Guest blog - The H-Word

I think the word “habits” has a bad reputation. It seems to carry with it a sort of negative connotation. Makes you think of “smoking” and “addiction.” Or maybe that’s just me, because I have some experience with bad habits. When I read Nicole’s latest blog, “You May Ask Yourself…” at the bottom she questions the formation of habits, how they come to be and why we get stuck in them and how we stay clear of those unhealthy ones. It inspired me to pursue the conversation because I have a few thoughts to share on that subject.

There’s a saying that a ladder of success has three rungs: unconscious incompetence, conscious competence and unconscious competence. We can move through being unaware of our inability to being unaware of our ability – or, in this context a bad habit versus a good one where, eventually, it won’t even be a habit anymore but just a positive piece of your life.

I spent most of my 20s in unconscious incompetence. Since this is a "family" rated blog I won’t go into the gritty details but suffice to say I enjoyed living a life of excess, of a lack of responsibility, the sort of perennial teenage dream. Credit card? Nope – bad credit. Nest egg, or savings account? Nope – spent it going out with friends to the local watering holes after work. I basically thought the term “mutual fund” was actually “mutual fun” and had no concept of thinking about my goals beyond getting to the party on the weekend (despite the fact every day was the weekend in that state of mind).

I don’t really know how I got out of it, but I did. It was tricky. I had to say goodbye to some close friends who, ironically, I’ve never seen again. I moved. I started to focus on my career. I stopped drinking – that was the big one because everything else was attached to it… every night of overindulgence always started with just a few beers.

Making the decision to stop was the hardest part. But once I’d said to myself, “This isn’t working anymore” and moved into conscious competence, I started to look at my options. I figured out what I needed to do to break the bad habits and the easiest part, by far, was just sticking to the plan.

A year and a half later I’ve learned a lot about habits. Old, bad habits can be broken if you just stick with it. And you know what else? There are a ton of great, positive habits out there that can be learned. Habits are a way of acting that can be adapted – sure it’s difficult at first but if you keep repeating the action one day you won’t even notice what you’re doing. I’ve since made a habit of walking to work and back every day. I’ve made a habit of recycling, buying organic/local foods and paying attention to green cleaning products. I’ve made a habit of taking my vitamins and drinking water throughout the day. They were all small changes on their own, but with each I’ve watched them change from conscious effort to second nature. Just like the metamorphosis into unconscious competence that was breaking my worst bad habit - the destructive course of my life - and finally growing the hell up!

So I guess at the end of the day, I would answer Nicole by saying: no, we don’t need to just wait for our bad habits to consume us, and yes we can avoid them. We just need to get to that first level of consciousness, and be aware of what we want to change - like she has done with her decision to stop driving to yoga class. :) Once we take that first big step toward our goal, the rest will fall into place. 

Emily Kendy lives in Vancouver, BC. She is the Project Coordinator of Renewable Energy Projects for Eaga Canada. She likes to write fiction (and sometimes non-fiction) in her spare time.

You may ask yourself "Well, How did I get here?"

I have expanded...
And not in a good way.  As Parkinson's Law states - the work expands to fill the time allotted - the same can go for - the stuff expands to fill the space.
Two things I have noticed about my personal expansion.  That makes me scratch my head and ask really - how did i get here?
In 2007 I bought a car, I had owned a car back in University for a year to help take my grandmother around, but didn't like having the overhead of the car and sold it.  I survived for 8 years without one after that. (For full disclosure, my significant others during that time own vehicles or had friends who lived close).  But I didn't own a car and I would take public transportation, bike or even walk.  I was surprised how little I relied on the car.  I also was in pretty good shape.
But in 2007 I bought a car - I was living in Ventura CA and well, you really need a vehicle in Southern California as distances are far and public transportation is spotty.  Now 4 years later I cannot believe how reliant I have become on that car.  I have now fit my life around the convenience of jumping in and getting somewhere in 5 minutes.
So this month I had to say to myself - ENOUGH - you are becoming so lazy, I was driving to my Yoga class that was 1.5 miles away.  Riding my bike would add 10 more minutes to the commute and burn about 50 calories. So no more convenient driving - I have to ask myself, do I NEED to drive?  If I planned better could I walk, bike or carpool?  90% of the time the answer is yes. So that is the new plan.

