Breakout Sessions at MIT Sustainability Summit 2010
On Friday, April 23rd, 2010, I had the pleasure of attending the MIT Sustainability Summit 2010. The morning keynote was of particular interest to me since it was given by Peter Senge and I am big fan of his book The Fifth Discipline. The subsequent keynotes and sessions did not disappoint. They widened my knowledge of sustainability and upheld the summit’s theme of “Communicate and Collaborate for a Sustainable World”. Here are some highlights…
Peter Senge
The morning keynote was very interesting. Having been long-time admirer of Peter Senge’s work, I couldn’t fathom how systems thinking applied to sustainability specifically. I realize that systems thinking can be used on any process or goal, but exactly how, I wasn’t sure. Mr. Senge used his work at Starbucks to explain that in order to make headway on sustainability, we have to collaborate. Companies need to work at all levels of the process, from suppliers, recyclers, and basic infrastructure to achieve their sustainability missions. The interesting part of that was how many ways there are to achieve the mission…for example, Starbucks decided not to go with biodegradable cups because the carbon footprint of the suppliers was a consideration. Plus some of the municipalities can’t compost the cups. I’m sure there are more than a few situations where you have to pick between two sustainability criterion that are in direct conflict with one another. Overall, I gleaned from the keynote that good, green companies are doing the research on what method of conservation would work for them based on their regulators, suppliers, and consumers. If these entities collaborate rather than grandstand on principles, realistic sustainability goals will be achieved in a systems thinking manner.
I followed this session up with the “Systems Thinking 101, How to See Sustainability Issues using Systems Thinking”. I’m not sure that I got any new concepts out of this session, but it did reinforce concepts such as stocks, flows, reinforcing feedback, and balancing feedback. This can apply to sustainability in addition to manufacturing processes, population control, marketing strategies, etc. I agree with one of the last statements of the presentation that “simple structures can explain models” (John Lyneis, MIT). For me this resonates because sustainability often gets clouded in difficult to present science detail. I think for maximum adoption we really need to bring it down to earth in relatively simple terms which is different than dumbing it down. Dumbing it down implies that people can’t understand but the truth is they want the executive summary…they want to know how it applies to them and what is the benefit to them. Don’t you agree?
The second Keynote speaker, Mr. Kook-Hyun Moon, intrigued me with his perspective from a large corporation. The dollars and sense of investing in your employees and the environment was encouraging to hear. I often worry that we make enemies of corporations by over-regulation and sharp criticism of their practices without constructive feedback. Mr. Moon explained his experience with influencing a large corporation to see the value in sustainability and elevating the workers and the neighboring people.
Another breakout session I attended was on Fair Trade. At first glance this didn’t seem like a deep subject. It’s pretty simple right, buy Fair Trade products if you support the environment. There is more to it than that. Namely, who are the members of Fair Trade coops? And what value does certification have for Fair Trade products? I would say, it has a high value based on the level of debate we generated talking about whether to allow large plantations to be certified or not. It would be hard to boil down this discussion in a few sentences, but suffice to say that in emerging countries, large plantations can influence government and have huge advantages over the coops. This doesn’t necessarily make them bad, but can they be a part of Fair Trade? This is an interesting topic that I hadn’t considered. Check out Equal Exchange for one example of Fair Trade Coop.
End of the day at MIT Sustainability Summit 2010
My last breakout session of the day was Green Marketing. Here I found a lively panel discussing techniques and challenges for marketing to those who value sustainability. They don’t feel that green marketing is really different than regular marketing, instead, they posed that the same concepts are upheld. Concepts like being authentic and strategic. Just slapping a green label on a product doesn’t make it so. Consumers want to know why it’s green and want details about how it is environmentally friendly. They also widened my thinking by explaining that any product can be “greener” than it’s competitors and that gives it an advantage even if the product isn’t particularly green. Diana Verde Nieto used Avis as an example. By providing environmentally friendly cars for rent and stating the fuel saved on average trips, they became “greener”. Trust from the consumer is hard to get. During a quick poll of the room, the panelists asked which organizations we trust to point us to sustainable products. Very few people piped up and those that did said they trusted Consumer Reports and Good Housekeeping but not much else.
This was a great summit and I’m glad I was able to attend because it challenged some of the ways I think about sustainability. I hope to collaborate with my neighbors and support my local businesses in sustainability efforts. We can all influence someone to save a little money and save the planet. What suggestions do you have for collaborating on sustainability?
For more notes on the summit from multiple, collaborators visit Twitter hashtag #mitss10.
Copyright 2010 Barbara O’Connell. All photos by Barbara O’Connell
