Author Archives: Ruth Ann

About Ruth Ann

Founder and Curator of EarthSayers.tv, voices of Sustainability, the only specialized search engine to curated video content in the service of Sustainability.

Water and Sustainability Letter

Dear friends and colleagues,

Nothing is more fundamental to sustainability than water. It defines the surface of our planet, prescribes what is necessary to our life, and challenges hopes for worldwide prosperity. The voices of sustainability who address water span a wide range of issues, programs, disciplines, professions, geographies, industries, opportunities, catastrophes, and toxins making it difficult, but not impossible, to organize and connect them under the one umbrella of sustainability. We have gathered together on EarthSayers over a hundred of these voices under three special collections – 1 Water, Oceans, and, most recently, Plastic in Our Oceans. Our intent is to increase awareness of sustainability and advance the leadership.

It was by meeting one such leader, Howard Lack, CEO of the UK Foundation Plastic Oceans, that it became obvious to me that the big problem with plastic in our oceans needs to be called out and the various messages and approaches brought together in one place on EarthSayers.tv by creating a special collection. We interviewed Howard when he was in San Francisco so we could share his passion, plans, and partners with you and contribute to his goal of increasing awareness. Howard, like the naturalist David Attenborough whom he quotes believes “when people are aware of the problem they want to solve the problem.” There are a good number of us around the world that are working under this belief and in my next blog post I will call out ocean rower and environmental campaigner, Roz Savage, to share her first-hand experience with plastic in our oceans.

Do visit the Plastic in Our Oceans special collection and give a listen to Howard here. Plastic Oceans is always looking for sponsors to cover the operational costs of achieving its objectives. Sponsorship can of course be financial commitment, however it could also entail the provision of products or services that we need. Talk to them about how you would like to be involved. We did.

Cordially, Ruth Ann

Ruth Ann Barrett, sustainability advocate, January 30, 2014, Portland, Oregon.

Innovation and Social Sustainability

We recently curated and added to the EarthSayers.tv collection two video interviews of women seeking out innovation in nutrition and community development the more social or people aspect of sustainability.

Isabel Hoffman

TellSpec -What’s in Your Food? (Video here)

Isabel Hoffmann CEO of TellSpec updates with her CTO Stephen Watson, their progress over the last three months on the TellSpec handheld device. The device beams a low-powered laser at the food you wish to analyze, measures the reflected light with a spectrometer, and sends the data via your smart phone, computer, or tablet to TellSpec’s servers in the cloud. Know more about what you eat as the information captured is then displayed on your computer, tablet or smart phone so you can intelligently decide if you want to buy or eat the food. While we tend to see hardware solutions as being in the the realm of tech innovation, and it is, sustainability suggests we emphasize the social path and its use for maintaining the health of our citizens and food safety. Sustainability > People > Health > Nutrition and Wellness.

Karen Litfin

Ecovillages – Integrating people, planet, and prosperity at the community level (video here)

Karen Litfin is a faculty member in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington. She specializes in global environmental politics, with core interests in green theory, the science/policy interface, and “person/planet politics.” In this interview she talks about her book, Ecovillages: Lessons for Sustainable Community having traveled to ecovillages on five continents.

Sustainability > People > Cities and Communities> Community Development >EcoVillages

Putting Typhoon Haiyan in the context of the “Fierce Urgency of Now.”

What brings home the catastrophe of Typhoon Haiyan are two speeches I recently added to EarthSayerstv especially in the context of the urgency of addressing climate change and what we citizens need to see happen as suggested by Jeffrey Sachs in today’s Financial Times. Home IF we take the time to listen to our EarthSayers Mary Robinson and Jeffrey Sachs.

