How to save our planet: lessons in practicality
York Zucchi
The Chief Coffee Drinker. 33 years of starting & growing projects around the world, trying to make the planet a better place for everyone. Sustainability│Innovation│Entrepreneurship
#Perspectives on #Sustainability
Have you ever really thought about how to ACTUALLY save the world?
There are countless posts about big announcements, conferences, committments at all levels of society, some well meaning, some important and many just marketing fluff. It is in fact becoming more and more difficult to find profiles on platforms like LinkedIn that do NOT include the world "sustainability" in the headline, a word that nowadays has as much legitimacy as the word "bio" on products "sugar free" on processed foods.
But on a practical level what do you do to make an impact on society and the world?
In this post I reflect on our learnings, both resulting from our work but also from our learnings of other people's work plus some nice resources for you to look at if you're interested in knowing the (often positive!) facts about what's going on in terms of progress.
As with all my posts please remember to take this as inspiration to start thinking differently rather than an absolute truth. My aim in sharing this content is to encourage independent thought and help you navigate a world of misinformation.
And as with all my posts (if you don't know) I use it to share random pics from my travel diary (in the last 24 months I visited 55 cities as part of our work). It is just me showing off :-)
Ready to hit the ground running?
1. Good Engineering + Good Policies = Fast Change
The fastest way to save the planet? Give more support to the the amazing scientists and innovators out there working on (and in many cases already rolling out) some incredibly effective solutions to our everyday challenges, from more ecological cement to car batteries that can be recycled etc. And the best way to give more support? Create policies that encourage the redirection of resources to those innovations! The private sector (big and small) is not particularly keen to cannibilise profits of existing markets so it often needs a bit of a prod by legislators to incentivise the behavioural change (want to learn who really drives innovation in society? Read Mariana Mazzucato s excellent The Entrepreneurial State book. It is a mind-duck!).
Sometime policies are really simple: The Hague has become the first city in the world to ban ads promoting fossil fuesl and carbon-intensive services like air travel (source: @The progress playbook)
2. Tap into the selfishness
We run the online academies of some 450 cities, municipalities, companies and organisations in 27 countries, from South Africa to Ghana to Italy to Afghanistan. Through all that we have learned a thing or two (sometime kicking and screaming :-) about how actual education works... and it doesn't work almost at all like it is taught in schools, universities and lectures around the world. Real (adult) education - if you want it to persuade - lies in translating knowledge into personal benefits.
To give you a practical example we tried two versions of the similar courses (the technical term is A/B Testing)... We launched a course to help people find ways to make their home more sustainable and save the planet.. Absolutely terrible take up - a total flop.
We rebranded it to "How to lower home your bills (and save the world): lessons from your neighbours (and why they are becoming wealthier than you).
Guess which one became a hit :-)
Telling people not to drive for the bigger picture of saving the planet just doesn't do it in a day and age of me, myself and I's. But if you show people how much money they can put away every month if they take up much easier alternatives etc (and of course have those alternatives available)... boom. We saw it in Italy when there was a HUGE drive of subsidised solar panels and double glazing installations country-wide. It is difficult to find a house that didn't take advantage of that. Result? Almost an overnight country-wide much better energy efficient housing market.
3. Inform, don't persuade
One of the tenets of great advertising is imperfection. A perfect ad is often one that wins awards and is quickly forgotten. The greatest ads are the ones that leave something nagging (perhaps something is missing, or the ending allows for interpretation) which makes you think about it long after you have watched it. In educating we often (and I make that mistake to this day in my lectures) try to make it perfect, adding all the facts that we think someone needs, trying to cover every angle. Don't is my advice. If you want people to really absorb knowledge and - hopefully - integrate it into their life the best advice I can give you is to cut back on how much info you give and how you give it. We learned this the hard way in our academies when we started with really comprehensive courses... but over time we moved to shorter and shorter courses (ca 21-27 mins)... and people started loving it more and more... and it has nothing to do with short attention spans. You see, when you give enough to make you think but not enough to bore you what you are doing is activating the curiousity of the learner. You planted the seed. That's your job. That incomplete information is usually the bug that doesn't let someone dismiss it outright... and people are clever and often motivated when they want to. Watch what happens when someone now WANTS to learn more. Motivation goes through the roof. You do NOT need to spoonfeed.
4. Make it practical
Talking about sustainability, saving the oceans/amazon, etc is important but if you want to help people stay away from those big picture stories that most people can't identify with or truly comprehend. We are terrible at comprehending the bigger picture as this wonderful short clip so aptly reminds us with the amazing Prof Rosling (RIP).
I have lost count of the talking shops (conferences) around sustainability with ZERO practical call to action other than "let's save the planet". Turn anything you do in the sustainability space into something that is easy for people to engage with and action on. Trust me on this. It is MUCH easier than you think. And has huge repercussions on the longevity of your conference and event. Do not let anyone attend something without having them partecitate proactively. You are just throwing a lot of time and money away if you do.
5. Slow down to speed up
We - on the whole - are terrible at change. One of the reasons for Trump's rise despite his incompetence and lies, lies in that he represents to a large chunk of the population a world that doesn't exist anymore... a world of quick fixes and simple solutions, of bringing back the old industries that people know, of making people feel that it is ok to deny climate change etc. This is a large portion of the population that is ill equipped to deal with a modern world whether is there are many shades of truth, with skills that don't seem to fit in a future world. To them the world is scary... and I get it. They are worried. Yet these are on the whole our friends and neighbours. They are wonderful people at heart who don't hesitate to help in their communities. They are often generous and give a hand even when they themselves are facing hardship. Yet in a big scary world they feel confused, scared and worried about the future.
