Learning from the future

Spending a day working with the champions of sustainability education from 20 colleges across Wales; these are the folks who are embedding real change into the workplace, and this post captures the ideas - heads of environmental education, business and many other work areas.

Short presentations from Pembrokeshire College and Yale College underpinned the impoetance of good monitoring and reporting of what happens so that the people taking action know what's happening. Yale created a 'green handprint' to stamp on projects where good practice is happening - they've developed a Moodle site with resources and embedded ESDGC into environmental management - using real information from building management systems etc as part of day to day work. The harder stuff, they're finding are topics such as resolving the loss of money from selling Coke to the reduction in plastic waste and dietary opportunities that would develop as a result. "We're also crossing the learning-teaching issue and are going to be working on paper next - realising it's a systems approach that's needed". Learning projects are what gets the students involved.

Gobal exchange programmes have developed using the College's international offices, so that students are now starting to run projects for themselves - one of the best indications that things are starting to work.

climate change is difficult because it's not in our nature to do favours for people who are not born yet.

Understanding relevance and complexity are two of the most important areas - one exercise asked students to cut out articles on climate, wealth SD and other issues and stick onto a flip chart and make the links between the articles on the flip charts with string to see where the connections lie. To understand Fair Trade, give away chocolate according the rules of the 'chocolate game' - the supermarkets get 10 squares, the farmers get one etc.

Eco footprinting exercises are working well - CAT's 'Where's the Impact?" is one good way of communicating this - understanding where the ingredients of my Kinder Egg comes from - plastic - cocoa - milk - sugar - aluminium - and then work out the connections between those products and personal action and choices.

Climbing mount sustainability

InterfaceFLOR are one of the world's best examples of companies on a mission to make sustainability happen. This is how they plan to do it:

The Seven Fronts

In leading Interface Inc. forward Ray Anderson (Chairman and CEO) has often likened achieving sustainability to climbing a mountain higher than Mt. Everest. With this in mind, we have laid out a path designed to achieve sustainability on seven ambitious fronts.

1. Eliminate Waste: Eliminating all forms of waste in every area of business;


2. Benign Emissions: Eliminating toxic substances from products, vehicles and facilities;


3. Renewable Electricity: Operating facilities with renewable electricity sources – solar, wind, landfill gas, biomass, geothermal, tidal and low impact/small scale hydroelectric or non-petroleum-based hydrogen;


4. Closing the Loop: Redesigning processes and products to close the technical loop using recovered and bio-based materials;


5. Resource-Efficient Transportation: Transporting people and products efficiently to reduce waste and emissions;


6. Sensitizing Stakeholders: Creating a culture that integrates sustainability principles and improves people’s lives and livelihoods;


7. Redesign Commerce: Creating a new business model that demonstrates and supports the value of sustainability-based commerce;

Here's Do for you:

Compare the work that you're doing to the seven processes that Interface and then pick one to improve in the next two months that can make the biggest difference. How about starting from number 1.

Worldwatch food update

Global Chronic Hunger Rises Above 1 Billion

"In 2009, an estimated 1.02 billion people were classified as undernourished, 12 percent more than in 2008. This means nearly one in six people on Earth suffers from undernourishment. Undernourishment—or chronic hunger—is defined as regularly eating food that provides less than 1,800 kilocalories (kcal) a day. In comparison, Americans, Canadians, and Europeans on average consume food that provides more than 3,400 kcal per day."



Sustainability Action in Wales

In addition to the work that we're doing with WAG on climate change and sustainability, there's a lot of other excellent activity happening, as listed below:

1.       Wales Sustainability Week

17th-23rd May 2010

The Welsh Assembly Government has announced the first Wales Sustainability Week which will take place from the 17th to 23rd May 2010; the week before the Hay Festival. Individuals, organisations and communities are invited to:

• take specific action to make Wales more sustainable;

• celebrate and promote what they are already doing;

• become part of a network of individuals, organisations and communities that works together to make Wales more sustainable.

