Pepsi’s decision to yank their ads from the Super Bowl and invest in social change was a smart move for a bunch of socially entrepreneurial groups. Pepsi is giving out much needed cash to a few of them based on the votes of people like you and me.
One candidate is Re-nourish which allows designers to enter project specs, and automatically calculate recommendations to reduce on-press paper waste. Cool!
“The current version is only a shadow of what we’ve got in development,” says Jess Sand, one of the organizers and partner of Roughstock Studios. “We’ve created a new version that not only improves the interface, but also calculates the environmental footprint of any given print project: CO2, pulp/trees, water, solid waste, etc. (data is based on a several different formulas from respected environmental orgs to ensure accuracy (and we intend to add non-tree substrates as budget allows).”
Re-nourish is up for a $50,000 grant through Pepsi’s Refresh Everything campaign, in which the public votes on which social change projects should get funding. They are at #23. If Re-nourish finishes in the top ten by the end of February, they get $50,000 to “completely overhaul the site, improve the project calculator, add new tools, do some serious research and content development.”