Green Futures - No.88 by Green Futures

greenfutures No.88 April 2013

Planet minding Our new executive operating system

Dirty secrets: why soil is essential to our systems The investors looking for more than mere profit Heading home: healthcare checks out of the hospital

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Drivers of public transport across the world are recognising the power of the tannoy to reach thousands. “Mind the planet”, proffers a driver on the London Underground, momentarily assuming the role of social shepherd. A poor pun on the habitual warning to “mind the gap between the train and the platform”, but an interesting prompt. As the commuters shuffle to the exit, some might picture their location: in a tunnel, under a city, on an island, in the northern hemisphere, and so on… It sounds like a child’s game, but the capacity to bear in mind your presence on the planet, and ask how your life fits into this massively complex system, is something more corporates are recognising as a great way to develop problem-solving skills – says Carl Frankel in ‘Minding our business’ (see p32). There’s increasing evidence to show that mindfulness enhances clarity, focus, and even creativity. It’s thrilling to see that scientists are getting closer to an understanding of what actually happens in the brain when creativity strikes. As Professor John Kounios of Drexel University explained in a recent episode of the BBC programme Horizon, the brain ‘blinks’, shutting down the visual cortex to allow a surge in gamma waves, allowing new insight to surface in our consciousness. If we can learn to quieten our minds and refresh our perspective more often, our ability to invent and innovate could soar. Playing with perspective is something any child growing up with touchscreens will find second nature. Flex your fingers a few times and zoom from the whole planet view down to the microbes squirming about under your feet. Soil is “the most diverse ecosystem on the planet”, writes Katherine Rowland in ‘Dirty secrets’ (see p16). It’s also one of the most valuable, not just as a birthing ground for a growing list of plantderived products (food, textiles, paper, fuels and, more recently, plastics) but as a store for carbon dioxide and a highly efficient recycling system for essential nutrients. Our own wellbeing depends on the health and resilience of soil, a correlation at the crux of ongoing debate about whether GM crops can ever be a good thing. It’s a debate that’s maturing along with the science, as Anthony Kleanthous reveals (page 20). The links between our wellbeing and the soil go beyond good food and water. More health planners now recognise the difference green space can make to recovery times and mental resilience. You don’t need a doctor to prescribe fresh air, though. Mobile apps are helping more city dwellers get out and about, and prompting them to keep closer tabs on their lifestyles. It’s a trend with potential to take quite a burden off health services, says Jon Turney (see p28), particularly as cities and brands get involved. I saw a doctor this week to get a medical certificate to enter a race. “I envy you”, he said. “I find it hard to get out of the house.” For a moment, it seemed, our roles were reversed. Where will we go for health advice in the future, and who will offer it? Shop assistants over the till? Train drivers over the tannoy?

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Green Futures April 2013

Contents 39

Number 88, April 2013

6 00

14 24

32 Features 16 D irty secrets What’s healthy soil worth to the planet? Katherine Rowland unearths its importance to our key challenges, from the food crisis to biodiversity loss to climate change.

ealth at hand 28 H Does the future of healthcare lie outside of hospitals? Thanks to mobile technology, proactive cities and bold brands, health is coming home, says Jon Turney.

20 GM: solution or distraction? Is genetic modification the future, the past, or a red herring in the race for sustainable agriculture? Anthony Kleanthous investigates.

32 M inding our business Corporations are journeying towards the inner mountain-top, says Carl Frankel, with mounting evidence that it could increase their impact.

22 Future stakes The impact of ‘socially responsible’ funds is equivocal. Heather Connon asks whether new forms of investment will create more change.

Green Futures April 2013

Briefings

Regulars

The latest in green innovation, including:

4 T he future in context Peter Madden gives laundry an airing

46 Feedback Readers respond online and in print

24 A thousand words Simple science revives our sense of wonder

48 J onathon Porritt The future of humankind depends on how, and when, we move on from fossil fuels.

5 Sun-cooled tomatoes Solar fridge for hot climates 6 A genetic leap for salmon US could put GM fish on the menu 8 Paraguay’s recycled orchestra Old oil drum – or a cello frame? 10 Greening demolition Salvaging materials from the skyline 13 Energy atoll to catch the wind Belgium’s energy storage island

26 T he Green Futures interview Ian Simm, Chief Executive of Impax Asset Management 35 Forum update Study questions future consumer needs; what next for industrial biotechnology; and, if you want a positive impact, you have to think in systems, says Sally Uren

14 Magnetic attraction Wireless charging boosts Utah’s bus

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Partner viewpoints 39 B ulk benefits Collaborations boost recycling rates AMEC 40 H ealth counts Funding lessons from carbon finance ClimateCare 41 R eport card Is sustainability reporting worth it? Pureprint Group 42 R eading between the sheets What your paper choice says about you Arjowiggins Graphic 43 R etrofit: the fourth ‘R’? The educational value of carbon cuts Skanska

Green Futures April 2013

Peter Madden

Briefings

The future in context

Sun-cooled tomatoes A solar fridge for fresh food in hot climates Food shortages in India are compounded by a lack of cold-chain storage facilities, but a new solar-powered cold storage device, developed by the University of Cincinnati in partnership with industry, could put this problem on ice. SolerCool has been designed to provide cooling at the individual farm level. The size of a large garden shed, it can be easily transported to farms on the back of a truck. The SolerCool project is a partnership between the University of Cincinnati and three local companies – Acutemp Thermal Systems, SimpliCool Technologies International and SAS Automation – funded by a Procter and Gamble higher-education grant. The unit derives its power from eight solar photovoltaic panels which, when in

Lighter laundry The ‘weekly wash’ with fewer weeks and less water

Green Futures April 2013

compact domestic machines – or even cleaning capabilities built into multifunctional household furniture. Some of the most cutting edge-innovations will result from cross-industry collaborations. These will be spearheaded by clothing companies such as Levis and Marks & Spencer, who are already cutting water-use and encouraging line-drying; by appliance makers such as Philips and Panasonic, who are already prototyping new designs; and by detergent manufacturers like Unilever and Ecover, who are trying to reduce the total footprint of their products, from packaging to consumer use. Some of these innovations are now with us. British washing machine manufacturer Xeros has a new process which uses polymer beads to cut water and energy use by 90%. Nudie jeans encourages wearers not to wash their denims for six months. And, in China, engineers have created a cheap new chemical coating which makes cotton clothes clean themselves of stains and remove odours when exposed to sunlight. Washing machines have been a hugely beneficial social innovation, especially for women, during the last century. Relieving billions more of the drudgery of hand-washing can only be a good thing. But all those new machines whirring around won’t be great news for the planet, unless they are radically redesigned to have a fraction of today’s environmental impact.

