Beyond eco-efficiency: sustainability for its own sake as a budget item?

As we set sail this week on seriously researching for the big essay (working in pair - new experience!), the notion of going beyond what's easy has centered around cost. A lot of what organisations do in the name of the environment is pretty easy to sell to the boss, as it also saves money (think energy efficiency, any kind of waste reduction). The hard part is going beyond the low-hanging fruit and doing things that actually cost more. How do you justify that, and will any organisation ever do it without huge public pressure?

I was pretty downcast when I asked someone from Yale Facilities whether the uni might ever spend extra money purely because of sustainability. I'm going to paraphrase, but basically: never, ever, ever. Or at least not in this post-GFC austerity.
This bugged me for a couple of days until I realized something. Yale is already spending money on sustainability stuff. How? It's not new money. When they save money through environmental measures, they don't splurge on a department car, but instead spend it on the more expensive environmental items. This is most prevalent in Dining, where savings in food waste can be used to buy local and organic produce.

So turns out Dining is way ahead of me. But as far as I can tell, this all happens pretty quietly, since if they trumpet their savings they might find their budget reduced. So new focus questions:
- How do you make sure the money you save doing sustainability gets spent on sustainability?
- What motivates people to spend the money that way, as opposed to redirecting it to other things?
- Is it worth publicizing these choices, or will that just result in the money being taken away?

Sustainability (big word) and what institutions can (should/will/won't) do

Time to talk a little about the actual learning I'm doing at Yale in between my mad rushing about (currently on a train to Baltimore).

The course I'm taking is called Sustainable Institutions. Using Yale as a case study, we are looking at sustainability and sustainable development (as per Bruntland Report and similar) and the role of institutions in going beyond 'greening' to true sustainability.

What at first glance may seem an odd topic has become more appealing to me over time. As global as our environmental problems can get, we experience them and their solutions locally. We interact with institutions (or organisations as the policy jargon goes) every day. Our workplaces, schools and governments are the places we go to make change - what exactly do we want them to do?

Our teacher Julie, Cynthia and Noris

As students, we are an international and eclectic bunch, with representatives from the US, China, Japan, Denmark, Singapore, Switzerland and Australia. We bring very different views from home regarding the role of government and of educational institutions. One thing that strikes me (and the Danes) about Yale's approach is the grassroots, bottom-up focus that avoids any reliance on government intervention. Given America's climate politics, an emphasis on private leadership and first movers makes a lot of sense here, and may offer helpful lessons for Australia (sigh). But for the Danish and Singaporean students, government has the ability to take a far more forceful role, for better or worse.

Pil, Ippy, Nathalie, Kerr, Snow, Jessica and Ayako

Exploring the stories of companies who 'go green' voluntarily has been encouraging - we see cases where environmentalism has become the sensible thing to do, with unexpected players like Coke putting a lot of effort into auditing and reducing their water use. I'm torn between being pleased and unimpressed. No matter how efficiently they do it, Coke is still a company that takes up water and arable land to sell sugar in bottles to people who can't really afford it, or the health problems that follow. If we're aiming for true sustainability (as opposed to just 'greening'), does Coke have a place in that picture? Do 'the needs of the present generation' really include softdrink (or soda, as it's called here)? Might the day arrive when their CEO says "You know what? The whole soda thing really doesn't make sense from a truly long term, holistic viewpoint. How about we just focus on getting bottled water to drought-stricken regions?"? 

We'll see. In the same way, I wonder about the big picture of sustainable universities. Of course Yale, ANU and countless others can do good by saving water, buying organic food and building the most energy efficient buildings possible, but in my crazy ambitious mind, a truly sustainable institution is one where all outputs and work form part of a sustainable future. This leads me to the uncomfortable area of teaching and research, which I doubt the office of sustainability has a say in. But does it really matter how well insulated ANU's new Economics buildings are if the lessons they teach inside are all about maximizing short-term revenue without looking at the bigger picture? Or if the lecturers persist in saying "IF you're worried about climate change, people breathing out CO2 and all that stuff" (they really do say that.)?

