ekko.world started 2019 with our first steps to build the Ekko Score with RMIT Computer Science and ended it with the launch of our first 1,000 Ekko Scores on ekko.world Body Care Categories. (Very inconveniently, just before Xmas!) This year, with way more people to thank than there are minutes left before Christmas break, I wanted to share with you some of the story of how we got here and the incredible people who got us this far.
From the AREDAY Summit in Colorado USA in June 2018 when we first announced our intention to build the Ekko Score with Amanda Ellis from Arizona State University (& Julie Wrigley Sustainability Institute), to this very day, has been 17 months.Ekko Score is based on the premise that changing a few simple actions in the lives of everyday people has the power to change everything. While that sounds a tad crazy, think about it. If millions of people simply chose to buy the organic apple or fair trade coffee or palm free cosmetics or refuse water in plastic bottles - even just once - what difference would that simple choice make? When I spoke at AREDAY in 2018, I was awestruck by the breath of global sustainability leadership: oceanographers, film makers, energy innovators, academics, black & women's rights activists, scientists, carbon sequesters, crypto miners, anti slavers and many more. I wondered at the time what would happen if all these people - at AREDAY and other events like it, could somehow seize complete control of the planet's sustainability agenda. Then we'd be cookin! (For the planet, not in the heat.) I was then and still am today, totally convinced that those of us who care, have all the knowledge, power and influence we will ever need - despite the rolling global side show of our politicians and those whose agendas they support. We simply need to harness that collective power in new ways. It's not about redirecting anyone's focus, but simply adding another purpose to the information these incredibly competent and influential people already have and using that to help first world consumers behave better.
I went to the AREDAY conference unaware and left knowing, that I had a problem and it's one that continues to be my constant companion. The problem is that most change advocates, like those at AREDAY, believe in big change and usually within their own sphere of competence. Fair enough - that's their job. But at the same time, pretty much everyone agrees that consumers should behave better. And we are all consumers.All consumers, including the best of us, talk way more about what should be done than we do. Even those of us who know better don't always make the most sustainable choices. It's not that we don't want to, it's simply not that easy. We're in a hurry. Life gets in the way. We need to relearn. Whatever the reason, all those little choices add up to more consumption of more stuff - and a lot of that stuff isn't sustainable. It is more important than ever that those of us prepared to work at influencing better choices are more realistic about how much all those simple choices add up to - both the size of this problem and the impact that changing it could make.
To help consumers make better choices easily, we've developed a score of a product's eco-ness in a way that anyone can understand and that allows them to shop their own values - the Ekko Score. The credentials of all existing consumer products that have been verified and claimed in some way. We simply tap into that information and categorise it in ways that makes it easy to understand how the product was made. We believe that simple act has the ability to drive better seller transparency at the same time as giving consumers more opportunity to readily buy better. At point of sale.
Building the Score was easier said than actioned. Since AREDAY, it's been an 18 month never ending climb up a very big mountain: piles of theories and research; endless spreadsheets; hundreds of dead ends - and then, being in the right place at the right time with a bunch of incredible supporters, who honestly see me scratching my head every day and feeling eternally grateful for their inclusion in our world. These are they.