But the "sustainability fest" part, not so much. I felt it was geared towards home owners, which is what most of us doing the home energy audit are finding. It reminded me of something that would happen at Home Depot. There were different window manufacturers, insulation vendors, and people selling their services to come to your house and do a home energy audit. The lady we met with in our last weekend intensive was there too, promoting her green roofs. She was right next to a solar panel person, I had to think that she did not have a chance going against solar panels. Then there were places like REI. There was a table there that promised clean drinking water, through this filter you install. They had a large cooler, like the kind you see at football games, offering their water, and little cups you could sample it with, think bathroom cups. I asked him how sustainable it was throwing out a bunch of cups at the end of the day. I don't think he liked me. Then I thought maybe I am going into this with the wrong attitude. He had pamphlets with a copyright date on them of 1997. So I just dismissed that booth. Now in the mean time my friend, who is a student at harvard extension school, and taking an environmental management class, comes running up to me with a reusable bag she got from some vendor, filled. Filled with every pamphlet each table had. I asked her what she was doing, she said she had to write a paper and was going to use the info as a starting point for her research. I have to admit I was disgusted by the amount of paper she had picked up. When I asked her about it she replied, "don't worry I'll recycle it." OK. so here's the question. As an urban environmental leader, how can I personally stop being so judgmental? Studying consumption habits as we have, I could not help but be so mad at her. I am unsure of how to get over being mad at people for wasting so much, and turn on the leader part and educate people. I need to stop judging, and start helping? Any suggestions would be great...
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
To Judge or not to...
This past weekend a friend of mine invited me to join her at a sustainability fest. Sure I said. Why not. It was supposed to be inside at a DCR building in Hull, and a tour of the wind turbine in Hull. Thinking ahead of the focus memo that will be due on energy and community building, I felt that it would be a great chance to gather some info for the assignment. And that part was.
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I hear you, Liz. I've had the same feelings and don't know how to express myself constructively in these situations so I usually end up saying nothing. I don't want to offend people and I don't want to get in a shouting match and I don't want to come across as judging...and I don't know what else to do. I feel like I could use a class in communicating urban eco concepts with "the outside world". If I had to teach a community seminar on urban sustainability to a group of people who'd never heard of the idea before, how would I go about it? And there would be a whole other set of challenges working with people who have negative connotations and are resistant to change. The experience you describe in your post is an important one we should continue to talk about.
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