Painting The Town Green!

A provocative but entertaining report out today (January 16 2006) comes to terms with the fact that the environmental movement has so far had limited success in encouraging the wider public to ‘go green’ but argues that with more imagination and new approaches it could achieve a mass swing to green behaviour.

report blows the whistle on the one-size-fits-all aspect of current approach to communicating green issues

grownupgreen members will recall being asked, late last year, for opinions about ‘green’ behaviour and choices. Your contributions were used, along with many others, to inform the Green Enagage Project report – Painting the Town Green

Green-Engage is a project that seeks ways to engage people in respecting, protecting and enhancing the environment for the benefit of society as a whole. The project’s contributing partners are WWF, Transport 2000, Friends of the Earth, Green Alliance, Sustain, Passion for the Planet and grownupgreen. The Report aims to create a blueprint for the ‘green movement’ in the widest sense to more effectively help and persuade people to adopt environmentally friendly behaviours.

Uniquely, the report draws on the views, ideas and vision of around 60 key thinkers in environmental policy, campaigns and communication, all of whom have contributed their thoughts specifically for the Green-Engage project. These include past and present national politicians with a frontbench environmental remit such as Peter Ainsworth, Norman Baker, Tom Brake, Oliver Letwin, Michael Meacher and Lord Whitty; green icons such as Sara Parkin and Helena Norberg-Hodge; media figures and authors such as Polly Toynbee, Leo Hickman and Penney Poyzer; key academics; respected consultants in communications; some of the best campaigners and activists within the non-governmental movement; figures from green businesses such as FirstGroup, Fresh and Wild and BedZED; and an essential sprinkling of people with backgrounds in psychology and behaviour.

Painting the Town Green argues that public participation is essential if as a nation we are to meet our environmental objectives and it recommends deep changes in how the wider green movement communicates in order to achieve public behaviour change across 13 lifestyle areas, including transport, holidays and leisure, energy use, waste and recycling, food and water use. The report will be essential reading for all those involved in encouraging the public to go green, including politicians, central government, local authorities, campaigners, advisers, academics, authors and businesses providing green products and services.

Chief among the recommendations are a move away from what is essentially exhortation to engagement on equal terms; a halt to scare and guilt tactics; the articulation of a positive vision for the future that’s desirable and realistic; movement from a reliance on detailed information towards a real attempt to connect with people’s values, emotions and desires; a focus on communication with people in ways that work for them rather than for the communicator; new attempts to involve public role models and produce ‘soft messaging’ particularly through television; movement towards green living ‘on a plate’ where people can access green advice and services easily, cheaply and without fuss; a shift in modus operandi for non-governmental organisations towards co-operation with decision makers and away from external campaigning and even public harassment; and the introduction of a national network of green ‘demonstration houses’ run by local authorities.

For regular users of grownupgreen you will be pleased to hear that crucially the report blows the whistle on the one-size-fits-all aspect of current campaigns and communications throughout the wider green movement, and argues that people fall into very different groups with different values, concerns and triggers for action and that they therefore need different approaches.

The report highlights other areas where environmental programmes have failed to understand the public. Nowhere is this more true, says the report, than with car use. We fail to recognise that cars are much more than transport to most people and that they are just as much about a sense of freedom and personal identity. Calls to use public transport rarely take this into account.

Painting the Town Green also draws on a wide range of contemporary research and new informal public surveys carried out by Green-Engage during 2005.

Stephen Hounsham, who researched and wrote the report and is also Communications Manager at Transport 2000, said:

“The public are crucial in the work of the green movement but we’ve a lot to learn in terms of how to engage with them. Indeed we sometimes tend to follow the Dad’s Army approach to changing lifestyles. It’s an unattractive combination of disaster prediction (Private Fraser’s ‘We’re all doomed!’), supercilious criticism Sergeant Wilson’s ‘Do you really think that’s wise?’) and condemnation (Captain Mainwaring’s ‘You stupid boy!’). And what response do we often get? Yes, Warden Hodges said it: ‘Oi Napoleon! Who do you think you are?’

“Painting the Town Green represents a meeting point of public education, campaigning, psychology and creative marketing. It shows that with new approaches and a degree of imagination, the green movement could have much greater success in promoting environmentally friendly behaviours in all areas of life, including transport, holidays and leisure, waste, food, energy use, chemicals, materials, water use, consumer goods, ‘green finance’, participation and donation, ‘green voting’, and even bearing ‘green witness’ to others.”

The report has already received widespread endorsement:

Rebecca Willis, Vice-Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission, said:

“Attempts to involve people in the environment are not working well enough at the moment. People just aren’t engaged. The reasons for this are complicated but this report unravels them and suggests some important ways forward.”

Stephen Joseph, Executive Director of Transport 2000, said:

“This report goes to the heart of the problem environmental groups face – everyone says they want to save the planet and be green but fewer people actually do anything about it. Painting the Town Green brings together a lot of the thinking and ideas on how to make ‘going green’ something people want to do rather than something they feel bullied into. It signposts the way forward for the environmental movement.”

George Marshall, Co-Executive Director of Climate Outreach and Information Network and Founder of Rising Tide, said:

“At last a challenge to the clichés, jargon and worn-out tactics of environmental communications. At a time of deepening collective denial about the environment, this call for a new approach to personal engagement could not be more urgent.”

Roger East, Editor of Green Futures magazine, said:

“If our messages don’t communicate, inspire and motivate change, we are just whistling in the dark. This report is admirably clear-headed about the challenges faced by the green movement, and full of practical and positive recommendations – in short, an object lesson in communication.”

Painting the Town Green is available as a 148-page printed report at £20 post-free or as a pdf file, price £10, from Sales, Transport 2000, The Impact Centre, 12-18 Hoxton Street, London N1 6NG (cheques payable to Transport 2000). Credit and debit card holders can call 020 7613 0743 for immediate delivery.

grownupgreen - 16/01/06

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