Hello and welcome to another CrowdLeaf newsletter đ Vicky is away this week, usual service will resume when she’s back.
This weeks newsletter is jam packed full of green and sustainable goodness.
With two guest articles coming out in the last week, I point to the upcoming event as listed below, the Brave New World Variety Show Shindig and another fantastic company doing great things to make the world just that little bit more sustainable ‘The Eco Collective’ a fully vegan Supermarket for good.
Firstly our usual plea, anyone or any company who is organising green events, sells sustainable products or any other variation thereof is welcome to contact us about working together on boosting the green community and economy. As part of this we are also restocking our store and are looking for local providers to link up with our store so if you are interested, please email us.
This week just like the last has had some pretty interesting developments. Solar reached a peak at 28.5% of the UK’s energy this early May bank holiday weekend, producing more energy than nuclear and gas powered energy plants.
Again, there are some great events going on this month so please check them out and get involved. Once again last week Ryan @rwscarter was back on the airwaves to discuss all things green and sustainable with Xan Philips, you can listen again here.
Government unveils plans for business-backed plastics innovation hub
As mentioned in last weeks newsletter –
Now Morrisons is trialling bring your own tupperware to reduce plastic waste.
UK’s Most Polluted Towns And Cities Revealed
Terra watch: Rocks Could Have A Role In Combating Climate Change
AB InBev – the world’s largest brewer orders 800 hydrogen-electric trucks
Solar reached peak energy so far this year, on the hottest Early May bank holiday on record.
In pictures: Kenyaâs coastal conservation heroes
Whitley awards for nature conservation 2018 winners – in pictures
Storage And Organisation Ideas For Recycling Centers
Swanage Pier Dive And Litter Pick 12th May
Southdowns Green Fair 13th may
Brave New World Variety Show Shindig in Southampton – 18th May
Sholing Valley’s Spring Fayre 2018 19th May
Tools And Tips For Reducing Plastic 24th May
Something we look to help businesses do in the future. If you are a business that is in the waste(not) business please get in touch –Mixed Plastic Banks In Southampton
Here is Southampton’s list on what to put into your blue lid recycling bin: What Can I Recycle?
Pledge Your Commitment To Improving Hampshires Recycling Habits
This brilliant website gives tips and ideas about food waste and how to reduce it.
Instead of throwing out or bagging up (to gather dust) all those clothes children quickly grow out of this is a brilliant website to buy or sell unwanted children clothes. It is run by a busy mum who also knows what itâs like with ever growing children and the endless amount of clothes children accumulate.
âLast year a quarter of the clothing we got rid of was simply thrown away. Thatâs a staggering 300,000 tonnes that went into landfill. So many of those items could have been re-used and enjoyed by a another child, instead of contributing to the destruction of the planet.â
Please join us on Facebook, like and share with fellow environmental and wildlife enthusiasts where we will keep you up to date with climate change, sustainable and wildlife and conservation news and anything else green.
We would also like to start adding a directory to our newsletter, making it more accessible for everyone to gain information, join other environmental groups or eco-friendly businesses that sell eco-friendly products. If you or someone you know are interested, please contact us. We can also help advertise and advise on any campaigns and fundraising events, with the option to advertise on our webpage, facebook and newsletters.
Equally if you have an article or blog which is relevant to the local or global cause of making the world cleaner and greener or feel there is an issue that could be part of a discussion, then feel free to send it over and we can publish it.
Contact us via our website:
Look us up on Facebook or drop us an email:
vicky@crowdleaf.org.uk
ryan@crowdleaf.org.uk
On behalf of CrowdLeaf,
Vicky & Ryan
Please come and check out our store to support our cause and green community!
London Air Pollution Live Data
See you next time!
A simple question – one in which Mar asked me (@rwscarter- Ryan) about recently while I was on the radio, what is more important? Education or Innovation?
Well here is her answer.
