Three Sustainable Things to be Grateful for in 2021

We get it. After 18 months of being told to be grateful for family, your health, and sourdough, you’re probably feeling a wee bit resentful of the hash-tag blessed folks. Chances are, you want to burn all the sourdough, eat a whole packet of Oreos and put your family out on the curb on bin day. You wouldn’t be alone.

So, this thanksgiving, we’re not going to go all Pumpkin Spice Latte on you. Instead, we wanted to come up with some sustainable things to make you feel good about the world, that are happening right now. We think they’re pretty cool. You might even say, we’re grateful.

The Young People

Much maligned as hashtag activists and flakey millennials, generational cliches haven’t been particularly kind to the youngs. But here at LittPark, we see a very different picture.

The young people we work with in our client teams are exceptionally smart, confident and engaged. They’re fully equipped to take charge in a post-covid world, demanding change within their organizations and across society, whether that’s using Fridays to demand a livable future, or taking the initiative to create more inclusive working environments.

The upcoming generations have innate leadership qualities that many of us have spent years trying to acquire. They have little sense of hierarchy, which might take some adjusting on the part of more senior colleagues, but means that they adapt quickly, work collaboratively, and aren’t afraid to speak out or take the lead where it’s needed. Not only do many of the young professionals we work with have a clear vision for the future, but they have the capacity to design and implement effective strategies to get there.

We are emboldened by the smarts and skills of the young people we work with. Perhaps there are young people on your team that you are grateful for, too.

A New Kind of Leadership

For years, the corporate world has dipped its little toe in the water of doing ‘good’. Companies would make highly public donations to charitable causes, while demanding untenable hours from staff, adopting destructive environmental practices and failing to promote women or people of colour.

Over the past few years, we have seen a significant shift in the business world’s understanding of what ‘corporate citizenship’ means. A new generation of leaders understands that a successful venture does more than make a profit for shareholders or develop an appealing strategy and marketing materials. Today’s leaders understand that to be purpose-led, is to be sustainable. They are unafraid to draw a line in the sand on topics that matter, understanding that having a voice is a key component of citizenship, and that stakeholders expect businesses to be citizens, too.

We are seeing old businesses transform, and new businesses emerge, that have sustainability at the core of everything that they do.

What does this look like? It looks like businesses who actively seek out partnerships with organizations who share their sustainable values, creating symbiotic opportunities for start-ups and small local businesses who can meet the needs of larger organizations when it comes to ESG. It looks like organizations saying no to opportunities that put their values and reputation at risk. It looks like real action, because savvy consumers see through greenwashing and smart leaders know integrity is at the heart of brand value.

A Kinder World

From our days in the playground to not all that long ago, when we came across something we didn’t like, it was “lame.” Every form we filled out gave us two options for identifying ourselves – male, or female. We called Indigenous people ‘Indians’, because Christopher Columbus made a wrong turn somewhere in the Atlantic and for centuries we were too lazy to refer to these diverse communities by anything other than the name of another ethnic group from a different continent.

It may seem insignificant, or performative, but the language we use matters. Language is a signifier, a way to code and decode our shared values, our differences, what’s most important to us.

Today, it’s more and more common to ask new acquaintances their pronouns, before assuming that they are a “he” or a “she”. Many forms give people the opportunity to clarify that they don’t live as the gender that appears on their birth certificate. We’re becoming more conscious of ableist language, and progress is being made toward creating more inclusive spaces, both real and virtual, for people with disabilities. We celebrate the triumphs of those with differences, whether they attempted to cross Lake Ontario on a paddleboard, or help us understand what it’s like to live with Tourette’s syndrome.

And, slowly but surely, we are talking about the importance of reconciliation. We are beginning to really listen to Indigenous people for the first time, hearing the word ‘truth’ properly at long last, and grappling with its deep reverberations.

In so many areas, we have such a long way to go. But language is at the vanguard of change, and we are getting better at language.

When it comes down to it, we’re grateful for change, and change-makers. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the state of the world, but that can be countered by actively looking for the good, and there’s a lot of it out there.

So maybe don’t throw out that sourdough starter just yet. Or, better yet, get your family to make it for you while you prop your feet up on the couch for a bit this weekend. Because the world isn’t such a bad place and sometimes you CAN have your bread and eat it too.