Need somewhere to start? How about the most wanted pages; or the pages we know need more work; or even the stub that somebody else has started, but hasn't been able to finish.
Advances in information technology have enabled many communities to emerge and work together to solve problems both locally and internationally. The technology of “Web 2.0″ accentuate this phenomenon. Unfortunately, the inefficiency of our systems and processes can lead to many waste and pollution.
Based on this observation, Open Sustainability provides a framework for sustainable data governance (Sustainability Governance Framework) to integrate sustainability at the heart of business practices. Collaborative open source project gathers around a wiki an active community that shares a main tenet: the importance of information management to meet the complex challenges of sustainable development. Indeed, improved data management enables organizations to better understand and assess the environmental and social impact of their decisions. Similarly, better knowledge sharing will promote the capitalization of experience. It is also to encourage an open and transparent to companies and especially publishers and solution integration, sustainable development subject to politicization and growing investment …
The method under development, will be based on FISDev, a collaborative web tool open source, and MIKE2.0, an open source framework for knowledge management developed by BearingPoint. Cut into 5 phases, the approach is comprehensive. She is already rich in content, offers many best practices and can be integrated with other methodologies.
First we just wanted to say a big thanks to you all for registering on open-sustainability. Then to fill you in on the latest we have just finished updating the look and feel of the site. While keeping true to our wiki roots we have refreshed the look and navigation. Three Components to open-sustainability We have also tried to simplify access to the site through the following core pathways from the home page:
Open-sustainability Approach – Follow the Guiding Principles of Sustainability, Openness, Collaboration and Information-Centricity
Sustainability Governance Framework – Once guiding principles are understood follow the Five Phases to embed sustainability into your operations
FISDev Collaborative Platform – Utilize social media technologies to help develop a sustainability program for your organization
Getting involved We would first like to thank BearingPoint for their support of open-sustainability. We are looking for members so if you are interested please check out membership options. To ensure that we have a truly open and balanced framework we need your help to review and edit content. Sustainability is about the convergence of 3 sectors - economic, social and environment, and the framework needs to represent all interests.
What you can do
Please complete your profile to help demonstrate the credibility and quality of our community. Also to get you going:
Make sure to add a photo so we can feature you on the home page
So I thought I would give an update on my previous post about wasted telephone directories. A number of people loved the little ways we can help make the world a better place!
I wish I could report that it worked out well but it didn’t… The yellowpages were still delivered and were all sitting there on our doorstep for ages as no one wanted them! I feel bad as I know that a number of people in our apartment building had told me that went to the site and also opted out.
But we can’t be deterred by minor setbacks as trying to change the system takes time and patience. So I contacted the guys at www.yellowpagesgoesgreen.org about the issue. They promptly responded very apologetic (Not that I blame these guys!) and they gave me another site to register with as well. So here is this one as well www.yellowpagesoptout.com
After the phonebooks sat there for a while I decided to take the initiative to recycle them all. If you are in Chicago here is a great resource for what and where you can recycle. This list was put together by another passionate individual, thanks Jeff.
ps. I note that yellow pages are still rotting on everyone else’s doorsteps! We need to try harder to get the message out – we really don’t want them!
Who here has heard this question over the course of their sustainability work?
It’s a fair assumption that everyone reading this post answered ‘me!’- because it is an inevitable question facing any sustainability champion/consultant. Having a simple, but logical and actionable answer is a critical success factor for any sustainability work. To assist us all in this endeavor, it would be wonderful to hear your feedback on Open-Sustainability’s working definition here. Even better- we’d love you to edit the wiki and share your definition of sustainability. And please share your thoughts and comments on how you define sustainabilty when working with organizations.
While sitting in the audience at a recent Green Collar Jobs in Manufacturing event at Oakton Community College I started to think of new categories of jobs. Well you have the White Collar desk jobs that are now helping the environment being called Green Collar Jobs (ie white + green = green). An example of these are new ‘Carbon Accounting’ jobs that are needed to help with such programs as the US Environmental Protection Agency requiring more than 10,000 facilities to begin reporting carbon emissions in 2010. Businesses of all sizes will need certified greenhouse gas professionals. You also have the big 4 consulting companies getting into sustainability strategy consulting along with sustainability report assurance and auditing. Just like financial reporting but it’s voluntary. While the percentage of work actually being classified as green we will start to develop shades of green jobs. Deep green jobs are the ones at NGOs like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth through to lighter green jobs of those sale people selling you somewhat ‘green products’.
We also have the exciting jobs being created by engineers and people within manufacturing and green construction. Where we once called people working in manufacturing, mining, building and construction trades ‘blue collar’ workers which sounds a little gloomy, we can now call them ‘yellow collar’ workers if they are involved in things such as LEED buildings, renewable energy construction and HVAC efficiency. Doesn’t it sound a little sunnier! Green + Blue = Yellow! I also heard at the conference where they are not only trying to teach new green jobs but they are also trying to teach a more high-tech green version. Where we can take advantage of advancements in technology better and students are even better adapted to future changes.
