Zero Waste Life and Social Media

To begin with, about 3 days ago I was scrolling down my newsfeed on VK (extremely popular social network among Russian-speaking users) for no special reason and suddenly, the post "How to live without producing garbage?" grabbed my attention. It's about Lauren Singer, a 23 year-old blogger from NYC who hasn't produced any garbage in 3 years (How?!). Though, I'd prefer to save it for last. So, now let's move on to a brief introduction.

ENVIRONMENTALISM

Do we really care about the environment? And what is Environmental Awareness? Where does it come from? Is it a big responsibility or just a good business idea? How to choose a right green-marketing strategy then? Furthermore, if you go deeper and deeper into this topic, it raises more questions than answers.

Looking through comments on social media, we can define different groups of people and their attitude to the environmental issues. Do you remember the expression "Is the glass half full or half empty?" Right! The following typology is about the same old story. 

Firstly, the most active "green" people are young people (more often than not) who do care about the environment, read many articles on this topic and buy eco-friendly products. Realists tend to believe that there is an inevitable conflict between the environmental issues and a company's profit. What is more, they are skeptical about its solvability. Wishful thinkers have  a positive and optimistic attitude towards everything what's going on this planet, but the prefer to leave the problem solving process to somebody else. And finally, the indifferent group of people believe  that environmental awareness is just "a new buzzword" and don't pay attention to it.

LAUREN SINGER: ZERO WASTE LIFE IN NYC

So, let's go back to the beginning and turn our attention to Lauren Singer who lives "a Zero Waste life in NYC" and keeps a blog "Trash Is For Tossers". Lauren is "an eco-friendly entrepreneur and former NYU student has gone three years without producing any trash after making 'a conscious decision to live sustainably' during her final year of college. She makes her own toothpaste, deodorant and laundry detergent an attempt to avoid creating any unnecessary waste". Currently, she owns a zero-waste company The Simply Co where she sells her handmade products.

 "How do I define ZERO WASTE? To me, Zero Waste means that I do not produce any garbage. No sending anything to landfill, no throwing anything in a trash can, nothing. However, I do recycle and do compost"

Lauren Singer

By means of social media, she's being supported by people from around the world. Who knows, maybe it's a right time to consider the matter. And it's a very good example how one person can encourage others. 

Zero Waste Alternatives: The Ultimate List

"Two years of trash"

Let's check her success on social media:

"Trash Is For Tossers" on Facebook

"Trash Is For Tossers" on Twitter

"Trash Is For Tossers" on Instagram

As we can see, she has 22,400 followers on Instagram, 5,624 followers on Twitter and 40,826 "likes" on Facebook. I'd like to mention that the content of her posts is always eye-catching, and this girl knows "how to talk so your target audience will listen". For instance, here is a very detailed feedback:

IF YOU ARE STILL IN DOUBT

Lauren's inspiring speech (Attention: it's not so easy to stop watching! It's very, very entertaining)

Altruistic Impulse & the Groundswell

"..the fundamental emotions that drive people to the groundswell - the desire to connect, to create, to stay in touch, and to help each other - are universal"

(p.49, Groundswell)

FIRST OF ALL

Reading the first pages of the Groundswell I've been waiting for an answer to the most enigmatic questions on the Internet at the present time: What forces people to participate in the groundswell? "What is their emotional motivation?" (p. 60, Groundswell). Authors describe many reasons, for instance, "keeping up friendships", "succumbing to social pressure from existing friends" (which is very true), "the altruistic impulse", "the prurient impulse" etc.

As for me, the altruistic impulse is a little bit questionable and problematic. What is at the back of this selflessness? In the age of the Internet and marketing it's hard to believe that something can be created for an absolutely altruistic reason. Besides, sometimes it's more difficult to check if that unselfish motivation is genuine or not. We cannot go to people's heads.

ALTRUISTIC IMPULSE 

I've found the following examples of altruistic sites (of course, Wikipedia is beyond competition) which demonstrate this idea clearly. Firstly, I should mention Linux (which is the most outstanding example of free and open-source collaboration). 

Another example is Project Gutenberg (PG) (the oldest digital library) which is "a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". It is claimed that they try to make this eBook collection as free as possible. Well, that remains to be seen.

