Green Snow

It is that time of year again when the powder hungry amongst us start avidly checking the snow forecasts, dust off our ski boots and dream of snow covered slopes. But most of us spare little thought for the environmental impact of our ski holiday or the sustainability of our pursuit, despite skiers and snowboarders being among the first to experience the direct effects of climate change. Glaciers are retreating and snow lines are creeping higher leading resorts to use increasingly energy intensive methods of artificial snow creation.

Luckily the Ski Club of Great Britain has launched its new website that hosts an array of advice for skiers and holidaymakers on how to ‘Respect the Mountain’. They have come up with the Green Resorts Guide that assesses the environmental management systems that ski resorts are implementing in a bid to improve their environmental impact. Resorts are rated on areas such as green building policy, recycling facilities, no traffic zones and their use of green power.
The Ski Club of Great Britain is doing a stellar job of raising awareness of the environmental impact that the snowsports industry is having on and off the mountain. From encouraging tourists to take the train instead of flying, to organising seasonal ‘Spring Cleans’ to help clear up resorts, this Not-for-Profit is miles ahead of tour-operators and ski holiday companies in the race to reduce the environmental impact of snowsports.

Some other best practice models are popping up across Europe with the White Pod Resort offering a unique concept to eco-ski holidays (www.whitepod.com) and The Monte Rosa Refuge ((www.section-monte-rosa.ch) uses 90% solar power and is a cooking pot of groundbreaking environmental and energy systems

But whilst tour operators are beginning to implement measures that protect the mountain habitat they work in, and are looking for ways to reduce the overall emissions that the Alpine holiday industry creates, there is still a long way to go.

A leap in the wrong direction?

LeapCR recently launched a white paper on employee engagement, and whilst it’s great to have a new contribution to the debate, I have to say that this report left me dissatisfied

There are some significant stats in there: engaged employees are 87% more likely to stay, and 86% are happier at work. Their employer is likely to have a 26% higher revenue per employee. In fact, the report is absolutely spot on in highlighting the benefits of an engaged workforce. But when it comes to the meat of it – how you might actually go about creating this happy, loyal and productive community – I’m left hugely disappointed.

Is engaging employees really as simple as getting them involved in volunteering activity or a charity event every once in a while? Surely to create a truly engaged workforce, the most effective approach is to make them feel a real part of the company and its objectives, to believe in the company vision, be happy about what the business is trying to achieve, be supported by their peers and manager, feel fulfilled in their daily work. This isn’t easy; it takes a proper strategy.

For the 84% of graduates that seek socially responsible employment, I doubt that being given the chance to volunteer would make them feel that they’re working for a responsible business. Surely working for an employer that demonstrates it’s embedding responsibility in business practices would be a greater motivator and more convincing than a few charity events, no matter how worthy the cause.

good to know Google cares

Google has often led the way in innovation and once again it is ahead of the market in it's new 'good to know' campaign. As the internet and digital technologies become increasingly prevalent consumers are often more worried about their privacy and security online.

Google has been quick to respond to this attitude through it's new 'good to know' campaign. A range of unusual, humorous cartoons have started popping up on trains, in newspapers and online, bringing attention to Google's ideas and efforts to ensure safer browsing. By working with the citizen's advice bureau it has gained some real credibility for doing good in society too.

For us, what's really interesting about the campaign is that it shows how a company can truly use responsibility to differentiate from its competitors. A web browser, an email account or a search engine, could easily be seen as commodities. Yet Google has always made great efforts to differentiate itself and that's why it's great to see that its using responsibility as its latest weapon of choice.

November e-bulletin

The protesters of the Occupy Movement have decided to get up and take action on something they believe in, they're looking for ways of getting their voices heard, they want to have a debate about our future.

We whole heartedly welcome the activism and energy and debate. But we don't agree with them. The problem with the protestors is that they don't know what they want to change, they don't have any alternatives and they're wrong to just rail against business as if it's a monolithic entity or against capitalism as though it's the system that's the problem. It's not.

