Making the good life a little easier
2019 saw the environment go mainstream as one of the top voter concerns globally. Let’s make 2020 the year we really begin to tackle the issues.
Whether it’s the fires burning in Australia or the images of an albatross feeding its chicks plastic, 2019 provided quite a few moments when the scale of environmental challenges ahead felt overwhelming. What changed everything, and made this perhaps the most positive year for environmental awareness, was the way so many related issues went to the top of the agenda so quickly. Perhaps for the first time, climate change and broader environmental issues are truly mainstream.
In the context of the everyday decisions we make to buy the products that help our households survive and thrive, it should be easy to make positive, sustainable choices. However, the truth is that obstacles are placed in our way every day.
The big food and drink businesses are unable to fundamentally redesign their processes fast enough. In most cases, although seemingly well-meaning, their innovations are woefully insufficient (e.g. Heineken using cardboard multi-pack rings) and in some cases, they’ve been shown to be deliberately slowing down the pace of change (e.g. British Plastics Federation’s lobbying to the Treasury). If there’s one thing we are all clear on it is that we need changes to be ambitious and to happen fast.
Sustainability for all
“Members have shown how making a few changes to their routines need not be hard”
Consuming sustainably can be made more simple and more accessible; it just needs to fit into our lives and meet our budgets. Good Club members have shown how making a few changes to their routines need not be hard and can create big changes, both in terms of reducing the impacts we are responsible for (through the products we chose to buy) and by helping fund free memberships for households on low incomes, making these positive actions a reality for many more.
There is even a food parcel donated to a local food bank for every new member that an existing member introduces to the club.
This is just the beginning of how Good Club members are helping one another to make more sustainable living more accessible.
A new type of business with the environment at its core
While companies like Amazon struggle to overcome their packaging and delivery footprint, new businesses like Good Club can work from scratch. Since October we have been working with some of the UK’s top environmental analysts to work out exactly what the lowest impact delivery solution is; what boxes, routes, transport, and in December we started trials on reusable delivery boxes. In the next few weeks, we will start working towards trialing reusable and more sustainable product containers and packaging.
As with introducing any change, it’s important to have enough people with you. You need scale to make a difference, to normalise and fund better stewardship of our land, turn our logistics and operations clean, help foster a better relationship between our families and the products we consume, and what we do with the packaging when we are finished with a product.
Good Club needs to find just 1,000 more customers. At that point, it will be possible to roll out an affordable closed-loop delivery box system to all members. This will mean recovering and reusing delivery boxes, a huge reduction in carbon and delivery packaging waste and the starting point for a very different relationship with your product packaging: reusable product packaging and product containers.
