Eco Friendly Living: The Future of Green Eco-Luxury Sustainable Living
Sustainability moving forward will not be seeing environmental or social challenges as costs, but actually seizing opportunities to enhance experience where consumers can contribute as solutions.
We are going through a crisis of the life system in our world right now, which include global warming, and even the rich are affected. The natural disaster events from last few years have been horrible, even the luxury watcher and executives have never seen in their lifetime. It is a challenging time for the luxury industries with economic downtime threatening sales and growth.
Some people may think Luxury is a bad word and often equate it with waste, unnecessary use of resources for ego chasing purpose. However, Luxury means more than that. ‘Luxury’ is not used to communicate ‘superfluous’ or merely expensive commodity but used more in the sense of the original Latin word Luxus, once used to indicate an object that was more beautiful or precious than others and would stimulate admiration and appreciation. Many people do not approve of using the word ‘luxury’ in matters relating to the environment, ecology, and sustainability.
Luxury has a bad name because the world is often associated with spoiled rich kids showing off expensive branding.They prefer the word ‘quality’, but the quality inherent in a product or service relates more to the standardization and procedural transformation required to create it. However, they have the same meanings.
I want to take a look at how the luxury industry can make an impact to the environment over the changing world. Dr. Jem Bendell, a Professor of Sustainability Leadership and Founding Director of the Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS) at the University of Cumbria in the United Kingdom, has been challenging the luxury industry around environment sustainability for years.
The industry used to be very proud in many areas of craftsmanship and heritage, but they can’t be proud about their performance on social environmental issues yet. — Dr. Jem Bendell
So how some luxury leaders are tackling issues of sustainability?
One of the challenges is there is no definition of sustainability in the industry, does it mean eco practices in the factories, or does it mean eco practices in the office, or does it mean using green materials to manufacture your products? does it mean you offset your carbon footprints?
All of these are questions the luxury industry leaders are asking. In my mind I’d say it is all of the above. Anything that can help the environment to sustain longer, or make an positive impact would count.
It doesn’t mean we have to stop longing for a high quality lifestyle, on the other hand, it may actually means we should long for materials with high quality. A high quality product tends to last longer, and you don’t have to replace them as oppose to lower quality products.
I find that the world of luxury is changing fast and might even provide some solutions to global challenges. WWF has created a report called Deeper Luxury a few years ago on luxury brands and their roles on social environmental impact. The report not only rates companies by their policies in eco impact, it also calls on celebrities to be more responsible when choosing brands to endorse.
Since the report comes out in 2008, it has increased awareness of eco importance in the luxury industry. Sustainability has been a new values that most of the luxury brands are basing on.
According to the UN General Assembly meeting in 1987, sustainability means that the need of present does not undermine the ability of future generations to meet their own future needs.
Almost 10 years have passed, are we doing better now? I think we do. Consumers are better educated today than from 10 years ago. Especially the luxury consumers are more aware of the environment and sustainability of the stuff that they buy.
Donating to a green charity or having a corporte “green day” are no longer enough to show corporate commitments to the environment. Consumers are demanding deeper luxury commitments, hence the term Eco Luxury arises.
I can provide many examples of eco-luxury.
Take the case of Tesla, Tesla has been very successfully create a new luxury brand of automobile which combine luxury and eco together. Their lines of electric cars uses electricity instead of fossil fuels. People are just loving it for it, high end
Sustainability moving beyond seeing environmental or social challenges as costs, but actually seizing opportunities to let consumer to contribute to solutions.
Another example would be Loro Piana, an Italian clothing company specialising in high-end, luxury cashmere and wool products.
Loro Piana recognizes through luxury fashion its customers can even contribute to the wildlife and the natural world. Loro Piana the eco-luxury brand has partnered with the Andean Paisano people of Peru in saving the Vicuña from extinction.
Eco Luxury has entered the furniture industry too. One example from my personal experience is from Nos Natura One-of-a-Kind Furniture, a boutique furniture store based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. They have identify the needs of Eco Luxury & Eco Friendly furniture and home decors. All the furniture are made by hands (green processes), with natural sustainable materials (Suar, Teak, Bamboo), and combine with arts.
I am sure we are going to see more and more examples in the new Eco Luxury paradigm shift. The thinking that the planet is a precious thing as as luxurious is also a precious thing should come together to create a truly luxurious world.
To close it off, Eco-luxury isn’t really a new trend. remember Anya Hindmarch’s trendy “I am Not A Plastic Bag” design? The project was very successful because people wants a good quality bag that speak for their values. They understand the importance of having a trendy item which is not cheap. It shows that fashion can have a voice outside the industry.
For myself, I have becoming more aware of the environment in the last few years after observing so many instances of environment disasters, and issues around the world. I will try to follow this trend and provide an update later.
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