First, Mary Robinson addressed climate justice in a speech to participants at the BSR (Business Social Responsibility) conference, November 5-8 in San Francisco. She talks about climate justice and the fact that the people least responsible for it are the most impacted as is the case in the Philippines. She reminds us of the importance today of Martin Luther King’s phrase, “the fierce urgency of now.” Mary Robinson served as the seventh, and first female, President of Ireland from 1990 to 1997, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, from 1997 to 2002. She heads up the Mary Robinson Foundation on Climate Justice.

Secondly, Jeffrey Sachs presents the key note presentation on sustainability, most particularly sustainable development (environmental and economic) for the first Global Grand Challenges Summit 2013 in London. The lecture is on how sustainable development must occur and how countries are not doing enough to meet this in either terms of energy and the economy. Video Published on Mar 30, 2013.

What you and I need to see happen:

In an October 15th 2013 article in the Financial Times in response to the climate catastrophe of Typhoon Haiyan, Jeffrey Sachs notes “People need to see credible energy plans, pathways for each country and region to a prosperous low-carbon future. Such pathways can be found, but aside from excellent work in a handful of places, such as the UK, Denmark and California, such long-term planning has not been done… The basic elements of a pathway include four key pillars: more electricity from low-carbon technologies rather than coal; replacing fossil fuels with electricity as the fuel source for sectors such as cars and household heating; greater energy efficiency in industry and the home; and the end of deforestation (which emits carbon).

Jeffrey D. Sachs is a world-renowned professor of economics, leader in sustainable development, senior UN advisor, bestselling author, and syndicated columnist.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, November 15, 2013, Portland, Oregon.

Sustainability and Ocean Conservation: The America’s Cup and Sailors for the Sea

Sailors for the Sea has a cause and it’s ocean conservation. The 34th America’s Cup, an international sporting event that is a regatta by any other name, came together under the sustainability flag with a focus on the Clean Regattas Program and ocean conservation. Since July 2011, Sailors for the Sea has worked with the America’s Cup Event Authority to support the vision and plan of delivering a model sustainability sporting event. Sounds simple enough.

In my previous blog post I featured three interviews with Jill Savery head of sustainability for the America’s Cup and if you listened to her (video here) you came to understand a sustainability plan for a sporting event of this magnitude was anything but simple and making it happen was a big challenge.

Dan Pingaro

In this post I am focusing on an interview with Dan Pingaro, Executive Director of Sailors for the Sea. Published in three parts, America’s Cup Clean Regatta, emphasizes their work with Jill and the collaboration it took between their organizations and among a whole host of partners and vendors, not to mention fans from all over the world, who all contributed to reducing significantly the carbon footprint of this event. A second video, Ocean Conservation and Sailors for the Sea Programs, is about their Clean Regattas Program and Rainy Day Kits, environmental lesson plans focused on marine ecology that can be taught to students in sailing programs and other low resource environments around the world.

While interviewing Dan I took the opportunity to ask him about his career as a sustainability and ocean conservation advocate and in this, the third video, A Passion for Ocean Conservation, he talks about how his passion, education, and experience combined with an emphasis on collaboration all came together to help his team grow Sailors for the Sea into an international organization.

In October Sailors for the Sea awarded the 34th America’s Cup their highest level Clean Regattas certification! According to David Rockefeller, Jr., chairman and co-founder, Sailors for the Sea, “The collaborative efforts between Sailors for the Sea and ACEA resulted in an expanded Clean Regattas program that will benefit the ocean that boaters rely on, and established a model framework within which other world-class sporting events can strive to achieve the highest possible levels of sustainability.”

We can all learn from this collaboration and the leadership provided by Jill Savery and Dan Pingaro, their staff members, and the hundreds of volunteers who all worked hard and together.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, Portland, Oregon, October 31, 2013.

