Taking a consumer approach to reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions
72% of global greenhouse gas emissions are attributable to household consumption, according to a recent research study.
Dave Finnigan, MPH, believes that instead of a top-down approach to sustainability, we can get further faster by shifting consumer demand – mobilizing school kids to shift things in their own home and community. Imagine Girl Scouts / Boy Scouts but for going green. That’s what he’s promoting with Green Actioneers.
His previous work was in South East Asia helping with cultural paradigm shifts that assisted in raising the median income from under $1,000/yr to $35,000/yr. His previous book sold over 1,000,000 copies. He’s looking to combine those two successes with this new focus, getting his sustainability Scout Handbook of sorts into the hands of the rising generation.
He’s 82 years old and going strong and has funded this entirely from his own pocket.
Dave is happy to send you a free digital copy of the workbook – email davefinnigan@greenactioneers.com and mention Impact Stories Podcast
Podcast Transcript
Jacob: [00:00:00] I’m here with Dave Finnegan with Green Actioneers please introduce yourself.
Dave: I’m Dave Finnegan and I’ve been a Green Actioneer most of my life. Green Actioneers is brand new, but it’s very old for me because it’s all the things you can do to save energy, save water, save money, and have a clean, green future. And what I’ve done is created a program that I call Scouting for the 21st Century based on Green Actioneers.
Jacob: How did you get started in that endeavor?
Dave: I graduated from Cornell with a degree in cultural anthropology and a focus on cultural change, social change and so I went out immediately and started working in family planning programs in East Asia. And I worked in Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, and helped them to take their average family size from six kids to one point six in a single generation. To take son preference and turn it into daughter preference and so I learned how a culture changes.
The countries I worked in became what they call the economic dragons of East Asia [00:01:00] and they have taken their average per capita income from under $1000 a year to over $35,000 a year because lower dependency burden reduced fertility, less kids, and, and more disposable income. So I learned from that and then I learned how to work with kids by going to schools and now I’m ready to make Green Actioneers.
Jacob: So how does it all work?
Dave: The kids get to look at the book in advance because some green-hearted parent, we call that professor green, carries the book around from classroom to classroom and shows it to the kids and gets the kids excited. Well, why are they excited because if you open it to any two page spread what you find in there is it’s got a coloring book feature. Kids love coloring books.
It’s got games and puzzles. So kids love games and puzzles. It’s got quotes from famous people. So your high school kid can research who is that famous person. And what else did they say? And the book is in English and Spanish. Oh, and we have these two little characters who can [00:02:00] do and can’t do and they’re from Muga.
And Muga is making our universe green again, and they’ve come to Earth to see if we’re going to make it or not. And so the book has a hundred actions that families can take in order to go green. Just things that everybody can do. And then at the end, we meet the Native Americans, and we find out that they have been sustainable forever.
And that if we will just do what they knew how to do 500 years ago we’ll probably clean up our act. So that’s the book and the idea is to take it into the school like scholastic books. We have a book fair with one book and everybody comes to family night and then the kids and parents sit down together with the book and they go through it together and the kids get to choose things that they want to do.
One kid may jump up and say, we’re going to recycle. And then everybody else jumps up and says, we can do that too. And another one says we’re going to take public transportation. We can do that too. We’re going to use [00:03:00] natural cleansers. We can do that too.
So the kids get really excited. We gamify family night and then at the end of family night, after about 30 or 40 minutes, Professor Green says, grown ups only, if you want to be on the green team for the school, raise your hand and then a lot of hands go up. If your hand is in the air, stand up.
If you’re standing, come to the front of the room. Put your arms around each other’s shoulders and take a bow. Principal, take a picture. We have a green team. So in one day, we go from nobody in my school knows about going green to. All the kids know about it, the teachers know about it, the parents know about it and we have a green team.
So that’s what we’re putting together, but that’s just the beginning because the key to the program is the chart on the wall. And this is out in the hallway, or it could be done classroom by classroom and kids get to put up a post-it note you every time their family does anything that’s in the book.
