Over the past two years I started making a conscious effort to live a more eco-friendly and sustainable life. I’ll admit it, it hasn’t been easy. It still isn’t. Living in a world shaped by consumerism makes it difficult to change our lifestyle habits. Everything around us is designed in a way that makes our lives easier, which is great, let’s be honest… however, it all comes with a price, and I’m not just talking about money here.
As consumers, most of the time we see the final product beautifully presented in a store, or modelled by a celebrity and posted all over social media. We don’t even think twice before buying it. Why should we? It’s cheap, it looks nice, it’s all we ever need in our lives, everyone else has it… The list goes on and on. I guess what I am trying to say is, we are only shown the pretty side of things, without being encouraged to question the complete story of the final product. Questions like who, where and how the products we use are made, often get ignored or answered in a very ambiguous way by certain companies. Why? Because things get pretty ugly once we look behind the scenes. Negative environmental impact and unfair labour practices are some of the most common issues that big corporations don’t often disclose information about.
Thanks to the power of the internet and social media, we are becoming more aware of what’s going on in the world and what we can do to get involved and help when a problem arises. We, as consumers, have a social responsibility to reach out to the companies we support and ask them for more transparency in the way they do business, to own up to their mistakes and to actually learn from them. I strongly believe that the more we start caring about where our money ends up, the more we can influence change.
A socially responsible business, no matter how big or small, should aim to give back to society and care about making the world a better place. There are many socially conscious companies out there setting up an example and leading this inspiring movement that invites society at large to do more, to care more, to ask more, and my goal is to write about them. Socially responsible will be dedicated to sharing information on local and global businesses striving for positive societal impact, along with ideas and inspiration on how to live a more sustainable life.
Socially Responsible 