Category Archives: triple bottom line

Passion

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A palette of watercolours and a brush.

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In response to my Cooking post, she said something like, “Wow, Michelle, I enjoy your passion about things.”

I thought. I paused. I reflected.

I was questioned several years ago why I won’t do art as a career. I can draw (always have been able to). I enjoy it. I love it. I love getting better. I love hearing new things and experiencing new things I can do with pen, paper, paint, paints, charcoal, any medium really. But, why don’t I pursue it as a career? I said, “I don’t want to ruin the thing I love with the pursuit of money.” He retorted, “Why not do the thing you love because you love it?”

Indeed. It’s too personal is the other answer. I don’t want what is so close to my heart criticized. And, there are so many other things I like doing, why be pigeonholed? I need a career that can encapsulate most of what I like to do – simply to keep me engaged!

I have realized that there are about three things – ideas – where I like to focus my daily thoughts: food, the earth (environment, planet, etc), and housing. There are skills I enjoy utilizing to talk about these ideas: drawing, sketching, presenting, creating, office busy work, talking, facilitating, organizing, motivating, problem solving, writing, reading, teaching.

I can use art to talk about food, but the creation of the artistic thing doesn’t have to be the only thing, and it doesn’t have to be tied to my heart or a commission. I can use the design skills I’ve used to help educate and inform marketing choices at work or in the clubs with which I work. I can use my writing to help with websites, newsletters, business letters – and it’s just part of the picture – not the whole thing.

I have learned I have to diversify my interests, but not too much because I can’t be stretched thinner than I already am. I learned that I can’t be a crisis counselor full time no matter how much compassion I might have for the person or the cause – but volunteering a few hours a month works. I have learned to overcome certain fears: like asking for money. I have learned that it’s even easy to ask people to support causes I love.

I have learned that I don’t want just any job and that it must be tied around a passion in order to motivate me to do it. Working a as a secretary just anywhere won’t do – it has to be around my interests. Several years ago I realized that my personal goal is to “teach people about the importance of a sustainable society.” Sustainability as defined using the metaphor of “people, places, and profit” all in equilibrium suggesting a balance in environmental use, the people who do the work, and ensuring there is a black bottom line for the finance people.

So, yes, friend, I would agree – I am passionate. But, I don’t know how else to operate! I feel like there is no point if I don’t go with where my passions direct me. Thank you kindly for your observation because it has given me this opportunity to reflect.

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Consensus Training

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Consensus plain 2

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Our consensus training is finally upon us! I am very excited. Our group has been self-learning consensus for the past 10 months, and I think it will be good to have a seasoned user show us some things to do.

In May, it became clear that majority rule wasn’t a good fit for our group of bottom up thinkers. So, I suggested consensus, and we’ve been trying it on ever since. One of our members made a comment that she lived in community, with consensus, for almost three years. She didn’t feel she even began to understand how consensus works until she was at the end of her stay in community. This was a very telling comment to me, as we hadn’t lived in community, had been doing it for less than 7 months, and it has felt awkward to me. Her comment validated my concerns. For the third time, I was referred to Tree Bressen; so I called her.

I read the Tao of Democracy by Tom Atlee almost 6 years ago. What an eye opener! The belief that in empathic situations, people really are smarter together. Most of our food club meetings have shown this to be true. We state concerns, work through problems, and come up with a much more brilliant answer than any one of us could have come up with on our own. It’s a true consensus process, truly bottom up planning.

I am hoping that tomorrow’s training will kindly show us some tricks and traps and how to navigate through those traps. One of the handouts is “Nurturing Dissent.” I’m a terribly excited.

Stay tuned for more.

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Living on Credit

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Levi's Cleanup

Living on credit sometimes means we have messes to clean up. The mess Levi cleaned up here was the size of about 1/4 of one towel. Image by alexis22578 via Flickr

Budget, budget, budget – crisis. It seems, today, everywhere you look, everyone is suffering from a budget crisis. Business, non-profits, families, single people, countries. What I found most interesting about this concept, right now, is the emotional stress it causes when not dealt with.

