How we Eco Partner for Sustainability

Over the last few weeks with the passing of Jimmy Buffet and our company entering into sustainability audit planning and development, it gave me the opportunity to revisit the benevolent and charitable aspects of my life and business and assess them.  I wanted to identify the stakeholders that we align ourselves with at orlandoambassador.com as our benevolence and service in order to connect their relativity to our mission. 

In an era where businesses look to label and Brand themselves with green alignments such as the environment or conservation to gather commerce, we would rather look through a green construction approach into how these efforts pay forward and back with our time money, and services. We hope this will give synergy to our systematic processes and growth rather than use the labeling as an eco-friendly or green company as our nature sylvotherapy is all about the amphitheater of nature and these are the philosophies and ideals that we move forward with in order to define our identity with greater clarity in the marketplace. Here are the organizations and our approaches to how they fit our focus for the future.

Save the Manatees

We start with our late friend Jimmy Buffet, the co-founder along with Bob Graham of an organization that looks after our water friends called Save the Manatees.  Putting all the music restaurants and celebrities aside, thank you just for this contribution to the preservation of Florida. 

From www.savethemanatee.org

Human activities are harming manatees, and only our compassion and action can protect them.

Manatees are Florida’s official state marine mammal. The IUCN World Conservation Union lists them as vulnerable at the international level. They are listed as threatened at the federal level by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and at the state level by the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). Their listing status is largely due to human activity. Since record-keeping began in 1974, more than 41% of manatee deaths where the cause of death was identified were human-related – and almost 34% were due to watercraft collisions (the largest known cause of manatee deaths). With increased awareness, education, regulations, and enforcement, manatee deaths caused by humans could be substantially reduced, and the eventual recovery of the species could be realized.

Our Mission: Save the Manatee Club’s mission is to protect manatees and their aquatic habitat for future generations.

Our Objective: The Club’s objective is the recovery and protection of manatees and their aquatic ecosystems throughout the world.

Our Goals: In order to fully recover the imperiled manatee population and maintain an optimal sustainable population — our goals are:

To protect and recover ample healthy habitat to support a stable or growing manatee population.

To reduce manatee harassment, injuries, and deaths from human activity.

Ensure that sufficient regulatory protections have been adopted and are supported by a broad constituency to accomplish these goals for the present and foreseeable future.

Our Work: In order to accomplish our objective and goals, we concentrate our efforts on reducing the negative impacts on manatees and their aquatic habitat caused by human activity through:

 Increasing public awareness and education

Sponsoring research, rescue, rehabilitation, and release efforts

Advocating for strong protection measures, such as boat speed zones and sanctuaries

Taking legal action when appropriate

Supporting rescue, rehabilitation, research, and education efforts in the Wider Caribbean, South America, and West Africa

Our Core Values:

Supporting the most effective conservation actions possible

Making science-based decisions and supporting science-driven policies

Demanding accountability from policy-makers

Working cooperatively

The manatee environment is vital to the entire ecosystem of Florida’s waterways and is a part of the nature sylvotherapy that we swim and bask in the water amongst as our marine friends.  This is a noble cause on the local and state level.  We embrace incorporating the education of our tour guests during our guided efforts by showcasing deeper information at manatee encounters and observation locations. We believe that the familiarity with the singer, the presence of the live manatees along our beach tours, and the parallels of coexistence with life make this a fit.

Surfrider Foundation

The Surfrider Foundation is dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the world’s oceans, waves, and beaches, for all people, through a powerful activist network.  The Surfrider Foundation is committed to fostering a just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive organization for all people who protect and enjoy the world’s oceans, waves, and beaches.  It is a community of everyday people who passionately protect our playground - the ocean, waves, and beaches that provide us with so much enjoyment.

From www.surfrider.org

Our Core Values

The Surfrider Foundation believes that getting outside and engaging with the natural world, especially the ocean, waves, and beaches, is inspiring, supports healthier lifestyles, improves productivity, and ultimately creates a better culture. 

1. Honor the mission.

Surfrider is dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the world’s oceans, waves, and beaches for all people, through a powerful activist network. At the center of every action we take are our mission, our grassroots structure, and local perspectives. We aim for positive impact and measurable results on behalf of the communities that we serve.  

2. The beach is fun and Surfrider should be, too.

Surfrider comprises people who love the ocean, work hard to protect it, and need to enjoy it as part of keeping advocacy gratifying and fun. We are optimistic about the future of our oceans and coasts because our volunteers make a positive difference every day.   

3. We are open and inclusive.

Our ocean, waves, and beaches belong to all of us, and we welcome all who are interested in joining our movement. Through our principles of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI), we seek to engage and represent the communities that we work in and to support, create, foster, and champion diversity at all levels within our organization.

4. We cultivate leaders.

We believe that the most effective way to build a coastal protection movement is to provide leadership opportunities for our volunteers. By cultivating their voices and skills, we are preparing the next generation of coastal defenders to lead within their own communities.                                  

