Sustainable Brands 2010 Re-cap, Part 3: Social Justice
Social justice is the topic of this third, and final, installment on my experience at the Sustainable Brands 2010 conference. While not a sexy thing to think about, social justice makes the interconnectedness of sustainability whole. No business or community, for example, can proclaim their determined pursuit of sustainable development if they are oppressing a lower income or minority group along the way. The white and privileged are far from alone on this planet. To sustain our global and local economies, those of us interested in being change agents have to ensure everyone has access – or sustainability will not be sustainable.
Work and Community Resources for All: Phil Berry, perhaps best known for his past work with Nike, is now designing sustainable factories in developing countries. At the conference, he talked about how his work goes much beyond designing structure and is perhaps even more about proactively changing lives of people in extremely rural outposts who previously had little hope. The big idea is that factories become way more than factories and serve as THE social change pivot and “place” for the communities around them.
Environmental Resources for All: Timberland’s Mike Harrison talked about one of that company’s initiatives to help low income people globally buy nurturing social and environmental resources locally. Their Horqin desert program began with a plan to plant 1 million trees in Mongolia by 2010. With the help of many Timberland employees using their volunteer time, the effort had achieved 700,000 plantings by the time Harrison spoke at SB2010. The human/social effects of this project as presented in a YouTube video are incredibly moving. Making sure stories like this get told at conferences like Sustainable Brands (and at conferences that aren’t about “sustainability” perhaps even more) will be key to furthering the awareness that helping people help themselves is good business.
Education for All: Finally, the GreenMyParents (GMP) program presented at SB2010 shows how sustainability can reach beyond specific neighborhoods or certain privileged populations. Our world’s youth may be the key to bridging it all (if co-presenter Jordan Howard is any indication, this will be exciting!). GMP launched on Earth Day 2010 in communities around Los Angeles where people of a variety of income levels and ethnicities lived. With GMP’s help, tween and teen kids bring energy efficiency challenges and the larger sustainability conversation into their homes, so EVERY household that participates can and should benefit greatly. There is no outside “other” trying to persuade behavior change. Making sure that more and more kids have access to this program will be important for ensuring ALL can get this education.
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My Re-cap Conclusion
Near the end of the conference one of the presenters made a resonant point that seems to be a rule for overall perspective on sustainability efforts: the idea is to work to amplify positive impact rather than just limit negative impact. That seems akin to what Paul Hawken and other sustainability founding fathers have said about not just pursuing environmental efficiencies but going for full-on environmental restoration. We can’t be satisfied doing the same old things in a more environmentally or socially aware way. Rather, we should innovate what we do altogether, where possible, and, as Greg Unruh, business ethics expert put it at SB2010, make sustainability “foolproof.”
