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1 September 2010

What Makes Me Mad...

... OK, lots of things make me mad, like the Daily Express, wheel bender cycle stands and and people putting 'off' milk back in the fridge, but what really gets me exasperated in the sustainability field is useless advice, mindlessly pumped out to the masses. Here's a classic I saw on Twitter the other day:

If you reduce the amount of bottled water you consume by 2 litres a day, you’ll save around 10kg of CO2 each year.

Right, let's take a closer look at this:

1. How many people consume more than two litres of bottled water a day? A quick Google shows that the average Brit consumes 34 litres of bottled water a year - less than 0.1 litres per day. The Italians seem to top the list with 200 litres per person per year, just over half a litre a day.

2. 10kg of carbon a year. Back on Google, I get a variety of estimates of the average UK citizen's carbon footprint and if I average those, it seems to come in around 10 tonnes per annum. Now I reckon it is much higher, because few of these footprint measures include overseas emissions 'embedded' in the products we import and consume, but let's go with 10 tonnes. I don't even have to get the calculator out to see that this saving is 0.1% of our annual carbon footprint.

3. If you combine the two factors together - if the average person in the UK cut out all their bottled water consumption, they would save 0.005% of their carbon footprint. Hardly worth typing the tip, was it?

So the advice is effectively "stop doing something you're not doing, and you'll make a negligible difference". Great.

Coincidentally, 0.1% is about the proportion of our carbon footprint taken up with that other eco-pantomime villain, the disposable plastic bag. These two things are drummed into us - bottled water bad, plastic bag bad - that one daren't be seen with either, even though they are relatively insignificant from a carbon point of view. I'm not immune to these memes myself - I recently found myself at a Green Festival choosing a bottle of flavoured water rather than plain water as I didn't want to be seen with the latter, even though the former is almost certainly more carbon intensive.

So why the big rant? Because we get limited chances to communicate the green message and it kills me when that bandwidth is filled with such utter rot. If you want to green your lifestyle, you need to insulate your house, adjust your diet and change your travel patterns. Fairly straightforward, but usually avoided in favour of pointless tips.

And similarly with business, you must deal with the big ticket issues. Measure your footprint - no matter how crudely - and identify the hotspots. For many products, these hotspots occur in materials extraction and production and energy required in the use phase. So get on with tackling these rather than worrying too much whether your paper invoices should be electronic or vice versa.

There. Said it. Feel better now.

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30 August 2010

Lighten Up, Pal!

Just over four years ago, I needed a catchy name for my new environmental/sustainability consultancy, so I, ahem, 'borrowed' the name from one session in a children's international conference I spoke at (I wasn't getting paid so, being a mercenary git, I had to steal something!). It's not a bad company name, but it does have a number of disadvatanges:

1. It is difficult to read out over the phone.

2. Just after I registered it and bought the stationery, the VC firm Terra Firma suddenly hit the headlines by buying out EMI - cue confusion at my end (I doubt they got many calls looking for an environmental review).

but more importantly,

3. It's a bit doom and gloom.

If you see any of my talks, I very rarely mention environmental damage - no pictures of melting glaciers or oil encrusted birds (a rare exception here). I am resolutely upbeat about green business and sustainability. I genuinely find it exciting to see an organisation making the right moves, rejecting business as usual, learning and innovating.

And this is the key rule of environmental communications, whether internal or external - make it fun. No-one wants to be beaten over the head with guilt or be lectured on how they're destroying the planet. And being human, if we don't want to hear something, we just switch off.

In practice, how do we do this? Well, for a start, get rid of all those annoying posters, all the pious 'hands cupping a sapling' pictures and any hint of sanctimony. This is a challenge, we're all in it together, so we might as well have some fun while we're doing it. Run competitions, use humour and make people feel that they can contribute.

I love the fact that Tesla's first electric car is a sports car. That's way cooler than a Prius. And cool will beat piety any day of the week - even a Bank Holiday Monday!

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27 August 2010

Video: Corporate Sustainability - Making It Happen


Here's the second in my new series of 'how to' presentations on green business/corporate sustainability. You can see the first one and more on the Terra Infirma YouTube channel.

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25 August 2010

Keep Going!