One more example is Care2 (social networking, petitioning site) which goal is "to connect activists from around the world with other individuals, organizations and responsible businesses making an impact". If you click the link, you'll see the groundswell in action. This is a great example how to take advantage of social media. Just look at these themes:

The results: 381 million signatures and counting. Can you imagine?

The Hottest petitions on Tuesday, September 22, 2015: "Tell Ellen Degeneres to remove leather from her clothing line" (100,322 supporters), "End commercial aerial hunting on wild hogs" (87,885 supporters), "Urgent signatures needed to stop OC Animal Control from killing karma the husky" (287,137 supporters). 

"It's one thing to understand what drives the groundswell - it's quite another to dive into it and turn those forces to your advantage"

(p.62, Groundswell)

AND ONE MORE THING

Do you remember Harriet Klausner? (she is the Amazon's top reviewer who reads 2 books a day). TWO BOOKS a day. "She's well known to publishers, which send her 50 books a week). I've checked the updates and the result is fabulous. It's very doubtful and inspiring at the same time:

Check these tips how to become a famous person on the Internet:

All in all, when ordinary people are given a voice and something or someone can be truly altruistic and truly prominent (as the Harriet Klausner's example), it can bring a lot more brilliant ideas and a belief in world's improvement.

Museums and Social Media or If Statues Could Talk

How often do you go to an art museum? Every weekend? Once a year? Or maybe it happened a good while ago? (Don't worry! If you are an absolute beginner click here 5 Ways to Enjoy a Museum).

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

To begin with, I would like you to pay attention to the following statistics.

In this picture you may notice that the Louvre (Paris)*, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC), the British Museum (London) were the most popular museums on Facebook and Foursquare in 2013. And there is a very low probability that the situation will change in the nearest time. Sure, most of these museums (if not all) deserve attention to go there and enjoy the arts, to fall in love with, to have an opportunity to learn more about other beautiful feelings which are accessible to a man. However, despite the many years of experience and a stable reputation, it should be noted that these museums have a very strong support on Social Media. Just take a look.

@MuseeLouvre on Tuesday, September 15, 2015

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Instagram account on Tuesday, September 15, 2015

 "Sharing of contents is subdivided into two lines: one following materials posted on line by the press offices of the museums themselves, and the other one joining contributions (spontaneous or motivated) from users and visitors. An example of the first type of content is represented by @MuseeLouvre which on March 27, 2015 counts 5399 twits...and a remarkable klout score of 81, gained with particular hashtags, targeted communication..." 

                (Source: French Museums & social media, May 2015)

NOW LET'S GET DOWN TO BUSINESS

Well, everything is clear about the best-known museums of the world. What if we take a smaller scale and look at, for instance, the Worcester Art Museum presence on social media (I've found its Twitter and Facebook accounts). Let's start with the Twitter account.

Despite the fact that it has just 1,923 tweets and 6,721 followers since April 2009, looking at this picture we can notice that the page is alive and, furthermore, is of interest to users.

@WorcesterArt on Tuesday, September 15, 2015

As practice shows, many creative, travelling and enthusiastic people are the Instagram users. And the Worcester Art Museum loses the potential audience being out of the Instagram account. 

If you are still in doubt whether the museum needs any social media, I propose to draw attention to the study of Natalia Dudareva (Denmark) Museums in Social Media. The result of this study is "formulation of five types of relationships: Enthusiast, Connected, Contributor, Interested and Informational. The types demonstrate different levels of involvement with museums and motivations for following them on Facebook". Also, this research proves that there are a lot more people in this world who love museums than we used to think. For example, the type "Enthusiast" shows the strongest involvement (sometimes even zealous) and can you imagine that these people is the largest group among the other relationship types.

I can conclude that museums need social media. Not fully explored, but at the same time a promising tool to reach success. So, the Worcester Art Museum stands a good chance to collect representatives of all these types, to increase the number of loyal visitors, to kindle tourists' interest.

* that's a given

So, there's no limit to perfection! Stop sitting at home. Let's go to museums! (By the way, if you are a child, or a student, or a pensioner, you'll have 2 in 1: discount price and good time)

AND ONE MORE THING