The Sound Green

So, the quarter has ended, and my project has been a good experience for me, but hasn't been fruitful for others yet! I can't force other institutions to work on UW's timeline.

My meeting with Camp Long has been delayed - again - but here is the link to the fan page. Look out for updates when they let me. :)

Here is the guide I put together for the Green Seattle Partnership - inviting forest stewards to create their own Twitter accounts to reach out about their work site events.

And finally, here are the other suggestions I had for the GSP website to integrate it more with social media.

(These docs are in lower quality than my original files. Enjoy...)

-Cecile

The BP oil spill in the Gulf is already causing mass amounts of damage to the underwater environment not visible by our eyes. The oil spill will definitely create dead zones and some irreversible damage to the eco-system! Posted below are two links to current articles on the issue.

The topic of dead zones has been observed and studied scientifically often over the last decade, but has had little presence in the public sphere in the Northwest United States and even the global sphere. A failure to recognize the existence and expansion of dead zones in the Puget Sound would be fatal to the health of the environment and the standard of living of those that reside in the Northwest. Dead zones are of particular relevance because its relation to the world’s current issues of climate change, food scarcity, and pubic health. Research analysis of dead zone discourse and the larger contributing factors reveals that dead zone growth is enabled by an absence of regulation, poor accessibility and transparency of dead zone information, and insufficient funds to solve the problem. The findings suggests that education and working to solve the problem in small communities would be more efficient as policy making decisions on regulation has been sluggish and needs additional reinforcement from society.

     There is a large network of individuals that are readily available for contact on public areas of the internet.  With the growing number of social media users, and new marketing tactics to tap into that population, my objective was to introduce or expand some of those concepts to volunteerism and environmental communication.  Ultimately, to implement a strategy which would frame the organization’s visibility as appealing to isolated persons, and consequently increase the number of volunteers.  To target the strategy locally, make it easily shareable, and be personally appealing, I suggest ways for the GSP to implement social media directly on their website.  For volunteer forest stewards that wish to put in the effort to maintaining a Twitter account, I recommend an appropriate way to do so.  Finally, I create a Facebook fan page for Camp Long, which is undergoing governmental review but has the potential to be a template for all Seattle Parks pages.  While not everything has worked out as anticipated, these efforts thusfar have driven more traffic to the GSP website.

Corporate Responsibility:  Communicating Environmental Values, Vision, and Performance through Annual Reporting

The concept of sustainable development has continued to shape public opinion as well as to motivate corporations to adopt practices benefitting, or causing less harm to, the environment and society. The importance of sustainability performance disclosure through reporting has been noted by many, "If a firm’s performance in these areas is improved from the past conditions, or if it is better than that of its competitors, then publicizing the fact has the potential to differentiate the firm’s products, to put pressure on its competitors to do likewise at an additional cost of doing business, and to increase positive reactions from stakeholders including employees and investors as well as customers” (Morhardt, 2002). It is obvious that annual corporate sustainability reports are necessary of all public companies. However, many companies fail to publish these voluntary environmental reports, while others have taken honorable strides toward communicating their achievements. Looking at these reporting differences has revealed communication techniques for the most effective reports, and the effects of reporting on the public.

This is an advocacy project to help spread the word on the Puget Sound water system and the non point-source pollution that haunts it. Hopefully by the end of the project we will be able to educate people on the cause of pollution, why it is harmful, and what we can do to prevent it. In order to achieve this we attended events and interviewed specialists, conducted research on local non point source pollution, and created a graphic design to educate the uninformed citizen. The poster will be sent all around the internet as well as posted physically on public billboards. Only the most valid and applicable information was on the poster in order to quickly and effectively communicate to our audience. The goal is for a poster of this type to represent the harm caused by non point source pollution and how you can make easy everyday changes to reduce your pollution contribution.