Farewell to the Queen of Green
On Monday night, in a hospital in Chichester, England, Dame Anita Roddick crossed over this world's threshold and stepped into eternity. A major brain hemorrhage wrote the final paragraph in her body's biography, but her entrepreneurial spirit will live on in the more than 2,000 Body Shop stores that she leaves scattered across 51 countries.
Being raised by a mother who lived through the rationing of World War II may have been the catalyst that started Roddick and her stores down the eco-friendly road long before it was the flavour of the month. She opened her first shop in Brighton in 1976 to support herself and her children while hubby went trekking across the U.S. From the beginning, she stood against animal testing and also made herself a name as a supporter of fair trade, actually paying her suppliers sustainable prices instead of the lowest possible market price. As much as possible, the stores' products have always been sourced from natural products and are sold in containers that can be reused or recycled.
Roddick wrote on her company's website, "Businesses have the power to do good." and she conducted her business transactions as though she felt it was an imperative. Obviously, Dame Anita was a woman with a social conscience, as well as being quite the business woman.
It is to be hoped that L'Oreal, now the owner of the Body Shop chain, will keep her principles in mind, in operating the business. I also think it would be a great idea if Anita Roddick were to be added to the list of women that should be presented in school classes as an example of business acumen tempered with moral rectitude, a combination that seems to be lacking in so many of our leading economic personalities. She would make a tremendous role model for girls, but how many really know about her compared to the sad number who know all the latest about such self-centred wastes of time as Spears and her ilk?
I don't think a little rearranging of the educational curriculum would be out of order. That list I mentioned could readily take the place of some of the time teens spend memorizing dates in history class, for instance. History is taught all wrong, anyway. Students are not informed that their textbooks, as all history is, were written by the winners. Here in Canada, for instance, they are told in detail about the failed rebellions of the Metis people but they are not given equal exposure to the situation as seen by both sides involved. When you teach history that way, you might just as well say, "Everyone who ever opposed us in anything was a ring-tailed bastard, and not worth your time to learn about. We're the good guys. Lesson over."
We could take some of that time spent on loving ourselves and our immediate heritage forbears to the exclusion of everyone else, and spend it instead in looking at some more contemporary figures, like Roddick. She and others like her don't care what side the people she did business with found themselves on in the pages of the history book. She accorded them a respect that too many of our young people don't understand and are not being taught. We shouldn't just read about Roddick's passing in the news and then forget her. Why don't we make her the start of something new in our schools, just like she made herself the start of something new in the business world?
Being raised by a mother who lived through the rationing of World War II may have been the catalyst that started Roddick and her stores down the eco-friendly road long before it was the flavour of the month. She opened her first shop in Brighton in 1976 to support herself and her children while hubby went trekking across the U.S. From the beginning, she stood against animal testing and also made herself a name as a supporter of fair trade, actually paying her suppliers sustainable prices instead of the lowest possible market price. As much as possible, the stores' products have always been sourced from natural products and are sold in containers that can be reused or recycled.
Roddick wrote on her company's website, "Businesses have the power to do good." and she conducted her business transactions as though she felt it was an imperative. Obviously, Dame Anita was a woman with a social conscience, as well as being quite the business woman.
It is to be hoped that L'Oreal, now the owner of the Body Shop chain, will keep her principles in mind, in operating the business. I also think it would be a great idea if Anita Roddick were to be added to the list of women that should be presented in school classes as an example of business acumen tempered with moral rectitude, a combination that seems to be lacking in so many of our leading economic personalities. She would make a tremendous role model for girls, but how many really know about her compared to the sad number who know all the latest about such self-centred wastes of time as Spears and her ilk?
I don't think a little rearranging of the educational curriculum would be out of order. That list I mentioned could readily take the place of some of the time teens spend memorizing dates in history class, for instance. History is taught all wrong, anyway. Students are not informed that their textbooks, as all history is, were written by the winners. Here in Canada, for instance, they are told in detail about the failed rebellions of the Metis people but they are not given equal exposure to the situation as seen by both sides involved. When you teach history that way, you might just as well say, "Everyone who ever opposed us in anything was a ring-tailed bastard, and not worth your time to learn about. We're the good guys. Lesson over."
We could take some of that time spent on loving ourselves and our immediate heritage forbears to the exclusion of everyone else, and spend it instead in looking at some more contemporary figures, like Roddick. She and others like her don't care what side the people she did business with found themselves on in the pages of the history book. She accorded them a respect that too many of our young people don't understand and are not being taught. We shouldn't just read about Roddick's passing in the news and then forget her. Why don't we make her the start of something new in our schools, just like she made herself the start of something new in the business world?
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