That's ambitious stuff, and it goes way beyond chatting with your coworkers about printing on both sides and not using styrofoam cups. I personally have never worked in a big organisation and tried to have conversations about radically overhauling the values and guiding principles that define everything we do. It occurs to me that with my intention of working in organisations that already share my environmentalist worldview, I may not find myself in that position anytime soon, but it must be a common one. Most of us work in organisations that are way part of our current economic and social systems instead of fighting them. Most of us (I hope) do worry about the environment and the kind of future we are creating for ourselves. Now I'm just making stuff up, but my guess is that people don't feel like they can take those worries to work, and that saying 'sustainability' in a typical office will lead people to a talk on recycling bins.

So in light of all this, I'm mulling over the focus for my final essay and I'm tempted to study something super messy and confusing. I'd like to hear the stories of people who try to introduce sustainability to their organisations - both the recycling and the bigger picture. What's their battle plan? Who do they talk to? Is it awkward to be tagged as the environmental nut? Why are they doing this and how did they get the courage to reach out and talk to people about their worries?

So there's my research question so far. How does an personal journey of sustainability become an institutional one?

If anyone has any thoughts, I'm eager to hear them.

How I'd missed the waves

Just another holiday update (I really should get to work now!) - some extremely organised Swiss students hired a car, told me to be out front at 7.45am on Monday and we were off to the beach! Feeling relaxed and sore after letting the waves toss me around most thoroughly.
Photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151909016665646.875969.763875645&type=3&l=7e6f1f01a9

Wandering the city

So classes have started and I have lots to say on that front, but first indulge me for a classic travel blog - the day in New York City.

Facing a Saturday with nothing much planned, I decided a day in NYC would be fun (pretty obvious). I skipped the classic tourist route a bit, since I'll be back with the group later. This is where I wound up:

NYC public library - an exhibit on the history of NYC's lunches, including the old Automat machines

NYPD Museum. 

Housed in the first ever police station on the island, the museum is a nice quick tour of policing history from the days when people mistrusted the citizen's watch so much they weren't allowed weapons. 

The noise makers patrols used to clear the streets of miscreants

Frances Tavern Museum

The site of early rebel meetings, the formation of the Chamber of Commerce and Washington's meeting place after the British retreated from Manhattan. The building has gone through many incarnations before being restored to resemble the tavern it once was.

My guide enthusiastically reads out an old proclamation the British posted declaring the revolutionary army illegal

Staten Island Ferry

The touristy bit of my day, checking out the skyline

Coming off the ferry, I found myself watching a street performance by some seriously confident dancers

And then I just wandered north through Manhattan eating ice lemon.

Winding up in Washington Square Park, where someone had pushed a piano half a mile so they could do this:

I also discovered how people cool off around here - made me feel much better (It's 28C every day here)

This park was how parks should be - full of life

I finished my day with one of the most awesome meals I have ever eaten. That sandwich is pulled pork, beans and rice with some kind of BBQ sauce so magical that I wandered the streets grinning like a fool afterwards. Sheer food joy achieved. Also cornbread is awesome and Australia needs it.

I then jumped back on the train, making to New Haven in time to attend a moving silent disco - everyone uses Ipods to listen to the same dance track and we dance through the streets, sharing music that no bystander can hear, with this result:

For the full context, download this song http://www.mediafire.com/?d47k6t2aui6m8dn and listen along. It's an incredibly joyful experience to do something like that for sheer absurdity.

I then slept. Heavily.

Settling in to Yale

I've now been at Yale for 2 days, but it feels like longer as I get used to the routine. Here's what's gone on lately:

Rob, Liz and Maeve delivered me to my college room after a couple delightful days of doing nothing much and catching up on relaxing time. We had lunch with Liz's siblings Mike and Barb, Connecticut locals who I will see around town, and then walked around the giant campus trying to find housing check-in and my room. The place makes much more sense now that I'm not carrying luggage around whilst exploring!

