You Might Like: A Very Commercial Carrot

Meet the CarrotMob

Forget negative campaigning, why not reward green businesses instead - with a group spending spree? Tanis Taylor joins their first UK event

"I heard about this two hours ago," says Meghna Nayaka, 23, holding a beer. "I was going to meet a friend for a drink anyway, so I thought, why not make a statement while we do it?" Meghna and Becky, 24, are CarrotMobbing. They and others have swarmed, as part of a virtually mobilised group, on a small business to reward it with their custom. Tonight the business is the Redchurch, a bar near Brick Lane in east London, the owners of which have promised to spend 20% of the day's takings on environmental upgrades on the premises. In return, trade is brisk - unprecedented, says the owner, for a Tuesday evening in September. Next time the mob will pick somewhere different to reward - maybe a corner shop or a pharmacy, the type of high street store they might frequent anyway.

The difference is that the business will have competed for custom and committed to adopting greener practices, and the mob organisers will have mobilised a spending spree to patronise the winner.

CarrotMobbing emerged in the US earlier this year. It uses the "carrot" of consumer buying rather than the "stick" of boycotting or bad publicity to encourage ethical business. Alone, our consumer choices make a minimal impact, but together and organised we unlock a bigger bargaining power. CarrotMobbers talk about "liberating" their capital. They make demands of their suppliers; green improvements in exchange for loyalty. And they are prepared to reward in a language that companies understand: cash.

The receipt roll had to be changed three times at the San Francisco CarrotMob. Three hundred shoppers assembled at K&D Market to spend $9,276.50 in a couple of hours. Beforehand, Brent Schulkin, founder of CarrotMob.org, met 24 shops in his area, telling each that he was organising a network of consumers and asking them to offer energy efficiency improvements in exchange for the monopoly of this mythical market. Competing offers were evaluated, and K&D Market bid highest, pledging that 22% of the day's takings would be used to improve the lighting system and the hazardous waste disposal. It got environmental upgrades plus an improved reputation. The mob got a cleaner, greener local high street store.

Direct action is nothing new, but usually it is in opposition to a system, rather than in cooperation with it. And now it has been mobilised by social networking. "In the past when you wanted to say, 'Let's reward this one business,'" says Schulkin, "you would have no easy way of knowing whether every-one else was going to reward them too, that it wouldn't just be you."

Today, with MySpace, Facebook, blogging, Twitter, Digg and YouTube calls to action, a single post from a credible, connected source such as Schulkin can mobilise what web expert Howard Rheingold calls a "smart mob" in an instant. Once rallied, the transition from online interest to offline activity is somewhat trickier, but CarrotMobbing is an activity people are happy with. It is about shopping. Milk, bread, beer: staples. There is no complicated barrier to entry. "We're not saying, come to the rally and chant against your enemy," says Schulkin. "CarrotMobs are fun community events. We're not asking you to go to some natural food store you've never heard of and buy some product you don't know how to use. It's familiar brands and familiar things to do."

Shopping our way out of climate change has its critics. It's difficult to make a serious bid for environmentalism just because you have bought your weekly staples from a mob-designated shop (and then put them in a plastic bag).

"You can make an argument that we're promoting consumption," says Schulkin. "But I think of it more that we're targeting existing consumption. CarrotMobbing is not saying that you have to spend more money. The idea is that you are spending money you would already be spending, you're just going to organise it. We harness the buying power of the casual consumer. This is not meant to be for the hardcore environmentalist, it's a movement designed to appeal to the mainstream masses." Which is perhaps why its first Britishincarnation is being held in a pub.

Britain's first CarrotMob is not as mobilised as San Francisco's. It doesn't have the spontaneous, can-do energy of buying toothpaste, together, at a designated time. Punters are middle-class, work in renewables and bring their empty pint glasses back to the bar. Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace lobbyists network happily, and there are lots of people who call themselves "social entrepreneurs" but obviously spend too much time on the computer. Still the bar is doing great business and, if nothing else, 100 punters in a credit slump has turned pub manager Rocky into an evangelising green convert. When we go, we will leave a legacy of energy efficiency upgrades at the Redchurch, rubber-stamped by environmental assessors Global Action Plan.

Like all good web 2.0 movements, CarrotMob is democratic. Anyone can plan a CarrotMob style event using Facebook. The next actions are already planned for Kansas City and Bristol in mid-October, and there are branches in Israel, Australia, Brazil and South Africa.

Schulkin is globally ambitious. "I see CarrotMob franchises all over the world translating good into profit." Whole networks of CarrotMob-approved venues; a thousand different local campaigns and a million mobilised shoppers ready to put their money where their mouth is. "At that point," he says, "I think we have critical mass to take on the larger companies." To demand that brands clean up their environmental policies or pay a living wage in return for our custom. "We are the economy," says Schulkin. "We decide who gets rich."

It starts here. With this beer. We clink our glasses and say "Cheers".