“In light of the current economic climate, what is the future of sustainable development and what role does government policy have to play?”

I applied for a job a couple of weeks ago. As part of the application I had to write an essay on this: “In light of the current economic climate, what is the future of sustainable development and what role does government policy have to play?” in 400 words, here's my effort:

People, Planet, Profit; Win, Win, Win?

During hard economic times it is easy to assume that action on Sustainable Development will be delayed; ‘if you are in a fight to save your business, you might forget to save the environment’¹. However, a recent study², highlights the rise in corporate action on Sustainability. The drivers for such a trend are not easy to detect but are worth exploring. The study reports that: ‘demonstrating a visible and authentic commitment to sustainability is especially important to CEOs... Strengthening brand, trust and reputation is the strongest motivator for taking action on sustainability issues, identified by 72 percent of the CEOs’³. It is easy to be cynical, but we must not be too quick to judge.

Wighton⁴ makes an interesting observation: ‘Many [CEOs] privately believe that being environmentally responsible is a good thing in itself. But they feel that they must adopt utilitarian ethics, justifying everything on the basis that it leads ultimately to the greatest happiness of the greatest number of shareholders.’ Are CEOs therefore acting on their environmental concerns but having to justify their sustainability activities on financial grounds to their investors (what’s good for the brand is good for profit)? This suggests a difficult balancing act in communications. At present, those concerned with People and Planet are sceptical that they can win while Profit wins. Those concerned with Profit alone worry that prioritisation of People and Planet will lessen the wins for shareholders and investors. The result is that authentic commitment is often masked and difficult to detect (whether it is there or not).

But, the future of sustainable development is bright if Government seizes the apparent enthusiasm in industry for sustainability and ‘steers the conditions’⁵ for sustainability in three key ways.

Following the Dutch example Government policy could:

1. Nurture a business led ‘Cradle to Cradle’⁶ revolution by regulating in favour of environmentally positive practices, to create a level playing field and encourage innovation.
2. Promote collaboration and sharing of best practice by those already leading on Cradle to Cradle;
3. Transform the education system to improve creativity, systems thinking and ecological intelligence^7,8,9.
   
   

Such Government leadership may help push those superficially engaged along with those who are already authentically committed. Although, this assumes that Government itself is authentically committed. If it is, it must proceed with caution. People do not like to be told what to do by politicians and ‘do-gooders’; this impacts on their role as promoters of sustainable development. Lively debate¹⁰ ensues over the correct approach for politicians and civil society organisations to take in communicating sustainability.

‘Cradle to Cradle’ may not be the answer, but it frames a sustainable future positively; a future where People, Planet and Profit all improve; it ‘sizzles’¹¹. This is an insight to be built on and a reason for hope.

Notes

1. Wighton, D. (2010) What’s good for the planet is good for business, Opinon, The Times, December 1^st, p. 29

2. United Nations Global Compact - Accenture (2010) A New Era of Sustainability [Online], p. 1, Available from: https://microsite.accenture.com/sustainability/research_and_insights/Pages/A-New-Era-of-Sustainability.aspx Accessed: December 4th, 2010.

3. UNGC-Accenture (2010), p. 10.

4. Wighton, D. (2010), p. 29

5. Jan Joustre, D. (2010) Cradle to Cradle Government, Presentation to Ten+One Conference, Bradford, UK.

6. Braungart, M. & McDonough, W. (2002) Cradle to Cradle, Remaking the way we make things, North Point Press, New York, USA.

7. Robinson, K. (2010) Changing Paradigms, RSA Edge Lecture [online], Available from: http://www.thersa.org/events/vision/archive/sir-ken-robinson Accessed: December 4th, 2010.

8. Webster, K. & Johnson, C. (2009) Sense and Sustainability [online], Available from: www.senseandsustainability.com Accessed: December 4^th, 2010.

9. Sterling, S. (2009) Ecological Intelligence, [in] Stibbe, A. (ed) (2010) The Handbook of Sustainability Literacy, Green Books, UK.

10. Phillips, M. (2010) WWF’s Common Cause –The debate [online], Available from: http://becominggreenblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/common-cause-debate.html Accessed: December 4th, 2010.

11. Futerra (2010) Sizzle: The New Climate Message [online], Available from: http://www.futerra.co.uk/downloads/Sellthesizzle.pdf Accessed: December 4th, 2010.

Bill Shankley and Benevolence

Saw this in The Independent yesterday. Liverpool are (were?) a club of with commendable values.