And indeed with the economic news seeming to get bleaker by the day, we need the enormous capacity of businesses to generate wealth and get things moving more than almost ever before. It's the only way we're going to move forward.

In this month’s Good Business e-bulletin, Giles calls for new bravery from business and delves into what this might look like and how we might measure it. To read more, email David@goodbusiness.co.uk.

It's a curious old world

The Rio +20 Summit is taking place next year and the environment press is already trying to gee everyone up and convince us that this, not Copenhagen 2009 or Cancun 2010, has to be the turning point in a global response to climate change. There are always high hopes for these conferences and to date none have lived up to expectations. That is why Paul Hohnen writing in the Guardian last week quite rightly pointed out that ‘the message from Rio+20 matters more than ever’. Paul identifies 5 groups of people, each with a different perspective on and response to climate change. There’s the ‘clueless’, the ‘cynics’, the ‘curious’, the ‘champions’, and the ‘calamitists’ – no great surprises and I’m sure we all know people that would fit into these categories. The group that clearly need the most focus is ‘the curious’; they are the ones that haven’t fully made up their mind either way and need a bit of encouragement. And this is where businesses can play a powerful role. Both by taking actions to reduce their own impacts and helping consumers find ways to reduce theirs, companies and brands can help empower ‘the curious’ to feel like they are part of something bigger and that their actions, however small they may seem on their own, can actually make a profound and positive difference.

From my sarcasm at the beginning of this post, perhaps you’ll assume I’m a cynic; to a certain degree you’d be right. But it’s not cynicism about the reality of climate change or the need for the Rio+20 Summit; it’s cynicism about what is expected from these summits and whether efforts would be better spent focusing on supporting and pushing business to take a greater lead.

Reinventing the high street

How do we design a high street as if the world mattered? That was the question set by Retail Reset at the Changemakers Fayre at Westminster Hub, last night.

As the post-it notes and scribbles started flying, pretty soon a debate emerged about chain stores and big business – where do they sit in all this? Do they have a role to play or are they just a recipe for clone town Britain? How can they contribute more positively to our high streets?

Which got me thinking…because while it’s great to see more and more businesses think seriously about how they can have a more positive impact, too often this feels hidden behind a CR report – a series of (albeit well-meaning) programmes, initiatives and commitments which can seem removed from the everyday activity of the company on the high street.

Surely there’s a missed opportunity here? Rather than just talking about what’s going on elsewhere, why not show it in action? Have a clothes retailer give over a section of their shop floor to provide working space for young designers, or a supermarket run regular classes in seasonal cooking in their store, or a bank deliver drop in business advice sessions for young entrepreneurs, or a communications company provide a space to support small business…

You get the idea.

Companies need to be brave about showing people what it means to them to be a good business – and through doing so they can not only talk to their customers more effectively, but play a vital role in making our high streets more exciting, inspiring and interesting places to be.

Sweet Success

As someone who grew up in a house next door to 6 buzzing hives, I’ve always had an interest in bees.

When we were small, it was all about the delicious honey and trying to avoid standing on the bees that had decided to take a break on the garden lawn. Now, well, it’s still about delicious honey, but I’ve also come to appreciate just how unique and interesting the whole concept of bee-keeping is.

Honey’s great because it’s so easy to be local. And I mean really local, because bees will go far and wide to hunt nectar. This summer, Travelocity identified The Fairmont Royal York in Toronto as one of its top-5 green hotels. The 10,000 bees on its roof, which produce honey for its restaurant, are key to its success and branding as a Honey Moon Suite.

Honey is linked with sustainability – in our minds and in reality. People love honey because it's natural. Its production relies on, and is friendly to, the environment. It can also be a social solution in areas where few sustainable farming options exist. From London to Afghanistan, from NYC to Malawi, bee-keeping is a trend that’s good for the environment and good for communities.

There’s a community in Sweden that’s so convinced by honey as the symbol of sustainability that they’ve made a local currency out of it: the Djing in Lund isn’t backed up with gold, but jars of the golden stuff. Perhaps honey money isn’t the solution for the Euro crisis. But let’s hope bees keep their growing role in our ideas about sustainable success.