A matter of Education or Innovation: which âlensesâ come first? For a real plastic free revolution we need a solid educational framework that shapes habits and attitudes for finally building a new green culture. Parallel to this process is Innovation on technology, an essential element and an ally for green goals.
We need to be educated to adapt effectively to the new challenges by changing habits and at the same time innovate and make this process easy and sustainable within a world that moves through digitalization. A green future should be based on Education and Innovation and also through an innovative educational framework that delivers values around protection to the environment.
Let´s have a look at some data to wake up to a devastating reality around the environment and in particularly in relation to plastics:
An estimated of 12 million barrels of oil is required to produce the plastic bags used in US each year.
A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute and the number will jump another 20% by 2021*
Around 50% of plastic is used just once and thrown away*
More than 8 million tons of plastic is dumped into our oceans every year*
Alarming figures that wake up our society to a new sensible issue that demands action not only in terms of business options but also on a complete reshape of our lifestyle and system. A revolutionâŚ.
Now, the system moves through a legal framework, is it possible to make a revolution against plastics without a complete reform of the legal system? Even if private initiatives are dominating the stage of the green market is it not enough and we need a full commitment from the public sector and definitely a new ambitious legal status.
Is precisely legislation that boosts a green way of doing business although always with the support of bottom up initiatives. Which is clear is that we cannot rely only on the latest and the progress would come from top down strategies that display commitment and structure for a system change.
We need leaders with vision, -not necessary visionary- but with the political will to make a change. Not only for cancelling the âplastic industryâ but to give alternatives that reconvert the sector into a new and productive industry able to reinvent themselves with innovation and creativity. Is it here that the political support becomes paramount in terms of investment on innovation. From the side of the plastic misuse and irresponsible consumption we must be focused on educating individuals and change their lifestyle no matter the influence of the public sector. The private sector could play a very important role on changing cultural habits by using the speed of social media and the powerful influence of a global structure. Multinationals are key actors to implement new practices and develop new individual habits on an equal impact around the world. In which cultures are not a burden but the necessary complementary element.
Even if political support is a very important factor to take into account, U.S. is a good example that is not necessary essential, which is definitely very important is a legal framework that allows the continuity of pursuing Green goals. The focused policies from Mr. Trump against the own existence of climate change and the investment on clean energies have exposure the power of individual action from millions of citizens in America that want to fight back and are achieving green results with or without public support. This rebellion from the citizenship (coming from all the Political parties) gives the green revolution a new boost and a new vision in which the center of the initiatives are not public. That is precisely what we need for a results-driven strategy against plastics: the determination and awareness from the citizens to make a change of their traditional lifestyle on an almost anarchic basis.
Despite the traditional standardization of concepts, habits and business we must make the effort of âseeing greenâ where others are not able to do so. The environment depends on this individual option of delivering clean practices. Is our responsibility and empower us to become active agents for change.
Vision it´s important to see the devastating impact of plastics in oceans and in our lifestyle, however there is an even more important element that is awareness and information. Both are missing and clearly the data is not coming from the pubic sector but from an active and engage civil society.
Its âa historical momentum for a radical change of the âlensesâ of mistaken traditions and move towards a new vision on green, with or without public support.
*http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/iceland-plastic-free-packaging-own-brand-products-recycling-pollution-environment-a8161081.html
* SDG´s 12+14= the panoptic for plastic waste
*https://www.plasticoceans.org/the-facts/
Increasing employee involvement in workplace sustainability programs is one of the top challenges for organizations. This is not surprising as most businesses face issues with competing priorities, while implementing programs that are informal and voluntary. This post is going to make a departure from the usual topics that are discussed about sustainability buy-in. It will focus on three key questions and strategic approaches that are effective at building sustainability momentum within an organization.
So, letâs take a step back from sustainability specific issues and ask a couple of deeper questions and do a bit of exploring possible approaches.
What motivates us at work?
Dan Pink, an expert on human motivation and the author of the New York Times best seller, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, shows us that there is a huge disconnect between what science knows and what business does. He discusses how 40 years of proven research on human motivation goes largely ignored by companies. Dan outlines, with case study examples, that using intrinsic motivators, across the board, increases engagement, productivity, creativity and satisfaction.