Former manager, Bill Shankley, is revered, not just because of the success he brought, but because of the man he was; his values. This quote exemplifies it. 'I would like to be remembered as a man who was selfless, who strove and worried so that other could share the glory...' Stirring stuff, what's it got to do with Sustainability? Well, it reinforces self-transcendent values, a commitment to things 'bigger-than-self'. In a world in which much messaging (not least from Premiership football) reinforces 'self-enhancing', self centred values, it is nice to reminded of great men like Shankley. He lived and breathed for his beloved club, he put it before himself at all times.

This quote highlights Shankley's Benevolence values, he was concerned with 'preserving and enhancing the welfare of those with whom who [he was] in frequent personal contact (the 'in group') (Crompton, 2010, p. 31). In Common Cause, Tom Crompton draws on Tim Kasser. Kasser's empirical studies have produced data showing how those with benevolence values are more likely to be concerned with 'bigger-than-self' issues than those who value personal achievement, status and power. I listened in on a conversation between Kasser and Andrew Darnton last week at the Common Cause workshop last week. They were discussing the potential for 'bleed over' between benevolence and universalism. Universalism: 'Understanding, appreciation, tolerance, and protection for the welfare of all people and for nature.' (Crompton, 2010, p. 31) Those who value universalism are even more likely to be concerned with 'bigger-than-self' issues. But, universalism (where concern is with abstract 'out groups') is probably less common in most people than benevolence (where concern is with those closest to us, our 'in groups') . The 'bleed over' suggests that benevolence can provide a step up to universalism and that they are mutually reinforcing. Common Cause argues for stronger reinforcement of benevolence and universalism. The sort of benevolence displayed by people like Bill Shankley and more recently by current Liverpool heroes like Steven Gerrard, and Jamie Carragher is good to see, but rare. Benevolence does not necessarily predict universalism, but it is a better value to champion that 'achievement, power and hedonism'. Sustainability educators can search out and amplify cultural examples benevolence, they don't need to mention the environment.

Keep Cup

'Keep Cup' are an Australian company responding to the disaster of 400bn disposable non-recyclable coffee (and tea) cups being discarded around the world each year. The Keep Cup is re-usable, the right size for coffee vendors but is getting cradle to cradle wrong.

Pret a Manger in London Bridge held a trial at the end of last month, selling their specially branded Keep Cups for £6.50 a go. 'Dan' commented on the Keep Cup blog: 'At £6.50 - not worth it. And the staff at London Bridge certainly were not pushing them this morning.' I can certainly understand this reaction. You'd have to be some sort of crazy eco-geek to want to pay that sort of money to get your coffee, drink it, wash it up and then remember to take it back to Pret the next day to get it re-filled. Even if you habitually buy coffee from the same company, it is still some ask to pay for the privilege of a cup that you can probably only re-use at Pret outlets and have to wash up yourself. Not to mention having to pay a company for your services as a moveable advert for them.

So, what's the solution? First what are the problems?

1. Problem: A thirst for coffee / tea / hot choc while on the move. Solution: Takeaway 'fast food' hot drinks outlets. (Let's hold the discussion on manufactured supply and demand for a minute!)

2. Problem: Mountain of packaging waste. Solution: well......

For retailers number 2 is only a problem if it is hindering sales, damaging their product brand, or so horrendous that customers have to wade through discarded coffee cups to get to the counter. Right now, it doesn't appear to me that this is perceived as a problem by retailers or their customers. The waste mountain is too abstract and too 'normal'. We are so used to the linear model of production and consumption, that the inevitable wastes are not surprising or alarming, it is just a fact of life when understand the world in this way. Pretty much all of our food is packaged in materials that will eventually end up in landfill or an incinerator, that's just the way of the world right?!

The opposite to the linear 'cradle to grave' model of production is the cyclical 'cradle to cradle' model where waste = food. Cradle to Cradle is based on the continual cycling of technical and biological resources in two discrete closed loops (see my previous post for a diagram). Keep Cup is attempting to create a cycling of a technical resource (plastic cup) but I can't see it working. It is very hard for retailers to re-capture plastic take-away cups for re-fill on any grand scale, because our behaviour as consumers is too chaotic. Would Starbucks fill a Pret cup or vice-versa? If when I came across a Starbucks and fancied a coffee, had a clean Pret 'keep cup' in my bag, but could not see a Pret anywhere, I'd probably just go into Starbucks and get a coffee. I'd be pretty unlikely to fork out again for a Starbucks 'Keep Cup' so would probably quietly take a disposable one. If I was feeling particularly rebellious and wanted to protect my identity as an 'ethical consumer' I might even pour my Starbucks coffee into my Pret 'Keep Cup' and discretely dispose of the Starbucks cup!

