WE ARE MOVING!!!  We are proud to announce our new partnerships with XinDanWei and The Wellness Works. Together, we are launching a creative space concept called Grasslands this December. The aim is to bring other like-minded social entrepreneurs, freedom fighters, environmentalists, health advocates, sustainability consultants, wellness practitioners, and human-centered designers under one roof.

Our new office and event space is now at 47 Shaoxing Lu near Shaanxi Nan Lu. Operations are up and running and we are looking for more tenants to work together to graze on greener fields.

If you are seeking tenancy, check out more details about the space here. For more information about joining our network of global green citizens, please contact us.

In the meantime, we look forward to having you at our future events and workshops!

The Greennovate Team

While we got the parents thinking and innovating about implementing sustainability into their daily work processes, we got the kids dreaming about what their future green city would look like 50 years from now. The end product? One eight-year-old’s imagination brought to life on paper: a city full of heart-shaped trees, renewable energy sources, vegetable gardens and of course…ice cream! And with the grown-ups, a proposal to optimize  current courier routes to save on fuel, emissions and time.

In the afternoon we visited Wuhan’s first landfill converted into a methane gas extraction facility in Yangluo County to discover the vast potential in waste, and  learn how to put the loop back on our linear take-make-waste system and make it more sustainable. The team was amazed at how the methane produced by decomposing waste could actually generate electricity. It was definitely an example of sustainability they had never experienced: turning something UNWANTED into something USEABLE.

There is a growing concern about what they put in and on their bodies. Since their lives are affected by pollution on daily basis, they want to know how they can increase their quality of life as individuals and are ready to pay more for better products. They are curious about the green movement and are apprehensive about brands that greenwash for marketing purposes.

Here is what we think. As consultants, we have been witnessing a long-standing discussion amongst brands that always ends with the convenient excuse — consumers are not willing to pay more. Not untrue. Until now, most consumers have been making choices based on one metric: PRICE. Price is the thing they understand, so cost becomes the main force in how things are made and marketed. As consumers demand quicker access to a greater quantity of cheaper products, brands with ‘business as usual’ strategies create a powerful downward pressure on suppliers that reward rock-bottom wages, long hours, and hazardous working conditions, as well as toxic materials and dangerous pollutants in local rivers and landfills.

So we are presented with the common dilemma over which came first: the chicken or the egg? Similarly, consumers and brands are creating a vicious cycle that is taking a toll on resources, generating waste and affecting the quality of life. This is not a local case, it’s global. The only difference for consumers in China is, that they experience all three effects on a daily basis. Brands are so far not trying or willing to educate consumers about environmental and social impacts because they are still tiptoeing around their own practices and levels of transparency. Chinese consumers then have insufficient credible and easy to understand resources to educate themselves when it comes to rewarding better brands and products.

What it boils down to: Transparency is just a fancy word for honesty.

With China and their domestic consumption skyrocketing off the charts, the real change should come from consumer behavior.

There are many organizations and individuals out there that have been working at all levels, building a common understanding of the effects that chemicals have on people and the environment so brands can improve their practices in China. But none of these organizations can be truly effective unless their work filters down to the consumer level.

There is another important factor that supports the change in consumer behavior in China. In the social media world, brands no longer control the conversations. For the first time, there is a dialogue going on, one in which consumers have the power not only to vote for better products with their wallets, but to influence their social circles to do the same. This is creating an ever-growing force that could present great opportunity on one hand, but also awkward moments for less than transparent brands in the Chinese market on the other.

It’s the end of 2011 and it’s time to stop confusing ‘not knowing’ with ‘not caring’ when it comes to Chinese consumers. It is also time to realize that sustainability is not a trend, it is a major shift. After all, we all care to live well.