WAG is asking that people demonstrate their enthusiasm and commitment to promoting sustainable development locally by organising Wales Sustainability Week activities.

More information:

Email: sustainable.development@wales.gsi.gov.uk.

Eng: http://wales.gov.uk/topics/sustainabledevelopment/sdevents0910/sustainabilityweek/?lang=en

Wel: http://wales.gov.uk/topics/sustainabledevelopment/sdevents0910/sustainabilityweek/?skip=1&lang=cy

2.       Hay on Earth / Sustainable Development Challenge Fund

1-4 June 2010

The Sustainable Development Challenge Fund is intended to support organisations, communities and businesses develop innovative new approaches to sustainable development in Wales.
As part of the Hay Festival, a series of workshops are to be run under the title Hay on Earth, which are intended to help develop innovative and creative approaches that help promote sustainable development. The workshops will be along the following themes:

• Tuesday 1 June - transport and accessibility

• Wednesday 2 June - agriculture and food

• Thursday 3 June - business, new goods and services

• Friday 4 June - community and homes

Each workshop will give organisations the opportunity to develop their SD project ideas. Projects submitted at the end of each workshop will be assessed by a panel. Grants up to a maximum of £10,000 will be awarded to help develop the best projects. 

More information:

Email: sustainable.development@wales.gsi.gov.uk.

Eng: http://wales.gov.uk/topics/sustainabledevelopment/sdevents0910/sustainabilityweek/?lang=en

Wel: http://wales.gov.uk/topics/sustainabledevelopment/sdevents0910/sustainabilityweek/?skip=1&lang=cy

3.       Sustainable Development Charter

1-4 June 2010

Also at the Hay Festival, WAG will launch a Sustainable Development Charter to encourage organisations in Wales to make sustainable development their central organising principle.

More information:

Email: sustainable.development@wales.gsi.gov.uk.

www.wales.gov.uk/sustainabledevelopment

4.       Community Action for Climate Change Networks

Llandudno 11/6/2010

Llandinam 14/6/2010

Newport 23/6/2010

Carmarthen 24/6/2010

The third series of highly successful Community Action for Climate Change Network events are currently being organised. Scheduled to take place in June 2010 the network events aim to help strengthen local networks and respond to the skills needs of groups and individuals working around climate change and carbon reduction in Wales.

This time around, the events will take place in Llandudno, Llandinam, Newport and Carmarthen. They are designed to strengthen local links, and will feature focused project development workshops such as Up-scaling your Project and Securing Funding, and open space opportunity to network with others around climate action.

More information:

Angharad Dalton adalton@glam.ac.uk

Usha Ladwa Thomas Usha.Ladwa-Thomas@Wales.GSI.Gov.UK

www.walescarbonfootprint.gov.uk

5.       Community Resilience – Launch of public consultation

The UK Government has launched the public consultation on the Community Resilience guidance documents as part a wider package on National Security. This includes the publication of an update to the National Risk Register of Civil Emergencies.

Service Designing Higher Education

There's a an interesting new project developing in Switzerland to look at Higher Education provision from the perspetive of service design. The COTEN project sets out to explore:

- How can we re-imagine the structure and experience of higher education using service design techniques?

- Can service design methodologies be used in a purely online, collaborative environment?

Over the past decade a great deal of attention has been paid to the structure, nature and design of the school curriculum across many countries. In many cases the results have been less than inspiring, if not deeply damaging, especially in the area of the arts. The focus on schools is highly important, but so is Higher Education, which is also facing a crisis and lacking inspired thinking.

An army of politicians, bureaucrats, auditors, managers and administrators have failed to offer an innovative vision for higher education – COTEN invite you to apply your most innovative thinking to the problem.

It's clear to me that the education system hasn't been designed to nurture the confident, creative and collaborative minds that we'll need to engineer, invent, farm and connect and care our way out of the forthcoming train crash of a system that we've created. It's pretty hard for any system to change from the inside - so jump on in and make your contribution.