Live Responsible is the New LIVESTRONG
By: Maria Popova
We’re still astonished at how Lance and team managed to take a charity and transform it into a cultural badge, a fad of astronomical proportions, through the simple LIVESTRONG yellow wristband back in the day. Say what you will about the questionable motives of those wearing the wristband because of the fad, not because of the charity it stood for, but the fact remains: it all served its fundraising purpose brilliantly.
These days, the cultural concern du jour revolves around sustainability issues — a concern well-grounded in our increasingly warming reality. Which is why we have high hopes for environmental newcomer GreenLaces — a nonprofit aimed at promoting personal responsibility towards the planet through a simple badge: a pair of green laces.
The idea: you make a personal pledge to make one small, actionable change in your day-to-day MO that will benefit the environment. You then get yourself a pair of green laces, which serve as a constant reminder of your pledge and ignite the word-of-mouth engine as friends notice the (rather cool-looking) accessory on your kicks.
Founded by Swedish professional soccer players Joanna Lohman and Natalie Spilger, GreenLaces was originally promoted mainly through athletes. The laces and the cause, however, seemed to resonate with “the general public” and took on a life of their own. Barely 6 months after it launched, GreenLaces already has 1000+ people sporting the laces, plus over 50 Olympic athletes strutting them around Beijing.
Their goal is to get 1 million pairs on people’s feet by 2009. That’s 999,999,997 to go — we just bought 3 and vowed start making the 10-foot trip to the recycling bin instead of trashing everything under the desk. Join us, we can be lace buddies. Plus, trendsetting anyone? This has the potential to be the next LIVESTRONG, reaching critical mass with hipsters and posers alike.
But, as long as the environmental purpose is served, we won’t judge. Plus, the laces go great with our new Simples. (And we already know 34 scientifically proven ways of tying them.)
If you know, or are, a dedicated pet owner — you know, the types who refer to themselves and their pet in the first person plural and address said pet in babyspeak — then you understand the near-worship situation we’re talking about here.
Here, we’ll say it: some people love their dog more than their mother. Which they must find quite unsettling given the huge national greeting card and flowers bonanza that is Mother’s Day without even a remote dog equivalent.
You can get involved by 
And while we’re in the spirit of spreading the pro-animal message, why not turn our attention to our closest non-human kindred? The Gorilla Foundation has dedicated a special site to a special gorilla: 
At 
Then there’s Koko’s (arguably even more talented) co-creator, 
Having been hit in the face by a pigeon, we can tell you these are some dumb birds. In fact, after the incident, we proceeded to deduce birds in general were pretty dimwitted beings. Boy, were we wrong — a 
We kid you not — the birds use nothing but their (grape-sized) brains to figure out how to insert a coin into a peanut-dispensing machine in the middle of a cornfield. Without training.