For my forthcoming second book, The Green Executive, I interviewed 18 senior managers and executives with green business responsibilities. The one key theme that shone through the interviews was perseverance. Don't give up, don't despair, keep on at it, they said.

Why?

That might seem a really stupid question. Green business is challenging, so you have to persevere to succeed. Obvious, innit?

Yes, but there's more to it than that. If you are a green business champion of any ilk, your job is to bring other people with you. If you are seen to give up, or needlessly compromise, you will send out the wrong message to all the other stakeholders in the process, be they colleagues, potential new recruits, cynical observers, customers, investors, suppliers, partners, other businesses and pressure groups. If you give up, your believers will too and your detractors will grow in strength.

So zero pressure then, you only have the future of the planet on your shoulders. But seriously, no matter how hard it gets, just keep going!

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23 August 2010

Green Business Up and Down the Supply Chain

Most organisations still see 'environment' as an internal affair - all about walking around their factory with clipboards sorting out a little energy efficiency here and some waste minimisation there. There's nothing wrong with this, but to really grasp the nettle and become a green business, you have got to look up and down your supply chain.

You are part of others' carbon footprint and other organisations are part of yours. Take Apple as an example: 38% of their average product's carbon footprint is in the supply chain and 59% is from retail, use and disposal. Apple directly control just 3% of all the carbon directly - you get similar results for almost any other sector.

This makes the process of going green much more difficult that most realise. Supply chains have evolved to deliver the nuts and bolts for mainstream products, not green alternatives and as a result green materials and components are often expensive and of poor quality in comparison. Likewise, it is increasingly difficult to predict consumer behaviour - who would have seen the success of Twitter five years ago and the demand it has created to constantly be in touch?

The answer is to be both smart and proactive. Supply chains can be transformed by creating demand - usually through working with others to create that demand - or by buying up potential green suppliers and transforming them. Consumer behaviour can be influenced by making green behaviour easier and more desirable than non-green behaviour.

None of this is easy - and that challenge is attracting many very clever people. The green economy is just the same as the mainstream economy - the smart guys thrive.

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20 August 2010

Green Business Confidential Ep1: Go Green, Save Money is for Amateurs

I'm producing a series of podcasts called The Green Business Confidential. These will complement the series of YouTube videos on the Terra Infirma channel. The videos are intended to be more detailed, the podcasts more opinionated.

Here's the first podcast in the series, entitled "Go Green Save Money Is For Amateurs":

Audio MP3

You can download it here:
GBC1: "Go Green Save Money" Is For Amateurs

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18 August 2010

The End of Recycling

I love my compost heap. I should say 'heaps' as I effectively have five - a two bay main heap, a plastic drum for food waste, a wormery and a dumpy bag for leaf mould. And three more at the allotment... but anyway, I turned the first full bay in the main heap the other week and marvelled as the hedge-clippings, grass cuttings, weeds and, ahem, 'nitrogen rich liquid' I had put in over the last year had been transformed to lovely, sweet smelling brown humus.

Of course this doesn't happen by magic - a whole eco-system of microfauna eats the different components and the compost I am so proud of is basically their waste. So they're using our waste, we're using their waste and the cycle continues.

So, from a philosophical point of view, which of these two processes is "recycling"? Both ecologists and economists like to construct rigid hierarchies where material and energy move from "primary" producers/industries up to top consumers. But in ecology these "top consumers" produce food for other organisms through their dung and eventually become food themselves. So in reality we end up with a messy 'food web' where there is no concept of 'waste'.

I believe that if we want to move to a sustainable society - ie one which mimics the natural cycles of nature - we have to get away from the concept of "recycling materials" as opposed to "cycling resources". We would then have a 'resource web' just like the 'food web' in nature (check out Kalundborg in Denmark). We hear endless calls to treat waste as a resource, but to really do that we have to stop thinking of it as waste in the first place, hence my aphorism "waste is a verb, not a noun.". If resources are no longer deemed waste then why do we want the "re-" in recycle or reuse?

So maybe it is time to say goodbye to "recycling".

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16 August 2010

Are you ready for climate change?

Russia is burning (and choking), Pakistan is drowning - major humanitarian disasters which are likely to be in part due to climate change as Pakistan is effectively getting the rain that the Russian plains should have had. A similar thing happened in the UK this winter - we got Arctic weather stuck over us for weeks, while the Arctic had abnormally high temperatures. While the usual caveat must be rolled out - we can't attribute any one event to climate change - the frequency of such events is increasing as the science would suggest.

