Planet Partnership® partnered with Great Explorations Children’s Museum in St. Petersburg to present the first AtKisson Group Pyramid building workshop on May 26 and 27. Diverse community stakeholders were invited to learn skills to improve the sustainability efforts in their organizations and create initiatives that will help Great Explorations further their leadership role in the community in the sustainability arena.
Roberta and Leslie graduated from the AtKisson Group’s Master Class Intensive Training which took place about a half hour outside of Stockholm on the shores of the Baltic Sea. This is the crowning jewel in their relationship with the AtKisson group as Affiliates for the Southeastern U.S. After a week of 14 hour days of study on sustainability, indicators, systems, innovations and strategy, they arrived home jet-lagged and tired, yet energized and ready to put their freshly honed skills into practice!
The City of Largo hosted it’s 3rd annual Trashy Fashion Show to celebrate Earth Day. Roberta was one of the judges, rating each entry on it’s environmental impact and message. Some of these designs were definitely Project Runway material and all were creative and educational! Roberta got to talk some trash as well, providing the audience with a short primer on how we waste. Kudos to all of the great models and designers – and to the City of Largo for drawing attention to this issue with such a fun and engaging event!
The Museum of Arts and Sciences in Daytona, FL is exhibiting a private collection entitled “Reflections: Paintings of Florida”, a look at old Florida through the eyes of different artists. For a special Earth Day tribute on April 25th, the Museum is airing the movie An Inconvenient Truth and has asked Roberta to give a climate update, specifically as it relates to Florida. Roberta has tied her talk not only to Florida climate issues, but to the art exhibit itself, illustrating how those locations look today and how sea level rise might impact those areas.
The GFA turned 40 this year, with large crowds and picture perfect weather in Tampa’s new downtown riverfront park! Our own Leslie Laney served as co-chair for the sustainability committee. The Board has set a 5 year goal of carbon neutrality. This year was spent educating, surveying 300 artists on their carbon impact to the festival, encouraging vendors to use more environmentally friendly products, and focusing on recycling and waste reduction. Leslie will be helping conduct the first GhG measurement, then expand it to eventually include all GFA functions and impacts over the next few years.
In a terrific example of how to not reinvent the wheel, Nike just announced their partnership in a new web-based marketplace called the GreenXchange. This is a a coalition of organizations to collaborate and share intellectual property in order to advance sustainable business innovation. Check out the website at http://greenxchange.force.com/
We’ve been busy becoming Affiliates of the AtKisson Group. A month long training session, followed by a live session in Santa Clara, CA with sustainability expert Alan AtKisson himself! For more on Alan and his tools, click here or visit his site.
Book signing time with Alan
A messy but effective systems map
Building a pyramid
We donated our Carbon Reduction Training Program to the Florida Renewable Energy Expo. Parents learned how to reduce their carbon footprint while their children became carbon fighters!