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Ancient practice boosts sales of cosmetically challenged crops Gleaning, an ancient practice where a farmer allows locals to harvest crops with no market value, is gaining traction as an answer to today’s food waste crisis. It is estimated that retailers reject 20-40% fresh produce because it fails to meet their tough cosmetic standards. But new initiatives in the UK, the US and France aim to boost the value of these discards. Gleaning Network UK, set up by the food waste campaign Feeding the 5000, coordinates farmers and volunteers

Photos: Dottie Stover / University of Cincinnati; Foodstar

Peter Madden is Chief Executive, Forum for the Future.

distribution. Any technology that addresses this overlooked area of development is to be welcomed”, says Ann-Marie Brouder, who specialises in sustainable food systems at Forum for the Future. Each unit may initially be somewhat expensive, at around $5,000, University of Cincinnati engineer Mohsen Rezayat told the New York Times. However, wider applications may bring the cost down. SolerCool has potential, not only in countries with hot climates, but also as a ‘green’ alternative to existing coldchain technologies, says Ilse Hawkins, the associate business law professor who heads up the project at Cincinnati. Plans for commercial roll-out will be finalised following further tests, she confirms. – Ian Randall

Gleaning adds value

Photo: Nick Woodford / Forum for the Future

In 10 years’ time, we can expect to clean our clothes much less. Textiles will be designed to repel and remove dirt and odours, so that clothes only need occasional washing, while onthe-go ‘spot’ cleaning will allow us to keep outfits looking pristine for longer. When they do make it into the laundry basket, smart clothes with embedded sensors will inform intelligent machines about their colour, weight and washing needs. There’ll be no more finding that your favourite garment has come out half the size and a different colour. And there may well be a ‘freeze cycle’ to get rid of bugs and bacteria. The washing machine itself will be small, silent and virtually waterless – in accordance with the latest regulatory standards. And it may well be on loan from your local utility as part of your energy and water saving package. On some tariffs, the utility will even switch it on and off for you, so as to make optimum use of the energy supplies and smooth out peak demand. There are trends taking us in that direction. With demand for water projected to outstrip supply by 40% by 2030, water will certainly be in short supply in many parts of the world – and this is likely to translate into higher prices, universal water metering, and tougher efficiency standards. An average machine today uses 70 litres for one basket of washing. That will have to decline drastically. As billions more people across the world gain access to their own washing machine, energy use will be an issue. Efficient, pedal-powered machines are already being prototyped in the developing world [see ‘All in a spin’, GF87, p11]. With 75% of people expected to live in cities, and space at a premium, we’re likely to see a rise in neighbourhood laundering services and ultra-

operation, deliver 1kW to charge several deep-cycle batteries. In contrast to the short, high-current bursts of starter batteries (such as those found in a car), deep-cycle batteries are designed to regularly discharge between 50 and 80% of their total charging capacity, without degrading. These power reserves ensure that the compression-based cooling unit is capable of functioning both day and night. SolerCool also features a battery health monitoring system, which digitally displays status updates and can predict in advance if any battery is in danger of failing. “A recent report by the UK’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers highlighted that in India 21 million tonnes of wheat annually perishes due to inadequate storage and

Rays against rot

to harvest fresh, surplus food for redistribution charities. The long-term ambition is to change “the market to make gleaning impossible”. Founder Tristram Stuart says “we want to create a demand in the market for wonky fruit and veg” by influencing the public’s perception. Gleaning helps highlight the lunacy that so much fresh food is binned, explains Dan Crossley, Executive Director of the Food Ethics Council. “It also shows that cosmetically imperfect food is not just edible but valuable.” Who will pay for it, and how much, remains to be seen. The potential growth of gleaning could be limited by too great a dependence on volunteers. However, the Californian start-up FoodStar aims to prove the monetary value of ‘cosmetically challenged’ food by marketing it in mainstream retailers. “We intervene and try to market this perfectly edible and nutritious produce”, says Stuart Rudick from FoodStar. “There is nothing wrong with the produce – it’s not waste. It’s a perception issue; we are working hard to change this so that more produce is consumed in the fresh state”,

rather than being further processed, used as animal feed or sent to landfill. FoodStar finds farmers with surplus food, and brings the produce to supermarkets to sell at bargain prices. It then alerts members – who have signed up online – where and when the food will be available. The aim is to help consumers access inexpensive, nutritious produce, while giving the farmers fair prices. In its first month, FoodStar sold over $3,000 of surplus apples and sweet potatoes. Rudick is confident that the supply of produce can support large volumes, and is looking to expand the platform to more supermarkets. The new trend in gleaning comes at an opportune moment. “People now understand that looks are not necessarily an indicator of the quality”, explains John Gregson, Senior Manager at Waitrose. Waitrose operates a system called ‘flexing the specs’ in buying its own produce. Weather and harvests are analysed, and optimum cosmetic and sizing standards are altered accordingly, so farmers can bring as much to the shelf as possible. – Olivia James

Green Futures April 2013

A genetic leap for salmon

Oxford: foodprint pioneer

US ruling could put GM fish on the menu

City uses a new tool to calculate the impact of its diet A new ‘FoodPrint Calculator’, developed by social enterprise Landshare and sustainability consultancy Best Foot Forward, aims to help cities understand the impact of their population’s diet on the environment. Oxford is the first city in the world to be ‘foodprinted’ using the new calculator. Sustainability experts examined where its food comes from and how it is produced, as well as the energy sources, food waste and packaging involved. Using the calculator, the researchers estimated that feeding Oxford’s population of 150,000 people represents 20% of the city’s overall greenhouse gas emissions, and requires a total of 53,000 hectares of agricultural land, 6.6 million gigajoules of energy from fossil fuels, and 398 million tonnes of water, annually. Importantly, the ‘FoodPrinting Oxford’ report, commissioned by the City Council, also highlights the risks in sustaining its diet. It includes recommendations to reduce its impact, such as sourcing more fruit and vegetables, reducing its dependence on meat and dairy, and cutting down on food

Pink salmon or red herring?

the pending regulations, the fish could only be farmed in Panama and no live species could enter the US. But Hansen maintains that creating conditions for a subarctic species to thrive in a tropical location will likely increase the environmental impact. Martin Jaffa of the aquaculture consulting group Callander McDowell says that even if the fish is approved, it will struggle to find a market. “There is no demand for the product”, he says. “Farmers don’t want it, stores don’t want it, and consumers don’t want it.” Then again, if the fish were to hit the shelves next year – the anticipated timeframe – consumers may be none the wiser. Unless the FDA concludes that the fish is substantially biologically different from the conventional Atlantic salmon, fish farmers will not be required to label AquaAdvantage as a GM product. – Katherine Rowland

I am a developing person that lives in a ‘developed’ country. I invite us all to be developing: that is where the power is. Jody Turner, Founder, Culture of Future

Green Futures April 2013

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surprising research insights as well as strong campaigning messages”, comments Phil Bloomer, Director of Policy and Campaigns, Oxfam. “As we enter a new era of rising food prices and ecological crisis, we must act on food security – at a country and world level.” Brighton is the next UK city stepping forward to use the FoodPrint Calculator, with funding from the Network for Social Change. – Katharine Earley

Bhutan’s organic ambition Will Bhutan be the world’s first 100% organic nation?