So kids will look at that and go Mom, Susie’s got four up there and we only have two, get [00:04:00] the book. So the kids will get out the book and get to work. And we give a free digital copy of the book to every family in the school. This isn’t a book sales program, this is a culture change program. So everybody can play the game and the game is out in the hallway.
And we think of it like a merit badge sash. When I went to my scout meetings once a month and I saw what my buddies had, then I wanted that. We think this is going to have the same effect and we just need some schools. I want to play with this and try it out. We’ve had a couple of K-8 schools here in Florida that have tried it and they loved it, but now we need to really take it nationwide and so we’re looking for volunteers.
Jacob: Tell me about your vision for this like, why climate? Why focus on kids?
Dave: That’s a really good set of questions and the answer is 72% of the carbon in the atmosphere comes from households. They’re working with government, industry, and business and not with individuals and not with families.
So it’s time for families to take charge. [00:05:00] Now, somehow they think that this is going to trickle down from the top, but change never trickles down from the top. Change bubbles up from the bottom. So what I’m going to do is create bubbles of change at the village level at the household level that will then expand to the top and meet the trickle-down.
So this is going to help a lot and one of the reasons that I think it will be acceptable is because in our book, we never mentioned climate change or global warming. or sea level rise. All we talk about is how to have a clean, green future. That’s what we’re doing now is aiming towards a clean green future and letting the kids lead the way because that’s how change is going to take place.
Now, the things they have to do are not expensive. They’re easy, they’re cheap, some of them are free, but all of them save you money. Now there are some expensive ones, like buying an electric vehicle, putting solar panels on your roof, re-insulating your house, but you don’t have to do those right away.
You can still [00:06:00] put post-it notes up if you just switch over from plastic bags to carry your own bag shopping. The kids will get into it, and then the kids will move it forward, and slowly, step by step, we’ll all go green.
Jacob: What are the hurdles that you’re facing? Like, why hasn’t this already spread like wildfire?
Dave: The reason it hasn’t spread like wildfire, the book is new. It’s just going to be released now in 24/25. And I expect that throughout the 24/25 school year, we’ll get bastions of support around the country and maybe in other countries as well because it is in Spanish and English, so we could get some Latin American uptake on it.
And then I expect that by the time you know, this time next year, we’ll have enough schools out there that we can create a presence on the internet. And that’s what’s going to spread. It is a good YouTube channel with plenty of videos on TikTok. And so we want whoever joins us to be enthusiastic about it and to go out [00:07:00] there and talk about it on social media so that it grows and replicates and eventually goes nationwide, maybe worldwide.
There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be in English plus other languages and I’ve had interest from people in Europe who want to put it in their languages as well. So it’s time for us all to take responsibility for the planet and that’s what I hope we’ll be able to do.
Jacob: How is this being funded?
Dave: I’ve paid for this all with my own pocket so far, I’m a little over $100,000 into this project, but you know, for me, it’s like, this is it. This is a labor of love. This is what I do. I am the first Green Actioneers, but I’m certainly not the last.
Jacob: And, is this a nonprofit? Is there a business model for this going forward?
Dave: The business model right now is selling books, but I’m going to set it up as a nonprofit as well so that we have both. So the for-profit sells books and can make a little money, but the nonprofit is going to be going into schools and promoting the program and [00:08:00] there is a huge amount of money to be made if followed through on it. And that is that if you open it to almost any page like this is attic insulation. Well, there’s a manufacturer out there that makes attic insulation and they would love to have us recommending them. And so if you or anybody who’s watching this is connected in any way to any company that might like to partner with us, we’re looking for partners.
The idea would be that we would put your QR code or your URL on the website and that whoever purchases your product would then get a discount and their school would get a rebate. And that’s where the money flows. If we can get some sponsors to jump on, then every time a kid puts up your particular post it note, then their school is going to get a little bit out of it.
And so that’ll put the schools behind it for square and the schools will really go, ok this program is going to work because they’re going to [00:09:00] see some money coming in in terms of commissions to the school for the work that the kids are doing. So it’s not at all unlike the things that have been done in the past. It’s time to get going green into the schools without scaring anybody with climate change.
