Other special guests were Jane Fonda and Ted Turner. We all signed this huge board with declarations of admiration of, commitment to and love for our Mother Earth. Why did I deserve to be there? What made me a darling at this conference? The invitation arranged by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Colombia was based on the enthusiasm of the international community with an entrepreneur who was taking market share from multinational corporations like Procter & Gamble, Unilever and Henkel with biodegradable soaps, without advertising. We could all celebrate a new business model.
Biodegradability was rightfully considered as one of the key breakthroughs in steering business towards sustainability. I had claimed that my soaps - made from fatty acids derived from palm oil - degrade 3,000 times faster than the standard petroleum-based cleaning products. The response from the industry was fierce: this is a lie. And, after an independent consultant verified my statement, it indeed turned out to be a lie - he concluded that my soaps were “only" 1,000 times faster dissolved into nothing. I suggested that Iʼd be condemned by the courts for misleading the public. Obviously no one took me to court. However, it revealed an amazing reality: the world did not know in 1992 that biodegradation is measured on a logarithmic scale, one that moves from 1 to 10 to 100 to 1000.
It was remarkable that key parameters like biodegradation depend on complex measurements that remain poorly understood. And yet, even when people slowly started to grasp the importance of biodegradation, then we realized that this was not enough to take us towards sustainability. Indeed, it would take another 16 months after the Rio Summit before I would be face to face with the destruction of the rainforest in Indonesia where I realized that a rising demand for these ecological products that clean up the rivers in Europe, and which decrease the risk of allergies are causing a massive annihilation of the habitat of the orang utan. It was a shock and I fell into a depression. Read the full report here.
Source: Gunter Pauli.
