Tag Archive for: Environmental Sustainability
What is the consumerism?
Consumerism in one of its interpretations is a doctrine which states that the increasing consumption of goods and services is the basis for a healthy economy (Business Dictionary, 2017). In other words, for a society to function properly, it must produce and sell goods and services (Shah, 2005). Capitalism 101. The more that is produced, purchased, and consumed, the more successful and prosperous the economy becomes. This culminates in the yearly gross national product (GNP), the measure of success every nation uses to rank its economic power (ibid).
What does that have to do with the Retail Industry?
Retailers are defined as the final link between manufacturers and consumers. Basically retailers are where demand and supply meet (The Balance, 2017). Philosophically, we could say that the retail industry is the wheel that turns the global economy. Round and round it goes. Yet, when mentioning consumerism, we often get a very negative impression. As if the world has gone bad. How can the world go bad, when the economy goes well? Does the wheel spin both ways?
I have touched on this subject on my previous entries. The moment when we, as consumers, ask for more goods, more performant, better quality, state-of the-art versions, we really confuse that poor wheel. Why? Even though we drive the economic forces that may result in a better purchasing power and life quality for us, we run the risk of stealing the same benefits from other people in other parts of the world. Or worse, we may be robbing future generations.
I am talking about the gap between the amount of resources we have and the speed through which we are using and misusing them.
Let’s take a classic example. Fast food restaurants such as KFC and Pizza Hut are designed to cater to the masses by providing food at a lower price (Global Issues, 2016). This way they are taking advantage of the economy of scale, having more beneficial prices from suppliers because of the sheer quantity that they demand.
At the same time, they create a competitive landscape putting in motion economic forces, such as the purchasing decision. Everybody’s got to eat. But what happens on the other side? Intensive breeding of livestock and poultry meant just for these restaurants. More animals means more space to house them, things to feed them, all of which can lead to deforestation, land degradation, contamination of water resources, etc.
If we were to transform this into an equation, it would look something like this:
…for every pound of red meat or poultry or egg or milk produced equals the loss of five pounds of irreplaceable top soil from farm fields.
Another equation:
…for meat breeding one animal per day requires 190 gallons of water which equals ten times the amount of water that a normal Indian family requires per day. The sad truth is that animal farms use nearly 40 percent of the world’s total grain production (ibid.).
But this is food you might say!
We buy food, folks! It’s still on the retail side!
What does that have to do with the Future?
If we imagine the future we tend to always have these shiny, sleek qualities in mind. Everything is high-tech and functional and ordered and efficient. But this future will happen only for some people. For others, it will be messy, with masses of lands sliding away due to deforestation, limited resources of water, leading to relocation, poverty and famine. And suddenly you find yourself in Elysium with Matt Damon fighting societal inequality.
In an ideal future, all people would have access to the same resources, have the same possibilities, the same potential. Now we are digging at the roots of Marxist communism. Every way we turn a turn the wheel there seems to be a danger waiting for us.
Let’s stop the wheel. Let’s think about what we are doing and most importantly WHY we are doing! The retail industry is a powerhouse. Let it be a force for good.
If retails would think WHY they are supplying or enticing demand when it would not be necessary, their answers would be connected to the financial aspect. But future retailers…what would they say? Would they even exist? There is a precarious balance between the economical rise and downfall, sustainable development and environmental collapse. They’re all specks on a wheel and they’re turning our world.
Consumerism pushes this wheel but it can also break it. Would it be difficult to temper our needs and wants? We want so much more than any human wanted in the history of this planet and we are surpassing nature’s rhythms to supply us. What happens when demand exceeds supply? Scarcity. Economy 101. Unfortunately, this scarcity involves our home at a planetary level. And for now, it’s our only possible home.
What happens when the curtain falls?
Nobody knows what will happen, but we know for sure that the curtain must not fall. The rising awareness of consumer’s action over the environment shapes the new economic dynamics. Personally, I will pay attention to what I am buying and why. If I do need it or if 50% of the time I am just indulging myself. Because if it is the latter than I must change. Mother nature deserves more consideration. And if I can change just one person’s mind about it and that individual would change another person’s mind…well…with the risk of sounding cliché…we would change the world. So, let’s spin the wheel of fate!
This post is brought to you by one of AQ’s Undergraduates, Laura Susnea. As part of our internship programs, undergraduates and classic interns are encouraged to take part in company culture. Laura’s primary project focusses on training programs and eLearning and how best to adapt this to industries under pressure.
To start, let’s check out the difference between a Linear and circular economy:
A linear economy exploits resources and puts pressure on the environment because of its reliance on large quantities of cheap, easily accessible materials and energy. It follows the “take – make – consume – waste” pattern.
Contrarily, a circular economy aims to reduce the leakage of resources and waste to a minimum. It does this by extending the cycle of use; preserving, rebuilding, and increasing the utilisation of assets or resources of any form by sharing, reusing, repairing, and recycling, thus closing the loop.
