by Beth Terry

A big thanks to Sustainlane for their support of the Take Back The Filter campaign. Last night, they created a listing for the campaign and this morning, featured it in their weekly online newsletter.

If you don’t know about it, Sustainlane is a great resource for finding environmentally-friendly products, services, and other resources. It’s a completely user-driven site. Entries are created by users and then rated and reviewed by other users. So if you’d like to leave a comment in support of the Take Back The Filter campaign, please check out Sustainlane’s new Take Back The Filter page, and while you’re at it, browse and leave comments on other listings on the site. Reviews and comments can be positive or negative. Believe me, I’ve left my share of negative comments, as well as positive. See for yourself!

Sustainlane is also the producer of the Gorilla in the Greenhouse environmental site for kids. Several people emailed me months ago when the site first launched, and I procrastinated looking at it because 1) it was for kids and 2) I was just too dadgummed busy. (Well, whether or not I’ve actually been as busy as I think is one of the questions I’ve been pondering in preparation for my vision quest. More on that tomorrow. Regardless, I have felt extremely busy and bogged down (blogged down?), as you know.)

So it wasn’t until today, reading Sustainlane’s newsletter, that I realized the Green Gorilla and his friends were actually created by the folks at Sustainlane. Not only that, but the first episode is called, “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” Guess what it’s about. And even more exciting to me was seeing my blogger friend, Anna Cummins, in the supplementary video called “About the Real Gyre.” Now, the plastic in the gyre doesn’t actually look like an island, the way it’s portrayed in the cartoon. But then, green gorillas don’t talk to kids and evil scientists don’t have talking worms growing out the the tops of their skulls either, as far as I know. Watch and enjoy at your own risk!

Alltop describes itself as the “‘digital magazine rack’ of the Internet,” and Alltop Green is a site that aggregates headlines from the most recent posts of nearly 150 green blogs (including Fake Plastic Fish) and news sites. It’s a neat place to go to discover new green sites (for those who don’t already have enough to read!) or just keep track of new postings from the sites that you do read on a regular basis. Alltop doesn’t publish stories, but it leads you to them. Is there a site you feel should be there but isn’t? Send an email to info@alltop.com and ask for it to be added.

And finally, The Experience Project is one site that could become completely addictive if you’re not careful. Rather than being based on who you are publicly, it’s a conglomeration of folks with shared experiences. Experiences range from big general categories like “I am trying to be more green” or “I love animals” to very specific experiences such as “I am not Mormon but my family is” or “I have a sibling with Down Syndrome” or my personal favorite (because I created it) “I pushed my brother down the stairs.”

What makes The Experience Project different from other social networking sites is that users are supposed to be anonymous. Real names and identifying information is not shared. This is to encourage people to open up and share their life experiences without fear of judgment or other repercussions. I, on the other hand, am not exactly anonymous on the site. Fake Plastic Fish (which is also my user name without the spaces) has been included as one of the Related Blogs on the “I am trying to be more green” group. Feel free to visit my blog on The Experience Project and click the “Recommend This” button. You’ll be glad you did!

Also check out another experience I created called “I want Clorox to recycle Brita water filters” that references the Take Back The Filter campaign. With a little creativity, you can get your message out to people who might not otherwise cross your path or visit your blog.

That’s it for sharing the online love tonight. Tomorrow night’s post will be more personal, if I can bring myself to write it without breaking down in tears and shorting out my keyboard. Okay, I’m being overly dramatic. But you are curious now, aren’t you?