Green Success Stories sat down with Douglas Marett, CEO of GH Sustainability and Founder of Enablesus. Douglas has been leading a pathway of innovation with sustainable solutions worldwide. For over eighteen years, he has driven innovative change in the fields of Sustainability, Climate Change, Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency, and Environmental Technology. Marrett is an experienced leader tasked with company management, strategy, business development, collaboration, and project planning.
Who is Douglas Marett?
Douglas is the CEO of GH Sustainability which provides innovative results worldwide in the areas of Sustainable Solutions, Climate Change, and Energy & Environment. This includes actively supporting public and private organizations in addressing sustainable actions and transformational change in all levels of their operation. Douglas believes understanding personal linkage to climate change is crucial to help fix the problem. That’s why he founded Enablesus which provides consumers and organizations with transparent sustainability information – giving them the POWER to make impactful decisions, and USE LESS time and resources for communicating sustainable impacts.
Douglas, thank you for being here. Tell us a little bit about you and your background:
I am always working with innovation and helping others to take the next-extra step in being more sustainable. This includes working with over 30 governments, dozens of companies, international development agencies, and people in their daily lives. Typically, I am leading professional teams to address current and future challenges in climate change, energy & environment, and sustainability in general. My traditional background as an engineer helps a lot in addressing the change we work with, that includes policy & planning, finance, diversity-inclusion, information systems, and physical actions. I have been on the management team and/or board of directors of several companies and this significantly helps in understanding of the stakeholders associated with the innovation I work with. Include my latest venture in founding start-up SaaS for sustainability where a lot of the dynamics of sustainability and IT meet.
What is a fun fact about you?
Though I am American, I am just as much a global citizen since much of my childhood and adult life has been spent living and working around the world. This gives me a different view on the problems that people face and an understanding that globally we have so many things in common. This experience leads to my absolute fascination with behavioral economics and the link of nudging change through both IT and physical solutions.
Why do you think climate change and sustainability is such an important topic today?
I have been working full time with both climate change and sustainability for nearly two decades, and the simple answer is awareness. I have personally seen the effects of climate change and unsustainable practices in dozens of countries on six contents. Now it is clear that a large portion of the global population can see this as well. Where the majority of people also understand their personal linkage to climate change and sustainability. This has all been driven by the rapid expansion of information systems, education, and traditional culture. It is also why I founded Enablesus which is a free and easy web application that helps consumers transparently see the impacts of the companies behind the products they buy, and helps companies communicate the value of their sustainable actions.
What do you envision your industry looking like 10 years from now?
Whether people are in a small village in Africa or South Asia, or a mega city in North America or Europe, they are going to be wired in! Therefore, I envision that professional services, tools, and solutions are going to be heavily IT based. This means we will continue to have high demand for people with core subject matter knowledge in climate change and sustainability, but that these same people will also need to understand information systems, software, and user experiences.
What can the average person do to make a difference?
There are so many small things that we can do on a daily or weekly basis that lead to real positive impact. I suggest spending a little bit of time to find out what sustainable actions you value most, and there are many internet / mobile applications out right now that focus on helping people do exactly. Those actions involve your brain, physical, and buying powers, and you are like already using them. One tip is that if your actions include buying a product or service, then make sure that the company behind it meets your sustainable values, and the company is not just delivering one climate friendly or responsible product out of the one hundred that they produce.
Douglas, thank you for being here today. We appreciate you sharing your background in sustainability and clean energy.
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