As good as this sounds, in reality, it’s still a fantasy. Even though some steps have been taken to bring our world closer to a circular economy, for now, there is a huge gap between the theoretical concept and the practical appliance. It is predicted that the annual consumption of minerals, fossil fuels and biomass double by 2050.
Implementing the Circular Economy requires multi-level governance and actions at local and international levels. Other challenges to overcome are the reluctance of people to adapt to new business models that point away from ownership, such as the sharing economy, and the significant changes needed in consumer behaviour and habits at all levels [EPRS, 2016].
Before going into the topic of how digitalisation can contribute towards a more circular economy, let’s talk about the complexity of a circular economy, using food wastage as an example:
To illustrate customer behaviour changes, think about an apple. Would you buy an apple in a supermarket if it had a brown spot? You would pick the shiny red apple next to it even if the other apple still is perfectly edible.
Did retailers adapt to the customer’s behaviour, not selling imperfectly shaped or blemished food or did they shape the customer’s purchase behaviour by not providing the option?
This is just an example within a complex supply chain, of a system that has evolved and captured consumers and retailers alike.
In our linear economy, the production of food that remains uneaten occupies 1.4 billion hectares of land, an area bigger than Canada, and close to 30% of the total agricultural land available. Next, to an immense amount of water, energy, fuel, fertilisers and pesticides that are used to grow food, agriculture uses up space to grow crops for which rainforest is clear-cut. Food wastage exacerbates this problem for no reason [FAO, 2013].
Next to food loss, which is unintended due to a lack of knowledge of farmers or food damage, steps where food waste happens, meaning throwing away edible food, occur at the process, retail and final consumption stages due to behaviour and legal restrictions such as many countries not allowing retailers to donate expired still edible food.
Whilst there are so many steps where food is wasted, it’s sad but true that in developed economies, the highest percentage of total food wasted, almost 50%, happens at household level (Determinants of consumer food waste behaviour. Two routes to food waste. Appetite, Stancu et al, 2016).
Amongst others, reasons for this are social trends such as an increasing number of single households, more woman working but also declining food prices that change the shopping routine (Food waste prevention in Europe, Priefer et al, 2016).
The processing phase further contributes to 30% of food wasted [Tagesanzeiger Zurich, 2016]. Needing to deliver what supermarkets and thus, the end-consumer wants, at this stage, the bad apple is pre-sorted from the shiny apple. Logistics and packaging further add up waste: for example, crooked cucumbers are thrown out, as they need more space than straight cucumbers during transport [Hatz, 2013].
To my surprise, food waste at the retail stage is relatively small, fluctuating per country. Nevertheless, retailers play a crucial role, being the “interface” between producers and consumers. Retailers are getting more and more aware of their role in educating consumers and the positive impact they can have on consumption, usage and disposal, reducing food waste, supermarkets are in control of food promotions that nudge a consumer to buy food not needed.
So, for the circular economy fantasy to become true, we have far to go.
Just looking at one piece of the puzzle, and just talking about a few factors that shape the human food supply chain as it is today, deep changes are needed at every link chain to not only reduce food wastage but preventing it. Ranging from educating farmers, improving post-harvest management, optimising package processes, to changing the consumers’ behaviour.
Aside from environmental benefits, a circular economy comes along with advantages such as the creation of new jobs and an innovation drive across many sectors, due to the need to redesign materials and products for a circular use [EPRS, 2016].
So, how can digitalisation contribute towards a more circular economy?
Combining digital developments such as intelligent assets – physical objects that are able to sense, record and communicate information about themselves and/or their surroundings – with the circular economy principle provides room for new innovations. Objects with embedded information technology, for example, smart cars or smart energy systems, will reshape the way people make, use, and reuse assets. It is predicted that by 2020, the number of such objects quintuples.
In a circular economy, global economic developments are decoupled from finite resource consumption. Intelligent assets increase asset utilisation and cycle use length, which creates new sources of value.
Sensors will gather data about the device location, the device condition and the device availability:
- Location: Real-time knowledge of the location of a car aids to optimise route planning, which reduces vehicle wear and extends the cycle use. Through knowing the location, shared assets can be localised, which increases the utilisation.
- Condition: Knowledge of the condition of a car can help to change user patterns to minimise vehicle wear and to take predictive maintenance prior to failure, which extends the user cycle. This information then aids to make founded decisions for improving future loops.
- Availability: Data on an asset’s availability could lead to a shift in the way products are used as transparency about supply and demand is boosted. Information of available parking space is sent to a driver, which saves driving around looking for space, reducing vehicle wear and blocked roads.
Knowledge of availability furthermore features the reuse and repurposing of assets that are no longer in use and also contributes to sharing assets by automatically connecting available assets to the next user.
