12 September 2012
I'd like to introduce the new member of the Terra Infirma team who joined us at half past midnight yesterday morning. His name is Charlie Kane and he'll be Vice President for Noise Pollution and Organic Waste. It may take a bit of time for us to get him up to speed, so there may be service disruptions for the next two weeks. But we're very proud of him and think he'll make a great addition to our burgeoning team.
Tags: gareth kane
Posted by Gareth Kane 4 responses
1 August 2012
Terra Infirma is six years old today!
Six years. Blimey. Sometimes it feels like just yesterday that I invested the grand sum of £300.00 in some self-designed stationery and a (self-designed) website and declared the company open for business - other times it feels like another age.
And the last year has been another great one for the company despite the constant backdrop of economic doom-mongering. We are now firmly planted in the FTSE100 zone, continuing to work with clients like Johnson Matthey plc and BAE Systems plc, another two new FTSE100 clients in the project start-up phase, and other big names like the BBC and the NHS. The vast bulk of this work has related to culture change for sustainability.
Our on-line Green Academy continues and now has its own webpages and we continue to get a wide range of participants from micro-businesses up to corporate giants.
One innovation this year has been the Corporate Sustainability Mastermind (CoSM) Group - a small group of senior sustainability practitioners from top companies getting together every quarter for a facilitated exploration of the challenges that they face. I've not been making a big song and dance about CoSM as we are deliberately trying to keep the numbers low, but you can see my notes from the inaugural May meeting here.
And, while I'm not publishing a book this year, my first short e-book is due out in the Autumn. Its provisional title is "Green Jujitsu: The Smart Way to Embed Sustainability into Your Organisation". Needless to say you'll hear plenty about it when it's released.
So, it just leaves me to thank all our clients, partners, friends, followers, subscribers and workshop participants for another great year. I'm looking forward to meeting more of you (online or offline), so don't ever be afraid to come and say hello!
All the best,
Gareth
Tags: gareth kane, green jujitsu, terra infirma
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5 April 2012
I'm away with family in Budle Bay in Northumberland - just south of Lindisfarne or Holy Island. Budle Bay is part of the Lindisfarne nature area and the estuary is a delight for birders - even my mediocre skills identified curlew, black headed gulls, greater black backed gulls, common gulls, red breatsed merganser, shelduck, mallard, widgeon, redshank, oyster catcher, pochard, kestrel, wheatear along with gazillions of plover-sized waders which are beyond my ken. We had some glorious, if windy and cold weather on Wednesday, but on Tuesday we had a blizzard - so we headed to the worlds best second hand bookstore, Barter Books at Alnwick, then to a soft play facility to let the kids work off their adrenaline.
We're staying in a rebuilt mill cottage at Waren Mill at the head of the bay, which, as the name suggests, had a number of mills dating from the 12th Century onwards. At the back of our garden the old mill race that fed water into the mills has been converted into a water feature which periodically kicks into life, creating a small waterfall. The bigger, more recent mill has been converted into holiday apartments too.
As I mentioned last week, I'm currently reading Jeremy Rifkin's Third Industrial Revolution which about the democratization and distribution of energy systems for a modern low carbon economy. It struck me that in the days of water power, this was very much how the economy worked - industry went where the energy was rather than the other way around. Of course Rifkin's vision is for a 21st Century version of distributed energy generation - creating a hi-tech internet of low carbon energy to get us out of the fossil fuel doom loop. But one interesting part of such a system is the potential for micro-hydro in locations such as this - tapping the same sources of clean energy that our forefathers did. So maybe, just maybe, places like Waren Mill will be going back to the future.
Tags: gareth kane, hydropower, microhydro, renewable energy, smart grids
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22 December 2011
Well, that's just about it from me for 2011, so all that's left is to thank all our readers over the last twelve months and to wish you and your families a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Take care & enjoy yourselves,
Gareth
Tags: gareth kane, terra infirma
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1 August 2011
It is five years to the day that I cast off the chains of an institutional career and set up Terra Infirma. I still remember my outline plan - spend August building a dry stone wall in the garden, start marketing myself in September and hopefully get the first project going in October. In the event the wall took another 18 months to build - half way through the first week the phone rang and I had to put down the stone I was holding, go shower off the dirt and get my suit on for what turned out to be my first client meeting. Exciting times.
The last year hasn't been any less exciting. My second book, the Green Executive has been published, we've launched the Green Academy set of green business webinars and we've landed our first two FTSE 100 clients, which means our strategy of shifting from our early reliance on public funding to large private sector clients is starting to bear real fruit.
