Posts filed under 'sustainability'
Recession and sustainability
Courtesy of the Transition Island Blog
Andrew Curry writes:
We’ve been thinking quite a lot recently about the impact of recession on consumer behaviour, and I was asked by Radio 4’s Beyond Westminster to join a panel discussion about this, which is broadcast tomorrow (Saturday 9th - if you missed it, you can hear it on the website for another week).
The other panellists were Chris Leslie, of the New Local Government Network (and a former Labour MP), and Jeremy Leggett, who runs one of Britain’s largest solar energy companies, solarcentury, and also wrote a fine book, Half Gone, about the end of the oil economy.
It’s difficult to summarise the flavour of a fifteen minute discussion in a few lines, and I wouldn’t want to spoil the programme, but some themes seemed to emerge:
- The upwards shift in oil and energy prices is a step change not a blip (a Dutch energy consultancy recently estimated that the floor price for oil had reached $110/barrel).
- In the short term this is reducing car use, but hurting the poorest hardest, mostly through the cost of their domestic energy bills (the poorest tend not to own cars).
- In the longer term, however, the government has to make a choice between orchestrating a full-scale shift to renewable energy sources, or trying to muddle through with conventional energy (Leggett is a member of the group which wrote the recently published The Green New Deal, which linked energy innovation, climate change response, and financial reform).
- Shifting to renewables will take investment, which probably isn’t going to come from taxation but could - without going into the economic theory here - come from market incentives and from encouraging people to save more, which would be good for the long-term stability of the economy.
Some of the evidence suggests that people are ahead of the politicians here. But it will still take some political courage to act on this - a quality which seems sadly lacking from British politics at the moment.
Add comment 8 August 2008
Growing support
Jo Phillips writes:
This weekend I bought 20 lettuce seedlings for a £1 from a country market. Should even a few of these grow into healthy sized lollo rosso, I reckon I will have saved a few pounds on the cost of equivalent produce at the supermarket, even taking into account the cost of compost and water. But perhaps more interesting than the potential to save money on food at a time when food costs are escalating and consumers are feeling the pinch, is the intrinsic value of homegrown produce to the grower. As Monty Don pointed out recently in his session at Hay, a person who grows food from seed wouldn’t even consider wasting it.
In his role as the new President of the Soil Association Don has been smart to encourage all growers, great and small, to consider themselves as part of a sustainable food movement. He clearly appreciates that those who have narrowed the gap between soil to plate to its minimum could, if connected to each other, be a powerful network for change. Linking small steps to big effects and harnessing the power of the collective may be a powerful way to address concerns about food security and food footprints and encourage behaviour change. And with sales of vegetable seeds overtaking those of flowers this year, the movement shows signs of burgeoning.
The greatest challenge perhaps will be in cities –people living within view of farms at least have a regular reminder of the provenance of food, but in urban spaces the mental gap is greater, and the knowledge less intuitive. But with the return of Victory Gardens in London and San Francisco, and vertical farms on the horizon, we are moving closer to the Soil Association’s vision of “a national policy of self-sufficiency in staple foods.”
1 comment 6 August 2008
It’s the planet, stupid
Source: ICM/Guardian 2008
One of the more interesting pieces of data to be published this month was the result of a Guardian/ICM poll which showed that a majority of UK adults thought that it was more important to deal with environmental issues than the economy. Interesting, because the notion that people always turn back to financial self-interest when times are tight is so ingrained that my first thought was that the poll must be wrong.
But maybe not. Looking at the poll through the lens of our 2007 Green Consumer Segmentation (summary here), there are high degrees of consistency. The segmentation generated five segments: two small activist groups (about 8% of the population); a larger group, ‘Positive Choosers’, representing 31% of the population, who were informed about ethical and environmental issues, and expected companies and organisations to act on them; a fourth segment, the ‘Conveniently Conscious (35%), who are environmentally and ethically informed, but don’t tend to act unless choices are framed from them; and finally a group of Onlookers (26%), who are unaware or sceptical. The point is that the top three groups are all more likely to prefer that the government tackles environmental issues - and so is some of the fourth group. From this perspective, the 52% figure seems completely plausible.
There were also strong degrees of consonance between the ICM research and our findings. For example, both pieces of research find that young people and older people had the highest levels of environmental concern (with a sag in the age cohorts between), that women had slightly higher levels of concern than men, that there was a poor correlation between socio-economic class and environmental concern, and that there were relatively few differences between different regions of the UK. With one notable exception: in the South east, Britain’s richest region, 52% say the economy matters most, compared to only 38% of Scots, perhaps more evidence to undermine the widely held idea that environmental concerns are a product of affluence.