If you have 6 eggs, and you know you aren’t going to get anymore for 2 weeks, and you need an egg a day to survive – you’d probably ration your eggs. Some people, though, would rather risk the eggs, eat them once a day, and not have any for 8 days. It’s Aesop’s fables – the grasshopper and the ant. The ant stores away, day after day, while the grasshopper plays. Then, winter comes, and the grasshopper is surprised. He has no food. The ant has enough food because he’s been preparing all spring, summer and fall.

When we live on credit: credit cards, borrowed money from friends, and lines of credit from the bank – we are playing the part of the grasshopper. I’m observing here. My husband and I are guilty of living on credit. We recognize it’s a problem, and are trying to have those hard conversations to stop it – but they are hard conversations.

I find it interesting how we are unwilling to have those hard conversations. We know what will happen, but in my case, I’d rather not give up my newspaper, netflix, and mobile phone. So, we live on credit and risk another windfall. We can’t plan for the windfall. We have to plan for the somewhat secure income.

I say somewhat, because hopefully we all know how risky even those secure jobs are nowadays. Unions on the chopping block in Wisconsin, so much rage, so much apathy, all coming up against each other – crashing. Egypt, Libya, Tunisia – this global unrest from the micro to the macro – and in some way – it stems from living beyond our means.

Sometimes, I think it stems from arrogance and lack of understanding. Like, when I try to piece together why the whole Northern American continent was basically clear cut in the 19th century. While studying sustainability at Portland State University, I took a sophomoric class in the university studies program. Our professor introduced this concept of short-sighted-ness with a story about shephards living on a hill. They all wanted to add just one more sheep to their flock – each. But, what happens when all 100 shepards add one sheep each? You have 100 more sheep! The hill can only hold so many, and if the shepards add another sheep to theri flock every year – at some point you’ll reach the carrying capacity of the hill.

The idea is that if you plan for the future, you will make wiser decisions for the group. Individually, or for families, the idea is that if you plan for your future you won’t be destitute and will be able to navigate tragedy with a stronger plan, or safety net. If government can help us out, I think that’s great. I also think, in a society as rich as ours, it should be a moral obligation. But, ultimately, we really need to say the buck stops here, and we need to plan for ourselves. So, it’s building within and building without. we need to make our own houses strong, strengthen our communities (that meas you have to get to know your neighbors), and have honest dialogues. Honest dialogues that recognize living on credit, while a luxury, isn’t the best course of action.

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Fiction: Veronica

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She looked in the mirror, again, examining the little lines around her eyes. “Those didn’t used to be there,” she thought. Age, such a condition of time. “How the kids keep getting younger, and today I look closer to 40 than 30.” She stretched her arms out in front of her. Still trim, but the skin was getting a little looser. “No, definitely not 20 anymore.”

How many grandparents had she put in nursing homes? Four. The hardest was her maternal grandmother. Her own mother was only 57, still a long ways off. She used to have a theory that those who continued with their routines were exempt from Alzheimer’s. Than her farm-living maternal grandparents got dementia. Blew that theory to shreds with one phone call. It only took six months for each, paternal and maternal, grandfather to die once put in the home. It didn’t matter how nice it was – they weren’t home, they were facilities. Her grandmothers faired better, but it wasn’t living.

She wondered, again, why religion and society looked down so much on euthanasia. She chuckled how her own thoughts have done a 180 on that topic. To think, when she was in high school, she had a passionate piece describing the point of cherishing life – always for abortion, because you never know who’ll need it, but against euthanasia. At least more states have changed their minds about mercy killing. It is all choice, isn’t it? Who has the right to choose – the person or the government?

“Well, enough oggling over how I’ve aged,” thought Veronica. Today she had plans to work more with the farm-to-school programs. The local Farm-HUB proved too expensive for most, and she preferred the direct connections and conversations. Getting others to network had always been a secret passion of hers. And, now, finally she was putting it into place. She lad to live in a place long enough to develop those connections, and once she learned that, the rest was easy.