The other area of expansion is in my home.  When we moved to Encinitas we found a home larger than the one we were living in Ventura.  Once everything was moved in we have two completely empty rooms.  Well 18 months later - we have a full house.  I will say most of the new furniture has come from Andy's woodworking projects.  Regardless I did have a hand in filling up the space - Parkinson was right, I could not let that empty space sit there empty for long before I added a plant, a chair, whatever the space needed.
Now I look around at all of the stuff and think - how did I get here?

Are we just destined to grow into habits or is there some way of steering clear?  Well at least now I see my behavior and maybe I can try and change it?

Surviving the Meta Trends

I gave a presentation at the Los Angeles International Textiles Show earlier this week and the topic was Sustainable Meta Trends in Textiles.  In all honesty I didn't know what a Meta Trend was until a few weeks prior. I looked it up and basically META is something transformational.
So it is not just what is new, but what is going to change significantly.
Pretty daunting - and to boot, my presentation was pretty daunting as well, as the impact of the textile industry on the planet is significant.

Often however we hear these significant meta statements about poverty, climate change, obesity, water, land and energy shortages and we cannot comprehend how to digest that information into our daily lives. At least I find it quite difficult. So I started thinking about a way to make these huge pieces of information enter my brain with some kind of comprehension. And the way I look at it is to find some kind of transformational experience that I have already gone though and build a connection.

For instance - when I worked as a freelancer and now as a consultant and do not have the same income I was used to - you begin to adapt and start living differently, you prioritize, and alter your behaviors.  I have seen the same with friends and family who have children, your life is now different, you adapt.
Another example - our pipes broke and had to turn off the water in our home for a day, we re-looked at how we lived, what could we do without water and still live.

These maybe small items, but it shows how if we step back and look at the times in our lives that we have been able to change, and change our behaviors we usually can do it. So you can look at these Meta trends as warnings for the areas of the world that are going to change and you can start practicing now. 

A little inspiration for the weekend

I love to read.  And I love to underline thoughts of great interest.  And I love to feel inspired.  Once inspired all of a sudden the world feels a little lighter and with so much going on right now. I figure we all need a little inspiration for the weekend.
Since we all have something going on and it all doesn't feel very sustainable these days, here are some good things to keep in mind.

(I am just reaching for books in the shelf beside me here and flipping through to find some of those nice underlines)

"Bring your children here, and their children, in turn. Do like you and me done and show them how to take a bearing off those two mesas - show 'em how to find the arroyo and the saddle.  But most of all Buddy," he said, touching his grandson's hand, "tell them the stories" - Monty Bassett Slim the Guide

"I made a list of the happiest periods in my life, and I realized that none of them involved money.  I realized that building stuff and being creative and inventive made me happy." Tony Hsieh Delivering Happiness - A path to profits, passion, and purpose


"When something difficult arises, the mind often wants to jump in to comment on it, or try to fix it, or move away from it - anything but stay with it.  this may seem like healthy, self protective behaviour, but the truth is that is you can't be fully present with the difficult moments, chances are you won't be present with the best moments of your life either." Phillip Moffitt - Dancing with Life


"Imagine that the universe is a great spinning engine," he said, " you want to stay near the core the thing - right in the hub of the wheel - not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes place, where you can get frayed and crazy. The hub of calmness - that's your heart" Elizabeth Gilbert - Eat Pray Love


Got any quotes you like?
Have a wonderful weekend

Who the heck am i?

As I keep venturing out into my sustainability consulting career I have have received some great feedback from colleagues and friends.  And a lot of it centers around my passion for sustainability not only in my career but in my personal life too.

I am very fortunate that I have learned a lot of great lessons about living a more sustainable life and have the opportunity to put my values into practice.  I have a LOT of areas of improvement, but I do have some great practices at home that allow us to reduce our impact.

I wanted to share some things we've put in place that hopefully give you a better sense of who I am and maybe some ideas for things you want to do too.

pickled turnips - all ingredients coming from the garden

me and my turnip "crop"

hanging laundry on the line to dry

my garden

the composter in the back ground - not only is it great for reducing our trash, but I use the compost in the garden which saves on buying dirt!

