Sustainability and Climate Change

Learning to drive is a coveted and exciting rite of passage for many teens. What if during this time, however, teens practiced teaching others about air pollution and how responsible driving strategies impact air quality (e.g., carpooling, refraining from idling, trip‐chaining, riding the bus, etc.)? This idea was the basis for a 2017 clean‐air poster contest involving over 400 teens across six high schools in Cache Valley, Utah, a community that suffers occasionally from some of the worst air pollution in the nation, particularly during winter inversion season. As Utah State University faculty, we piloted the contest two years earlier at a local high school as part of a broader university‐community engagement initiative addressing sustainability issues. This article provides an overview of the literature on children's influence on others in marketing and social settings and a review of our past clean‐air poster contests that were piloted on smaller scales. Details about the launch and outcomes of the expanded 2017 Utah High School Clean Air Poster contest as the context for educating teens about air pollution and clean air actions are discussed, along with the results of a voluntary post‐contest survey of contestants' self‐reported direct impacts and their social influence on others. We investigated both the contestants' self‐reported direct personal behavioral impacts and their unprompted behavioral influence on others in what was termed the “Inconvenient Youth” effect because adults often feel uncomfortable having youth instruct them about pro‐social behaviors. Parents, in particular, feel obliged to comply in order to maintain their children's respect. Approximately two‐thirds of surveyed contestants reported engaging others, primarily parents and siblings, about clean air actions. Only 43 percent believed, however, that they had actually changed others' behaviors. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of the study and future research directions to help guide others crafting their own school‐based environmental education initiatives.

SMEs account for over 90 percent of businesses and for the majority of gross domestic product, wealth, and employment creation, and thus have significant social and environmental impacts. However, most of these businesses have not yet mastered ways of implementing sustainability practices. This article explores the potential barriers that prevent SMEs from improving sustainability performances through a study of a physiotherapy center in Hong Kong. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted to gain an understanding of existing practices, which were put under the lens of a sustainability maturity level model. Challenges in relation to the leadership, guideline developments, communications, and measurements were then highlighted. The results provide insight into barriers to sustainable practices of small health‐care facilities and shed light on ways they could move forward with the targeted sustainability initiatives. The results may also be applicable to SMEs in other sectors.

The implementation of project‐based learning and subsequent collaborations between the university and a nonprofit, local utilities, and area businesses, originally aimed at giving senior‐level engineering students experience in real‐world problem solving within the area of sustainability, has resulted in a successful model for community engagement. Semester‐long projects involved pairing student groups in civil and mechanical engineering sustainability classes with local businesses interested in conducting feasibility studies that ranged from increasing the energy efficiency of their organization to implementing renewable energy technologies. Each project involved meetings with business owners, site visits, and energy assessments conducted by the local electric utility, activities that required the students to hone both their professional and technical skills. These projects represent a unique opportunity to provide a practical educational experience, and by leaving the projects open ended, students have had to utilize their creativity and problem‐solving skills to a greater degree than is required by traditional classroom instruction. Additionally, by giving control of the project to the clients, students had a more real‐life experience. Impacts on the citywide and university‐wide sustainability efforts have been far reaching, including new partnerships and collaborations between the City and university and a network of internship opportunities for engineering students within the community.