Ecomonkey incentivises greener shopping. They rate tens of thousands of products from hundreds of retailers on a simple green/ethical scale.
A simple traffic light rating scheme is used to filter out the best (green) from the good (orange), from the worst (red). These ratings are based on independent certification schemes (e.g. EU energy label), and published corporate responsibility rankings. When you buy greener you basically get more green points (assuming commissions being equal). What’s cool is that smaller companies can compete effectively with bigger ones as their marketing costs (and commissions) are generally higher. Also neat is the fact that they can take a middle of the road retailer (ethically speaking that is) and incentive at a higher rate their greener products (even if they don’t recognize this niche). Likewise they can take a brand with a poor reputation, but encourage people to buy their more energy efficient products. Their filtering tools mean that the green stuff automatically rises to the top, so the user can focus on what they want to buy rather than agonize over how many green angels are dancing on the pin head. To kick off with you can collect green points and redeem them at a low threshold (£10) for iTunes, Amazon vouchers, donations to charity, carbon offsets.
Ecomonkey.co.uk In Their Own Words
“The Ecomonkey way to go green: We rate over 100,000 products. You buy to collect green points. Claim iTunes and Amazon vouchers as rewards.”
Why Ecomonkey.co.uk It Might Be A Killer
It is much more than a directory, and much more than a bunch of links to third party websites. They are more like greenmaven.com than like smartlygreen.com, but have a funkier repertoire of features than either. Monkeys are not necessarily all cute and not all the killer features are on show, yet. Built on the Open Source Drupal, they are itching to turn on some of the community plumbing, but conscious that they don’t want to overwhelm user’s initial experience. Peruse below the bonnet (the hood!) and you will see that considerable care and attention has been devoted to building a versatile application that meets a range of technical needs (ratings, categorisation, filtering, points management, user interaction etc), but also the need (and an apparent desire) to encourage small behavioural changes, that taken together have a big impact.
Some Questions About Ecomonkey.co.uk
Are people in these days aware of the importance of buying green? This is an interesting way of rewarding this kind of shopping. 
