This is the last straw. Suck it up!
Steven McGinnes
Vanguard - Fighting Giants - Aire Global + Speaking/Consulting/Writing/Coaching
The pressure to ban plastic straws is the tip of the iceberg. Brands can, and must, lead the way. Adopting radical and incremental ways of reducing or reversing environmental impact, better serves the consumer, and stays ahead of legislation.
As consumers we pay our money and take our choice.
Our choice, in most cases, is to talk about environmental issues, voice our concern, agree with each other about the need to change, and berate companies and brands that we do not feel are doing enough.
And that is where it usually ends.
We then carry on as normal. Sipping take out coffee and glugging bottled water. Throwing out shampoo bottles and single use razors. Stuffing plastic bags into kitchen drawers.
Brands are businesses. Businesses need to make money. You make money by giving people what they want, not what they don’t. As long as we want disposable brands and single use products, businesses will keep supplying them. Everything else is simply rhetoric.
The fact is, bottles, bags and cups are just a small part of the overall environmental impact of CPGs, dwarfed by factors such as manufacture of the actual product within, logistics impact and water usage.
So why have straws become totemic? They are the highly visible, easily understood, manageably legislated symbol. An easy fix that doesn’t address the fundamental issue. An (ahem) straw.
Is legislation the only answer? Governments informing and leading public opinion and corporate behaviour, rather than reflecting it. Taiwan, with it’s plans for a single use plastic ban by 2030, is setting the international benchmark.
As strategists, branders, marketers, innovators and designers, we need to keep pushing at the edges. Putting better incremental and revolutionary options on the table at each opportunity. Give clients and consumers win-win solutions.
We can shape the future or we can react, perhaps to late, to mandated legislation. It’s the only choice. Suck it up. This is the last straw
We can chat on this. Steve@thehummingbirdperspective.com