Look at Your Shoes

What are sustainability’s three simple words?

Do you remember – Clunk, click, every trip.

Stop. Look. Listen.

Stay home. Protect the NHS. Save lives.

Three short instructions can sometimes carry an extraordinary amount of complexity.

They don’t explain everything. They aren’t supposed to.

“Stop. Look. Listen.” doesn’t explain traffic engineering, stopping distances, human reaction times or the physics of a collision. It gives us a simple behaviour that helps us navigate all that complexity.

And I’ve been wondering: what is the sustainability equivalent? Because sustainability is complicated. Really complicated. Years ago, I attended a sustainability workshop that began with one of the simplest exercises I have ever encountered.

Look – at – your shoes.

That was it. Look at the shoes you are wearing and imagine their entire life.

Where did the materials come from? Perhaps there is rubber, leather, cotton, polyester, foam, metal, glue and dye. Each has its own story.

Something was grown, extracted or manufactured somewhere. Water was used. Energy was used. Land was used.

Those materials were processed. Transported. Processed again.

Eventually they arrived at a factory where somebody made them into shoes.

Then the finished shoes travelled too. Perhaps by road, rail and ship. They were packaged, stored in a warehouse, transported again, displayed in a shop or delivered to your door. All before you took your first step in them.

And the story doesn’t end there. How often will you wear them? How long will they last? Can they be repaired? What happens when you no longer want them? Can they be reused, recycled or repurposed? Or will all those materials, all that energy, all that water, all that work and all those miles eventually become waste?

All of that is sitting quietly on your feet. And that’s just your shoes. Now look around the room.

The chair. The table. The phone. The cup. The carpet. The window.

Then think about breakfast. Or the journey to work. Or the building you’re sitting in.

Pull one thread and suddenly you discover that almost everything connects to everything else.

That is both the wonder and the problem of sustainability.

We have spent years trying to explain the complexity. Carbon footprints. Biodiversity. Circular economies. Net zero. Supply chains. Water use. Fair trade. Climate adaptation. Nature recovery. Food miles. Embodied carbon.

All important. But perhaps there’s another question we need to ask.

How much of that complexity does someone need to understand in order to make a better choice? We don’t teach children the physics of moving vehicles before telling them how to cross a road.

We say: Stop. Look. Listen.

The complexity hasn’t disappeared. We’ve simply created a small human behaviour that helps us navigate it. Perhaps sustainability needs something similar. I’ve been playing with possibilities.

Look. Think. Choose.

Look at the thing in front of you. Think about where it came from, what it took to make it and where it will go next. Then choose. Or perhaps:

Need it. Use it. Keep it.

Do I need it? If I have it, can I make proper use of it? Can I keep it going for longer — maintain it, repair it, share it, reuse it or pass it on?

Neither feels quite right yet. And perhaps that’s the interesting bit. Because I’m beginning to wonder whether we’ve been trying to make sustainability simple when what we actually need to make simple is the way we respond to its complexity.

Three words aren’t going to explain sustainability. Bu they don’t need to – to start with. They just need to create that tiny moment between acting automatically and making a conscious choice.

A pause. A question. A different possibility.

So perhaps, for now, we start where that workshop started.

Look at your shoes.

Really look at them.

There is a whole world beneath your feet.

And then ask yourself:

What three simple words might help us take better care of it?

Oh and for those that don’t remember it:

Clunk: Close your car door.

Click: Fasten your seat belt.

Every Trip: Wear it even on short local journeys.

I know I’m showing my age but I have never forgotten it!