ECO coin

Alberto’s Choice

Meet Alberto. A farmer in the Amazon rain forest. He has a choice. He can burn down the trees and grow soy to feed his family, or let the trees be and earn zero. What would you do?

If Alberto cuts the trees, another piece of the forest is lost, CO2 of in the atmosphere increases and global warming perpetuates. Still it would be hypocritical to make a moral call upon Alberto to let the trees be and not make a living – especially for people in industrialized countries that cut their trees centuries ago for economical gain.

Rather than preaching Alberto on his moral obligation towards the environment, we should economically compensate him to steward the rain forest.

This is aim of the ECO coin.

If we have to deal with environmental issues like deforestation, decreasing biodiversity and climate change, we need to articulate environmental value in economical terms. In this report you will find how we link our economy and ecology through backing every ECO coin with trees. The paper also describes the ECO coin as a living coin: A currency that is born, lives and decays over time.

Planetary ceiling

What we call a growth economy is in fact a process of an economic sphere feeding on the environmental sphere (e.g. the oil trade). For a long time the environmental sphere seemed to be an infinite resource, because it was so much bigger than the economic sphere. In the last few decades, however, we have reached a point where the impact on the environmental sphere reaches the limit of what our planet can carry.

Balancing the currencies

If we are to cope with current environmental crises like deforestation, decreasing biodiversity and climate change, we have to connect the economical ecology and the environmental ecology. With the latter we mean the ecology of plants, trees, animals, and other organic material. Whereas the economical ecology is defined by our financial system of market, money, goods and other economical exchange.

Eco coin. At your office.

Engage your office, event or community with an interactive experience working towards a desirable future for humanity and the planet as a whole. Empower your co-workers to become more sustainable in a playful manner. We use leaderboards and team play!