A Mission for Change
EcoSnoop's mission is to help our communities heighten awareness of opportunities to be more green, save energy, eco hypocrisy, and even fill pot holes. Leveraging the power of the community, EcoSnoops use their an iPhone to capture clear pictures of a problem and post these pictures on a community website so that building owners and others can take action. Have you ever.....
Seen lights left on in a building, late at night, for no good purpose?
Noticed a door that never closes properly, wasting heat or air conditioning?
Observed a truck unnecessarily idling at a loading dock?
Been bothered by a broken sprinkler in a city park running non stop?
Complained about street lights left on all day?
Wanted a pot hole filled?
EcoSnoop lets you help solve these problems. EcoSnoop is a photo driven "Trouble Ticket" system, letting you identify a problem while leveraging the community to find a fix. The EcoSnoop website is a tool for awareness and understanding efficency. By using the EcoSnoop iPhone application, the user becomes an important link in the chain of many helping to discover and mediate waste (energy, pollution, etc.) in government buildings and our community.
EcoSnoop is Not Big Brother
EcoSnoop is not about picking sides in the environmental or climate change debate. EcoSnoop frankely has no idea if man made CO2 is the source of climate change. EcoSnoop helps identify opportunities for making improvements that help companies and communities reduce cost, waste and inefficiency. McKinsey Consulting has identified Energy Efficiency as the best and cheapest form of energy. Energy Efficiency often pays back quickly, putting cash into our pockets. Just as many people did not know what to use a personal computer for in the early 80's, so to do many people not realize how much energy can be saved in their daily life.
For those that fell strongly that climate change is man made, EcoSnoop offers the least costly method for reducing carbon emission - Energy Efficiency. For those that believe dependence on foreign sources of energy puts a nations security at risk, EcoSnoop offers the least costly method for reducing dependency on foreign sources - Energy Efficiency.
Don't use EcoSnoop to tattle on your neighbor, thats a dumb and offensive idea. We will remove any EcoSnoop content that appears to personally address an individuals behavior or focuses explicitly on a residence.
A Community Driven Platform
As EcoSnoop continues to grow, this site will let users make recommendations to buildings owners. See a light than can be replaced with a Compact Florescent, take a picture and notify the building owner. A polite but empowered social networking experience, EcoSnoop will help us all take a step towards savings, one picture at a time.
Companies, government and other organizations can use EcoSnoop "Enterprise" solution to monitor their properties of energy, water and other environmental inefficiency. Corporations that wish to encourage customers to find "Green" problems, can use EcoSnoop to motivate customers to engage in a collaborative effort to achieve better Green performance.
EcoSnoop is bootstrap funded. We will continue to add more services and features as our community builds. If you would like to help us, please contribute to the effort via PayPal. The donation is not tax deductible or anything, but if our features ever include a paid component, we will apply your contribution at twice its value for those services if you elect to use them.
EcoSnoop Community Principles
EcoSnoop is an evolving social community. As community, we need to maintain a certain decorum to assure everyone benefits from the "networks" observations to eliminate waste. These principles form the foundation of our online community, operations, and future strategies.
- Assisting Energy Efficiency: Energy Efficiency offers a solution for saving money, reducing dependence on sources of energy, and offers a hedge to the uncertainty of CO2 emissions impact on cooling or warming.
- Owners: Building owners, government and other large entities seek to reduce waste and inefficiency, but are not always aware of how they are wasting resources.
- Observations: Customers and users of buildings and public space sometimes observe opportunities to improve efficiency, save energy or otherwise help business, government or the community, but are unsure who to inform.
- Solutions: There are experts with effective solutions that have difficulty finding opportunities to help business, government and the community.
- Free Market: A free market matching solutions and opportunities reduces the need for regulations, tariffs, and taxes.
- Crowd Sourcing: Social networking systems can facilitate the connection between those that observe an opportunity, those that seek better solutions and those that offer solutions.
- Privacy: Despite the benefits of Social Networking and tools offered by EcoSnoop, people have the right to privacy. As a community, the EcoSnoop community will respect the rights of people and corporations to Privacy. We assume others are likely aware of the opportunities discovered through EcoSnoop. EcoSnoop will continue to adapt to facilitate solutions, reducing intrusion and eliminating misuse.
- Residences: The community will not seek or report on opportunities regarding someone else’s residences/homes. Personal privacy must be respected at all times.
- Respect the Views of Others - EcoSnoop is not a political platform. EcoSnoop is about using technology and social networking to help people, companies and communities understand how awareness can eliminate waste, reduce emissions, and save money.
- No Personal Attacks - Do not use EcoSnoop to single out and attack people or companies. The best way to help people understand is through better information and cooperation. In taking pictures and making notes on the EcoSnoop site, think about what information will help a person or company understand how energy efficiency and waste reduction can help them improve profitability and community appeal.
- Avoid Mentioning Company Names - It is helpful to identify opportunities and describe ways to improve, but EcoSnoop finds the property owners take action quicker if they are not threatened or attacked. Sometimes when lights are left on at night it might be a simple instance of night maintenance rather than persistent waste. The EcoSnoop community assumes everyone is well meaning, so given them a chance to take action. If they take no action, assume there is a good reason or work to better educate.
Protecting Corporate Brands
Corporations are a target for organizations critical of energy waste. But indeed many corporations are working hard to be good corporate citizens, often doing more than they are credited with. EcoSnoop works with Corporations to help promote activism, allowing consumers to capture examples of waste they see working with "BigCo" and reporting examples of missives to the right people in the corporation to allow rapid fixes.
For more information please contact snoop@ecosnoop.com or visit http://blog.ecosnoop.com