A Test Spoke

Tomorrow we start our tour, and our focus is shifting from packing to ‘spokes’,  our catchy word for ‘conversations about sustainability.’  The spokes are going to make our travels so much richer because we’ll have an extra reason to talk to people we meet.

Last weekend we had a test spoke with our friend Anna Tikina, who has done a few sustainability-related projects at UBC Faculty of Forestry. Here are some highlights from our conversation.

At home, Anna works on reducing her family’s environmental impact; often this results in financial savings as well. For example they’ve upgraded the insulation of their house envelope and set up heat recirculation for their fireplace to save energy on heating. They also have a compost bin in the yard to reduce landfill waste. Anna has a personal philosophy of small trade-offs: as she puts it, “I turn off the lights so I don’t feel bad about taking long showers”.

In her teaching, Anna finds that to reach to her students she needs to tell them something they care about. So when she was teaching a course on sustainability to MBA students, she centered the discussion around financial returns. That way, she said, the students are be more likely to adopt sustainable practices for their future businesses.

All in all our test spoke went very well. It was really easy to talk to Anna about sustainability because she is very knowledgeable on the topic and was interested to talk to us. How will we manage with our future spokes? Stay tuned!