Sustainability at the America’s Cup with Jill Savery

Jill Savery

EarthSayers.tv received press credentials to cover the 34th America’s Cup in San Francisco last month. If you are like many of my friends you may be wondering how it is that EarthSayers, voices of sustainability covers a major sporting event. When you see the first of a series of interviews we did during the event you will better understand the emerging field of event sustainability and the specialty within, sporting events. Our first interview to be released is with author and Olympic Gold Medalist Jill Savery and head of sustainability for the America’s Cup Event Authority. The interview is published as three videos:

What Is Sustainability? The best definitions of sustainability come out of the application of its principles and practices and in this interview Jill talks about embedding sustainability in all of the various roles at this major and complex sporting event. Click here to view video interview. (1:16)

Sustainability at the America’s Cup Finals. Stem to stern sustainability reflects total integration ranging from power and fuel to public transportation and partnering with organizations such as Sailors For the Sea, the official Clean Regattas partner, and with Offsetters, the Official Carbon Credit Supplier and their Great Bear Forest Carbon Project. There is no better way to understand the complexity and challenges facing Jill when she took on the job than to hear her talk about “minimizing any potentially negative impacts of this event here in San Francisco whether it’s on land or in the water and then maximizing all possible legacy benefits for the City of San Francisco and the Bay.” Recently, Sailors for the Sea proudly announced that the 34th America’s Cup earned a Sailors for the Sea Platinum Level Clean Regattas certification, the highest level possible reflecting the success of Jill and her team at sustainability achieving goals and objectives. View this informative interview with Jill by clicking here. (7:49)

Sustainability and Sport. Olympic Gold Medal Winner Jill Savery talks about her career in the field of sustainability, particularly sporting events and sports. In addition to the America’s Cup her professional experience included the United States Olympic Committee, the London 2012 Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, the Chicago 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games bid team, the England 2018 FIFA World CupTM bid team, and several municipalities in the United States to embed sustainability into operations. (3:55)

Throughout her life she has coached and mentored athletes for over two decades. Savery earned a Master’s Degree in Environmental Management from Yale University, and a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of California at Berkeley. In 1996, Savery won an Olympic gold medal in synchronized swimming, and was later inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

This video is in our Leadership Development special collection, here, on EarthSayers.tv, Voices of Sustainability.

So, we covered sustainability at the America’s Cup and hope to have the opportunity to do the same at other major events so as to shine the spotlight on the sustainability advocates and professionals who are reducing their event carbon footprint creatively and with respect for our environment and people. Increasing sustainability awareness and advancing the leadership is our objective here at Earthsayers.

We didn’t miss out on any of the excitement of the races and witnessed the amazing “never give up” attitude of Jimmy Spithill and his crew, Oracle Team USA, as they came from eight races behind to win the Cup. (video here communicates excitement level).

Our team consisted of myself as producer/interviewer, David Okimoto, videographer and Mary Kay Okimoto, logistics.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Portland, Oregon, October 28, 2013

Artists, Environmentalists and a Prince as Sustainability Advocates

Roger Renaldi

We recently added to our video collection (keyword phrase, beliefs and attitudes) the CBS news story by Steve Hartman about the NY photographer Roger Renaldi and his project, Touching Strangers. It got me to thinking how often we think of sustainability solely in the context of environmentalism, ignoring the social element of sustainability and most particularly the values and beliefs we carry with us that blind us to our own humanity and interconnectedness. We often ignore our artists and musicians as sustainability advocates because they are addressing culture and consciousness – a major category of social sustainability encompassing keyword phrases such as beliefs and attitudes, conservation, consumerism, and spirituality.

I think Edward Burtynsky, a Canadian photographer and artist known for his large-format photographs of industrial landscapes, expresses this shift from an “ism” to sustainability and the importance of consciousness very clearly in a radio interview:

“Well, I don’t know if I’m technically an environmentalist. I see myself more as an advocate for sustainability and that does include looking after the environment but also includes looking at the fact that we have employment, that our economy is in shape, that we

Edward Burtynsky

have a good judiciary that’s there, that’s part of the sustainable movement, it just isn’t environment, if you don’t have those two other components then environment doesn’t come into play.” He goes on to add, “I think it is interesting as an artist to create dialogue to bring these issues into consciousness…” Listen to the entire interview, The Scale of It All.

