The easiest way to help people change behavior

… Is to make it FUN

For a while now I have written about my struggles with what is it that I can do to move people to dispose of their trash properly and recycle.

One thing I do know – getting angry at someone who throws their bier can or sandwich wrapper out of the window of their car… will more likely get me into a fight than teach the benefits of recycling.

See the Playback Theater Performance on the subject right here >> Making Sustainability FUN

This latest initiative from Volkswagen brings us the factual proof that making it fun works.  I suggest you take a minute to watch this short video clip on the worlds’ deepest Trash bin:

Notice: In one day, the world deepest trash bin collected 72 Kg of trash when a usual trash bin just a few meters away collect 41 Kg less.

Katherine Gajewski Ain’t No Bully — But She is Coming to Meet You

Katherine Gajewski, Philadelphia’s New Director of Sustainability speaks in West Mt. Airy in Northwest Philly.  She reveals five tactics as to how she will implement Mayor Nutter’s Greenworks Plan to turn Philadelphia into America’s Greenest City –  including the appointment of a community Outreach Coordinator.

“Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim. [S]He’s the neighborhood bully.  (Bob Dylan, Neighborhood Bully)

Though certainly not a “neighborhood bully” in the conventional sense of the term, Katherine Gajewski is one focused agent of change.  In speaking to West Mt Airy Neighbors’ (WMAN) monthly gathering of just a few committed folks in Northwest Philly, Gajewski demonstrated a key strategy towards realizing Philly’s dream of becoming America’s “greenest city”: going from community to community and from ‘hood to ‘hood to coordinate the city’s ambitious (overly ambitious?) 15-point plan.  I don’t think Philadelphia can become green without this kind of synchronous, systemic action.  To that end, she told us that she intends to appoint a dedicated Outreach Coordinator to connect with each locality’s sustainability efforts.

Sustainability, Community Building and Playback Theater

On October 12, “Sustainable Mount Airy”, one of the Neighborhood Sustainability Groups in Philadelphia organized a Playback performance on the theme of Sustainability.
Playback Theater is a form of Improvisation Theater where the actors combine spoken word, dance, music, storytelling, and physical theater in an improvisational form that can be serious, deeply moving, and often hilarious. The content of the performance comes from audience members telling their real life experiences, stories, and dreams.

Measuring your Water footprint

Check out what your water footprint is?
You might be in for a Surprise.

A new website, H2O Conserve, allows you to actually calculate how much water you use so you can begin to assess your “water footprint.”

The Great Philadelphia Cleanup Day: A story in words, images and video.

For the first time, Heather Craig and Julia Hoff from the Drexel University Film Department went out to document the cleanup for PhillyEcoCity.com. See their video right here.

Two lines in the city tally of the Great Philadelphia Cleanup Day caught my attention:

- 200 Community organizations involved

- 14 Churches or faith-based institutions involved.

I think the impact of the Great Philadelphia Clean Up Day goes far beyond the statistics tallying the outcome of the operation. In my experience, the Great Philadelphia Clean up Day was a community building event.

I was assigned to the Simons Recreation Center in the Ogontz Section of the city. I got there and landed in a crew who was cleaning a long block of Walnut Lane bordering the sport fields of the Simons Recreation Center. Carl, Malcolm and myself discussed the finer points of comparative religion while picking up trash along Walnut Lane.

Food Service giant Sodexo commitment to Sustainability. What about Philadelphia based Aramark?

I noticed the short PR announcement from the Canadian subsidiary of Sodexo, describing the impact of the introduction of new dispensers allowing to dispense a single napkin made of recycled paper at a time. You will find that information here.

I then navigated to the website of the Sodexo Group which is a giant 320,000 employees company operating in 80 countries based near Paris. I was surprised to find on their corporate website a 24 pages brochure giving in great details, an account of the Group sustainability strategy, target areas, objectives, performance indicators, action plan for fiscal year 2007-2008 and examples of programs and initiatives implemented by some of the Sodexo companies throughout the world in one of identified four priority areas: pollution prevention, waste treatment, energy saving and water consumption control. Here is a link to Sodexo’s booklet “Act as a Corporate Citizen for the Planet”.

It so happens that Aramark, one of Sodexo’s closest competitor is based downtown Philadelphia…

City Council decides to investigate creation of Philly BikeShare

Philadelphia City Council Investigates Creation of Bike Sharing.

Philadelphia City Council in its first 2008 Session passes Resolution to hold hearing to investigate the creation of a Public Use Bicycle Program.

The Philly BikeShare initiative launches

I wrote the text of “Philly Eco-City” in July of 2007, that is before the election of Mayor Michael Nutter.

Last week I discovered that on Thursday January 17th a bunch of people from the Bicycle Coalition of Philadelphia launched an initiative to create Philly BikeShare or rather “Bike Share Philadelphia” as they call it. The launch event took place at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences on a cold winter night. The event attracted about 400 people with, among others, Michael Nutter, the new Philadelphia Mayor, and a state representative in attendance.

I am very happy that other people had the same idea and are working on making it happen.
Launching a bike sharing program in a large US city is a major endeavor.

Philly Eco-City

I wrote this post in July of 2007, before the election of the new Mayor of Philadelphia.

The major themes of the election for the next mayor of Philadelphia predictably were:
Crime, Jobs, Ethics, Taxes and Neighborhood development.

For even sake, has anyone in the local political class heard of Global Warming?

I hear that Michael Nutter is a firm supporter of sustainability.
Cool.

I found the absence of a unifying direction in the platform of the candidates striking, even bewildering.

Crime, under-employment for youth and for the under-privileged population of the city, ethical lapses from city officials, fair income sources for the city, neighborhood development, in my mind, are all symptoms of a deteriorating social fabric of The City. Not just this city, all large cities on the planet exhibit these symptoms with varying degrees of acuity.

The fact that Philadelphia is the city where the Constitution was drawn is not just a historical event. I propose that Philadelphia be the city where the model for the city of the next decades emerges.

What does this mean ?