WALKING THE TIGHTROPE ATHALIA HARPER
Put your money where your mouth is. It’s a challenge that applies equally to big business and individual purchases in today’s moral marketplace. Athalia Harper explores the ethical give and take between corporate and consumer.
14 | Walking the Tightrope
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eople, planet, profits. This is the catch-cry of sustainable business—the new triple bottom line. Gone are the days when businesses could just care about balancing profits and losses— the new normal means businesses now have a mandate to care for the environment and society at large—the borrowed phrase “first, do no harm” now seems applicable. It’s an admirable standard. Surely today we can hold businesses to account and demand that they care. Surely we can expect businesses to do better than they have in the past. That said, I am faced with my own conundrum when nature, quite literally, comes to call. My two-year old needs toilet training fast and, a mad dash to my local discount retailer later, I find myself the slightly ashamed owner of a rather ugly, very cheap plastic toilet step and potty-training insert. I’m ashamed because I know I have just bought the step as a stopgap. I plan to replace it in a few weeks for something a bit more long lasting, made from better materials, and definitely more attractive. At only $5 it was an easy decision—I knew my bank account wouldn’t feel the pinch—but now, a short way through an article on sustainability, I do feel a bit guilty. I’m torn. Do I dump and replace? No one will notice my solitary ugly, green stool amongst the acres of refuse at the city dump, I think. Or do I keep it; its ugly green hide a constant reminder to make better purchasing decisions in the future. It’s in my purchase of this eyesore that I can see the heart of the consumer problem, the almost unmanageable challenge we set for businesses today. Our insatiable demand for low-cost goods combined with a moral call that “they” (those “faceless corporations”) care for people and planet. CEO Mark Powell is a man well versed with the complexities of this challenge. He helms The Warehouse Group, a Retail Group that includes The Warehouse, Warehouse Stationery, Noel Leeming, and Torpedo7. He wrestles daily with both the commitment to provide low-cost consumer goods and the vision to become a 100-year company that helps New Zealand flourish. A true challenge to balance profit, people, and planet. “Business is often caricatured in today’s media,” says Mark. “Most of the business leaders I know are not capricious capitalists; they do care passionately about society.” Despite this, managing profits and losses alongside the call to compassionate care of people and the environment is a tall order. There is a fine balance and it’s evident after a few moments conversation with Mark that big business does not have a cut and dried solution; there are indeed no easy answers, particularly for businesses competing in the market of low-cost consumer goods. Challenges range from balancing the triple bottom line, avoiding bankruptcy while fulfilling moral and ethical obligations, through to bigger questions like: “What exactly is the greater good? What does real sustainability look like?” Take ethical product sourcing for example. A seemingly easy, yet extreme response to continued reports of sweatshop labour,
would be to close the doors of the West and shut down free trade, a response that Mark finds simplistic and unhelpful. “Building a wall around the West is not a solution,” he says.
“It’s important that we don’t go and throw the baby out with the bath water. We need to remember that global trade has actually lifted hundreds of millions out of abject poverty in China, India, and many other countries.” His defense that global trade actually contributes over time to raised incomes and better quality of life—doing more for poverty in developing countries than any aid organisation could do—feels like sound logic; the burgeoning middle classes of China and India living proof. But should that “greater good” override our concern around the reports of unethical labour, child workers, and terrible working conditions we see coming from many manufacturing nations? “There are undoubtedly abuses. You can’t be naïve in this space, but the general improvements happening are huge,” Mark responds. “An important part of what makes market-led economies work is the democracy and questioning that puts pressure on people in power and asks: ‘Is wealth being shared? Is trickle down happening?’ Because of that, major companies like ourselves feel the social pressure to have good, ethical sourcing policies in place, because if you don’t, you will get caught out. Consumer-led pressure, societalpressure, that’s what drives change.” Mark holds a similar view on the “Made in NZ” movement. Consumer-led pressure for locally sourced products is, he says “good.” But he doesn’t believe it should turn into a “Protect NZ” movement. “As soon as we do this,” he says, “you undermine creativity and fossilise a society…free trade puts a great creative pressure on New Zealand manufacturers and helps our country to move forward.” This “vote-with-your-feet” philosophy does sit a little bit uncomfortably with me. It places great onus on the individual, and I’m not sure I trust myself to make the “right” choice, especially in light of my recent foray into the world of garish toilet steps. Surely, I ask, there must be room for some regulation, some government intervention, some limits to consumer choice, and some guidance for corporate responsibility? Mark does believe there is a place for government intervention. Just not overregulation. He believes the State’s role, worldwide, not just here at home is to ensure that base levels of protection are in place, a responsibility he extends also to the governments of developing countries. These include health and safety standards and a minimum wage, but should not, for example, extend to the legislation of the so called “Living Wage”. Athalia Harper
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