Let’s take a fresh look at a couple of tired old sayings you’ve probably heard a million times, and examine what they mean when comes to raising environmental awareness and encouraging everyday citizens to do their part to preserve the planet for future generations.

Here’s the first: “Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?” In our world, this classic dilemma could be rephrased as “Which comes first, environmental awareness or environmental action?” You could be forgiven for answering that environmental awareness comes first, because that it is how it appears to the untrained eye.

But social and behavior research often finds otherwise  — small actions lead to big attitude changes, and then on to the big behavior changes. In his classic book, “Fostering Sustainable Behavior,” social marketing guru Doug McKenzie Mohr cites a number of cases where the simplest possible behavior — such as holding a flashlight for an energy auditor — becomes the first step in a journey that leads to major energy conservation efforts around the house.

I like to tell my clients that the smallest and easiest of environmental actions — replacing an incandescent lightbulb, making a $30 donation, signing an electronic petition — matter. They matter a lot if you see them as a kind of “gateway drug” for the person who does them. If you can make that person aware of how good it feels to make a little difference, some will come back looking for a bigger fix. Next time around, they might insulate their attic, make a large donation, or speak up for the environmental at a public hearing.

Here’s the second old saying, from the world of physics: “A body at rest stays at rest, a body in motion stays in motion.” In the world of behavior change psychology, that might be rephrased this way: “a body that pays lip service to the environment will probably keep doing that, but a body that takes a first step for the environment is likely to take a second.”

When we set out to just raise environmental awareness, what we often end up producing is lip service, instead. If you want that awareness to lead to some action, it helps a lot to define that action and aim for that directly.

What both of these reinterpretations have in common, is that they point to the importance of beginning with behavior for your environmental communications. Set a goal of motivating your audience to take some small action, and follow up afterwards to lavish your audience with praise and gratitude — and suggest the next, more meaningful action they can take.

Article Source : The Environmental "awareness" Paradox : ArticleBase

Eric Eckl –
About the Author:

Eric Eckl runs Water Words That Work, LLC., an environmental communication company, and writes a blog that provide tips on how to raise environmental awareness and promote conservation action. The company has developed the Due Diligence Test Panel, a service that nature protection and pollution control organizations can use to pre-test their environmental message materials prior to publication.

Please Note... All links within articles are placed by their author-owners and not by this blog.Products with in those links may or may not be the best in the world.If it sounds too good to be true it could be a scam.Articles are posted for their info,ideas and or entertainment value only.

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This April the fantastic UK AWARE exhibition will be taking place at London Olympia. UK AWARE is the UK’s only green and ethical lifestyle exhibition, which invites normal people to come together, with a view to making a difference to climate change.

As a largely social enterprise UK AWARE unites businesses, organisations and individuals and gives them a forum to share advice on living and working more sustainably, without having to sacrifice lifestyle or comfort.

Various products and services are exhibited over the 2 day event – all of which showcase ways to help to live a greener lifestyle. Areas covered include all sorts, from sustainable fashion and beauty to green motor-vehicles. And it isn’t just small, independent businesses choosing to take advantage of this eco-opportunity. More established companies and charities, including BT and Actionaid, are also on hand to advise the 15,000 visitors expected to attend the event.

This year visitors will be treated to all manner of ingenious innovations and developments, including Hubcap Creatures (sculptures made from recycled hubcaps), Bubblehouse Worms (wormfarms that ‘promote global worming’), Twinkes (futuristic light electric/pedal powered mobiles) and many more.

UK AWARE is now in its third year and, as the UK’s only green and ethical lifestyle exhibition it has thrived where all others have failed. As such it attracts both visitors and exhibitors from far and wide. So the issue they faced was where to put them all…

UK AWARE are the first to admit that hotels are notoriously bad for the environment but the Campaign Against Climate Change also bemoans the situation. In 2007 they reported that hotels were responsible for around 2% of the UK’s carbon emissions. Just thinking about the amount of energy wasted on air conditioning, in hotel kitchens and thanks to the enormous amounts of laundry a hotel gets through – is enough to make your eyes water.

Many hotel chains are trying to rectify things but progress is relatively slow. So the organisers of UK AWARE have put forward an alternative solution for out-of-towners who are keen to attend the event, Crashpadding. They suggest that people visit Crashpadder.com to find accommodation that is not only eco-friendly but budget-friendly too.

The basic premise of  Crashpadder – along with other sites like it – is that it is preferable to stay with a friendly local in their spare room than to book a bed in an uncomfortable hostel or an over-priced, environmentally unsound hotel.

The science behind it is pretty simple, while hotels have to maintain rooms and services that are often left unoccupied and wasted, people’s homes are always in use and as such it makes very little difference to the environment to pop an extra person under the same roof.   

The principle of opening your home to strangers in the spirit of good will and collaboration obviously ties in with the principles of UK AWARE. Both are hoping to make the world a better and friendlier place, and allow us to move through it in as positive a way as we possibly can.

To find out more about the UK AWARE event, arrange tickets or even book an exhibition slot for your business or organisation why not visit the UK AWARE website, www.ukaware.com.

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About the Author:
Crashpadder.com PR – find out more about us at crashpadder.com or take a look at crashpadder.com/how-do-homestays-work. Alternatively feel free to get in touch via crashpadder.com/contact-us.
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Please Note... All links within articles are placed by their author-owners and not by this blog.Products with in those links may or may not be the best in the world.If it sounds too good to be true it could be a scam.Articles are posted for their info,ideas and or entertainment value only.

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Let eBay Help You “Green” Your Home
By Harriet Shugarman
“One person’s garbage is another person’s treasures,” or so the saying goes! If recycling and reusing someone’s “gently” used products is something that tweaks your interest, you might want to check out eBay’s new green shopping hub. According to eBay the site highlights: “pre-owned, sustainably-made and resource-saving products, handpicked from eBay.com listings.” Did you know that a year ago, eBay “opened up” their eBay Green Team, from an internal company only initiative, to a program targeted at all of the millions of eBay buyers and sellers?

The program gives eBay users the opportunity to purchase used products in addition to new ones advertised on their site. This concept isn’t new; in fact you can get a lot of “free stuff” on the web or from places and stores in your own neighborhood. Some of the more well know on line organizations that offer “free stuff” for you to take or trade include “Freecycle” and Craig’s list, both of which provide listings of products people no longer need, but feel someone else will value!

A twist in 2010 on the eBay site is that eBay has teamed up with a company called Cooler, Inc in an attempt to showcase for their shoppers the environmental impact of their purchasing decisions. Not only will you be able to find out how much you are reducing your carbon foot print by “purchasing” a gently used product instead of a new one, you will also have the opportunity to buy new products through the Cooler website, from reputable and well know retailers, and have Coolers “offset” your purchase at the same time! The new program is just in the “launch stage.” Look for eBay Green Team ads in April in many of the Hearst family magazines.

It is important to remember that every purchase you make has implications for our environment!

Climate Mama is an online climate change education, advocacy and information site. We want you to feel empowered, that you are doing what you can to ensure that the world they inherit is a world that is as precious, as vibrant, as healthy and as alive, as the one you grew up in.
http://www.climatemama.com

Please Note... All links within articles are placed by their author-owners and not by this blog.Products with in those links may or may not be the best in the world.If it sounds too good to be true it could be a scam.Articles are posted for their info,ideas and or entertainment value only.

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