Sustainability

Friday we convened a group of leading Vermont businesses, NGO’s, and politicians to explore new visions and possibilities for accelerating the process of creating a more sustainable future for our state. We talked a bit about the Earth Charter and about connecting our work in some way to the template for a healthier society it provides. We discussed how we can generate new patterns for how we work together, think about the future, and engage the public.

We, (me included) chase with great and even desperate passion more and more and more stuff. A bigger pay check, a nicer house, a cooler car, new clothes. Now we sort of know better. We know that we can’t have both a sane and sustainable world with all that stuff. What we don’t seem to know, despite all the research that clearly lays it out, is that once we’ve met our basic human needs more stuff has nothing to do with more happiness.

Community, conversation, participation, involvement, trust, passion? Yes. More stuff? No.

Lucas, our guru of consumer insight at Seventh Generation, just came back from the LOHAS conference in California. He reflected that wherever you go people have begun to misuse the word sustainable. That’s both good and bad news. It’s great that it’s in everyone’s mind, but unfortunately most people have so little idea of what the word actually means that they can be of little help in creating a more sustainable world.