5. We are problem solvers.

We are solution-oriented. Surfrider applies science, critical thinking, and innovation to assess problems and develop practical long-term solutions that protect our coasts.                

6. The Surfrider is yours to create.

The Surfrider culture is defined by the people who show up with a love of the ocean and care deeply for its well-being. Through science, community, and respect, we are people who joyfully take on the challenges before us. Our culture is one of selflessness, sharing, and bringing people together to achieve Surfrider’s mission.

With so much of our activity at the beach promoting the healing sand, sun, and surf they embody the way that we approach our work as well… as a fun community respectful of protecting 100% of the coastline for generations to come to enjoy.  We look for restaurants as meal providers on our tour that have the same respect and try to employ mechanisms of conservation.  Taking a leadership mindset into our work at the beach we embrace the need to be stewards of our earth mother and keep observation over any activities or compromises we may encounter and pledge to make known to the proper authorities any legal conservation matters we witness.  In our rentals and business standards of operation and procedure we take a scouting mindset from wilderness conservation and embrace the “Leave no Trace” realizing that the worst reputation one can get is that it was a beautiful place until they arrived.  We rather look for ways to pick up trash and nuisance items without prompting as we go out every day prepared to and enjoy contributing our service.  We pledge to deal with any horse waste on our horseback riding tours in an environmentally and bio-friendly manner realizing that even the scent we leave could offend someone’s experience of beauty and grace with nature.  For any food packaging or servicing items that enter nature, we pledge to source mindful of any ability to be green-focused.  We take great care that our vehicles, although gasoline-powered, are not damaging or a nuisance to the area or its guests.

Surfing’s Evolution & Preservation Foundation

Directly responsible and a beneficiary of the Florida license plate that bears the familiar standing surfer silhouette made famous by the classic surfing film Endless Summer.  This foundation gets its money this way and we encourage our drivers to get the plate if their values align with theirs as well.  Rather we look to partner with the lifeguards as ambassadors of their territory cultivating relationships and cross-functional services. From:  preservesurfingbeaches.org

The Foundation’s Charitable Mission Is:

Fund the proposed Surfing’s Evolution Experience™

Supporting programs and events of likeminded organizations for the benefit of ocean and shoreline health

Promote education on beach safety

Support and promote lectures and board sports events

Promote education and action in coastal pollution and beach ecology

Provide funding for needed beach enhancements

Allocate resources for safety needs such as lifeguards on high-risk beaches

Fund and promote community activities such as beach clean-up events, educational materials, and conservation initiatives

Working as a sentry on beaches with no lifeguards for our guests, we provide additional alertness for other guests in the area and remain on call ready to be in contact with the emergency or rescue services if the occasion arises.  Partnering with board and beach events we look to align ourselves as a partner to the beach communities and provide labor and services for beach enhancement or cleanup efforts.

The foundation of our sustainability comes from our embracing the overall standard that we look to strengthen each of our business processes. Through it, we can learn the sweeping and subtle differences that when aligned make all the difference in the world. It is the benchmark that serves as the point-by-point standard we look to for our sustainability audit is the United Nations. Yesterday, I published an article on Designing Systemic Sustainability showing the process of taking the lead from @deloitte @salesforce, and @KPMG we are building our sustainability audit. The foundation of this effort takes each of the United Nations' 17 areas and places them as almost a filter towards the development of policies, procedures, and business operations. Here are the points from the United Nations website:

United Nations 17 Goals of Sustainable Development

No Poverty

End poverty in all its forms, everywhere.

Zero Hunger

End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture.

Good Health and Wellbeing

Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all, at all ages.

Quality Education

Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

Gender Equality

Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

Affordable and Clean Energy

Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all.

Decent Work and Economic Growth

Promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all.

Sustainable Cities and Communities

Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.

Life Below Water

Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development.

Life on Land

Protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, manage forests, combat desertification and biodiversity loss, and halt and reverse land degradation.

Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all, and build effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions.

By revisiting who we choose as stakeholders that represent our organization internally and associate us with externally every year we can look at each of the ways that we are making a difference without changing the business or making people uncomfortable isolating behavioral changes that are easier to address as policy before they start. We try and embrace life on earth as a compact between nature and the humans who are so versatile at creating, building, and converting natural resources to their business as the fundamental materials. We must be mindful of the toll and impact we place on our actions in business and life and simply make a choice that we will select with our overall mission already giving us a barometer to make them. Our purpose is defined we can easily explain company culture as our path and walk the talk of taking the behaviors that make the changes in all of our lives.

Be the change you want to see in the world. You may say I'm a dreamer... but, I'm not the only one.

Brian BJ Hall is a scholar at Arizona State University in Digital Audiences advancing through the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He builds his guided tour and excursion business OrlandoAmbassasdor.com focused on synergy with the local ecosystem and visitor industry. This article is from a series published every Sunday on tourism and hospitality entrepreneurship and acceleration on LinkedIn and promoted via social media

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