Program Rewards Residents for Ecological Action
Program rewards residents for ecological action
By Jim Cornelius
News Editor
Many folks in Sisters have started using the reusable shopping bags offered at Ray's Food Place. They are convenient, sturdy, and they keep plastic bags out of landfills and paper bags out of the recycler.
Now, those folks have even more incentive to use those bags.
Through an innovative partnership between Ray's Food Place and EcoUnit, a San Francisco Bay Area company, each time shoppers at five Central Oregon Ray's stores use their reusable bags, they can get "EcoUnit" credits to spend on a environmental projects in the region.
"What we've done is build a rewards program to encourage consumers to take eco-friendly action," said Kent Ragen, founder of EcoUnit. "It"s essentially an environmental currency that EcoUnit developed."
Shoppers can either take the standard five cent rebate for using their bag or receive a coupon for a five cent value EcoUnit. Ray's is paying the cost of each eco unit.
Shoppers can cash in their eco unit either to plant a tree in the Deschutes Basin (50 credits) or to fund habitat preservation projects on the John Day River.
Shoppers will need to create an account online; instructions are available at Ray's Food Place.
Ragen hopes to expand the program into all 60 Ray's stores in the greater region.
Ragen has close ties to the Sisters area. He grew up in Portland and spend his vacation time in Central Oregon. He is a close friend of Sisters Folk Festival Executive Director Brad Tisdel. EcoUnit was the "eco-sponsor" for last year's festival and has signed on for the same role this year.
Involvement with the Sisters Folk Festival led Ragen to contact Ray's manager Jeff McDonald with the EcoUnit concept, and McDonald referred the idea to Ray's corporate headquarters.
Ragen acknowledges that the individual impact of the program is small, but its cumulative effects could be significant, especially as it changes how people shop.
"That little extra motivation will help (shoppers) hopefully make that behavior change," he said.
Ragen's company charges a small fee to administer the program. It's not a get-rich-quick Internet scheme, Ragen acknowledges. "We're not a non-profit," he said, "but we sort of set up our system to be non-profitable."
That's just fine with Ragen, who launched his career in more conventional Internet-based enterprises before seeking "something more meaningful."
He sees a bright future for enterprises that encourage and incentivise eco-friendly behavior and the Ray's pilot project is a step in that direction he's proud to make with residents of Sisters.
"This makes them innovators," he said. "There's nobody doing anything like this anywhere in the United States."
For more information on EcoUnit, visit www.ecounit.com.