Climate change mitigation (cutting carbon emissions) is a medium term measure, but it must be backed up by adaptation measures for the short (and medium) term impacts which are already in the system. Adaptation is normally considered at the regional/national scale, but what about individual organisations? Are you prepared for climate change? Would you be resilient to extreme heat or cold? Are your data servers in your basement and vulnerable to flooding? Are your raw materials grown in a climate sensitive area? After all, Russia has announced restrictions on grain exports.

Of course we can flip this around to the positive. Have you a design, a product or a service to help make organisations, regions or whole countries resilient to climate change? Can you spot a gap in the market? Will climate change produce gaps in global markets for, say, food stuffs? This may sound mercenary, but a robust response to climate change will involve the markets as much as it does disaster relief organisations.

So whether climate change is an opportunity or a threat to your business, you should be factoring it into your business planning.

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13 August 2010

Green on Green

In military parlance, a "blue on blue" is when units on the same side mistake each other for the enemy and open fire. The same thing happens with irritatingly high frequency in the environmental sector, the most recent case being the attacks on the proposals for a green motorway service station in the Cotswolds. The credentials of the facility are impressive - green buildings, alternative fuels and local foods, the problem seems to be the 'motorway' bit - a green motorway service station is seen as an oxymoron.

Poppycock. That's the only phrase I can use without breaching my own no swearing rule here on the virtual Terra Infirma Towers (the air in the real Towers is often blue). Nowhere in any scenario of a sustainable future will people not travel or eat, meaning they will want to refuel themselves and their vehicles (public or private) while they are travelling. So its not an oxymoron to provide those services on a low carbon basis, on the contrary, it is essential.

But this is just one example of 'commentators' who paint themselves so fundamentally green that no progress will ever be good enough (as it would mean they would have nothing to moan about). Criticising others is the easiest thing in the word and, while often necessary, has minimal virtue compared to actually doing something positive. As Ross Perot once said 'the activist doesn't say "the river is dirty", the activist cleans up the river.'

So should businesses like the developer of this motorway services just give up if nothing they do is good enough? In a word, no. In The Three Secrets of Green Business, I identified a number of "green hyenas" who look for weaknesses in green efforts to feed on - one of which was the fundamentalist green who will never approve of anything done by business. While hyenas are generally unpleasant animals (I've seen one take a wildebeest down by the, ahem, family jewels), they perform a very important role in the eco-system by weeding out the weak and clearing up waste. Same in business and sustainability - we do need the self-righteous critics to sniff out the greenwash even if they sometimes/frequently miss the target. Use them to spur you to greater efforts, greater transparency and greater honesty. The best way to beat them is to be impeccable.

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11 August 2010

Twittering On (and On and On...)

It's been about 4 months since I signed up to Twitter, but it's only been the last two that I've really got my head around it. I find it fantastic for keeping up with a range of news sources, thought leaders and my broader network of clients and associates. On the broadcast side, most if not all of my blog posts now go out on Twitter, along with one line pieces of advice and comments on news stories.

Some things I've learnt:

1. For every two followers who follow me, one is genuine but the other is trying to get an automatic follow back from me - and will evaporate in a couple of days. I find this annoying, pointless and cynical, so I don't play that game.

2. Some people are obsessive retweeters. If I look at my Twitter feed and there's two dozen retweets from the same person, they get unfollowed. Flagging up interesting tweets is one thing, creating noise is quite another.

3. Overall, it's all very well mannered and there's a huge amount of good value information, despite old media's lazy stereotyping of it as a swirl of self-obsessed introspection.

So, if you like what you read on this blog, want updates and more, you can follow me here.

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9 August 2010

Low Carbon Webinars

I'm doing two webinars for the Low Carbon Best Practice Exchange this month:

• 17 August, 14:00 BST - Staff engagement in low carbon activities.

• 24 August, 14:00 BST - Quick wins on reducing carbon emissions.

There's a small charge to register - for more details see here.

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6 August 2010

TED Talk on Retrofitting Suburbia

Very interesting talk on one of the key sustainability challenges in industrialised nations - the 'burbs!