Jacob: If someone was interested in learning more, where would you point them? I
Dave: Well, have them come to me and we’ll get them a free digital copy of the book. And then they can show that free digital copy of the book around or you can actually buy a print book. I’ve only got, at this point, I’ve got four print books. I’m out of print, but I’m going to start a new edition and it’ll be the launch edition and you can get an actual print book for $20 plus shipping.
This is not an attempt to get rich. This is an attempt to get us out of a problem that we’re in as the human species.
Jacob: I think you mentioned, you’re 82?
Dave: 82. Yeah.
Jacob: There are other activities that you could be doing, right? Especially in Florida, you could be [00:10:00] golfing every day.
Dave: I already had skin cancer. I don’t need to golf and no, this is my recreation. I just love going to schools and working with kids and teachers and parents and having a mission.
Jacob: Who’s sort of the entry point for you? Is it a teacher? Is it a Principal? Does it have to be at a school district level?
Dave: That’s really a good question. Yes, to get into the school I think our best bet is green-hearted parents. And so I’ve been going to the state PTA conventions, California, Texas, Maryland, and Florida, talking to moms about coming to their schools and getting the program started.
I’ve had a lot of enthusiasm and I think that’s our entree. And the reason is because teachers are up to here with required stuff and this is not required stuff. So it has to be initiated, organized, and run by parents, and that’s why we form that green team at the school when we have family night because we want the green team of parents to be in charge of this chart.
So the green team puts the chart up in the [00:11:00] hallway and the green team supervises the chart and makes sure that, you know, nobody tears off anybody’s things and that the things that the kids put up there are realistic. And so that’s who is going to run this I think is green-hearted parents.
Now we do have the problem that a lot of kids now are not in school. They’re being homeschooled. So here’s an idea, you create a tree and the tree is just like on the refrigerator door. You draw it with a marker. And then every time your family does anything that’s in the book, you put a leaf on the tree.
And I’ve got one. It’s right here behind my bulletin board. board So this is my family’s tree. This is our family’s Green Actioneers tree. And these are all the things that we have done in order to save energy, water, and money and have a clean, green future. And we’ve got about 70 of them up there. So what we want to do is set up levels that kids can aspire to.
For [00:12:00] instance, if you put up one post it, you’re a Green Actioneers. You put up five, you’re a sprout. You put up ten, you’re a sapling. You put up twenty, you’re a mighty oak. You put up fifty, you’re a giant sequoia. And so the kids can aspire to go up and up and up, just like Tenderfoot, First Class. Eagle Scout. You can aspire to be a giant sequoia. So that’s how the program’s gonna be organized and how kids are going to get excited about it because they have a rank that they can attain.
That’s the goal is to have kids get excited about it. Excited enough to drag their parents kicking and screaming to family night and then get the parents excited about it enough that they will help the kids to put the chart up on the wall and keep the chart moving. So it’s brand new right now. It’s an idea, but it’s an idea whose time has come.
Jacob: And if in a nutshell, we’re down the road and this is in every school and people are implementing it, how is the world different in [00:13:00] your mind?
Dave: Well, as I said, 72 percent of the carbon in the atmosphere comes from what households do. Some of the things that are on here are also things that companies are trying to do, for instance, drive an electric car.
The industry will change. Our lifestyles will change the way that we interact has already changed because here we are creating something that could go all over the country in a day when It would have taken years for this message to get out before. And when I did my previous books, I sold over a million copies of that little book before the internet existed.
The joy of juggling and I sold it in German, French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese. Well, if I sold a million copies of a silly little book on a funny little skill, like juggling before the internet existed, just think what we can do with a really important book and a very important topic and the internet to help us to get it out there.
So that’s the goal is to get everybody who’s excited about [00:14:00] going green to get behind this and push the program in their schools, in their community, and to cumulatively reduce our carbon footprint much more than it would be reduced if we didn’t do this.
Jacob: Well, Dave, thank you for your enthusiasm and for your vision for this, and excited to see where it goes and how we can help move it forward.
Dave: Yep. Thank you. I can’t help but be enthusiastic. I think this is going to be a great program, but we gotta get it started. So get in touch with Dave Finnegan at greenactioneers.com and get a copy of the book.
Jacob: Fantastic. Thank you.
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