Why Environmental Sustainability Will Work This Time

Environmental Sustainability is a perfect example of “knowledge in the age of the Net”. It’s all linked data and results; new information arrives constantly to build knowledge and that constant influx means there are always new ways to try to improve our green work – it’s a journey, not a destination.

Those characteristics mean that environmental sustainability today is better-suited to succeed even when it didn’t in the Net-less 1970’s.

In David Weinberger’s article The Machine That Would Predict The Future, in Scientific American, December 2012, he wrote how predicting the future includes an understanding of “knowledge” even as its definition changes.

We humans are used to limited-source, printed or recorded information: a book, an article, a study or a history -- what Weinberger calls a publishing system. However, increasingly knowledge has a much broader medium, he says, better described as a networked public. He writes “We may get lots of knowledge out of our data commons, but the knowledge is more likely to be continuous argument as it is tugged this way and that. …never fully settled, never fully written, never entirely one.”

No wonder museums use green teams to get work done.  And no wonder integrated design fuels environmental sustainability solutions. Green team, integrated design...they're just other names for a networked public. Do you have one?

Green: One Size Fits None

Rainbarrel a no-brainer? It depends.

I love my green museum work, but it has one down side: the frustration that, no matter what the question, what the situation, my answer can only be partial: I have to say “it depends” every time.

But “it depends” because green is truly local construct. Don’t be tempted or pressured to copy what anyone else does. Have the courage, and take the time to find the right green answer for your situation. One size fits none.

•  Sunlight is different in New England compared to the Southwest.
• There are lots of reusable timbers in the old sawmills of the Northwest, but not in the Southeast.
• Geothermal doesn’t work on Cape Cod as well as in other places.
• The Eastern Shore of Maryland is short on slate and any other rock, but big on wind.
• Some historic sites have enough room for CSA’s or farmers’ markets; others are in urban settings and can hardly grow a window box. 
• Waterpower in one region comes from waterfalls and in another from waves.
• Some communities require all stormwater management onsite; in Denver you can’t capture rainwater.
• Some offices can have a 5:1 ratio of people to printers; others have sensitive information or disparate locations that don’t allow for printer-sharing.
• One museum might have rooftop space for an ESCo to install a solar array while another is in an historic district that isn’t interested.

Few answers fit more than one situation.

Green is an ecosystem concept that depends entirely on related systems and local situations. Local -- right here, in this place, in this way, right now – is what defines your green journey differently than anyone else’s.

Don’t let anyone sell you an off-the-rack solution.