Add some colour

Forget naming a star, naming a colour is the new 'in' thing. Dulux's quirky new partnership with UNICEF allows the public to choose and name a colour from the 16.7 million that the average computer, tablet or smartphone are able to display. Whilst at first I found it quite tricky to narrow it down with all that choice, my friend is now the proud new owner of a colour I quite originally named 'teal'. And the clever part is that the price, for the novelty concept of owning a colour, is in that of a donation to UNICEF. So by adding a colour to the list of useless items you own, you will in fact be adding colour to other people's lives too.

Can we survive progress?

First off I think I should admit that there is a slight conflict of interest in this blog. It is a cousin of mine that is one of the producers for this documentary film.

However, with that having been said (and having only seen the trailor and read the reviews) it feels like a very timely (funnily enough they started work on it way back in 2005) and a badly needed documentary that will hopefully get some real airtime in the way that an Inconvenient Truth did in helping more people understand the direction we are currently heading.

It features some of the world’s great contemporary thinkers including Jane Goodall, Margaret Atwood, David Suzuki and Stephen Hawking. Inspired by Ronald Wright’s bestselling non-fiction book about societal collapse, this documentary explores the idea of “progress traps” in our modern world. At the moment we are on a trajectory that focuses, rewards and delivers bad progress - unsustainable progress. This documentary focuses on taking stock of where are and understanding what we need to change to allow us to make progress in a positive and sustainable way in the future.

The signs are good for its success. It has already taken part in the Toronto International Film Festival, and had its world premiere at the event on Sunday, September 11th. It has also been selected for the Vancouver International Film Festival and Montreal's Festival du nouveau cinema.

Fingers crossed that this helps mainstream some of the real issues business, government and society needs to address.

To see the trailer, go to:

http://kinetictrailers2.com/Progress/Progress_V9.mov

A boost for Breakfast

It’s been a good month for positive action by some of the UK’s food giants.

Mums – and nutritionists – will be able to say ‘breakfast is the most important meal of the day’ with more confidence after Kellogg’s announced that it is reformulating Coco Pops to have less sugar, and it’s increasing the number of healthy options in its product range.

And this week McDonalds made clear its support for the government’s Responsibility Deal when it started listing calories on its menus – a very public recognition of its responsibility to tackle obesity (even if it did promote a storm in the blogosphere complaining that ‘nudges’ do no good to change behaviour).

Giving through action

I came across this interesting social enterprise that enables you to sponsor your friends through action rather than money. It’s the brainchild of Hermione Taylor and her friend who wanted to challenge themselves for a good cause but didn’t like the idea of asking their friends for money. Instead they asked their friends to sponsor them by doing simple green actions instead. This idea grew into DoNation.

It works a bit like Just-Giving, you upload your challenge, and then friends can pledge to do simple green actions such as riding a bike, washing your clothes at 30 degrees, cutting down on meat etc. Each action has a CO2 saving and so far 35,771 kg of CO2 has been saved through pledges. This doesn’t mean much to me and they’d do well to include an equivalent to put the saving into perspective; however, overall, I think it’s an interesting concept.

Like many of you, I get millions of emails from friends requesting sponsorship – especially in the lead up to the London marathon – and think this new approach is quite refreshing. It also follows hot on the heels of Do Some Good, the app from Orange that enables people to carry out actions for charity using their mobile phones. There is definitely a trend towards more innovative ways for people to give something back.

Apparently ‘CO2 is the currency of The DoNation, not the soul’, in other words it’s the only way to quantify people’s actions. This means that the actions are a bit boring and might turn more people off than on. If they could include and find a way to quantify We Are What We Do type actions, it might feel more innovative and appeal to a wider audience.

Whilst I do agree that people are more likely to change their behaviour for their friends than for the good of the planet, I’m still a little bit sceptical about whether this initiative will actually attract the attention of anyone who is not already a ‘concerned consumer'.

Telling the right stories

Writing in yesterday’s Financial Times, Michael Skapinker argues that the central problem with corporate responsibility is that what the public expects may not be what shareholders want.

