Are You Seeing What Lays in Your Company’s Wake? Are You Leaving a Damaging or a Generative Wake?

When three Norwegian fashionistas agreed travelled to Cambodia and spend a month understanding how clothing is made in a new reality TV show, they were signing up for an extended reality tour. What the Norwegian fashionistas saw shocked them. 

Just like these three, few Europeans and Americans have clear, first-hand images of what lies behind modern industrial goods and economies. When we do, it is often hard to handle the reality. What lies in the wake of modern industrial goods can be devastating. Too often, it is the very opposite of an act of kindness. Though seldom intentional, we have a global economy rife with unintended consequences—many of which have a human face.

Seeing the human, as well as environmental, costs of the modern industrial economy can be powerful, as is clear on the Norwegian TV show. What previously lay hidden from view sparks questions and hopefully innovation. “There must be another way,” is the instinctual response when seeing the negative effects in the human faces that we unknowingly touch around the world through our daily decisions—about what shirt to buy, what kind of fruit to eat, what source of energy to use, how much water to use, or many other actions. Though it is often hard to see, these decisions leave in their wake either acts of kindness, or quite the opposite.

Click here to continue reading on CSRwire.

Sissel Waage, Ph.D. is the director of biodiversity and ecosystem services at BSR. She has over 20 years of experience working on environmental and sustainability issues in North America, Europe and Africa. Her areas of focus have included sustainable business, corporate environmental strategy, water risk and opportunity, ecosystem services, biodiversity,  ecological restoration, and green infrastructure.