The Key To Making a Difference

Aug 29 2009

Written by Ava

For David DiSalvo, the key to water conservation is making the right choices, but it's also about getting the word out. As an environmental public outreach specialist with smidgens of marketing and editing and loads of science writing under his belt, it's easy to see why he's the perfect man for the job, encouraging the world that even small contributions, like reusing towels at hotels, makes a difference.

While he also writes about energy, public health, healthcare, social marketing, and air quality, we wanted to get his take on the subject of water conservation and cleaning wastewater, as he's worked to spread the message as a marketing specialist and written on the topic for places like his blog, Neuronarrative, which addresses public awareness topics and ideas that intersect with neuroscience and psychology.

Water conservation and clean water is on the way up and that’s due in part to the efforts of David DiSalvo.

What is your background as a public outreach specialist in environmental issues?

I spent several years as a public communications consultant to the U.S. EPA developing outreach programs for many of the agency’s major initiatives. These included a national lead-poisoning awareness campaign called “Runs Better Unleaded” and a program focused on building awareness of critical children’s health issues, such as the drastic increase in asthma rates and possible links to air quality and environmental contaminates. I also worked as a consultant to a number of state and city government agencies, like the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the City of Birmingham, Alabama, developing and implementing public outreach strategies for city and statewide environmental programs.

What are some of the creative ways you get the word out about water issues (clean water, water conservation, etc.)?

In my experience, the key ingredient for the success of any outreach program is to draw credible links between the messages you are communicating and genuine concerns of the audience. The messages have to matter in a way that’s easily and quickly grasped by the audience, otherwise they’ll fall flat.

As an example, for many years now major hotel chains have been trying to encourage guests to reuse towels instead of having them washed every day to conserve water (an initiative I’m sure your audience is very familiar with). From a communications standpoint, these initiatives suffer from a major flaw – they contradict the overriding commercial message of any good hotel: that its guests will have nothing to worry about while they stay there because the hotel’s business is to “take care of them.” The more luxurious the hotel, the stronger that message is communicated. In other words, guests pay a steep price for comfort, and that’s what the hotel promises they’ll receive. But then, once the guest arrives in his or her room, they see a placard on the desk asking them to reuse their towels. You can almost feel the contradiction. The guest’s internal response is, “Why? I’m paying you to make me comfortable while I’m here. If I want to be environmentally conscious, I’ll do it at home.”

So what’s the answer? Draw a link between the behavior that’s being encouraged and one or more tangible benefits. For most people, it’s not enough to give them a 30,000 foot benefit like, “You’re helping the environment.” Perhaps they are, but how are you, Mr. Luxury Hotel, sacrificing as well? Are you reducing my rate by a certain percentage if I reuse my towels? Are you showing me that a percentage of your revenue is supporting initiatives that can make me feel good about staying here rather than at the hotel up the street? If I consistently reuse towels while I stay at your hotels, will you add points to my guest rewards card?

Again, it’s about making it tangible. Behavior is rarely changed by any other means.

What are some the best technologies for cleaning and/or conserving water that you’ve encountered in the past?

The technologies I’m most interested in right now are desalination, on the water side, and biological cleaning methods on the wastewater side.

I see desalination as a potentially powerful way of addressing water scarcity issues in some parts of the country. For instance, in Florida, where I live, we’re very much in danger of massive water shortages in just the next few years. We’re already experiencing this in some counties, and with the population increasing all over the state, it’s only getting worse. The water management districts are working nonstop to battle scarcity issues. They’ve raised the permitting criteria for tapping groundwater resources and drilling wells into the aquifer, but it’s really a race that can’t be won unless something happens to stem demand or considerably increase supply. I have major misgivings about increasing supply, via desalination, even though I find the technology fascinating. I’ve worked with transportation planning engineers who enjoy pointing out that, no matter how many lanes you add to the highway, there will always be more cars to fill them. I think the same can be said of water supply, especially in a state like Florida where the inflow of new residents rarely pauses. That said, I think if we can find a way of judiciously adding to supply via desal (particularly brackish groundwater desal, as opposed to ocean desal, which is more problematic) then we have to at least try.

