Moving toward an Economy for Good

A paradigm shift is showing more companies and consumers fighting against exploitative economic practices and putting integrity, compassion, and inclusion first. But what does this really mean? We take a look. 

By Stacey Lindsay

Clockwise from top left: Poplinen, Halona Studio, Intersectional Environmentalist, GOODFISH, noho.

The American capitalistic economy has thrived on the presence and absence of values. More than 200 years of private sector profiteering has generated incredible growth and advancement. It has also resulted in dire consequences, as many companies have long put profits over the well-being of people and the planet. These issues are ubiquitous: Racism fueling unconscionable oppressive systems. Plastics swallowing marine animals from the inside out.  Atrocious financial inequality. Rising pharmaceutical drug costs. A threat of environmental catastrophe. Mental health decline. 

The injustices of reckless production and egregious systems are fueling more and more people to make a change. Desiree Buchanan is one of those people. Several years ago, Buchanan found herself frustrated by the clothing market. One of the reasons was that she felt women were being “underserved.”  There were too many messages of “fit into this” and “if you look like this model, our brand will resonate.” This messaging left her feeling less than and not good enough.

Buchanan wanted to shift the narrative. She envisioned creating clothing that emboldened women and made them feel included. Pieces that were thoughtfully designed, size inclusive, and—speaking to the other aspect she felt was underserving people—were ecologically manufactured. The line had to be “approachable, accessible,” says Buchanan, who was driven by the hope that “different women from different backgrounds and walks of life could see themselves in this clothing.” 

This all unspooled into Poplinen, Buchanan’s direct-to-consumer line of streamlined basics. To ensure that the pieces invite women rather than discourage them, Buchanan made the line in sizes extra small to three-X. She uses only eco-friendly, innovative fabrics like organic linen and Tencel, a relatively newer textile engineered from the cellulose in wood pulp, and incorporates low-impact dyes. “Designing for the future” is how she describes her brand’s efforts. “What are we doing today to help prevent more waste, to help prevent our carbon footprint, to help alleviate the problems we’re having with mass overproduction and continuing to contribute to the landfills?” she asks.

Buchanan’s concerns present another vital question: How are those who actually make the clothes treated? This query brings up the jarring reality of how the global garment industry (and other aspects of the economy) is rife with harassment, child labor, and other forms of abuse. To thwart this, Buchanan chose proximity: Her pieces are crafted in small Los Angeles factories, a handful of miles from where she lives. This allows her to “keep a close eye on things,” she says, and to get to know the factory managers and owners. 

These choices weren’t easy, Buchanan admits, but they were critical to her values and taking part in changing the system. “It was a zig-zag road to finding my people, so to say.” 

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Buchanan’s entrepreneurial story presents the evolution happening in today’s economy. The Draconian, profits first, people last, exclusive, plastic-slinging, earth-depleting, manipulative way is losing steam. Consumers are demanding more—more transparency, more inclusivity, more sustainability—from the products and services they choose and the companies they support. In turn, this is creating economic pressure and sparking a change from the makers. Entities of all sizes, from boutique brands to giant corporations, are realizing that putting the welfare of the consumer and the planet at the forefront is as much about creating a better future as it is about creating a better present.

“People, right now, really want to know what’s going on across the supply chain and how an organization is supporting people and the planet,” says Leah Thomas, founder of Intersectional Environmentalist, a platform eponymously named after the movement that dually advocates for people and planet, and stands for inclusivity and the dismantling of racism and other forms of oppression in environmentalism. “It is really cool,” Thomas continues “that consumers are demanding transparency and accountability from businesses.”

Discernment is growing. Data has steadily shown an inclination for ethically and sustainably made products and makers that operate with a conscience. In 2015, a Nielsen study found that millennials are willing to pay more money for items if they believe them to be sustainable. Furthermore, Neilson states that sales for products linked to sustainability have increased approximately 20 percent over the last five years. In 2016, the group Label Insight conducted a survey of 2000 people about their preference for transparency on personal care and food labels. That survey found the vast majority want more than what is required to be listed on packaging labels, including details on sourcing and ingredient breakdowns. More recently in April 2020, Accenture conducted a study based on how the global COVID-19 pandemic has impacted people’s purchasing habits. It included the insights of more than 3000 people across fifteen countries and found the inclination toward sustainable products has swelled by 45 percent. 

