset credits. Just through them we’re now at over a ton of AES plastic purchased.
Moving Forward as GEA Trainers
We’ve now done away with the old donation, encouragement, and trainer contribution system. Now as trainers we’d like to ask you to move forward mandalically with us, to purchase your own offset credits.
Instead of requiring GEA Trainer to make a monthly contribution, instead, we’re going to ask that you maintain your PTR at above 200% (the Regenerative level). As you know, you’re Plastic Transition Ratio is calculated by dividing the plastic you ecobrick by the plastic you generate on a monthly basis. We’re now adding Plastic Offsets to the beginning of the calculation. In other words, your PTR will now be your (Ecobricking + Your Offsets) / (Plastic Consumed + Plastic Produced).
To maintain your GEA accreditation you can thus either ecobrick two times as much plastic as you generate or purchase AES Credits to maintain your PTR at above 200%.
We will bring this into effect in January 1st, 2021.
I would like to invite you, as a GEA Trainer to personally to add to your ecobricking to super charge your own personal impact! You can purchase AES offset credits either with Brikcoins or with USD (using Paypal or Credit Card). Rupiah and other currencies will come soon.
www.gobrik.com/#offsets
To regeneration and beyond!
Russell, Ani, Lucie
GEA Center Circle
Global Ecobrick Alliance
www.ecobricks.org/about
P.S. We’ve got a full backdrop of supporting materials for all these new concepts. You can learn more about them all on ecobricks.org:
> AES Plastic Offsets: www.ecobricks.org/aes
> Plastic Sequestration: www.ecobricks.org/sequest