Looking forward, we will soon be launching a better registration system for Green Academy, starting to turn the webinar sessions into stand alone learning modules and starting a range of e-books. We are also in negotiation with a number of big name prospective clients. All our other services including this blog and The Low Carbon Agenda monthly bulletin will continue.
So, it just leaves me to thank all our clients, partners, friends, followers, subscribers and workshop participants for another great year. I'm looking forward to meeting more of you (online or offline), so don't be afraid to come and say hello!
All the best,
Gareth
Tags: gareth kane, green academy, green executive, low carbon agenda, terra infirma
Posted by Gareth Kane one response
25 March 2011
By the time you read this, I'll be on one of four trains to Seville in Spain before heading by car to Ronda in Andalucia. So Terra Infirma Towers will be closing for a couple of weeks while the family and I get used to the fact I'm four decades young over many bottles of Rioja.
Blogging here will be on holiday frequency - once or twice a week depending on whether the villa's wi-fi works. Full service will re-commence on 11 April.
Hasta luego, amigos!
Tags: gareth kane, holiday, terra infirma
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14 January 2011
A short clip of yours truly talking about why business should go green. There's plenty more video on the Terra Infirma YouTube channel.
Tags: business case, csr, gareth kane, green business
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3 January 2011
So the Christmas decorations are coming down, the cards heading for the recycling bins and life starts returning to normal. I hope you all had a great festive holiday and that Santa Claus brought you what you wanted. For the first year ever, I really did want, and got, new socks. I also managed to be fast asleep by 23:55 on New Year's Eve - what a lightweight I have become!
But I'm extremely excited about 2011. Last year was challenging for me personally with the new baby and two elections (local and general) requiring a lot of my energy, but it was all a lot of fun and the business did pretty well regardless.
Here are some of the reasons why I'm looking forward to 2011:
So, I hope you will come with us into this thrilling period - by subscribing to these blog posts (hit the big orange button) and/or The Low Carbon Agenda. By the way, the first edition of the latter will feature a planning process for 2011 and the answers to the fiendishly difficult low carbon quiz (nobody got all six questions right). Keep it green!
Tags: gareth kane, low carbon agenda, seminars, terra infirma, webinar
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22 December 2010
Terra Infirma will be on holiday from tomorrow until the New Year - I'm really looking forward to 2011, more excited than my kids are about Christmas. We're launching a set of webinars (details tbc), we'll be trialling then launching our new diagnostic process and I've got the publication of The Green Executive in May.
So all that remains for 2010 is wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.
All the best,
Gareth
Tags: gareth kane, terra infirma
Posted by Gareth Kane no responses
22 September 2010
I've become a bit addicted to Twitter - I find it very useful for keeping up to date with news and views from a very wide range of sources and it has become the glue that holds my various social networking profiles together.
Just like this blog, I also use Twitter to disseminate the green business message. The 140 character limit is a brilliant anvil against which to beat these ideas down to their fundamental message. The nature of Twitter is ephemeral, so I thought I'd trawl my back catalogue of tweets for my favourite 10.
I try to write one of these every day, so if you want more you can follow me on @GarethKane.
Tags: gareth kane, green business, terra infirma, twitter
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11 August 2010
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.
Tags: gareth kane, terra infirma, twitter
Posted by Gareth Kane one response
21 July 2010
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.
The resources I mention in the interview include:
1. AT Kearney findings re green companies in a recession.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Tags: gareth kane, seminar, sustainability, teleworking, working from home
Posted by Gareth Kane no responses
18 June 2010
It has been a busy and eventful week here at Terra Infirma Towers. Here are some of the highlights:
1. We are able to offer two days FREE waste consultancy to one (and one only) small/medium sized business (height restrictions apply). If you want to know more, get in touch asap as we are contacting a number of likely candidates directly.
2. I'm doing two FREE workshops on 21/22 July on behalf of Business Link - more details next week.
3. Don't forget the FREE Virtual Working Summit 28 June - 9 July. My slot on virtual working and sustainability will be on 6 July.
4. I'm probably doing two on-line events in August on aspects of a low carbon business. More details when I have them, but there will probably be a small charge.
5. I've been offered a book contract by the award winning environmental specialists Earthscan for my second book, The Green Executive. I'm flat out editing and tweaking - I've got about 70,000 words, I just need to get them into the right order. I'm doing the last of the 18 interviews for the book on Monday. Estimated publication date: April 2011.
6. UK Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman singled the company out for praise in a newspaper article.
Phew! Have a good weekend - I will!
