Radical Transparency: Now is the time for business to tell all

Radical transparency is my favorite kind of transparency. My soul sings when a company can clearly share their ambitious goals to achieve truly meaningful change, and tells the public not only where they are succeeding, but also where they’re struggling. This, more than anything, gives me a boost of confidence in our collective efforts to keep our planet live-able. We need more of it, now!

The Business Dictionary defines transparency as the “lack of hidden agendas and conditions, accompanied by the availability of full information required for collaboration, cooperation, and collective decision making.” Its important to remember that being transparent includes sharing where we have failed or are struggling, and I think this is the side of transparency most businesses would prefer to gloss over or hide. I’ve added the descriptor “radical” because, in the world we currently live in, to publicly share whats challenging for us is a rare and brave thing to do. There is a way to share these hurdles that raises brand value, creates opportunity for industry collaboration, and doesn’t diminish a company’s industry leadership. It is meaningful to state you have a goal, you tried these things, some efforts didn’t work so you’re trying this new strategy next. And that is so much more meaningful than glossing over shortfalls, sweeping them under the rug or revising down your goals.

We need businesses to be radically transparent in setting and tracking truly ambitious goals for climate action and social equity.

Here are a couple examples at vastly different scales:

Continue reading “Radical Transparency: Now is the time for business to tell all”

The secret is to begin

Or so my co-star app told me today.

I have been feeling a strong creative bug to make something and put it out in the world lately but haven’t known where to direct it. Paint? Sew? Write? Draw? ….Rearrange all the furniture in my house? Revamp my financial plan? Cook? The last three have not cut it for me, so I’m diving back into writing.

The secret is to begin. The bigger secret is to keep going.

This quote applies to business sustainability and climate action as much as it applies to personal life goals.

Maybe an even bigger secret is that restarting something, picking up where you left off (even 3 years later) is ok too.

So here I am, restarting! I think the future of this blog will blend my perspectives on sustainability and climate action with more personal reflections, interests and anecdotes. This is supposed to be fun! I’m hoping to write shorter blog posts more frequently… let’s say a goal of one each month. And I’ll continue to sprinkle great quotes in between.

Hope you are all staying healthy, happy and are keeping quarantine boredom at bay.

All my best,

Alex

“Imagining the future for a brand means incorporating responsibility values into its DNA and discovering new opportunities. It means injecting creative thinking and different points of view about the past, which translate into new or renewed products… which, in turn, open up new markets, attract new customers and reduce risk throughout the entire value chain and lifetime of the product.”

Francesca Romana Rinaldi & Salvo Testa
The Responsible Fashion Company (p 117)

Good Guide; A love letter

goodguide

Dear Good Guide,

Thank you for existing. You’re the main consumer transparency tool I share with fellow innocent members of the public. Your app is my favorite tool to use as a consumer, because of your independent, third-party evaluations of ingredients and handy, UPC-code scanning abilities. I can’t imagine shopping without your information on a product’s ingredient healthiness, certifications and ecolabels, and lists of possible alternatives in the same product category.

Roses are red,
toxic chemicals are cruel,
transparency gives me the power
to choose products that rule.

Continue reading “Good Guide; A love letter”

Book Review: What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming

; Toward A New Psychology of Climate Action by Per Epson Stoknes 

“We need a more compassionate understanding of how our paradoxical, many-voiced psyche is responding to news of the ongoing shifts in the climate.” p 7

Those of us who are wondering WHY others don’t get the message we feel like we’re sharing loud and clear will definitely appreciate the tools psychologist and economist Per Epson Stoknes spells out in this entertaining, easy to understand and to-the-point book. In it, he provides tools to successfully break through apathy and cognitive dissonance Continue reading “Book Review: What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming”

What I learned from the Millennium Drought

My guest blog post for Women Leading Water, “What I learned from the Millennium Drought”, is now live! It was fun to reflect on my time living in Melbourne, Australia and what it taught me about conserving water.  Read the full post here!

“When it comes to the facts of increasing climate disruption due to our human impact on the earth, there is an ethical obligation to respond. Those who actively give voice to or just passively live out their denial actually support the ongoing human violence to the land and clean air.” – Per Epson Stoknes, What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming (p 25)

Meet the LOHAS

I have been reading the book The Responsible Fashion Company: Integrating Ethics and Aesthetics in the Value Chain by Francesca Romana Rinaldi and Salvo Testa  (published 2015) this year, and one consumer description caught my attention that I felt the need to share: the LOHAS, or Lifestyle Of Health And Sustainability! Continue reading “Meet the LOHAS”