“People are craving goods that are more sustainably and ethically made,” says Rhea Bailey, an Oakland based photographer, artist, and founder of Halona Studio, a boutique ceramics company. “Goods that have a story where you can track the life-line of a product. I see more conversation around that and that gives me hope.”

Bailey, who left a fourteen-year career in city government and public health to follow her artistic passions, says that in navigating her more recent career path, and all the uncertainties that may come with it, she lets her values—inclusivity, equity, quality craftsmanship—guide her. “I try not to conform to what I think will sell or what I see others doing, and really try to stay true to what feels right to me,” she says, further expanding that she believes that by following this truth it will embolden her creative community and customer base. “I feel that I will find my people and my people will find me in the process,” Bailey says.

“I have a firmly held belief that the world is progressively, bit by bit, shifting toward this propensity to purchase from those whose values set align with your own,” says Richard Shirtcliffe, founder and co-CEO of noho, a recently launched line of furniture comprised mainly of up-cycled plastic waste.

Bailey and Shirtcliffe’s sentiments bring up the question of what defines values. The worth equated to beliefs or actions vary person to person and therefore maker to maker and company to company. Values don’t exist within clearly defined lines but rather the context of one’s own heart and mind. Which brings up another point: What does it mean to weave values into the capitalistic economy, from both the consumer’s perspective and the maker’s perspective? And what do these popular words, be it conscious or sustainable or ethical, really mean?

“It certainly is a word that gets thrown around a lot,” Buchanan says about sustainability. With Poplinen, she says it “comes down to ensuring that we’re using practices and efforts and fabrics that are all geared toward creating the least harmful impact on the environment through all our practices and our supply chain.” It also includes the ethical component of why she created the brand in the first place: to lift women up and make them feel seen and included, which is why she takes extra time to work with at least two fit models of varying sizes. “It’s a great way to ensure that the fit is at its best at its size,” Buchanan says. 

Shirtcliffe, too, sees sustainability surpassing ecological benefits. “That is a critical component of it,” he says, “but sustainability for me—and this isn’t news—means triple bottom line.” While you can’t ignore the need to make a profit, he continues, “the important thing is that you balance it out with how you look out for your people”—stakeholders both inside and outside of the business. Shirtcliffe and his team are working to tackle the issue of waste plastic by using it “in a way that the resulting product will do good for individuals who use the product.” As for his employees, he and his team are consistently striving for noho to be as inclusive as it can possibly be, which includes incorporating progressive methods for hiring, building empathy, and creating a non-hierarchical way of the business. “Yes, decisions need to be made,” he says, “but I think what you can do to create inclusivity and a lack of hierarchy is to create conditions and systems and understandings whereby decision-making is as distributed as possible.” 

Noho is currently undergoing the process to become a B Corporation, which is widely becoming more of a motivation for companies. An enterprise that obtains a certification from the non-profit B Lab, a B Corporation (or “B Corp”) is a company that makes paramount the welfare of its non-shareholders. It supports the movement that business can be a force for good by providing strict credible standards. Shirtcliffe looks at the certification process (which is quite rigorous) as a “scorecard” to see if they measure up to other like-minded people with similar values. “If we want to find the very best employees, then we have to have a value system that aligns with them,” he says.

Clockwise from top left: Leah Thomas, Desiree Buchanan, Justin Guilbert, Rhea Bailey, Richard Shirtcliffe.

Seeing companies and entrepreneurs striving to bring more empathy and care into the economy is a positive story. It sheds light on the hope that business can actually do good rather than copious harm. But it is also a dark tale, as it reveals the deepest depths of what traditional capitalism has caused—one of the greatest things being fissures in equitable access. 

Take the general concept of environmentalism. It is easy to think or talk about, but it can be hard—or nearly impossible—to implement environmental and healthy living practices into day-today life. Growing research continues to show that Black, Brown, and low income communities face a dearth of resources and access to healthy fresh foods and clean water and air. Furthermore, these communities are often located near harmful, toxic environments, such as landfills, food deserts, and hazardous waste sites.