According to Pink, the key drivers to increasing employee performance, productivity and satisfaction are:
Purpose â doing things because they matter and are in service of something larger than ourselves; a higher or outward looking mission
Autonomy â a desire to be self-directed; ownership & responsibility in areas of day-to-day work, life balance, career development, organizational direction, etc.
Mastery â the urge to get better and better at something that matters – learning new skills and build our capacity to address new challenges/talks
In Dan Pinkâs TED talk, âThe Puzzle of Motivationâ, he reveals the substance of his findings from his book. He discusses how the carrots and sticks approach to incentivizing, outside of a surprisingly narrow set of circumstances, largely never works and often destroys creativity. The proven secret to high performance is intrinsic motivation, the drive to do things that matter.
Practical Application: The key here is weaving these 3 drivers into your programming to inspire employee involvement and commitment. I often hear people say, âI tried that once and it didnât workâ. One-off and ad-hoc attempts at fostering buy-in do not work; itâs necessary to use strategic, consistent and embedded approaches to build commitment, community and a supportive culture. Creating momentum may take a bit of time, but consistency builds credibility, accountability, aids in measurement and provides a platform for effectively communicating relevant messaging.
How does being purpose driven increase buy-in and participation?
The latest trend in the corporate world is the shift to establishing a company brand promise and growing profits through purpose-driven business strategies. Research shows purpose-driven organizations that foster shared-value experience a higher level of trust, ability to innovate, employee and customer satisfaction and overall profits.
Simon Sinek, the author of âStart with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Actionâ, tells us that customers donât buy what you do; they buy why you do it. Your companyâs why is the larger purpose that inspires you to do what you do every day beyond the objective of solely making money.
According to John Mackey & Raj Sisodia, the authors of âConscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Businessâ, there are four general categories to consider when determining your organization’s âwhyâ or higher purpose:
1.   Improving quality of life through service
2.   Furthering human knowledge through discovery and knowledge sharing
3.   Achieving excellence, beauty and mastery
4.   Doing the right thing
In Simonâs TED talk, How Great Leaders Inspire Action, he discusses the why (higher purpose), how (value proposition) and what (impact and scale of your offerings) of your business and the importance of starting with and discovering your why. Successful and innovative organizations start with a clear why and create aligned experiences (how) and products (what) around their brand that inspire employees, customers and investors.
Practical Application:Â Sustainability and corporate responsibility (CSR) initiatives are valuable alignment points to illustrate purpose-driven brand experiences that resonate with employees, customers and investors. Aligning sustainability-related activities with organizational purpose and business objectives provide a powerful platform to foster shared value, trust and ultimately buy-in from various stakeholder groups.
How do we build momentum when implementing internal initiatives?
How does an idea get widely adopted over time? We can look to the diffusion of innovation theory, developed by Everett Rogers in 1962. In his book, âDiffusion of Innovationsâ, Rogers explains how, over a period of time, an idea gains momentum and spreads within a social system. This is essentially what Derek Sivers was illustrating in his “how to start a movement” video that was highlighted in Part 1: Steps to follow in this post series.
The theory, illustrated by a bell-curve, is broken into segments: adopters, innovators (2.5%), early adopters (13.5%), early majority (34%), late majority (34%) and laggards (16%). The theory outlines how each category of adopters acts as influencers for the next segment under the curve.  A key effect in the model, which is often referred to the as the tipping point (16%), is where the rate of adoption accelerates and takes on the momentum needed for the innovation to be widely adopted.
Rogers also identified, in the Diffusion of Preventative Innovation, five characteristics that directly affect the probability of adoption of a specific innovation:
1.   Relative advantage â new idea is better than what is already available or in use
2.   Compatibility â compatible with their current habits and values
3.   Complexity â relative ease of use
4.   Trialability â potential adopter may trial it on a limited basis
5.   Observability â innovation is observed in use by other members and their results
Practical Application: When creating your programming, it is key to weave the success characteristics throughout your programming. Explore the five characteristics like a checklist and identify how your program stacks up in each area and where there are areas for improvement.
