Ecological Intelligence

Book: Ecological Intelligence - Knowing the hidden impacts of what we buy

Author: Daniel Goleman
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 276
Price: Rs 399

Published on Times Wellness on Monday, June 21, 2010

Green can also have some dark shades and we should know better to choose. It is this simple fact that is the central theme of psychologist-journalist Daniel Goleman's Ecological Intelligence.

Which toy do you buy?
You are what you eat, but you can make yourself and the world a healthier place to live in by choosing what you buy carefully. "Our world of material abundance comes with a hidden price tag. We cannot see the extent to which things we buy and use daily have other kinds of costs - their toll on the planet, on consumer health, and on people whose labour provides us our comforts and necessities," Goleman writes. So it's the choice you make between an inexpensive small, bright yellow wooden racing toy car which may contain poisonous lead and the one that certainly doesn't, that can impact not just your health but that of a whole lot of people and resources that go into making that toy.

Green's not green

It's not just the product that needs to be checked for quality, it's it's whole life cycle that should be under the scanner. Goleman scratches the surface and find out why 'green' does not always mean healthy, recycling isn't about just newspapers and bottles and why our brain is not designed to warn us of the innumerable ways that human activity corrodes our planetary niche. 

What's Life Cycle Analysis?
Goleman digs deeper into Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of a wide range of products, looking at the environmental and social ramifications that are usually "out of sight, out of mind," guided by expert Gregory Norris. LCA analysis allows us to know how chemicals impact our health or that of the biosphere:

1. Cancer impact assesses an industrial process or chemical in terms of the expected pathways of carcinogens put into the environment, their persistence once there, the probability of human exposure to them, the cancer potency and just where in the supply chain all those cancer impacts come from.

2. Disability adjusted life years measure the amount of healthy life lost due to impacts from particulate emissions, toxins, risks on the job, etc.

3. Loss of biodiversity refers to the degree of species extinction caused by a given process or substance.

4. Embodied toxicity calculates how many problematic chemicals are deployed into nature over a product's life cycle. It recasts what have long been thought of as "occupational hazards" - such as welders' heightened risk of Parkinson's disease from inhaling manganese fumes - as consumer issues.

A case for radical transparency
Goleman's biggest contribution in this book is the coining of the phrase, "Radical transparency" which is the availability of complete information about all aspects of a product's history, with the potential to drive consumers to make better choices. He explores different synergies between media that will allow a consumer to know what exactly he/she is buying at the supermarket by just holding his/her mobile phone next to the product's barcode. The choice will be the consumer's but this process will ensure that he/she will think about it instead of randomly picking attractive jars off shelves.

The verdict

Ecological Intelligence is a provocative book. It makes you think about products you use everyday - an organic cotton T-shirt, nail-paint, sunscreen (chemicals leached from sunscreen on swimmers' bodies are responsible for bleaching coral reefs), mangoes, Coca Cola, and much more. Goleman tries to make his point with several examples, highlighting the good points of bad processes and bad points of good products. He doesn't try to alarm you by exposing the ruthlessness of manufacturing companies but instead makes you realise how little you know about things around you. Terms such as ecological intelligence and radical transparency may sound like 'green jargon' but ultimately, it boils down to how you think and act. As Goleman suggests, "Make goodness pay."