'Green Footsteps' - a step in the right direction?

This year the organisers of the Roskilde Festival (all profits go to support humanitarian and cultural causes) are running a Green Footsteps campaign, empowering young people to make changes and reduce their carbon footprint.

The idea is simple – all ticket holders will be sent information about ten ways or ‘footsteps’ to take action against climate change leading up to the festival. For example, they can decide to ride their bike to the event or identify ways to reduce their home energy consumption. And it is not simply a question of pledging to complete the ‘footsteps’, you have to prove that you have done it, for example, sending photos of your recycling sorting system or registering with the Danish Saving Trust and sending in the results of your online home energy audit.

Completing 3 footprints reserves you a central spot in the Climate Community camping area at the festival, where there is LED lighting, pedal charging points and a Climate University where you can chat to climate change experts and activists.

Part of me loves this campaign – not only is it raising awareness about climate change but it is also empowering people with the knowledge, mechanisms and incentive to act now. However is the idea of a Climate Community just a bit exclusive? Why not reach out to everyone attending by integrating climate-friendly initiatives and products throughout the festival in order to reach audience members who might not otherwise take any interest? Why have one sustainable stage when all the stages could feature low-energy lighting, LED screens and generators run on renewables?

To be fair, the organisers do take the environmental impact of the event seriously and have won awards to prove it, and obviously there is a balance to strike because organisers don’t want to put people off by bombarding them with green messages – ultimately the aim is to sell tickets and raise money for charity.

Perhaps Green Footsteps in its current form is just the start of something which will grow and become a model for all festivals. It will be really interesting to see how it turns out!

Green Companies 2009

Another day, another list. The Sunday Times has just published its list of Best Green Companies 2009. An interesting one, given that it's based, in part at least, on employee feedback rather than what the company tells the judges - so those companies that score highly are not only getting the message out there but also getting their employees to believe them. And there are some innovative ideas in there - like PWC's setting of personal carbon targets for its 1,600 most frequent travellers, and Coca-Cola Great Britain's provision of smart energy meters and lower cost renewable energy tariffs for its employees.

So far, so good. But there's a significant omission in the methodology. It gives the impression that a company's most significant environmental impact is an internal one. That turning down the thermostat at HQ and putting a grass roof on your building is going to outweigh the impacts that your products and services have on consumer behaviour.  It does nothing to reward the companies whose innovation and forward-thinking are actually helping consumers lead lower-carbon lives. Like Fiat's eco:Drive system, its in-car technology that gives personal feedback on your driving style and helps improve your efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions. 

On the one hand, it's great to see some high impact industries are taking the management of their environmental impacts seriously (hats off to construction firms Willmott Dixon, Skanska and Carrillion for making the top 15) . But I'd like to see a special award next year for companies who have done the most to actually change consumer mind-sets - this is where the really big wins in terms of carbon savings are going to come from. 

A positive future for corporate responsibility

Many thought that the Credit Crunch would be the end of CSR, forecasting that as companies scrutinised their balance sheets to find ways to cut costs, corporate responsibility would be one of the earliest victims. However, as this article in this week’s Economist points out, whilst companies are turning away from expensive PR stunts or greenwash campaigns and traditional corporate philanthropy is indeed being sidelined - Citigroup’s charitable foundation, for example, has cut the amount of money to be distributed as grants by almost a third – a new era of sustainability and efficiency is being embraced by all.

I don’t think it matters that these changes are driven by self-interest or, in some cases, a fight for survival. Accenture, which has saved itself $8 million in one year by using technology in the place of business travel, didn’t implement the changes solely from a desire to save the planet, it was a straightforward cost cutting exercise that also happened to reduce its CO2 emissions by 2,000 tonnes – as far as I am concerned this doesn’t diminish the achievement. Whatever the reasons behind the change – it is great to see that the idea of responsibility at the heart of business is not only weathering the storm of the recession, but becoming stronger!

In these times the last thing we need is more innovation

Early this week I went to The Foundation’s Forum which debated the above. Speakers included Mat Hunter from the design agency IDEO and Russ Shaw, the former Chief Innovation officer from Telefonica, so unsurprisingly the discussion responded with a resounding ‘Against – innovation is as important as ever!’.

Despite the predicable outcome the discussion was fascinating and it was Martin Chilcott, CEO of 2degress, who really got me thinking. 2degrees is an online network designed to help people find solutions to sustainability problems. He focused on the need for innovation to create products and solutions that help mitigate ‘the next mass extinction’ i.e. climate change.

A big part of this has to be getting everyone to buy less stuff. So I left the discussion feeling slightly confused about what all this innovation actually is. To me, from a corporate perspective, it’s ultimately about finding ways to encourage consumers to buy more of your product. Does this not conflict with innovating to find solutions to slow climate change? Further growth in consumerism will only make the environmental battle a harder one to win.

So how should people be innovating in these times? It was Mat’s message that I think best sums up the desired approach – whatever the innovation is, it has to meet a real social need.

Web 2.0 - the future of sustainability ratings?