This model is also an incredibly useful marketing tool. Use the profile for each segment to create a targeted marketing strategy. This approach, using each segment profile, allows for the crafting of relevant and compelling marketing tactics and messages to effectively increase the rate of momentum and adoption.
Want to learn more?
Watch for the next installment of our 6-part âStart a Sustainability Movement in Your Organization â series. Part 3 will focus on how to scale your program, no matter the size, function or structure of your organization.
Start a conversation! Please leave a comment, question or share your experiences below. Also feel free to post any burning issues that you would like to see covered in this series.
Start a Sustainability Movement in Your Organization Series:
Connect with Wendy on :
Twitter:Â @EngageIntl
LinkedIn:Â Wendy Firlotte
Wendy is a Sustainability Employee Engagement Specialist. She specializes in translating high-level strategy and vision into purpose driven, embedded and aligned employee action. Sheâs a great asset to our guest blog here on CrowdLeaf.
âWhen I talk to organizations of all sizes and functions, their biggest pain point is essentially the same, lack of participation. Â Consistently, the two biggest challenges I hear are obstacles to increasing stakeholder buy-in and deal with competing priorities in the workplace.
In corporate responsibility & sustainability, we talk about being purpose driven and embedding sustainability within the organization, but what does that mean exactly? Essentially, we are looking for ways to mobilize employees and resources toward a shared sustainability purpose. In other words, what we want to know is how do we start a sustainability movement? This is the first installment of a 6 part series where we will discuss what starting a sustainability movement means, what it takes and the key elements for success.
Before getting into how to start a sustainability movement within your organization, letâs watch a TED talk by Derek Sivers (3 mins) and break down the basic steps and key insights of starting a movement in general.
Observed steps and key insights from the video:
I love that these insights are clear and simple, but I also wanted to add some key ideas that relate these steps to engaging employees in internal sustainability programs; many of these will be discussed in greater detail later in the series.
Create relevance for the program beyond company purpose. If a mission isnât relevant to employees on a personal level, outside of work, itâs not likely to resonate with them at work either. How does your companyâs sustainability agenda align with a greater purpose, allowing employees to contribute to the global good? Are you relating similar actions in their daily lives at home?
The UN Sustainable Development goals are a great way to create greater overall relevance. It provides a collective (global) way forward to address the worldâs most pressing issues, but allows companies to choose the goals that align with their purpose and materiality priorities. With this greater vision and purpose, employees can participate make the broader connections with the meaning behind their brand experiences.
Meeting people where they are. A key element to increasing participation is by creating programming to engage employees that reflect their varying levels of understanding and willingness to participate. Do you have activities planned to accommodate these levels of employee involvement to meet them at their highest level of engagement and potential impact?
Law of diffusion of innovation principle. According to research, the required percentage of uptake in order to achieve the tipping point when adopting new innovations is only 16 %. (That lovely number makes the task seem more manageable, right?) Here is a great talk by Simon Sinek, where he discusses the law of diffusion in more detail.
Share employee experiences. Create fun, engaging, and relatable experiences for participating employees to share and inspire others to get involved. You could highlight and share articles, videos, blogs, pictures, posts, tweets, etc. Harness the powerful resource of employee influence and amplification in networks, on social media and word of mouth.
Cultivate followers and equip them to be advocates. Advocates and enthusiasts can be your strongest resource. We are very much social beings and are strongly influenced by our peers. Often sustainability practitioners feel overwhelmed when implementing programming as they say, âitâs just me!â I say look for ways to mobilize your employees and make them all owners and leaders. Create a clear process to show your followers how to follow, so they can then easily communicate the process to other potential followers.