What’s needed, he says, is for companies to better communicate the business value of responsible business – and to do that they need a compelling narrative.

So far so good. Gaining the understanding and support of shareholders is an important part of a successful responsible business strategy. They are, after all, key stakeholders. And there’s no shortage of messages to tell. There are the financial opportunities of growth into new markets, reaching new customers, cost savings, potential for new products, and so on, as well as the benefits of improved employee satisfaction, loyalty etc., let alone the potential for brand and reputation strengthening and differentiation.

But too often the importance of that narrative is forgotten or lost. Whilst exploring ways to get shareholders on board, Michael Skapinker gets his teeth into General Electric’s corporate citizenship report and website, lamenting the lack of storytelling to engage the reader. Why, he asks, do they tell us about supporting girls through school in Kenya without giving case studies?

Having an engaging narrative is an important part of communications, but it’s not the golden key to getting shareholders on board!

If we’re thinking about General Electric, how about talking of the 17% increase in brand value as a result of their sustainable venture ecomagination? Or the fact that ecomagination’s revenue is set to grow at twice the rate of total company revenue over the next five years, having generated $18 billion in the tough climate of 2009?

Skapinker is right that responsibility communications benefit from a good narrative. But that narrative needs the richness of business value as well as heart-warming stories, to get all stakeholders on board.

Doing the Right Thing

‘Doing the right thing’ isn’t always easy in business, even if you can see the commercial opportunity.

John Lewis is celebrating the release of its latest CSR report, which says that doing the right thing isn’t just good economics, it’s also part of their purpose as a partnership.

The colourful report highlights some steady achievements in its summary - in areas like reducing environmental impacts, keeping employees happy and supporting local communities. But why is the really meaty stuff – about products and customers – not put in the spotlight?

M&S is shouting very clearly about what it stands for: it plans to be “the most sustainable retailer in the world” by 2015. What does John Lewis stand for? A partnership, yes; one that focuses on quality in every sense of the word, one might think. With such huge potential to show what this means for the business, its world, our world and the future, a more innovative and relevant CSR strategy and stronger communications are needed. Their latest CSR report feels like it’s missed a trick.

The warm glow of the supply chain

The private sector should be accepted as a positive driving force behind global poverty reduction - and the international development community needs to stop being so scared of the profit motive. So argues Peter Davis of the Overseas Development Institute this week.

But why does suspicion and concern still surround the role of companies overseas?

Perhaps it’s the continued controversy around the heroes and horrors of supply chain ethics in sectors as broad as electronics and fashion. Some have felt the bite of getting it wrong or, Primark might argue, appearing to get it wrong.

Consumer-facing brands like Apple and Levi Strauss are now leading the charge towards reassuring their customers that there’s a warm glow and no murky shadow behind their products. Some are scared of the risks, others have seen the opportunities.

The flurry of activity so far this year to push up standards in supply chains is refreshing. Those companies that do it with real commitment will reassure the international development community. And those that communicate it right will be rewarded by consumers.

Black Cab Brand Butlers

My cycle route home is populated by a growing number of Vodafone’s new brand butlers – these eye-catching black cabs.

The cabs enable passengers to pay for the cab by text message – and also to charge up their mobile phones while on the move. The idea is to provide a helpful service, making your life easier and leaving you thinking positively about the brand, thanks to its butler.

This initiative comes hard on the heels of Just Text Giving, Vodafone’s new service to enable all and any charity to receive text donations of up to £10, free of fees.

Some nice and simple steps to making things easier for customers and charities.

RIP GDP?

What do we value the most? A healthy bank balance? A clean river? Being able to borrow milk from your neighbours?

What we value as individuals varies immensely, so in some ways it’s surprising that so many of the benchmarks and targets we set ourselves in society and business are focussed on monetary measures of wealth and growth.

But things are on the move.

On Tuesday, the OECD launched their alternative measure of wellbeing – ‘Your Better Life Index’ – which encourages you to explore how countries compare, not just on traditional factors such as jobs and income, but also community, work-life balance and life satisfaction. Rather than proclaiming any one country top of the table, the countries rise and fall as you decide what wellbeing means to you.