The “People, Places, Profit” slogan had been used so often, that it was now second nature to most. Sustainability was little more than a question, although the Amazon Burn was a big wake up call for the whole world. She was only 16 when it happened – a formative teen. That was certainly a turning point in her life, from a suburban kid to an “activist.” It wasn’t so surprising, when you thought about how socially liberal her parents were, even if it was a quiet liberalness.

Time to walk the half mile to the Mag Train.

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Community

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Sustainability in Tuscany Study Abroad Group

Our Sustainable-Tuscan-PSU Community. Image by alexis22578 via Flickr

It was either 2005 or 2006. I was taking my first Urban Studies & Planning course, Film and the City. It was a sort of introductory course to Urban Planning through the eyes of film. The first movie we viewed was a Chinese film called Shower. This film introduced the concept of community and how design works with community and how community changes as design changes. There were many other levels to the film, but it was first, for our class, an introduction to this concept of community.

Los Tres Imanes

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As a film class, one-page write ups and group discussion were par (for the course, ha ha). I was either 27 or 28 at the time of this discussion. My other classmates, or the ones in the discussion group, were in their early twenties. (It’s amazing to me how the difference of 5 years in your twenties means a lot.) We were asked, after having viewed the movie, how we would define community.

I suddenly found myself in a disagreement with my discussion group on what community is. I feel that we have many different communities. We have communities in which we select: church, certain social groups, classes we take, work place communities, and so on. Then, we have broader groups, our neighborhoods, cities, states, nations. When I was arguing for these micro communities, my classmates disagreed with me. They suggested that this idea of community was too narrow and didn’t allow for diversity. For example, I could have chosen to live in an all-white neighborhood and that would have been too singular in what I heard them arguing to actually be defined as community.

I cannot remember their exact words now, four or five years later. But, if that was truly their argument, I still, to this day have to vehemently disagree with their concept of community.

Garden City diagram
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What is community then? I still believe a community is simply the circle of people with whom we surround ourselves. Whether it be our street, our neighborhood, our work place, our school, or our churches. All these places have different people, offer different things, and they serve as a community for us. A community of living, of economy, of knowledge, of spiritual growth – whatever. It’s still a form of community, and we sometimes turn to those in that community for assistance. We could look for neighborly assistance, as in, “Please, could you watch my house while we’re on vacation?” to study buddies to prayer circles. All forms offer some support if we choose to lean on them for that support. All forms can offer fun, learning moments, teaching moments, conflict and resolution.

Still, what is community? I am busy. I have a lot of interests. I cannot afford to spend my time randomly. While I appreciate random encounters for those teachable, fun moments, I have chosen to spend my time with certain people. Family and close friends. From there, I reach out to my church community, my food community, and a local mom’s group. With this local mom’s group, I subscribe to a daily email list, and have thus far attended one event. Many of the moms overlap with my food community.

What does community do? Community is there for you when you need them. Today, I hope I was there for a fellow mom. I’ve seen her name on this list a million times. I have met her exactly once, to the one event attended and organized by this mom’s group.

Today, 8 days before Christmas, she was in a car accident. No one was injured, but who’s to say how the family mini-van will fair. Although I had a front row seat, I actually didn’t see anything. I still can’t believe this happened. That I didn’t see anything. I had no helpful detail of information to share. It all happened so fast. SUV turning, me dazing, crash, call 911, tow truck pulling through, cop following, hanging up since 911 isn’t needed. Recognition. I know her. Parking the car, hazard lights on. Validation. Rolling window down, stating her name. Yes, I know her. So, I did the only thing I could think of to do. I got out of the car and gave her a hug. I only told her that I was a part of this mom’s group.

I got back in the car, went to a fellow mom’s house, she wasn’t home. She’s usually good at organizing these things, so I called her first. By “these things” I mean care packages. She was a little unsure of what to do, so I later phoned the Queen Bee of the mom’s group. She advised the other mom to call her insurance and began organizing an evening meal, while working.

Community. That’s what community is.

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The Story of Cap and Trade

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From the folks who brought The Story of Stuff comes The Story of Cap and Trade.  Click on the links if it doesn’t show below.