Focus on key messaging and ongoing dialogue. Â Be consistent in your messaging, frequency and contact channels with your communications and engagement. Focus on regular messaging communications, activities and feedback. If we want activities to be embedded into our organizational ethos, it needs to be part of an ongoing conversation, not only a few times per year when specific activities are launched.
Want to learn more? Watch for the next installment of her 6-part âStart a sustainability movement â series. Part 2 will focus on building stakeholder buy-in at every level of the organization.
Start a Sustainability Movement Series:
Leave a Comment! We would love to hear your thoughts! Please leave a comment or question below. Also feel free to post any burning issues that you would like to see covered in this series.
You can find Wendy on Twitter:@EngageIntl or LinkedIn: Wendy Firlotte
Wendy is a Sustainability Employee Engagement Specialist. She specializes in translating high-level strategy and vision into purpose driven, embedded and aligned employee action. She’s a great asset to our guest blog here on CrowdLeaf.
Used cups are not only a challenge for recycle depending on materials and waste management, but also a big waste of space when binned and thrown away and into trash bins.
Too often we walk along streets and see trash cans quite exploding or worst we have to deal with this problem in our offices near coffee break areas or vending machines.
This is my personal experience and honestly, watching this garbage obscenity and the number of wasting bags used for waste management, I couldn’t take it anymore to see all that space wasted.
So I tried to find a solution to this problem, and too bad I found only big machines which are awesome to collect and/or destroy used cups managing big numbers, but too big and too expensive to install in my office or my home.
So here came the idea: realize a device to be inserted into the bin that let me collect and stack my used cups easily instead of trying every time to stack one into another one and often failing.
The solution should be low cost, small size and possibly affordable to everyone and most important could be applied to almost every type of existing trash bins around the world.
After a lot of modifications and tests finally a brand new tool was born to satisfy my needs: Daizyp. And using it for the first times gives me knowledge to use it even for other type of waste, or for example I found it great when using it in my office desk bin to collect coffee plastic cups into Daizyp and paper into the bin. A smart and eco-friendly solution all-in-one!
Daizyp helps people to collect used cups stacking them nicely avoiding waste of space and at the same time improving recycle collecting cups all together easily.
Daizyp transforms your trash bin into a smart one and can be installed in almost every type of trash bin.
Install and using it is very simple, all you have to do is inserting it into your bin (or outside the bin) and begin to throw inside it your used cups.
All the cups will stack together and when full emptying Daizyp is a simple and fast operation: you release the pin on the bottom and let the stacked cups fall into waste bag and you’re done.
Daizyp benefits are many and helps you:
Daizyp comes in 2 sizes version: normal size (84mm diameter) for plastic cups and glasses, and XL size (95mm diameter ) for fast food or big cups.
Daizyp project is young but promising: these days we are performing tests at our friend’s offices and small business and they are enthusiastics about it!
We are working for crowdfunding campaign scheduled for the first quarter 2017 and in the meantime trying to let people know Daizyp, the benefits it will bring and join the Daizyp recycle revolution.
Discover more on www.daizyp.com or follow Daizyp @thedaizyp
I would like to take this opportunity to once again thank the great @MarIntroini for writing another guest post for us.
The piece was also posted here on Mar’s blog.
Resilience seems to be just another fashion word that defines the need of renewed architecture projects and technology systems. However resilience is a holistic concept that demands and in-depth review of current standards of living as well as the built of new economic-financial codes under the framework of a strong political will. The capacity of changing a status quo that is not responsive is the challenge for facing uncertainty effectively.
Since the start of the modern era, cities become a factor of development but also of chaos. More and more people migrate to urban areas and is expected that 70% of the world population will live in cities by 2050 which create the ambitious goal for a modern way of living: an urban life that includes the benefits from nature. By the contrary of what we could imagine, it´s possible! Changing rural for urban life does not necessary means loosing the contact with nature and a clean environment. Is a matter of innovation and changing habits: vertical gardens, green roofs, parks, more walk able areas, plants turn to generators of electricity, transport powered by clean energies, solar, wind energy, urban farming, etc. All of the above are green pieces of an urban puzzle that boost resilience.