And as it happens, the Green Consumer Segmentation has just won an Atticus award from our parent company, WPP, for being one of the best pieces of work in the area of ‘Market Research and Insights’ across the whole group worldwide last year. The Atticus competition, named for the Cretan storyteller, is designed to encourage and promote new thinking across the company. We’re delighted, obviously.
Add comment 15 July 2008
Water : the new carbon
Rachel Claydon writes:
Carbon consciousness is now here to stay. However the CO2 intensity of different activities isn’t the only issue concerning environmentalists. We’ve been aware of water shortages in many parts of the world for many years, but as these become more acute, the ‘water intensity’ of various products and processes is moving into the spotlight, particularly those relating to food and drink production. This is not about turning off the tap to save water when you brush your teeth, rather understanding how much water has been used to make the items that we consume every day, or what’s known as ‘embedded water’ (opens in pdf). The data are pretty staggering - it takes 35 litres to produce a cup of tea; 170 to produce a glass of orange juice; and 2400 to produce a hamburger - and are much easier to visualise than grams or tonnes of carbon.
Unlike carbon, the water issue has not yet reached mainstream consciousness, but this isn’t far off. Individuals can now calculate their personal ‘water footprint’ thanks to a collaboration between UNESCO and the University of Twente, and manufacturers are also starting to respond. The Coca Cola Company announced a new partnership with WWF in June last year around water conservation, and was already talking about reducing the water intensity of its products at the time. It may take a while to convince the British consumer that the world is short of water, even though the South East of England has less water per head than Istanbul. In many other markets, from Spain to China to Australia, consumers are already acutely aware of shortages. Without doubt companies need to actively scrutinise their supply chains and implement water saving strategies. This said, water footprinting may prompt people to move away from certain ‘water heavy’ categories altogether - meat, especially red meat, is a prime candidate.
The chart at the top is from the Australian news site crikey - perhaps not surprisingly, given Australia’s acute water shortage.
Add comment 21 June 2008
Green consumers or green consumption
Rachel Claydon writes:
I’ve been reading a lot recently about the ‘blizzard’ of ethical and eco-labels and product claims from companies. And with companies such as Renault producing images of (slightly more energy efficient) cars with leaves coming out of their exhaust, and P&G putting an ‘earth friendly’ stamp on their washing powder, this seems to be a reasonable critique.
What does this sea of green marketing activity mean for the growing numbers of consumers trying to ‘do their bit’? There seem to be three possibilities:
- gritting their teeth and working harder to unearth the genuinely ethical products;
- giving up on the endeavour in cynical frustration; or
- enjoying the new array of ‘guilt-free green products’ now on offer.
The ethical livers (likely to go down route 1) are now well-established, and may even enjoy having to work harder to identify truly sustainable choices. But it will become harder. Sustainability design guru John Thakara fears that an growing number of green standards will cancel each other out, creating too much noise as each brand measures itself by different criteria, making comparison impossible. Consumers may respond by assessing green product claims themselves through sites like greenwashingindex.
Those who are less committed to sustainable lifestyles are unlikely to make such efforts. Eco-labels will stop being a purchase short cut for those short of time (after all, most of us wouldn’t choose to spend our time evaluating the competing ethical claims of different baked bean brands). But worse, consumers may become disillusioned with unfounded and confusing claims. Sustainability communications experts Futerra believe that the consequences could be bad (opens in pdf):
“Without confidence in the claims, consumers are reluctant to exercise the power of their green purchasing, as they no longer know who or what to believe. This puts the whole market for the ‘green pound’ in danger and might damage the virtuous circle of companies promoting their green products, consumers choosing them over non-green products thereby encouraging business towards greater greenness”.
I’m personally more worried about the third option, that consumers will unquestioningly embrace every new supposedly ‘ethical’ product that finds its way onto the shelves. Most people want to hear that they can do the ‘right thing’ without having to make too much effort. We’d rather buy organic mange tout from Kenya in January than work out how to cook seasonal swede; rather install energy efficient light bulbs than stop taking short haul flights. This said, campaigners such as the WWF are now challenging [opens in pdf] the prevailing wisdom that we’ll achieve pro-environmental behaviour change through small, painless steps. More please.
{And thanks to treehugger for the picture].
