Get Energy Smart! NOW!

For awhile, I’ve noted We Add + Up.  From their “about” page:

WE ADD UP is a global campaign using organic cotton t-shirts that literally “counts you in” to help solve the climate crisis. Every shirt is printed by hand with a unique number. YOUR number is your position in our sequential global count of people who are taking steps to do their part. As the count grows, we demonstrate to the world that “WE ADD UP.” On the back of each shirt is a word or phrase that describes an action almost anyone can take to reduce their carbon footprint – the contribution their lifestyle makes to greenhouse gases – such as, Unplug, Lights Off, Carpool, Hybrid, Bike, Buy Local, and 27 others. You choose which action you are committed to doing and get counted in. No one can do everything. Everyone can do something. And, WE ADD UP.

To be honest, I’ve discomfited by the effort.  My reaction has been along the lines of:

In the name of saving the planet, you too can get yet another t-shirt. Yeah, yet another way to buy our way to a better planet.

Okay, that just didn’t sit well with me. Just how many t-shirts do you have?  Just how many do we need.

Recently, I ended up face-to-face with the Jill Palermo from We Add Up and was pretty direct about those concerns.

This lead to an interesting conversation, with an interesting twist. Jill argued that the shirt opens the door for conversations in a way that many other shirts don’t. As she put in an email after our conversation,

unlike wearing a “Stop Global Warming” t-shirt (where no one wants to talk to you), a We Add Up t-shirt invites questions.  I get emails all the time from people saying how they were stopped in the middle of the street, in the grocery store line, etc, with “What does that number mean?”   Education is the way to create lasting change and We Add Up is literally a street marketing and education tool for the climate.

Okay, I’m not sure that I need yet another t-shirt but this is an interesting argument. I’m not sure that wearing a 1 Sky shirt (as I was when we chatted) is such a turn off. And, unlike the We Add Up shirts, that 1 Sky (or 350.org or Greenpeace or …) shirt is making a direct political comment, like having a bumper sticker on the car.  But the idea that those t-shirts could create openings (at the grocery store or in the park) for conversations that might not otherwise have occurred makes some sense.

We Add Up does make sense in other ways, as well. If you have a child in America’s schools, you know that you are inundated with fundraising efforts, for wrapping paper and lots of other rather ‘disposable’ and climate-unfriendly products.   We Add Up fundraising path offers a range of potential products (reusable bags, steel bottles, …) that can be used in a school fundraising effort (which has the benefit of providing a cash stream for the PTA and a bit of an educational opportunity).

So, at the end of the day, I’m uncertain that many of us need yet another t-shirt, but if given the choice between wrapping paper sales and a steel bottle purchase, the choice becomes pretty clear. And, that t-shirt just might lead to some interesting conversations …