Bishop Museum Launches Sustainability Dashboards

# Bishop Museum Launches Sustainability Dashboards

The dashboards are co-launched with the Hawaiʻi Local2030 Hub and provide publicly accessible updates on the Museum's energy usage, solar generation, water usage, and plastic bottle elimination.

Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum is excited to announce the launch of its Sustainability Dashboards, accessible via its Sustainability webpage: BishopMuseum.org/Sustainability. The dashboards' online, interactive displays provide publicly accessible updates on the Museum's energy usage, solar generation, water usage, and plastic bottle elimination, as well as illustrate the effects of Museum initiatives and operational improvements.

"Bishop Museum's Sustainability Dashboards are part of our efforts to be transparent about our energy and resource usages, and the sustainable practices we're implementing to improve on these," said Dr. Christopher Hobbs, Bishop Museum curator of sustainability. "I believe we're one of very few institutions worldwide to provide this data to the public, and show our progress in improving our operations and adopting the very same sustainable practices we're promoting.

"Caring for the over 25 million cultural objects, historical documents and media, and natural science specimens in our collections requires a lot of resources and energy. Bishop Museum is an institution committed to sustainable operations, and the dashboards show how we're including renewable energy and other sustainable practices to help conserve our islands' precious resources, while continuing to protect and preserve our collections," Dr. Hobbs added.

The Museum is co-launching its Sustainability Dashboards with Hawaiʻi Local2030 Hub, which encompasses the Hawaiʻi Green Growth (HGG) public-private partnership committed to advancing economic, social, and environmental goals. HGG works to accelerate the Aloha+ Challenge, which builds on island culture and values and is Hawai'i's locally-driven framework to implement the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

"Climate change and resource scarcity are some of the greatest challenges we're currently facing as a global community. Launching these dashboards in collaboration with Hawaiʻi Local2030 Hub and their network allows us to share our data on a statewide platform, engage with organizations throughout their network, and show how organizational-level data can feed into and align with statewide and global sustainability frameworks," said Dr. Hobbs. "We hope this work will inspire other organizations to track and understand their resource usage, which is the first step in an organization's sustainability journey. By aligning our operations, initiatives, and changes with the Hawaiʻi Local2030 Hub goals, as well as the global United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, we can contribute to the state of Hawaiʻi's 2030 sustainability goals."

"The Hawai'i Local2030 Hub is stewarding the Aloha+ Challenge Dashboard in order to make Hawai'i's contribution to the global Sustainable Development Goals accessible to the wider public. We're proud to partner with an institution that understands the crucial role it plays in co-creating Hawai'i's sustainable future, and has taken the initiative to establish a new standard of sustainability reporting," said Kaimana Bingham, Hawaiʻi Local2030 Hub data & innovation director. "We hope that Bishop Museum's Sustainability Dashboards will inspire private and public organizations alike to develop dedicated plans to monitor and transform their patterns of resource use."

"Bishop Museum's Sustainability Dashboards and commitment to sustainability are great examples of how institutions can draw on Hawai'i's legacy of systems thinking to help us chart a more equitable and resilient pathway for Island Earth," said Celeste Connors, Hawaiʻi Local2030 Hub CEO. "It's also a great example of laulima – 'many hands working together' – which is what we need to achieve the Aloha+ Challenge Goals by 2030."

Sustainability at Bishop Museum

Bishop Museum's sustainability efforts started with a "Sustainability Hui" of employees and supporters dedicated to adopting sustainable practices throughout the organization. In 2019, the Museum launched an effort to become a single-use plastic-free campus. It has since appointed Dr. Hobbs as its Curator of Sustainability, to incorporate more sustainable practices in its operations. The Museum also has the unique opportunity to learn from and build on knowledge it gleans from its cultural and historical collections, as well as the conservation research being done by its scientists.

"As the caretakers of the largest collection of cultural and historical items, and natural science specimens, from Hawaiʻi and the Pacific, we at Bishop Museum understand and appreciate that our native Hawaiian predecessors and other Indegenous peoples actively incorporated successful sustainable practices in their daily lives," said Brandon Bunag, Bishop Museum vice president of public programs and interim director of education. "Our goal at the Museum is to bring forth this ʻike to the modern day, with supporting research conducted by our natural science department in the areas of conservation and biodiversity. Our ancestors knew that preserving and protecting our natural resources was key to not only their survival but that of future generations as well, and we hope to share more of this manaʻo through our own sustainable efforts."

To learn more about Bishop Museum's Sustainability Dashboards, and its other sustainability initiatives, please visit BishopMuseum.org/Sustainability.