Sustainability Where consumers corporates compromise

[Music]

sustainability

where consumers and corporates

compromise

what does it mean to you when your

favorite personal care product

food or household item is relaunched

sustainably

would you like it more do you think it

will work

just as well do you end up paying more

for it

for many everyday items the packaging or

product material often gets substituted

for renewable sources that are

redesignated as

recyclable or compostable some of them

work well

others not so much i was recently

reading about the recycling channel

where only

nine percent of plastic that has ever

been created

has been recycled in the world and

started learning about the current

system

in place for a sustainable future and i

became indignant

china has now shut its borders to

plastic and the rest of

asia is following suit and we have

nowhere to put our plastic

so instead of 91 of plastic gain to

landfills

oceans and incinerators now almost 100

percent will be

even that glimmer of hope of energy from

waste incinerators has been dashed

as we now know it is more carbon

intensive

second only to coal so

why was the blame being pushed onto us

as the consumers

why is it so difficult to live

sustainably

found myself asking these questions

during my process for founding a

sustainable personal hygiene company

i want to let you in on what my

entrepreneurial journey taught me

on sustainability and compromise

when i was in my final year of medical

school i was having a very bad

period i asked my housemate to buy me

some sanitary products

and had a good chuckle when he brought

home about half of the store

we got talking about periods and had a

rather enlightened discussion

he had never considered the

practicalities of periods

and i never had to justify them i’d

never really fully thought about the

environmental impact of my period

nor many activities in my daily life i

had rather lazily been reflexively

purchasing

what i thought was sustainable products

that were labeled

organic bioplastic and compostable i was

coming across these green terms

commonly in my daily life i don’t fully

understand them

what does sustainable leather mean how

can mass leather production

be sustainable with cows contributions

to climate change

how can must vegan leather production be

also sustainable without impacting

agriculture and food

ambiguous terms such as eco-friendly are

not specific

what does that mean is that referring to

the carbon footprint

there are different meanings of zero

waste so are we talking about an

individual product level on a mass

corporate scale where we look at

all aspects of the company and product

impact from cradle to grave

myself and my housemate aaron entered

imperial’s innovation competition

as it was rather fittingly the spark to

the discussion

we entered with the fully biodegradable

sanitary pad

we substituted conventional materials

with biodegradable ones

and combined with a savvy period app

sprinkled in with some machine learning

and entered with this idea we were

fortunate

and won and decided to use the money on

experimenting with the prototype and

testing out our hypothesis

we started off with understanding why

our biodegradable pad was better than a

conventional plastic one

and why we should convince people to buy

them

during this we found that people would

prefer sustainability

up to a certain point as long as it did

not impact their priorities

such as comfort or quality of the

product or lifestyle

is needed for a reusable one we learned

that in general

people would prioritize the intrinsic

factors of a product

over the extrinsic factors for

sustainability

whilst understanding what drove

purchasing decisions

we were also testing our hypothesis that

biodegradable pads are more sustainable

than conventional plastic ones

our first failure was that we didn’t

have a working definition of

sustainability

this is a key internal process that we

realized we needed

how can you strive for something if you

don’t have a clear

criteria or definition for success

we define product sustainability as a

product

that has a positive or no long-term

ecological impact

from production to disposal well then

our hypothesis was wrong as pads are

either flushed

incinerated or end up in landfill

none of our biodegradable pads would

ever

find a way to degrade we panicked

what do we do with the money now so we

had to change our solution once we

better

understood the problem we realized that

our initial proposal did nothing to the

actual

impact of the pad on the environment the

real problem

lay around the point of disposal and not

the materials

so we decided to create a flushable pad

a pad that uses existing infrastructure

to break down into starch and sugar

when put into contact with water before

it seemed insane to me

that every day in the uk over

2.5 million pads and 4.5

million tampons are flushed down the

toilets

that’s a third of all pads and tampons

being flushed away

but then when you think about it it

doesn’t seem

all that insane you are sitting on a

toilet

you flush toilet paper after use if you

thought along the same principles

it seems to follow that you should flush

your pad

we are surrounded by products that are

sold as sustainable

and better for the environment but we

realize that companies have only ever