However, many environmental leaders aren’t that different from artists if we listen closely and even if they don’t actually use the S word. As an example, environmental advocate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. noted in a recent video interview, “When I started doing environmental advocacy I understood that first of all we are not protecting the environment for the sake of the fishes and birds so much as for our own sake because we recognize that nature is the infrastructure of our communities.”

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Seek out and advance our visionaries, wisdom keepers, and leaders with the ability to direct our attention to the elements of people, planet and prosperity and represent them as nested together rather than as columns or pillars and, most importantly, as connected to the unifying principle of sustainability eloquently expressed by Mr. Kennedy in the same interview, “to create communities for our children that provide them with the same opportunities for dignity and enrichment and prosperity and good health as the communities that our parents gave us.” A guiding principle of sustainability nearly everyone can understand and embrace and a good response to the question, What is sustainability?

Kumi Naidoo

In the same vein, I recently listened to the Bill Moyers’ interview of Kumi Naidoo, environmental and human rights activist, now heading up Greenpeace International talking about the urgency of climate change. Mr. Nadoo says he constantly in his conversations with the leaders of fossil fuel companies says to them, “…put your children and your grand children’s future in the middle of our conversation. I think history is going to judge this generation of adult leaders extremely harshly…there is no excuse for not taking bold, urgent action, and do it in a creative way that gives us a win for the climate, jobs and addressing things like economic development.”

HRH Prince Charles reiterates the same underlying principle when addressing climate change deniers at a conference, The Road to a Low Carbon Prosperity (2011).

Prince Charles

“I ask how these people are going to face their grandchildren and admit to them that they actually failed their future. That they ignored all the clear warning signs by passing them off as merely part of a cyclical process…that they had refused to heed the desperate calls of those last remaining traditional societies throughout the world who warned consistently, consistently of catastrophe, because they could read the signs of impending disintegration in the ever more violent extreme aberrations of the normal patterns of nature.” You can hear his comments in this video.

A shift in our thinking and language towards representing sustainability as nesting elements, rather than columns or laundry lists of issues and programs, coupled with integrating the guiding principle of seven generations into our conversations, would go a long way in breaking down the sectors, silos, realms, disciplines, and “isms” that have become polarizing forces. The negative impact of our unconsciousness and disconnectedness should not be minimized, but like the future for our children, moved front and center into our conversations, speeches, and presentations. The highly commercial laden language of the status quo tinted green should not be confused with that of sustainability.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, October 18, 2013, Portland, Oregon.

Sustainability:Water: Video Series

“Climate change is changing the statistics, we can’t use the past as a very good predictor anymore.”

Tom Harmon

Dr. Tom Harmon of the Water Sustainability Project goes on to say, “We’ve relied on past history to try and judge how much water we’ll have and statistically that used to work out, but now climate change is changing the statistics and we can’t use the past as a very good predictor anymore.” He’s talking about this limitation in the context of the Sierra Nevada Snow Pack & Snow Melt that provides drinking water to about 30% of California residents, irrigation water to the $35B agricultural industry, and water to run the hydroelectic power industry that serves up 15% of California electricity. Being able to predict how much water and when is crucial to the management of water resources.

The connection of climate change and water to sustainability is made clear in an online video series, Sustainability:Water. The series brings into focus the challenges we have around “wanting water that is healthy, enjoyable, and safe” here in the United States in our cities, farmlands, mountains, rivers and lakes.

Martha Conklin

The Sierra Nevada Snow pack and Snow Melt video featuring Scientists Tom Harmon and Martha Conklin of UC Merced is one of si x videos in the collection, Sustainability:Water, produced by NBC News’ educational arm NBC Learn, and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The seventh video is The Water Cycle an animated primer on the flow and storage processes that supports life on earth. This collection aims to help people become more conscious of the threats to our water supply, from human activity and climate variability, and understand the steps that need to be taken to maintain it.

