HOW MUCH DO YOU REALLY KNOW ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE BUYING
Christian Pickard
12/7/11
ENP-100-01: Intro to Environmental Issues
Research Paper: Ecological Intelligence
Introduction
A concept that has been thrown around a lot these days is sustainability. Sustainability the idea that everything that human kind needs for survival and well-being depends on the natural environment. Sustainability is the ability of an ecosystem to operate and maintain productivity for a prolonged period. Sustainability is crucial because all of the decisions and actions we do today will affect everything in the future. In the world today, conducting business in an environmental friendly way to achieve sustainability, has put enormous pressure on the private sector to change. This is because consumers have shown the government that it is essential to become environmental stable. Strict environment regulation telling the private sector what they can and cannot do was a result of this thus far.
Business will not become environmentally friendly on their own because more environmentally friendly they get the less competitive they will be. Using governmental restriction to drive business to be more environmentally friendly is not the right approach either. Economic regulations hinder the success of an economy. More regulations restrict businesses ability to do things at a lower cost thus preventing them from becoming competitive on a global basis. Ecological Intelligence provides society with a way help the world become sustainable with of impacting businesses ability stay competitive in the global economy.
Ecological Intelligence
Ecological Intelligence provides people with the knowledge of health and environmental risks of a product. Daniel Goleman in his book Ecological Intelligence, describes ecological intelligence as; “recognizing and understanding the countless ways manmade systems interact with natural ones.” Ecological Intelligence refers to societies collective ability to understand the human impact on ecosystems and act in a way that improves it. It is a way to give consumers the ability to push organizations to create products in an environmentally sound manner. This is a way to stop government restrictions toward being environmentally sound. It will provide producers an incentive to be environmentally aware because the job of the producer is providing consumers with what they want.
Ecological Intelligence can be broken down into two sections. First, it is making a calculation know as the life cycle assessment (LCA) this calculation measures the environmental and health effects of producing economic goods and services. LCA is a method to assess the environmental aspects and potential impacts associated with a product, process, or service, by: compiling a list of relevant energy and material inputs and environmental releases; evaluating the potential environmental impacts associated with identified inputs and releases; interpreting the results to help one develop a more informed decision (“Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) | Risk Management Research | US EPA”).
Second, making these calculations more transparent for its consumers. Making the LCA more transparent allows customers to take advantage of this equation. As of right now GoodGuid.com is a website that allows consumers to look up products on their website and follow the product environmental footprint and health risk. GoodGuide.com also has a smart phone app that allows consumers to scan the bar code of a product. It then tells the user what the products environmental footprint and health risks are.
An example of how ecological intelligence would work provided by danielgoleman.info/:
Three teen-aged girls are at a shopping mall looking for sunscreen. It’s an impulse purchase, and it has to be an all-natural choice. They think they’ve found what they’re looking for at one store, but on the way to the register one of the girls takes out her phone and swipes it by the barcode of the product they’ve selected. Moments later, as she’s pulling out a credit card at the register, her iPhone announces an incoming email. It’s a short message informing her that the item she is about to purchase contains compounds that are linked to the decimation of coral reefs. Moreover, the plastic container is difficult to recycle. Because her phone has pinpointed her location via GPS, she also learns that another store in the mall carries a “greener” sunscreen that has neither of those two problems. The girls leave the register and make a beeline for the other store.
Transparency
Ecological intelligence uses transparency to allow consumers to make the decision to change their buying behavior based on how vital the environment is to them. Goleman in his book calls it radical transparency, a management strategy where almost all decision-making is carried out publicly (“Radical transparency”). Transparency is an excellent way to make businesses adjust to consumers needs. If consumers can see the environmental impact of buying a product, this may convince them to buy a more environmentally safe product. Business will notice this change and will make changes to their product to make them more environmentally friendly. If, the government can see that consumers are scared to buy products that are not environmentally sound. Then the government will respond by forcing producers to become more environmental transparent.
Transparency is a terrific way to get industries, business and the government to change through public pressure. In the late 1990’s, SUV became immensely popular because of their safety. In September 2000, a Senate hearing shocked SUV drivers with the news that these top-heavy vehicles were prone to deadly rollovers that had killed a total of 271 people. The public was outraged and scared. In an attempt, to calm driver’s fears they turned to transparency: by making a law that required automakers to divulge to buyers the likelihood that an SUV would roll over.
This transparency system was a five-star rating based on government study that instantly allowed a potential buyer to know if a given car was among the least or most prone to rollovers. At first only one SUV had a 4 star rating and 30 models had a rating of one or two stars. However, only four years later, the pattern had changed. 40 models were given a four star rating, and only one model had a two star rating. This shows the power that transparency can have on forcing change in business. With the knowledge, of the safety rating consumers started buying safer cars. Which forced automotive manufacturers to improve the safety of the cars they buy. (Goleman pg. 132)
Through out the 1990’s there were trans fat in everything. Trans fats allowed products to have a longer shelf life and have a pleasant sweet taste. In 1993, The Lancet from the British medical journal reported that woman on high trans fats diets, had a higher likely hood of heart attack. Then in 2000 the FDA released a study estimating that roving trans fat from margarine and other foods could prevent about seven thousand deaths each year in the United States. Around this time, the FDA started discussing the idea to make food manufacturers add a label for the amount of trans fats in their products. When food manufacturers caught word of this they strongly against the idea arguing that there was no appreciable substitute for trans fats, and that a bunch of foods would lose the taste, texture and shelf-life that customers expected. Meanwhile, the food industry picked up there research to find an equally a good substitute it could use to reformulate their products. By the time the FDA got around to requiring these labels, leading food companies had already found a suitable substitute and were proudly labeling once-guilty foods as ‘trans fat free’. (Goleman)
Now-a-days trans fats are hard to come by. This is because the food industry saw change was coming. Food manufacturers decided that they could take advantage of this change by delivering products that would assure consumers needs. Wal-Mart has seen the possibility that Ecological Intelligence can provide.
