Let me tell you a story

‘Sustainability’ is a word that is given plenty of air time by business at the moment. For many companies, being sustainable means being less bad. While this is a step in the right direction, the problem is that being less bad isn’t as truly sustainable as being good.

When it comes to product sustainability too often business starts from the wrong place – meaning that the effect is one of “make-do-and-mend” rather than an ideal world solution. This is partly a necessity, since many companies – especially those smaller-to-medium sized enterprises – lack the expertise within their own workforce, and the financial resources required to really invest in sustainable innovation.

So I was interested to read about Material Short Stories, a German company set up with the specific aim of helping companies to identify sustainable materials for product manufacture. You send them a visual of your product (and 600 euros) and they send back a unique booklet that details five innovative materials that have been selected and applied as a sketch to your product.

Material Short Stories provides an outsourcing service that helps bring product material sustainability expertise to the masses, without having to have an R&D department the size of Procter and Gamble. As with many things that drive the sustainability agenda forward it is the little steps (made by lots of small companies) that will help us make many of the big leaps forward.

The cult continues

Considering that it has been mentioned in almost every conversation, meeting and email exchange that I've had since Thursday morning, I thought I should write about it here. Yes, you all know what I'm talking about (cue celestial music): 'the ipad'!
Is it good, is it bad? I don't know and I'm probably not going to have a chance to find out for a while... What gets me is that everyone is talking about it. What they have created is innovative but it is not as innovative as the hype would make you believe. The fact is that it doesn't really matter anymore - the Apple brand is so powerful that they could produce something very ordinary and consumers would still start lining up outside Apple stores the world around.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no different to anyone else and on Wednesday evening I was intrigued as the rest of you about what they were going to reveal. I'm just looking forward to what they do next...

Escaping Alcatraz... with the help of a little rum

Radio 4 had an interesting subject for its In Business programme last week – the Santa Teresa Rum Company in Venezuela. The company operates in Aragua, an area blighted by high levels of gang-related violent crime and unemployment, and has taken an enlightened approach to tackling these social problems. Its initiative began in 2000, when a local gang attacked a staff member at the factory. Once arrested, the company offered the two men involved 3 months’ unpaid work as an alternative a jail sentence. The whole gang arrived the next day to start work. Thus began Project Alcatraz, which aims to help gang members ‘free’ themselves from a bleak future by offering them work experience and training that will re-integrate them into society. The project has catered for five gangs to date, which have effectively been ‘disarmed’, and seen the local incidence of crime fall by 40 per cent.

This is a nice example of community investment that has grown in the ‘right’ way – not a programme decided on in boardrooms but, rather, a response to issues that were relevant to the business on the ground. It recognises that business doesn’t operate in a vacuum, but is heavily affected by the environment around it. It also gives us an unusual perspective on the idea of carrying out community investment to gain a ‘licence to operate’ – usually associated with multi-national mining and oil companies. In this case, however, playing an important social function has helped Santa Teresa to win support and legitimacy in a political environment that is otherwise prone to hostility towards business.