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4 August 2010

We can help you with that...

We often find our clients and potential clients stuck in a quandary. They tell us "we want to do something on sustainability/csr but we're not sure what and we'll call you when we've worked it out." It is hard work persuading them that "we can help you with that."

The fear is that they would be putting their future in someone else's hands and who knows what that might mean. Here's some reasons to master that fear:

1. The biggest value a consultant can bring to an organisation is strategic direction in unfamiliar territory. Sustainability is a great case in point - it is uncharted territory for most organisations, so why not get someone experienced in to advise on the big picture, rather than try and work it out from scratch?

2. Any consultant worth their salt will work with the client to identify the overall aims, objectives and approach, rather than try to apply a "one size fits all" template to everyone. This means you get the solutions that work for you.

3. Consultants are much more effectively utilised as "expert advisors" than "hired hands". If you don't know where you are going, that's when you need advice. If you know what you want, and how you want it done, you should implement it internally - employing a consultant to do it makes no sense unless there is a particular skill or process required (and usually then you can fish at the 'commodity' end of the market - eg for ISO14001 implementation).

Want advice on employing a consultant? We can help you with that!

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2 August 2010

We are four!

Terra Infirma is 4 years old!As of 1st of August, Terra Infirma is four years old!

The last year has been an exciting ride - the publication of The Three Secrets of Green Business, the rebranding, the launch of our YouTube channel, our first venture onto Twitter and getting praised by a Government Minister. That's not to mention working with some great new clients like Aker Solutions, the National Health Service and East Coast Main Line, and some old friends like NISP North East, Business to Business Ltd and the Low Carbon Best Practice Exchange. It hasn't always been easy, given the recession, but it is clear that sustainability isn't going away.

So what's the next year got in store? We're already limbering up for some events including some webinars in August and the Low Carbon Best Practice exchange in Harrogate in November, the first draft manuscript of the Green Executive has gone to the publishers - estimated publication date April 2011, and we've got some new product developments going on in the background. Of course you'll get all the usual support from this blog, The Low Carbon Agenda, YouTube and Twitter.

We hope you will join us - stay in touch!

Gareth

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30 July 2010

The Business Case for Sustainability


This presentation takes you through the business case for sustainability - feel free to share, embed or whatever you would like to do with it!

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28 July 2010

Why "irrational" fear is completely rational

I'm a engineer by training, and I was taught that:

risk = probability of something going wrong x resulting impact of that event

There's a big problem with this equation - it is out of sync with the public perception of risk. Our gut instinct is to fear one big accident much more than lots of little ones. So an air crash leading to the deaths of 100 people will get much more press coverage than 1000 car accidents killing one person in each accident.

There is a tendency to consider such risk perception as completely irrational, but in practice it provides an essential buffer to a number of metarisks (risks in measuring risks):

1. Mistakes - either mistakes in calculations, estimations and measurements, or not considering all the factors that apply. Such mistakes usually have much more serious consequences when working with high impact risks than in the case of lots of low impact risks.

2. Deliberate distortion of results - history is littered with cases of risks being deliberately played down in order to allow a project to proceed.

3. We tend to underestimate risks we are familiar with, or overestimate risks that we are unfamiliar with. Therefore people "in the know" tend to subconsciously play down risks.

So the public perception of fearing big impact risks balances the tendency of risk managers to make mistakes, be blasé or even, in the worst instances, distort results. The Gulf of Mexico oil spill was judged to have a negligible risk of the catastrophe occurring and a negligible impact - the latter prediction was certainly incorrect and the former is very likely to have been incorrect. Yet if you asked a member of the public whether drilling for oil in mile deep water is "risky", most would say "sounds like it to me".

Maybe we should trust our gut instincts a little more and our calculations a little less. But at the very least we should understand why the public perception of risks is as it is and use it as a spur to make sure that a 'rational' approach to risk management is not the result of wishful thinking.

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26 July 2010

Time Now for Beyond Petroleum

So the hapless Tony Hayward is to go. I don't envy his reported replacement, Bob Dudley, in the least. He has to finalise the closing of the Gulf of Mexico leak, continue the clean up, and deal with the political and economic fall out, all within a poisonous atmosphere of blame and recrimination.

