Capturing and Sharing Sustainability: The Green Living Project

When we think of education, thoughts of heavy textbooks and lengthy lectures may come to mind.  Even when it comes to sustainability education, at times the content may seem many steps away from being practical or relevant to the real world.  The Green Living Project takes a different approach, “capturing sustainability, one project at a time.”

The Sustainable Environment Technologies Group (SET Group), based in Los Angeles, hosted a panel on the topic of Sustainability Education. On this panel, Green Living Project Founder and President, Rob Holmes, spoke of his venture.

Their business model comes in two parts, media production or capturing & crafting the story, and marketing & distribution.

In terms of media production, the team uses video and photography to document sustainability projects around the world.  It’s a form of visual storytelling, if you will.  From Africa to South America, and even closer to home such as Maine, the Green Living Project captures stories from the local perspective.  As Holmes’ suggests, they may be “local stories, but national and global application.”

You may have a compelling story, but how do you get it out there?  Once the story is captured, the story must be told.

The Green Living Project holds several types of events to market and distribute the sustainability stories they have captured, which the organization calls, Premiers, Mobile Tours, and Event Series: “The purpose of each channel is to educate, inspire, and entertain individuals to communities on the importance and benefits of sustainable living.”  Thus far, they have held over 150 events in the US and Canada.

Also, during the panel, Holmes provided several short videos, less than 5 minutes a piece, which captured the essence of local culture and action towards sustainability.  One such piece focused on a community going local, growing vegetables locally, turning it into not only local meals, but healthy meals.  If a picture is worth a 1000 words, a video must be worth a tad more in terms of storytelling.

At times, we may feel like no one is doing anything about sustainability, either locally or globally.   Or that we are the only ones in the room pursuing it. But many times, we just have yet to hear about sustainability successes.  As Holmes suggests, “It's very important to document what people are doing to educate the rest of us."

The Green Living Project helps to educate us about what people are doing around the world.  It brings to life the stories of people in pursuit of sustainability, that no textbook or lecture could.