Photos: Oxford.gov.uk; Pete McBride / National Geographic

and raising them in onshore containers in Panama. The company has been trying to gain approval for its innovation for nearly two decades, and maintains that the product will offer an antidote to overfishing, while bringing cost savings to farmers and consumers. David Edwards, director of animal biotechnology at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, says the fish provide a healthy alternative to eating imperilled wild species. “This technology offers the opportunity to make a product that sustains the environment and feeds a growing global population”, he says. But environmental and consumer groups are less convinced. Michael Hansen, senior staff scientist at the Consumers Union, says the fish have an increased potential to cause allergic reactions and that the safety assessments are based on “poor quality data”. Under

Photo: AquaBounty Technologies inc.

The first genetically modified (GM) animal approved for human consumption could be swimming onto America’s dinner plates soon. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released a draft assessment of the AquaAdvantage salmon, stating that it has “no significant impact” on the environment and that it is “as safe as food from conventional Atlantic salmon”. The fish contains a growth hormone gene from the Pacific Chinook salmon as well as genetic material from the ocean pout, an eel-like creature that contains antifreeze in its blood plasma. These modifications result in a fish that grows faster – reaching market weight in about 18 months as opposed to three years – and can be bred all year round. The fish are produced by AquaBounty Technologies, a Massachusetts-based company that is hatching the eggs in a facility in Prince Edward Island, Canada,

waste and any unnecessary packaging. “We recognised that a city’s food system represents a big part of its carbon footprint, and wanted to be able to quantify this and identify realistic, tangible solutions”, explains Jennifer Carr, the Council’s Sustainable Energy Officer. “We’re now engaging all sorts of different groups, including businesses, supermarkets, policy-makers and consumers, to collaborate and take action by sharing the findings via our Low Carbon Oxford network, and running communications campaigns using a new video animation.” The development of a foodprinting mark, to highlight the impact of and potential food security issues for restaurants and businesses in Oxford, is also being discussed, following on from a successful trial at the city’s Turl Street Kitchen, a member of the Sustainable Restaurant Association. Oxfam is a keen supporter of the FoodPrint calculator as a means of sharing knowledge on food security issues between UK and developing world cities. “The FoodPrint Calculator provides both

Bhutan’s Minister of Agriculture and Forests, Dr Pema Gyamtsho, reiterated a pledge to render the small south Asian country’s agriculture wholly organic, at the annual sustainable development summit in New Delhi. The ambition is to eliminate herbicides and pesticides, and use natural fertilisers instead. The ambition applies to exports, too. Gyamtsho hopes the plan will boost Bhutan’s export potential, particularly to countries like neighbouring India and China, where there is an increasing demand for organic produce. Bhutan’s mountainous topography increases run-off from fields, introducing chemicals into water systems; in response, many farmers already opt instead to use rotting leaves or compost as natural fertilisers to minimise pollution. Gyamtsho says the organic ambition will be realised “region by region and crop by crop”, and has yet to commit to a firm timeline. If Bhutan is to be the world’s first organic nation, it will have to rise to the challenge before the tiny south Pacific island of Niue, which has set itself a 2020 target. However, Gyamtsho sees the organic shift as central to Bhutan’s socio-economic development plan. Under this, the

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Agriculture Ministry has set out plans for Bhutan to achieve food self-sufficiency by 2015. Bhutan currently consumes about 100,000 tonnes of rice a year, yet only produces about half that sum. A Buddhist state which considers the self and the environment as one, it has already made commitments to protect its abundant biodiversity, including the preservation of at least 60% of its land as forest. Some of Bhutan’s farmers are reportedly unconvinced by the feasibility of a wholly organic system, telling international media that they are already under pressure, with a booming population and a labour drain of young people, not to mention increasingly unpredictable weather conditions. Tim Benton, Professor of Population Ecology at the University of Leeds, believes a wholly organic food system could be feasible for countries which are not competitive in terms of the quantity of food they produce but harbour ambitions to compete on quality. “Immediately, Bhutan would suffer a yield loss, but they would also see environmental benefits”, says Benton.

“They will have to decide if the potential benefits from things like green tourism will be economically sufficient to offset their loss of production. Of course, Bhutan will never compete with the Brazils of this world [on food production].” Benton points to Switzerland as a country which strives to maximise quality over quantity – producing less food but focusing on premium, organic crops. Ultimately, the plan’s success may depend on the subsidies available to farmers, he says. – Lucy Purdy

Green Futures April 2013

Three-wheel home

Buildings that breathe

An answer to overcrowding and high accommodation costs?

New e-stack system keeps offices fresh but warm

Get up and go

be configured in different ways to turn it into a kitchen, dining area, bedroom or bathroom (there’s a water tank and an ingenious fold-away bath tub). All the owner has to do is find somewhere to park, and they’ve got a home for the night. It’s a dwelling that might appeal to ‘new nomads’ – those for whom technology means more flexibility and who welcome alternatives to the restraints of conventional housing [see GF87, p16] – as well as those who find themselves pushed to the margins by formal urban economies, including those who are forced to travel on a daily basis in search of work. “We built the tricycle primarily to bring attention to issues relating to housing costs in China, the inability to own land, and the intense traffic and pollution”, says James Shen, the principal of PAO. Sadly though, there are no plans to put the tricycle house into production any time soon. “I’m not sure if the world is really ready for this type of living”, Shen opines.

Benjamin de la Peña, Associate Director of Urban Development for the Rockefeller Foundation, concurs that it shows the hallmarks of “a design exercise, rather than a sit down process to find out what people need”. For more practical examples of solutions to the urban housing shortage, he points to the award-winning, easy-toconstruct moulded brickless dwellings produced by Moladi in South Africa, and the bamboo-based modular shelters developed by Micro Home Solutions for the homeless of New Delhi. But for Shen, the design process is by no means complete: he hopes the open source template will be adapted to suit particular locations and lifestyles. “We developed the plastic structure specifically so that it can be easily manufactured locally using basic machinery.” So, although this technology won’t be hitting the streets of Beijing, who knows if someone from Nairobi or São Paulo won’t pick it up and pedal with it? – Dixe Wills