And that’s not all. Back in November last year, David Cameron announced plans by the government to measure the nation’s happiness and introduced the notion of ‘general well-being’ (GWB) as an alternative to the traditional GDP. Along with initiatives such as Mappiness, Action for Happiness, and organisations such as the new economics foundation, it’s coming at us from all sides.

So how should businesses respond?

As the backbone of the economy, businesses have been the key driver of GDP and other traditional measures of progress. But with growing momentum behind new measures of ‘progress’, there’s a clear opportunity for business leadership in this space. And with evidence demonstrating strong links between greater well-being and economic prosperity, this is also more than just an altruistic goal. I’m looking forward to some real trailblazers demonstrating creative thinking in creating value and success beyond numbers.

Sustainability in Sport

Good to see that some footballers are interested in more than gagging orders and playing at home...and away

Gary Neville has set up Sustainability in Sport an initiative that aims to "support the continuing growth of sport within UK communities, whilst reducing the associated environmental impacts". He hopes to enjoy as much success making football fans conscious of the environment as the Kick It Out campaign did highlighting sport’s problems with racism.

Really positive interview in the T2 today for those who have access or some part coverage from The Telegraph.

Calculus and curry

I came across this in my local news bulletin and thought it's a really nice example of a simple project that uses local community space in a positive way.

Every Tuesday and Wednesday Tower Tandoori in Tower Bridge Road opens its doors to 20 pupils from a local school to let them receive Maths tuition from City University students.

After their two hours of intensive calculation, the restaurant provides the tutors and students with a curry.

Trig and tikka. Nice.

http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/5303

The promo that will just keep giving

Not sure about you, but whenever I see a bunch of promo girls and boys hanging outside a tube or train station I have a sinking feeling that another brand is giving out loads of samples and leaflets most of which end up in the next available bin.

So this morning as I was walking through Trafalgar Square the sight of a promo team coming towards me made my heart sink - that was until I realised what they were giving out...my very own tomato plant all ready to go.

It turns out that B&Q are running a campaign to get Britain gardening. They have teamed up with a charity called Capital Growth dedicated to creating new food growing spaces across the capital. We all talk about locally sourced food. This is a great example of not only a truly useful promo givaway, but something that might just get a few of us growing our own.

It certainly put a smile on my face this morning and I'm hoping by July I might just be enjoying a desk grown tomoto at lunchtime!

Tech is the word

In last Thursday’s Raconteur supplement about e-retail there was a list of ways that retailers are using mobile technology to improve the customer experience in-store (p.8-9). My favourite is the use of Radio Frequency Identification Tags on products so that you no longer have to queue up to pay; instead, sensors at the store door are able to pick up what you have in your bag or trolley and charge the correct amount to a pre-registered card. Certainly makes self-service check outs look like something out of the dark ages, although, having said that, I can imagine the automated system having a number of teething problems...

One of the other technological innovations mentioned was an application that enables customers to scan product barcodes a see a ‘video showing them how a product is made, information about its Fairtrade status or footage of catwalk shows’. A great way of empowering consumers to be more discerning about what they buy, and a great opportunity for manufacturers and retailers to showcase the responsible/sustainable credentials of their products. In any case, with all these new innovations in technology, there are going to be far fewer places to hide!

Supermarket waste top of consumer concerns

Today’s e-bulletin from Good Business looks at the latest Concerned Consumer Index (CCI) results on the supermarket sector.

All retailers have seen a rise in consumer trust (M&S remain top on almost all ethical measures) and nearly half of consumers (49%) think the sector is doing enough to address its social and environmental issues - the highest of any sector we survey.

However, the sector is still facing a number of serious issues, none more pressing than waste. 92% of consumers think food waste in the supermarket sector is a serious issue and more needs to be done about it. Given that a commitment to no landfill and compostable waste is the social or environmental issue that has seen the biggest rise in importance when it comes to determining consumers' supermarket choice (up 12% from 2010 to 55%), this is clearly going to be one of the big talking points of 2011.