Also read this article: Retail Customer Service: Reality of Retail Industry
[WEF, 2015].
To close the loop, back to food waste:
Intelligent assets with sensing technology are improving the agricultural sector enabling greater output with less input. The agricultural sector is becoming very high-tech and software based. Digitalisation will help to overcome land and resource productivity challenges by enabling monitoring soil nutrients, better pest and disease control, increasing the yield per square metre without using more fertilisers, pesticides and fuel [WEF, 2015].
A digitalised supply chain where location, condition and availability play a role to be optimised, will improve the steps from food being harvested until reaching the end-consumer – bringing us a step closer to the circular economy.
“Failing to reap the benefits that the Internet of Things and the circular economy present, is the biggest waste of all.“ – Kenneth Cukier
This post is brought to you by one of AQ’s Undergraduates, Alexa V. As part of our internship programs, undergraduates and classic interns are encouraged to take part in company culture. Alexa’s primary focus is in digital marketing.
Why did humans become the leading species of Earth?
We did two things:
- We ranked the importance of things surrounding us, giving them value
- We changed the environment according to these value perceptions
If we look back at the proto-humans, thousands of years ago, and judged them based on the current principles of survival, our assured conclusion would be that they would not survive. Nature did not equip them with sharp claws, poisonous teeth, or hard-shelled exoskeletons. How could they possibly go up against apex predators when countless species of mammals have done so and disappeared?
The one advantage that humans have had is the fact that they wanted more. More food, more heat, more comfort. Although nature did not equip them with features that enabled them to easily achieve it, humans took it for themselves by changing their environment. That still holds true for today!
Value Perception
Nowadays, people expect speed, transparency, and immediate gratification in/with any service or product they purchase. Taking technological advancements into consideration this may seem an easy process. However, to get what we want, we transform our environment, and not always in the best of ways.
Take a look at the fashion industry, we notice that this sector has one of the most drastic impacts on the global surroundings. This makes sense, considering that it is a $3 trillion global industry. Making abstraction of the social issues it supposes and the community sustainability principles it must uphold, the fashion industry starts its environment impact with one word – ‘fiber’.
Here are some dramatic facts about fiber processing:
- ‘Approx. 70 million barrels of oil are used yearly to create polyester fiber, the most commonly used fire in clothes today.’
- ‘It takes 200 years for polyester fiber to decompose.’
- ‘More than 70 million trees are logged yearly and turned into fabrics like rayon, viscose, modal and lyocell.’
- ‘Plastic microfibers shed from our synthetic clothing into the water supply account for 85% of the human-made material found along ocean shores, threatening marine wildlife and ending up in our food supply.’
- ‘The apparel industry is the second biggest polluter of freshwater resources on the planet.’
- ‘A quarter of the chemicals produced in the world are used in textiles.’
The question is why do we need to invest so may resources into the creation of fiber. True, we number 7.2 billion people now, but it is not our numbers that pushed this change (Conca, 2015). It is our value perception. We want more, we want newer, flashier, more complex, and instant products and services. And if it lasts one or two years, that’s ok, because a better version is right on its heels and we are going to buy that one. Durability, consistency, stability, preservation, these features are no longer sought after.
You might ask yourself why that is so important. Not so long ago, all the products available on the market were handmade. Hours were put into their development and so, because they were not instantly available, they were cherished and their durability appreciated. Now, the speed of consumerism drives a hard-competitive edge and nature by itself cannot keep up without artificial support. What does that mean?
Environmental Impact
Considering the current energy expenditure, we realize that the highest amount is for the least eco-friendly fibers.
For instance, linen is woven from the fibers of the flax plant and it is one of the world’s oldest textiles, as old as 7000 BC. It is white, lightweight and durable, gentle on the environment, consumes the least of energy, water and pesticides. However, it takes more to weave it and is more expensive. On the upside, it is more durable and more gentle in the contact with the body (Conca, 2015).
Cotton, however, is advertised as one of the most natural, high quality fiber. It is used in 40% of clothing and requires large amount of water, 2.6 % of the global water use and is chemically dependent, using 24% of all insecticides and 11% of all pesticides globally (EcoWatch, 2015; Hermes, 2017).
Polyester and nylon are made from petrochemicals and by nature they are not biodegradable. They need the highest amount of energy in their manufacturing, but they also emit large amounts of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas. Its impact on global warming is almost 300 times that of carbon dioxide, the most ubiquitous greenhouse gas (EcoWatch, 2015).
The next step from the fiber is to give it the desired color. Dyes processing is becoming a concerning issue in Indonesia, where the Citarum River is considered one of the most polluted rivers in the world. All along its banks there are hundreds of textile factories (EcoWatch, 2015).
