4 Introduction – My Nguyen, Director of Interior Design, Holland America Group Sustainability has always been a personal passion of mine. I don’t know if it’s from growing up in Seattle, having similarly minded friends with environmental awareness in their DNA, or simply appreciating the outdoors and being inspired by nature. I wouldn’t call myself an activist, but I am certainly an advocate and am very aware of our human responsibilities – both in our personal lives and at work. I’ve been in the industry for over 20 years and environmental issues have always been in my mind to address, but as with many things in life and in business, it’s always about finding something that triggers positive action. A couple of years ago there was a window of opportunity that started with small conversations and occasional action that’s now grown into something much bigger. It didn’t take much for the topic to gain some serious momentum within the ship interiors community – a few conference sessions, a variety of conversations and the occasional dinner. And it’s going to grow into something much bigger, which is really exciting. In the past, I would have conversations about sustainability with colleagues and we would take one or two steps forward. There was an underground hive of activity with individuals and companies doing a lot in isolation, but often going unnoticed. Now, we’re starting to connect meaningfully and a group of like-minded individuals and companies is coming together. This November, we will be meeting up in London for Elite Exhibitions’ Sustainable Design Summit, where we will discuss the ideas and insights shared in this report and start to develop a unified strategy. It feels like we are ready to take bigger steps now and there’s so much excitement about what’s to come from every stakeholder group. We must talk collectively about how to crack the sustainability code because it’s otherwise too overwhelming. If we can correlate ideas and find some consistency in our approach, we can bring engaged minds together to establish a plan of action. I certainly advocate things that I’m personally very passionate about and if it happens to influence people to get them excited about an important topic then I’m confident that we can achieve great advances together. It is hard to embark on a project like this because there is no consistent definition for sustainable interiors. If you ask 10 people what a sustinable interior is, you will get 10 different answers. We need to start by taking a bunch of different ideas and perspectives and narrowing down the definition to help guide people.
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