Greetings!
I am writing to make a request. I don’t think I’ve ever done this before (I have a mild concussion from a bonk to the head the other evening so I might be forgetting the four thousand favours I’ve already asked for—forgive me!). (And I’m fine, thank you for asking! Just a bit out of it and resting more.) (Except for now, because, as you’ll see... someone messed with my compost worms and I can’t drop it.)
Chemicals don’t kill compost worms, misaligned corporate purpose does
One of my super powers is discerning corporate jargon from the basic laws of biology and physics (they’re still working on my costume). It comes from decades of working behind the scenes in various sectors on companies’ sustainability stuff and noticing a lot of disconnects and nonsense.
So when I found a bunch of dead compost worms on my back balcony, it didn’t take long to solve the mystery. One of the largest purveyors of “garden products” was behind the mass death.
It turns out that not only does this company sell a lot of poisons to unsuspecting co-habitants of compost worms, but they are also the exclusive marketer of RoundUp (aka glyphosate) in the US and China. That’s a whole lot of trouble that my worms could explain to anyone paying attention to soil health (and therefore human health) if asked (and if they weren’t dead now).
So I did something I rarely do—even more rarely than asking for favours (and I didn’t even have a concussion yet!): I wrote directly to the CEO of Scott’s Miracle-Gro, Jim Hagedorn, to let him know that their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) materials are completely disconnected from how they earn money (and what they say to investors), and that we notice, and that it’s not okay.
“The fact that you produce a product that my landlady bought in good faith to make her tenants more comfortable, but that instead gassed us out of our homes and killed my compost worms, is the effect of a dangerously broken set of market incentives…”
What can you do to help? You could read the article so you aren’t misled by the marketing nonsense that you might be experiencing without realizing it if you garden or have houseplants. You could share it with others so they have a window into reality, to ensure my worms’ demise was not in vain. You could leave a comment on the article that shows your concern so when their PR people (who have so far not responded) see it, they know that at least a few people are paying attention.
And of course, you can be careful with your own composters and your neighbours’ too.
Lots more going on
I’ve been on a bit of a tear lately, but I don't want to clutter up this note with all that. If you’re curious what I’m up to as I bumble my way along the trail towards industrial healing, I am publishing a “Medium Short” every Friday with highlights from the week.
Here’s the latest: Medium Short: The Chewy Edition, in which I contemplate, am I gumming things up or is the Universe made of gum? (I didn’t even have a concussion when I wrote that so honestly there’s really no explaining.)
I also provide a table of contents in this piece, What Goes On Around Here?, which includes “friend links” so you can access any of my articles without a Medium membership. (By the way, the table of contents linked in that piece also includes a brief description of each article so you can pick and choose what’s useful to you.)
Of course, I think you might enjoy the membership as there is lots of interesting stuff on the Medium platform on a wide range of topics. And friends and colleagues have poked me to say it’s dumb to give my work away for free so I might be rethinking that. But for now it’s all there, so go get it! (And if you do subscribe, I’d be mighty grateful if you used this link.)
Wait: What about Matereality?
Right, right. More on that soon. I’m still chipping away on the Danone Matereality assessment. And in case you missed it, the TD Assessment has lots of goodies to keep you busy. It’s kind of technical but I tried to make it accessible for the (lucky, vast majority of) people who aren’t familiar with “traditional materiality” by way of this quick video.
Come to think of it, in a way my letter to Scott’s Miracle-Gro CEO Jim Hagedorn was a mini-Matereality assessment, replete with a scan of investor calls and financial statements, so I used the same principles. The escaping, dying worms merited a different format and a quicker turn but it’s the same idea: holding companies to account within reality.
Okay. It’s time to close my eyes for a while and be grateful some worms survived. Thanks for hearing, sharing, and composting.
Yours in connectedness,
Lorraine
PS It’s true I did write to one other CEO before—to Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, the largest investment company in the world. It’s weird. These guys never write me back.