The Story of Cap & Trade from Story of Stuff Project on Vimeo.

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Eco lunches

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Peter's Eco Lunch Bag

A homemade duck-cloth lunch bag.

I’ve noticed lately two things:  1) there are a lot of tips to show you how to build a green lunch and 2) there is a lot of talk about how organic food doesn’t hold any more nutrition than conventional food.  The discussion that could happen based on these trends is amazing, and I would like to add a few points to hopefully further the discussion. Continue reading “Eco lunches ” »

Balance

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Sustainability means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but in academia it focuses on balance.  Academia, more specifically, focuses on balancing the Economy with the Environment while always focusing on Equity.  What does that mean on a small scale, though?

It’s always so easy to criticize the Giant Corporation (McDonald’s, Ikea, Walmart) for the Evils they inflict upon the helpless little guy.  We often take refuge when we can “stick it to The Man.”  But, what opportunities are we forgoing on a personal scale?

Sustainability, then, means balance.  And one vision of that balance is found in Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia.  In his very thought provoking books, Callenbach details many ideas, one of which is the 20 hour work week.  What would happen if the government mandated no one work more than 20 hours per week.  What would our lives look like?

Recently, my family got sick with a nasty cold.  No, it’s not the Swine Flu (or Avian Flu, or Bird Flu, nor West Nile!), but it has laid us up!  We’ve been incapable of doing the most mundane chores around the house – like dishes and trying to figure out what’s for dinner because this Nasty Cold sapped our energy.  Last Friday, Levi and I spent the day snuggled in a blanket, on the couch, watching hours of OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting, PBS for Oregon).  I even endured Barney and his “I Love You” song because we lacked the energy to do anything different.  I had many high hopes for the first day Levi and I would spend together, alone, while Daddy was off learning how to be a mechanic.  Alas, life had other plans.

Remember, being sick is often nature’s way of saying, “Dude, you overdid it, and you need to take a break.”  “You need to rest, Dear,” Mother Nature gently reminds us with a bout of the Nasty Cold.

So we did.  We rested.  Levi and I watched T.V.  My body wouldn’t allow me to work on projects with deadlines looming.  Nasty Cold prevailed.

The irony of the situation is when other greenies forget these basic balance reminders.  We can argue the psychologies of selfishness, the fears of missing deadlines, the lack of trust the whole shebang screams… but the point is this – we must remember Balance.  When we preach balance of Nature’s Services, we can’t forget one of the most important… sleep well young one, you have a big day ahead of you.

Greenville in the News

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Some time ago, I posted a link about United Solar Ovonic and its new plant in Greenville, Michigan, my home town.  Well, the piece finally aired:  NBC Nightly News & United Solar Ovonic.  It’s a short piece that describes how former Electrolux employees are being trained and employed at the new solar-cell plant.  The company will manufacture solar panels that stick on roofs, and will then be distributed across the world, especially Europe.

I love to hear that  my home town gets to partake in the reinventing that is needed given the current economy and how awful it has been for folks living there.  But, caution is the word that comes to mind when I hear stories like this.  Sometimes, it seems we become so eager to jump on any bandwagon that screams new jobs when so many are hurting for lack of work, we then forget to ask questions to see if it is truly a good idea.

In my previous post, I wrote about how Greenville has a history of smokestacking to attract industry and how that has contributed to the situation Greenville now faces with no industry where industry once flourished because the jobs have all fled to places that offer cheaper labor, such as countries in Asia or south of our borders in Mexico.

I suppose, the only thing I want to offer to anyone reading this blog is to consider the 3 Es of sustainable development, economy, equity, and the environment.  So, even though the new plant boasts green energy, how is the product manufactured?  Is it done with the 3Es in balance with each other?  Does it reach the Triple Bottom Line? Are the folks working the line being paid a decent wage, with adequate time off so they can spend time with their families?  Is the company borrowing on borrowed time to pay for its venture, or do their own books balance?

I just hope those questions were asked before this deal was brokered.  I do hope the Green can be put back in Greenville, both monetarily and with the environment in mind.