June 16th, 2008

Win $500 For Your Great Green Home!

Posted by Jason Pelletier, Low Impact Living

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We’re amazed at how many of you have taken action to make your homes green, based on what you’ve entered in our Environmental Impact Calculator. So amazed, in fact, that we’re going to reward the greenest home of them all with a $500 credit for green products and services from Low Impact Living. We’re going to identify the single family home (and its proud owners) that has the lowest Low Impact Living Index (calculated using our Environmental Impact Calculator), and we’re going to share with you what that family has done to get there. Don’t worry if you haven’t installed solar panels or a graywater system - as the calculator shows, many of the best projects aren’t that expensive. Also, we’ll be giving a second prize of $250 to a randomly-selected entrant, even if you’re at the very beginning of your green path! So, even if you’ve just started out, throw your hat in the ring and see where you stand!

What you have to do

1. If you’ve already created a LILI account, then you need to return and, at a minimum, log in again. We’ve added some new features recently, and they won’t work unless you refresh your account. If you haven’t used the LILI calculator before, then visit www.lowimpactliving.com/scores and get started.
2. Once you have entered all of your base inputs, move on to the “select projects” page of the calculator. Make sure you only check projects that you’ve finished (or will finish by July 18th) before you log out.
3. Make sure that you log out or save your profile before leaving - if you just move on to another web site without logging out, your inputs could be lost.
4. The calculator isn’t all-encompassing yet, so there may be projects that you’ve done that don’t show up. If this is true, send us an email at contest@lowimpactliving.com describing what you’ve done. LIL staffers will review your efforts and award up to a 5% additional deduction for compelling projects.

How we’ll select a winner

The contest closes on July 18th (extended from July 15th), but we won’t announce winners until the week of July 28th. This will give us time to check with the finalists to make sure that they’ve completed all of their checked projects.

If you are a finalist (in our top 10 lowest LILI scores), we may ask you to verify that your projects are actually completed, via photos or receipts / invoices for work performed. We’ll also ask for your address (not to be published!) so that we can verify entered information about your home.

If you are a winner, then you have to be willing to let us share your projects and process with everyone via our blog, and to provide us with the photos and project descriptions necessary to do that. You’ll become a green star overnight!

What You Could Win

The greenest homeowner will receive credits for $500 of products or services found on LIL’s website. If it is a product or products that can be purchased via links from our site, we’ll simply purchase your “wish list” for you and send it your way. If instead it is services (say, a few visits from a green cleaning service or a small down-payment on solar panels), then we’ll pay the vendor directly once you’ve agreed on a price and have a quote from them. The same goes for our randomly-selected $250 second prize. It’s as simple as that!

At the end, we’ll also publish the collective impacts of our calculator crew - even if you don’t win, you can feel proud once you see the tons of CO2 and tanker trucks full of water that we’ve collectively saved!

So, good luck, and get greening!

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