These environmental injustices started to consume Leah Thomas’s thoughts in the summer of 2014. A biology student at Chapman University, Thomas had gone to spend the summer in her hometown outside of St. Louis, Missouri. That August, a police officer brutally shot and killed Michael Brown, igniting civil unrest in Ferguson and throughout the country. While Thomas didn’t know Brown personally, he was still close, a physical and emotional part of her community. 

When Thomas headed back to California for the fall semester, she was reeling. There she was, “where the air couldn’t be clearer, and the mountains were just so beautiful, meanwhile my family back home was participating in protests,” she says. A pang of guilt and sadness ran through her as she acknowledged her access to the ocean air and nature while her family and fellow Black community back home were surrounded by protest flames and smoke.   

This pain and disparity sparked a new way of thinking for Thomas, one that merged her loves of biology and nature and communication. She began to study environment and public policy while  looking at the racial and economic injustices that plagued the country. As her studies evolved, Thomas began to follow the work of Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor and civil rights activist who pioneered work on intersectionality. Coined by Crenshaw, intersectionality describes how “multiple forms of inequality or disadvantage sometimes compound themselves and they create obstacles that often are not understood within conventional ways of thinking.” 

As this lens was used to look at women’s issues, Thomas began using it to see environmental injustices. “That terminology, and everything that was going on in Ferguson and everything that I was studying, all of that was all linked together for me,” she says. It helped her ultimately build Intersectional Environmentalist, her platform that educates about social and environmental injustices. “I can’t separate my identity as an environmentalist from my Blackness,” says Thomas. “When I am reading studies about Black communities that are disproportionately impacted by climate injustice or environmental hazards, I can’t flip the page and go ‘that’s an interesting statistic let’s move on to conservation.’ I have to go, ‘oh, that’s my community, therefore my family, therefore I will likely experience it.’”

Of the many learnings she hopes her work with Intersectional Environmentalist will fuel, one is to help people consider all perspectives and circumstances. Just because a statistic does not impact someone directly doesn’t mean that page should be turned, as Thomas says. Considering every fact is part of bringing more awareness into consumerism and the economy overall. “When I think about sustainability and what that means for the environment, we should be factoring in people to that equation,” says Thomas. “What are we doing to create a sustainable future so people on small island nations or large ocean countries are going to have a country to inhabit?”

The criticality of taking an innovative look at things, even those we may not immediately see, has been a central part of Justin Guilbert’s entrepreneurial path. He and his business partner, Douglas Riboud, founded Harmless Harvest, the wildly popular coconut water that focuses on ethics, social accountability, and fair-trade practices. More recently, Guilbert and Riboud have launched GOODFISH, a snack made from the skins of wild Alaska Sockeye salmon that is “100 percent traceable.” 

Of the global seafood industry, Guilbert says there is “criminally a lack of transparency in terms of the supply chain, where you're basically abusing a resource and an ecosystem, which is very poorly understood simply because it can't scream or shout.” Rather than cultivating from coastal areas, which commonly kill large amounts of fish and therefore exploit the surrounding ecosystem, GOODFISH works with a few select fisheries that responsibly harvest the skins, thus upcycling the byproduct skins. Because salmon is a keystone species, meaning it influences other species’ survival and reproduction, it is a critical part of the Alaskan wilderness and social fabric. By seeing this and thus putting an economic value on this commodity in an ethical, sustainable way, Guilbert argues it has positive residual impacts. “You have this renewable resource that is preserving an entire ecosystem and at the same time is creating jobs and opportunity for the local economy,” he says.

It took Guilbert and Riboud more than two years to develop the product. They wanted to put a spin on an extractable resource, give it credence in a capitalistic society while pointing out the overlooked and underserved, and make it interesting to the American consumer. (The snack is “salty, it’s tasty, and it’s not expensive,” says Guilbert.)  Guilbert says that GOODFISH and many other businesses are part of a larger mission that is “collapsing the status quo” to really innovate. “We're destroying the pre-existing paradigm,” he says. “It's not as if we're a threat. We're just the new way to do things.”

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In her book, A Life Less Throwaway, Tara Button delivers a compelling look at consumption. Button, who is the founder of BuyMeOnce, a movement that rallies for a revolution of the way people shop, writes that by being more “mindful” of how people bring things into their lives, by doing so with “purpose and thought,” it will help create a home and life “that uniquely reflects you and your needs.” 

