Terra Infirma - Environmental and Sustainability Consultants

News & Views From the Front Line

Monday, 8 February 2010

London Book Reception (& other book stuff)

Another successful, if smaller, reception for The Three Secrets of Green Business in London last Thursday night. A slightly different mix of friends, colleagues, business folk, journalists and interested others showed up. Thanks must go to LBi for providing the venue, and publishers Earthscan for their contribution to refreshments and for tidying up afterwards (as I was dragged off for a celebratory Brick Lane curry).

Interesting questions again - the killer being "in what timeframe should companies act?" That's a really hard one to answer as some sectors can re-invent themselves in a couple of years if not months (eg smart phones, web 2.0) whereas others take decades to transform (eg the energy sector). I usually suggest to clients that they aim to transform themselves over a 5-10 year period, as I find this to be far enough in the future to consider major changes, but not so far ahead that people make unrealistic assumptions about technology. The guy who asked the question pointed out that in Japan 30 year planning is perfectly normal and suggested that's what we should be pursuing in the West. I'll have to mull on that one as it asks all sorts of questions about culture differences.

I also found time in London to interview Jim Hagan, CSR supremo at GSK, for The Green Executive, and have a meeting with the organiser of the Business and Sustainable Environment (BASE) conference in March. I'll be doing a couple of sessions at the latter and I hope to be able to offer a discount to partners and subscribers to The Low Carbon Agenda.

It was really nice to find 5 minutes to drop into Blackwell's on Charing Cross Road and see The Three Secrets on the shelves for the first time (although I had to remind myself that they didn't belong to me despite having my name on the cover). Blackwell's had 4 shelves of green business/CSR books, so the competition is heating up. As an aside, now I'm in the market, I've decided that it would be a conflict of interest to review similar books here in the future - particularly as I can be a rather harsh critic. So book reviews will be limited to books related to business and sustainability but which have a different focus.

Lastly, the local press did a nice piece on the book (and me) on Saturday.

Labels: books, seminars, three secrets of green business

# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:45 0 Comments

Friday, 5 February 2010

USBCell Bunny Viral

Simon Daniel of Moixa Energy, an old college compatriot of mine, has invented these cool USB rechargeable batteries. Moixa's viral video gives you a flavour...

Labels: eco-product, fun, innovation, low carbon economy

# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:00 0 Comments

Wednesday, 3 February 2010

iBandwagon...

It seems that, by some sort of intergalactic law, every blogger on earth has to use Apple's new iPad as the subject of a blog post, no matter how tenuous the link. Well I'm not going to be buying an iPad anytime soon as my iPhone and MacBook Pro cover all my Applacholic cravings. But I do find that my iPhone in particular is a fantastic tool with many green attributes - and I'm not just talking about Apple's shiny new green image.

It's more the flexibility and adaptability of the device. When I started interviewing people for The Green Executive last summer, I thought "I'll need a voice recorder". No need - a cheap app covers all my requirements - no extra stuff required. Likewise the dictionary, maps, train timetables etc etc - never mind the fact that I don't need a separate iPod/MP3 player/organiser or anything else ever. And I rarely buy music in a physical format any more.

I had the opposite problem when my 3 wireless broadband 1st year offer came to an end. I had two choices - go on a monthly tariff with the existing dongle which would work out as £180, or, ditch the old one and get a new one (materials, embodied energy, packaging, documentation, SIM) with a year's free use for £80. What a stupid and unsustainable business model - more stuff costs 44% of the price of no extra stuff and encourages me to consider rival options.

From the sublime to the ridiculous...

Labels: business model, environmental strategy

# posted by Gareth Kane : 13:05 0 Comments

Monday, 1 February 2010

Questions, Questions

My (soon to be) three year old is starting to assert his independence. This morning there was a big row because I forgot to let him carry the Weetabix box to the breakfast table. Howls of outrage resulted. How did I get him to calm down? I asked him "how many Weetabix would you like?".

The secret is in the very last character of that last sentence - the question mark.

It's not just children who respond to the calming effect of being asked a question. I use the technique to deal with all sorts of situations and it is great for dealing with recalcitrant staff when implementing environmental strategies. A question is non-threatening, flatters your companion, and engages them in conversation.

Look at these pairs to see how the question version is more persuasive than the declaration:

"We must go green! Everyone is doing it!" vs "How are we going to compete against green rivals?"

