Can Businesses Be Ethical?
Ramses Oliva (in conversation with Pellegrino Dormiente/Debitum Naturae)
A lot of businesses have been more and more vocal about their ethics, in terms of sustainability, employment, transparency on demographics, and materials used. But when you start looking into what they define as “ethical”, you realise that it’s an umbrella term which holds little value: it is a generic definition but is still a fundamental part of every business and organisation.
When I first started working in retail, I have made a habit of checking their sustainability guidelines. After all, I had to be comfortable representing them, being the “face of the business”, whether that meant folding t-shirts in a store or posting on social media. After coming out at work as transgender, I have been looking more into Diversity and Inclusion. I am often called on panels to evaluate businesses, train staff members, and that lead to the question: what makes a business itself “ethical”? And how do those values translate into the products?
After endlessly scrolling social media, reading various mission statements, and looking at the “sustainability and engagement” pages of international companies and local stores, I have decided to have a conversation with someone who makes his ethics the core of his business. And I’m not being blackmailed to say this, but there is just something really peculiar in talking about the products they sell, and their ethics. Bones. They sell bones.
When you deal daily with products strictly connected with death, you are led to a discourse about what is ethical and where to draw the line. Debitum Naturae often receive accusations from various demographics about their work, and they have a good understanding of what is and isn’t possible when you’re managing a business. They are a collective of artisans who work with animal remains to create artistic skull carving, jewellery, music, paintings. Most of the profits are invested in rewilding, reforestation and education.
The rise of “cancel culture” and the pressure put on public-facing businesses made me even more wary of trusting brand statements, and I decided to have an open conversation about realistic expectations we can have from companies. Can a business be truly ethical? Can it be cruelty-free or sustainable in a wider sense?
The short answer is “no”.
Peter Singer argues that in order to preserve nature and animals we should remove anything that’s not strictly necessary, which includes music and entertainment. This kind of extremist view is embraced by some vegans who limit entertainment, only eat raw food, don’t smoke and drink alcohol because they’re not necessary at all, and condemn comfort food. In general, they have views which are not shared by the main community. In the same way, music, cinema, and books are a “waste” of paper, resources, and fuel, which impacts the environment. So where do we draw the line between what’s necessary and what isn’t?
Considering it’s impossible to live even a personal life which is completely “ethical”, how could it be possible to expect businesses to be completely ethical? How can a business be completely cruelty-free (in terms of animal and environmental rights)? What can be done?
The good news is that it’s mainly two things. The bad news is that they are way harder to apply than it may sound.
Choose, depending on the way someone lives, where to draw the line. Find a balance between what can be realistically achieved, and personal ethics, in order to reach a compromise that still makes you, or your business, “ethical”. This comes down to personal accountability and it’s more about the individual’s conscience when making business choices. This also entails being open to reconsider one’s internalised biases, and being open to educating oneself and business partners, and make the necessary adjustments moving forward. This, for example, could mean reconsidering the way deliveries are made (ground instead of air, cycling instead of driving), using recycled packaging and materials, and/or making sure all materials are sourced locally. It’s a continuous project that requires analysis and personal growth in the process. To sum up: find your own ethics and set a realistic goal. Consider how these would translate into your business and consider budgets, resources and ethical options.
This is more subjective, but the second point is the intent. The direction in which you strive to move, more or less successfully. Can there be a zero-impact business? No, but there is an intent to reach that. To use a mathematical analogy, ethics should be that limit the function always “approaches”, without actually reaching that value. Your life and your business should get as close as possible (due to the aforementioned limitations) to that important - although impossible – goal. Even if you will never reach it, you’ll get closer and closer the more you try. It’s an ethical push that leads to a continuous process. From an external point of view, it can come across as performative, because you are only saying “I’m doing my best”, and often that best is not going to be enough. But what will come across is the fact this isn’t your final goal, but your first step in that process.
To facilitate a better understanding of what makes a choice ethical, it is important to define “cruelty” in the context of business. Cruelty means intentionally inflicting damage for a specific purpose - usually financial gain. This umbrella term is fairly problematic because it means that even if you never take into account morality when setting up your business and you don’t “care” where your materials come from, you actually do “care”. You care about the financial gains over ethical implications. After all, cost and “ethics” in the current market are inversely proportional: all ethical options mean a higher financial cost.