Climate change and their growing threats have exposure our weakness to face crisis and the lack of adaptation methods that encompasses a new normal of drought, floods and an unusual weather that affects crops, hence food habits. Emergency situations are not only a matter of humanitarian aid âthat need to be reshaped according to the new reality- but of adaptation policies that are also an urgent matter, even if there results may not be perceived in the short term. Prevention measures are not a priority anymore but adaptation to make resilience a real goal; through strong innovate policies that could go in harmony with those adaptive policies.
To get to 100% resilient cities is paramount to be aware of the need of a systemic process in which all elements are of equal importance. There is one pillar that has a key role: innovation in technology and architecture in conjunction with the creativity of building new behavioural codes political and individually.Without innovation all sides of this revolutionary process means nothing if it is not combined with a strong political will and a smart distribution of resources.
In this process of adaptation, education plays a paramount role to produce âadaptive mindsâ able to become a catalyzer of changes by reforming the system in a holistic way. Therefore politics, economics, finances and civil society must joint together in an effort to change habits and boost creativity towards green minds.
To achieve those goals a reform of the entire system in a strategic plan in which political old codes are left aside and a new political class emerges to design with creativity and determination the path for a reformed system.
Being Green is not another fashion attitude but an essential pillar to become resilient towards the new challenges that the environment is posing. A change of mind is the password to start this creative process of living in âgreen codeâ.
CrowdLeaf, we have a problem, a big one. Â A problem I do not need to tell you, your probably here reading this because you know of this problem. C02 emissions and the catastrophic damage it causes to our climate and environment. The collective problem of climate change, needs a collective response. So on this the first blog I am doing for CrowdLeaf, I would like to say thank you for joining in a collective response to this collective problem.
A news story caught my eye recently, for me it symbolises the momentum that we have behind tackling the emissions, it is a story of Carbon capture. Carbon Capture is one way in which we can mitigate the negative effect we are having on the world and we should be doing all we can to capture as much carbon dioxide as we can from the root causes as well as what we can to lower the amount of causes of emissions.
First I want to put an argument to bed, I have been told that carbon capture just allows bad behavior, or at least bad practice to go on longer. I get the angle but I put this to you, some decisions will be made around the world that we will have no power over, we have no say in and that will go ahead regardless. Only through advancements in this sort of technology can we mitigate these damages while we push for a better world. In, local, company, national, pan national or global agreements this sort of technology strengthens our hand when we are entering negotiations around emissions and lowers the cost of tackling the problems we face.
In global negotiations such as COP21 which happened in Paris recently are about overcoming a lot of vested interests and sadly about a lot of money that does quite well from the status quo. This is where carbon capture really shows its strength, the emergence of new technologies allows more uptake for less costs and the increased bargaining power that comes with a lower cost of carbon reduction technologies is a good result for us.
There is a noble and pragmatic case behind carbon capture, the world would be a lot worse if we did not try and at least mitigate the negative externalities that arise from what is the largest cause of emissions. invest in new innovations to stop emissions is still technology that can be used in other countries where our movement may not be as strong. There is not yet the capacity on renewable energy and sustainable alternatives to shut off these very dirty but very profitable industries. So for every increase in the quantities of C02 that can be captured is a minor victory.
Last year the government withdrew its support for carbon capture, but today I can announce that despite losing state backing, the C02 soaking sponge keeps going with the support of baking Soda! – Through the use of 3D printers scientists have been able to make a new sponge-like substance that captures C02 and creates backing soda. The sponge is made to increase the surface area and when the surface makes contact with CO2 they react and create baking soda through the mixing of water, C02 and sodium carbonate.
The beauty of this is that baking soda has a market, green baking soda has a far more ethical tinge to add to a future kitchen cabinet. If you’ll excuse the cliche if this works ‘were really cooking on gas now’. Â Â CrowdLeaf wish everyone on the team the best of luck in creating the final product and hope they can get it to market as soon as.