Behavior Change for Sustainability

The Partnership for a Green City is an innovative sustainability collaboration of four of the largest public employers in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The Partnership process convenes peers from each public entity to address problems and share sustainability solutions.  Peer pressure, rather than top-down decision-making, has produced significant changes in behavior and operating procedures within each partner.

Environmental education and sustainability awareness are important aspects of any sustainability program; however, education and awareness do not make people change their behaviors.  The Partnership for a Green City convened a Behavior Change Team in 2013 to create a behavior change campaign that can be implemented across the four public partners.  Employees of each organization are also working with undergraduate and graduate classes in mindfulness and behavior change on specific behavior change.  Remarkably, there is much agreement across four different issues including focus areas of energy use; transportation; reduction, reuse and recycling; and public health issues (local foods, increasing exercise, anti-idling of vehicles, etc.). Each of the focus areas has multiple behavior change targets that the students and employees will be working to change.

Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound (SMART) criteria will be used across each of the groups to show, to the extent possible, the individual and organizational change achieved.  Social media tools such as myActions.org will be a part of the change process.  It is important that people learn and believe that their individual contribution does indeed make a difference.