Lessons from my Green Grandma
Lessons from my Green Grandma
By George B. Brooks, Jr. Ph.D.
Have you ever done something that was wildly successful and you did not know why it worked? Well I had that experience about a year and ½ ago when I was asked to give a lecture on “How to Go Green.” I am an environmental scientist and have been working in what we now call Sustainability for about 30 years. So I had some ideas on what to say. However, I really wanted to give those kind enough to listen to me something to take home and actually put to use. It turned out the best way for me to frame the topic was to speak about my Grandmother.
Back in her day, Grandma Willie knew how to turn a dime into a dollar. She knew how to patch pants, recycle pop bottles, grow a garden and use the waste water from the washing machine to irrigate it. She took care of her neighbors as her own family and knew that cleanliness was next to Godliness. Grandma knew how to sustain. Grandma was Green.
Today we would call Grandma a Green Forward Thinker because she was not trying to be Green. She was simply using the breadth of her knowledge to find the best way to provide for her family’s needs.
Well the lecture and subsequent editorial written from the experience (click here for a copy of the editorial) were very successful, but we could not figure out why. Only recently have we discovered what really went right that day. It seems that what Grandma did inspired people and connected them to good memories of what their parents and grandparents did. Sustainability was no longer an alien concept but instead part of their culture and family history. Most importantly, the lecture provided a new way of looking at sustainability and inspired them to look beyond “How do I go Green” and ask powerful new questions including:
“How do I use Green to best serve the needs of my family and community?”
or
“How do I use Green to help me best serve the needs of my customers?”
or
“How do I harness this power to revitalize a neighborhood and give help and hope to those most in need?”
The people who heard the talk found this new paradigm liberating! With more than 2 million webpages on “How to Go Green,” many had been overwhelmed with information. Grandma’s example released them from the analysis paralysis of too much information and gave them a place to start. It allowed them to use this wealth of information to pick and choose Green methods that they could actually use to best meet their needs today while simultaneously saving the environment.
As we researched the idea further we have found that it is actually being used around the world, though not described in this manner. Some call versions of it “Greening the Supply Chain.” Others “Creating Sustainable Value.” We call the process “Green Forward Thinking,” and the resulting action “Going Green Forward.” More and more governments are using sustainability to inform and guide their decision making processes. Aspects of Green Forward Thinking may even be the driving force behind the growing number of successful corporate sustainability initiatives now seen across the United States.
A Call to Action
The question is now “what do we do with this revelation?” Answer, put it to work to do some good. Just imagine if you would, what could you do with this idea. To find out we are dedicating this website (http://sw-green.com) to exploring the subject, refining it and teaching others how to use it. Send us your story about how you or others are using this concept to make great things happen. We want to let the world know. Stay tuned boys and girls to see what happens next. It should be interesting.
Email your stories to:
Green Forward Blog
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
