The Challenge Your World Blog

Today we had our first in-house, all-team sustainability discussion, which I had the honour of leading. We brainstormed keywords, reviewed the history of the development of the concept, and talk a closer look at some of the important leaders and ideas that have emerged in the field over the past half-century. A term that resonated with everyone strongly was balance. We've been joking around at the office a lot recently about the sustainability or 'unsustainability' of different personal activities and lifestyle choices, stemming from a response I made a few weeks ago when posed a question about how one makes choices in a world of complexity and change: "It's all about balance." For example, today Jocelyn, our project manager, told me he wouldn't be using any paper because he had taken a twenty minute shower that morning. (I had just printed out about two hundred pages of reports.) On Tuesday, Martin, our Director of Interactivity showed up with two bags of vertically-integrated, fair-trade cotton clothes from infamous apparel provider American Apparel, cheerfully explaining that it offset the styrofoam (actually polysterene) container from his lunch.* After our meeting we all got into a serious discussion about the challenge of establishing what's okay and what's not in terms of sustainability and protecting the environment, and the question of offsets: Is it okay to drive a Hummer if your house is solar powered? Is it okay to fly frequently if you purchase carbon credits? How do you make a decision? How do you total up the energy balance? My answer? I don't know. But we're going to figure it out. Sustainability is a journey, not a destination. It's about asking questions, taking time to reflect, and honestly discussing that which challenges and confuses us, and that which gives us hope. It's about deciding for yourself what you are willing and able to commit to, and gaining a bigger picture of the whole. It's about a whole lot, this wonderful subject of sustainability, and I am excited and honoured to be helping bring that to you. And remember, next time someone asks you a challenging question regarding a personal life decision, you can always rely on our favourite response: "It's about balance!" *On the subject of polystyrene, I am looking into alternative packaging providers and I am going to start approaching the restaurants we buy from to switch over to them. Stay tuned for more!