Button’s argument is one of values. When we honor what is important to us, we have a stronger foundation and thus inspire others to do the same. This can embolden a movement, a critical mass. In theory (and in hope), by further supporting the companies that are making conscious efforts to do good, we are further divesting from the companies that continue to put profits over everything else. “While I believe there will always be a market for the cheap, for the mass-produced, fast fashion and fast goods, I do think there will be, and maybe there already is, a tipping point. I’m starting to see it,” says Rhea Bailey, who believes that purchasing power can be used as an advocacy tool.

There is a sense of agency that comes from taking a moment and really considering what you’re buying and who you’re buying from. It heightens the sense that every individual decision matters. It also begs many questions: What is this product supporting in the long run? What are the impacts, both visible and invisible, of ordering from this conglomerate over this small business? What is a person’s role in this? 

In truth, considering all of these things is no easy feat. There is no overarching guideline to know whether or not a company is aligned with one’s values. But organizations like B Labs make it easier to vet companies and find empowerment in doing so. B Lab’s Vote Every Day campaign is a mission to show consumers the power of change that comes from more mindful purchasing. (Other organizations like Project Just and Good on You tell you where a company stands on sourcing, waste, worker conditions, among other issues.) But while there are more than 3400-plus and counting certified B Corporations, there are still millions of companies not certified. This leaves many layers of greenwashing, tricky marketing ploys, and less-than-honest jargon to peel back. A company touting a product that does right by the land may be encouraging racist practices. Or an endeavor that empowers women may be incorporating loads of plastic into its packaging. 

Perhaps the greatest rub is the fact that the ability to consider these things is an advantage, one that is not lost on Bailey. “While I get and support the ecological and ethical need to be a more mindful consumer, which I feel that I am, I’m also balancing that with this deep understanding of privilege and the inequitable access to resources, whether that be knowledge of what is and how to be a more conscious consumer, to monetary resources to buy things that are more consciously made,” she says. “That is not always possible for everyone at the same time, so I balance those two things.”

This where the justice component comes into plain view. It is imperative for the education, resources, and funds needed to make decisions that align with one’s values to be universal and accessible to everyone. It is a large part of Leah Thomas’s work with Intersectional Environmentalist. In tandem with education, Thomas and her team are developing a business accountability program that is targeted toward offering accountability metrics for both sustainability and environmental impacts, and also equity and inclusion— internally and externally. This will shed light on how companies are supporting people and communities of color, and it will provide them with actionable steps.

For any movement, education is an integral component. It galvanizes. It awakens. But in the push for greater awareness there is also the argument for understanding and warmth. The problems are massive, and even with all the bold companies making efforts to tackle them, if it’s too esoteric or confusing to get on board, the efforts could prove moot. “If you make it hard for people to do things the right way, trust me, they're going to do it the wrong way,” says Justin Guilbert. He believes there needs to be an element of playfulness. Consumers, he says, “need to be happy, they need to be joyful. They need to be hedonistic in a lot of ways.” 

Perhaps there also needs more room for humility. “We haven’t come out of the gates wearing halos,” says Richard Shirtcliffe. “I describe myself as a recovering polluter. I have a long way to go to be decent, to be good.” 

Desiree Buchanan sees it as a cumulative practice: small shifts add up to great things. “I’m always trying to preach that message of progress not perfection,” she says. It would be ideal to be able to flip a magical switch and have everything be ethical, sustainable, positively impactful. That, obviously, is not the reality. And the economy—and the world at large—is rife with obstacles, particularly in the face of a global pandemic and those for brands paving new ways. But it is also filled with potential. By looking between the cracks, being mindful of the dark sides of the economy, and always considering the individuals underserved and unjustly impacted, it allows for greater momentum forward. 

“It can’t happen overnight,” says Buchanan. “It’s just taking those steps, day by day, making more space for something new.”

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At The Conscious Investor, it is our goal to shed light on topics that we find interesting, inspirational, and educational. Therefore, this article is strictly for inspirational and informational purposes only. It is in no way intended to substitute for professional investment advice, professional financial advice, or general counsel. To the extent that an article features the insight, opinions, or advice of an expert or company, the expressed views are those of the cited person or company and do not necessarily represent The Conscious Investor and its employees or affiliates.