Introducing the THIS! marker

Today I decided to introduce a visual marker to identify products that go beyond being engineered for function, quality or aesthetics.

THIS!

Those are products that are either designed or manufactured with benefit to people and environment in mind.

I know a fair bit about corporate responsibility and sustainability, having held senior positions in product development and in the supply chain for big corporate companies.
What shocked me when researching this topic for an article, was that the bicycle components industry (and the bicycle industry as a whole) is lightyears behind other industries, such as the apparel industry, when it comes to sustainability and corporate responsibility.
The reasons for this, and more insights into this topic are spared for said article.

In the meantime, I come across products here and there, that show some effort by the brand to do better. This should not go unnoticed as a small side note somewhere in the description.
Hence the THIS! maker right on the main picture.

Naturally there is no clean cut between a product that is sustainable (in the strict sense, non are) or manufactured socially responsible and one that is not; it is a sliding scale from very bad to very good.
I also do not think or claim that I can assess every product and give a fair score, often there is not enough information available and a proper assessment is generally very hard to do (you can’t rely on marketing speak).

However, what matters is the bigger picture:
That sustainability and social responsibility matter. The more brands and products get called out for either wrong or right behaviour (even if unjustified or unfairly in some cases), the more brands will pay attention.
This has worked in the apparel industry, where companies now are very afraid to be called out and lose sales as a result. Their leadership might not care about environment or people, but they care about sales and thus brand image.

You do good for the environment by riding a bike, please also vote with your wallet and buy responsible products whenever you can!

Got any feedback or questions? Please comment in the section below!