Walking the talk to create a healthy environment by 2030
This blog was distributed to our first 250+ backers via email and published on Linkedin.
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If we take responsibility for our reciprocal relationship to nature, we might have the ability to create a healthy environment by 2030.
In conversation with Dave Shoemack, CEO at Goodnature it became clear that sustainability is often confronting both personally and professionally.
But maybe, the most rewarding work is not meant to be simple? And could it all start with each and every one of us walking the talk?
"Sustainability is everyone's game." Dave argues we need to get away from vagueness and grayness. It's vital to translate ambitious goals, like saving the world by 2030, into tangible actions which people and companies are motivated to take. If each week, every organisation finds better ways of doing things for people and the planet, we could easily see widespread sustainable change.
For a company like Goodnature, these actions include choices around materials, manufacturing locations, energy sources, circular design, investment decisions, cost reductions, and beginning the journey to become BCorp certified.
They use the Objectives and Key Results framework to measure their impact. As a team they decide in which areas to create ambitious change. They set these targets quarterly and act on them weekly.
From their experience they have had failure along the way but through constant measurement and experimentation they find themselves constantly learning and improving at every step.
"You need to keep solving problems, knowing there will always be new problems. By showing up with curiosity and creativity, you will get closer every time." Dave Shoemack
To create a healthy environment by 2030, we will need to inspire each other to embrace change and complexity.
"Sustainability can feel like looking at "all things moving together at once" and change can be confrontational." Dave Shoemack
When moving to Amsterdam in 2011, Dave was confronted with his own fear of change, but he soon realised, it is often the biggest opportunities that are waiting for us on the other side of our greatest fears.
Sustainability asks us to stay curious and open-minded about solutions. If someone had all the answers, we wouldn't be in the predicament we are in. Luckily for us, we are a highly-creative species who respond quite well to the question ¨Why?¨.
Let's say we find a problem, in this case biodiversity loss due to invasive pest species and lack of humane trapping solutions. Curious, we keep asking why things are the way they are, until we come to design a for-nature product solution which thinks end to end about its life cycle. It is from here that we can start actually measuring our impact, not in vague or gray terms, but in concrete numbers.
By staying curious and working through constraint we boost our creativity and end up with solutions that we otherwise could never have imagined. In the case of Goodnature this might be in numbers of pests humanely removed, area of habitat protected, or reducing the carbon footprint of products through smarter design and supply chains.
Dave´s outlook hints at the current disconnect between investing and impact. Many people and businesses choose higher returns that come with a side of environmental damage and guilt, rather than making an ethical or green investment due to the difference in rate of return.
Do we ever stop and ask, what is a fair return? This is something that Dave has been sitting with for some time. Acknowledging crowdfunding has become popular in recent years and that there is now a range of more ethical Kiwisaver funds. It still feels that nobody has really nailed the ability to offer a fair return of say 3-5% that feels good and can tangibly demonstrate the impact behind it.
From experience, Dave knows that when you connect and enable people who are passionate about the bigger picture of sustainability, the change happens quicker. Creatively scaling solutions to challenges is in Daves blood. He’s scaled his impact with bicycle mobility in Europe and is now tackling biodiversity loss in NZ. With this in mind he believes he has not seen anyone really flip the financial industry with this mindset. So the question elicits…
"How might we tempt people to be less selfish in our capitalistic society to drive their impact and energy towards a meaningful and fair return." Dave Shoemack
If we can ignite that change, then that is a transformation worthy of the people, the planet and for future generations to come.
Are you constantly curious?
Are you embracing change?
Are you doing small things better every single week?
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Dave Shoemack is the Goodnature CEO and a Director at Abel and FTN Motion.
This article was created with support from Regenerate New Zealand who has a 100 year vision to profitably invest in regenerating New Zealand forests. You can read more about the progress towards the 100 year vision here.
Arohanui,
The team at Regenerate NZ
Interviewed by Alex McCall and co-authored with Ciara Moynihan
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This blog was distributed to our first 250+ backers via email and published on Linkedin.
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