The vertical potato stacker that Andy made me

my commuter bike with a milk crate fixed on the back for a great basket. 

The kitchen recycling center - co-mingle recycling, soft plastics which we can recycle at the prAna offices, laundry for dirty dish rags and trash, which we take out only every couple of weeks

So there is a little peek into living sustainability. 

Fair Trade Certified makes its way into clothing

I don't think I would normally be this excited about a product, but it has been the focus of the last 18 months of my life, so I have to share...
I have to go back a few years. There has been a desire from customers to want to buy products that are made with high ethical manufacturing practices.  Many companies and organizations have been working on trying to bring that level of transparency, but with traditional manufacturing and spread out supply chains it is very difficult. Fair Trade Certified is label you see on products like chocolate, coffee, bananas, sugar etc. But in the past few years  Fair Trade USA had been working on project for Apparel.  To ensure to customers that the products are in fact Fair Trade they developed the Apparel and Linens standard and I got a chance to review it years ago.  The ideas were right, but there were too many questions with implementation.  However they listened to their stakeholders and continued to revise the standard to a place that as a brand it would be relatively straightforward to put into reality.
So when I started a new job with prAna in August of 2009, the values of social responsibility resonated with the brand, everyone at the company was on board to test this out.

I am writing about this now because finally you can buy prAna's first Fair Trade Certified product - the SOUL T on prAna.com

The process was incredibly interesting as prAna along with a small handful of companies were the tester brands for this new standard and I soon memorized the Fair Trade USA phone number.  The shirt was designed and developed by prAna's internal team and we worked with the Liberian Women's Sewing Project in Monrovia Liberia to make the shirts.  This is just one of many factories that have already been approved by Fair Trade USA to make Fair Trade Certified product.

When people ask me what is so special about Fair Trade Certified Apparel - it really is about having a transparent supply chain, knowing that there is environmental protection, direct trade, and getting fair wages into the hands of the workers.  We all feel this should always be the case, but it just isn't so. So to support a system that does this is incredibly important.  Ideally we would see Fair Trade attached to all manufacturing.

It is so inspiring to be a part of something that is bigger than yourself and that is what being involved in a project like this does.

Sending market signals to companies

If you have the option to vote your values with your dollars by supporting companies and products that aligned with what is important to you - wouldn't you?  Unfortunately before it was very difficult for consumers to do this.  You might hear a cool story about a company that was using organic, recycling their waste or creating their own renewable energy and buy their products, but if you look at your everything you bought in a week - there are almost too many products to know everything about.

But now there is a really easy solution - especially for all of you smart phone users (I know, I know, I'll get one some day) It is call GoodGuide, and their tag line is "Find healthy, green, ethical products according to scientific ratings".  (check out the video on how it works)

If you look through the website you will see that products are rated at a high level on Health, Environment, and Society. Dig deeper and each category is broken down into sub categories, so depending on how much detail you want you can learn about why a product or company was ranked the way it was.

What is unique about GoodGuide is the level of scientific analysis that goes on behind each of the rankings, data is collected from a wide variety of sources and is analyzed to come up with the score.  You can only imagine the difficulty in acquiring all of this data. The data is then normalized across product categories so like with like is ranked against each other.

It is interesting to see the ranking and then your personal and emotional reaction to that ranking.  For instance I don't buy Clorox Green Works cleaning products because I felt Clorox was a bad company - but in fact their dish soap ranked well.  So that got me interested in how my current dish soap is ranked and interestingly it was only slightly higher.

If you want to get even more issue specific about how you purchase from companies who share your values here is a list of other ranking websites and the issues they look at. (Let me know if I am missing others)

Climate Counts - companies and their commitment to tackling global warming

Free 2 Work - Human Trafficking and Slavery 

PETA - List companies that test on animals

Newsweek - USA top 500 and 100 global companies

Better world hand book - (Human rights, the environment, animal protection, community involvement, social justice) Various consumer products

Greenpeace - Green guide to better electronics

So try it out - see how your toothpaste, laundry detergent, and favorite candy bar rank - see if you would make any changes to your buying habits based on this new information.