Paraguay’s recycled orchestra Landfill project make music from trash

Green Futures April 2013

poverty and waste, but is ultimately one of hope which celebrates the transformative power of music.” The film is part of a wider outreach programme to replicate the project in other parts of the world, with funding from Creative Visions Foundation, a non-profit that supports projects which use art to create change, the MacArthur Foundation and a Kickstarter campaign. For Damien Short, Director of the Human Rights Consortium at London University, Landfill Harmonic is “testament to the ingenuity and spirit of Cateura’s inhabitants in the face of the excesses and inequality of global capitalism [and] a story that deserves to be celebrated”. Music may be the food of love, but Mexico City is encouraging citizens to trade recyclable materials for fresh food at the Mercado de Trueque, a new market launched by the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources. The market accepts glass, paper, cardboard, aluminium cans and PET plastic bottles, and returns green points which are redeemable for agricultural products (such as lettuce, spinach and prickly pears) grown in and around Mexico City. – Tess Riley, with additional material by Tom Rossiter

The skyscraper, due for completion in 2015, has two layers – an outer one which works as a weather barrier, and an inner one that has automated air vents, a wood curtain wall, and manually operated sliding doors to open the building for air. But it’s not simply a matter of green design. “It’s hugely about the follow through”, says Penoyre and Prasad partner, Ian Goodfellow: “There’s no point in having the greenest building in the world if it’s too complicated to operate or people override the systems.” For him, end-user training, as offered by The Building Services Research and Information Association’s Soft Landings project, is “equally important”. – Lizzie Rivera

World’s largest ‘SolarWall’ installed in Britain

Music makers: garbage picker Nicholas Gomez, aka ‘Cola’, and Director Favio Chávez

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cold air in, and two (low-energy) 45W fans to mix it with internally generated heat. First commercialised in 2007, it’s now in operation in 65 buildings across the UK, including the zero-carbon Crouch Hill School in north London, designed by architects Penoyre and Prasad LLP, which opened in January 2013. The system costs the same to install as mechanical ventilation, but energy consumption in use is about half that of standard industry benchmarks. Indoor air quality improves, too. Breathing Buildings has been shortlisted for Ashden’s 2013 Energy Innovation Award. As Ashden Founder-Director Sarah ButlerSloss puts it, “building products and services that make reducing CO2 emissions realistic and affordable are essential for combating climate change”. It is part of a trend which could be catching on more widely. Costly but pioneering designs, such as PNC Bank’s new headquarters in Pittsburgh, are helping to raise the profile of natural ventilation systems.

Warmth through the walls

Photos: Penoyre Prasad; Marks & Spencer

Welcome to Cateura, a town built on a vast landfill site outside Paraguay’s capital city Asunción, where 1,500 tonnes of solid waste are dumped every day. Over 2,500 families live here, many making a living from repurposing the trash and then selling it. Some of them are also making music – with violins, cellos, saxophones and drums all carefully fashioned from the materials to hand, a process which can take weeks. Empty oil can – or a cello frame? Used x-rays – or ideal drum kit skins? The musical project began when social worker Favio Chávez sought to provide Cateura’s local children with a modest activity to keep them occupied and away from the rubbish tip. Little did he imagine that the fledgling musicians would become ‘Los Reciclados’, a chamber orchestra of 25 children performing everything from Beethoven to the Beatles in concerts around Central and South America. The story of Los Reciclados is now set to go worldwide with a feature-length documentary, Landfill Harmonic, charting the orchestra’s progress since it began. Alejandra Amarilla Nash, Executive Producer, says, “The film shines a spotlight on two of the most vital issues of our time,

Most natural ventilation systems introduce fresh air into sealed offices without difficulty in summer. But once temperatures drop below 15oC they are either switched off, or use heaters to warm the cold air – a solution which demands a lot of energy. Now, a Cambridge University spin-off, Breathing Buildings, thinks it has a better solution. It involves mixing the fresh (but cold) incoming winter air with the interior air. The latter is of course much warmer. Combining the two can produce air which is fresh, but does away with the cold draughts typical of many ventilation systems in winter. “Most companies just throw more energy at the problem”, says David Wilkinson, Finance and Operations Director. “[But] there is a huge amount of heat gain from occupants in commercial buildings. Why not use that energy?” The company’s e-stack technology funded in part by BP – uses a roof stack (an opening that can be part-closed when outside temperatures drop) to allow the

Photos: People’s Architecture Office (PAO) + People’s Industrial Design Office (PIDO); Landfill Harmonics

A campervan it isn’t. Designed by China’s People’s Architecture Office (PAO) and the People’s Industrial Design Office (PIDO), the bijou tricycle house is made of translucent recyclable polypropylene plastic with sides and arched roof folded in the style of an accordion. Using origami-like techniques, the interior can

Let it flow

Making the most of the sun to heat buildings is nothing new. Socrates encouraged it. More recently, glazed cavity walls have maximised passive solar gain, but with the problem that the heat can’t be regulated precisely. Now, a relatively new solar thermal air-heating technology has made its biggest appearance anywhere in the world on a British building: the Marks & Spencer (M&S) distribution centre in Castle Donington, set to open this year. The ‘transpired solar collector’ (TSC) technology is a perforated metal cladding with a 20cm air cavity between it and the building wall. On a southerly or southeasterly aspect, the metal cladding is heated by the sun while ventilation fans create negative pressure in the air cavity, drawing in the heated air through the panel perforations. This heated air rises and is ducted into the building. When no heating is needed, the warm air is vented out, and fresh, cool air is drawn into the building instead. On cloudy days, supplementary heating may have to be used. The industrial appearance of this technology, and the large scale needed for efficiencies, means that it’s more suited to commercial properties and public buildings, so far, rather than homes. The installation at the M&S distribution

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centre – branded SolarWall by installers CA Group – covers an area of 4,334m2 (about 16 tennis courts) and is the largest in the world, according to the Group’s Director, Brian Watson. On a clear day it will harvest in the region of 500w of thermal energy per square metre, and is expected to reduce CO2 emissions by over 250 tonnes a year. In the UK, a SolarWall costs £60 per square metre, and the average size of installation is 200m2. “Payback is usually less than three years”, said Watson, who credits the SolarWall on their headquarters with reducing fuel bills by 51%. “This technology is a fantastic innovation”, says Leonie Greene of the Renewable Energy Association. “Here in the UK, we’re familiar with solar thermal for

water heating but not so much for space heating. We’re far behind Europe.” Chuck Kutscher, Principal Engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado, says that – while TSC is efficient, cost-effective, simple and reliable – the downside is that it’s limited to preheating ventilation air during the day. “This technology competes with natural gas preheat as well as heat recovery devices”, he explains, “both of which can operate when the sun isn’t shining.” TSC was first developed in the US by Conserval Engineering in the 1980s. In 1992, the US Department of Energy said it was in “the top 2% of energy related inventions”; today, there are over a thousand examples across 25 countries. – Paul Miles Scaling the solar wall