The other five videos in the collection are:

The Ogallala Aquifer, Kansas farmers Stan Townsend and Mitchell Baalman with Scientist David Hyndman from Michigan State University -pumping out water for crop irrigation far faster than natural seepage of rainwater can replenish it;

Los Angeles and Water Import featuring UCLA researchers Stephanie Pincetl and Mark Gold – nearly 10 million people needing water;

Baltimore’s Urban Streams with Scientist Claire Welty of the University of Maryland-Baltimore County – the Chesapeake is facing an environmental crisis due to pollutants;

Nutrient Loading in Lake Erie, Researchers Anna Michalak, Tom Bridgeman, and Pete Richards, University of Toledo’s Lake Erie Center – a vital source of drinking water for 11 million people; and

Dead Trees and Dirty Water In The Rockies, with Scientists Reed Maxwell of Colorado School of Mines and John Stednick of Colorado State University – the Rocky Mountains supply water to more than 60 million homes in the West.

Partnership

Through private-public partnerships such as the one that produced this collection, sustainability awareness is increased and the focus on water and the effects of climate change brings home the need for education and research around threats to our water supply. The NSF with an annual budget of about $7.0 billion (FY 2012), is the funding source for approximately 20 percent of all federally supported basic research conducted by America’s colleges and universities. NBC Learn is the educational arm of NBC News dedicated to providing resources for students, teachers and lifelong learners.

Let’s work to promote the series by linking and embedding the videos in our blogs, on our Websites, and in educational published as part of CSR programs.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, August 1, 2013, Cleveland, Ohio

Are We Afraid to Call It Climate Change?

First, let me raise a few more questions.

Will we continue to talk about the changes in climate, climate variability, warming temperatures, extreme weather, exceptional drought, or Hurricane Sandy, but not use the term climate change so we as sustainability advocates don’t step on anyone’s toes? Why are we targeting the 12,000 folks a month using Google to search on, say, climate variability, only a fourth of them from the United States and not the estimated 2,240,000 citizens searching monthly using the term, climate change, 30% of them in the United States?

Should we even care about the 3,600 searchers using the term climate change hoax, considerably less than the 18,000 wanting information on the global warming hoax, a majority of these searchers, 66%, being from the United States? Are we not at the back of the pack addressing the stragglers when we fail to title, describe, and tag properly our papers, blog posts, reports, and videos addressing global warming and climate change?

The mainstream media appears to be in the back somewhere. When on June 25th the President of the United States makes a major address on climate change it doesn’t register on the dial with the press, but it does cause a spike in search traffic, so the Web part of the awareness cycle is working even if TV isn’t. We need both.

Just how much of a snoozer was the President’s speech in terms of “news” was discussed by Bill Moyers and Marty Kaplan, the Norman Lear Professor of Entertainment, Media and Society. Here is a four-minute video clip of their conversation. In the video see how Fox News used a smidgen of the President’s speech as a segue way to the author of Red Hot Lies – a lesson in distraction and manipulation. Bill Moyers references an infographic by Think Progress that sums it all up as in zero seconds for major programs.

In the case of building awareness, no news is not good news.

Are people afraid to talk directly about climate change? Some may have a good reason to be afraid. There are reports of climatologists loosing jobs because they expressed a belief in climate change, or didn’t, depending on the political climate in their State or their boss. For a flavor of the pressures professionals can find themselves under listen to This American Life, podcast 495, Hot In My Backyard, May 13, 2013 featuring the story of Colorado’s State Climatologist, Nolan Doesken.

