Subtitle: Culture Change and Keeping it Real
9 participants

Lydia Bergen - NE Aquarium
Victoria Mills - EDF
Dwayne Martin - sustainable food finance consultant
Rob Larbacher - MIT
Monica Sullivan - Well Lit Path
Christina Bosch - Erb Institute
Nina Dudnick - Seeding Labs
John Rooks - SOAP
Ben Anderson - Preserve

Interest in the culture change...
WHAT ARE THE BARRIERS TO CHANGE?

• Stasis - easy habits, patterns, conventions
• Inaction based on lack of awareness, lack of information (example: really understanding where things come from and where they go to (food, to recycling, to trash)
  
• Pain/Benefits as drivers - is there enough pain or a great enough benefit to catalyze change
• Very punk rock to do something different - get away from the norm
• Hip-hop started as rebellious impulse, has embraced/changed to include all consumerism, showiness, bling
• Punk rock may be continuously more rebellious? John thinks not - punk rock sold out too. When corporations skim images from fringe groups like punk rock to sell products, fringe groups seek new ways to rebel/be different
  
• How do you take something that is fringe so cool, that it is appealing to the masses?
• How do you make sustainability sustainable? Green bubbles pop too
• Green may do better when it aligns with parts of an organization's business model already (cost saving, efficiencies). Some debate around this - some win-win options, but still intractable powerful interests.
• Issue of authenticity in fringe movements?
• Point made that have to let go of authenticity meaning that not everyone understands it (i.e. if want to overcome barrier of people not having information, have to share it).

What if sustainability is not scalable?

• What is scale? Bigger, and more not necessarily better
• more not necessarily better
  
• Sustainability is more complex
• There is more resilience in more complex systems - less vulnerability if have more distributed, differentiated systems
• [For later: conditions to ponder --> is sustainability scalable?]
• Curiosity not necessarily inherent (only curiosity is how can I get my needs met- not very curious really) - needed: curiosity about how the world works and how could we have a world where everyone can live sustainably?
  

Biggest change could hope for - get people to ask "What difference does it make?" if I choose one action over another. Then if people are ready to ask, and hear answers, and all the 'becauses', maybe can get more action

WHAT ARE REAL EXAMPLES OF BEHAVIOR CHANGE/CULTURE CHANGE?

• John - examples from companies where marketing is "bastard child of sustainability" - the face of it for a company but not allowed to really engage insustainability fully. Example of Tide going into disaster-struck areas and providing laundry services.
  
• How does one do this? Measures are critical to demonstrate and get senior buy-in
  
• Did we push a dialogue further?
• Are people better off?
• From Preserve: engage people in their own supply chain
• give yogurt cups, get toothbrush, then have interest in what happens to the toothbrush
• makes people part of the solution - closes loops
  

• Clearly some personal psychology involved, but what about connectedness and networks to give people a sense of involvement and ownership?
• recommendation for increasing cross-collaboration, intra-interaction, business cross-pollination of ideas
• Seeding Labs - model has very tangible experiences of this - people see the effect of their action with photos, a face connected to the name of the person receiving the equipment. Without high-level buy-in, the project never gets easier - when push comes to shove, it takes more work that organizations aren't willing to take.
• From Aquarium's program - have seen major shift within organizations they work with where now more senior members are spearheading programs instead of small scale one-off projects.
• Hard to get people to go the last mile - making the business case is still crucial.
• Suggestions: have to have strategy to work at at least 2 levels - top-down and bottom-up; these two have different interests.
• Suggestion: get waste reuse included as a ranking criteria for universities - may drive action
  
• Government can play a key role - we benefit from major initiatives with spinoffs and side benefits to society (e.g., the space program).
• Tension always between grassroots face-to-face engagement with people to corporate level involvement and then even larger the government activities.
  

What is the strategy to get to sustainability?
There is no "we" - we are all working for change but from a million different angles.