admonkey's blog

Since the first couple of hundred sign ups to Ecomonkey, we've forced a choice of avatar during the registration process. Not because anyone had submitted anything too rude to publish, of course they didn't. But most people were a bit shy or in a rush and didn't upload anything at all.

Anyway, as we were doing a bit of number crunching, we thought we'd find out what avatars users have been selecting.

A statistically valid sample was selected (all of them) and a five bar gate used to add them up.

Here at Ecomonkey, we are fans of KIVA, the microfinance website that supports entrepreneurs and others seeking loans across the world. In the last year or so we have made 15 loans. The individual sums we have loaned are quite modest, but this is because each loan is split up to reduce any one lender's risk. This is analogous to the developed world's increasingly popular web-lending tool Zopa.

At risk of getting trouble with MoneyObserver, who send me a monthly email newsletter, I reproduce the following article on ethical investment performance verbatim (yes Stewart this probably is a bit spammy) :

'The average ethical fund has fallen 9.1 per cent over the past year compared with a 5.75 per cent drop for non-ethical funds and 8.56 per cent for index trackers. Twelve months ago the average ethical fund ourperformed its non-ethical counterpart by 3.3 per cent over the year.

Those who have read earlier posts, will know about my impatience with information recycling on the internet. Especially annoying are the lazy regurgitations of press releases without further analysis or triangulation (fact checking to you and me). The main perpetrators? The press, lets leave the PR people alone for now.

In the seventies young Italian men, and older ones too, carried 2 things in their hands. Their car radio in one and a clutch bag, il borsello, in the other. I vaguely recall my older cousin may have had one and so did an uncle, both stylish chaps, and bus conductors often had them too. By the time I could have afforded one, they had been banished to a footnote in the history of fashion.

This morning after I picked up the chariot from the menders I decided to dispose of the ugliest ever Christmas tree holder. With the main family stakeholders away I popped into our local recycling centre (funny how everyone we know still calls it the “tip”.)

The world’s most successful retail loyalty scheme, Tesco Clubcard, launched Green Clubcard points in August 2006. The programme claims over 13 million active member accounts – you probably have one too, even if you don’t want to admit to it. Like other schemes, card holders typically earn 1 point for every £1 they spend in stores, online and through selected partners, like E.ON the energy company.

Tesco sticks out for a number of reasons, not all of them good. Notwithstanding the criticisms of many Tesco policies, it is difficult to challenge the success of their loyalty programme, which is comprehensively documented in Humby, Hunt and Phillips’ fascinating 2003 book “Scoring Points”.

Twitter, the technological equivalent of a noisy dawn chorus that wakes you at 4:00 am, is really quite cute if you remember to set your quiet / sleep time settings.

Hardly breaking news, but courtesy of twitter we picked an interesting item on greenwash following the publication of the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) annual report. It shows that in 2007 it received over 500 complaints about environmental claims, compared with just over 100 the year before. The subjects of the ASA's censure included some of the usual suspects from Shell and Ryanair to Toyota for practicing "greenwash" – ie misleading consumers on their environmental practices, or benefits of their products and services.