Welcome to the Global Ecobrick Vernal Newsletter. Four times a year, near the equinoxes and solstices, we send out a newsletter to all GoBrik users to share our latest developments.
Dear Ecobricker,
A new season of green is upon us! The other week we passed the Vernal equinox– meaning many of you are celebrating Spring and Easter, and some will soon celebrate Ramadan. Spring symbolizes the resurgence of green after a long winter of grey. This has a deeper meaning than usual this year. After a long challenging time, hope is on the horizon– both for our human health and for that of the planet. Indeed, it feels that more than ever the awareness of our ecological challenges is growing and so too the desire to do something about it!
The Global Ecobrick Alliance (GEA) is really excited to add to the hope.
After three years of focused work, we’re excited to launch a powerful new means of ecological contribution: plastic offsetting.
It works the same way that many folks and companies purchase ‘carbon offsets credits’ to balance off CO2 emissions– such as from flying on a plane or running a factory. Usually, the offset correspond to trees being planted or other activities that sequester (secure and store) CO2.
Like this… but with plastic!
Your Plastic, Ecobricking and Plastic Transition
As you know, we live in an age where it is almost impossible not to consume plastic! Around the world, countless of us are now ecobricking that plastic– and over 50,000 of you are logging that plastic sequestration online. Why all this effort? Because we believe there is an inextricable connection between ecobricking and plastic transition, we’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars to support the ecobrickers with a blockchain that quantifies and values their hard work.
Each 1Kg of authenticated ecobricked plastic (AES plastic for short) on our GoBrik app is matched up against the openbooks accounting of the GEA to manage the platform. Because of this, we can now tell you exactly how much capital expense went into sequestering one kg of plastic!
In 2020, 3.46$ USD per Kg of authenticated sequestered plastic
Offsetting works by purchasing credits of this AES plastic to compensate for your household or company plastic generation. This way, your offsetting directly supports the work of plastic transition and sequestration being done by ecobrickers around the world and by the GEA Earth Enterprise.
There’s no obligation to do so of course!
Just like you don’t have to ecobrick, it works like a voluntary ecological tax that you pay to acknowledge your responsibility for your grey impacts, knowing that doing so support those doing deep green work. When you do buy the credits, we record your transaction in our block chain and issue a serialized certificate for your impact accounting
We don’t launch the sale of AES plastic lightly!
Dig a little and you’ll discover that carbon offsetting done by big businesses has serious issues. Many doubt it has made the planet greener! Indeed, the GEA has long observed a direct correlation between capital and carbon/plastic. Because of this it makes paying capital to solve pollution a paradox (think about what money buys these days: capital = fuel being burned + more plastic!).
https://www.gobrik.com/#offset
We’ve spent the last three years working to ensure we avoid this downwards spiral. We’ve built a manual blockchain currency from the ground up to circumvent a direct connection to petro-capital. Every detail of our system is documented and explained in our publicly available white paper, ecobricks.org site, and our full accounting and formulas are viewable live online.
The really big leap we’ve made however, is super simple.
None of the ecobrickers who are logging their ecobricks are doing so to make money.
And neither is the Global Ecobrick Alliance.
We’re all doing it for the Earth! 😀
By structuring our enterprise with the primary purpose of contributing to the Earth, the GEA has no owners or shareholders. Neither do we have the support of Corporations or Charities that are dependent on the continuation of pollution. All our surpluses go back to the objective of contributing to the greening of the biosphere. We call this an Earth Enterprise and it works just like your unpaid ecobricking.
In this way, offsetting becomes an upwards greening spiral that vitalizes more and more plastic out of the biosphere, less plastic going to industry, and most importantly, accelerated petro-capital transition. The GEA uses the funds do more trainings, educate more people about the dangers of plastic, train more trainers, enable less dumping in the biosphere, remove more plastic from industrial recycling and burning, and move forward with amazing show case earth builds and food forest gardens around the world!
Currently you can purchase plastic offsets with your Brikcoins, with paypal and with credit card– (coming soon: Indonesian bank transfers). We invite you to check our new plastic offsetting page and take the green impact of your life, household or your enterprise to new heights in 2021:
https://www.gobrik.com/#offset
Towards plastic transition.
Semangat hijau!
Russell, Ani & the GEA team
The Global Ecobrick Alliance
Earth Enterprise
www.ecobricks.org/about
www.gobrik.com
P.S. Offset purchases are certified by the GEA. You can opt to receive a printable certificate integrated with the unique block chain of your transaction. Here’s a thumbnail example from one of mine…