Three years ago I wrote a blog post citing Elizabeth Kolbert reporting in the The New Yorker “a quarter of the TV weather-casters AGREE with the statement ‘global warming is a scam,’ and nearly two-thirds believe that, if warming is occurring, it is caused mostly by natural change.” While I can’t find a study to confirm a shift in the thinking of these folks over the last three years I can appreciate this headline on the Weather Channel last week (Jul 24, 2013) as a sign of a shift, an increasing awareness:

“Poison Ivy is Growing Out of Control, Thanks to Climate Change”

Robinson

Fortunately, business leaders such as General Motor’s Mike Robinson, Vice President of Sustainability and Global Regulatory Affairs are openly discussing the importance of preventing climate change. In this video posted by 3BL Media Mike talks about the steps GM is taking to stop climate change and why it is important to address it. The North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) hosted a panel, Business in the Age of Climate Change with leaders from the Ford Motor Company and the WWF (video here). Elected officials including President Obama are stepping up to the plate such as Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley’s presentation at a state-wide Climate Change Summit, and Mayor Bloomberg”s speech, “A Stronger, More Resilient New York.”

GM Works with Ceres, an advocacy .org for sustainability leadership, “to reduce carbon emissions, improve energy efficiency and increase investment in a clean energy economy.” The Ceres Climate Declaration (full list here) signed by GM and a host of companies makes it clear where they stand on climate science. Sign the declaration as an individual and/or company here and join with Levi Strauss & Co., The Weather Company, Method, L’Oreal, Nike, AMD, Intel and many more.

What’s in a name? When it comes to search and using the Web to educate and inspire, terminology is extremely important. Denial of climate change is what the stragglers are chatting about. Let’s move on. As sustainability advocates target those active in the learning cycle on climate change (searching on Google and YouTube qualifies an individual as active) to increase awareness and emphasize the connections to the pressing issues of water, energy, and even poison ivy. Let’s as sustainability advocates emphasize in our conversations and communications the leaders among us who openly discuss climate change and are working to do something about it. Distance yourself and company from organizations associated with skepticism, the Heartland Institute being identified as the most prominent one by the Economist in May 2012, a quote featured here on the Heartland Website.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, July 29, 2013, Cleveland, Ohio

Everyone Uses Social Media to Educate and Inspire

Use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest as education channels. Why?

The reasons vary and the main one, selling more stuff, fits with the relentless commercialization of the Web, yet social media, especially the four called out above, should be viewed as education channels for growing a movement, educating our citizens, and/or advancing champions and innovators. What I am suggesting is all of the people in an organization who are active on the Web, and that should be EVERYONE, be called upon to become educators using social media and making it part of their work life. It’s about everyone in an organization, especially a purpose-driven one, helping turn on the lights here, there and everywhere across the Web. It doesn’t mean you don’t hire folks to do social media, but you collaborate with them and do your part. Instead of a minority in the organization who use social media, shift to a minority in the organization who don’t. This assumes a small to medium-sized organization with little or no marketing budget and low awareness numbers.

For me social media is about my work and self expression as an online video producer and curator with the objective in life of increasing sustainability awareness. The chief way I do this is to advance leaders from all fields who are advocating sustainability – the integration of planet, people, and prosperity into all decision-making. Advancing leaders means making them more visible through organic search* (more likely to be found) and bringing to the fore not what they write or someone else writes about them, but what they say on video. Social media helps me with our awareness objective for like many founders my objective is both personal and professional.

However, in order to make use of it efficiently and effectively, the key I found was to link up {CONNECT} social media so when I post to one, it’s posted to the others. I picked an entry point (YouTube) that best fists with how I use the Web most of the day so I am leveraging my time while turning on as many lights as possible.

Here’s what I mean. My primary social media entry point, as a curator of online video, is YouTube. YouTube from my perspective is a social network of video producers (it takes all kinds), rather than Facebook, which is for me mostly friends. Yet when I post a new video or ‘like’ a video on YouTube it shows up on my Facebook timeline so my friends see my work and other videos I like.

