Sophie Gripenberg

Head of Sustainability

The Swedish Red Cross

Sophie is an activist for the well being of our planet, a consultant for sustainability, but also a yoga practitioner and teacher. I met her on a event where she was passionately talking about sustainable consumption and the work of the Swedish Red Cross as their sustainability coordinator. I invited her for a dialog to learn more about the sustainability efforts of the organisation.

Below you can more about the three dimension of sustainability and Sophie's thoughts on transparency, gender equality, responsibility, sharing knowledge, collaboration and innovation.

On the three dimensions of sustainability...

At the Swedish Red Cross we look at sustainability and it’s three dimensions: the economical, social and the environmental.
We have several social activities in Sweden and also round 300 second hand shops. The main purpose of the second is to get funding for the local social activities, and most of it to be sent internationally for humanitarian aid work. Our aim is to help people in need.

Second, the majority of the work is run by volunteers, such as elderly people who want to meet others and do good for their local society. The second hand shops at the Swedish Red Cross also gives the unemployed people the opportunity for training and internship. We don’t communicate this a lot, but there is great social empowerment happening.

Environmental work is not the initial aim of the Swedish Red Cross. However, now that we are more aware of the issues and how unsustainable we live, we cannot neglect the fact that our second hand shops are part of the solution. For every gift that we receive we take full responsibility and we aim to pass it directly. When we receive gift that cannot be sold we make sure it’s getting recycled.

On their journey to being more sustainable...

Our mission is already good, we’re helping to reduce human suffering. On this journey we’ve been taking we started to look into the mirror and ﬁguring out that we can do better. As a civil society and humanitarian organisation our work is not very harmful to the environment. However, when you’re trying to work in a more sustainable way, you’re doing more good by thinking about sustainability through every aspect of your organisation. From trying to protect the environment, to making sure it’s more inclusive and diverse, and using all the resources we have in the best way.

One of the ﬁrst thing we did, was making sure that, what we consume at our headquarters is organic certiﬁed, locally produced or fair traded. One of the most commonly used methods of evaluating sustainability is the GRI standard, and one of the key indicators is the CO2 emissions. We’ve been measuring our CO2 emissions since 2014 and we changed our travel guidelines. Nowadays, sustainability reporting is part of the Swedish law. It creates transparency. People can learn about how we’re working, and it’s a possibility for donators and members to have a saying when supporting our organisation.

"We’ve been measuring our CO2 emissions since 2014 and we changed our travel guidelines"

On collaboration, technology and innovation

We have a dialog about textiles and recycling with The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency which is a government agency
responsible for proposing and implementing environmental policies. However, since our major work is in humanitarian aid our
focus primarily is on policies about the migration law or the regulation issues.

On the other hand, three of our second hand shops are taking part of a project that explores ways to recycle textile through
new technologies. In the upcoming years we expect that the industry will change a lot, since the whole society needs to move forward to circular economy. For that reason, organisations,
businesses and different sectors need to collaborate in order to create a cycle. We are open to the possibility to collaborate and
thinking of whom we can create change with.

On sharing responsibility...

With the big challenges we are facing in society, we have to realise that the government cannot do everything and politicians cannot solve all the issues. Businesses should look at the 2030
Agenda to see how they can contribute. Also, civil society has to integrate that kind of thinking, that not only should they stay focused on the social work that they’re are doing, but do it with the least harmful impact on the environment.

Everyone needs to put themselves within what’s called the planetary boundaries. Nature has trapped great percentage of the CO2 we emitted, and our ecosystem buffered some of the harmful chemicals we release. We are functioning in a way that we can no longer guarantee that nature and the ecosystem can withstand it. When it come to challenges like global warming, all of us regardless it we are small or large scale businesses, the
government, or we do social work, everyone can put sustainability in practise.

The Swedish Red Cross stand

at the Tomorrow Is Now marketplace at the lobby

"Transparency gives opportunity for democracy and the ability for people to have impact.

It’s a baseline for creating dialog."

On transparency...

Transparency for us is being open and honest about how we do things and how we run the organisation. If someone donates money, how did we used it, if you are a member, how can you impact for democracy, if you donate clothes, what will happen to it?

We have an idealised picture of what a human is, but we are never really perfect, and we fail many times along the way. And if that’s how humans are, we have to realise that that’s how companies and organisations are as well. Sometimes companies do harm just to generate proﬁt and don’t really care, but it can also be a question of not having the right knowledge or tool to do better.

To conclude, transparency is sharing that we are not perfect, but we are doing our best. Transparency is a one of the key dimensions of sustainability because it gives opportunity for democracy and the ability for people to have impact. It’s a baseline for creating dialog.

On gender equality...

Sustainability is in minor things, such as the coffee and chocolate you’re sharing for example on an event you've arranged to talk
about gender equality. If the coffee you provide is not organic, it not fair traded, ﬁrst not only you’re doing harm to nature, you loose credibility. But it might be, that there were women in the supply chain that were exposed to bad working conditions or sexual abuse. So how can we talk about equality, when we don’t
take every detail in consideration. Whatever we consume there is always a gender equality question there. Those minor things matter the most in the long run.

"Sustainability is in minor things. Whatever we consume there is always a gender equality question there. Those minor things matter the most in the long run."

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