It is impossible to overstate the significance of the western scientific method or its impact in driving human innovation. However there is a side effect of this method that is concerning. It’s been called the siloing effect, or the tragedy of the drill holes. You are probably familiar with it, but it looks a little something like this: in order to make tremendous advancements in nano-technology or information technology (just for example), individuals inevitably spend their entire careers drilling down into the silo of one particular discipline. Within this particular field everyone speaks one language- with a certain set of terms and common practices of relating. The tragedy comes as we lose the ability to speak to our friends in neighboring silos. With each academic and professional discipline possessing it’s own language and culture, the deeper down you drill into your own field, the harder it becomes to climb out of the drill hole and communicate with the rest of the world.
Sustainability is forcing us to confront this problem. No single breakthrough will comprehensively address our current sustainability challenge. We need to collaborate and innovate on a scale never seen before, across disciplines, in order to find a new way forward. However the drill-holes in which all of us separately operate make that a tremendous challenge. Often when you try and work across disciplines (for example- an engineer with an economist) the language and cultural barriers become literally insurmountable.
This is a challenge we face daily here at Open-Sustainability. The world of Information Knowledge Management has progressed with leaps and bounds. Those advancing the field are so successful in their efforts, that many of us benefiting are actually unaware of the discipline, and completely oblivious when it comes to the terms and tools driving the field forward. But Information knowledge management is ESSENTIAL to finding a sustainable path forward. In fact, many have argued an inability to share and comprehend all the data at hand is the largest barrier to finding innovative, practical sustainability solutions.
Open-Sustainability is hoping to straddle the divide between the important field of information knowledge management and hard working sustainability practitioners- people who have spent years studying the environmental and social manifestations of unsustainable behavior, and creating frameworks and guidelines for a sustainable path forward. However it’s not an easy task. We’re always exploring new ways of making this resource as rigorous and deep as is needed to be a comprehensive information management framework as well as sustainability framework, without getting lost in the terminology of our separate drill holes.
Any and all suggestions on addressing this challenge are greatly appreciated.
Since arriving in the US and living in a populated area I have seen far too many telephone directories rotting on apartment doorsteps. So have tried to do something about it my building. There is a simple service offered where you can opt out of unwanted directories www.yellowpagesgoesgreen.org. Some statistics from their site are to produce the 500 million telephone directories each year in the US:
* 19 million trees need to be harvested
* 1.6 billion pounds of paper are wasted
* 7.2 million barrels of oil are misspent in their processing (not including the wasted gas used for their delivery to your doorstep)
* 268,000 cubic yards of landfill are taken up
* 3.2 billion kilowatt hours of electricity are squandered
I emailed everyone in my building to opt out if they wanted to. If they choose not too they need to pick up their phone book as soon as they arrive as they seem to sit there for months! There is always the option of reordering one once off in the future by dialing 1 800 346 4377.
Also remember to keep a list of emergency numbers just in case you can’t get access to good ol Google when the plumbing breaks!
From the Guardian – “We are launching this sustainability blog because we would like to start a conversation with our many and varied stakeholders.
As you can see from this site, we already open up many of our articles to comments, but we now want to go deeper into the everyday activities we are engaged with on our sustainability journey.
What we are essentially seeking to do is go beyond traditional corporate social responsibility reporting, which often claims to be based on stakeholder engagement, but does not actually allow interested parties to comment on content that is publicly available.”
Dr. Albert A. Bartlet has posted a most insightful series of videos looking at sustainability and our obsession with growth in this world of finite resource. He makes some striking points, and provides supporting evidence and reasoning showing the consequences for us all if we ‘progress’ with our growth plans in the same way as we have been. Here they are:
In summary, what does he say?
1. We are addicted to growth (and we don’t understand the consequences)
2. The fuel will run out more quickly than people are aware of or will admit
3. Our growth in population and energy consumption is at odds with what the environment can support and will see a crunch within the lifetime of children today
He gives many eloquent, colorful, and well argued examples with plenty of data backup.
He says:
4. We must educate all of our people to an understanding of the arithmetic and consequences of growth, especially in terms of populations and in terms of the earth’s finite resources.
5. Growth cannot be sustained.
6. Democracy cannot survive over population.
7. If there is ever a time that the human race needs people who can think, it is now….. thinking is very upsetting…. it tells us things we’d rather not know… but things that will be our undoing if we do not understand them and create our future by action in light of that thinking.
8. Many messages from politicians and the media are spoken from an emotional and fear based position of denial, often with no rationale, let alone evidence
9. We cannot let other people do our thinking for us.
From Environmental Leader: A Net Impact panel discusses strategies to advance corporate social responsibility at large companies including Ford, Starbucks and Home Depot.
