Doesn’t this spot look inviting? It’s Barton Springs in Austin, TX. And the Save Our Springs Alliance really appreciates the feedback that Water Words’ readers have provided on their upcoming TV commercial. They’ve made significant revisions to the script and they’d like your input on the almost-final draft:
Save Our Springs Alliance 30 second TV ad
Scene: Hot sun is blazing down on an outline of Texas.
Voice: “Texas is hot.” Zoom in to Austin. “But Austin’s got the coolest place around.” Zoom into Zilker Park and see Barton Springs from above. “Barton Springs! Cool, clean water that refreshes hundreds of thousands of people every year.”
Pan down to pool level and scene is typical summer at Barton Springs: families playing in the water, people doing laps, jumping off the diving board, snorkeling, lounging on the grounds.
“Will future generations enjoy a clean and flowing Barton Springs? Find out how Barton Springs is threatened with pollution and over-pumping, and what we can do as a community to save a community spring. Visit SOS Alliance dot o-r-g.”
Zoom out so view of pool is from above. Swimmers spell out “Save Our Springs” and “SOS Alliance.org” in the water with their bodies. Sun sets and fade out with Bill Oliver’s song “Barton Springs Eternal.”
Well gang, what do you think?
Here’s a story that a reader shared with me a couple ofmonths ago. I finally figured out what I want to do with it. The reader sees it as a story about everyday citizens’ ignorance. But I think it reveals how we overestimate the importance of education and underestimate the power of peer pressure. Here’s the story:
I was walking through my subdivision in northeastern Illinois. It was a trash/recycling day, and noticed that a homeowner had placed several 4-foot fluorescent tubes (T12F40’s) in his recycling container on the curb (we utilize the least-common-denominator method: single-stream/commingle).Just then, the garbage/recycling truck turned the corner, so I decided to linger and confirm that the garbageman would reject the tubes.To my surprise, he threw them in the hopper with all of the other recyclables - glass, newspapers, and plastic. I approached him and asked, “You threw fluorescent bulbs into your recycling hopper??”He laughed and said, “Yeah, we do it all the time. We recycle everything!”
I asked the reader what they thought this story revealed, and they replied:
…it points to both carelessness and a broad lack of education - among consumers and haulers - in the recycling arena.
I disagree. Social and scientific research is most conclusive that educating individuals about environmental problems simply does not move many to participate in the solutions.
Doug McKenzie Mohr, dean of the “social marketing” movement, writes:
“While education and advertising can be effective in creating public awareness and in changing attitudes, numerous studies show that behavior change rarely occurs as a result of simply providing information.”
“Social or community context appears to be one of the key factors that can motivate people to take pro-environment actions,” writes the Roper Starch research firm in their 2005 report Understanding Environmental Literacy in America. “[O]ne of the most important determinants of behavior change is not information/education, but people’s beliefs about the pro-environmental behavior of others.”
Spitfire Strategies, in their study, Discovering the Activation Point, concurs, but puts it more succinctly, writing “it is more comfortable for most people to try something they have already seen someone else doing.”
If we apply the insights from these studies to the situation at hand, what would seem to be a better solution to increase the rate at which the refuse workers properly handle flourescent bulbs?
- Schedule a workshop to explain to workers (one more time!) about the dangers of mercury in the bulbs and how to identify which ones are recyclable and which aren’t
- Create a public display in the refuse workers’ office that shows how most of the workers are properly sorting the bulbs out of the recycling — signaling to those who don’t that they are in a minority
Well, I have completed my monster road trip and I am happy to be back home. I went to four conferences (and visited three clients) in four weeks, and put 2484 miles on my camper van which gets (gulp!) 13 mpg. According to the carbon calculator at NativeEnergy, I pumped almost two tons of carbon into the atmosphere on this jaunt.
So it’s time for me to be responsible and do my part to make up for this pollution, so that future generations can enjoy clean air, water, and a healthy environment. And given the seemingly limitless number of options that are available, I have made the choice to make a carbon offset donation to the The Nature Conservancy.
Why? Because I know the organization and trust them to make an honest effort to spend the money wisely. Also, they clearly suggest an appropriate donation of $20 per ton of CO2, where other choices I looked at weren’t as explicit about the link. I pumped out almost two tons, so that’s $40.
Don’t spend the windfall all in one place, TNC!
P.S. I can’t put my fingers on the study right this second, but very few people out there have any idea what “carbon neutral” means. Definitely belongs on the “Words That Don’t Work” list.
That’s the headline of the day over at the Save New Jersey Parks blog, which is celebrating a recent NY Times investigative article criticizing New Jersey Governor Corzine’s draconian and short sighted effort to balance his budget on the back of the state’s natural areas and the people who care for and use them.
I’m sure the article will help — but not as much as it would have a decade ago. Like other newspapers around the country, the New York Times is hemoraging readers, advertisers, journalists… and clout. Park supporters around the state are waging a full blown campaign, with lobby days, public demonstrations, websites, letter writing campaigns, and more.
That’s the appropriate place for the groups to invest their efforts. These days a supportive newspaper article is a welcome development, but not the game changer it once was.