Change is not easy. Yet rushing change through is a recipe for disaster. Ask any CEO.
Real change management is about communicating, addressing the fears and holding the hand of the grandmother as you help her cross the big scary street. You can't rush her or she won't cope and will freeze. The cities that managed to improve the quality of life of their citizens exponentially (Valencia, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Amsterdam etc) are cities where the Mayoral team didn't just push through changes at breakneck speeds but which did local pilots of the suggested changes to show how much better life can be. When you see people in another neighbourhood happier it won't be long before you start asking your Mayor why they are not rolling out the same initiative in your own neighbourhood (e.g closing streets to traffic permanently and turning the streets into tree filled long parks which cleans the air, reduces pollution, improves health and increases turnover of local shops and cafes).
6. Realise that sostenibility isn't just about planet but also about society
As my business partner, Elisabetta Tambani (the real brain behind out operations... I am just the pretty nose) that the more we remind ourselves that real sustainability means understanding the impact that our actions have not just on ourselves but also on others. When we only focus on the impact on ourselves we tend to generallly care less (so what if you fly a few more times or take the car to go down the road... it is just you). When we start understanding that everything we do has an effect on other people we - on the whole - become better humans. As Mashall so aptly puts it, there are no passengers on spaceship earth: we are all crew. When we focus less on the self and more on the collective we change our behaviour much faster (plus it has another unintended consequence: we start feeling happier psychologically and emotionally).
7. Little drop of water fill the glass
Elisabetta often points out that the tiny little things we think don't matter that much actually as a collective have enormous impact! From turning off the lights when you leave the kitchen (1 billion people turning off those kitchen lights and you can imagine the impact) to sorting your rubbish (leave the conspiracy theories out: differentiated rubbish collection does work for many many reasons) to changing what you eat (for heaven sake stop buying ultra processed foods! If you are too poor to afford healthier foods grow your own: here's a free course to help you do it: https://www.thestartuptribe.org/courses/start-a-farm). Changing what you eat has much more impact than you can imagine: is it really necessary for you to have to a specific fruit all year around? To satisfy your appetite that fruit has to travel from really far flung places).
8. Reduce our addiction to the consumption economy...
Inviting more pre-loved aka refusbished items or recycled items in our lives is a fantastic recype for lowering your expenses and saving the planet. Think it is uncool to own pre-loved shit? Think again. Giants like Decathlon are creating more and more avenues for their second hand items to be sold in their stores which I so totally love. Sites like refurbed and others are playing an important part in the technology space (I personally buy only 2nd hand phones or technology from places like Cash Converters Espa?a etc) and often find amazing clothes on @Vinted. None of these are absolutely sustainable, but it certainly beats new.
9. Expose yourself...
... to the right kind of content.
Amidst all the doom and gloom it is easy to think that nothing is really happening. I have really clever friends (to be fair, it isn't difficult to be clever next to me: I set the bar really low with my own IQ :-) that are so completely out of touch with the reality around the progress humanity is making across the world that it is actually embarassing.
Eg. do you know how much % of energy consumed by most of the major countries in the world is renewable? I'm 100% sure you're wrong in what you think (and the news is far more encouraging). The reason why it is important to be kept up to date (with factual scientifically observed info and not promises!) is that you will feel far more motivated than when thinking that nothing is happening and your contribution don't matter.
(PS - the answer is 53% across all OECD countries)
Not sure where to start?
10. Don't be shy to apply pressure
Often the leaders - in a highly politicised environment - often have to navigate complex political scenarious to stay in power. They tend to have little attention to the quiet ones in and amongst the population: the hardworking people who are going about their daily lives - and meander instead to the loudness of the extreme voices. Most people just want to live, work, improve their lives and be happy if given a chance. These are the quiet ones in our democracies who often go unheard (it is why so much news is distoring as it often just represents the loudest sections of society that are often also the minority view). Learn to speak up. You don't have to scream. But the more we speak up about what matters and bring to the fore what we care about the more oxygen we give it and sooner or later the leadership of a city, country or company will take notice. It happened with suffragism, racism and many other important topics. It can happen with sustainability.
11. Don't worry, Be happy.
And sometime it is just enough to realise how happy we already are and stop seeking happiness in the marketing funnels of products and services. I was just chatting to Elisabetta and she was reminding me how good a life most of us have. We get used to it and then forget to appreciate it as much as we used to.
Learn to love what you have, appreciate that you have access to water, a roof, healthcare and food. There are many fellow humans out there that don't. That may not make your suffering go away, but, hey, once you figure out what's enough for you life is easier.
In the words of Bobby...
Have a sustainable week everyone!
Always yours
York
Founder at Pathways outa Poverty
5 个月Practical is perfect ??if it is to be it is up to me!
General Manager (AFP SAFMA) | African Facilities Management Association Ambassador (AFMA) for South Africa | Transforming Facilities Management | Sustainability, and Operational Excellence | Business Growth Strategist
5 个月York Zucchi some of the basic things can be done in your home, and when you go and shop, to live a life that makes less impact on our environment. My Wife, decided that since we use paper serviettes at the dinner table, to change that by using cloth serviettes, less waste and less money spent on this item, less packaging into the landfill, I grow vegetables and share them around my immediate family and friends, so less traveling to the grocer for your salad goods, no chemicals, only organic, small things make the difference. Thanks for the article.