Going Green Online

The Internet has become more than just an information portal. It has become a medium for expression, whether written or visual, and has also led to ease of communication. However, I also love that the information has become a platform for advocacy, especially for environment-related causes.

Two of the websites that I find most interesting are a perfect illustration of the ongoing call for protection of the environment. They have capitalized on the web's popularity and convenience as a tool for getting their green message across.

One such site is Ecoworldly. I chanced upon this site through a link in a blog and the articles were extremely interesting that I found myself reading one article after another. Most of the articles focus on threatened, endangered and extinct wildlife. The articles talk about efforts all over the world in protecting threatened and endangered wildlife and, at the same time, poke at the reader's conscience by pinpointing where the previous generations failed. The more fascinating thing about this site is the sheer diversity of the fauna featured in its archive of articles. I mean, this website isn't simply about dodos and sabertooth tigers. It was from this site that I learned that the Yangtze river used to be populated by a special specie of dolphins which have long disappeared from those waters. Success stories include recent discoveries of animals which were thought to be extinct such as the Arakan turtle and the Irawaddy river dolphin (which looks nothing like the regular dolphins seen in marine parks) and the release back into the wild of a rehabilitated Amur tiger.

Another website which has less to do with animals and more with landfills is Gazelle. Gazelle is the (sort-of) website equivalent of the plastic boxes in Glorietta which ask you to drop your old cellphone batteries for recycling or proper disposal. Gazelle buys old electronic gadgets and recycles them. Prospective sellers can browse through the database of items that Gazelle wants to purchase. They then inform Gazelle about their gadget's condition. Sending the gadget to Gazelle also comes up at zero cost as the seller is sent a free shipping label. Here I am, hoping for a Philippine counterpart as Gazelle only operates within the North American region.

I can't seem to help myself but I really love the fact that this generation's current playground has become another medium to send out an age-old message of caring for our planet. And it all starts with a single click.