Gotcha! I bet you thought this was going to be another top 10 tips to quick and easy sustainability, didn’t you? Well, sorry, I don’t believe in that. I think that many sustainability consultants are doing their clients a disservice by holding out the “low-hanging fruit” as the holy grail of achievement.
It’s not easy being green.
Oh Kermit, you had me at hello.
Let’s dissect this with a bit more seriousness. A long time ago, I think we used to understand that big changes can be difficult, and that they take hard work, and effort, and groups of people working together. And then, at some point, we seemed to collectively decide that this approach was too hard for “ordinary people.” Collectively, the environmental field decided to focus on changing light bulbs and switching off computers.
Lest you miss my point, I’m all for low-energy light bulbs and switching off computers.
However, these actions and others like them do not represent the achievement of sustainability. They are engagement tools with tangible outcomes that should be utilized to grease the wheels for much more substantive change. And sadly, that substantive change is not happening on a large scale. Strategic thinking about sustainability is sorely lacking in every sector. Waste, in the form of cost savings not realized or wasted opportunities to grow sustainably, are literally everywhere.
The best thing any of us can do is to get on board and change that light, but realize that it’s the first step, not the last.
