Utopia
2008. January 11., lizAre you the black sheep of your family? Do you have a fancy for ecological products? Do you bother everybody with your concerns about an ecological lifestyle?
Then you are right at utopia.de! Unfortunately just in German, this is a wonderful, fresh and new homepage, with a big deal of ideas how to lead a greener life. In the following the idea of utopia.de will be described. Let it be an inspiration!
Utopia.de is dedicated to a green lifestyle and it propagates the beauty, the coolness and the sexyness of a conscious consuming and a sustainable lifestyle. It is all about positivness and sustaining the right producers with what you have got: your choice as a consumer!
This is the idea of strategic consume, you decide what you want to buy and you let the producer know, by what you buy and where.
Utopia.de is much more than just a new green homepage. It is a lifestyle. People are gathered like at myspace and share their experience and ideas about how they lead their lives. The member of the week will be presented with his or her own contribution and new members will be introduced. In the category „50 members” the best ideas of utopia.de members will be presented and there are links to other hompages, f.e. armedangels, a fashion brand which stands for fair trade and is against child labour, exploitation and environmental pollution. An ensueing result is the „Trusted Shops Guarantee”.
The clothes are cool, and have a very appealing style, they depict street works and the prices are fair. Armedangels gives you an idea what world(s) are lying beyond the usual hippie batic clothes or H&M on the other side. It shows, that a consciousness for eco-lifestyle doesn’t necesserily mean to be out of fashion, but you decide the how of producing and are thus making a choice.
A special feature is the ranking of the best product of each category. There is a whole lot of the most different categories, such as: cars, shoes, apple juice and so on. The members of utopia.de can rank their favorite bio yogurt or the best fair trade sofa and thus spread the word about who has got the best quality and who not.
In the news section utopia.de is reporting regularly about what’s going on in our international struggle for sustainability and nature. You can discuss this on the site’s blog.
Very interesting is it to see from how many different backgrounds the utopians (as they call themseves) are from. There are students, business men, veterinaries and many more! A desire for green lifestyle goes through all ages and jobs!
Just one of the many news is the idea of two German environmental organisations (BUND and JANUN) to install a program in which they will instruct young people up from 16 how to be eco-city guides. This city-guides will lead interested people or eco-tourists to green spots, bio-shops and so on. Particular interest will be paid to globalization critics and a conscious consumption. This will show how consumption is effecting the world and alternities.
Another brilliant idea is the utopia.de black board. Here you can even look for jobs and some of the offered are: gardener, art-director and assistant for utopia.de and different jobs in a bio-hotel.
Of course there are other categories as well, where you can buy and sell apartements, furniture, private maths lessons and so on.
There is also a category which is called Share and Free, for people who don’t like money.
Another good topic which would be great to copy is the idea contest in which everybody can post his or her personal idea to tackle climate change. It is incredible how inventive people can be – once they made up their mind about it! The best ideas will get a prize, of course.
A nice extra are the many videos on the homepage which are not only witty, but also full of positive spirit, f.e. the advent calendar.
The only minus to utopia.de is, that the homepage is only available in German and that it is very chaotic, confusing and badly arranged.
However, the short informations to the members of the redaction are well made and they give utopia.de a face – together with the increasing number of members.
Messzelátó Egyesület







