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