The old two-story house, nestled on Vila Madalena, a quiet street in the city of São Paulo, hides a tiny plaque reading Virada Sustentável” (Sustainable Summit). The house, which looks like and smells like our grandma’s place, does not look like an event-planning venture. Yet it is the headquarters of a nine-city summit with an attendance of about 4 million people. André Palhano, a former finance reporter who fell in love with sustainability, runs the organization.

Palhano was born in Piracicaba, a city in the state of São Paulo. He began his working life in journalism and is now an entrepreneur on a mission. As a reporter, Palhano worked at Agência Estado, Veja and Folha de S. Paulo, always for the economics and finance sections. At Folha, he was invited to write about sustainability. “I didn’t know anything about it. I hardly knew where to start,” he said. Once he accepted the challenge, he realized that the way the subject was handled by the press could not possibly attract readers’ attention. “We needed to improve the narrative,” he explained. That meant going beyond the papers and finding new ways to reach the public. That is why he decided, working with his wife, Mariana Amaral, who has a degree in advertising, to create an event based in the mold of the then-five-year-old Virada Cultural (Cultural Summit), a festival with concurrent activities in different neighborhoods throughout São Paulo.

The first Virada Sustentável, held in São Paulo in 2011, drew about 300,000 people, with 482 attractions in 78 locations, despite its tight budget. Six years later, in addition to the capital of São Paulo, the event is also held in Rio de Janeiro, Manaus, Salvador, Porto Alegre, Campinas, Valinhos, Ilhabela and Sinop. The entire operation is organized and operated from the old two-story house on Vila Madalena.

While fielding a couple calls from Virada speakers, Palhano gave an interview to Believe.Earth in his office, just as the event was about to begin.

Believe.Earth (BE) What is it like to organize an event the size of Virada Sustentável, given that you started with a relatively simple structure?
André Palhano (AP) Virada Sustentável is inspired by cultural and sporting summits with events in different places at the same time. Apart from that, they are different models. Ours is essentially a collaborative party: Nowadays, the funds we collect from donations and sponsorships cover from 30% to 40% of the costs, but in other Viradas, the event is covered 100% by municipal and state governments. That’s the nicest part of the event. We act as instigators and coordinators so that the city can mobilize its own actors. It’s like a pot luck party: You organize, clean up the house, buy food and beverages, but ask each guest to bring some food and beverages too.

BE – How has your experience as a finance journalist helped you in this second career as a sustainable entrepreneur?
AP –
The logic of sustainability is also economic. We must show that the changes that the planet needs can be be balanced with our society’s economic needs. My experience as a columnist writing about sustainability at Folha showed that the coverage of the subject removed, rather than attracted, the average citizen. We needed to change our way of communicating, so that the subject was no longer seen as something distant.

BE – Has that distance lessened since you began this work?
AP –
Brazil is still crawling when it comes to action on sustainability, and the process of change takes time. In England, for instance, a low-income citizen already knows that he should only buy fruits in-season, as the production and transportation of an off-season fruit carries higher environmental costs. That’s not the case here in Brazil. But here is something that cheers me up: New generations have a new kind of consciousness. Young people aged 18-20, even here in Brazil, no longer see sustainability as an old-fashioned hippie concern. Take the sharing economy as an example. This generation already understands that instead of having a drill, idle most of the time, in every apartment of a building, it is cheaper and more ecological for the whole complex to share one or two state-of-the-art ones. This also applies to cars and many other consumer goods.

BE – To what extent can civil society projects, such as Virada Sustentável, which lacks regulatory power and state resources, bring about environmental change? Do we still rely heavily on the state to do that?
AP –
Civil society has discovered that it has the power to show the public that it has choices. For instance, bike and pedestrian activism have played this role by bringing their demands to the local government in São Paulo. This is happening all over the world. But bear in mind that, beyond this power to shape policy, these groups’ importance also lies in their day-to-day practical involvement in helping people to make these important changes in their lives. A good example is Bike Anjo, which gives free bike lessons. Another is Mão na Roda, which offers free repair services for bike owners.