Maybe Keep Cup could persuade the large coffee chains to club together on this and agree to re-fill any 'Keep Cup' regardless of the branding. Maybe they'd go for this, I'm not sure they would and they'd probably want to continually make small technical upgrades to their 'keep cups' to make their competitor's one's look outdated, un-fashionable, 'Have you seen Cafe Nero's new Keep Cup? It is way better than the 'Pret' one I used to have' etc, etc.

Now, I like being able to get a hot drink on the move, it is handy. But, being environmentally aware, I also have a guilty conscience every time I chuck an empty cup in the nearest bin. 'Keep Cup' are trying to cycle a technical resource, when the solution might be the cycling of a biological resource. Coffee Cups can quite easily be produced to bio-degrade a day or two after use into nice juicy compost which could then become food for a new coffee plant, or any other plant for that matter. This makes life a lot easier for the retailers and consumers.

Of course, infrastructure is needed for this, compost bins need to be as widespread as other bins in public spaces (a job for government?); the waste food needs to be turned into compost efficiently and taken back to growers (a job for the market?). Both of these things seem more possible to me than expecting consumers to re-use 'Keep Cups'. We have to remember that the cradle to cradle model is still in its embryonic stages, amazing things are possible and as conditions become more favourable, things like this will take off.

It doesn't have to be one line for the shareholders and another for the environmentalists

I got back from the Ten+One conference in Bradford last night. My understanding of the sustainability and business was satisfactorily advanced, thanks largely to the conference, but also unexpectedly by an article I gleaned from The Times over breakfast at the independently run and very hospitable Ivy Guest House!

Many environmentalists feared that the economic crisis would delay corporate action on Sustainability, as David Wighton put it in The Times yesterday (December 1^st, 2010, Opinion, p. 29 [paywall]): ‘If you are in a fight to save your business, you might forget to save the environment.’ Wighton points out however that the opposite appears to be true; the economic crisis seems to have had a galvanising effect:

[S]ome of the increased focus on green issues is a direct result of the economic crisis. Companies are faced with slow growth in mature markets, but rising and volatile prices for many commodities driven by the insatiable appetite of China. It makes sense for businesses to be more careful about how they use such resources, particularly energy.

Wighton speculates further that investing in sustainability is also a very good public relations exercise:

Business leaders have also been alarmed by the slump in the public’s trust in big companies... Some chief executives talk about trust as “the scarcest resource of all.”

Bosses fear that their businesses could pay dearly for this loss of trust and believe that demonstrating a commitment to the environment could help to rebuild it. A survey of global chief executives, conducted by Accenture with the UN this year showed that boosting trust in their brands was by far the most important motivation for taking action on the environment.

It is of course easy to cynical about this, I must point out that Wighton is not presenting these findings in a cynical way at all, he is just exploring a business trend, taking his cue from this year’s UNGC/Accenture CEO Study ‘A New Era of Sustainability’. That study surveyed 766 CEOs from around the world and interviewed a further 50 CEOs and 50 business and civil society and business leaders; ‘the largest such study of CEOs ever conducted on the topic of sustainability’ (UNGC & Accenture, 2010, p. 10). The study says this: ‘Demonstrating a visible and authentic commitment to sustainability is especially important to CEOs... Strengthening brand, trust and reputation is the strongest motivator for taking action on sustainability issues, identified by 72 percent of the CEOs’ (UNGC & Accenture, 2010, p. 10). So what is an authentic commitment to sustainability, do CEO's even know? And what about the shareholders? I’ll deal with that last question first.

Wighton argues that because a commitment to sustainability is good for a company’s brand, employee retention and running costs it is good for the company full stop. It follows therefore that it must also be good for its shareholders. But, Wighton throws up another interesting observation: ‘Many [CEOs] privately believe that being environmentally responsible is a good thing in itself. But they feel that they must adopt utilitarian ethics, justifying everything on the basis that it leads ultimately to the greatest happiness of the greatest number of shareholders.’ Are CEOs therefore acting on their environmental concerns (a la ‘Social Business’ as practised by Professor Yunus) but having to justify their sustainability activities on financial grounds to their investors and shareholders? This creates a difficult balancing act in communications around the win, win, win; People, Planet and Profit triumvirate. The result is that authentic commitment is often masked and difficult to detect (whether it is there or not).