What Now
As of right now one can only take advantage of ecological intelligence through their smart phone or on their computer. I believe the only way to see an impact from ecological intelligence is for the government to force producers to but the LCA results right on the label of the their products.
A studying conducted by, P.H.K.Prathiraja and A.Ariyawardana, on “Impact of Nutritional Labeling on Consumer Buying Behavior”, proves that labels on products does impact what people buy. In the study they reported that among the 90 respondents 86% had awareness about the nutritional labels on food products, while 14% did not have awareness about nutritional labels. Twenty five percent of the respondents stated that they always read the nutrition labels when purchasing a food item and 62 % said they sometimes read it. Only 2% said that they never look at the label. This shows that most consumers do read nutrition labels. 77.8% considered that nutritional information on food items are vital for their purchasing decisions. This tells us that people don’t just read but they also these label have some effect on what they buy.
When looking at this data it says that food labels have quite a big influence on what product people buy. With the growing support toward the public wanting a more sustainable world to live, I feel ecological labels would produce very similar outcomes. I believe that the label would shape what people buy and thus pushing businesses to become more sustainable to gain an advantage in the market. Eventually leading to the government reducing environmental regulations.
Leading The Way
Wal-Mart is doing something very similar. Wal-Mart announced its new sustainability index that supports ecological transparency. Wal-Mart has indicated that suppliers who ignore the requirements for ecological transparency will become "less relevant” to them. This means that competitors in the near future might be fighting for shelf space based on their ecological impact. Wal-Marts plan is to show all products ecological rating next to the cost of the product.
Wal-Mart is making steps in the right direction and is an excellent way for ecological intelligence to gain awareness. With more transparency and less regulation, we are able to live in a world that allows us to make the choice to change. Democracy, an idea the government gives people power to make changes. The more we let the government enact laws and regulation the more we head towards a socialist society.
Conclusion
Ecological intelligence is about more than what we buy. It is about our ability to accept we live in a world with limited resources. Goleman discusses in his book the Tibetan community of Sher, where for hundreds of years, their people have survived harsh conditions by conserving every resource available to them. The Tibetans an ecologically sustainable life because they have no other choice. We no longer have any other choice either. "We once had the luxury to ignore our impacts," says Goleman. "Not anymore, however, it is not the job of the government to enforce laws and regulation to restrict what we do. It is up to us to push for a more ecologically safe way to live. Ecological Intelligence offers us the solution. (“Ecological Intelligence - 10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now - TIME”)."
In order to get the government to make a regulation for adding an ecological label or to get producers to make their product more ecologically transparent there must be support of the mass public. There is a need for a sustainable movement to help gather more public support. Their need to be more news articles, and social media support on this subject. The government reacts fastest when its general public is scared. Look at the financial crisis, the general public was scared about loosing all their money so the government quickly reacted and bailed out major businesses and financial institutions. Business’s react quicker when they can see an advantage in changing their ways.
Work Cited
- “EBSCOhost: Ecological Intelligence: Rediscovering Ourselves in Nature.”, n.d., http://web.ebscohost.com.cobalt.champlain.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=72cb275c-c11f-47c6-9443-1a5cf3ead7d8%40sessionmgr114&vid=10&hid=112.
- “Ecological Intelligence - 10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now - TIME”, n.d., http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1884779_1884782_1884776,00.html.
- BOOK: Daniel Goleman, Ecological intelligence : how knowing the hidden impacts of what we buy can change everything / Daniel Goleman. (New York : Broadway Books, c2009.).
- BOOK: “Ecological Intelligence : Rediscovering Ourselves in Nature”, n.d., http://site.ebrary.com.cobalt.champlain.edu/lib/champlain/docDetail.action?docID=10288656.
- “Green, Healthy, & Safe Product Ratings & Reviews | GoodGuide”, n.d., http://www.goodguide.com/.
- P.H.K.Prathiraja and A.Ariyawardana, “Impact of Nutritional Labeling on Consumer Buying Behavior”, n.d., http://www.slageconr.net/sjae/sjae51f/sjae05103.pdf.
- “Industrial Ecology: An Introduction”, n.d., http://www.umich.edu/~nppcpub/resources/compendia/INDEpdfs/INDEintro.pdf.
- “Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) | Risk Management Research | US EPA”, n.d., http://www.epa.gov/nrmrl/lcaccess/.
- Scientific Applications International Corporation, “LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT: PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE”, n.d., http://www.epa.gov/nrmrl/lcaccess/pdfs/600r06060.pdf.
- “Radical transparency”, n.d., http://www.knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/Radical_transparency/.
- “Sustainability Basic Information”, n.d., http://www.epa.gov/sustainability/basicinfo.htm#sustainability.
- “The Business of Sustainability: What It Means to Managers Now”, n.d., http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/2009-fall/51108/the-business-of-sustainability-what-it-means-to-managers-now/.
- “The Economic Benefits of Nutrition Labeling: A Case Study for Fresh Meat and Poultry Products”, n.d., http://content.ebscohost.com.cobalt.champlain.edu/pdf10/pdf/2001/JCN/01Jun01/5381795.pdf?T=P&P=AN&K=5381795&S=R&D=heh&EbscoContent=dGJyMNLr40SeprQ4wtvhOLCmr0mep7NSr6u4S7WWxWXS&ContentCustomer=dGJyMPGtt1Gyq7NJuePfgeyx44Dt6fIA.
- I chose to use the MLA citing format
