Visiting friends on a long weekend in Chester District between Montego Bay and Ocho Rios in Jamaica in early February brought me a heightened awareness of how inefficient my household routines are.

In Jamaica, my friend lives with eight other family members in a small home situated on a sunny hilltop surrounded by fruit and nut trees and flanked by other small homes populated with extended family. The children, too young to go to school (which begins at age 3), are watched by whichever family member is off of work, or unemployed at the time. Jobs are hard to come by, and often require long hours and six to seven day work weeks. Typical income for working adults in her home is about 55 US dollars per week. Food prices, however, are comparable to prices here at home.

To combat these prices, much of the food is grown on their property. They have a beautiful almond tree, breadfruit trees, abundant coconuts, bananas, and other sustainably farmed fruits and vegetables. Some of her brothers bring fresh fish home a few times a week which they eat immediately or salt for future use. There is very little food wasted. But what is determined as “scrap” is put on a small pile outside of their kitchen door for their two dogs to enjoy. The dogs, who have no names, and aren’t ever let into the home, benefit from the food and shelter (outside of the house) provided by the family. In return, they help dispose of scraps and alert the family of visitors approaching.

Freshwater is efficiently captured in large rooftop containers, and occasionally replenished with buckets and trips to the nearby stream to supply household needs via gravity.

They use the natural Caribbean breeze to cool their home opening all doors and windows during the day and close things up at night to guard against insects and other pests. Very little is wasted and they seem to want for very little.

When I think about my heating costs, cooling costs, food waste, my beloved dog (who has her own bed in my bedroom), and my struggles to grow a few good tomatoes each year, I feel like I have much to learn.

So long as I continue to try, however, my Jamaican friends assure me there will be “No problem!”

Betterworldbuys.com is transitioning to a new systems approach in the operations of our business. The systems approach is being taken to assure that as a company, we are focused not just on sales or profits, but on our interconnectedness with our stakeholders and our planet.

As a quick primer, to the science of systems thinking, I give you the late Donella H. Meadows explanation of systems thinking via her Slinky example:

“A Slinky is a toy—a long, loose spring that can be made to bounce up and down, or pour back and forth from hand to hand, or walk itself downstairs.

I perch the slinky on one upturned palm. With the fingers of the other hand, I grasp it from the top, partway down its coils. Then I pull the bottom hand away. The lower end of the slinky drops, bounces back up again, yo-yo’s up and down, suspended from my fingers above.

“What made the slinky bounce up and down like that?” I ask students.

“Your hand. You took away your hand,” they say.

So I pick up the box the slinky came in and hold it the same way, poised on a flattened palm, held from above by the fingers of the other hand. With as much dramatic flourish as I can muster, I pull the lower hand away.

Nothing happens. The box just hangs there, of course.

“Now once again. What made the Slinky bounce up and down?”

The answer clearly lies within the Slinky itself. The hands that manipulate it suppress or release some behavior that is latent within the structure of the spring.

That is the central insight of systems thinking” (Meadows, 2008, p.1).

The betterworldbuys.com transition to a systems approach will be transparent to our clients. Within our organization, however, we will focus on concepts of personal mastery, understanding our mental models and how they influence our perceptions of the world, building a shared vision, learning as a team, and systems thinking to enable us to see the impacts of our actions on our stakeholders.

We aspire to use this new approach to more effectively promote self-awareness and environmental and social consciousness through responsible consumerism.

For more information on systems thinking and the benefits of an organizational systems approach, you can refer to Meadows text referenced below or to these online resources: Creative Learning Exchange at www.clexchange.org, The Systems Thinker and Leverage Points newsletters published by www.pegasuscom.com.

Meadows, D. H. (2008) Thinking in systems: A primer. White River Junction:
Chelsea Green Publishing.

I traveled to the other side of the globe two years ago and met a man.

My travels took me through the rainforests of Peru, on to Cusco and from the Sacred Valley to Aqua Calientes and the majesties of Machu Picchu. The man I met had a similar itinerary, and our paths crossed oddly at several destinations.

I recall being struck by the abject poverty that many of the people in the towns we visited lived in. This man seemed oblivious to the plight of the people there, and talked incessantly (in the churches) of how the Wall Street Journal was his Bible and the stock exchange his God. He insulted teachers, who work in a profession I strongly admire, multiple times during the first ten minutes after we were introduced and was generally dismissive of women. My typically high tolerance level was severely tested.

Just when I’d begun to think Peru might not be large enough for me and this man, I learned that he lived and worked in the same town I call home. As Bogart said, “Of all the gin joints in all the world…” Not only did he have the same small town as his home address, but he boasted (often and loudly) of his very successful business there.

As I work to review all the wonderful thoughts and ideas presented at the most recent Board of Directors meeting of betterworldbuys.com, I’m challenged to reconsider my personal definition of success. When I do this, I’m reminded of that man whose definition I want to stay so far from. Unknowingly, he has helped me to become increasingly aware of the fact that I must share my home, and that we all must share our planet, with people of vastly differing backgrounds, cultures, races, religions, and belief systems. In addition, we share it with a multitude of other living beings, with whom we need to coexist in order for the ultimate survival of our species.

Doing our part to educate consumers on the impact of their responsible purchasing decisions, and providing conscious alternatives to typical products so we may promote this peaceful coexistence in a sustainable fashion is my definition of success for betterworldbuys.com.

How do you define success?