Keep your message environmentally friendly

Traditionally, marketeers with an environmental bent tend to have to think about quite obvious concerns when it comes to how they communicate with their consumers. Questions like "is the direct mail we are using printed on recylced paper?" or "should we send an email, text or letter?" (McCafee estimates the energy consumed in transmitting and deleting spam is equivalent to the electricity used in 2.4 million U.S. homes), might be the ones that spring up. But what if we totally changed the media used to get the messages out there.


In 2009, this is exactly what has been happening. More and more brands have begun using 'natural media' to get their message out there. Brands like O2, Puma, Vodafone and Gumtree have all used the services of companies like CURB Media and Street Advertising Services to use natural resources, whether it be dirt on the street, bubbles in the air, or crops in the field, to create messages for consumers.

And it doesn't stop there. Now CURB Media has launched its latest low-impact innovation. GlowFungi, also known as DiscoFungi - basically glow-in-the-dark bacteria. The harmless bacteria's glow is a natural reaction, requiring no chemicals, and can last up to a week. It seems that good bacteria can not only help the marketing folk sell yoghurt, but it might even help them get their message across. Watch this space for the first brand to make 2010 the year of the glowing fungi!

It may not be for everyone, and it certainly won't replace much of the marketing we see today, but it certainly shows us that being good to the environment and marketing can be happy bed fellows.

I was lucky enough to be invited to Restaurant magazine's R150 last week, a gathering of the top restuarants in the UK, to hear restauranteurs talk about their experiences on the front line and also to introduce them to the Sustainable Restaurant Association, a new venture in which Good Business is involved (see here for the Guardian's take on the SRA)

There was lots of interesting comment but the talk which remained with me was from Simon Kossof, the Carluccios boss. He recounted the journey that the chain had been on to find both a charity partner and donation mechanism which worked for the business. After several false starts they had alighted on Action against Hunger which works with families in over 40 of the world's poorest counties to help feed children and build sustainable futures. working with Action Against Hunger had worked, where other partnerships had failed, because it was relevant and therefore engaged both employees and customers alike.

The second issue of the donation mechanism also needed several goes to get right. It started off as a 50pence cover charge on the bill but customer feedback quickly showed that this blanket policy was too demanding. The solution was to add the same charge to only one dish on the menu, allowing customers to choose to participate or not. Carluccio’s has been working with the charity since 2007 and expects to reach a total donation of £500,000 this year, so it's definitely working.

The most interesting comment though, was that, while the direct benefits of charity support are obvious, it can be difficult to quantify what the benefits of community activities might be to a business. Simon concluded that the return was real, genuine and had wide ranging benefits, but couldn't prove it.

This desire, to quantify, either ex-post or ex-ante, what the return on a responsibility investment is/will be is cropping up more and more often and presents a real challenge to the industry. Isolating the effect of a community investment on identified business objectives such as building brand value or improving employee retention is extremely complex, but it seems like finding a working model to do so is essential if the industry is going to evolve.

Sustainable Restaurant Association

Seen End of the Line or part of Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall’s Chicken Out campaign, interested in where your 12.5% service charge on your bill goes? Sustainability has never been such a powerful force in our decision making when deciding on how and where we would like to eat. Being a big fan of eating out and all things sustainable I was over the moon to start working on the Sustainable Restaurant Association a few months ago. Things have been moving fast and we are on our way to creating the UK’s first national association that aims to help restaurants take a holistic view of sustainability. Launching in February 2010 we have come across a host of positive and negative attitudes to trying to make UK hospitality global leaders in sustainability. Some seem to think it is too hard, too big, too many grey areas. Our response, if we have many restaurants doing the little things, getting involved and becoming knowledgeable about the impact they have on the environment and their community then all the better.

It is a confusing world of information out there, lots of groups, charities and associations trying to help in their own area. For your average restaurant owner or chef it is a minefield, what to go for, Rainforest Alliance, Fair Trade or local and seasonal? Through expert advice, forums, events, outside organisations and our website we will bring together the latest information and research that can be practically adapted to restaurants.

