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Wednesday, 26 August 2009
Don't get left behind...
It is said that the advent of the transistor killed off all the old valve manufacturers. They stood still and got wiped out by the new upstarts with their fancy new technology. The same could, and probably will, happen with the Low Carbon Economy - FTSE 100 packaging manufacturer Bunzl is having to shift its focus away from single use plastic bags in light of the many attempts to phase them out. You gotta move with the times...Labels: green business, sustainable production and consumption
# posted by Gareth Kane : 05:24
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Wednesday, 11 February 2009
Sustainable Consumption with Tim Jackson
I attended an excellent seminar at Newcastle University last Friday. Professor Tim Jackson was the keynote speaker and the reason why I was there – reading his 1996 book ‘Material Concerns’ on the problems of and solutions to unsustainable production was a turning point in my understanding of this subject. The book is now out of print, but is well worth tracking down on the second hand market.Prof Jackson has now moved on to the consumption side of the sustainability equation. He presented ‘the economic dilemma’:
- Economic growth in GDP is related to ecological damage, but, below a very low threshold, is not related to quality of life;
- Falling or unstable GDP is related to a drop in quality of life.
He demonstrated that there has been no global decoupling of resource use and economic growth (any national decoupling is simply due to the offshoring of resource use). His conclusion was that we needed a new economic system of zero growth.
In the Q&A, I asked him whether this would be more difficult than decoupling as in my view we hadn’t really tried to decouple the two. His view was that some decoupling was possible, but probably not to the degree required. I'm still not convinced that inventing a new economic system would be any easier.
Labels: sustainable production and consumption, tim jackson
# posted by Gareth Kane : 08:49
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Friday, 9 January 2009
Book Review: Sustainability By Design
Warning: don't be fooled by the cute sunflower on the cover, or the modest page count, John Ehrenfeld's Sustainability by Design
is the most intellectually rigorous treatment of sustainability that I have ever come across.Ehrenfeld's diagnosis of the earth's problems is that we have become addicted to Having. The addiction analogy is a great one - we want more and more stuff even though we know that getting any of it will not satisfy us for long and only make us crave more. He then uses systems theory to argue that eco-efficiency, corporate social responsibility and (the standard view* of) sustainable development won't get us out of this addiction.
Instead he proffers and deconstructs a new definition of sustainability as "the possibility that humans and other life will flourish on the Earth forever". In particular the word 'flourish' is included to force home the idea that sustainability is not just a lack of unsustainability, but much more ambitious and positive than that. Drawing on the work of thinkers such as Heidegger, Fromm and Maturana, he argues we must move from our addiction to Having to a state of Being. To this we need to disrupt our current patterns of behaviour and he gives a range of examples of how that might be achieved.
The simplest of these is the two button toilet flush. By providing a decision point (high volume or low volume flush?) this product makes us stop and question why would we want to use more or less water and therefore links us (however briefly) to the natural world and the pressures upon it. He calls this disruption of our habits and routine by products 'presencing'. The disruption principle is also applied to the design of organisations and governance structures. Of course Ehrenfeld cannot provide all the answers within a 215 page book, but this work provides a context and springboard for the next generation of sustainable solutions.
Despite the approachable and open writing style, this a challenging read as it covers a lot of ground very quickly and the philosophical and linguistic concepts behind the arguments can be hard to grasp if you are coming to them for the first time as I was. It certainly disrupted my thinking on sustainability and has given me a deeper understanding of the principles - particularly on the consumption side of the coin.
In short: quite brilliant, but be prepared for an intensive intellectual workout!
* I define sustainable development as the process of achieving sustainability (so this work would be part of that process), but Ehrenfeld uses the standard definitions (eg meeting today's needs without compromising the needs of future generations).
Labels: books, eco-product, ehrenfeld, sustainability, sustainable production and consumption
# posted by Gareth Kane : 08:00
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Monday, 8 October 2007
On the Rebound?
Last week I made reference to the 'rebound effect'. I like to illustrate this concept with a little story. Back in December 2003, I wrote off my Ford Ka in a smallish prang. I replaced it with a Golf TDi, for two reasons:a. I want to have the option of using biodiesel (but that's another story...).
b. It did 55mpg compared with the Ka's 40mpg.
Brilliant - cut my fuel consumption by 28% and saved £250 each year.
But....
1. Statistics show that I'm likely to lose about a fifth of that saving by driving more because it has become cheaper. This is the 'direct rebound effect'.
2. £250 is exactly the cost of a return flight from Newcastle to New York. Given my love of travel, this is a real option. If I take it, then I've just doubled the annual carbon emissions I had in the Ka. This is the 'indirect-' or 'respend-' rebound effect (or, as energy economists call it, the Khazzoom-Brookes Postulate). If we save money through efficiency, we can easily wipe out the eco-benefits by choosing to buy or do something even more environmentally damaging with the windfall.
So what effect does this have in practice? The Khazzoom-Brookes Postulate is hotly debated in academic circles - certainly the prominent energy guru Amory Lovins once told me rather tersely that there was no empirical evidence for its existence.
In my opinion this is down to changing consumption patterns. Some time ago I immersed myself in consumer data and found that the fastest growing areas of expenditure were on telecommunications and home entertainment which are less carbon intensive (per pound/euro/dollar) than, say, road or air travel. A back of the fag packet calculation suggested that the rebound effect would not result in environmental damage getting worse, but that only about 50% of expected efficiency benefits would be delivered in practice.
The title of Lovins' own famous book, "Factor 4: doubling wealth, halving resource use", backs this up - a factor 4 improvement in resource efficiency will only result in a factor 2 reduction in resource use - the rest we enjoy in increased quality of life. I haven't seen him since to run this by him!
The bottom line is: with resource efficiency you never quite get the environmental benefits you expect, but it's still worth doing.
Labels: amory lovins, factor 4, rebound effect, resource efficiency, sustainable production and consumption
# posted by Gareth Kane : 08:32
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A highly accessible, practical guide to those who want to introduce sustainability into their business or organization quickly and effectively.
