Rebranding SUSTAINABILITY
“I DON’T THINK SUSTAINABILITY IS EVER REALLY PORTRAYED AS ‘EXCITING’, AND THAT TO ME SELLS SUSTAINABILITY SHORT. WE HAVEN’T EXPLORED ITS FULL POTENTIAL.”
After fronting audiences in Brisbane and Sydney for her Knowledge Talks tour, Kim Elena Ionescu addressed a packed Melbourne crowd with one question: “In what context do you think about sustainability: environmental, social, or economic?”
Eighty per cent of the crowd raised their hand to acknowledge environmental, the remaining 20 per cent said social, and no one selected economic. “It’s interesting to see how people perceive sustainability and what motivates us,” Kim says.
To some, sustainability is about assessing your carbon footprint, using left over coffee grounds as compost, avoiding the use of pesticides on crops, minimising gas consumption, or reducing the number of paper coffee cups sent to landfill. For others, it’s about the amount of water used to wash and process coffees, the labour of handpicking coffee, or the energy expended to produce aluminium foil capsules.
While these are all necessary to