Getting out there and meeting restaurants such as Leon, Alimentum, Moro and Barrafina we have seen a real passion for great food, great service and an amazing atmosphere, it is with this obsession to detail, that we hope sustainability becomes an important agenda for customers and operators alike.

You manage a brand. You have a product to promote. You sign up a celebrity. Simple. Or, if you prefer, you invent a character to promote your product (remember The Milky Bar Kid?). Easier to control, and less risk of him or her being photographed stumbling drunk out of Whisky Mist at 2 in the morning.

Or, if you're MTV, you take this idea and subvert it by creating a virtual celebrity to promote a cause rather than a product. So, welcome Cherry Girl. She aims to "show a lifestyle that is fun and fulfilling, and, as a by-product, happens to be sustainable", according to MTV's Head of Sustainability, Ian Jackson, whilst being "mischievous, rebellious, seductive, intriguing and hedonistic". So nothing like the Milky Bar Kid, then.

Building on MTV's Switch campaign, which communicates climate change messages through a variety of media, Cherry Girl inhabits a virtual world - through her blogs, tweets, MySpace page and Facebook profile. She extols the virtues of reusing and recycling (and cycling), and debates the issue of sustainable consumption, with a cool and slightly off-beat approach. All very web 2.0, with the emphasis firmly on dialogue and user involvement.

Cherry Girl Video from Cherry Girl on Vimeo.

It feels like an inspired idea - it engages the MTV audience through channels they understand and use everyday, it does it in a way that feels inspiring, contemporary and thoughtful rather than preachy, and it aligns with existing activity that's already up and running. 2,136 Facebook friends may not be enough to change the world, but it's worth remembering that MTV's long running Staying Alive campaign, promoting safe sex messages to youth globally, reached 800 million homes - that's 64% of homes with a television. They know what they're doing, and you've got to respect them for trying.

Bedtime story for sceptics

Interested to hear about this new advert from the Government’s Act on CO2 campaign, showing on primetime TV from today. The aim of the ad is to win over the remaining climate change sceptics (and persuade people of the immediacy and gravity of the challenge. It’s in direct response to some Department of Energy and Climate Change research showing that 52 per cent of people still don’t think climate change will significantly affect them. The ad itself – a bedtime story about a ‘very very strange world’ – is pretty sugary and ‘save the kids,’ but anything that helps to bring climate change from something abstract and futuristic that people think will never affect them, into something that people are moved to act on now, has my support.

Of course, it would be nice to think that we’d moved on from the argument on whether climate change is indeed a threat or not by now, towards actually doing something about it. Though from the somewhat crazed comments on the Times article (worth a read, if you find conspiracy theorists amusing), it looks like there’s still some way to go before the argument is won.

The dawn of the carbon police

WPP, the global engineering consultancy, has been trialling a new scheme to get employees to cut their personal carbon footprints (The Times). As part of this mini cap and trade scheme employees are given a personal emissions target - fines are handed out for every kg of CO2 emitted over the limit and, similarly, if they reduce their footprint they are rewarded.
The 'policing' of personal carbon footprints is the opposite of our approach to incentivising employees to reduce their footprints. Our programmes aim to engage, motivate and enable employees to make changes, in other words, the focus is on empowerment rather than force! This does not lessen the results and in the long term, the shcemes are likely to be more successful.
We also strive to avoid cultivating the 'offsetting' attitude, whereby employees make a change in one area of their life but fail to think about the environmental impacts of other actions. You have to feel sorry for the Managing Director of WPP, Stuart McLachlan, who cycled from Richmond to the City everyday but still got fined for his flight to South Africa. Should have opted for a 'staycation' Stuart!

What is feminism?

Last weekend a Butler in the Buff came to my flat, hen do of course. Today my mum viewed the photos on facebook (yes my mum’s on facebook). She sent me the following email in response “Feminism was supposed to make men and women equal in a good way - not to allow men and women both to wear lots of make up and pay others to appear semi-naked!”

