Over these past few months I’ve found myself frequently telling people “I’m in this really cool Sustainability and Innovation class” or “in my sustainability class we were talking about….”. I have truly enjoyed this class and it is definitely one of my favorites that I have ever taken in college. I know when I look back on my college experience I will remember this class as a defining moment.
Before this class I knew very little about sustainability, or how it intersected with business. I never considered a product’s lifecycle when evaluating its sustainability. I knew recycling wasn’t the end-all-be-all of sustainability, but I didn’t really know what a better alternative was. Now, I know to consider what materials went into the creation of a product, how the product is delivered, what actions the company is taking to actively help the world. I’ve learned more about what the circular economy is, that there are more dimensions to sustainability than just environmental, although that is extremely important. All of this has also changed my behavior. I have started actively looking into the ethics of a company before purchasing from them, I’ve stopped shopping for clothes if I don’t actively need them, overall I’ve started to be a smarter consumer. Perhaps the weirdest thing I’ve done since this class started, was when my favorite shoe brand, Allbirds, announced they were going carbon neutral, I found myself legitimately excited. Whereas before my reaction, and that of my friends when I told them, was a slightly disinterested “oh cool,” I was so excited.
Another result of taking this class aside from making me unreasonably excited over a shoe brand, was that it made me actually excited to go into the “real world” and get a job. I have always figured I’d go into business after college, but prior to this class, I wasn’t exactly excited over this prospect I just thought of it as a job from which I would hopefully make money. A lot of this was probably because I felt that businesses often lost sight of ethics and became focused on profits, and I didn’t want to “sell-out,” per say, to a soulless corporation for a job. Yes, I was probably overdramatizing this, but I wanted a job after graduation that felt like I was helping the world, giving back in some way, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find that in business, or if I was, those jobs would be few and far between. However, after taking this class I feel like I’ve been made aware of so many cool and unique businesses that are really trying to make a positive impact, and I’ve also learned of a lot of ways to find more of these businesses, like looking through B-Corps and the Fast Company. This course made me actually look forward to graduating and getting a “real job,” and excited to find a company who’s goals aligned with mine, where I could truly make a positive impact on the world.
Overall, not only did this course help me to gain a wider perspective on sustainability and encourage me to change my behaviors to be more sustainable, it also introduced me to a way to find ethical companies that I could possibly work for. I learned a lot about sustainability and the design thinking process in this course, but it also helped me to feel slightly more prepared to go out and join the real world after graduation.