"If you're in a bad situation, don't worry, it'll change. If you're in a good situation, don't worry, it'll change."
-- John A. Simone Jr.
11 Things You Can Do To Be Sustainable
Sustainability is not recycling. It is a process. A way of life.
- Practice a discipline that gives you real insight into your Self. Deal with what emerges.
- Draw a value web and ask yourself, “How can I strengthen ALL of these relationships?”
- No waste. Just do it.
- Develop a meaningful personal sustainability practice that you can commit to.
- Stop “fighting” global warming, poverty, (insert cause of choice).
- Begin working for systemic solutions to global warming, poverty, (insert cause of choice).
- Commit yourself and enroll others to realizing renewable, clean energy in your community NOW.
- Break old habits.
- Seek out and support sustainable businesses and business models.
- Do whatever works for you from all of those other lists.
- Stop reading lists.
Tags: capacity evolution, clean energy, global warming, no waste, personal sustainability practice, poverty, renewable energy, sustainability, sustainable business, value web
Sustainable Leadership: No Waste
In the overview of Sustainable Leadership: Evolving Sustainable Leadership: Engaging the Core I wrote:
No Waste: No Waste means what it says and says what it does. On a tangible level it could mean looking for and implementing lifecycle oriented solutions that incorporate technology into the eco-systems into which it will be introduced. Intangibly it is about integrity: matching action with words and espoused values: being the change we want to see in the world.
As we watch our financial system unravel, our savings evaporate, banks implode, credit freeze and earnings contract, we should keep this principle in mind. Fundamentally, no waste means living fully in the here and now, living closely with that which sustains us. Flourishing while living simply.
Where can you simplify?
The further we venture from common sense, basic principles of economic exchange and move into sophisticated schemes involving trading the idea of the ideas of money chopped up like toxic sausage and served piping hot as investment vehicles, the further we move into the realm of waste: time, money, energy and resources wasted in the pursuit of the fallacy of unlimited growth.
How much time and energy are you wasting worrying right now?
No waste asks us to know our home (however big it might be), the names of our co-habitants and to create and trade with them in the most effective and efficient way possible. If we feel the pull for sophistication then, for example, let us focus on sophisticated (waste free!) technology that harnesses inexpensive, widely available energy from inexhaustible, readily available resources like the sun and wind that frees us from “energy dependence.”
Can you think of a really good reason why we shouldn’t?
We can invest in and work on technologies, products, services, projects and initiatives that will provide for and sustain us, our children and their children. From the ashes of our current economic debacle we can create a new way of doing business, banking and living that is both eco-nomically and eco-logically sustainable.
Are you willing?
Shifting away from excavating energy to capturing it, working with bioregional patterns instead of fighting them, creating the capacity for deep and brilliant green consumerism takes a huge re-orientation of the time, money, energy and resources squandered on our collective trip down financial fantasy lane.
Are you ready to be the change you want to see?
We need to re-group, re-inspire and re-invigorate our selves to begin again. And, we need to do it NOW.
Why wait?
Things are going to get worse and things are going to get better.
Where do you want to live?
We are capable, we can build the capacity to move to a “no waste” way of living, doing business, even banking and investing. It takes vision, desire, courage, commitment & discipline, and accountability for our intentions and actions.
What can you do?
It takes and needs leadership. Sustainable leadership.
As my friend Tony says: “Are you part of the problem or part of the solution?”
Well, are you ready to stop wasting time?
Tags: alternative energy, economic meltdown, green consumerism, no waste, sustainability, sustainable leadership