The current environmental crisis is the biggest generational challenge that the world has ever faced.
You’ve undoubtedly read that before. The gravity and ubiquity of the statement have unfortunately made it cliché. If you’re liberal, you might be fed up with stonewall conservatives that don’t want to interfere with the economy to ensure the planet’s health as we move into an uncertain future.  Those on the conservative side of the fence are likely tired of hearing about various legislation initiatives that would involve higher taxes, regulation, and restriction of freedom.
With Ecological Intelligence, Daniel Goleman presents a new interpretation of our environmental dilemma that can potentially satisfy both parties. Goleman begins his argument following one common in other arenas of the environmental and sustainability movement: there are unhidden costs in everything we buy that are not being accounted for. Goleman doesn’t just focus on that carbon in the gasoline of our cars or the coal powering our refrigerators – there are significant costs in our products that we are unaware of that fall into three categories: costs to the environment, personal health, and society. The main premise of Ecological Intelligence is that the vast majority of our products and industrial processes contain dozens of hidden costs that are hurting the environment, us, and the populations that are producing or being negatively affected by the production of commodities.
Goleman shows that increased market transparency – being able to see all of the statistics on how our consumer goods are being made – leads to not only greater market efficiency, but also more conscientious purchasing decisions. Products that have been made under humane working conditions or with environmentally sustainable practices influence consumers; they very frequently choose these products when comparably priced and often will even pay more. Goleman also gives examples of how companies have been negatively affected due to the exposure of information that was played close to the chest. One of the most famous examples spotlighted was that of Nike. Remember back in the 90’s when we found out that Chinese were making shoes in slave conditions, and remember the public outcry around the globe? Nike was there. Sales plummeted and the brand’s reputation was severely injured. But then Nike turned itself around. They not only changed their labor practices (of which many Nike executives allegedly were not even aware), but went the extra mile: Nike now sends auditors unannounced to all of its production facilities to ensure that humane standards or being met. Market transparency means that companies have to take responsiblity for their practices as they are put on display for all to see. If these practices are objectionable and are not altered, companies will lose competitive viability and disappear from the marketplace.
On the grassroots level, greater market transparency is already a rising trend. An entirely new academic discipline of industrial ecology is using a tool called the Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) to trace how a product is produced from “cradle to grave.” For example, the production of a single piece of paper involves not only the tree necessary to make wood pulp, but the metals to produce the chainsaws to cut down the tree, the fossil fuels to transport the wood to a processing plant and again to a distribution center and again to a retail store, the electricity needed to power the paper presses, the industrial processes necessary to extract the chlorine used to bleach paper, and on and on nearly ad infinitum. LCA’s take into account not only a commodity’s carbon footprint, but also whatever social or health impacts that might be involved (e.g. poor safety regulation for workers or lead in the paint on a toy that could harm an infant).
There is one service in particular that is already available to the public that is mentioned in Ecological Intelligence that embodies this mission called GoodGuide. GoodGuide has been dramatically increasing market transparency at an accelerating pace. Available for free use at goodguide.com or free download as an app for your iPhone, the service rates products on the same three factors discussed in Ecological Intelligence: environmental, health, and social. There’s also one single meta-score from 1-10 that takes all factors into account to provide a comprehensive representation of how “good” everyday products are in relation to their competitors. Each of the three scores is not a subjective analysis. GoodGuide assesses data from hundreds of statistical sources, and all of these sources and scoring processes are available and visible for consumers if they are curious why a certain product got a specific score.
I tried out the service myself. Not only did I feel more educated about my purchasing habits, it was also incredibly fun. I looked up all of my hygiene products first since they come into direct contact with my body, from my Mountain Spring detergent to that tube of Crest toothpaste on the ledge of my sink. Among other enlightening (and empowering!) discoveries, I found that Axe deodorant, a comparable product to my oft-purchased Old Spice, scores significantly higher in each of the three fields.  Despite Old Spice’s new youth-directed brand image that I’m totally enthralled by, you can bet I’m jumping ship.
My change in behavior is driven by my values. If I continue to buy Old Spice, then I am indirectly endorsing a company with inferior standards that are causing much more damage than a comparably priced competing product. People love to do what is right — it’s why our societies have naturally developed systems of law and moral codes. Market transparency holds no opinions and does not intentionally persuade anyone. It simply represents the availability of information that already exists. It is how people internalize this information that influences behavior. If tomorrow you woke up and every product for purchase had comprehensive scoring of production practices in a visible place, would you immediately change all of your purchasing habits in favor of being an optimally responsible consumer? Maybe not. But I bet mothers everywhere would start buying laundry detergents that score highest on health. Young people disillusioned with unsustainable American habits and legislation likely would seek out products that score high environmentally. Practicing Christians might only buy those products rated highest socially. The point is that as an aggregate consuming population, there would be noticable shifts in purchasing behavior toward products that, in similar price ranges, score significantly higher than the competition in one, two, or three of the fields specified. Gradually, lower-scored products would either go out of business from a significant loss of market share, or find ways to improve their performance to entice consumers with their “good” products.
Now, some of this is already happening spontaneously on a small scale as small populations of consumers become better informed and some companies voluntarily seek to provide greater transparency (look, for example, at how Hannaford’s new three-star nutritional rating system that shows at a glance which products are actually good for you. What a ground-breaking idea!). But imagine if businesses on a wider scale tapped into this potential. I see a snow-ball effect just waiting to happen. Or imagine a series of protests asking the government, state or federal, to require this kind of transparency or at the very least greater investment into LCA data collection. In fact, a simple federal mandate that all companies at each stage of the production would be required to submit the necessary data to an international database could create the information repository necessary to effect wide-spread GoodGuide-esque ratings to be implemented in under a year. Our world could be a better place with more responsible purchasing decisions if only we were granted access to information that is already out there just waiting to be uncovered. Without any kind of significant government intervention into the economy, bleeding liberals and hard-core right-wingers could unite their arm-pits in acceptance of the best deodorant out there (which at the moment happens to be Tom’s of Maine Natural Deodorant Solid with an incredibly impressive 9.5).
Ecological Intelligence, Daniel Goleman **** / 4 of 5 stars
Enjoyable Reading: 5/5
Applicable to Business: 4/5
Behavioral Insight: 4/5