I don’t think I’ve ever written a blog post before. And I’ve never Twittered. But the team have dragged me kicking and screaming into the shiny new world of Web 2.0 so what better way to start than with a post about…Web 2.0.

I got sent a link to Scryve the other day – it’s a new site designed to let us, the public, analyse and rank companies on their sustainability performance. Over time these ratings aggregate into an overall score for the company. So far, so  interactive. But I can’t help wondering whether most of the users on the site are going to be companies’ own CR managers trying to boost their own ratings (think of authors on Amazon sneaking on to write glowing reviews of their own work). Are most people really motivated enough to spend time logging their thoughts on different companies? And are the people who are motivated to do so really providing the most objective opinions (bearing in mind the old adage that a satisfied customer tells one friend, and an unhappy customer tells everyone)? 

US lobbyists threaten climate change progress

This story may be a few days old now but it has stayed with me, and hasn’t had the coverage it deserves. It reveals that $45 million has been spent on a huge PR drive in the US by a coalition of interests largely tied to the coal, oil and gas industries, lobbying to block the passage of the draft climate change and energy bill that Obama wants to introduce. There’s real cause for concern that Obama won’t be able to drive through the bill - part of his mission to move the US towards a low carbon economy - or at least not without hefty compromises. More worrying still is the indication, from the sheer level of expenditure on this lobbying campaign, of just how far many companies still are from recognising that climate change is something that needs action now and that such action needn’t be the enemy of successful business; quite the opposite, we’d argue.

The past few weeks haven’t given us much cause to celebrate the integrity of our own political system but I do feel pretty thankful that, for all their failings, our MPs aren't beholden to and influenced by special interests and their donations. It’s incredible that in the US groups with enough money to throw behind their causes can have such an undue influence on policy.

Let’s hope Obama is tough enough to stick to his guns and that the 12 wavering Democrats who are likely to hold the swing vote have the strength, and sense, not to bow to the PR offensive and instead to prioritise tackling climate change as a matter of urgency.

Tigers put the rest of us to shame

Every morning and every evening I cycle through Parliament Square. Whether it’s Nick Robinson preparing to interview an MP, or Joanna Lumley heading to help the Gurkhas, there’s always something to look at. But for the last month it’s the Tamil Tigers that have really caught my attention. Physically by halting the traffic, but more importantly emotionally – by impressing me with their day after day commitment to their cause.

Last night saw 1000s turn out for the fourth protest since April the 6th. Men, women and children sat on the square and once again they managed to block the roads. Not bad for a minority group who are a tiny % of the UK population.

So what does this say about the rest of us? Admittedly their cause is about life or death and urgent action is needed, but could we not say the same about climate change? Surveys suggest about 50% of the UK population is concerned about environmental issues. Just think how much we’d bring the things to a stand still if 30 million of us took to the streets...

Just how green are we?

There have been plenty in the past and I am sure there will be plenty more to come, but National Geographic have just released its Greendex.

The index has calculated (by surveying 17,000 people from 17 different countries) just how 'green' a range of countries are from across the world - the UK coming in at a rather lowly 13 out of the 17.

You can also work out just how 'green' you are. What is interesting, however, is the fact that when you fill in your own entry there appears to be no questioning about holidays and air travel. Surely this must be something that should be included in a survey of this kind...although I am not sure it will do much for the UK's position in the survey!

Sainsbury's on 140 years of values-driven business

We were interested to catch Sainsbury's new ad to celebrate their 140^th birthday this week. It traces the history of the supermarket through some of the values-led decisions that have defined the business.

This week also saw Sainsbury’s posting a better-than-expected 11.3% hike in annual profits to £543 million. Like-for-like sales rose 4.5%, excluding fuel, in the year to March 21.

For many this will be evidence that Sainsbury's combination of recession-friendly campaigns (Jamie Oliver's Feed Your Family for a Fiver, Switch and Save) and high profile commitments to ethical practice (in February it became the first of the big four to ban battery chicken eggs) is proving to be a winning formula.

However, Ian King warned in a piece in Wednesday’s Times that the latest industry switching data suggests that Sainsbury's is losing sales to discounters Aldi and Lidl as well as Asda. We’ll be watching closely to see how the battle for customers plays out over the recession…

Making BBQs love the environment

Charcoal is notorious for its undesirable effects on the environment and human health, but for backyard grilling, there have been few alternatives. Just in time for summer in the northern hemisphere, a Wisconsin-based company has now launched a greener alternative.

Sologear's uGO FlameDisk is an eco-friendly grilling option that employs solid ethanol as its fuel source and lights instantaneously with the touch of a match, no lighter fluid required. Users simply peel off the device's protective film, place the disk in their grill and light it. Pretty clever...let's hope it makes it over this side of the pond.

Welcome to the new Good Business blog

We probably should have just gone for Twitter (you never know that might follow), but we thought it was time we started to share some of our thoughts, experiences and interesting stuff we have seen all related to sustainability and generally making the world a better place. So here we are starting the ball rolling. We hope you find some of the posts (if not all) interesting. And don't let this just be us telling you what is going on - have your say. There is plenty of space to let us know what you are thinking too. We look forward to hearing from you.