Eco-teams or Eco-dreams?

I like the idea of Eco-teams and can see why they (and many other team-based activities) would be more successful than targeting individuals as they provide both a social support and shame network. The main problems that I can see with them came up in the lectures and are mentioned on some of the other blogs, namely that it’s going to be hard convincing people to join and there is ceiling on what they can achieve without additional support from local and national institutions.

I don’t have any inspirational solutions for tackling the first problem, but maybe by looking to solve the second it will help galvanise support and thus solve it indirectly. What I think is needed is better organisation, representation and governance that will open up lines of communication between the grassroots and local & national bodies who can act on them. Perhaps emphasizing the social aspect (by running events with multiple eco teams, organising socials outside the normal meetings etc.) and introducing a bit of friendly competition (regional “who’s recycled the most” league tables) may also help. I don’t know how the scheme is currently run, so some of this may already exist, but I’ll plough ahead nevertheless…

I think there should be a hierarchy of local, regional and national coordinators that have access to the ears of their respective authority level. They should also meet on a regular basis (frequently within the level and occasionally between levels) to share experiences, provide feedback etc. from the grassroots. Once the key issues have been identified these can then be presented to the appropriate authority, with the results of this shared with the grassroots in course of the normal meetings. Identifying quick wins initially would be a good way to show that people are making a difference and should increase participation and involvement. A suitable next step would be to have guest speakers (other community initiatives or local councillors for example) for Q&A sessions facilitated by the eco-team leader. Forging linkages with other eco-teams and other community groups (both locally and regionally) would also increase the community network and raise the volume of their concerns. Along these lines, a role should be created (if it doesn’t already exist) for a “community officer” on the local council who acts as a focal point for all community initiatives and who can provide information, coordinate between different initiatives and look for potential synergies and conflicts. They could also be responsible for identifying local unused capacity and auctioning it for use.

This is all lovely, but not really possible without the policies and cash to support it. However, luckily, many activities to promote sustainable consumption are, by their very nature, resource savers. Additionally, the funding is already there to spend on improving the local infrastructure, services etc. Hence, ideally this would be just a better allocation of the funding that responds more directly to the needs of the local community in a more sustainable way and maybe the savings from this would go in some way to offset the increased administration costs.

So, I go for an eco-possibility with government support needed