Green Futures April 2013

Greening demolition

Water cycle with value added

Let me down gently

Green construction has been the subject of considerable attention for some time now – but what about demolition? One innovative organisation, Taisei Corporation, is leading the charge. The Japanese company has developed an eco-friendly process that makes it possible to salvage building materials for recycling and reuse, while also reducing CO2 emissions through effective use of energy. The Taisei Ecological Reproduction System, or Tecorep, begins with the creation of an enclosed space at the top of a building in which everything that can be reused is removed. The system then works top to bottom, floor by floor, while the roof is held up by temporary columns lowered by jacks as the higher floors come down. Currently, Taisei is undertaking a project of significant proportions: bringing down the 140m-high Grand Prince Hotel Akasaka, a Tokyo landmark. The salvaged materials are transported to the ground using a crane, which in turn uses the weight of its load to generate

electricity. This energy is then harnessed to power other equipment needed during demolition, such as lights. In a report outlining the system, Taisei notes that approximately 5,100kJ can be generated at the maximum weight of 8 tons. In addition, says the company’s head of construction technology development, Hideki Ichihara, carbon emissions are reduced by 85%. So could this be the future of demolition? Jennifer Clark, Director of Environment at UK construction specialist Skanska, calls it “an interesting development”, adding: “We have been increasing recycling rates on site to lessen demolition impact for a number of years. But this is the first time I’ve seen a technique like this used – although there are a number of cranes and hoists that generate energy on the market now.” In the US, salvaging materials for reuse is promoted through organisations such as the Delta Institute and the Building Materials Reuse Association, non-profit organisations working to advance sustainable development.

A clean water fund nudges hotels and spas

Photos: Yves Behar / Fusproject; Müller Wiseman Dairies

Self-powered cranes take down buildings for less

Meanwhile, in the UK, regulations are planned that will require developers, builders and contractors to consider how to prevent, minimise and recycle waste when planning a demolition project. – Ruth Stokes

Water, as the saying goes, is life. Or lifethreatening for the billion people living without safe drinking water. Enter, a new campaign which aims to expand access to safe drinking water by helping the hospitality industry cut back on bottled water. The target is to raise $1 billion in three years to fund projects such as the provision of sustainable, safe drinking water to communities in SubSaharan Africa. Whole World Water generates funds in collaboration with hotels, restaurants and spas, which install in-house filtration systems as part of the campaign. They can then serve local water to guests in elegant and reusable glass bottles, a low-carbon, low-cost alternative to disposable plastic bottles of drinking water. And how does it generate money? In many hotel minibars there’ll be a bottle of mineral water. In a campaign member hotel, it will be a bottle of ‘Whole World’ water. The consumer still pays to drink it, then (more often than not) leaves the bottle behind for the hotel to reuse. In a spa, they might add a line item to the guest’s bill, telling them about Whole World Water. In either case, 10% of

the revenue generated goes to the fund. The financial benefits for the hospitality industry are clear: a bottle of filtered water can cost hotels 25% less to provide than a plastic bottle of water. Each glass bottle can be re-used, reducing CO2 emissions from production and transportation of plastic bottles and avoiding the issue of plastic waste. Richard Branson’s Necker Island estimates it will save 200,000 plastic bottles a year. The UK-registered charitable fund, managed by ClimateCare, will soon be open to applications from organisations seeking finance for projects to secure safe, sustainable and affordable drinking water in developing countries. Disbursements will be made by a committee of water and financing experts, based on strict objectives, including the potential to return income to the fund. This additional revenue will be recycled to new projects to increase long-term impact. The filtering concept was piloted by founding member Sonu Shivdasani in the resort and spa group Six Senses. Other early members include Banyan Tree, Oberoi, Ritz-Carlton and Virgin. Shivdasani hopes the

fund will showcase the potential of filtered water in the hospitality industry. “It’s sort of a me-too industry”, says Karena Albers, a television producer and co-founder. “Part and parcel of that is making it as simple as possible for hotels to take part in it. We hope it will inspire businesses to think more holistically about their processes and sustainability.” – David Fulbrook Minibar life-saver?

Net positive campus

Milk with less water

Chicago school joins the ‘restorative’ movement

UK dairy industry signs up to pioneering water reduction scheme

Green Futures April 2013

the campus as a “third teacher”, offering practical education through its gardens, greenhouses and innovative designs. The school secured more than $50,000 through a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo – which, combined with match funding from the school’s board of directors, is enough to secure the land on which to build its new campus. It is still a long way from the total $30 million required to complete the vision. In addition to stimulating small-scale financial commitments from parents and community members, the school is also approaching founding donors, and hopes to partner with enterprises that would pay to use the school as a “learning lab” for sustainable technologies. According to Dan Schnitzer, Head of Sustainability and Operations at the school, the long-term vision is to become financially independent of donor funds, offsetting operating costs by generating resources, namely energy and food. “The campus will eventually pay for itself”, Schnitzer says. The net positive framework has been

gaining traction across multiple sectors, says Bruce McKenney, Strategy Director for the Nature Conservancy’s ‘Development by Design’ programme. He says there is a growing interest in net positive impact, born of a burgeoning “sense that it is possible to maintain systems for wildlife and people, while meeting development needs”. Among the companies pledging to go beyond zero, the home improvement retailer Kingfisher recently convened a ‘youth board’ to suggest ways for a retail group with over 1,000 stores to help people improve their homes to the benefit of natural resources and communities, and make a profit [see ‘Youth on board’, GF87, p39]. Schnitzer and his colleagues also take a long view on positive impact. Not only is the school investing in the local environment and sustainable infrastructure, but also in a new generation of social and political stewards, “aware of the tremendous opportunities they have as individuals to make a positive impact”. – Katherine Rowland

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As water becomes an increasingly scarce commodity [see GF Special Edition ‘Water Works’], savvy companies are working out new ways to use less. With expertise on the issue at a premium, the Food and Drink Federation (FDF), which groups the UK’s leading manufacturers in the sector, teamed up with WRAP to set up something called the Federation House Commitment (FHC). Its aim: to help the industry cut water use overall by 20% by 2020. In return for signing up, FDF members can get access to the latest specialist knowledge, best practice guidelines and online tools. Importantly, they also get to learn from the experiences of companies throughout the food and drink industry (such as Coca-Cola, Heinz and Kraft) by participating in peer working groups. Now, industry federation Dairy UK has come on board. And not before time. The sector consumed 11.2 billion litres of water in 2010 – an increase of nearly a billion since 2008. Companies already committed to taking action are Dairy Crest, Müller

Photos: Taisei Corporation; The Third Teacher+ / Cannon Design

A public charter school in Chicago has launched an ambitious campaign to build a net positive energy campus, which will open in 2015. “One molecule more” has become the Academy for Global Citizenship’s philosophical slogan, guiding planning and development for a facility that will eventually generate its own energy, and grow enough produce to feed its students and members of the community. The developers envision