Add comment 12 June 2008
The power of ‘we’
Becky Rowe writes:
I’ve been in Australia for a few days for a client project and one of things I have noticed (aside from the jetlag and great weather) is the constant reference across all kinds of public communications to ‘us’, ‘we’, ‘together’, ‘you’, and ‘community’.
New building projects mention ‘helping our communities grow stronger’, while ‘no alcohol’ signs on the beaches explain why it is beneficial to everyone if you don’t drink your beers on the beach. The taxi rank at the airport had a large sign which communicated clearly and simply what you could ask of your taxi driver, and what he could expect of you (you are entitled to ask your driver to turn on or off the radio or aircon, and to take a different route, but you aren’t allowed to be drink or eat in the cab).
The prevalence of these signs, the explicit wording, and clear reference to shared responsibilities, all communicated in a friendly and understandable way, somehow surprised me. In some ways I found them a bit patronising, but I also found it refreshing to have ‘the rules’ of ‘good citizenship’ made clear.
Knowing the rationale behind an apparently bureacratic or even irrational rule can make all the difference to compliance. I think the UK has something to learn from the Australians about how to behave - and how to get people to behave.
1 comment 15 May 2008
7 million litres of water
Jo Phillips writes:
Our More London office reopens today after two days of closure following the Great Flood of Tooley Street. Some took the fact that the nearby Greater London Assembly building was out out of action in the week of the mayoral elections as a bad omen for Ken Livingstone. The events have demonstrated rather vividly the vulnerability of all city infrastructure; you might have thought a fifth floor office would be immune (I did), but servers and electricity supply in the basement are - unsurprisingly - vulnerable to street level flooding. Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospital was similarly affected.
In this instance, 7 million litres of water poured out of a burst water main. But it gives us a glimpse of a possible future London — as we see more climate-change related extreme weather events, what will change? What I learnt was that crises in the real world push us further into the virtual world. With email and phone systems down, our company used text messages and a blog to disseminate important information. Local residents similarly used the SE1 community forum to communicate with each other. One possible outcome is an increase in mobile working (or more exactly, ‘extended working’, in which the workplace is extended in space and time), but this leads to interesting questions about infrastructure. Maybe not that sensible to leave it below street level when the local flood risk map looks like this:
So maybe there’s likely to be less emphasis on managing your own infrastructure, and more on getting it delivered to you as a service by a supplier - already a strong developing trend, as Nicholas Carr blogged this week. Having servers down in the basement may provide an illusion of control, but would not prove very resilient in a world of increasing environmental risk.
Add comment 30 April 2008
Environmental damage a modern day sin
Amy Esser writes:
In recent years the noise around environmental sustainability has increased, and society mostly now acknowledges its part in damaging the planet. Despite this, we are not yet seeing significant changes in behaviour to reverse the damage and help preserve our planet for the future.
Sadly it seems that even the prospect of environmental Armageddon is not enough to prompt real action or even divert our moral compasses. If we as individuals are lacking motivation and desire to make the changes ourselves then who needs to take the lead? Perhaps sensing that faith could make a difference, the Vatican announced earlier this month that environmental pollution and damage is a modern day sin.
Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Vatican’s Apostolic Penitentiary, said - in language that was largely misunderstood in the (non-Catholic) English media - that priests must take account of “new sins which have appeared on the horizon of humanity as a corollary of the unstoppable process of globalisation”. Whereas sin in the past was thought of as being an individual matter, it now has “social resonance”.
Bishop Girotti told L’Osservatore Romano,
“You offend God not only by stealing, blaspheming or coveting your neighbour’s wife, but also by ruining the environment, carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments, or allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos”.
The effect of this interpretation will take time to manifest itself. Perhaps it is more interesting to see the re-emergence of old authorities in response to more turbulent times.
Image source: http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1308679,00.html
Add comment 28 March 2008
From wind-powered cheese to socially-conscious snack bars
Anouk van den Eijnde writes:
Over the past few months our global streetscapers have been busy tracking down examples of how sustainability issues like energy consumption and fair trade are playing out in their home markets. The cheese manufacturer Forlasa in Spain produces wind- and solar-powered cheese, using renewable energy to minimise its CO2 emissions and to power local homes.
The American company Peaceworks produces a range of natural foods , such as the ‘Kind’ snacks bars, through promoting joint ventures between people on different sides of conflicts. Five per cent of the profits go to OneVoice, a PeaceWorks foundation, that fosters co-existence in the Middle East.
Remarkable recycles UK waste by making it into useful (and fun) stationery and office products. This notebook is made of recycled car tyres:
Add comment 9 January 2008