Get in touch if you would like to read the full e-bulletin news on consumer attitudes towards supermarkets, what the Government’s new Responsibility Deals mean for businesses, the business case for responsibility, and more. Or click here to join our mailing list.

Seeing bigger value in shared value

Clear the stage for Puma CEO Jochen Zeitz. He’s the latest big name calling for a paradigm shift towards businesses thinking about how to “do more good, not just less bad”. ‘CSR’ can't be confined to a single department, he says, ‘responsibility’ must be woven into the fabric of big business.

Zeitz has seen the business benefit of this kind of approach. His comments are reported in Marketing Week in an article titled ‘The New CSR: This time it’s profitable’, which documents the rush of companies realising that good business is good for the bottom line.

From M&S' £50million benefit of Plan A, to Coca Cola's $100million saving from reduced packaging, this is valuable reading for those knocking on the Chief Financial Officer's door.

The idea that businesses can generate real business value through delivering broader societal value is nothing new. It’s something that Good Business has been helping companies to achieve since 1997! But there certainly seems to be a real and growing buzz about ‘shared value’ this year, kicking off in January with a challenge to old-style capitalist models from Harvard School’s Professor Michael Porter. Let’s hope Marketing Week can inspire the marketing world to join the charge towards responsible growth.

Time to rethink your appearance

Recession and our choice of images - it's not something that I would have really thought about but, having read this recent article and gone through the process of helping write and source content and images for one of our client's responsible business section of its Annual Report, its clearly something on the corporate agenda. What we're seeing is a shift in the images used in corporate communication in these times of austerity.

Could this be a line in the sand that starts to demonstrate how much more companies are thinking about sustainability and corporate responsibility? Many businesses are showing they are concerned about what its stakeholders think of it. Business is aware that trust needs to be rebuilt. Aloofness, arrogance and one up-manship are out. In are open, friendly, inclusive pictures that show you, as a business, cares – as David Cameron might say – “we’re all in this together”.

Okay so we’re talking about communications and communications doesn't always mean the company has changed. However, I’m a great believer that half the battle is just starting the process. Often writing a report is less about what is written and more about the process of starting to think about the issues you are reporting about. Also, in this day and age of technology and social media if you don't live up to your word, you will be found out pretty quickly.

I’m sure there are plenty of examples of where companies have made this shift – can you think of any examples that stand out? Or examples that don't quite live up to the pictures?

Exporting Social Enterprise

I was reminded this week of a lunch I went to last year where I sat next to Jon Cracknel, director of the Goldsmith family's JMG Foundation, which funds campaigning work around ecological issues in farming. Jon made the point that in many ways the UK was over-provisioned with funders in the area of food and farming (true at the time, perhaps less so a year later) and that the way to use this over-provisioning was to create successful models to tackle particular issues. He saw the UK as an incubator of experimental initiatives and campaigns, where the funding surfeit allowed a tolerance of the sort of failure rates you might expect from dot com start ups and where the best would survive and could then be duplicated overseas at a fraction of the cost. It was an interesting market based view of philanthropy funding, but he wasn't able to come up with any examples.

The Sustainable Restaurant Association celebrates its first birthday this week. We launched into the teeth of the recession as a not for profit that supports restaurants making positive changes to the way they operate and we survived a challenging first year thanks to the generosity of some of the funders Jon was talking about. Over the last year we've learnt a huge amount and created a blueprint for a successful membership association which, with a little pump priming, can become a financially self sustaining business.

We are now, as a vindication of Jon's vision, working with our first overseas partner to launch in Netherlands later this year. It made me wonder how many other UK initiatives have been afforded the time and space to fine tune what they do, how this fits into the vaunted "knowledge economy" and what could be done to support the export of similar initiatives.

energyshare - 6/10

A colleague alerted me to the new energyshare initiative from British Gas (and, slightly bafflingly, from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall...who I know is most definitely of the knit-your-own-lentil-soup persuasion but wouldn't necessarily be my go-to person for advice on green energy) which wants to encourage us to get together with our neighbours and generate our own electricity, sell it back to the grid, and use the funds to do something awesome. So far, so very Big Society.

