Tag: Climate Change

Recognition is Very Cool – and Inspires Us to be Cooler!
By Kathy Kuntz, Executive Director

We’ve had a lot to celebrate lately!

In early October Menasha Corporation won an Innovation Award from the Campbell Institute and the Stewardship Action Council for their employee engagement efforts with Cool Choices and then, a few weeks later, In Business Magazine honored Cool Choices as its Eco Service of the Year!

Recognition is an interesting thing. It feels great to get that pat on the back for your past efforts but recognition is not just about the past. Recognition also prompts us to try harder going forward – to prove that the recognition was deserved and to gain more recognition.

The power of recognition to inspire additional positive efforts is one of the principles we use at Cool Choices. We partner with companies and public entities to engage employees around sustainability – to make sustainable practices the norm in workplace communities. And in our work we show companies how recognizing and celebrating the good stuff – even when it’s small – can inspire employees to do more.

As sustainability professionals we spend a great deal of time thinking about what’s not working – the number of employees who forgot to turn off their computers, the still-imperfect ratios of waste to recycling, those single-sided copies… Cool Choices’ programs demonstrate the power of positive reinforcement – when you celebrate what some employees are doing right it can motivate others to change their practices so that they get kudos too.

Yes, the recognition is much appreciated. We also appreciate that it will inspire us to continue to rock the expectations of our partners going forward.

How much do people save just by changing their behavior? Do savings persist after the game?

Whenever we talk about our employee engagement efforts people ask about outcomes. That’s great! Cool Choices believes changing practices helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions – so we have a responsibility to prove it.

The Energy Center of Wisconsin recently evaluated Cool Choices’ work at Miron Construction showing our approach is effective. In the study Center staff analyzed player utility bills before, during and after the Miron game. Then Center staff compared actual changes in usage to actions players reported in the game. Finally, the Center conducted interviews with a sample of players to understand differences between actual savings and reported savings. In those interviews, conducted more than a year after the end of the game, the Center also explored whether participants continued sustainable practices adopted during the game.

What were the results?

The Energy Center of Wisconsin:

• Verified that Cool Choices players reduced their electric usage in the game (the median reduction for participants was 6% of household electricity – which is substantial).

• Documented that former Cool Choices players continued sustainable practices. Some one-time practices like programming thermostats to save energy remained a year later in 100% of households interviewed – and repeated practices like turning off game consoles was relatively high with respondents reporting that they maintained the Cool Choices’ sustainable practices 60-79% of the time.

Really great results – but we’re getting even better!

The Energy Center of Wisconsin’s analysis also helped Cool Choices by increasing the accuracy of our savings estimates and clarifying players’ sustainable practices (e.g. we learned that some of the refrigerators players unplugged in the game were not full-size). We have adjusted our estimates to allow for a refrigerator mix including smaller units, and are incorporating other recommended improvements to make things even better.

To learn more about the Center’s findings click for the full report (pdf).

Extreme weather—from heat waves to flash floods and severe droughts—is fast becoming the new normal. The extremes are consistent with climate change models and, per NOAA scientists, consistent with a warming planet. The New York Times summarized the NOAA findings:

Heat waves, in particular, are probably being worsened by global warming, the scientists said. They also cited an intensification of the water cycle, reflected in an increase in both droughts and heavy downpours.

More, there are some indications that change may be accelerating. Scientists monitoring sea levels, for example, are seeing levels rise on both the east and west coast at faster rates than anticipated by current climate change models.

The heat is also generating more discussion about climate change.  This issue gets tricky because weather is not climate. Here a clothing analogy is helpful—weather is like the outfit I chose to wear today whereas climate is like the collection of clothes in my closet, a collection that works for the seasonal weather patterns in my community. Living in Wisconsin requires a different closet of options than does living in Arkansas or Alaska (assuming you spend some time out of doors in the natural environment). A single weather event is not proof of climate change but multiple events add up to trends and, as this graph from Climate Communication illustrates, the trends are stunning because the incidence of record high temperatures is fast outpacing the incidence of record lows.

Recent poll data suggests that Americans are noticing these trends and that the general public’s concern about climate change is growing.

Of course concern is not action.

Polls also suggest that Americans want the US government to take the lead on climate change. Unfortunately, federal action seems unlikely since polarization is sharp in Washington and gridlock seems to be the norm. Besides, climate change is not just about the US; this issue involves all countries, which makes consensus even more difficult. The recent Rio+20 conference illustrated this point all too well.

So what is left to do?

