At Hatched we do a lot of work with businesses to help them be better, recently we started to think about us, the people, and what responsibility we have?
The word citizen has intrigued me for a while. It congers up images of people acting in the best interests of those around them. Contributing to and creating thriving communities. Looking out for and after each other. Sharing skills, resources and most importantly making good collective decisions.
It is about time we all became more active recognising that we, the people, have a responsibility to deliberately participate in the economy to change it for the better.
We are not sure about you but we drive ourselves crazy thinking about every item we buy working through where its made, by who and how. Yet as we walk home with the shop carrier, refusing the use of plastic bags and having read every product label we wonder if this is making a difference?
Does buying free range chicken, local ingredients and paying extra for organic just fool ourselves into thinking that we are doing good? How often are we going good, is it 1%, 5% or 50% of the time? Can we really make a difference by changing the way we shop?
At Hatched we believe that collective people power has huge potential to change the system yet there are many barriers including lack of transparency, education, simple easy of access and affordability to scaling this behaviour. We also have to stop and acknowledge that most people probably don’t even think about it or even care. Bob Dylan said it “People don’t do what they believe, they do what’s convenient, then repent later”. This seems to get us closer to the heart of the issue…..convenience……so how do we redesign what is convenient?
This is a significant challenge and we hope the following snippets begin to show how designing for convenience might start to create this shift:
- Provenance is service built on the blockchain which enables consumers to track the entire supply chain of the items they are thinking about purchasing. This enables open and transparent communication between the person producing the product and the person buying the product. It starts to allow us to ‘look underneath the hood’ of companies and it makes good purchasing decision much easier.
- Fair phone is an initiative that opens up the electronics supply chain enabling individuals to know where all the components of their phone is made. This provides a great short cut, helping us feel at ease using electronics which typically use rare minerals and questionable labour processes.
- 360.org is platform that highlights issues to conscious consumers. Campaigns such as the divestment movement enable people to collectively participate in making change happen such as moving their money away from high carbon investments.
- Restart is a project that enables individuals to learn how to use their electronic products for longer teaching people how to repair them allowing us to reduce waste and feel empowered as part of the process
Such initiatives help us change our purchase behaviour through a combination of raising awareness, facilitating transparency and up skilling. It provides a glimmer of what a new system and behaviour could look like. It seems quite simple but if we can make good purchasing convenient it is our belief that people will start to accept their responsibility to participate in a more active way.
Let the redesign begin! Stay tuned for more Hatched musings xxx