At the Ellen MacArthur Foundation ‘Ten plus One conference’ this week, Douwe Jan Joustra of the NL Agency (the Netherlands governmental agency for innovation, energy and sustainable development) explained how the Netherlands government is trying to nurture a business led Cradle to Cradle revolution. He made three key recommendations for policy makers: Firstly, using the slightly lost in translation phrase ‘steering on conditions’, he argued that Government’s need to provide the right conditions for innovation (basically don’t intervene; let creativity flourish). Secondly he advises policy makers to make use of ‘coalitions of the willing’, start with the businesses, like Desso, who already ‘get’ the C2C model and are living and breathing it; the rest will eventually follow. He thirdly stressed the need to ‘educate, educate, educate’ specifically on systems thinking and Biomimicry.

A Cradle to Cradle revolution has a huge potential to realise the sustainable development dream; the holy trinity of a balance between People, Planet and Profit. This is why it is so powerful and it makes the communications balancing act possible. At present those concerned with People and Planet are sceptical that they can win while Profit wins. Those concerned with Profit alone worry that prioritisation of People and Planet will lessen the wins for shareholders and investors. This is why CEOs are caught in the difficult position of trying to convince shareholders that sustainability is good for business, while also trying to convince environmentalists that their commitments to sustainability are authentic. Either by accident or design the Ten+One conference was priced such that it attracted Corporate Businesses as well as independent business, academics and one or two scruffy environmentalists like me. Because of this mix, the speakers from Desso, Aveda and B&Q were thrown into the communications dilemma, they had to convince environmentalists and business simultaneously. Although wild enthusiasm never quite broke out, I detected very few raised eyebrows or deep sighs. Why? Because of a recognition that Cradle-to-Cradle is not about limiting the impacts of business on the natural world, it is about creating positive impacts on the environment. Cradle to Cradle, when thoughtfully applied, enhances the natural world; companies can say ‘we are in the business of enhancing the natural environment’ and can show the tangible results to prove it. It is a natural ally of the Social Business concept championed by Muhammed Yunus.

Ten+One was framed around Cradle to Cradle, Systems thinking and the Circular Economy. Looking at the world from these perspectives is transformative, it is game-changing. We often think of the world in a reductionist, mechanical way in which we are separate from nature and seek to control and tame it. We think of natural resources being infinite and send them linearly from cradle to grave in a take, make, transport, use (re-use and recycle a bit) and dump progression. These linear models are embedded in business practice and environmentalists have been trying to limit the negative impacts of businesses that use this model for decades. Instead of focusing on greening that model to make it ‘less bad’, we should be focusing on the promotion of an entirely new model (one, as Bucky Fuller said, that makes the old one obsolete). This is where the Cradle to Cradle model comes in. In this model resources don’t travel along a linear path they cycle. Technical resources and biological resources cycle in two discrete closed loops powered by renewable energy sources. If that can be achieved the environment no longer gradually declines, it gradually improves. Michael Braungart describes this as the difference between eco-efficiency and eco-effectiveness. This model is incredibly positive, it ‘sells the sizzle’, it is inspiring and transformative. At the moment it is in an early embryonic form, but as a concept it allows us to dream of true balance of People, Planet and Profit and a better future.

The examples of Cradle to Cradle presented during the Ten+One conference illustrated what could emerge when you ‘steer the conditions’ correctly. By their own admission Desso, Aveda and B&Q are far from perfect; they have a long way to go to be truly cradle to cradle. They are limited by ‘the conditions’ they exist in but, as leaders, and as part of a ‘coalition of the willing’, they have an opportunity to help ‘steer the conditions’ for others, like Unilever (?) to follow. Despite the positivity of the UNCG/Accenture study, it is notable that it only carries one reference to cradle to cradle on page 44 of 60. Apparently ‘the Timberland Company’s new range of “Earthkeepers 2.0” are conceived with “cradle-to-cradle” principles in mind, and designed to be disassembled for recycling at the end of their useful life’ (UNCG/Accenture, 2010, p. 44). This suggests that sustainability is not properly framed yet in the business world, the objective of being ‘less bad’ seems to remain.

Despite the phenomenal success of the Cradle to Cradle book, as a concept it still remains on the margins of both the business and sustainability worlds. It mustn’t stay there, it is a concept with a huge potential to unite these two worlds. For it to gather speed in the mainstream, an imperative must be placed on education. But, it is not enough to simply educate about Cradle-to-Cradle in isolation in the business world. Education based on a mechanistic worldview needs to move towards education based on a systems worldview and ecological intelligence. It is a paradigm shift called for by Sir Ken Robinson, Stephen Sterling and now the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.