BE – The future of automobiles is discussed in the context of urban mobility. Some auto manufacturers even speak openly about solutions like carsharing. However, we notice that the average citizen is reluctant to give up car ownership and daily car use, even as mobility research points to an increased interest in public transportation and bikes. Is there a cultural issue in this resistance to changing our car habits ?
AP –
This has been taking some time. But people are realizing that sustainable transportation — whether bike, public transportation, foot, taxi, Uber —  is not only better for the environment, but often the best way to get around.

“When you decide to go by bike to work, you may be motivated at first by the fact that biking is  environmentally friendly. But as you come to realize that it’s also healthier and faster than your car, the bike becomes a better choice for other reasons besides  sustainability”.

People are noticing that there is a variety of options besides the car and these options are not only more sustainable but improve the quality of our lives.

The same man from the cover photo, with white skin, short dark hair and thin beard, looks at the camera with a soft smile. He is wearing a gray t-shirt under a gray jacket, zipped up to the middle of his chest. The jacket has a hood that the man is not wearing. In the back, in the left corner of the photo, is an open white door. Next to the door is a big, white sign written "The number of bicycles in São Paulo is now greater than the number of cars" in Portuguese, in light green letters. Below the writing and in front of the sign is another sign with a cyan background and out of focus text. At the same height, towards the center of the photo, is another image, also out of focus, of a silver satellite dish.

“Young people do not see sustainability as an old-fashioned hippie concern” (Rodrigo Elizeu/Believe.Earth)

BE – How will you  bring companies to Virada?
AP –
The private sector has stopped seeing sustainability as a nice idea and started to treat it as the main core of its business decisions. Because it has to do so. Companies have always been very good at planning, and once they understood that they could not ensure the long-term viability of their own businesses without addressing sustainability, they took the matter seriously and put pressure on governments to do so. Not because they are good people or concerned about the environment, but because they understand the rules of the game.

BE – Are companies really worried about this? Or are they just hoping to deliver sustainability reports and carry out publicity stunts to boost their own reputations?
AP –
There are several realities facing the business world, depending on the industry and the company. Some, especially those that depend directly on certain natural resources, have already understood that if they do not heed the issue and start taking action, they risk disappearing altogether. That’s why some companies view sustainability as much more than a branding issue. We have several interesting examples. On the same day that President Trump announced that would leave the Paris Agreement [to reduce CO2 emissions], many companies, including in the oil and gas sectors, also announced they would continue to follow the standards Paris set out. In Brazil and around the world, banks have been considering environmental risk when granting credit, even in situations not covered by the so-called Equator Principles [related to the adoption of sustainability criteria in financing operations], since the financial institutions know that fines and lawsuits can hurt the business of the borrower.

BE – Has the organization established parameters for its events? If so, can you explain?
AP –
We have guidelines establishing the parameters for the entire Virada event and do not accepting projects outside the original model. We do not associate Virada with partisan or religious projects. And we receive many proposals linked to politicians, which are always rejected. We’re not denying of the importance of institutional politics, but we want to take care with the content presented. Likewise, we do not accept projects that seem relevant but are actually greenwashing attempts, pushing that “friendly little drop of sulfur”. We must be rigorous.

BE – Since Virada was launched in 2011 in São Paulo, it has spread to cities with very different environmental and sustainability realities. Sinop is a city in Mato Grosso, where the expansion of soybean farming threatens the Amazon rainforest, while in Ilhabela, people are concerned about  the preservation of the culture of the “caiçara” (people from the beaches) and about the pollution of the beaches. How do you attend to such local environmental concerns without losing a sense of the event as a whole?
AP –
The point is not to present a prepackaged event, but to create it in a collaborative way in each city based on key themes [linked to the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Objectives], and stimulate the community itself to present demands, to be involved with the festival as a whole, to be the key player. It does not make sense to talk about air pollution in Manaus or to stop talking about the impacts of global warming on agribusiness in Sinop. Today, we have a very interesting approach that allows us to map and cover this diversity of subjects.