This captured what seems to be a topic on the moment. Somewhere along the way feminism went wrong and the general consensus is that the young women of today don’t get it. The perceived liberation that we believe we have is overshadowing sexism, exploitation and inequality. Ouch.

Sure a few of you have read this article. My mum agrees with every word of it, I’m not so sure. Yes feminism needs to wake up but it also needs a bit of a rebrand. A PR campaign maybe to let young women know its not radical movement that rejects waxing but…I'm not entirely sure what. The need for women to remember to value themselves and strive for an equal standing maybe. A position that unfortunately we’ve not quite reached. But mum - it doesn't mean we can't enjoy our girly nights out and the latest GHDs in the mean time.

Power to the people

This is probably old news to many of you due to the speed the campaign seems to be moving, but the 10:10 campaign in the UK is showing just how powerful the internet and a simple idea can be. All too often the climate change debate gets lost in numbers, goals, targets and commitments. Here we have one simple idea: that by working together we can achieve a 10% cut in the UK’s carbon emissions in 2010. So much so that only a few days after launch they have already got all three main political parties to sign up!

Is this the best and most engaging climate change movement? Will you be signing up?

Blog bloc

As anyone who knows me will attest to, I am not known to be short of opinions even, some may say, in areas that I am not nearly qualified to have them in (pls don't listen to these doubters).

So why after launching our Good Business blog have I not blogged?

I can't seem to muster my first few words. Well I have been racking my brains as to why and I think I have the answer. Its because it gives me the chance to write about anything - its just too broad - I just don't know where to start.

So my solution, because I have to start somewhere, is to start with the name of our blog.

In the 16 years since Good Business came together in a conversation between myself and ex-business partner Steve Hilton many things have changed from the macro/external (I'm sure I don't need to tell you this) to the internal - what we do, the work that Good Business generates, the people we work with, and the businesses and NGOs involved have all changed.

But one thing has never changed - we wrote on a scrap piece of paper 'Value + Values = Good Business' and 'Good Business = Value + Values'.

No business will succeed without a great product and a great price but, increasingly even with that, it does not give you the right to succeed. The product must also be a positive contribution to society in a way that also makes me, the purchaser, want to be associated with it (think Toyota Prius, Innocent drinks, Dove, Green and Blacks...).

In 16 year this has gone from a nice to have to an absolute must have. In fact I would go so far as to say that I don't believe any new product can really be launched in the future that doesn't think as much about the impact of the broader society and environment as to the person that they want to buy it.

So you heard it here first (or sometime in the last 16 years). Business, and most importantly marketing, must evolve its obsession with just focusing on the end consumers in a vacuum, to thinking about the end consumer a part of the broader community, who matter as much.

Onwards and upwards.

Humble walking boots

In my last carnation I worked as part of the Tomorrow's Company team - a business-led think tank looking at the future of business. One of the most interesting projects I worked on was an inquiry exploring the critical success factors for tomorrow's global company.

In the final report we included a set of recommendations for tomorrow's sucessful global leaders. Humility was one that made it onto our shortlist. If only this was an attribute that made it on to the shortlist, or even the long list, of global leaders in the world of finance we might not be where we are today...or at the very least we might have seen some real changes to the banking world.

Thinking about this made it all the more refreshing to read a blog written by Jeff Swartz, President and CEO of Timeberland. From this short blog not only do you get a feel for a man at the top that is not only passionate about creating a profitable and sustainable company, but also one that listens to others and is happy to admit he doesn't have all the answers. It may only be about bottled water, but I can bet you see the same approach throughout his leadership.

Could bankers learn a bit from being in Mr Swartz's shoes (or boots)?