We are going to explore further the concepts of impact and intent. It may look like intent does not make any difference, but that’s the problem. There is intent - even behind not well-thought actions. When conducting a business, it’s unlikely that orders, allocations, choice of materials and products are not planned. So, while some actions could be just due to being naïve or not well-informed, the same intent simply can’t apply to businesses.
The reason why personal conscience is incredibly important, is that some cruelty-free choices aren’t that hard… or ethical. For example, you could hire people from a country where the minimum wage is lower, still pay them adequately, but would still not be paying them enough as you would pay local workers. Or, in the context of skull carving, you could get bones from slaughterhouses, and technically those animals wouldn’t have been killed specifically to provide those remains.
Just a few years ago, Ikea was involved in a controversy regarding the sale of sheep and cow skins, sourced as by-product of Brazil’s meat trade. They argued otherwise they would end up “wasted”, but that is a big grey area, and would any of these options be considered truly ethical? Or is it just looking for a shortcut? And this, once again, boils down to intent: why are you buying from there? Is it because it’s cheaper? Because it’s quicker? Or it could be because the quality is objectively higher, or you believe they’re more aesthetically pleasing. So, in a market that pushes you to the ethically worse choices, it is your intention that makes the difference.
Specifically, for skull carving and businesses that work with animal remains, there are two main criteria behind any choice. It’s almost ironic that ethics are based on two quite gloomy parameters: cruelty and death. Does buying that specific skull or trophy increase the cruelty that’s been inflicted on that animal? And how did that animal die? Does “saving” that material respect its death? And what does that choice say about your business to the people around you (colleagues, clients)?
We must remember that ethics represent more than a choice. Ethics have an impact on people around you, both in your private life and your business. With the rise of social media, no life is really private, and all actions are subject to judgement. Witnesses will look for a certain consistency in your actions and will remember failures. But, at the same time, they can be educated according to your choices. They can understand the intent behind them. In this way, a “simple” commercial choice becomes a form of education.
As Debitum Naturae mentioned during our conversation: “We always remember the history of each piece, not only for archival purpose, but because every action we take has educational purposes.”
To ensure that the “ethical limit” is obtained, every action, personal or professional, has to take into account two variables: if it’s cruelty-free (has a limited impact on the environment) and its benefits (from financial and educational perspectives). All actions contribute to a direction, and these directions tend to have a certain continuity: you should ask yourself, in which direction is this action taking me? And how easy would it be to change that direction if mistakes are made?
Debitum Naturae’s approach, for example, is to always put “recycling” first: the best option is to use recovered materials (salvaged from natural deaths in the woods and roadkills). Then they have “gifts”: they are in touch with many local communities, and occasionally people send them their findings. They also “save” collections: trophies and skulls of animals killed years if not centuries ago. They aim to honour the death of those animals by taking them out of the hunter’s house. The animals were killed for selfish purposes, but when their story is no longer told and their suffering forgotten, the cruelty inflicted on the animal increases. They begin a process of giving the animals “new life” by honouring their death and overriding previous unethical behaviour.
This is why education is important. Whilst lots of businesses which make “ethical” choices tend to be pushed out of the market due to their financial limitations, new markets and demand can be created by educating people. Customers who previously had an interest in furs or skulls and didn’t mind where the materials come from can learn of the importance of the process of rewilding. They can learn how this ethical business strategy has roots in spirituality, ecology, anthropology, and is an important alternative to fast retail. That is going to create a demand which will help your business survive, because you will not only surround yourself with like-minded individuals, but you will create them.
You have a responsibility to embrace certain ethical choices, and you must do so in order to set expectations and meet requirements, and because of your own personal drive to set those standards. And, in the long run, you will impact the market, make space for more options, create an improved sensibility, and, hopefully, bring ethics “closer to the limit”.
Written by Ramses Oliva
In addition to working 9-5, Ramses can't seem to stop writing, even if it means scribbling on a notebook overnight. He's a trans activist who loves talking about queer identities, diversity and art. He is co-host of the brand-new podcast "Punching the Wall" and you can find him posting overpriced selfies on Instagram at @queer.discart.