I found my way to the dining hall and was reminded of the contrasts between Australians and Americans when every announcement or introduction at the meeting was greeted by exuberant cheering and clapping; anything done here is done with enthusiasm.

We went on the standard historical walking tour yesterday and learned the tricks of the campus. I feel quite comforted by the fact that the ye olde gothic buildings were actually built in the 1920s by a guy who liked an old time feel - he aged the slate in a river, poured acid down the walls, chipped corners off bricks, and cracked and soldered the window panes to get an authentic 'been standing for centuries' look (a nice touch: all the window cracks are done in a Y shape). The architecture is less intimidating when I keep that in mind.

The same mad architect contributed to Yale's churchy feel by deliberately building a church, sorry, a library. Apparently he wanted to add a cathedral to his portfolio, but Yale didn't want one, so he offered to do the library instead. The facade has burn marks (from 16th century fire/ 20th century blowtorch) and empty nooks where statues should go (stolen by Vikings, 14th century/never there to begin with) and there's a circulations desk under a picture of 'Mother Yale' instead of an alter under the virgin Mary. Complete with the largest collection of secular stained glass art in the world, it's the ultimate (not a) cathedral.

Oh and Rob, that mad white building with no windows? Turns out it's all windows, we just can't tell - it's the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, and the walls are made of marble at 1.25 inches thick, letting in light but no UV rays. I'll go in at some point and check out the ancient collections, including one of the Gutenburg bibles.

I'm still adjusting to the college life; there's something magical about not cooking but so weird that I can't have food when I want - dinner closes at 7 and I have no fridge access!

On the other hand, I have a free membership the Payne-Whitney gym, another building that looks like a church and is the largest indoor gym in the Western world, complete with at least 2 pools (that I've seen). That's pretty sweet.

We haven't actually started class yet, that happens today. I shall report back on that aspect soon!

cheers

Eb

Parting thoughts on Rio+20

I'm leaving Rio, leaving behind a great city and a conference that tends to evoke an uncertain range of grimaces from people when spoken of. The uninspiring outcome of Rio+20 provokes different reactions depending on expectations and personality. I myself never expected much from the actual document. I came to find out how the bottom-up approach makes use of international meetings and how the local relates to the global. I learned a few things:

• Policy based side events are incredibly dense.
• You never quite know who you'll meet around the corner or what they'll be talking about.
• Human society is experiencing challenges in the urban environment that are daunting in complexity and scale:
• In the next 40 years, we will spend as much on urban infrastructure as we have in the past 4000.
• One billion people live in slums right now. By 2050 there will be 3 billion.
• In 2009, we passed the halfway mark: more than 50% of people now live in cities, and it will be 70% by 2050. Factoring in population growth, the number of people in cities will double.

There's some good news: with all of the huge technological, planning and management challenges cities face, we actually have the capacity to handle it. The technology is there, the planning methods have succeeded in some cities already. We can do it. What remains is finding the political will and organisational capacity to get it done. If we can get ourselves sorted out, we can actually improve quality of life while making cities more environmentally sustainable and economically productive. The power of town planning to shape good, healthy lives is incredible.


As I begin to ponder the importance of strong, functioning local governments and their ability to implement sustainable planning and services, it seems entirely appropriate that I'm bound for a course called Sustainable Institutions. I look forward to examining the role that people and social networks play in shaping a sustainable institution or organisation, and considering how Yale's experiences can help me back at Australian National University and in future organisations.


I get the feeling that a lot of what can go wrong in an organisation comes from the role of human fallacy and unexpected social patterns. I'm still not sure whether the helpful response is to resist this or embrace and cooperate with it. Human enthusiasm and social empathy can be great forces for good, and I like to think this doesn't stop in a work setting, and that the right workplace can support these drivers for the kinds of phenomenal outcomes we need.

Photos begin!

Click here http://www.flickr.com/photos/56162016@N06/sets/72157630296304298/ to see some photos from Rio