Sustainable Lifesyle Campaign:
A Closer Look
Empowerment Institute helps government agencies and private utilities enable citizens to conserve the community’s natural resources and protect its environment. This is done under the umbrella of a Sustainable Lifestyle Campaign and its Green Living Program.
Description of Program
The Challenge:
In their blueprint for sustainability, Agenda 21, The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development stated that "the single greatest cause of the deterioration of our global ecosystem is the unsustainable patterns of consumption and production…and the industrialized countries need to take leadership." Empowerment Institute’s Sustainable Lifestyle Campaign is addressing the unsustainable patterns of consumption amongst American citizens, and through dissemination of its tools, other high consumption countries. As 5% of the planet’s population, Americans consume a third of its resources and waste up to 75% through inefficiency and lack of awareness. In US cities households consume between 35% and 85% of its resources.
EI discovered in its research, the principal beneficiary of sustainable consumption, beside households and the planet at-large, are various local government agencies responsible for the communities natural resources and charged with cost-effective management and avoidance of environmental pollution. Their principal tools for citizen education are information brochures and media campaigns which, according to the behavior-change research, raise awareness, but are not effective at changing behavior. They need new tools to be more effective.
Goals and strategy for implementation:
The Sustainable Lifestyle Campaign’s goal is empowering individuals to create environmentally sustainable lifestyles. It does this through delivering its Green Living Program. This program helps households lower their environmental impact by reducing resource use on an annual basis, depending on the city, by an average of 35% to 51% for solid waste, 25% to 34% for water, 9% to 17% for home energy, 16% to 20% for transportation fuel, 16% for CO2 and saves them $227 to $389. These are self-reported results based on program participants filling out a pre and post program assessment.
Program participation is achieved through finding interested individuals, teaching them how to reach out to their neighbors, host information meetings in their homes, and start neighborhood teams. It then helps the teams continue this process. Through a sophisticated neighbor-to-neighbor recruitment strategy, on average 25% of all community residents approached participate on an EcoTeam.
Program’s evolution over the years and where is it going:
EI’s Sustainable Lifestyle Campaign is now appreciated amongst the municipalities where it has been implemented as an effective tool to help them achieve one of their greatest challenges – citizen behavior change. The Green Living Program consistently produces significant resource savings and adoption of environmentally benign lifestyle practices. The behavior change is documented through baseline and follow-up questionnaires. Through longitudinal studies it has been determined that the behavior change is sustained over time.
The program is customized to the unique needs of the government agencies who hire EI and can be delivered either by the municipality through a technology transfer or by locally hired and trained EI staff.
Major challenges faced and overcome:
The major challenges that have been faced and overcome include: getting the program to produce consistent results, getting households to report these results, finding the arguments that could consistently get households interested in starting or joining teams, building a replicable model that could work in any municipality, learning how to customize it to the needs of each government agency and municipality, creating a training model that enables new staff to quickly and competently deliver the program, learning how to manage multiple campaigns, and creating a financially viable business model.
Lessons learned:
Good ideas are hard to come by, but even harder is the effort necessary to perfect a good idea. To be effective one needs, to among other things, develop a learning organization. For EI this has been done by carefully de-briefing program participants, staff and clients. Each household who goes through the program is debriefed in their final meeting. Each community program staff person is carefully debriefed in their weekly coaching call. All staff debrief and support one another in "master classes" which also solve common challenges. Regular discussions take place with clients to explore ways to better accomplish our mutual goals.
What makes the program innovative:
The empowerment of citizens to successfully and voluntarily lower their environmental impact. The enabling of local and state government agencies to effectively help citizens change behavior that negatively impacts the environment. The replicability of the program combined with the ability to customize it to each municipality and client. The way the program both improves the environment and generates social capital that can be reinvested in the neighborhood and community at-large.
How program integrates resource conservation, economic progress and human development:
By helping citizens conserve natural resources, it enables local governments to better steward the community’s natural resources. In certain cases this reduces the costs for service delivery and forestalls new infrastructure expenses. It helps households save money through resource efficiency, approximately $200-$300 per-household per-year. This serves as the equivalent of a yearly tax rebate and economic stimulus for the households and communities participating in the program. It creates an environmentally literate populace and encourages advocacy for sustainable community development policies and programs. The program builds leadership, empowerment and community-building skills within the community’s neighborhoods.
Program Effectiveness
Measures used to determine effectiveness:
The principal measures are natural resource savings, EcoTeam formation, number of neighborhoods in which program is delivered, government agency information or services utilized by residents, and cost-benefit analysis per government agency investor.
Important achievements of program to date:
Achievements include the implementation of campaigns in over a dozen US municipalities; participation in EI’s US programs of over 30,000 people; dissemination of the EI tools to 16 countries with program participation of 120,000 people; and various forms of recognition including contract renewals, awards, media and keynote addresses at national conferences. The Sustainable Lifestyle Campaign has been recognized by the President’s Council on Sustainable Development as one of the most promising sustainability initiatives in America. Renew America awarded this tool its national award for community sustainability. And EPA recognized the program with its Environmental Quality Award.
Does success of program depend on on-going cooperation among diverse groups?
Yes! This program brings all sectors of the community, as well as various local government agencies and private utilities, together in a common effort. Through this, much dialogue, learning and cooperation occur. This process of working together creates the commitment that keeps all the parties involved for the long-term.