Here's a suggestion: resurrect "Beyond Petroleum". Instead of business as usual, why doesn't Dudley declare an energy revolution? Big Oil, along with coal, is at the root of all our carbon footprints, whether as individuals or organisations. Why not become a 21st Century energy company, providing low carbon, clean, safe energy to the masses and demonstrating that the change is feasible. The precedent is there with GM. When the motor giant came back from bankruptcy, it sold off the Hummer and invested in the Volt electric car. It even, it is alleged, considered changing the iconic blue GM logo green.

So BP could make a stand - declare an end to deep sea oil exploration, arctic wildlife drilling and tar sands. It could reinvest in renewables and bring the "Beyond Petroleum generation" - the execs who jumped ship into renewables start ups - back into the fold. Investing in talent, innovation and the future would restore faith in the organisation and make it part of the future rather than a relic of the past.

The alternative is chasing increasing elusive oil reserves while its customer base tries to find low carbon alternatives. That doesn't sound like a great business plan to me.

The opportunity is there - let's see if BP takes it.

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23 July 2010

A reflection on learning...

I love running training workshops and the two Secrets of Successful Green Business Workshops I've run for Business Link in the last two days were corkers. We got about 30 people mainly from office based businesses in the Newcastle session and 25 on Teesside from a much wider range of businesses (from independent consultants through a prison to major chemical companies), and it was good to see a smattering of familiar faces at both. They were half day sessions and I structured them around The Three Secrets of Green Business - understanding the business case, what does green mean, and how to integrate it into your business. Frankly I prefer running whole day sessions - I only add about 20% more content and spend much longer on exercises - but there was still enough time for plenty of interaction.

And interaction I got! In Newcastle we had a lengthy debate about the pros and cons of telecommuting. I was challenged on the lack of social opportunities, but I maintain that the increased time you get with family and neighbours from not commuting is at least as rewarding as socialising with colleagues - or it should be anyway. On Teesside we had a discussion about the pros and cons of incremental innovation and disruptive innovation - we got a little sidetracked into innovation on the printing press/internet level rather than radical alignment of products, processes and supply chains to sustainability (à la TQM) which was the point.

The big learning area for me was the half hour slot that Gareth Williams of Business In The Community (BITC) did on climate change adaptation. This is definitely the Cinderella of environmental issues, but it is crucially important. Even if we slashed carbon emissions today, there is enough warming locked into the system that we do need to prepare for the impacts. Gareth covered risks and business opportunities. Now, while I have worked with clients to identify potential markets in helping others reduce their risks, I hadn't fully grasped how many purchasers are now taking resilience to any form of business interruption seriously in their buying decisions. So if you have your servers in a basement in a flood prone area you might be at a business disadvantage to a rival who has taken the necessary steps to protect their business. Every day's school day in this game - that's why I love it so much.

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21 July 2010

Listen Again: Sustainability & Virtual Working

If you missed my interview with Penny Pullan on sustainability and virtual working (teleconferencing & telecommuting) on 6 July, you can download an MP3 by clicking here.

Audio MP3
Penny Pullan interviews Gareth Kane on Sustainability and Virtual Working

The resources I mention in the interview include:

1. AT Kearney findings re green companies in a recession.

2. Smart 2020 project

3. Virgin coconut oil story

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19 July 2010

Tales from the Yorkshire Dales


Just back from a superb 2 week holiday in the Yorkshire Dales. Askrigg, where we stayed, has its own bakery, microbrewery and dairy, loads of walking routes and some challenging cycling (with some gruelling 1:4 hills). That to me is pretty much heaven.

But it wasn't a complete holiday - every morning I was up at 5:30 working on my second book, The Green Executive, until 7:00 when the rest of the family started to stir. People often ask me how long it takes to write a book - my usual glib reply is "forever!". To give you an idea, that 18-odd hours of intense, uninterrupted effort was long enough to read through the entire draft manuscript once through, annotate changes and make the edits (but not those which require any research). I need to do that at least twice more...

Anyway, busy week ahead. Don't forget those free training courses I'm doing Wed & Thur. This month's Low Carbon Agenda is out on Wednesday. You might also want to check out this article on green business leadership on Sustainability Forum.

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By Gareth Kane

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

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