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.

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.