Most people agree that climate change is happening but that doesn’t make it an easy problem to solve. Plenty of people experience ‘analysis paralysis’ which happens when people get overwhelmed or 'paralyzed' by the size and complexity of a problem. It’s so overwhelming that motivated people end up doing nothing because they don’t know where to start.

At Deane, we think education is as good a place as any to start because it’s a (relatively) small and controllable action but also has the potential to reach (and influence) a lot of people. Our hope is that by giving our staff knowledge, they can share it with their households, their families, and their communities.

In early May, we kicked off the first of our ‘lunch ‘n learn’ Sustainability Talks. This is a series of interactive sessions covering all things “Sustainable”. Our goal is to deliver:

• Highly relatable topics that are relevant to Deane’s Sustainability Strategy.
• Bite-size info - no longer than 45 mins.
• Fun and informative sessions that leave people energised.

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For our first session, we were lucky enough to have Kate Hodge from sustainability consultants, Go Well take us through the new curb-side recycling standards. For more info on this read our Recycling Right blog. The main goal of the session was to encourage people to separate their recycling from their landfill waste in the office and of course, in their homes too.

Kate kicked us off with a quiz (amazing how excited people get about a quiz!) to test people’s existing knowledge, some info about why the changes have taken place and what they mean and finished with a Q & A. Simple stuff but great feedback from our staff. The question is, how effective was it at improving our office recycling habits?

We will let you know when we do our next rubbish audit but for now, here are the top 5 things we learnt (and are continuing to learn!) about sustainability education:

1. Just start – it’s never going to be perfect but doing something is better than being stuck, doing nothing. Starting, gives you an opportunity to review and make changes for the next time.


2. Make it fun – who doesn’t love a quiz or a spot prize?


3. Make it accessible – remember to take all your team members into consideration. Set up a video link so remote teams can be part of it. If you have warehouse staff or teams that can’t just leave their desk, check in with their managers to encourage their attendance too.


4. What resonates with one person, won’t resonate with another – a voluntary ‘lunch ‘n learn’ session may sound fun to some people but to others, might sound painful. The same message will probably need to be delivered in multiple ways; a voluntary session, a team meeting, new signage/notices, company-wide quiz and back to reinforcing at a team meeting…. then start it all over again.


5. Patience is a virtue – change doesn’t happen overnight, so the message needs to be consistent. Don’t be disheartened, it takes a lot to change people’s habits!