Truthfully, I usually ignore Facebook Apps. I don’t want to hunt vampires or play Scrabble. Honest. I have a lot of fan pages and Causes, but that’s about it. But Green My Vino, by Village Green, combines my bleeding heart causes with an application. In this case, it’s allowing you to give free virtual “gifts” on Facebook.
Each one of these gifts is a token for 1-10 minutes of Green Power. Village Green totals the amount of tokens exchanged by folks on Facebook and purchases tht amount of solar energy from specific wind farms and solar arrays. When a certain number is reached, a selected wineries have agreed to power their operations on 100% clean energy. For example, the first winery is Iron Horse Vineyards. Iron Horse will convert when 10,000 tokens have been exchanged.
Iron Horse is the first of four wineries to commit to the program. Also involved are Girard Winery, Windsor Vineyards, and Windsor Sonoma. Once the first four are converted, Village Green will recruit more wineries to participate.
I think this is a great idea, especially considering how many of my friends are using the similar L’il Green Patch application on Facebook. This appeals to folks who like wine (that’s me), who like playing with various apps and sending gifts on Facebook, and those who are trying to go green.
The application just launched today and at my last count it was at 1700+ tokens exchanged. Not bad for a few hours. I think we’ll have some greener wineries in the near future.