Social media is a part of most people’s lives, with a record of 2.6 billion active social media accounts in the world (2017). With this, the of offline advertising is falling and brands are pushing more digital promotion than ever. With this came the rise of influencers. The fellow citizen who influences you because as their power lies in their expertise and social proof. This can be their sense of style, their interests such as fitness or skills and talents combined with their social status data which is their following. The larger their following, the better the trust in their expertise.
Although new laws have been implemented that influencers must include information on a post having sponsored product placement, very little is done on what is being marketed. Its now believed that influencers are having an impact on the fashion industry encouraging fast fashion consumerism, one of the worst industries for environmental impact.
This is why I started Sustainability is cool, a social media platform where the inspiration and creativity are the same as the mainstream influencers but with a twist, everything is recommended with a conscious and sustainable angle. Started in 2016, the concept has raised a lot of attention and recently got awarded a social enterprise status for helping the community. In a digital age, where it’s estimated that we are exposed to 3000 advertising messages a day, it’s time to be a new kind of influence.
The story of sustainability is cool started a few years ago in a hospital waiting room. I was waiting for a friend and there was a well-dressed lady sitting there waiting for her husband. She started a casual conversation about what I do which at the time was still studying and she told me that though she wanted to be sustainable she was in her own words “too stupid to understand it” that’s when it dawned on me that sustainability was seen as this scary and complex project which would be too difficult to implement. I gave her a few tips on small changes she could make to her everyday life and from there had the idea to start writing about it as a hobby. At the time I thought I was going to work in renewable energy so this was all for fun and it wasn’t until a few years later when I fully accepted that this is what I’m meant to do, I’m meant to help to educate and make sustainability cool and simple.