True corporate responsibility requires shifting from minimizing harm to actively restoring the planet, Adrian Solgaard, founder and CEO of travel gear maker Solgaard, argues in his inspiring DLD26 talk.
Solgaard highlights the staggering volume of plastic in our oceans – a mass equivalent to the entire human population – and reminds the audience that “the ocean is really the lungs of our earth”, providing over 50% of the world’s oxygen.
Given the dire state of many of the planet’s ecosystems, “sustainability is not enough”, Solgaard says. “We don’t want to sustain where we’re at. We need to go above and beyond just sustainability.”
To achieve this, Solgaard advocates for a dual approach: a corporate “footprint” that does as little harm as possible and a “handprint” that does as much good as possible.
His own company uses ocean-bound plastic for its products while funding the removal of plastic for every item sold. “In total, we’ve prevented over three and a half million pounds, or 1.5 million kilos of plastic, from entering the ocean”, Solgaard says.
For broader impact, Solgaard proposes integrating nature directly into financial reporting through a new metric he calls “EBITDAP”: Earnings Before Interest, Depreciation and Planet.
This could create a competition, he argues, “for who can do the most good instead of just who can do the least bad.”