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Dairy and First Milk. Others benefiting include chocolate-maker Thornton’s, which has reduced its water footprint by 20,000m3 per year by analysing flows in and out of its sites, and quickly identifying underground leaks. The company expects to save £60,000 per year as a result. Bread-maker Warburton’s has identified 39,000m3 of water savings per year with the technical support of FHC experts. It also reduced its reliance on mains water by 10% in 2012 by using water more efficiently on site. Overall, FHC signatories made a collective 14.4% reduction in water use between 2007 and 2011, according to the FHC’s 2012 ‘Progress Report’. The FDF is encouraged at the rate of progress. “We’re seeing a growing commitment from all corners of the food and drink industry to reducing water use”, says its Head of Climate Change and Energy Policy, Stephen Reeson. “This kind of voluntary commitment really promotes the value of collaboration and knowledgesharing.” – Katharine Earley

Green Futures April 2013

Rings of bright water

Energy atoll to catch the wind

Ancient trees could hold the key to modern water management

Pumped storage at the heart of Belgium’s offshore energy plans

Over the last year, the central and southwestern US has been stuck in drought, a condition that has killed crops and depleted reservoirs. To help manage diminishing water supplies, some utilities and scientists are investigating a surprising source of information: old trees. More precisely, water managers are looking at tree rings, the concentric layers of tissue that trees produce each year as they grow in diameter. In a wet year, when times are good, trees are able to add a lot of new growth, and produce wide rings. In dry years, trees batten down the hatches and produce much narrower ones. By examining these patterns in a region’s tree trunks, scientists can determine how precipitation has changed over time. Which trees provide the most useful rings? The ones that have been around the longest, of course. “The most valuable species are trees like redwoods and bristlecone pines, which live hundreds of years”, says tree physiologist Graeme Berlyn. Researchers in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains have used giant sequoia

stumps to reconstruct the region’s drought history as far back as the year 101 BC. In the South Platte River watershed, which supplies eastern Colorado with most of its water, pinyon and ponderosa pines tell a story in which droughts regularly occur every few decades. By correlating tree ring data from as far back as 1634 with modern stream gauges, Denver Water, a public utility with 1.3 million customers, has been able to determine the severity of Colorado’s worst historic droughts, and conserve resources accordingly. “We plan on having enough water to get through the most severe drought we’ve seen on record, with a bit of a safety on top”, says Steve Schmitzer, Denver Water’s manager of water resources analysis. As climate change tampers with precipitation patterns, that safety margin could become vital. One of the driest years in recent Colorado history was 2012, and 2013 is shaping up to be just as parched. Is the current dry spell a random fluctuation, or a harbinger of a changing system? “2002 was the worst single year on the historic

Belgium has proposed an artificial island in the North Sea, storing wind energy generated by its network of offshore turbines. The island is part of a wider move to shut down its nuclear programme by 2025, in line with a number of other European states. Nuclear accounted for 57% of Belgium’s energy in 2011, and the closure of its oldest reactor was postponed last year when concerns were raised over future energy supply. The artificial island will use pumped storage techniques to store the 2,000MW its offshore wind farms could be generating by 2020. The system will work by pumping water from a reservoir in the centre of the island, then letting it back in through hydropower turbines as and when the country’s demand exceeds its supply. This will help overcome the thorny problem of wind’s intermittency. While pumped storage is a proven technology, this will be the first time it’s been used for offshore wind. The ‘energy atoll’ will be constructed 3km from Belgium’s Flemish coast, and take five

record, and here we are only 10 years later with very serious droughts”, says Schmitzer. “We’re starting to adjust flows downward based on climate models.” Not only do tree ring records help water managers prepare for climate change, they may also demonstrate just how much the climate is changing. Scientists in China and Mongolia have used tree rings to calculate rainfall variability, and researchers in India are exploring the technique on the Satluj River. Although climate change will affect precipitation differently in each country, the big picture is plain: rainfall patterns are in serious flux. For Berlyn: “Tree rings give us a valuable baseline against which we can measure the changes that are happening.” – Ben Goldfarb

years to build. As with all nascent technology, costs could be high. “The island is very interesting as an R&D project”, says Philip Thomas, Professor of Engineering Development at City University, but “there will need to be a breakthrough to benefit from economies of scale.” Nick Medic, Director of Offshore The North Sea could mimic high ground for hydro storage

Clothing company embarks on strategy to wring out water use

New technique captures carbon at half the cost

Green Futures April 2013

its supply chain, from river to retail. In many ways, cotton is at the heart of H&M’s new water stewardship plans. The clothing industry has always been vulnerable to cotton price fluctuations, never more so than in 2010, when rising global demand, combined with flooding in China, produced a global shortage and sent prices skyward. “All clothing companies have felt the pinch of cotton prices over the last few years”, says Stuart Orr, Freshwater Manager at WWF-UK and one of the architects of the H&M partnership. “And a lot of them have woken up to the vulnerability they face from water issues.” The partnership is designed to help mitigate these water-related risks, particularly in the Yangtze and Brahmaputra River basins, which together supply the bulk of H&M’s products. Although it’s still early days for the project, Orr says that WWF will focus on improving water quality and efficiency among the local manufacturers that supply H&M, and many other companies, with textiles. Improved water quality has been the focus of several recent campaigns aimed at corporations. Greenpeace’s 2011 ‘Dirty

Laundry’ report, for example, revealed that Chinese textile suppliers for brands including H&M were dumping hazardous chemicals into waterways. In November, Greenpeace launched its Detox movement, through which fashion industry members vowed to collaborate only with brands that adopt transparent water policies. Coaxing suppliers to clean up their acts, as H&M hopes to do, will inevitably impose costs on these facilities. To help ease the burden, Orr expects that lenders and donors will help manufacturers invest in technology and production techniques that use less water and return it cleanly to the environment. “We’re not going to change the world by ourselves,” Orr says, “but we can show other companies what good water stewardship looks like.” While these production upgrades are vital, they represent only half the hydrological battle. “Technological solutions are easy”, cautions Tien Shiao, a water specialist at the World Resources Institute. The more fundamental need, he says, is for H&M “to figure out how to sustainably manage water across the watersheds they operate in and depend on”. – Ben Goldfarb

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Photos: SpaceKris / shutterstock; Jo McCulty / Ohio State University

Cleaner coal by chemistry

Photos: John Eastcott & Yva Momatiuk / National Geographic; H&M

Shrink to fit Swedish fashion giant H&M isn’t the first company to seek to reduce the environmental impact of its water usage. But while most corporations restrict their focus to their own factories, H&M has partnered with WWF on a strategy that will transform how the clothing company uses water throughout

Coal could satisfy many regions’ energy needs were it not so polluting. For decades, scientists have dreamed of economically extracting the fuel’s energy without releasing huge quantities of CO2 and other pollutants. Researchers at Ohio State University have moved closer to achieving that dream through a novel process called coal-direct chemical looping. The University’s Clean Coal Research team, led by Professor Liang-Shih Fan, has successfully demonstrated a laboratory power plant that chemically ‘burns’ coal without releasing CO2. The system operates An ‘iron curtain’ between coal and carbon?