I really, really want to love this idea. It's got everything - getting to know your neighbours, cutting your carbon footprint, social media, saving money. But it's a classic example of a great idea let down by poor execution (at the moment - to be fair to British Gas this is the beta version) . If I was seized with a sudden urge to erect a wind turbine on the new pedestrian zone outside the Ritzy cinema in Brixton, I'm not entirely sure I'd know how to go about it based on this website. The "how to" guides are buried away, there are lots of different and distracting elements that take the focus away from the core idea, and it lacks an easy-to-use overview. On the other hand, if I already had the idea, the support, the know how and the motivation, perhaps energyshare would be the difference between my idea succeeding and failing.

So, 6/10 for energyshare - great idea, great potential, just needs a bit more work to make it truly great.

Inspire us, Don't scare us

The power of brands to inspire us and change our behaviour is huge.

The challenge to create a sustainable future for people and planet is huge.

So surely the opportunity to harness the power of brands, marketing and advertising to create a sustainable future is a match made in heaven. You’d have thought so, but the problem is that so few brands are seeing, or stepping up to, the role they can play.

Get it right and your brand could just be the disruptive force that makes us think in a different way (about the world and your brand). Makes us re-look at the way we have always done things. Inspires us to be better. Drives us to a more sustainable future.

The drive bit at the end is actually what inspired me to write this. BMW have just launched its stand alone sub-brand, called BMW i, with the motto “Born Electric”. The car maker is rebranding its sustainable vehicles division in an effort to differentiate its upcoming line of electric vehicles.

What caught my eye is the video on its new website. The video is not about reducing things. It’s not about stopping what you are doing or having a worse life.

It’s about inspiring us to do more. It’s about having a better life. It’s about thinking about things in a different way.

Okay, so BMW aren’t going to stop producing gas guzzlers for the foreseeable future, but if they can stimulate greater consumer demand for change by inspiring more of us to think differently, we might move more quickly towards a more sustainable future.

Fairtrade Flavours this Fortnight

Fairtrade Fortnight has returned, and this year it’s all about showing off.

Businesses, says the Fairtrade Foundation, need to be ‘loud and proud’ about how they’re helping sustainable development through fairtrade. What better week to start getting loud than this?

Sainsbury’s agrees. As of today, you can find fairtrade coffee from the Democratic Republic of Congo on its shelves. And Cadbury is getting loud too, keen to let everyone know about the Fairtrade goodness of Dairy Milk. 20% of profits from the chocolate bars sold during the fortnight will go towards solar power projects in Ghana.

If you’re looking to participate on a personal level, you could get involved with the world record attempt for bunting (fairtrade style, of course). Personally, I think I’ll head down to Soho’s Fairshare store on Berwick Street, where they’re serving up Fairtrade Flavour cupcakes. What tastier way to show support?

Marketing a Bigger Picture

Marketing has the power to transform brands, inspire consumers and move the world. But has marketing forgotten its own potential?

A new white paper from The CarbonNeutral Company says that too many companies forget to think about branding when they think about sustainability. Instead of inspiring consumers to favour responsible companies, marketing has become fixated on the short-term and oblivious to consumer interest in the bigger picture.

And there’s no doubt there’s interest. Recent research indicates that a corporate citizenship strategy accounts for 13% of consumers’ overall impression of a brand, and two-thirds rate environmental and ethical issues as important when deciding which brands to buy.

The potential for sustainable messaging hasn’t been lost on all. Ethical brands such as Innocent and Green & Black's have become household names through making it easy for consumers to put their money where their ethics lie.

We know there’s a market for inspiring sustainability messages. Now we need the marketing teams to get inspired.

Greener Love

For those of you dashing out today for some last-minute Valentines shopping, take a look at The Guardian’s guide to making those roses and chocolates a bit greener.

Don’t worry, you don't have to do a zero-carbon option of serenading from a balcony instead of giving a card.

