Speaking at the 2015 SEED Awards

Recently I was asked to speak at the South Bay Business Environmental Coalitions 2015 SEED Awards. Here's some of the hilarity that ensued!

Hello! I am Christina Kull Martens from the South Bay Business Environmental Coalition Board of Directors. I wanted to take a moment to welcome you to the 2015 SEED Awards on behalf of the board.

Keep in mind, if this organization was a person, it would be old enough to vote, drink, even rent a car! It has developed into a deep, interconnected organization that has relationships and impact far and wide.

Now to introduce the board. My elected officials- I’m sure you’re accustomed to the double clap after I read each name- that way one person doesn’t get big applause, and another a golf clap. Let’s Practice (Clap-Clap).

• First, our Current President Grace Huizar
• VP Lisa Ryder Moore
• Secretary Stephanie Harris
• Treasurer Lyonel Martens (Forgot my husband last year- have to make a big deal out of this one!)
• Past President Michelle Nicholls
• Mary Hewitt
• Sona Kalapura Coffee
• Matthew Mazzoocco
• Scott Martin
• Jaime Lozano
• Kermit the Frog (Just kidding! Seeing if you were listening. Hey- it’s not easy being green!)

A little about me- I’ve been a member of the Board for 7 years and work for Northrop Grumman. Yes, we’ve won a SEED Award twice…so I wrote a book about it! It’s called “Bring your D.O.G. to work: A (green) person’s best friend”. If you want a leg up on next year’s competition, we’ve got it for sale in the back! It’s full of short funny stories about all of the great projects my teams have done. And it’s full of bad jokes- but you wouldn’t expect that from me, would ya?

SBBEC’s focus is to provide collaboration opportunities to South bay network with professionals on environmental issues. Since many of you have been with the SBBEC or SEED Awards for a while, we don’t want to duplicate how we talk about the org each year, so Doug keeps challenging me to be creative- 2 years ago it was a top 10 ala David Letterman, last year was Haiku, and this year what was it?

Doug-Iambic Pentameter.

Christina-Yes! Does everyone remember that from their high school English classes? Shakespeare did it best- it goes ba-DUM (like good-BYE) alternating in the stanzas. Doug, do you want to give them an example?

Doug- sure. This one’s the most popular bit from Shakespeare: (Christina- make sure you say it with an English accent!)
Shall I compare thee to a Summers Day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

Christina- Think I can do it? (Cheering) Ok, here goes.
Shall I compare SEED to the SBBEC way?
Members art more hippy and pure volunteers.
Green winds do shape the science fairs of Day
And our mixer’s drinks are all too short to stay!

How did I do? (clapping) So what’s the challenge for next year, Doug, mad libs?
Again, congratulations on being nominated for a SEED award.
It creates focus not only on your efforts, ut also on the culture shift of the community. You’re all role models, and I hope to write a book on YOUR organizations green efforts in the future!
Congratulations from the South Bay Business Environmental Coalition Board of Directors.

Top 10 Reasons to apply for the South Bay Business Environmental Coalition SEED Awards:

The South Bay Business Environmental Coalition just extended their application deadline for their 2015 SoCal Environmental Excellence Development (SEED) awards until July 2nd! Why should you or your organization apply for one of their environmental awards? Check out the Top 10 list to find out why!

10. You can't win if you don't apply.
9. The winners span from individuals, to non-profits, to multi-national corporations- so your group is eligible!
8. The speaker overviewing the SBBEC Board is funny (and sometimes forgets to mention her also board-member husband (guilty)).
7. The categories cover everything, including: Environmental Leadership, Pollution Prevention, Education and Outreach, Resource Preservation, Innovation, and Bridge-Building Awards.
6. It's held at a Palos Verdes location with an ocean front view.
5. There's free food :)
4. The who's who of local Environmentalism will be there!
3. Seeing if past winners have kept their eco-sphere brine shrimp alive another year is an ongoing rivalry,
2. Winners and nominees alike attend the awards ceremony.
1. It's an honor just to be (even self-) nominated!

Good luck to all ofyou, and make sure you apply today! http://www.sbbec.org/pages/category.asp?id=15

Happy Birthday, Earth Day! Lookin' Good for 45

Yesterday was the 45th anniversary of Earth Day- and it's never looked so good :) This week my parents are in town for my Baby Shower (yup, you'll be harassed with lots of green baby advice in the future), and have been gamely doing all the "green stuff" that consists of living/staying at my house and for events throughout the week. (Full Disclosure- my mom is a past AP Environmental Science Teacher, and my dad is a semi-crunchy camper and wood carver, so not a far stretch for them.)