Renewables at the trade association RenewableUK, adds that it “holds tremendous promise to further unlock the potential of offshore renewables. It is very exciting that a European country on the North Sea, close to the epicentre of offshore wind development, is seriously considering this idea.” – Ben Alcraft

in two stages. First, iron oxide pellets and powdered coal are electrically heated in a chamber, releasing coal gas, which combines with the oxygen of the oxide, turning it into iron. Second, the hot iron moves to another chamber, where it burns in air and so becomes iron oxide again. The heat from the burning iron drives a steam turbine. The oxide returns to the first chamber, where the process is repeated. The system captures all the CO2 at a purity of 99%, and because the coal ‘burns’ at a lower temperature than in a traditional plant, much less NOx is produced. As in a

traditional plant, a standard desulphurisation unit deals with the SOx. Gary Spitznogle, Director, New Technology Development & Policy Support, American Electric Power, is enthusiastic. “The chemical looping technology promises a future of clean, efficient power plants with very low CO2 emissions”, he says. The team spent 15 years perfecting the technology before building the current 25kW test unit. Now, with financial support from the US Department of Energy, they plan a 1MW plant with energy company Babcock and Wilcox. “The recent breakthrough by Professor Fan’s team indicates the potential of this technology,” comments Samuel Tam, Divisional Director Office of Fossil Energy at the US Department of Energy. Electricity produced by a traditional coal-fired plant with standard carbon capture systems costs about 70% more than electricity produced by a plant without such systems. “Our process would increase the cost by less than half that amount”, says Professor Fan. “That’s well within the target set by the Department of Energy.” – John Fencer

Green Futures April 2013

Magnetic attraction

Not-so-temporary shelters

Wireless charging boosts the bus

‘Super-adobe’ structures combine beauty and resilience topping up its batteries from a charge plate in the ground whenever it collects passengers. It works regardless of weather conditions and even if the bus isn’t lined up perfectly with the charge plate at the bus stop, offering the same reliability as current public transit bus options, including diesel and compressed natural gas buses. It also holds out the prospect of electric buses being able to run all day – something that isn’t possible with overnight charging. Petra Beitl, Marketing Director at Liberty Cars, which also develops more efficient charging systems for electric buses, says that, despite high upfront costs, the

technology should save money over the vehicle’s lifespan. Kate Peterson, Marketing and Business Development Specialist at USU, agrees. “After initial investment has been paid back, long term maintenance and costs estimates would be equivalent to about 40 cents per gallon. The technology is infrastructure intensive. [The charge plates have to be installed in the roads.] After we put in the first commercial system, we will have a better idea on exact price; initial costs for wireless charging systems are higher than traditional liquid fuel. But lifecycle costs can be lower because the operating expenditure of electric vehicles is so much cheaper than liquid fuels, particularly in Europe”, Peterson continues. It saves on battery costs, too. “Charging wirelessly allows electric vehicles to use drastically reduced battery sizes”, says James May, Vice President of Business and Product Development, WAVE. By comparison, he adds, standard systems use batteries that are “prohibitively large, heavy, and expensive”. The standards body SAE International is developing a standard specifically for conductive charging, which, says May, should help ensure that wireless systems will be “more inclusive than proprietary”. – Giles Crosse

3D print and print again A closed-loop system for plastics

Green Futures April 2013

successfully tested: HDPE, which includes items such as bottle caps, ABS plastics (often used in toys) and nylon. “Nothing should break if something goes in that cannot be melted. Nothing will come out of the extruder”, confirms McNaney. However, “depending on the type of plastic, some outputs will be weaker or stronger.” Nick Allen of 3D Print UK calls the invention a “brilliant idea” and “a good step forward to something that can potentially really help”. However, Allen remains wary: “You don’t have any quality control in your material … if you’re mixing lots of different plastics together, you’re going to get a very inconsistent material coming out.” The first batch of 67 prototype Filabots is currently being produced by

McNaney’s company Rocknail Specialties, after a Kickstarter campaign raised around $32,000. They will be distributed to the campaigns backers for $350 apiece; plans for further commercialisation will then be released. – Kyla Mandel

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The structures are finished with a skin of cement or, more sustainably, lime plaster, and painted or lime-washed. So far, the project has constructed a community centre, with distinctive domed, beehive-like structures, and a small family house. The artists are returning to Haiti in spring 2013 to help build “a model house that is easy to replicate, and to write an instructional booklet in Creole”, says Konbit Technical Director KT Tierney. “Although labour-intensive to build, the demonstration home comes in at the same price point (about $6,000) as temporary prefab plywood housing”, says Tierney. Half of the cost is in labour: the new house is expected to take a team of 15 people five weeks to build, far more than some emergency prefabs that can be erected in a day. But other factors drive this project. “We are seeking to participate in the rebuilding of Haiti in a way that acknowledges the importance of soulfulness and beauty in people’s daily lives.” Funds have come

Labour of lime and love of design

from selling artwork and a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. A spokesman from Oxfam, which favours plastic sheeting as its emergency shelter response, praised Konbit Shelter as “very much a local solution for a local problem, using inexpensive and locally available materials and able to be built by people within the community.” – Paul Miles

Light weight Gravity-powered light promises cheap, clean illumination

Photos: James Cross; Deciwatt

As the 3D printing world continues to boom, one enthusiast has invented a device to give left-over plastics a new life. The ‘Filabot’ turns plastic into filament, so that those early adopters already fabricating their own products from digital templates can reduce, reuse and recycle old prototypes and household waste. The inspiration for developer Tyler McNaney, a 20-year-old mechanical engineering student at Vermont Technical College, came after purchasing his first 3D printer, when he was looking for a new way to use old soda bottles. Small enough to sit on a desk, the Filabot melts and pressurises plastics as they are pushed through an extruder. The molten plastic is then turned into printer filament with a tolerance of plus-or-minus 0.002 inch in thickness, the same as commercial filament. To date, three plastic types commonly found in household waste have been

When natural disasters strike, aid agencies rush in with tents, tarpaulins and prefab buildings to provide shelter. Life-saving, perhaps, but hardly environmentally sound. And rarely is such emergency housing beautiful. It does, however, often end up lasting longer than planned. Three years on from the devastating earthquake in Haiti, over 350,000 of the 1.5 million people who were made homeless are still living in temporary shelters, in 500 camps. In an effort to bridge the gap between emergency shelter and sustainable architecture, a collective of artists and engineers from the US known as Konbit is working with local communities on a new range of building designs. It’s based on the ‘super-adobe’ technique of earth bag architecture (using sandbags comprising 90% earth and just 10% cement), and promises to be resilient to earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and fire – as well as relatively inexpensive. It complies with California’s strict seismic codes.