The end of the life cycle in fashion is when clothes are not needed anymore. With the rising of fast-fashion chains like Zara and H&M, weekly fashion has become the norm (Hermes, 2017). Trends are changing too fast for nature to keep up with the expected demand on its own, and as we buy more, we throw away more. Clothing waste reached new peaks in U.S. in 2014, where the average person discarded 32kg of clothing annually. Approximately 85% of them reach landfills or incinerators. In China millions of tons of unused fabric go to waste each year when dyed the wrong color. Taking into account that 41.3 million tons of fiber are processed there and account for 53% of the world’s total production, this paints a grim color on the textile industry. Although clothing recycling is rising, currently it cannot face the environmental challenges that fast-fashion creates (ibid).
Conclusion
Change is good, it’s what made us who we are today. But I believe we are sufficiently advanced nowadays to understand the consequences of our action on an environment that expands throughout the whole planet. We want more, we want to fit in, we want self-achievement, we want to promote a certain image, because today’s battle of wits comes through value perception. And we want to be valuable in the eyes of our peers. The easiest way to achieve this is through fashion statements. What we wear, what we show other people, with what we are associated, this decides our status in society, our worth. The problem is that we are changing these values so fast that there is no time for the environment to absorb the impact.
It’s simple, today’s value perception is reduced at the power we have over others. Powers is the easiest obtain through accumulated wealth. Wealth comes through the development of businesses. Business need the required services and products to exist. But power over nature we have not. And what we should strive for is a co-existence in harmony. That can only be achievable through the shift of our value perception. Durability over speed. A well-made blouse will still be a blouse in 5 years. It should last 5 years! It will fulfill the same function in 5 years! And by changing the fashion trends we are making it useless in 2 weeks.
We became the apex predator of this planet by transforming the environment to suit our needs and wants. We created our own claws, our own poison, our own shells. But there is no one else to challenge us anymore. And despite that we keep wanting more in the detriment of all other creatures that share our planet. The force of nature is the ultimate power and I am not sure we can become winners by tackling that. I may want to look good now, but I also want to live on this planet when I’m 80. Will nature allow me to do that in 50 years? Will nature even allow humanity to exist in 100 years? Food for thought!
This post is brought to you by one of AQ’s Undergraduates, Laura Susnea. As part of our internship programs, undergraduates and classic interns are encouraged to take part in company culture. Laura’s primary project focusses on training programs and eLearning and how best to adapt this to industries under pressure.
This morning on the way into work, I was confronted with human decency.
After a rough start to the day – starting with my oversleeping – all I wanted was to buy my morning caffeine hit from the little coffee place where I get my wake-up call every morning.
I auto-piloted off the train and out of the station and headed towards caffeine. As I waited in line, coffee in hand, the gentleman in front of me glanced back and then told the cashier that he’d get my drink as well. I didn’t think I looked that tired, but maybe I did; it was one of those days.
Now. As a female, alone, and in public, there are several things that go through my head when something like this happens. My brain processes go roughly like this:
Brain: Wait what?
Voice: You don’t have to!…Are you sure?
Brain: What’s the catch?/I’m not going out with you./There has to be a catch, no one does stuff like this./Do I really look that tired?/Do I come across as being unable to afford my own coffee?/I’m offended/I’m flattered/I’m late! I don’t have time to be nicer!
Voice: Thank you!
Brain: Darn, I hope I expressed my thanks properly./Oh, he’s gone with no further queries or conversation./Now I feel guilty for doubting his motives, I hope he understands that I’m grateful./Faith in humanity restored.
Maybe it’s a sign of the times, or possibly of my inner cynic revealing herself because it’s too early in the morning and my collective consciousness has had a rough start. Truth is, I am grateful. Not just for the coffee, but for the fact that there are still people out there who believe in doing right.
Part of the problem with the world is that we’ve lost sight of each other as individual people. We’re all so caught up in our personal issues that we forget that we’re all part of the same world and we could all use a bit of human decency.
“Pay it forward,” the gentleman from this morning said to me. And I will.
Something else this experience highlighted was that one of the best customer service pointers you can have in your toolbox is simple human decency.
Empathy is one of those things we talk about a lot, but rarely practice. How much do we actually care that the customer who just came in had trouble parking? Or ran into an old friend just down the street? Be honest: we don’t actually care at all – we may listen, and nod and smile, but as soon as the customer’s out the door we’ll forget about their little experience. That’s just how humanity works.
I’m not suggesting that we take everyone’s stories home with us – that’s not healthy, but really listening to someone’s story gives you a deeper connection with that customer, and customer service is all about connections. Human decency is about how well we develop those connections and under what motives we form them.
The gentleman from this morning had nothing material to gain from buying my coffee for me – he wasn’t even the one doing the selling – but what he did prove was that a simple gesture of human decency completely changed my day. Apply that to customer service and you get a winning recipe. Showing people a personal touch, paying a little more attention to their needs, can make all the difference.