Here's some of what they've gone through this week:
* We picked them up at the airport so they didn't have to rent a car. After all, many things are walkable from our house! (beach, grocery store, gym, shopping, bars...)
* Stayed with us instead of getting a hotel room (they are SUPER Hilton Honors Points collectors), and since the guest room is now the Baby's room, were game for our lush new guest room in the finished...garage.
* We brought them with us to the gym for a 1 week free pass- and almost made them walk (it's less than a mile)- but I took pity that they would be working out there, and I didn't give them coffee early enough in the AM to make that motivation stick.
* Had my napkin lovin' Dad use a reusable napkin for meals all week and use the same glass for water to drink from- even hid the recycled compostable napkins we had for the baby shower to keep temptation at bay!
* They had to take their shoes off in our house- to keep outside dirt out. This is tough for nature-lovin' parents who want to go in and out into my garden to investigate ripe cherry tomatoes or watch birds!
* They volunteered to pick up some more organic milk for us (so many people eating cereal in the AM!),and they walked to the grocery store just down the hill (and back up) with a heavy gallon of milk- yikes!
* They rented an eco-car for a 1 day trip to go visit my Dad's brother (I dropped them off the first day), then walked back from the rental car place the next morning as I had to be at work earlier (it's less than a mile)
* They crafted some yummy meals for us all during the week using the left overs from our baby shower.
* They helped keep our baby shower as Zero-waste as possible- carefully putting up and taking down decorations, and even helped me sort out the compostables that had been thrown in the recycling bin by the party attendees.
* Took down all of the gently used baby onesies from friends that I had clothes pinned up all over my house as decorations for the party
* Put all their coffee and tea grounds and veggie waste in the worm holding bin so I could bring it outside.
* Took Uber to visit me at work on Wed to attend my companies Earth Day lunch time fair and workshops! We got lunch at the cafeteria, and made sure to get and use reusable plates, utensils, etc to make sure there was no waste from our meal (Dad even finished Mom's stir fry for her so she wouldn't "waste" heheh)

Whew! They are great green sports, and I love them and the fact that they came out to visit us for the Baby Shower. Here's to you, Mom n' Dad! You're the greenest parents I could hope for, and hope to be the same for my little one!

I'm a proud, new, published author!

Just published! Check out my funny, new book,on being green in the workplace.Now on Amazon as an e-book and paperback! http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U9QCEO0

Why does sustainability sometimes have to be so…boring? Whether we are making changes at home or at work, there should be an element of fun to it! In this easy read, Bring your D.O.G. to work- A (Green) Person’s Best Friend, follow teams of green employees making changes for the betterment of their companies, all with a lighthearted perspective about how they go about it. You’ll find that bringing your D.O.G. (Doing.Our.Greenest.) perspective to work will make eco-friendly changes easy and attainable- no degree in environmental science or sustainability required! So, c’mon boy, let’s have some fun!

Let's make a large event greener...

“They say the easiest way to go is disposables.”

When you hold site celebrations, they can be A LOT OF WORK. On one side of the scale is doing a small booth for earth day in your cafeteria. You need volunteers, giveaways or activities, messaging, and prep and event time away from your regular job (and that’s just for 1 cafeteria table for 2 hrs on Earth Day that will hit around 100 people).
• Now, imagine doing that for a 10,000 person Family Day at your location! It can get overwhelming if you don’t eat that endangered elephant one bite at a time. In the mix of making sure that you remember tell catering to place the ice with the drinks, finding where facilities stored the time capsule you’re supposed to unveil, and keeping to your budget, many of the actions you can take to minimize your ecological footprint during the event run right out the door (pun intended)!
• To counteract that, we always put a person on our team whose sole focus is “sustainability”. That used to be me on teams, but as you go up in your green career, you’ll need others to be that person- even for you! Sure, they will point out when you have a spelling mistake in the flyer, but their main focus is to let us know when we are missing an eco-opportunity.

Here are some eco-opportunities that our team had from a recent event:
• Having hamburgers at your event? Consider also a veggie burger option.
• Can you use large reusable pumps and containers for the mustard and ketchup?
• Can you serve meals in a compostable paper boat instead of Styrofoam or metal wrap? Then just have compost bins to collect waste that day.
• Having to use bottled water? Place recycling bins with signage everywhere people pick up bottles or throw away trash to close the loop.
• Had to use a bus last time to shuttle visitors from 1 area to another? Try decreasing the footprint on your event so it’s walkable.
• Spent too much money on a rented tent and disposable warming trays to feed people? Use your existing cafeteria to hand out the food.
• Threw away all your welcome signs, directional signs, maps, etc from last time because you put the year and date on them? Let’s make them generic so you can reuse them again next time.
• Couldn’t GIVE away the extra goodies later from the event as prizes at your company because they said Family Day on it? Why not just put your company logo on it instead.
• Get a lot of silly sleeves for your giveaway Frisbees that you aren’t going to use? Why not donate them to an up-cycling charity.
• And the opportunities continue…

Let's have some fun.

Let's have some fun. You don't hear that as the first words from most people, do you? Turns out more and more that's my POV for projects, challenges, and even jobs. I realized in college, as a resident advisor, that you should view your job as a game (I was trying to catch the residents who kept propping the security door open so they could sneak a smoke.... and thus endangering us all to being mauled by a polar bear who got terribly lost due to climate change and made it down to Southwest Virginia, wandered onto campus, and nosed its way into an all girls Dorm). If you view your job as a game, the workplace politics just seem like one move of a chess piece, that when you have a victory you don't rub it in to the losers because you know they could topple your Jenga pieces next round, and that you take setbacks more gracefully because it taught you something about how the game was played...and revealed some of your opponents strategy in the process! As a sustainability person working in Corporate America, it feels like every day is a game. Budgets are held back for years for Electric Vehicle charging stations, someone sabotaged the paper recycling bin with coffee grounds, or a boss in your new department returns the desktop paper recycler you assembled for them to you with a note that "he's not one of those recyclers". What do you do? I say game on. I'm Green Heeled, and it's just the first move in a longer, more interesting, fun game. After all, if you're not having fun, why do it?