Label and Certificate free Products & Services:
the next Step in Sustainable Development has begun
-- a note from _kt75
Since the economic (i.e. profitable) breakthrough of 'sustainability' in the beginning of this century the number of standards, protocols, labels and certificates, that in principle shall provide some form of sustainability guarantee of a certain product and/or service (but typically fail to provide such), has literally exploded. Today, labels and certificates (based upon standards and protocols of any possible nature) are as common as commercial product brands and created in a number of cases some sort of symbiosis with real products and/or services. This rather critical and actually adverse development basically has its origin in the formation of brand-awareness since the late 1960ies and can result in an undesirable because manipulated form of product and/or service dependency (by e.g. consumers) and prevent from unbiased sustainable development (i.e. it can help to preserve conditions that are not progressive, e.g. rescues of ailing banks). The key problem is basically a communication (thus manipulation) monopoly exerted by a limited number of stakeholders. However, and this is inherent in the critical nature of masses that as of a certain point manipulation is understood and an alternative development process begins. That is what happens, still at lowest level, right now: environmentally (thus sustainable) conscious stakeholders (typically still at individual level) opt for label free products and services. Essential fundament is a sound relation between client and vendor, i.e. old-fashioned values like 'trust' come into play and unsurprisingly it has been reported to work well, it saves a lot of time and eases selling processes.
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Prominent _kt75 Publications:
► An inconvenient truth: the green business bubble bursts in... (click here to participate) - More than 190 participants voted on the teaser poll: How about you?