You may have someone on board who does all the content creation and posting, both text and video. Remember, I’m suggesting you collaborate with them to seed the Web, turn lights on, pepper the Web with your influence, thinking, the ideas of your colleagues and the people you admire. In terms of sustainability much of the content is ready-made, it all ready exists in TEDx speeches, University lectures, conference panels, and keynote addresses. Thought leaders and advocates on YouTube are waiting to be “liked” and advanced by you. Paul Hawken entrepreneur, environmentalist and author gets this as do many others with dual responsibilities and tight schedules. I just watched, liked and pinned a video he recommended on Facebook.

YouTube + twitter

I drive traffic to videos on YouTube (our own and those we have liked) through a series of twitter accounts (5), depending on the subject, using the tool, Hootsuite.

+ Pinterest

Because the Pinterest world is a very visual, well educated group (audience infographic here) and it is easy to use I often “like” a video on YouTube and then “pin it.” Again, I’m doing this with an eye to advancing sustainability thought leaders by increasing their page rankings on Google and adding to their presence in the webstream of consciousness. I also pin videos from Websites I visit during the workday. I would find time to do this no matter my job or organization because in the process I am educated, inspired and motivated and who doesn’t need that these days?

Here’s a recent example of advancing the Canadian and Fine Art photographer Edward Burtynsky, a sustainability advocate. For searches on his name he has good visibility already on the Web, some search traffic (12,000 per month), and ranks in the top three results on a place search, “Canadian photographers.” He’s been shortlisted for the Prix Pictet global award in photography and sustainability. There are other less known, hardly visible artists and musicians that we are also advancing and connecting as we identify their video interviews and performances, get referred to them, or Stumble across them.

As an organization, we do this for a wide variety of leaders ranging from artists and musicians to farmers and experts to business and civic leaders. The Edward Burtynsky video on YouTube we curated and added to our site EarthSayers.tv, voices of sustainability. As a curator, this is what I spend most of my day doing – identifying, reviewing and adding to our database sustainability videos. You may have someone else doing this footwork. This is were you come in. Then I “liked” the video on YouTube, pinned it (using a button I added to my browser’s tool bar) to the category, What is Sustainability? On Pinterest I have set up categories that reflect mostly my interests as a sustainability advocate and which parallel many of the categories, but do not do so exactly as the ones on our Website, EarthSayers.tv.

Categories on Pinterest

Remember this activity on social media needs to reflect your interests, your influence in support of the purpose of the organization. On Pinterest each category has its own “landing page” or board as they call it that you can link to in posts, articles, emails when you are educating and informing colleagues and clients and want to reference your own library of sorts. Click here to see a landing page. I’ve also set up Pinterest so that my pin is posted to my twitter @earthsayer. From this perspective, Pinterest is a social network too and for some it is more important than YouTube or Facebook or even LinkedIn. This might be your situation if you are connected to the visual arts, see the value of video and photographs over text, or just find it easy to use.

Advancing leaders by making them more visible through organic search using social media is an important part of my awareness objective, but it is not the only way nor the primary method to achieve this objective. This blog, Sustainability Advocate, focuses on advancing leaders and seeds the Web and it is particularly effective at reaching a larger audience and turning on a lot of lights.

You may not have time to blog, but opportunities to pin. The point is find at least one tool and the best one for you and contribute to seeding and turning on the lights. Of highest priority is our Website, EarthSayers.tv, a specialized search engine of all curated content, highlighting the voices of 1,300 leaders+ from all over the world. You most likely have a Corporate Website that you can use more effectively to meet your visibility objectives, personal and professional by offering visitors a white paper, how to booklet or embed a video interview from your company YouTube channel. The more the better. Pin it.

Seeding involves multiple keywords/phrases and is why a taxonomy or category system helps everyone in the organization be more effective with their use of social media. Settle on basic terms then allow for tagging based on subjects and interests.

This does look like a lot of work and I don’t want to minimize that it takes time to turn on the lights. But the rewards are great and measurable. If we are to educate and influence, the Web is the place where people are active in the learning cycle.