C is for Cat, S is for Sustainability

Sustainability is not a word that featured in my vocabulary when I was a child, but it is a sign of the times when Disney includes the word in its scripts, especially a film with very little talking anyway! I am talking about Wall-E, which I finally got round to watching the other night. I was surprised by the number of social and environmental issues that it deals with – waste, pollution, obesity, breakdown of society, role of technology and the list goes on. Disney films have often been argued to be more than ‘bland populism’ – Snow White actively fought against discrimination through her relationship with seven dwarfs did she not? Therefore I shouldn’t really have been surprised that sustainability came up - it is only logical that modern Disney films cover issues that are current in society today - as long as the messages are clear and children don’t now expect a small robot to come along and clean up the world…

Good Business

Having been helping out at the Good Business office for one week on work experience, I have seen how the industry functions and what the enviroment in the office is like:

The Good Business team is very much united and everybody is extremely friendly to one another which I believe is essential in making progress in a company. The working atmostphere feels positive and driven, which makes one feel good because you know you are getting somewhere.

My experience at Good Business was very enjoyable and I feel extremely lucky to have worked for such a good cause in such a unique company.

Scientists, celebrities…what about the sociologists?

The momentum behind Climate Change is building from every angle. The scientists are beavering away at the latest carbon busting gadget, NGOs are lobbying harder than ever and not a day goes by without another celebrity committing to de-clutter and green their life.

But an article published in nature today makes a damn good point. Where are the sociologists is all of this? As the solution to Climate Change largely lies in collective action, is it not about time that the sociologists got involved? After all aren’t they the ones who are supposed to understand why society acts the way it does? Sociologists of the world, unite!

Oh and by the way the girl who wrote it is a very good friend of mine and runs the podcast show down at Nature – check it out plug plug.

Why did the squirrel cross the road?

Several of my colleagues were convinced I was making it up when I told them that as a child I used to attend The Tufty Club. Tufty was a safety-conscious red squirrel who taught the children of the Seventies how to look both ways before crossing the road and about the difference between a pelican and a zebra crossing - at the height of his popularity, over 2 million children were members of the Club.

But a recent announcement from Volvo may mean that Tufty can at last rest in peace. The car manufacturer has announced a radical goal of ensuring that nobody (yes, you read that right - nobody) is seriously injured or killed in accidents involving any of its new cars within 11 years.

It's going to achieve this through improvements and innovations in in-car technology (e.g. systems that detect pedestrians and activate the brakes, "alert controls" that let you know when you're tired by detecting irregular driving patterns and other marvellous developments), as well as through funding driver education programmes and partnering with other stakeholders, looking at how the road infrastructure can be adapted to make it safer for everyone.

What a marvellous ambition for a company. That's true product responsibility - accepting that you are accountable not just for the impacts from your manufacturing process, but also the impacts of the people who buy and use your product.

Ambitious stuff. And maybe it could only happen in Sweden. But if they pull it off, then perhaps Tufty really can fade into quiet, and well-deserved, obscurity.

You've got 22 months...

There’s always something in the Sunday papers that stands out more than anything else. This week Revealed: the hidden benefits of a private-school education”.

Two scary stats: 1) A bright baby from a poor background is liable to be overtaken by a less bright baby from a wealthy background by the age of 22 months 2) No state school in the whole of Tottenham has even sent a pupil to Oxford.

As a state school attendee the whole issue of social mobility is both fascinating and distressing. Why did I manage to stay ahead in my first 22 months and make it to Oxford while the majority of my peers fell behind?

The answer – good parenting. I had the importance of academic achievement ingrained into me at a very early age. But for others it’s not so simple. How do you help your child read when you can’t do so yourself? Or encourage them to go to university when you have to experience of higher education?

The report which stemmed the article is great for raising awareness to the issue. But before we get carried away with sharing the benefits of private education, there are a fair few other inhibiting factors that we need to overcome first.

On a completely separate note….did anyone watch Top Gear last night? Ok, so Clarkson’s idea for removing CO2 from exhausts by attaching a giant greenhouse wasn’t exactly practical but a 10 minute green feature on Top Gear?? Hats off to you Jeremy.

