SUSTAINABLE PLANET
Sustainability: threat or commercial opportunity? Get Connected has been writing for some years - with considerable interest and support from manufacturers - about the relevance to this industry of sustainability, “green” products, energy saving, conservation of resources and recycling. The (literally) burning issue of climate change is now huge in consumer consciousness, and our industry has the opportunity to offer advice and guidance to customers about how their choices of domestic appliances can help achieve the sustainable planet You have stolen my dreams… my childhood – HOW DARE YOU!” Teenager Greta Thunberg’s throaty growl and withering thousand-mile stare at last year’s UN Action Summit cut through the political noise to put world leaders on the naughty step and climate change back on the world’s agenda. National Treasure Sir David Attenborough, some eighty years her senior, showed his full support. And to sustain the pressure, Ms Thunberg turned up at this year’s Davos World Economic Forum to repeat the message – albeit in more measured terms – to the world’s rich and powerful, and again stole the media limelight from the big boys (no mean feat when the world’s most needy attention-seeker, Donald Trump, was there.)
This time, the gravitas of older-generation establishment support came from Prince Charles seeking the Thunberg photo opportunity. Meanwhile in the UK, Extinction Rebellion was disrupting road, rail and air transport, costing the Met Police millions and earning huge media coverage – though not always the total approval of commuters just trying to get to work. Sky Ocean Rescue’s campaign has succeeded in making plastic pollution a worldwide concern, forcing multiple retailers and commercial companies to consider publicly how they can reduce plastic usage. Finally, and not at all frivolously, Greggs announced a bonus for all its workers on the strength of profits from sales of its vegan sausage roll.
Caple Di651 dishwasher: part of the greening of washing up
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GET CONNECTED
JAN/FEB 2020
AND YOUR POINT IS…? How is this relevant to our industry, and particularly to electrical retailers trying to make a living in a very hard world? You may believe climate change is an emergency we all need to address. Or you may think Greta Thunberg is a stroppy teenager who should stop shouting at grown-ups and go back to school; that Extinction Rebellion is a bunch of middle-class virtue-signallers smugly taking advantage of a benign system when, if they were in Russia or China, they would risk far more than a suspended sentence and the chance of losing a bit of skin off their superglued fingers. The point is, agree or not, concern for climate change and the planet’s health is now a very big thing indeed. It has huge public momentum and