Tags: earthscan, gareth kane, seminars, terra infirma, workshops
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9 June 2010
I'm shooting down the East Coast Line for tomorrow's Low Carbon Best Practice Exchange in London Olympia. The drizzly weather means I'll be spending less time gazing out the window and more time working on book #2, The Green Executive. But I have been mulling on the event I spoke at yesterday hosted by ISPE (which is one of those acronyms that used to mean something but now just is, but it's the professional body for pharma industry engineers).
Engineers are a tough audience - I'm an engineer, so I can say that. Not because they heckle, but because they don't. They don't ask questions or challenge you in the same way as say, environmentalists, politicos, marketing people etc, etc. The other talks at the event were heavy on the engineering, so I decided to be provocative and challenge the audience that their focus on energy efficiency, returns on investment, value engineering etc, were holding their companies back from sustainable innovation and thus profit - actually I went further than that and accused them of murdering Rachel Weisz (somebody left at that point, but I think it was for unrelated reasons). I got nods, chuckles, smiles, some good feedback afterwards and even an approving tweet, but only one question. One. And that question was a technical point about how waste legislation can impact on industrial symbiosis - good question, but it didn't explore or challenge any of my main themes.
Questions are essential to the way we deliver on the environment. Imagine if BP or the US Government had challenged the Environmental Impact Assessment for the Deepwater Horizon which said the risk of spillage was negligible and the impact would be small if it did happen? No, there were lots of figures produced, so they must be right. Likewise my engineering audience were totally focussed on the how and not the why. One of the earlier speakers was asked whether energy efficiency improvements were dependent on the chemistry being undertaken - again a good point - but no-one went on to the logical next step - whether we should be changing that chemistry to deliver the energy efficiency rather than the other way round.Engineers are essential to a sustainable future and we must start asking the questions that matter.
I like the idea of The Toddler Test - keep asking 'why' until the question cannot be answered. It might be annoying, but you won't innovate if you don't challenge the status quo - as Einstein said "we won't solve problems with the kind of thinking that created them."
Tomorrow, I'm chairing a panel session on staff engagement with some really great panellists. My biggest worry? That no-one will want to ask them a question...
Tags: energy efficiency, environmental strategy, gareth kane, green business, seminars
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31 May 2010
I'm presenting/chairing/facilitating at a few events in the coming weeks:
1. 8 June, Sustainability in the Process Industries, Newcastle University
2. 10 June, Low Carbon Best Practice Programme, Olympia, London
3. 28 June - 9 July, Virtual Working Conference, erm, Cyberspace
And I'm hoping to be able to announce a couple more in the coming days (contractual negotiations...).
Tags: gareth kane, green business, seminars, terra infirma, workshops
Posted by Gareth Kane no responses
24 May 2010
I had a fantastic week cycling around the Inner Hebridean Isle of Mull. I love the West Coast of Scotland - rough, tough and beautiful landscapes and wildlife combined with a really arty culture - I had my first sighting of a real iPad in a cafe in Tobemory as well as seeing a Sea Eagle taking a fish back to its nest. The weather was, um, variable - heavy rain when you're living in the world's smallest tent is not fun! (see pic right)
On the other hand, pedalling up through a beautiful glen in the sunshine with eagles overhead can't be beaten. And it was great to practice some camp craft after (too) many years of creature comfort - although I'm still no Ray Mears it has to be said.
Anyway, it is great to be back and I've got a full agenda - facilitating a recycling workshop tomorrow, giving a presentation on Sustainability in the Process Industries to IPSE in Newcastle on 8 June and a strategy workshop in London on 10 June. Plus I'm trying to get The Green Executive finished off by the end of June.
Tags: gareth kane, sustainability seminars, terra infirma, workshop facilitation
Posted by Gareth Kane one response
15 April 2010
Sustainability in the Service Sector from Gareth Kane on Vimeo.
Here's an extended clip from the Service Network event I did back in February. This will soon be on permanent display on this site.
Tags: gareth kane, service sector, sustainability, terra infirma
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30 March 2010
As part of the upgrades to the site, we're going deeper into the world of web 2.0. I now have a Twitter account and a 'professional' Facebook account (as distinct from the one where me and my mates banter over nonsense) as well as my existing LinkedIn account. Over the next couple of weeks these should be integrated to maximise the amount of free services we provide.
Tags: gareth kane, terra infirma
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10 March 2010
The Three Secrets of Green Business from Gareth Kane on Vimeo.
Here's a lengthy extract from the Newcastle book launch for The Three Secrets of Green Business. We'll be upgrading the site this month to find this video and at at least one other a permanent home here. But in the meantime - enjoy!
Tags: gareth kane, three secrets of green business
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20 January 2010
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.
Tags: climate change, gareth kane, green business, webinar
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