Naresh Ramchandani is the co-founder of environmental non-profit Do The Green Thing, a partner at design firm Pentagram and a practitioner of what he calls ‘communications with a conscience’.
Ramchandani began his career in London, where he worked as a copywriter for the illustrious advertising agency HHCL. There he went on to win the prestigious Gold Lion Award at Cannes with his 1990 commercial for Maxell. For the next 20 years he continued to build up an impressive repertoire of award-winning campaigns, as well as establishing two agencies of his own; St. Luke’s in 1995 and Karmarama in 2000.
In 2007, Ramchandani decided to harness the persuasive power of design for the good of the planet, and co-founded Do The Green Thing, a creativity-led environmental charity that encourages people to live greener lives.
‘It’s design that helps to convince us that we need exotic holidays or this year’s shoes or this month’s phone. Equally, deployed well, design can help to convince us that holidays at home are as special as holidays overseas, that last year’s shoes are worth keeping and that last month’s phone is not any worse than this month’s,’ says Ramchandani of his thinking behind the initiative. ‘That’s our manifesto: to use creativity to make sustainable behaviour as desirable as unsustainable behaviour.’
Today, Do The Green Thing has a network of over 500 creatives around the world who donate their time and talent to help tackle the issues, behaviour and assumptions and that are making modern life so damaging to the planet.