"We must cut waste!" vs "How can we cut our energy, waste and water bills? Any ideas?"

"Pollution incidents must be eradicated!" vs "What are the implications of a pollution incident?"

It works, doesn't it?

Labels: environmental strategy, staff engagement

# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:07 0 Comments

Friday, 29 January 2010

Newcastle Book Launch Report

The launch of The Three Secrets of Green Business went really well last night. A nice mix of friends, family, clients, business partners and interested others in the audience - some of them bought copies too (see pic for a satisfied customer). We had some very intelligent questions in the Q&A so all in all it was a great event. Thanks to Newcastle Business School for hosting and to Dr Ron Beadle for chairing - Ron stepped in at the last minute even though it was his birthday, so I was very grateful.

We've taped the presentation and will be putting excerpts up here in due course. Don't forget there will be another one in London on 4th Feb. RSVP if you would like to attend.

My other good news is that the BASE 2010 conference has made a bulk purchase of the book - one for every delegate. I'll be doing a signing there and possibly a seminar. If your organisation would like to make a similar bulk purchase (which can include a company logo), the details are here.

Labels: seminars, three secrets of green business

# posted by Gareth Kane : 14:55 0 Comments

Wednesday, 27 January 2010

Making Green Look Normal...

I was quite harsh on John Grant's Green Marketing Manifesto when I reviewed it, but while I'm doing the zillionith edit to The Green Executive, I've been having a think about his main maxim:

"Green Marketing is about making green stuff seem normal, not about making normal stuff seem green"

The first part is really quite powerful and chimes with the need to aim green products at the mass market rather than the green niche to get any worthwhile impact from and environmental point of view. And the second part really skewers greenwash - that if you want to be green, you've really got to break from the norm, not put a green prism in front of what business does as a matter of course.

I like it. I like it a lot.

Labels: green consumerism, green marketing, greenwash

# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:00 0 Comments

Monday, 25 January 2010

Indirect benefits outweigh cost savings for BT by a long, long way

I was doing some background research on BT's sustainability activity for the Green Executive and the Service Network talk I'm giving in two week's time. Their sustainability report says they've saved £400m between 2005 and 2009 and supported bids worth a potential £1.9bn in 2009. Which means:

• direct cost savings: £100m per annum
• indirect business benefit: £1,900m per annum
= indirect benefits are worth 19 times as much as direct cost benefits

So, please, don't be taken in by by the old "go green and save money" line - BT could have lost out on direct economic costs and still made a handsome profit on their sustainability programme. The prize is much, much bigger than just a few bob's worth of energy savings. The best of the best have their sights set much, much higher. Have you?

Labels: costs, environmental strategy, green business, savings

# posted by Gareth Kane : 10:22 0 Comments

Friday, 22 January 2010

Better Place EV Battery Swap

While doing some background research on new low carbon business opportunities for The Green Executive, I came across a demonstration video for Better Place's automatic electric vehicle battery swap technology. The idea is that instead of having to wait a long time to charge your batteries, you simply swap your depleted battery pack for a charged one. This condenses recharge hours into a couple of minutes (it's slightly sped up in the video).

The business model will mean EV owners don't actually own the batteries, rather that they purchase a power service instead - a neat example of a product service system. It is exactly this sort of innovation which will thrive in a low carbon economy.

Labels: batteries, electric vehicles

# posted by Gareth Kane : 14:30 0 Comments

Wednesday, 20 January 2010

Free Webinar: Climate Change and Business Success

Date: 23 Feb 2010
Time: 5pm GMT
To register click here.

I'm co-presenting this Earthcast (hosted by my publishers Earthscan) with Paul Lingl and Deborah Carlson from The David Suzuki Foundation and authors of Doing Business in a New Climate. The webinar will focus on the challenges and opportunities that climate change poses for businesses of all sizes.

Labels: climate change, gareth kane, green business, webinar

# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:33 0 Comments

Tuesday, 19 January 2010

IPCC Red Faced Over Glacier Statement

I'm extremely angry with the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Their job is to assess the state of the science across a wide range of aspects and provide a digest for policy makers and others. In general their analysis errs on the conservative side. Both the loss of sea ice and the rise in sea levels are happening much more quickly than the IPCC prediction. So it came as a great shock that a statement buried in their last report that the Himalayan glacier system could all but disappear by 2035, depriving 40% of the world's population of drinking and irrigation water, turns out to be very unlikely to be correct.