Let it grow

Having read this article about how much food we currently waste and got rather depressed I was inspired to read about the Secret Seed Society. For so many of us the growing of food is totally removed from our everyday lives. Wouldn't it be great if more of us could get involved the growing of our own food, or even just having a better understanding of where it all comes from.

It certainly isn't easy for many. I for one live in a flat with no garden, but just growing a few herbs on the window sill is enormously satisfying. Okay so it might not be the silver bullet to stop climate change and reduce all the waste there currently is, but it certainly is one step in the right direction.

Maybe if we had a little more of ourselves invested in the food we eat, less of it might end up in landfill. Perhaps the first stage is to sign up as a Seed Agent...

19 ways to save the UK

Once again I’m blogging about Jonathan Porritt – potentially the nation’s most outspoken environmentalist. Today he’s delivered a list to number 10 outlining the Sustainable Development Commission’s top 19 ways to help save the planet. I’m not sure why the list stopped at 19, you’d have thought they could have made it to 20, but that’s beside the point because you know what, the list is great!

Imagine a world where happiness lessons are given outside, everyone ride bikes and vegetables grow freely in our towns – it sounds like Holland!

The next steps for implementing the list aren’t specified but apparently all ideas will be ‘seriously considered’ by the Government. So keep your eye on the high street. It might not be long until the Royal Bank of Scotland becomes the ‘Royal Bank of Sustainability’. I wonder how Mr Brown would feel about that?

One dress, 365 days

What does sustainable fashion really look like? If pushed, most of us will admit that reducing the carbon impact of our wardrobes is going to mean more than buying the odd organic t-shirt here and there. True sustainable fashion equals buying less stuff and keeping what we do have for longer. For fashion addicts, it’s not an easy message to swallow.

The Uniform Project is a one woman campaign to marry style with sustainability. Sheena Matheiken has pledged the wear the same dress for a whole year. The only thing that changes each day is the way she accessories the dress with second hand or handmade items, which supporters can donate. You can follow her progress and see what she’s conjured up on a daily basis (pictured is today’s ensemble - Day 53 of the project). Being a New York hipster with access to lots of funky accessories (and a dress that was especially made for the campaign by a designer chum), she’s not scrubbing up too badly at all.

The project is also a fundraiser the Akanksha Foundation, a grassroots education movement in India. At the end of the year, all contributions from supporters will go toward Akanksha’s School Project to fund uniforms and other educational expenses for slum children in India.

Hygiene freaks, fear not, there are seven identical copies of the dress to be worn in rotation…

Are small changes really going to reduce the number?

Today Deutsche bank launched Know The Number a live carbon calculator that measures the total amount of greenhouse gasses in the Earth's atmosphere. It’s big and it’s going up pretty damn quickly - ek.

I also happened to be sent the EU’s carbon calculator. It’s a new take, going straight to making pledges to reduce your footprint rather than calculating it. However the impact that some of the pledges have is laughable. I know every little helps but seriously, 3 kg of CO2 for turning the tap off when brushing your teeth every day for a year? 8kg for remembering reusable bags for every shopping trip? At this rate we’re a long way from making any significant reduction to our 11 tonnes figure never mind the 3,642,051,347,339 that, at last count, Deutsche claims is in the atmosphere.

This point isn't a new one – it reminded me of a piece in the Guardian from 2007 that’s worth a read. But hopefully with giants like Deutsche throwing investment at this area we won’t just be relying on just individual behaviour change to turn this number around. Bring on Copenhagen, it’s time for our political leaders to get on board.

Oh and in the mean time, remember to wash at 30.

Monopoly: It's not just a game...

On holiday with a group of friends last week, we decided to play a big game of Monopoly to pass the evening. Fantastic, I thought, I used to love Monopoly as a kid – such a wholesome, family-friendly game.

