Sustainable Practices - Environmental Action, Sustainable Practices

About us

Our Mission

Sustainable Practices is a Barnstable County focused environmental action group. We work across all 15 towns in Barnstable County to facilitate a network to support environmental quality for our residents, visitors and fundamentally, the ecosystem on which we are dependent and of which we are all a part.

The overarching mission of Sustainable Practices is to facilitate a culture of sustainability as defined by reducing the human-made impact to the planet and its ecosystems. The organization seeks to achieve its goal through the promotion of a global environment that supports the value of all life. To this end we specialize in the integration of sustainability into business, non-profit, and government operations, curriculum and stakeholder communications:

Increase awareness of the health and environmental impact of consumption and foster conscious consumerism through enhancing individual accounting of the lifecycle impact of consumption choices, including introduction of regulatory initiatives.

Create sustainability-focused communications and marketing communications targeted to both financial and operational sustainability: process mapping, stakeholder communications and targeting, risk management, sustainability action plans, and corporate social responsibility.

Develop curriculum to teach and incorporate sustainability into an operating structure: general curriculum (i.e. company-wide, school system-wide), economics curriculum (i.e. university economics curriculum, including online platforms); non-profit and government operations (e.g. development of comprehensive operationalized sustainability programs and strategy initiatives focused on resident and visitor environmental sustainability education).

Sustainable Practices Ltd. is a non-profit, IRS 501(c)3 designated corporation.

Our Executive Director

Madhavi Venkatesan is the executive director of Sustainable Practices.

Madhavi earned a PhD, MA, and BA in Economics from Vanderbilt University, a Masters in Sustainability and Environmental Management from Harvard University, and a Masters In Environmental Law and Policy from Vermont Law School. A recipient of a Fulbright Distinguished Lectureship (Philippines), she has contributed to numerous books and journal articles on the subject of sustainability and economics. Her present academic interests include the integration of sustainability into the economics curriculum. Madhavi is presently a faculty member at Northeastern University in Boston.

Prior to re-entering academics, Madhavi held senior level positions in investor relations for three Fortune 250 companies. In this capacity she was a key point of contact for investors and stakeholders and was instrumental in the development of socially responsible investing strategies and corporate social responsibility reporting. She started her financial services career after completing her post-doctoral fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis.

Madhavi resides in Brewster, Massachusetts

Our Community Engagement

Recent Press

After successful passage of the Municipal Plastic Bottle Ban in five Cape towns this spring: Provincetown, Wellfleet, Harwich, Chatham, and Orleans, Sustainable Practices is preparing for fall 2019! We will be filing and working in the remaining Barnstable County towns: Barnstable, Bourne, Brewster, Dennis, Eastham, Falmouth, Mashpee, Sandwich, Truro, and Yarmouth. Our initiatives are focused on promoting municipal policy that addresses single-use plastic by eliminating purchase of single-use plastic bottled beverages by towns and prohibiting the sale of beverages in single-use plastic containers on town property. We are actively engaged with towns to promote alternatives to plastic and are primarily focused on behavioral change in favor of reusable containers.

Recent news coverage highlighting our Cape activities can be found on Our News page.

Our Activities

As a community-based organization on Cape Cod, we are helping to make this beautiful locale a better place to live. With the help of volunteers, we organize community-building and educational events on the values and benefits of conscious consumption for long-term sustainability.

We are currently engaged in two ongoing community initiatives:

The Cape Plastic Bottle Ban campaign, a grassroots effort to promote understanding and civic engagement with respect to the adverse consequences of plastic consumption on both human and environmental health. The Ban initiative was announced in March 2018 and has been covered by multiple press outlets.
Sustainable Practices Sustainability Film Series, a documentary screening series started in the fall of 2017 that we host along with our partner, the Chatham Orpheum Theater. Our third film season will begin in September 2019. Please see our Film Series page for a listing and schedule of films.

As part of our routine civic engagement we maintain two Adopt-A-Highway sites and one Adopt-A-Visibility site on highway 6 on Cape Cod. Our areas are cleared of and patrolled for debris by volunteers on a monthly basis. They are located between exits 10 and 12 on both the eastbound and westbound lanes of the highway.

Our Initiatives

Cape Plastic Bottle Ban

The Cape Plastic Bottle Ban is an educational and citizen advocacy program to raise awareness of the environmental and human impact of plastic bottle consumption. We are currently focused on eliminating plastic bottle purchase, sale, and distribution by town, regional, and county government on Cape Cod.

Details on the Bottle Ban effort, including upcoming activities can be found on the Bottle Ban page.

Sustainable Practices Sustainability Film Series

Along with our sponsor, the Chatham Orpheum, our movie series promotes awareness and understanding of the role of consumption choices on the health and well-being of both humans and the environment. Our films are screened the first Saturday of the month at 9:30 am and our season begins in September and ends in June. For a listing of fall 2019 films, please see our Film Series page.

Join the Cape Plastic Bottle Ban

2nd Annual All-Cape Beach Cleanup, September 28, 2019