When Heather Stephenson was growing up in Libby, MT, her family’s neighbors would display signs in their front yards that read, “This Family is Supported by Timber Dollars.” Needless to say, the cofounder of IdealBite.com—an online resource of clever ideas that make living green simple and easy—has come a long way from her logging-town roots. “Where I come from, environmentalism is a dirty word,” says Stephenson, a former NYC advertising consultant who started Ideal Bite in May 2005 with her friend Jennifer Boulden, also an advertising veteran. Boulden now runs an Ideal Bite office in Bozeman, MT, and seven months ago Stephenson set up the website’s headquarters in San Francisco. “I moved here because locals tend to stay up on environmental issues,” says the 33-year-old yoga practitioner, who considers herself “light green,” a term coined by Ideal Bite to describe its demographic: people who want to do their part to save the planet without making major lifestyle changes. So far, more than 100,000 of them worldwide have signed up to receive Ideal Bite’s daily eco-tip emails. “Sure, I drive a Prius, but I also only drink Italian wine,” admits Stephenson. “Those bottles have to cross an ocean and an entire continent, and yet I live just two hours away from one of the best wine regions in the world.” Eco-confessions are a large part of the Ideal Bite approach to incremental environmentalism; in the future, the website will feature similar declarations from Hollywood types. “No one’s perfect,” says Stephenson. “Scaring people into a green lifestyle isn’t our style. I’m not even halfway there, but I’m definitely trying.”
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When Heather Stephenson was growing up in Libby, MT, her family’s neighbors would display signs in their front yards that read, “This Family is Supported by Timber Dollars.” Needless to say, the cofounder of IdealBite.com—an online resource of clever ideas that make living green simple and easy—has come a long way from her logging-town roots. “Where I come from, environmentalism is a dirty word,” says Stephenson, a former NYC advertising consultant who started Ideal Bite in May 2005 with her friend Jennifer Boulden, also an advertising veteran. Boulden now runs an Ideal Bite office in Bozeman, MT, and seven months ago Stephenson set up the website’s headquarters in San Francisco. “I moved here because locals tend to stay up on environmental issues,” says the 33-year-old yoga practitioner, who considers herself “light green,” a term coined by Ideal Bite to describe its demographic: people who want to do their part to save the planet without making major lifestyle changes. So far, more than 100,000 of them worldwide have signed up to receive Ideal Bite’s daily eco-tip emails. “Sure, I drive a Prius, but I also only drink Italian wine,” admits Stephenson. “Those bottles have to cross an ocean and an entire continent, and yet I live just two hours away from one of the best wine regions in the world.” Eco-confessions are a large part of the Ideal Bite approach to incremental environmentalism; in the future, the website will feature similar declarations from Hollywood types. “No one’s perfect,” says Stephenson. “Scaring people into a green lifestyle isn’t our style. I’m not even halfway there, but I’m definitely trying.”
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