Wrong. It’s brutal. After the misfortune of not landing on a single street during the first three trips round the board, I found myself with no property and had to spend the next three hours watching my funds ebb away slowly as I paid the everybody else increasingly exorbitant rent with my every move. (Actually, I wasn’t completely property-less – I did manage to get hold of one of those brown streets. You know, the ones that yield £1 rent for each visit). It might be a game designed to celebrate the ‘fun’ of capitalism – the chance to buy property, accrue wealth and beat one’s rivals - but, with my unlucky start in life, I found myself with quite the opposite perspective. I was downtrodden and despairing of ever improving my lot, not to mention feeling abused by tycoons who didn’t seem inclined to show much social responsibility as they built their empires and ruthlessly swallowed up the smaller landlords (see, it’s not an entirely irrelevant post…)

So I’ve changed my mind about Monopoly – less a fun childhood game, more a stark reminder that for every big winner there have to be other unlucky losers, and that those losers will struggle to ever become winners after a bad start. I don’t think I’ll be playing again any time soon. Of course, had the Monopoly boot been on the other foot, maybe I’d have a different view.

Just in time for BBQ season!

As mentioned by David in his last post, the latest celebrity endorsed environmental campaign to be launched is ‘Meat Free Mondays’. The campaign encourages every household to give up meat for at least one day each week and help slow global warming. Until not so long ago environmental campaigns have focused on reducing things like travel, energy use and waste and this has frequently been met with hostility. It will be interesting to see how people react to being told to make changes to something more personal like their diet. Will the die-hard ‘no meat, no meal’ ever choose pulses over steak, or will it propel them in the opposite direction to join the ‘global warming is baloney’ camp? Unfortunately, even the message that the livestock industry is responsible for 18% of man's global greenhouse emissions does not seem to concern everybody.

Of course, having high profile celebrity supporters helps, although if it was as simple as Paul McCartney and family telling us to change what we eat would we not already be a nation of trim, healthy and probably a lot older individuals??

Just gone fishing

It seems that if we carry on as we are, the phrase "just gone finishing" may be one of the past as there will be nothing to catch. A new documentary, The End of the Line, has predicted that by 2048 we could have hunted the world's fish popluation to extinction.

What really struck me about the situation are the numbers...

• Global fishing industry is subsidised to the tune of about $14bn a year
• 90% of Europe's fish stocks are over-fished
• 40-60% of fish caught a year are thrown over the side (to keep within EU quotas)
• The mouth of the largest commercial net is big enough to swollow 12 jumbo jets
• 70% of the worlds fish stocks are now fully exploited

The difficulty is that not only are governments trying to protect their interests (i.e. the country's fishing industry) which often leads them to ignore scientific advice, but we are also being advised to eat more fish (the Foods Standards Agency is still pushing its "eat two [fish] a week" campaign). Worldwide we are now eating five times as much fish as we did in 1950 and, in the UK, sales of fresh fish outstripped fresh poultry for the first time last year.

So what is the solution? Should we stop eating fish? Just yesterday Paul McCartney suggested we should have Meat Free Mondays. Should we add to that Fish Free Fridays?

The situation is complex and, although there is some hope from sustainable fishing policies in countries such as New Zealand, there needs to be co-ordinated bold moves from governments around the world. After all if we don't act now we'll be dealing with the collapse of an entire industry and not just the fact that there's no fish to go with our chips.

Dynamic Demand - coming soon?

How do we feel about electricity companies controlling when our fridge compressor kicks in, or our dishwasher does its stuff? Gordon thinks it' s good idea and you have to say he has a point. At the moment UK electricity consumption fluctuates wildly from 30 to 60 gigawatts through the day and the only tool that engineers at National Grid have to cope with the spikes in demand is the "spinning reserve" . This simply means that additional power stations are kept running, but their electricity output is not used, just to be ready for any increase in demand. Estimates suggest that we produce over 2 million tonnes of unnecessary CO2 each year, just in case we all decide to have a cup of tea at the same time.

