Learn from Lei Feng? Yes. But how?

 Doug Woodring

 UNEP Climate Hero; co-founder of the Ocean Recovery Alliance

There are many reasons why doing good deeds is good, not only for enhanced individual well-being, self-gratification and positive mental spirit, but because it can help the community you live in in many ways. By doing good deeds, you can inspire others to follow your actions. Sometimes actions are louder than words, and showing by example is often good enough to encourage others to do something good too, even if it is a different task or action.

In a world where our communities are busier and more densely populated, it is all the more important to be able to "share" and contribute to society. It is important to bring a sense of "pride" back into the mindset of our youth, so they can be ambassadors for the environment and the communities they live in and protect. For example, if people show pride in where they live, and pick up after themselves (litter), and even for others, it brings benefits to many around them.

Is it better to be humble or flamboyant? I think both types of activities have their place, but there is no need to over-promote actions taken to improve something in the community. It is good if people recognize that good deeds have been done, because they might then think that they too can contribute next time as well.

I do not think that people should be expected to be rewarded for doing good deeds. One of their rewards is self-satisfaction that they know they are doing the right thing, and helping the community or the environment. On the other hand, however, sometimes specific rewards are required, and proven to work, in order to create new habits and actions for recovery or collection of materials, with recycling for example. If there is a bring-back program, whereby a reward in the form of a discount coupon, gift or product are given to those who bring products in for recycling, then it greatly helps aggregate material so that recycling is easier to happen for that product (instead of having to sort through the normal municipal waste to find that material). We are doing this in Hong Kong now with plastic coffee lids in 30 stores of Pacific Coffee. The program is called Lids for Good, and the customers receive a free upgraded size of drink when they bring in their old coffee lid for recycling. This helps get the lids back, and keeps them out of the waste, and creates a pure quantity of material that the recyclers can then easily make use of. In just two weeks, over 3,000 lids have been collected. This is an example of a purposely created reward program to drive an intended result – in this case, increased recovery rates for recycling.