The Sound Green

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.

For my project on water pollution I've decided to focus my research on dead zones and also addressing dead zones in the Puget Sound. My Paper outline looks like:

I am an Apple consumer.  Ever since those grade school days using the OLD Apple Macintosh computers I have been a fan.  But, I am also a fan of the environment and those companies who honor it and their stakeholders through their environmental reporting, such as Dell, IBM and HP.  Thus, I am quite disappointed with Steve Jobs and Apple execs, even Board member Al Gore.  As an industry leader, why doesn't Apple want to follow suit?  This past February at the annual shareholders' meeting, two proposals to require further analysis of the company's environmental impact were rejected by the majority of shareholders, while a small group spearheaded by As You Sow, fought for this necessary move.

One proposal would have asked Apple to produce a detailed environmental sustainability report. The other called for a board committee focused on sustainability. Apple, which had opposed the measures, said investors rejected the proposals but did not give voting percentages.  Responding to shareholder questions about Apple's environmental record, Jobs pointed to several steps he said the company is taking, such as getting suppliers to make products with nontoxic materials and reducing waste by cutting down on extraneous packaging. (Huffington Post)

If they can put this information on their website why can't they shell out the money to create an annual report?  Small and large companies alike are reporting on their environmental and social goals and performance under Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines.  Is it necessary to follow their peers, or can they have transparency by putting up information online only?  I'm not sure whether to believe their claim of taking an "alternative" route.  It seems more like they have something to hide.  I mean, the only sustainable success that has been confirmed is the financial sustainability of the firm and its shareholders' value (which has increased at an average of nearly 1000%).   


Article References:
As You Sow an organization that strives to increase corporate responsibility; spoke at the shareholders meeting on behalf of a small group of shareholders who proposed the environmental efforts.  This is the second year they have proposed Apple to report publicly.
Huffington Post
macnn
EE Times

Nature is a PBS show that is in its 28^th season. The show is designed to bring the ‘natural world’ into people’s homes. It has received upwards of 450 awards. Does the number of awards it seems to accumulate mean that people do care about nature? Is the show soaking up the advantage of having a widespread audience to get out an environmental message for change. Messages need outlets to be heard and this show is a perfect one. It is an example of working with what is popular to make something else popular. I recommend watching a show!

http://ncseonline.org/NAE/envirojustice.html

Here is the link to some of the “alternative” environmental views of Native Americans. Essentially they look at humans, plants, and animals as equally important. I was actually talking to my roommate about this over the weekend and his response was, “Hey just like those blue people in Avatar.” This is absolutely correct, because the “blue people” of Avatar are BASED on the ideas of Native Americans, which many people don’t actually realize. This makes me think of the “Avatar Depression” people faced, where after seeing Avatar they became depressed they can’t live in a place like Pandora. When in reality there are places like this and Native Americans have been teaching these “alternative” views for a very long time.

For my project interview I met up with Janet Nazy from the Partnership for Water Conservation. The main purpose of the company is to bring together other companies and help communicate the message of water conservation. So of course, she had a wealth of information on good communication techniques. She noted that by far the most successful way to get people to agree with your message is by appealing to their emotions. I thought this was very interesting because we talk about this all the time in class. One example she gave is when she has a booth set up at a public event, she gets much more of a response when she includes disturbing pictures of what can happen if we don’t take care of the water. If she has no visuals, not as many people notice the booth or care to stop by. She said that through her experience most people out there don’t want to change their habits and could care less about water conservation. To change those types of people you just have to make it hit home, and the only way to do that is through an emotional response.

Here is the website to the Partnership for Water Conservation; they do some really cool stuff.

http://www.partners4water.org/index.html

Thought this might be an "alternative" voice from the regular office environments-- Treehouse Office

Last night i was reading the Alex Steffen article preparing for the quiz today. Reading it right after the Gore article was very disturbing. Although I'm not sure i feel the same pending death and destruction the Al Gore does, i do feel that he is making a good point in that strong action needs to be taken to combat global warming. Steffen's article further made me realizes that drastic measures need to be taken in order to change the process that has already been started. The reason this is depressing to me is our government in its current form can not take dramatic action of any sort. If al Gore is even close to right about the seriousness of this issue then we are all doomed. Things are not going to change in the way Steffen is proposing, there are to many powerful interests opposing them. Real change can not happen if our government continues to work, or not work, as it does. I don't want to be a downer but i believe that our government in incapable of anything but the smallest of reforms, and if Steffen and Gore are right then we are f-ed. Change will not come, no we can't. Sorry but we are all going to die.

These are prototypes without knowing anything more, what do these make you think about???

20. You Must Be the Change You Wish to See in the World

19. Every Time History Repeats Itself the Price Goes Up.

18. Where Do You Think the Environment Is?

17. What Would Nature Do?

16. I Object to NOT Saving our Planet

15. Can You Hear the Eco?

14. Hear the Trees Falling?

13. Ignore It And It Will Go Away

12. What Will Your Children Breathe?

11. What Will Your Children Drink?

10. See Green, See Life

9. Melting Ice – A Hot Topic!

8. Delivering Environmental Innovation Through Sustainable Practices.

7. Kick the CO2 Habit

6. Green. That’s how we’d like the world to be.

5. Good Golly, Go Green Girl

4. It’s Cool to Be an Eco-school

3. Green for Bikes

2. Reduce, Reuse & Recycle

1. Will Work for Trees

I found these slogan approaches to be interesting and it got me thinking about what each of them is asking audiences to do or what exactly the slogan is getting at. Try to think of ways you react to these twenty slogans. The website below also offers some insight into what each one means or draws on.

