Like most problems, the climate crisis can feel less intimidating after some pasta. That’s the message from Stephen Shocket – the creative director behind Carbonara Credits, a platform that connects a classic Italian dish with people keen to donate to a climate NGO.
The sort of people with a distaste for carbon and a taste for carbonara.
With a plate of carbonara costing $10,000, with all of the surplus being tipped to a carbon-negative organization of the donor’s choice, Carbonara Credits’ target is folk with the wherewithal to donate such a sum, who would rather enjoy a delicious plate of pasta at home instead of going to a donor gala or thank you dinner. Indeed, having to endure the latter must be taxing if you simply want to do some good for the planet in a humble yet tasty manner.
And aside from all the comfort food, we think the project’s a case of where a wee bit of creativity goes a long way to relieve some of the gloom we’re all facing, as well as the earnestness that can afflict ‘sustainability’. So let’s find out more about it all…
Let’s kick things off with an intro. Tell us a little about Carbonara Credits and its origin story…
Hi, my name is Stephen Shocket. I’m a freelance creative director. When I’m not on any active contracts with an agency, the brief becomes: what do I want to pay myself to make?
The answer ends up being any project that feels climate-positive. I think climate nihilism is a trap, and Carbonara Credits was a really nice exercise in the idea that you don’t have to get the approval of a massive organization to do something. You can just be some guy with a laptop.
The elevator pitch is this: For $10,000, you get a plate of spaghetti carbonara delivered to your door. I also get a plate of carbonara delivered to my door for my trouble, and then the rest of the remaining funds go directly to a carbon-negative organization that you can write off as a donation to a real 501(c)(3) charity.
You can order yours today at CarbonaraCredits.org.
$10,000 for a carbonara is obviously a bit pricey but we guess you must have some takers. Who are those eaters?
I have to be honest with you. We haven’t had any purchases yet. But with interviews like this, hopefully the word gets out. All it takes is one hungry millionaire who gets enough of a chuckle out of this project to say, you know what, I was going to donate this money anyway. Why not get some pasta out of it?
If I put myself in the mind of this rich person, I’m probably tired of having to go to donor galas and thank-you dinners. I might want to donate and just eat in for once. That’s Carbonara Credits’ sweet spot.
Once the pasta has been served, where does that sizable amount of coin go – we’ve read it’s 100% towards science-focused NGOs?
Yes – I can’t actually accept any of your money via the Carbonara Credits website. I buy the pasta out of pocket and then facilitate reimbursement from the buyer. This way, everything remaining after the cost of pasta goes directly into the hands of a charity.
It’s a lot easier to set up a website than it is to get actual 501(c)(3) status, so with my limited scope, I opted to let the professionals handle the charity work.
After research on my end, I highlighted three NGOs you can choose from on the Carbonara Credits website. But it’s your donation, so we’re happy to work with you if you’ve got another specific organization in mind. We just require it to be climate-focused and legitimate.
The restaurants involved at the moment are in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. How do you pick regions, restaurants, and owners to work with – and where’s next?
Honestly, the current list of partner restaurants is simply based on where my personal network is. But I was just talking with a friend who suggested I add a new round of partner restaurants that are in really high-income areas.
I believe the person who is most likely to order a Carbonara Credit is vacationing on some rich person island I’ve never been to. I need to give the pasta place on Martha’s Vineyard a call and see if they deliver.
One solution to the climate crisis is a rising plant-based food system. Do you have any vegan or vegetarian carbonaras on your menus, featuring some kind of crispy alternative to pork?
That’s a fair point. I’m of the camp that it’s not the end of the world to serve up one traditional meat dish in exchange for a significant contribution towards a worthy charity. Creative advertising is always a game of compromises, after all.
We’re fans of brands, freelancers etc. that are bringing a bit of wit, creativity, and levity into climate communications. Why choose that kind of approach rather than a more earnest tone of voice?
It’s like covering medicine in peanut butter so your dog will eat it. It’s more fun to think about sustainability when it’s covered in pasta.
