Aspiration-al Spending: Drake’s Endorsement of Green Banking
They say that money doesn’t grow on trees, but now it can help plant them. If we are to learn anything from The Lorax, it is that we need to be more mindful of our consumption of the environment and replenish what we use. One banking company, Aspiration, is fighting the largely pro-fossil fuels banking industry by offering ways to benefit the environment, including offsetting users’ carbon footprints through their purchases.
To help get their feet off the ground and motivate people to get involved, Aspiration has partnered with celebrities like Orlando Bloom, Robert Downey Jr., Leonardo DiCaprio and most recently, Drake. While the support of these celebrities is critical, what is important about Drake’s involvement is that it does not stop at mere financial support. On Twitter he showed his excitement and commitment by sharing that he is “looking forward to working with @aspiration and encouraging everyone to offset their carbon footprint.”
The Company
How Aspiration works is that they offer debit and credit card options with different settings to make your spending carbon-neutral and environmentally friendly. No matter what options you choose, they promise to never spend any money towards funding oil or coal industries as other banking companies are known to do. With the standard ‘Aspiration’ card, you can choose an option that rounds up every purchase to go towards planting trees. The ‘Aspiration Plus’ debit card offers to offset the carbon dioxide for every gallon of gas bought with the card.
The upcoming ‘Aspiration Zero’ credit card offers the same options as the debit cards, plus Aspiration plants a tree for every purchase made in addition to the trees planted from rounding up transactions. Another bonus feature of Aspiration is the creation of personal impact scores based on your spending habits in order for you to help your shopping match your values.
The Partner
Drake’s special involvement with Aspiration starts with this last feature. As a musician and celebrity, his carbon footprint is sizable compared to the average person. Whether it be touring the world, extravagant dinners, or excessive hotline blinging, these actions add up. He is dedicated to changing his lifestyle and behaviors to lessen his personal impact on the environment by getting personal impact scores and suggestions based on his habits from Aspiration.
It is important for celebrities like Drake to be transparent and endorse businesses like Aspiration because of the huge followings they have. It is a common argument that one person’s actions do not really matter, but it is important to remember that there is power in numbers. If we can galvanize communities to change some behaviors and make steps towards becoming carbon neutral, then there is some real impact made. Just as songs like In My Feelings and One Dance bring together people and create communities, actions taken by musicians like Drake can bring about real change and tangible effects.
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