One of the most interesting challenges that I have run into with my project is working with a government agency - Seattle Parks & Recreation.  From day one at my internship in social media marketing, I was so surprised that people would just trust me not to post inappropriate or irrelevant information through Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress, etc, accounts.  I hold in my hands the passwords to dozens of accounts of big-named clients!  Working with the government is an entirely different story.  I thought it would be as simple as creating a Facebook page and Twitter account, making it look pretty, coming up with a good strategy, and approving it before going live.  In reality, the page has to be set up and branded as seattle.gov by one person for every single government organization that wants to go on FB, and after that's done, I have to go to their office and edit it from their computer on their account.  They are toying with giving me access temporarily as an admin of the fanpage.  They are advanced enough to have a social media policy, and I hate to challenge our government (Ok, no, I really don't) but Facebook changes every few months and they are not up-to-date to deal with it.  I realize now that it's a struggle because they have to bring up policy changes in official meetings which might be laden with pressing issues... but seriously, if they have a social media addict and professional come in to help for free, you've got to be able to accept their help!  This project might be more than just a temporary nice Facebook page... jobs in the parks department are just waiting to be cut, and if we can build a shown fanbase and outreach for events and classes at the Camp Long Environmental Learning Center, who knows, a few more naturalist jobs might be able to stay after all.  Get with the program, and accept my help already, Seattle, WA!

With minimal effort, I was able to locate a very important resource for our project. Please paste these links directly and click on a few of the initial links to parts of the document. There is more than enough information in here to support our claims about pollution sources. It is time to discuss the "bigg Comm question" and how we are going to answer it!!!!

This is the link to the Dep. of ecology website,
http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/wq/nonpoint/index/html

This is the EPA's impervious surface pollution run-off site
http:/www.epa.gov/nps/MMGI/Chapter4/ch4-1.html

Under "C. Scope of this Chapter" have a look at "general sources" they are all outlined very well. Lets choose some topics from those?

Hey guys, I'm working on a splash page image for Camp Long's facebook fan page that is going to be set up soon.  I'm trying to make it appealing to people who are looking for family activities (i.e. good clean fun.)  Do you have any suggestions for font/arrangement of the links? When it's finalized, I will create a link map via HTML so the links will work (links will lead to relevant sections on their seattle.gov website), but it's too much work to do it before I know that the buttons are in good places. The actual image is larger as well.

 I just sent it in to get feedback from my contact at Camp Long. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Water Pollution is one the most pressing environmental concerns. There isn't one source of all water pollution but a multitude of contributors. In areas of the Puget Sound, parts of the water system have become dead zones where no life exists because of water pollution. For my project I plan on examining-

 ISSUE
One by one, companies or various industries are adopting the green trend.  Creating products from recycled materials, using efficient energy sources, and conserving natural resources are all the beginning steps to developing as an environmentally-friendly company.  How do these companies communicate  their accomplishments to consumers, competitors, shareholders and other stakeholders?  
After attending Heather Rogers' lecture on her book "Green Gone Wrong" and learning about industry practices as a part of the green movement, I find it pertinent to research the activities of companies in response to the environment through their published reports.  UPS is an example of an industry leader in their environmental efforts, while Apple refuses to publish a formal environmental report.

METHOD
Following further investigation of this topic, I will choose particular companies to discuss within my paper -- those who lead their industries, some who have room for improvement, and others who are falling behind.  My project will include the importance of formal environmental reporting, just as financial reporting is required of all public firms, and explain the communication methods used.

I know this topic could be a bit dry, however reporting is a critical form of communication by industries and individual companies.  At this time, many business owners still need to be convinced of their negative impacts on the environment, let alone understand the importance of improvement and communication of these actions. Plus, there are many organizations who are exceeding standards and seek to maintain the welfare of the environment.  These companies should be acknowledged for their efforts and intentions. 

I have been following the oil spill stories and the more I read, the more hopeless I feel.   Sometimes I think Mother Nature must have thought, "You humans want oil? Here, I'll give you SOME oil." And then oil started gushing out from the seabed in an angry manner. It seems like human power has finally lost to the nature.

That was my surrealistic way of interpreting this oil spilling disaster.

If you are interested in reading a more rational interpretation, read Jonathan Hiskes' story on Grist.
Wake up, Obama.  The Gulf spill is our big chance

After looking at different waste products we can recycle, I decided to focus on electronic waste (e-waste) recycling.  So here are the main points of my project:

Sam and I were finally able to meet this last Wednesday before class and discuss our plans for this project. In order to complete this advocacy project we are going to make a short video concerning local (Puget Sound area) water pollution issues.

Video construction: this will get planned out after some brief research this weekend. Since the video needs to be no longer than about 5 minutes we need to make sure points are made and supported concisely. The first segment will outline current pollution sources and problems in the Sound. The second segment will go over current projects and measures taken to alleviate the pollution. The final portion will offer insight and further analysis of pollution management practices and what "you" the individual can do.

This video will be targeted towards highschool/collegiate people. We hope to use responsible humor to make our point.

Let’s face it, the water system of the Puget Sound is in trouble. Everyday there seems to be more and more threats on the Sound, including toxic chemicals, polluted storm water, and regular pollution from the ever increasing human population.

The Puget Sound is the nation’s second largest estuary, so why aren’t we doing more to save it? It might simply be that the message is not getting out to enough people. So, Jacob and I are heroically taking matters into our own hands.

After some brainstorming we have decided the best way to successfully communicate our message would be through video. We are going to create an advocacy video about the troubles of the Puget Sound water system and send it around the web.

I think the natural progression of things is our video will not only save the Puget Sound but also save the world and our class will become famous. Well maybe that won’t happen but hopefully we can at least educate a few people about the issues surrounding the Sound and what they can do to help.