thought about the impact of the

environment during the making of their

products

leaving the burden of disposal to the

consumer

many public awareness campaigns focus

solely on the actions of the consumer

and not companies companies should be

thinking through the entire product life

cycle

so products are easy to use and disuse

sustainably in scale

for mass consumption as the r d for our

flushable pads that

took three years during that time we

realized a huge problem to tackle is the

misinformation and perception

surrounding sustainability we are

exposed to sustainable language on a

daily basis

most of these words mean next nothing in

in current objective sustainable

standards and the words that do provide

definition within context

are often misused in branding

we see this as a marketing push to

re-label the product or re-brand with

green washing without real innovation or

change to back it up

so this begs an important question how

can we expect to grow sustainable

businesses

and collectively decide on actions

without even being able to talk about it

properly

with the spotlight on growing

environmental social and governance

funds to drive

innovation in these sectors has prompted

changes within consumables

and our purchasing patterns slowly

we are defining some of these words such

as biodegradable

compostable and biodynamic into

universal scientific standards

but we still have a long way to go we

see a lot of companies with misleading

use of these words

as we set standards for them we’ll be

able to culture sustainable businesses

and educate consumers too

so by clarifying the language of

sustainability we can then

talk honestly about the true impact of

products

from companies that have made the switch

our focus group stated that they often

felt that the quality of the products

however were compromised

in sustainable options or their

lifestyle was compromised

with the switch to reusable and voiced

that their sustainable options were

usually more expensive

this compromise felt by the consumer

whether on performance

finance or lifestyle was mirrored by

many other consumer packaged goods

this compromise doesn’t have to mean

that you aren’t happy with making the

change

but ultimately more of one thing may

mean

less of another and these views

are mirrored for many consumer package

goods forcing consumers

some kind of compromise but is this

compromise inevitable

this consumer demand for better has

driven awareness and innovation and we

are seeing sustainable innovation

across industries as they’re asking

questions like who is the last person to

be holding the product at disposal

what disposal methods will be commonly

available to them

and importantly what incentivizes the

customer to correctly dispose of a

product

we are seeing a shift in responsibility

as companies

design consumer-centric sustainability

these companies are innovating products

to ensure that the entire

product life cycle is sustainable and

not

compromising the quality of their

products nor the environmental impact

we are seeing climate positive companies

who give

back more than they use and climate

conscious funds

driving changes in fields across sectors

let’s take a step back and compare how

the market values

different types of harm

we would never launch a product to the

market that knowingly caused damage to

consumers

beds are just unacceptable side effects

however extrinsic damage to the

environment is not considered

unacceptable the consumers are now

advocating for this damage to the

environment to be as

unacceptable as the intrinsic damage to

us

to stop harmful processes and materials

going into the products and into the

environment

so through asking a series of important

questions throughout my journey

i was able to learn what actions we can

do on our part as the consumer

to understand and promote sustainability

and where we are still

forced to compromise i urge you

to consider these three questions on

your next purchase

what does that really mean

by first understanding the language we

recognize that many companies

green wash their products so ask

yourself what actually is clean

natural plastic free and base your

decision on that and not the marketing

or branding behind it

the second question is where does it

come from and where does it go

pay attention to the complete life cycle

of your products

not only should your products be

sustainably produced and used

but also disused companies must take

back the responsibility of product

disposal

and this final question is do i really

need this

this recognizes that we as consumers are

the most

important factors we purchase the

product

i personally find this one the hardest

and wrestle with this

daily i live a modern life and

choose to be a hermit and reuse

everything however there is a certain

level of convenience and hygiene that i

get from disposable products

that i am sometimes unwilling to give up

this should be a balance that is

personal to your lifestyle

and you make the decision like i said

you

are the most important every product has

an impact no matter how sustainable

sometimes the consumer does not want to

compromise on convenience

other times the corporation does not

want to compromise on margins

we need to recognize that sustainability

is a spectrum

and consumption always has a price

thank you very much