Student environmental group organizes Carrotmob of Twist

As part of a Carrotmob — a mob of people providing the incentivizing carrot of patronage — they were supporting Twist’s promise to spend 100 percent of that night’s revenue on environmentally friendly investments in the store.

Twist’s commitment came after Students United for a Responsible Global Environment invited the business, along with several other local ice cream shops, to compete for the most environmentally friendly use of one evening’s sales. In return, SURGE promised to promote sales for one evening at the winning store.

The first Carrotmob was organized in 2008 by Brent Schulkin. Then an undergraduate at Stanford, Schulkin invited three Palo Alto, Calif., liquor stores to submit environmentally friendly proposals. Schulkin brought dozens of fellow students, accompanied by a band, to the winning store, which committed 22 percent of an evening’s sales to energy efficiency measures.

“Since then, it has taken on a life of its own,” Schulkin said. In two years, Carrotmobs have been organized in 10 cities in six countries, with future events scheduled in such places as South Africa, Switzerland and Sri Lanka, according to the Carrotmob website.

Two months ago, Tim Bauman ’13, a SURGE member who had organized a Carrotmob in his hometown of Portland as a high school senior, raised the idea of bringing Carrotmob to Princeton at the student group’s weekly meeting.

Alex Landon ’12, a SURGE officer, recalled in an e-mail that the group chose to conduct a Carrotmob “because it is an innovative and completely positive method for consumers to show businesses what they care about.”

Landon said she hopes Carrotmob will show businesses at Princeton that “they don’t have to lose money” to be environmentally friendly and that “climate change is something that their costumers care about.”

Landon got official approval from the Carrotmob headquarters, giving the group access to a Princeton Carrotmob blog. Landon said the group initially planned to promote the event on the blog. But the group decided to advertise through posters and Facebook instead, and the site remains dormant.

Support nonprofit student journalism. Donate to the ‘Prince.’ Donate now »

Schulkin said that Carrotmobs will, hopefully, eventually organize environmental competitions on a bigger scale, such as having Adidas and Nike compete. Yet for now, he noted, college communities provide an ideal environment as “the strength of mob comes from the community leaders … getting frats and friends involved.”