Sustain-a-what?!?!?

twelfth man's first foray into the world of facebook applications is proving to be an interesting one. The closest analogy we can find is that of releasing a single by an unknown artist and then, in ones and twos, taking feedback from listeners and changing the lyrics, beat and melody until it finally gets enough support for radio play and a place in the charts, albeit the indie charts.

If you want to skip the background you can check out the application here.

Or, if you're interested in where the idea came from and what we are trying to achieve, read on. The application will still be here when you finish the post.

We have been working with a group of Sustainable Development (SD) practitioners at the University of Bangor to help get the SD message out there and at the front of people's minds, especially business people. What became clear when we looked at all the communication on the subject of SD was that it means something different to everyone (or nothing to anyone), even governments haven't got it straight in their heads. So your man on the street really doesn't stand a chance.

To date, the SD field has been dominated by well meaning intellectuals (who talk about the problems instead of to the people that can do something about them), governments, (who are hamstrung by the next election - more on this in a later post I feel) marketers with no bravery or vision who seek to maintain the status quo by putting a 'greenwash' on their brand, and a few big businesses who actually have the capacity for long term vision and are putting in place programmes of innovation to protect their futures (albeit in an often less than perfect fashion).

So into this field comes twelfth man, with a belief that it is not government or big business or marketers that will effect change on the major issues facing society today, but the consumer. The man in the street who frankly has no clue what sustainable living means, even less how to work towards it, or in fact WHY to work towards it. These are the people we need to convince, for it is they that elect the governments and support the brands that fund the corporations.

Hence the facebook application. A drop in the ocean? Maybe. But an interesting test of how to challenge people's perceptions of SD and effectively get across the, very simple, message of being environmentally sound, financially stable and socially responsible. It's not a difficult concept, but with all the confusion out there we felt we needed to cut through the crap and bring it back to basics, with our tongue, firmly, in our collective cheek. Our ambitions for the application are, on the surface, not great, we simply want it to create an understanding of the most basic, but crucial, issues facing the modern, global, society. However this is the first step on a long road to encouraging individual action and behaviour change. People need to understand before they can act. The time for talking was the sixties, the time for action is almost past.

Sustain-a-what?!?!? is our first pebble in the ocean of inaction.

Check it out here and let us know what you think.