The Guide will have you buying your card from M&S’ FSC-certified range, indulging in some Booja Booja organic chocolates, and heading out for a romantic meal at sustainable restaurant The Zetter. This is full blown direction to greener loving.

Oxfam 100% giving

Oxfam have just launched a new concept called 100% giving that involves companies paying the charity running costs so 100% of money donated goes to the cause.

www.oxfam.org.uk/giving

I've seen the Oxfam pitch and it's positioned as the biggest innovation in corporate giving for well...a long while. Their vision is that they lead it but that other charities and corporates adopt it.

The idea came from detailed consumer research about obstacles to giving and apparently one of the biggest ones is that people think most of their money goes to admin / marketing etc rather than to help those in need.

It's a clever concept but is it opening a can of worms and presenting a challenge for non-100% giving in the future?

Livewell

The WWF has come out with a 'Livewell diet' deemed to be cheap, nutritious and good for the planet.

It's actually not that much of a shift from what we eat now, less meat and more complex carbs but interestingly the same amount of dairy and an emphasis on white bread. There's no booze in there either so no comments on the environmental impact of vineyards...

Plus at £29 / head for food only I'm not sure whether low income families would manage it financially.

Better world, or better communication?

Top marks go to some eye catching load of rubbish, this year. Nike has launched its Better World Website: an edgy, tell-it-how-it-is communication platform that’s set the blogosphere alight and converted some old foes to friends.

Nike says it’s all about making the world better through sport. “Trees should be hugging us”, Nike hollers. Scrolling through the sections – and you really can’t help but scroll on and on – takes you on a journey from a bolshie video describing Nike’s commitment to a better world, through recycled polyester football shirts, and ending with news of Nike sharing the technology behind its “environmentally preferred rubber”.

Is creating football shirts from recycled material as impressive as, say, committing to 100% sustainably sourced materials and halving waste by 2020? (Well done, Unilever.) Probably not. But Nike is certainly mastering the art of communicating what it is doing. The magic of the site makes you read it all. This is a new and exciting level of sustainability communication.

The pitfalls of mining

Fuelled by UK Coal’s plan to open a mine in Measham, the small town where my Dad lives, Dad has made himself a world expert on open cast mines.

And he’s done pretty well. Through MOPG (the protest group he’s spearheading) he’s written three reports on the mining industry, been interviewed on 5 Live and featured on Countryfile. But it’s his latest campaign that has the potential to have the biggest impact.

Through close collaboration with MOPG, a Leicestershire MP has tabled a private members' bill to propose 500-metre buffer zones around mine sites, meaning coal can't be quarried within close distance of people’s homes. This would align England with Wales and Scotland, where the negative community and environmental impact was formally recognised years ago.

The bill gets its second reading on the 11^th of February. Good luck Dad!

Giving the gym a purpose for 2011

It is about this time of year that many of us look in the mirror and wonder if we should have eaten that extra mince pie or allowed ourselves that second helping on turkey. The reaction for some is then to sign-up to the gym, go for the first month, and then end up paying for something we don't even use.

The problem I have always had with the gym (and I have signed up for a few in my time) is that other than the obvious health benefits it lacks any purpose. You are running on a running machine, but not going anywhere. You are rowing on a rowing machine, but all the energy you are expending is powering nothing. It all lacks purpose and, for me, I really need a clear purpose to get motivated.

For many, even going for a run outside can be a challenge as there little purpose (other than getting fit). Whereas if you are playing a sport, you usually playing to win - there is a clear purpose.

This is where the Good Gym may have hit on a winner. It basically encourages people to exercise, but while they are doing it they do something good. For example when you go for a run, you run to a less mobile isolate person in the local area deliver something nice, have a chat and then you are on your way again.

Could this be the perfect combination of the end of the season of good will and a new year's resolutions to get fit?

Missed the e-bulletin?

Not wanting to look back so early on in 2011, however, just in case you missed it in the flurry of snow and festive good will - here is the link to our latest e-bulletin. You can check out all our previous e-bulletins here.