Embedding Sustainability in Every Day Life
Veritatis InSights
Sustainability has yet to Become Embedded in Our Every Day Lives
If you look closely at the Google search word trend graph for the word “Sustainability” over time, a telltale pattern emerges which belays a lack of behavioral engagement to the level of everyday life similar to the word “Green,” especially in retail segments. So how do we Embed Sustainability in Every Day Life?
The hills and valleys repeat and you will note that non-work related periods show the significant dip in use correlates to perhaps people being away from work. While all search terms see certain volume constrained changes, this pattern repeats over and over. I believe this is indicative of a behavioral lapse of uptake yet to be realized in the market.
Are consumers struggling to assimilate “sustainability” concepts? “Green” concepts are much easier. we all know what green looks like, feels like, tastes, smells and so on. But sustainability is a different beast altogether. Its complex, with different meanings held by different people, across different regions ranging from drinking recycled grey water to recycling steel from a construction site. Social justice for the responsible harvest of coffee, to nuts, and mining of minerals.
“Sustainability” is almost certainly a business term that people identify with as part of their jobs but not their lives. Until consumers have the same level of engagement, in this consumer centric society, we will keep building products with one-use materials embedded in them, filling landfills, using coal derived electricity, and other such resource intensive measure solely for least cost to the Enterprise approach.
If we have learned one thing from Apple’s marketing messaging is the KISS principle is useful (Keep-It-Simple-Stupid).
Veritatis Advisors 2016
Diana Livingstone says:
Yes. I appreciate you pointing out that Green is more palpable than Sustainability. But business keep adding in more favorite topics stretching their view of Sustainability especially when it allows their company to look better to the Stakeholders.
I have a more accurate tool to measure Sustainability that is embeddable in employees home & work lives… but it is unreleased at the moment.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by Apple’s marketing message?
Don Macdonald says:
Apple continues to lead in the KISS department (Keep It Simple Stupid). Embedding behavioral characteristics into EE App’s and softwares for I&C control is a speciality of Veritatis Advisors, Inc. We recently advised ABB on such a strategy for its global CPM Plus platform ultimately leading to its third party verification by a major certification body resulting in millions of additional sales.
We still many IT Directors doing well implementing engineering tools, decision logic’s but are just touching the beginning of adding behavioral. NEST is another example. I would offer that their success (the designers worked for Apple prior to these assignments) is of similar strategy.
Schneider electric’s global EE platform was guided by Veritatis Advisors (at the time under contract to UL) to include strategies such as ISO 50001, IPMVP both which include behavioral aspects to drive continual function and performance management.
If you would like a private consultation please feel to reach out, my cell is 847-987-1645.
Don Macdonald says:
Let us collaborate for a demo our your platform off-line. Please reach out to [email protected]