On the wastewater side, I’m really intrigued by the use of biological organisms to remove contaminants. This technology has come a long way, as have other wastewater treatment options, all of which have helped to provide more reuse water resources for irrigation. The more forward thinking utilities are actually able to earn considerable revenue from selling reuse water to neighboring localities. This is important; because we’d otherwise still be using an enormous amount of fresh water to irrigate golf courses, as one example.

You have some training and expertise in this area, but how would you suggest the average person bring more awareness to some of these water issues?

Well, the place to start, I think, is by seeking out knowledge about what can be done and the benefits of taking specific actions (starting with little things, like flushing your toilet less often, making sure faucets are closed, fixing leaks, etc.). I’m of the opinion that awareness typically precedes attitude, which in turn precedes action. You have to know what you can do; you have to want to do it; then you have to do it. The link from one stance to the next is not easy to make, and harder still to maintain.

In the public communications world, a constant and unrelenting frustration is that you can help move people in the right direction, and even start doing the right things, but it’s next to impossible to sustain change. No outreach campaign, no matter how expensive or far reaching, can ignite and maintain long-term change if enough of the audience is not committed to making the changes part of their lives.

So, again, I say start with you. Become committed to making the changes a normal, everyday occurrence. Then, once you’ve done that, you can communicate the benefits to others. “You want to see your water bill decrease by 20%? Then start doing these things. I did, and it worked for me.”

Another thing to do is study the statistics and use them to illustrate your point to others. For example, it’s one thing to say that plastic water bottles are a growing environmental problem, but another to show someone a photo of a landfill overflowing with them, or to let someone know that more than 60 million plastic bottles end up in landfills and incinerators in the U.S. every day. How many football fields full of plastic bottles is that a year? Work out the numbers and let someone know.

You’ve spearheaded promotional partnerships with places like Home Depot and Verizon to advance the energy efficiency message, but would you ever consider replacing the world’s current energy with marine energy or energy that comes from water?

The energy question is enormously complex, and it’s difficult to even speculate about which of the many possible solutions will be the “killer app” to liberate us from fossil fuels. The solution I like best is an amalgamation of behavior change on the one hand, and technological change on the other. I don’t think either can work in isolation, nor do I think that anything but incremental change can realistically be hoped for.

Energy efficiency has made an impact on the problem, though how large an impact is hard to say. What I can tell you for certain is that since the time when I was working with companies to retrofit their facilities with energy efficient technology (about eight or so years ago), a lot has changed, and most of it for the better. New commercial construction now routinely includes energy efficient technologies, like more efficient lighting, windows, thermostat controls and HVAC systems. We’ve come a long way, and we’ll go even farther as the technology improves.

All of that is context to address your question about water-related energy sources. As another technology that can move us toward the ultimate goal, I think marine and other water-energy sources are excellent options. Will they ever be THE solution? I don’t think so. They can be part of a portfolio of solutions, along with renewable energy and better energy containment technologies that will allow us to store energy more efficiently. Combined with continued behavioral change on the demand side, the impact will become larger and larger. I’m very optimistic about this.

Tell me about this public-private energy efficiency program you helped launch in Beijing.

The U.S. EPA’s Energy Star program has been a success in the U.S. and as a result has drawn a lot of international interest. An agency affiliated with the Chinese government wanted to adopt key elements of the program to begin an energy efficient product program in Beijing – which is to say, a program which certifies that certain products meet energy efficiency criteria and then are “branded” with a certification logo, which tells consumers that the product is energy efficient. (In the U.S., just about anyone who has ever walked into a Home Depot or Lowes has seen the Energy Star brand on a range of products). The products, in this case, were big box items like washing machines and refrigerators. I worked on a consulting team that set up the program in Beijing and developed a public communications campaign to launch it. The campaign was subsequently adopted by Haier, China’s largest appliance manufacturer.

Tell me about your blog Neuronarrative and some of your other writing projects.

Neuronarrative is a blog about the complicated business of thinking. It covers psychology, neuroscience and everything “mind”—from research reviews to interviews with notable authors and researchers. It’s a place where I explore my interest in these fascinating subjects and invite others to join the discussion. I’m also a freelance writer with Scientific American Mind. I have an interview with Dacher Keltner, author of the book, “Born to be Good” in the September issue.

What are your plans for the future?

My plan is to continue writing about topics that interest me, and hopefully engage others’ interest as well. In the arena of technology and science there’s never a shortage of topics to learn more about and discuss, so I’m looking forward to staying busy for a long time.