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Tuesday, 6 April 2010
Book Review: Confessions of a Radical Industrialist by Ray Anderson
This book seemed to take an age to get published in the UK, and I had it on pre-order as soon as I knew it was coming as, in terms of green business leadership, Ray Anderson is the Guv'nor. His company, Interface, is the least likely champion of green business that you could imagine - they are the world's biggest manufacturer of carpet tiles, made from oil-based chemicals using huge amounts of energy and producing tonnes of toxic waste - if they can do it, anyone can.Anderson first wrote a book, Mid-Course Correction, in 1998 describing his decision to turn Interface into a sustainable company back in 1994 and this book, he says, is an update of that journey from the point of view of ten years later. The title of the first book comes from Anderson's epiphany on a flight reading Paul Hawken's The Ecology of Commerce. He had been given the book after struggling with the question "What is Interface doing about the environment?".
The answer was the radical Mission Zero - the like of which I have seen nowhere else - to have a zero ecological footprint by 2020. Yes, zero. In order to achieve this, Interface developed the idea of "Mount Sustainability" which has seven faces - all of which have to be climbed:
1. Zero waste
2. Eliminating emissions and effluent
3. Renewable energy
4. Recycled or renewable materials
5. Making transport resource efficient
6. Sensitizing stakeholders
7. Redesigning commerce
There are too many examples of how they have progressed on these faces to list here, but here are a couple of my favourites:
• turning the perceived cost of installing solar energy in one factory - enough to cover the whole supply chain's carbon emissions - into a business opportunity. The result: a new product, Solar-Made carpet, which has won huge public sector contracts.
• developing a new carpet fixing tape, inspired by the tiny hairs that allow geckos' feet to cling to any surface, to eliminate the need for glue and make the carpet easier to recover.
• using landfill gas to heat one of their factories and cut methane emissions
• the "entropy" carpet tile, again inspired by nature - this time leaves on a forest floor, which can be laid in any direction.
Interface isn't afraid to fail either. Their much talked about "Evergreen" carpet leasing service (part of face 7) was a marketplace failure - mainly because their customer's financial systems and the US tax system couldn't cope with carpet being a revenue item rather than a capital item.
If I have to criticise anything about the book, it is that the writing itself is a bit clunky in places and threads sometimes get lost. For example, in the chapter "One small digression and six lessons" I could only count two lessons, and the biographical nature of the first few chapters suddenly disappears until the end, giving a slightly uneven tone. A very minor criticism, but a bit more polish would make the message so much more compelling.
But in summary, Interface is my No 1 green business and this book goes a long way to explaining how Anderson and his team did it - so, buy it, read it, buy a copy for your colleagues!
Labels: book review, green business, interface, ray anderson
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:00
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Friday, 25 September 2009
Book Review: Strategy for Sustainability by Adam Werbach
Adam Werbach was the youngest ever president of the Sierra Club and now heads up sustainability consultants Saatchi & Saatchi S having worked with many businesses including Walmart, so I had high hopes for this book. Unfortunately it does not get off to a good start, when Werbach lists ten of nature's rules for sustainability:1. Diversify across generations.
2. Adapt and specialize to the changing environment.
3. Celebrate transparency.
4. Plan and execute systematically, not compartmentally.
5. Form groups and protect the young.
6. Integrate metrics.
7. Improve with each cycle. Evolution is a strategy for long-term survival.
8. Right-size regularly, rather than downsize occasionally.
9. Foster longevity, not immediate gratification.
10. Waste nothing, recycle everything, borrow little.
Problem is, two of these are demonstrably nonsense. Nature is not transparent, but has armfuls of beasties that rely on decidedly non-transparent tactics such as camouflage, mimicry and traps. If a fly knew what a Venus flytrap was, it would steer well clear. Likewise the idea that nature is 'obsessive' about protecting the young is disproved by watching any nature programme - just watch the annual slaughter of the innocents on BBC's Springwatch and you will see what I mean. I would also suggest the 'integrate metrics' rule was tenuous to say the least. Werbach also omits probably the most important sustainability lesson from nature - "Use Solar Energy". The other strange thing about these rules is that many are never or only briefly mentioned again, particularly number 1.
Werbach drops another clanger when he describes 'cradle to cradle' as the concept of eradicating toxics and improving energy efficiency at every life cycle stage from raw material extraction to disposal. Wrong. Cradle to cradle, as the name suggests, is about making products endlessly recyclable - there is no 'disposal' stage. There is also a somewhat unnecessary comparison of sustainability requirements with the famous business book 'Good to Great'.
This is a really great shame as the guts of the book, Werbach's TEN cycle of transparency, engagement and networking is a strong model for the human side of business sustainability (although why it has to be a cycle is not clear - why not three parallel activities?). Transparency is interpreted as both opening up available information to everyone and collecting all possible information. In engagement, Werbach advocates getting individuals to choose their own 'personal sustainability plan' to get them really engaged, and in the networking chapter he demonstrates a limited number of advantages of engaging with external stakeholders. All of this activity should be aligned to the business's sustainability 'North Star Goal'. Werbach omits any discussion of technological solutions, management structures or innovative business models.
In summary, I found the book really frustrating. The North Star Goal and TEN concepts are excellent, but I was constantly distracted by clangers, tenuous logic and clunky use of language. Werbach needs a really tough editor to cut the book down to the good 50% which could then be developed further. A deeply flawed gem.
Labels: adam werbach, book review, sustainability
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:07
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A highly accessible, practical guide to those who want to introduce sustainability into their business or organization quickly and effectively.