Creating an environment where everyone contributes to the best of their ability is what social media is really all about. I know its a function, a profession, a specialization, but we need everyone to turn the lights on if we are to be successful at populating the Web with sustainability leaders and content. We need social media professionals to be conductors and organizers and the rest of us to participate.

If you see the advantages lighting up the Web for purposes of education, both personal and professional, and appreciate the value of self expression, then there are ways to do it and tools available so that seeding leverages what you are already doing and produces measurable results for the objectives you set for yourself and the organization. In purpose-driven organizations they are one in the same.

I’m here to help. Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, July 2, 2013, Cleveland, Ohio. A version of this post was published as part of my marketing blog, Digital Savvy.

* A quick look at the importance of organic search (47%) in terms of Web traffic.

Revisiting Definitions: What is Sustainability?

“Since you and I have been communicating regularly again, all of sudden ASPA has been publishing a lot on this subject and soliciting for articles on it too.” Nancy Foye-Cox, Member, National Council, American Society for Public Administration (ASPA)

Nancy and I go way back to the mid-seventies when we served together on the ASPA Committee on Women in Public Administration. Over the last few months, and since I moved but an hour away from her, we have been emailing more frequently. And, yes, ASPA like other professional associations are increasingly turning their attention to sustainability resulting in more opportunities to increase awareness and answer one of the first questions often asked, What is Sustainability? Over 60,000 searchers a month ask a variation of this question on Google and even more on the term, sustainable as in sustainable business. This out of the 1.2M overall searches per month on sustainability, thirty-seven percent from the United States.

Dr. Stuart Hart

Complicating matters is the issue of there being the opportunity to customize an answer based on individual interests and world views. Stuart Hart the Samuel C. Johnson Chair in Sustainable Global Enterprise at Cornell University’s Johnson School, observes “Sustainability is tribal to some degree. There are many different factions. People come from different directions that all use the same term.” In other words, there is no one strict definition (video quote 1:37). This is particularly nettlesome as some folks use this lack of precision “as an easy way to set sustainability aside.” It is for this reason that I am revisiting some definitions and also citing a recently posted video from the folks at Eastman Chemical Company. You may find these quotes by sustainability leaders helpful to reference in conversations. Link to the their videos in email and in your blog posts. Most importantly, craft your own definition of sustainability and be passionate about it.

“Defining sustainability also means you have to admit what you are not yet doing that you ought to be doing. And so that gap between aspirations and reality is what you want to cross.” Christoph Lueneburger of Egon Zehnder International (video 3:02)

Karl-Henrik Robèrt

The first of four operational principles for sustainability is “in a sustainable society mined materials such as carbon dioxide from fossil fuels and heavy elements are no longer systematically increased in concentration in natural systems.” Karl-Henrik Robèrt, M.D., Ph.D. and founder of The Natural Step. (video 8:29) ”

My vision for sustainability at Eastman is that it is embedded in everything we do, it is part of our DNA, part of our daily life…it is an attitude, a state of mind, its not something you choose to do one day and not the other.” Godefroy Motte, SVP, Regional and Sustainability Officer, Eastman Chemical and

“What sustainability comes down to is balance. It’s about having to make hard choices every single day. To do things that are right for business, right for the planet, and ultimately right for you.” Matt Acarino, Chef ( (video 2:49)

“Look and listen for the welfare of the whole people and have always in view not only the present but also the coming generations, even those whose faces are yet beneath the surface of the ground — the unborn of the future Nation.” The Constitution of the Iroquois Nations: The Great Binding Law, Gayanashagowa.

There are many more of our leaders addressing sustainability and several animated videos in our special collection, What is Sustainability on EarthSayers.tv, voices of sustainability to help with the conversations around sustainability at home, in the office, and in our communities.

Ruth Ann Barrett, Sustainability Advocate, Cleveland, Ohio, June 28, 2013