If we do nothing we exacerbate the problem. Ignoring the risks means we are ill prepared to deal with extreme events each time they occur with increasing frequency. Maintaining business as usual also means we continue to emit greenhouse gases at a pace that will further jeopardize our communities.

The alternative—acting to reduce our emissions and preparing for extreme events—can seem hopeless. After all, I cannot solve this issue alone; I’m just one person.

Cool Choices believes that we can solve this issue together. We believe that every action matters because it is another step away from complacency. We know that your actions can inspire others to act—your friends, co-workers, other members of your church, etc. We believe your actions can be viral because we have watched actions spread.  We also believe that if people begin to act, to demonstrate their priorities, then our national political leaders will eventually follow, even if we cannot currently count on them to lead. At this moment, we encourage everyone to think about the words of Margaret Mead:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.  Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Cool Choices invites you to join us—and to be part of the solution.

Do we believe we have the will to do what’s necessary to slow global warming?

The latest Yale University survey suggests that Americans are increasingly doubtful about our collective will. The percentage of Americans who assert that it’s possible to slow warming “but people aren’t willing to change their behavior so we aren’t going to” has risen four percentage points while those who believe “it’s unclear at this point whether we will do what’s needed” dropped six points. Other categories—including those who deny there’s any warming and who are sure humans will fix everything—stayed relatively constant.

I read those results as a drop in confidence in each other.

The lack of confidence is striking because Cool Choices is in the midst of a pilot at Miron Construction that gives me great cause for optimism. At Miron, more than half of the company’s employees are regularly taking actions to reduce their emissions, having fun and becoming part of the solution.

As I watch what’s happening at Miron a couple of things are clear to me.

First, people want to do the right things—to save money (which enables them to have funds for other priorities), to preserve local resources (so that their kids and grandkids have access to those same resources), and to lead by example.

Second, knowing you are doing the right things feels good. The employees at Miron are sharing their successes with us and their colleagues because they are proud, because these are successes.

And, finally, doing the right things can be contagious. One successful change can lead to another and your successes can prompt a co-worker to make a change as well. The process is slow and far from linear, but ultimately the hundreds of small successes (and people who are glowing with pride at what they’ve accomplished) are how we can build whole communities that are part of the solution.

The climate challenges ahead of us are enormous, but I’m not ready to give up on humans just yet.

Jayme Heimbuch at Treehugger.com published a piece a few weeks ago about the failure of energy conservation to engage people via social networking, suggesting that perhaps people were the problem (because we seem to care more about celebrities than kilowatt hours).

Three weeks into a pilot where people are sending us photos, bragging to us and their colleagues about the electric savings they’ve uncovered, I’ve a different take on all of this.

Most existing energy conservation efforts haven’t engaged people in social media around their sites because the efforts are not any fun. Most of the tools function more like a test than a game, requiring you to gather and interpret all kinds of data before you can do anything the least bit fun. It would be akin to Trivial Pursuit requiring players to complete a comprehensive assessment to optimize team assignments. Imagine how much fun that would be.

Actually it would be about as much fun as filling out screen after screen of questions about your electric usage and insulation levels—stuff regular people don’t think about.

Disclosure: I’m an absolute energy geek. At my house the utility bill is something we open and discuss, as soon as it arrives. And then we input the data into customized spreadsheets, marvel at the graphs and talk about it some more.

But most people are not like me. Whereas I enjoy filling out carbon calculators and comparing the results from one tool to another, most regular people (our target market) find this a burden. And most people have enough burdens already.

Game developers have taught me that if you want to engage people you need to provide opportunities for early successes, to let players feel good about their efforts. It has to be fun.

Asking people questions they can’t answer about their appliances or energy usage makes them feel bad, incompetent even. It is not fun. While a few might dig in to learn more, most will drop out, opting to spend their time on something more pleasant. And we wonder why these folks aren’t posting their results on Facebook? What should they post?

Just learned I don’t know how to read my utility bill – even though I’ve been paying it for years.  It’s probably also time to admit that I can’t reset the clock on the microwave.

Our initiative, by contrast, empowers people. Participants can take easy actions, without having to learn how kWh converts to tons of CO2.  We give participants clear signals—points—to value their actions. In our experience people immediately grasp this approach, seeking out high point-value actions that fit into their lives.

We’re finding that a few people want to get into the details. We support and celebrate those efforts but that’s not the main event. The main event is regular people taking action and bragging to their colleagues about the points they’ve accumulated.

By making this fun and easy we have engaged participants who intend to continue taking actions that, in aggregate, will generate meaningful savings and reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the long run.

And isn’t that the real objective?