Sustainability is a topic that has earnestness already baked in. And that can get tiring. Just the word alone, sustainability, is kind of exhausting to read through. So any climate project is already going to feel earnest. Adding more of that with the messaging quickly gets to be too much. It makes me tune out.
But we do have to talk about sustainability. Especially with our friends who aren’t currently in this space. The audience for this project is obviously people further outside of the climate space looking in, and I find it easier to create a welcoming space than to try to force you to pay attention. You already have so many other things you’d rather be giving your time to.
Aside from carbonara credits, are you working on any similar creative projects that you could let us know about?
I spend the majority of my time freelancing with ad agencies and in-house creative teams to pay the bills, and I’d love to make more of those projects climate-focused. So if you’re a climate organization with creative development needs, please feel free to reach out and say hi. I promise to reach back out to Akepa and ask them to update this answer once we produce something fun.
Bringing a bit more creativity into communications is an approach that a lot of folk would aspire to (including Akepa) but doing it consistently and successfully, isn’t easy. What tips would you give to brands looking to become more ‘creative’?
I find it easy to fall into the trap of thinking, what is the right answer to this problem?
That kind of approach kills the “creativity” you’re talking about here.
I’m also always working on adding simplicity into my work. It’s easy to forget that the person who ends up seeing or reading your message won’t have the capacity to remember every word. They’re just going to take away a gist.
And a third tip, since these things seem to always come in threes, is practice. Creativity is a muscle that you can only develop so much in theory. Get out there and make stuff—if it’s bad, no one will see it anyway, so you can just move on.
Brands these days are often driven by data – perhaps a hindrance to letting some creativity loose. Do you take much of a data-driven approach yourself?
If I were smarter, I’d figure out how to use data more effectively—like using data to figure out which cities are most likely to have potential Carbonara Credits customers, for example, which I didn’t do.
On the whole, I think it’s really difficult to publish creative work online and not be influenced by the numbers that get spit back out at you. I’m always impressed when creatives can make work that is completely for themselves, or their intended purpose—and not artificially shaped by the needs of any algorithm. If we’re self-editing with higher view counts in mind, with disregard for what’s best for the piece of work, why not just reach out to tech platforms ahead of time and ask them what they would like us to make for their channels?
If you can carve out the time and the energy to make something completely free from that kind of data, that can be really healthy for your creativity.
Sustainability can be a tricky concept to pin down but we always ask our interviewees to make an attempt. How would you define ‘sustainability’?
Sure, here’s an attempt. Sustainability is the measure of: When we’re done with this project, will things be better, the same, or worse than before we started?
Could you tell us about some of the most exciting sustainable projects that you admire for taking a wittier approach?
Fat Bear Week from Katmai National Park in Alaska completely kicks ass. You get to watch bears eating fish on a live stream, and then vote and rank them in a fantasy football-style competition. It plays into everything Americans love most and uses that to highlight a nature conservation cause.
I also have a deep love for the Salmon Cannon, aka, the Fish Tube, which became a meme a few years ago. That’s just great branding in an industry that can appear inaccessibly boring to outsiders.
Edited the fish tube video with Space Mountain music to give the fish a bigger thrill pic.twitter.com/IUxaosPgd6
— Tom Zohar (@TomZohar) August 11, 2019
Final thing, and sustainability aside, we do have strong views about what makes a great spaghetti carbonara (or at least our founder does). Do you have an opinion on this?
Now we’re getting into the important stuff. Thanks for asking. For it to be a carbonara, the meat has to be guanciale or pancetta. I’d even agree to bacon lardon if everything else is really convincing, but otherwise, we’re not talking about carbonara anymore. Then it’s just a different dish. Are you familiar with the phrase, “If my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a bike”?
Climate-conscious carbonara fan with hella wherewithal? Or just curious to know more? For more about Carbonara Credits, and to order some of that classic pasta while making a brilliant donation, find out more on the Carbonara Credits website.
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