In conversation with Stephanie Dickson - The founder of The Wedge Asia and Green is the new Black (GITNB)
GITNB is a conscious movement where we bring people together, friends and others, so they could connect deeper with themselves, others and with Mother Nature.
When was GITB first founded? GITNB had our first conscious festival in 2015. We started GITNB with a festival because I come from an events background. So when I realized that there’s no Planet B and all of us is playing a part, I wanted to be part of the solution and not part of the problem anymore.
So for me, when I look through my skill set and asked myself: “What can I really do?” and I realize that it is event management. I decided to create this platform, where people can come together to discover and learn about sustainability and conscious living.
Since its inception, what has GITNB achieved and what are you guys planning at the moment?
We first started with the festival and since then we really evolved. We recently launched our online platform, which is a go-to guide for conscious living in Asia. It includes an E-directory, contents and basically what we were doing offline with the event, we are putting it online on our platform.
You mentioned you are focusing more on solutions right. Is there any advice you would give to start taking action?
The very first thing is to understand what is your passion, what is going to get you excited, get you fire up to actually make a change in your life.
So we’re talking about passion and fabrics here: Do you care about animal rights? If you care about animals you really want to protect them. You should be buying from brands that are vegan or don’t do the test on animals. Or if you really want to protect people, then you should really buy ethical clothes and ethical things right (know where & how it’s being made). And if you’re really terrified of Climate Change and all the scary stuff that’s happening around the world. You should be buying from brands that are environmentally friendly. Brands that are reducing their carbon footprint or that are recycling or upcycling. There this 4 Rs. Reuse, Reduce, Recycle and Repurpose. So those are 4 things that are really easy to think about when you are purchasing and I guess the key thing is to be more conscious about your consumption: do you really need that piece? Can you upcycle something you have or swop something you can do within its cycle?
I understand from your website you have this 3 golden motto which is inspiration knowledge and action how do you actually apply it in your daily life and also how did you came about this 3 moto?
So I was trying to understand: “what are the 3 things that actually activate people to make a change?” So for me, I wrote it down as people like to be inspired and that was what I was talking about like getting that fire burning inside of someone, you got to ignite the passion of people. You want to inspire them first.
Once you have the inspiration, you got the gut feeling excited about something, you have to feed the brain inside. Which is the knowledge side, you’re going to give them information about these things. And then the third thing is to make it incredibly simple for people to be able to take action and take that first step. Because that’s when they implement what they learn and is following their passion. At this point, everything we build is on those 3 philosophies.
Is there any advice you like to give to people who want to take the first step to be more conscious about what they buy and also going for the sustainable product?
Yea. I mean it really depends on what it is you are trying to achieve, but to start a conscious living it’s about daily things that you purchase. You know like you’re going to the supermarket especially in Singapore, you have the big issue of haze every year and a lot of the products on the supermarket shelf are (contained) with unsustainable palm oil. All of us complain about the haze, all of us complain about when it comes through but no one not many people really actually understand that we are purchasing products that are causing the haze.
So I think the biggest thing, the first step is to educate yourself, just look up where your things are coming from try and see if they are brands that are transparent on their website. Try to see if you understand the ingredients they use to making our products or like clothes as well. Where are these products coming from? Where are these fabrics coming from? And I think that is the very first easy point, it is to educate yourself. And then go on from there once you are educated. You are powered and then you make better choices.
My favourite quote and words of advice are “everything is figure out –able.”
Which I think just when you’re having a really stressful moment or if you are exploring this idea of conscious living. Sometimes it’s overwhelming you forget at the end of the day, there is always a solution and everything will always work out for us at the end. So just remembering everything is figure out able and those are words from Marie Forleo, who I really love.
For a conscious living, I think the one is from Anna Lappe which she says that “Every dollar we spend is a vote what we want to see in the world” and I truly believe that too. We have the power to vote with our wallets.