I know this sounds lame, but getting a Valpak in the mail is a special occasion at my house. I have a deep and inexplicable fondness for the packets that arrive at my door filled with coupons and promotional materials for a variety of sad-sack local businesses. A recent mailing offered discounts from the usual collection of low-rent retailers: shady chimney sweeps, lesser-known frozen yogurt chains, and family restaurants on the verge of bankruptcy. But stuck in the middle of these was a real surprise: a coupon advertising Sharon Gardens, a cemetery not far from my home.

I wasn’t quite sure what I should do with this offer – except maybe increase my consumption of hollandaise and cigarettes. Or else I could merge onto the interstate with my eyes tightly shut. Ten percent off my eternal rest? Pass the bacon!

As much as I like a bargain, it was hard for me to get excited about this particular coupon; besides its grim overtones, it stirred up all of my deep-seated environmental objections to cemeteries. Grave sites need a huge amount of ongoing maintenance – and all that mowing, cutting, cleaning, and watering requires an enormous expenditure of labor and natural resources. Then there are the gnarlier consequences of burying bodies: studies have shown that the human corpses in cemeteries can cause water pollution as the “products of decomposition” pass through the soil and into the groundwater. And with some regions of the country facing shortages of undeveloped land, there is the troubling issue of dead people using up lots of really prime real estate.

To address these problems, environmentalists have begun advocating something called a “Green Burial” as EcoSalon’s Scott Adelson discussed here. This involves carting bodies out into the wilderness where they are buried without coffins as a way to save trees. In this type of burial the dearly departed are wrapped in a bio-degradable shroud, and they are not embalmed, thereby minimizing the likelihood that harmful chemicals will seep into the ground. Instead of a tombstone, each grave site is marked with a tree. Green burials have been slow to catch on – possibly because people are notoriously squeamish when it comes to death-related traditions. Also, it’s hard to get people amped up about an event that will take place when they no longer have a pulse.

In the meantime, I remain mightily bewildered about the marketing plan that led to mailing out discount coupons for burials. Still, I am going to hang on to my coupon – I have found it to be a great ice-breaker at parties – although I don’t plan on ever having to use it.

Despite the rumored inevitability of death, I possess the secret, happy knowledge that I myself am somehow different – special and singularly blessed with an exemption from mortality. It’s too bad for the rest of you, but I really believe, deep down, that I am never going to die.

It’s almost a shame though – I hate to waste a perfectly good coupon.

Image: sdc2027

The post It’s the Last Eco Decision You’ll Ever Make appeared first on EcoSalon.

You know it’s true. You might forget your head if it wasn’t screwed on, but you would never, ever leave your smartphone at home. This fact could work in your favor next time you head out to a concert or event and leave behind everything you need for the evening – except your tickets, because they’ll be on, yep, your smartphone! (Oh, and how much do you hate Ticketmaster? More on that later”¦)

Twicketer is a new paperless ticketing service (can you say save like a billion trees?) that uses what TriplePundit is calling “a scam proof system” for on-phone ticket sales and downloading. The process is simple enough: Event promoters create an account on Twicketer, set up an event and are given a URL that can be used in promotions anywhere online: via email, websites, Facebook, Twitter, wherever. (Twicketer refers to its service as “social ticketing,” by the way.)

To get your paperless ticket, you just click on the URL and you’re taken to a website that accepts PayPal or credit cards in exchange for a for-your-use-only link where you’ll “accept” your ticket to your phone. (You can buy multiples if you like, and distribute them to your friends’ phones, as well.) Security at the event checks your phone “like an ID card.” With a couple of taps you verify your ticket with the system’s servers and voila, the velvet rope’s undone. The service can also be used for coupons and vouchers.

The technology was developed by Twicketer’s parent company, Screen Ticket, which has developed something called “On Device Verification,” a patent-pending feature that makes it possible to redeem coupons and tickets without the use of scanners or any other hardware. This is great news for folks putting on events (or redeeming coupons) as everything’s done directly on your web-enabled phone, which also provides real-time statistics about conversion rates, usage and other info that marketers get all excited about. The technology also boasts a seven-ways-from-Sunday, you-so-can’t-f-with-it security system.

Twicketer is now in beta, but is looking like a damn good idea. The service can already deliver mobile tickets to more than 200 countries through hundreds of mobile carriers and is prefect for events both big and small. And here’s a big kicker: the service charge is only 99 cents a ticket! Setting aside for a moment the fact that we all love using our smartphones for doing, well, pretty much everything, consider the service charges and general hassles Ticketmaster, et al., have been killing you with for, oh, how many years now? Wouldn’t it be nice to stick it to the Ticketmaster man? By the way, a quick Google of “Why does Ticketmaster suck so bad?” is some great fun. (Oops! Does the link I provided for Ticketmaster just now take you to ticketmastersucks.org? Did I do that?!)

Image: micahtaylor

The post Showtime for Smartphones: Calling It in with Paperless Ticketing appeared first on EcoSalon.