The actual mistake appears to have arisen in the World Wildlife Fund report which was being quoted by the IPCC - they accidentally attributed this to an expert group of glacier scientists when the 2035 date comes from a New Scientist interview with a single scientist. What makes me cross is:

1. why a statement of such impact was not sourced directly from a peer reviewed scientific paper? The WWF may have messed up, but they're a pressure group not a scientific body. I actually wonder if it was left in by mistake during drafting - if it had been reliable, the statement would surely have been a headline fact, not an obscure comment buried in the text.

2. why did the IPCC chairman dismissed the representations of the Indian Govt on this matter as 'voodoo science' rather than checking the facts first? I suggest he should seriously consider his position.

3. Of course the denial industry is having a field day, blowing it out of proportion, and trying to bring down the science as a whole. But for the rest of us, we should be able to trust the IPCC to get these things right and, as with the rest of their work, err on the side of caution where there is uncertainty.

4. While I've never personally quoted 2035, I've used the wider Himalayan case as an example in my talks and courses as it is a human story rather than one featuring polar bears. Given the resulting hoohah, I'm going to have to use other examples as I don't want to get bogged down in debunking myths and splitting hairs.

So what is the true situation? I've had a quick rummage through various documents, books and official websites and what I can gather is:

1. The Himalayan glaciers do appear to be retreating as temperatures have risen by 1°C in the region. This is in line with a serious reduction in glacier mass around the world, but, strangely given their importance, the Himalayan glacier system has not been well studied.

2. This melting is already impacting on the surrounding populations through flood risks and reduced flows in rivers - this is likely to get worse if temperatures continue to rise.

3. The ice sheet is so huge it probably won't disappear for a couple of hundred years.

I've updated the climate change FAQs on the resources page to substitute other, peer reviewed, impacts to avoid confusion. Looking on the bright side, if the 2035 prediction had been correct, it would probably have been game over.

Labels: climate change, Himalayan glaciers, ipcc

# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:43 0 Comments

Monday, 18 January 2010

Blue Monday (Tell me, how do I feel?)

It's that day of the year when scientists (whose evidence presumably comes under somewhat lighter scrutiny than that of climatologists) declare it is the most depressing day of the year in the UK - post Xmas slump, weather, illness, yadda yadda blah blah.

So what can you do? There seem to be three options:

1. Muddle through, complaining constantly.

2. Give up - go back to bed with a cup of tea and a magazine full of adverts for stuff you can't afford.

3. Take control - go for a run, start a new piece of work, read something inspiring.

There's an analogy here with your reaction to the environmental agenda - you can muddle through, hide under the duvet or take control of your destiny. It is clear from the businesses and I work with that the last option is the only way to do it properly. So why not take a break from the routine today and decide what this agenda means for you?

Labels: environmental strategy

# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:10 0 Comments

Friday, 15 January 2010

The Big Picture (and the one bigger than that...)

I've been writing up my interview with Nick Coad, Environmental Director of National Express, for my next book The Green Executive. He gave a wonderful example of how you need to look at the big picture. National Express started on their sustainability journey by looking internally - risk reduction, eco-efficiency and their branding and reputation management. However it became clear to them that they were part of the solution rather than part of the problem. A shift to public transport use could actually increase the company's carbon emissions, but the net effect would be a substantial cut when you look at the bigger transport picture.

So they started engaging with policy makers, other businesses and customers. But they found that the UK Government was more interested in improving the efficiency of each transport mode rather than modal shift - getting people out of high carbon transport modes and into low carbon modes. National Express's paper "More is Less" was proclaimed as visionary in the trade press and shifted the debate several steps forward to look at modal shift.

There is of course an even bigger picture to this. Why do we travel? The broadest definition of the reason is I can come up with is "to experience something that is geographically distant". But technology allows us to experience some distant things (conversations, sights, sounds, data etc) without moving. So the ultimate modal shift in this sector is towards teleconferencing and telecommuting.

And before anyone says it, I know there's yet another, quite enormous picture which is why do we want/have to do these things, but that's going a little too far into the realms of philosophy on a cold Friday morning in January!

Labels: carbon emissions, sustainability strategy, transport

# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:00 0 Comments

By Gareth Kane

A highly accessible, practical guide to those who want to introduce sustainability into their business or organization quickly and effectively.

Gareth's Blog

Recent Posts

Archives

News & Views From the Front Line