Is Waste Essential to Sustainability?

Elephant ears in the fryer

Recently, I visited Portland's Oregon Zoo with my wife and daughter.  Besides enjoying the animals, especially Samudra, the now not-so-small baby elephant, we made some purchases.  First were two elephant ears for my wife and daughter: tasty, zoo-themed slabs of fried dough slathered with butter and sugar.  At the end of our visit, we stopped in the gift shop, where my ten-year-old daughter got a stuffed animal.  In the gift shop, a sign announced an upcoming renovation that would enhance the shop's sustainability, with new bamboo shelves and paints with low levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

The sign got me thinking.  Certainly, the zoo's activities embody sustainability: education about the precious diversity of life; breeding and sometimes even releasing endangered species; and contributing to the economic well-being of the Portland metropolitan area.  But the concession stands and gift stores sell a lot of junk food that isn't good for us and souvenirs that we don't really need, like plastic toys, stuffed animals and T-shirts.

But everyone likes souvenirs, and they contribute to the economic viability of the zoo.   So, are they a good thing?   It seems that unnecessary consumption is an essential fundraising tool for even the worthiest of causes.   Consider the charity auctions and galas that consume significant resources just to get people to come and donate.  Why not just donate everything directly to the charity?  But I imagine that just asking people to write a check doesn't work as well.

"The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization" Guides Leaders of all Stripes

We expect organizations to be corrupt and dysfunctional, requiring watchdogs to keep them on track. We expect their leaders to be venal and short-sighted, on the verge of being uncovered by investigators. Peter Senge, however, in the 2006 revision of this 1990 management classic, provides a convincing and inspiring guide for building successful organizations that adapt to change while nurturing their members.  Learning organizations see their members, operations and surroundings as a connected whole, and use each of their members to continually sense, interpret and adapt to change. A learning organization must continually engage in five disciplines:

1. Personal Mastery,  in which individuals develop personal visions while seeing the world exactly as it is.    They harness the resulting "creative tension" to focus their efforts on realizing these visions.
2. Mental Models, which are ways of consciously and unconsciously perceiving the world.  All models are simplifications and therefore limiting.  Many are useful, but often we are not conscious of the models we embrace and the limits they impose.  Therefore we can achieve new levels of success by becoming conscious of these models and deliberately evolving them.