Did you know about the Sustainable Development Goals before commencing this subject? What do you think are the most important aspects of a Sustainability Action Plan?
Impact Lab 3. Week 4 Reflection
I think the first time I was introduced to the SDGs was at an Experience Design Thinking Meetup where Lis Dingjan spoke on Designing Experiences to Shift Systemic Issues. If not there then perhaps at a Circular Economies Brisbane Meetup. Since then I often think about how I can integrate them into projects and how they form part of my value systems. For example last semester I had the opportunity to take part in the world’s largest green business ideas competition, Climate Kic Launchpad. As part of that I worked on a business idea for renting vintage clothing with SDGs 12. Responsible Consumption and Production and 13. Climate Action in mind.
As part of Climate Kic we had to measure what our impact on Climate Change would be in terms of cutting greenhouse gas emissions and any other possible indicators we could use. Which leads me into what I believe are the most important aspects of a Sustainability Action Plan:
Having clear indicators, measurable metrics and systems in place for recording and reporting progress on action being taken are the most important aspects of a sustainability action plan.
Reading through the Business of Fashion Sustainability Index (a Sustainability Action Plan) over the weekend (The Sustainability Gap: How Fashion Measures Up) I came across this Key Outcome which really resonated with me: “Discourse Outpaces Action: Companies need to move past target-setting to demonstrate tangible progress.”. It’s something I’ve come across constantly in my current research assistant work looking at certifications and claims being used by fashion brands. There are a huge majority making claims about how they’re sustainable and changing their ways to be greener. But the language is vague, there’s no dates or deadlines, nothing measurable and most importantly no evidence that they’re actually taking action. When looking at this it’s easy to see why the fashion industry gets a bad wrap for greenwashing.
Whilst the fashion industry can be pulled up for talking about sustainability without taking action I think something that can be taken from many fashion brands is that when they do have a Sustainability Action Plan they make it accessible and palatable to their consumers. I think this is perhaps a very overlooked aspect of Sustainability Action Plans, second only to taking action. From time reviewing Sustainability action plans it appears that they are too frequently designed as huge, linear reports. They’re designed as if to be printed into a physical, high gloss report or read sequentially as a PDF. But I think this misses the point. A Sustainability Action Plan is only useful if:
People know it exists.
It can be referenced and referred to for clarification quickly and easily.
It can be understood by many stakeholders across many different contexts and sectors.
I feel like the SDGs are doing a better job of this by presenting their information as an interactive platform that can be navigated by the user in a way that fits the user’s goals, rather than a linear report style document that is tedious to access.
The SDGs site is by no means the gold standard. Whilst it’s easy to access a high level overview of what each goal is about by clicking on a tile to see an infographic, I still find that their navigation to the Targets and Indicators is very easy to miss. It can even be easy to miss the infographic if you don’t scroll. I think this is because they place the Related Topics above the fold and many of us now associate that with being at the end of content, e.g. the end of a blog post, directing you to other things you might be interested in.
