Its always confused me why they added environmental sustainability to the team sustainability award. The process of being environmentally friendly is completely different from team sustainability. Should these be separate awards?
Should team sustainability and environmental sustainability be seperate awards?
- Yes!
- No!
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voters
Is it?
By counter example :
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Working to bring an event locally to serve a growing team population benifits both environmental and economic (team) sustainability goals.
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Working with offcuts from a fabrication shop serves both.
Not that environmental and team can’t be exclusive, but many times they go hand in hand.
Having an open judging criteria also helps give the award out at events. Get too specific and that becomes difficult. It doesn’t look good if the environmental awards can’t be given out and go into the dumpster, or the team sustanability award can’t be given out and gets tossed… The teams’ registration paid for that.
Also, we don’t need excessive virtue signaling to win hyper specific awards. I think there is value in being able to generalize and communicate how a specific initiative folds into a greater whole.
Just my 2¢
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Being able to show we are environmentally sustainable over a long period of time is also indicative that our program itself is sustainable. Anytime when something is sustainable, it follows that most other things about a team are sustainable.
One of the core things on our team that bonds our program is our “Purple is the New Green” initiative we started in 2013. While it has evolved over time, our teams sustainability has allowed us to sustain that program through several rough patches.
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I’m fine with them being together, but having judges be specific about what they’re asking for would be a big help. When asked “tell me about your team’s sustainability” it’s hard seeing a team member talk about how they recruit new students and establish a feeder system while building lasting relationships with their sponsor, only to be met with “fine, but do you do anything to recycle or reuse materials at the end of the season?”.
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For the answer to be meaningful, you’d really need to identify a high-level description for each category, e.g.:
- Keep people from this pool (e.g., school, community) actively participating in FIRST leagues, ideally growing and reaching out to activate other nearby communities with that message, etc…
and:
- Don’t do things that release greenhouse gases, pollute, consume limited natural resources, harm the environment, etc…
and break down the two into things they might imply, e.g.,
For the former, you might have things such as:
- keep costs under budget
- create endowments
- sign beneficial long-term contracts
- build dedicated team facilities, potentially integrated into a parent organization (sink some cost!)
- have multiple people very devoted to the local franchise
- be able to swap people in and out as needed; not completely dependent on particular individuals; have documentation and common practices
- try not to burn people out, such that they’re able to keep being involved, and be holders/distributors of the team’s institutional knowledge
- build and maintain recruitment pipelines
- create deep relationships with sponsors and potentially a parent organization
- maintain ties to the community
- set realistic goals, achieve those goals, set new goals
- make it exciting; appeal to that part of human psychology
- make it valuable for the parent organization and sponsors; appeal to adult/corporate/institutional values
and some examples for the latter:
- reduce car use; meet within walking distance of where people already are (e.g., at the school), when they’re there, carpool or bus when possible, or make calls instead of driving
- avoid supplying food to the team that’s environmentally-taxing to create and/or deliver (e.g., a parent delivering lunch is a single-person car trip, in most cases, but still better than multiple people driving separately to restaurants to get lunch)
- share build and practice space with as many other people as possible; avoid dedicated space for the team
- avoid using air conditioning
- avoid air shipping and rush shipping
- avoid consuming resources, including iterating on physical parts, minimize building robots, field elements, wearing out batteries, field carpet, etc…
- avoid events that require air travel, including event staff and volunteers
- avoid dependence on or publicity for other entities that aren’t working toward these goals or similar ones
- avoid hiding or offsetting these activities so they can still take place without technically being performed by the team – they still have an impact if you “cook the books”
- look beyond the team to other entities or activities that might have greater environmental impact potential
I’m absolutely pulling these up off the top of my head without ranking them by effect size – I am sure someone can do better, and I welcome a new set of examples, provided they aren’t just cherry-picked to align with both categories or vice-versa. My point is, this would be a good first step toward answering the question. First, figure out what each category actually implies via some relevant, meaningful examples. Then, compare the examples and see which ones overlap, which are unrelated, and which conflict. If you end up with a lot of overlap, and not a lot of conflict, maybe combine the awards. But if there’s a lot of conflict and not a lot of overlap, maybe do something else.
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I do think it is a bit of kludge to stick the two things together. But I’ll pass on answering a survey with exclamation points. Its not that big a deal.
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That’s a really good question, and I’ve wondered the same thing. Team sustainability and environmental sustainability do seem like pretty different things, so combining them under one award feels a little odd at first. Team sustainability is more about making sure the team can keep running long-term, things like fundraising, recruiting new members, mentoring younger students, and keeping everything organized so the team doesn’t fall apart after a few years. Environmental sustainability, on the other hand, is about minimizing your impact on the planet,using fewer resources, recycling, or being energy-efficient. They’re not really the same thing.
That being said, I can kind of see why FIRST put them together. Both ideas focus on being thoughtful about the future. A team that focuses on being environmentally friendly is thinking long-term, just like a team that builds a strong structure to survive year after year. Maybe FIRST wants teams to see sustainability as more than just keeping the team alive—it’s also about being responsible with the resources you use to keep the team running.
I do think it could make sense to split them into separate awards because they’re such different things. Teams that are doing a lot to stay environmentally sustainable might not necessarily be doing well with their internal sustainability (and vice versa). Splitting them could let teams focus more specifically on one or the other and be recognized for that.
But on the flip side, keeping them combined might encourage teams to see sustainability as something bigger than just one aspect of their team. Like, what if a team ties their environmental sustainability efforts into their long-term team sustainability? For example, building partnerships with eco-friendly companies or using green initiatives as a way to attract sponsors or do outreach? That kind of combines both ideas into one plan, and maybe that’s what FIRST wants teams to think about.
So yeah, I get why it feels like two totally different things, but I think combining them might be a way to challenge teams to think outside the box.
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A reminder about where this came from:
The only reason they added environmental sustainability to the award was because Dow Chemical paid them to make it look like they cared about the environment. Both are important, but I would like to see the two efforts acknowledged separately - the environmental aspect feels like something that could see recognition as part of an Impact or Judge’s award win now that reusing parts is legal so there isn’t as much need for individual teams to get creative with sustainability.
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