Learning break: Taking action from a 30,000-foot view

(upbeat music) - In college, I had one of those profound classes, thanks to Dr. Cal DeWitt. So I was raised on a sheep farm in Western Wisconsin and I'd never lived in a city and never really thought about cities before moving to Madison, Wisconsin. And during this class, we had a whole section focused on the metabolism of the city. And I have to be honest, I was pretty skeptical. I really thought that cities were devoid of nature and didn't really appreciate them very much, but I was really wrong. When we were in that class, we visited places that I'd never even thought about before, places that made cities work that helped humans thrive along with the natural systems. We went to the landfill, we went to the wastewater treatment plants, the Humane Society, the Arboretum, and a number of other places that all were created by humans to help us live together in society, especially in cities. That moment in the class really helped me think differently. I started to get a deeper understanding for all of these systems within systems that humans have created to help us live in society together. And that systems thinking has really shaped how I approached sustainability. And I wanted my colleagues at the California Academy of Sciences to think like that as well. So about 30 of us went to our local recycling center and we got to see how all of the recycling materials moved throughout the system, and that trip really helped us understand why we should make certain upstream decisions at the California Academy of Sciences, so that downstream, the materials could actually be recycled into usable things. So what does that mean for you? What about learning about the metabolism of your city? Maybe you have an employee resources group that's interested in sustainable operations or just interested in sustainability in general? How about going to visit your local landfill or your wastewater treatment plant? Understanding why the choices that you're making in your workplace are having positive impact on those systems. What about getting a group together to think about writing a sustainability statement or a sustainability master plan for your organization? Or meeting with senior leaders to really think about the most impactful sustainability commitments that you can make to show the world that you're moving in the right direction? All of us together, thinking about sustainability, bring it top of mind can help strengthen those systems, and ultimately, help both people and the planet thrive.