What benefits are associated with the program?
This campaign attracts financial resources from government agencies and private utilities that are invested in educating citizens to better steward the community’s natural resources. This benefits the citizens, local government, the environment, neighborhoods and the overall livability of the community. Many of these benefits are brought together at the neighborhood level. As neighbors work together they build more socially cohesive, safer and healthier neighborhoods. Whenever possible, neighborhood visioning processes are held in which citizens who have been on EcoTeams work side-by-side with municipal officials, utilizing the program to determine what’s needed to create more livable neighborhoods. A final benefit is the development of citizenship skills. Many of these campaigns begin or are sustained because citizens lobby their local government officials and encourage them to fund it. Local governments experience citizens doing the right thing. Citizens discover they do make a difference.
Is it innovative in applying existing resources or developing new tools to address a problem?
Yes! The program is a new tool that is directed at the efficient use of existing resources -- natural and financial. The program enables local governments to use financial resources, that often go into expanding infrastructure, to be utilized more cost-effectively by enabling households to develop resource-efficient behaviors that reduce the need for landfill space, water resources, energy resources, road size and rebuilding and health costs through reduced air pollution. Overall it helps the community develop both a practical demand-side management approach and conservation ethic.
Can the program be replicated in other communities with similar challenges?
This program is designed for replication. It has been used in many different size communities urban, suburban and rural in over 30 states. It is flexible enough so it can be customized to the unique situation of each community.
Natural Resource Conservation
How does the program successfully conserve natural resources and reduce waste? The program is designed to help households systematically evaluate their environmental impact, learn of actions they can take to lower it, set up a support group to help them follow-through on the choices they make, and provide feedback to positively reinforce the benefits of the actions taken so they are sustained over time.
Does the program protect one sector without subjecting others to hazards? Yes. The program is designed to help any part of the community that participates with no negative outcomes in any other part. In fact, it spreads positive outcomes to other parts of the community through serving as a role model for the benefits of the program.
Does the program provide financial incentives to pursue environmentally sound practices? The program itself offers a financial incentive by helping households save money through resource-efficient living. EI provides program participants an end-of-program report that documents dollars saved. The money saved we call an "ignorance tax" that they no longer have to pay. Also, whenever possible, campaign funding partners provide financial incentives for households to experiment with new environmental behaviors through opportunities such as free transit passes and reduced costs for compost bins.
Economic Progress
Are jobs, industries, business opportunities created by this program? In each community EI creates at least two to three jobs for program staff. We also strengthen the green businesses of the community by generating new customers.
Does the program reduce costs or improve efficiency? It helps local governments reduce costs of delivering essential services. It helps households reduce costs in managing the household.
What specific economic benefits result from the program and who benefits? Residents of the community benefit by saving money and local government agencies often reduce the costs of delivering services or infrastructure and see increased participation in revenue producing activities such as public transportation.
How does the program contribute to long-term economic renewal and growth? By helping the community better manage its natural resources and improve its environmental quality it becomes a more attractive place to live and work thus attracting and retaining businesses and improving its tax-base. By strengthening neighborhoods and making them more attractive it reduces migration out of the community, particularly in larger cities. By increasing the efficiency of citizen’s natural resource use it defers the cost of major infrastructure projects (i.e. water treatment, landfills) thus making these funds available for other projects of community development.
Human Development
Size of community affected. EI works at the neighborhood level with groups of 5 – 6 households per team. It initially works with 20 to 40 neighborhoods in a municipality – usually representing between 10% to 30% of the community. A campaign is designed to grow and eventually impact larger and larger numbers of community residents through applying a growth model know as "social diffusion." This model was developed by a Stanford University social science researcher through observation of the diffusion of innovations in over 1,500 case studies. Applied to EI’s Sustainable Lifestyle Campaign, we start with households and neighborhoods who are naturally attracted to the new innovation called "early adopters" — usually 10% to 20% of the population. This is designed to create a groundswell so that the program can start diffusing on its own momentum and achieve program participation deep into the neighborhood. EI cultivates this phenomenon within neighborhoods and amongst neighborhoods and has seen diffusion occur quite regularly at the block and neighborhood level.
Does the program reach a unique population? The population reached is a broad cross-section of the community. 80% of residents approached by neighbors are interested in attending the neighborhood information meeting. About half actually come and about 75% of those attending, join teams. This boils down to approximately 1 out of every 4 people approached by a neighbor participates in the program. The program and recruitment model has proven very successful in middle income neighborhoods. The program requires modification and extra resources to work in low income neighborhoods but with these adjustments has been successful.
Does the program address a community health concern? The principal health impacts are on air and water quality. The program’s transportation and energy actions help improve overall air quality and reduce ground-level ozone. The program’s water quality actions help reduce non-point source pollution of the community’s water bodies.
Does the program work with collaborative planning and consensus-building? Collaborative planning and consensus-building is how EcoTeam participants determine which actions they are going to do together. It’s also how the various government agency and private utility financial partners work together to achieve their individual goals within the context of a community-wide campaign. The program also brings citizens together with local government in a spirit of cooperation and collaboration for actively addressing the challenges of developing a sustainable community.
For more information contact:
Empowerment Institute
1649 Route 28A
West Hurley, New York 12491
Tel: 845.331.1312
E-mail: info@empowermentinstitute.net