Dynamic demand attempts to divert attention from the supply side and refocus on managing demand, in order to smooth out the profile. In practical terms this means re engineering domestic appliances like fridges, dishwashers and immersion heaters to "listen" to the grid and operate when demand is low, not high. This seems like a good idea but I'm sure we'll see resistance from those (probably climate change protesters!) who feel their privacy is being invaded.

The role out of smart meters next year will pave the way for this sort of intelligent grid and it seems like it's only a matter of time before you'll be able to blame the utility company for forgetting to turn the dishwasher on.

On yer bike!

Assuming that London Underground don't reach an agreement with the RMT in the next couple of hours, I'll be joining the throngs of commuters cycling into work tomorrow. Actually, I do try and cycle when possible, but as the rest of the team will tell you, I'm very much a fair weather cyclist - however, it doesn't look like I'll have much of a choice tomorrow if the BBC forecast is to be believed.

Interesting to see that TfL are organising extra cycle parking and escorted cycle routes for the influx of new cyclists turning out onto the roads tomorrow. Perhaps this is the start of a cycling revolution. Who knows? But look out for me tomorrow as I dodge the rain showers and the strikers. 

Ahem, I’ll just dig out my Manolos…

I’ve always been a bit scared of shopping in charity shops – it just seems a bit of a hassle! I don’t think I’m alone in thinking this, although the recession has seen a change with more people beginning to turn to charity shops and their second hand bargains. Mary Portas is leading the way with her charity shop revival campaign showcased on BBC2’s Mary Queen of Charity Shops and featured in today’s G2.

Great idea, updating the frumpy charity shop image, encouraging us to adopt a more sustainable approach to fashion and even creating a way for charities to forge links with businesses - but is it really going to work? I’m sceptical, especially as her successful ‘flagship’ store in Westfield Shopping Centre was filled with designer items donated by ‘fashion pals’ and Grazia readers…

Beautiful - but vacuous?

Today is World Environment Day – but being an eco-aware sort of a person you knew that already, right?

It also sees the release of Home, a documentary made by Yann Arthus-Bertrand (famous for his Earth from the Air photography) about the earth's fragile eco-system and the impact of human excesses. If you have an hour and a half to spare, you can watch the whole thing on a dedicated YouTube channel.

French luxury brand owner PPR has backed the film to the tune of 12 million Euros, allowing it to be given away for free to distributors. It’s an interesting (some would say risky) move for the owners of Gucci, Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent and Puma - not well known for their environmental credentials.

Narrated by Glenn Close (and Salma Hayek in the Spanish version) it has that polished, glossy feel that you’d expect from a company like PPR. And it’s undoubtedly beautifully shot. But as with all these kind of films, their value depends on their ability to engage with individuals who aren't already signed up to the green agenda. Am I really going to invest time in watching this if I'm not someone who is already pretty interested in the environment and committed to doing my bit? Or are these grand scale cinematic projects aimed at creating an emotional response exactly what we need to change the way people think about climate change?

Let us know what you think...

Can we blame the fatties?

Jonathan Porritt’s claim that fat people are causing climate change got a lot of discussion going in our office. As someone who has been called ‘fattist’ in the past and who assumes that most fat people are lazy and unmotivated, I was the first to put my hand up and agree.

But is it really that simple? Yes they eat more meat and processed foods and get out on their bikes less but does that mean they have a bigger carbon footprint? There is a strong correlation between obesity and lower social-economic class and although they eat more, they probably fly less and live in smaller houses. If we ever moved to a carbon quota system I reckon it may be the thin affluent people who end up buying credits from the poor fat people, not the other way around.

Putting customers first

The recession is a tough time for lots of people and it is pretty difficult to see any silver linings. However, one that I have noticed recently is the fact that it is forcing many companies to put their customers back at the top of their priority list.

Suddenly we are seeing companies discounting their rates, offering new packages, and generally pulling out all of the stops to keep hold of their customers. Even if we are unemployed, companies want to keep us as customers. Check out this recent article in the FT.

It may be self-interested, but it certainly helps some companies get back to basics.

'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.