Fortunately, gone are the days when businesses could just earn profit and call it a day. In the 21st century, businesses have evolved beyond their own needs and profits.
Companies with such traditional business values have taken a backseat and focus has been shifted to companies driven by larger social or environmental missions.
Since addressing and tackling social and environmental problems is much more complex, innovation is inevitable.
In this age, the world is echoing with endless issues that provide businesses opportunities and room for innovation.
Here are the seven businesses creating intermediate social impact through innovation:
Fairphone
Phones have become a necessity in the modern age. Sustainability when it comes to phones is hard, as technology is going obsolete at a very fast pace thus leading to landfills full of e-waste. Fairphone is the first-ever ethical, modular phone company that is aiming at solving this problem.
They make phones with lesser environmental impact and without conflict minerals like tungsten, gold, and tin. The company also makes modular smartphones, which are phones with replaceable or repairable parts, to prolong its life.
Andiamo
They manufacture orthotic braces using AI technology and 3D printing for disabled children in dire need. Special children with disabilities have to suffer due delays in the manufacture and delivery of orthotic braces which take up months. Andiamo delivers them globally within two weeks of the order so no child has to suffer.
Apiary Book
Bees are a crucial part of the ecosystem. They pollinate the crops and therefore, play an essential role in the food production process. Without them, we’d have much lesser food on our tables.
While the bee population has been shrinking due to a lot of negative environmental changes, it is important to preserve the fading art of beekeeping.
Apiary book is a community for beekeepers all around the globe, helping them from a to z of beekeeping. Beekeeping being a complex art, the application allows beekeepers to handle all areas of it like to track, organize, treat, and make inventory.
Birdsong
Birdsong is a rebellious fashion brand that helps disadvantaged women get their fair share in the garment market. Born as a feminist business that made t-shirts with rebellious slogans, it later shifted to making sustainable clothing for women, by women.
Providing disadvantaged women opportunities and a fair minimum wage and a good work environment is at the core of their business. They use various techniques like screen printing and ethical packaging and postage.
Chatterbox
Chatterbox is a very unique concept. It is a language learning platform, where languages are taught by refugees. Chatterbox tries to tell the story of the refugees, in the tutoring industry that solely focuses on the students.
It provides opportunities to refugees who often feel isolated, to utilize their skills and interact with the community. Gone are the days when students would seek quick assignment help or tricks for languages they find hard to learn.
Students who are struggling with language learning can gain a better understanding of it by interacting with refugees who offer not only language lessons but also insights into their respective cultures.
This helps students to connect better to the language they are learning. Both parties benefit through this and ultimately the language learning process becomes fun.
Nuw
Fashion is the second most polluting industry just behind petroleum, but this isn’t acknowledged enough. Going sustainable in the fashion sector is hard for consumers as there is a major lack of sustainable initiative by fashion brands and unaffordable sustainable options.
The founder of Nuw faced the same problem and ventured to escape the toxic fashion industry. As a result, they developed a circular business system, wherein consumers can sign up and borrow and lend clothing.
The members can lend, borrow or swap clothes, keeping their wardrobe fresh all the time while never buying new fashion.
Panda Packaging
Plastic is synonymous with the packaging industry. It has monopolized the industry and people have been led to believe there is no true alternative to it. But thank God for companies like panda packaging that are revolutionizing the packaging industry by providing bamboo-based packaging.
They serve the packaging need of the food and hospitality industry, eliminating tons of plastic waste. Businesses like these are born not only out of the needs of the consumers but also the need for change. Slowly all businesses will have to integrate such goals and values into their missions.
Raina Jordan is an academic writer at Global Assignment Help Australia. She is a passionate scuba diver, an avid reader, and writes about sustainability, and ethical businesses.