Photos: Donna Barry / Utah State University; Whitney Trudo

Breakthroughs in inductive power transfer are promising to transform the prospects for electric buses. In July 2011, the Utah State University (USU) Research Foundation demonstrated a 90% electrical transfer efficiency of 5kW over an air gap of 10 inches. The breakthrough made inductive power transfer viable for buses, potentially minimising pollution in urban centres and saving costs. Since then, USU and its spin-off company WAVE, funded by a $2.7 million grant from the US Federal Transport Authority, have unveiled the Aggie Bus. This electric bus charges through induction,

Developed by two London-based designers at innovation company Therefore, the GravityLight produces 30 minutes of light for three seconds of effort. With an estimated market price of $5, families can expect to see a payback period of just three months, in terms of the savings on kerosene expenditure. To power GravityLight, the user pulls a rope, which lifts an attached bag, weighted with 9kg of materials. Gravity does the rest. As the bag descends, a series of gears translate the weight into energy, powering a small generator. The project is aptly named Deciwatt, after the amount of power the GravityLight produces. A deciwatt is enough to power an LED light and some small devices, such as a radio, or to charge batteries. After developing and self-funding GravityLight for four years, the team behind Deciwatt turned to the crowd-funding site indiegogo. After raising $399,000, they will now be piloting 1,000 GravityLights in remote communities over three continents during 2013. Mike Pepler, UK Ashden Awards Manager, believes it has “huge potential”, but adds that the “durability of the gearbox will be key, as will getting sufficient light output”. Jim Fullalove, Therefore’s Director, says

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that “it has to be designed to work many times over, and be useful and practical”. If, by the end of 2013, it proves to be all of this, he adds – and users really want it, “then of course there is no reason for it not to go into volume. It could be a product to break the poverty trap” by sparing

families hefty kerosene costs. While the GravityLight is being trialled, says codesigner Martin Riddiford, the team will be “setting [its] sights high” by researching the possibility of a battery-free system for accessing the internet. – Olivia James

Lighting worth the weight?

Green Futures April 2013

Dirty secrets

Soil is the most diverse ecosystem on the planet. Just one teaspoon contains as many as one billion bacteria, which provide vital services to support the growth of plant species and the myriad creatures who feed on them. Without healthy soil, everything from human health and food security to the resilience and biodiversity of the planet is at risk. The earth beneath our feet is so important that geomorphologist David R. Montgomery, author of Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, regards its quality and abundance as a measure of whether societies flourish or flounder. In the past, those with poor quality earth typically faced the prospect of dwindling in power or moving on to better lands. “In today’s world we’re running out of places to move on to”, says Montgomery. “The only option is to develop resilient soils.” However, modern farming has created a paradox. On the one hand, innovations in machinery, irrigation and synthetic fertilisers have boosted crop yields dramatically, making it possible to cull ever larger amounts more from smaller tracts of earth. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), agricultural production worldwide is 2.5 to 3 times greater than it was just 50 years ago, even though the amount of land under cultivation has increased by only 12%. On the other hand, the technologies that accomplish these feats can be deleterious to land and water, and all too frequently undermine the central source of this abundance: the soil. One-quarter of the world’s food-producing soils are currently degraded or headed in that direction, says the FAO. In recent decades, the conventional approach to managing exhausted soils has been to turn to outside inputs, like greater amounts of fertiliser and irrigation, to induce crops to grow against the odds. These strategies may increase production

Green Futures April 2013

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The roots of perennials (above) help to keep soil intact, while the permanent surface cover (below, left) prevents erosion

Photos: Bianca Lavis / National Geographic Stock; Hemera / thinkstock; iStockphoto / thinkstock; iStockphoto / thinkstock

Photos: xxxxx

Healthy soil is so important to our planet’s systems that it could be our best hope in the face of climate change, food crisis and biodiversity loss. Katherine Rowland unearths its value.

and profits in the short term, but, says soil scientist Rattan Lal of Ohio State University, any effective solution requires a long-term perspective. Lal maintains that it’s not only possible to restore our “abused and taken-for-granted” soils – but that efforts to conserve and revive the earth benefit far more than just our own food chain. Healthy soils also deliver a range of essential ecosystem services, high among them being the absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide. When it comes to strategies for solving the complex equation of climate change mitigation, biodiversity preservation, and safeguarding human security, soil conservation and restoration are “low-hanging fruit”, says Lal. While industrial farming may be one of the central culprits in depleting soils, preserving this resource does not necessarily mean an end to the high yields and profits gained through intensive methods. Matt Liebman is an agronomist at Iowa State University, with expertise in integrated pest management, an approach that looks to the environment to accomplish some of the work of synthetics herbicides, pesticides and fertilisers. On the 22 acres of the experimental Marsden Farm, Liebman and his team planted three plots with different crop rotations. The first was a conventional rotation of corn and soy, raised with regular doses of chemicals, a cycle typical of the American Midwest. On another they planted a three-year cycle that also included oats, and, on the third, a four-year cycle that featured alfalfa as well. The longer rotations also integrated livestock, whose manure was applied as fertiliser. These plots also received chemical inputs, but in judicious amounts, serving “as powerful tools with which to tune, rather than

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Green Futures April 2013

crops favoured by farming systems, like wheat, rice, corn and soy, are annuals, that need to seed and be replanted each year, and whose shallow, hungry roots deplete precious topsoil. For Jackson, president of the Land Institute, the way out of the modern agricultural mire is to grow perennial crops, which blanket the ground year round, year after year, and whose deep roots extend 6, 10, 12 feet into the earth. His is a vertical vision. On the surface, permanent coverage means that the earth is not subject to the till, and thus never left bare and vulnerable to erosion. Underground, the tangled masses of roots help to enrich and keep the soil intact; the crops also retain greater moisture, which makes them more resilient in the face of drought and high temperatures. For the past 30 years, Jackson and his colleagues have been crossbreeding annual staples with their wild, perennial relatives, and interest in these technologies is now on the rise, says soil scientist John P. Reganold of Washington State University. This August, the FAO is convening a three-day summit on the promise of perennial crops to improve food security while minimising

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Photo: SOIL Haiti

drive, agro-ecosystem performance”, Liebman and his research team report. The results of the nine-year experiment, published last fall in the journal PLoS One, were dramatic. In the more diverse rotations, compared with the conventionally cultivated plot, yields were higher, herbicide use was reduced by up to 88%, levels of freshwater toxicity (caused by chemical run-off) were 200 times lower, and profits were equivalent. There is no one-size-fits-all solution in farming – and some strong resistance to change – but the study suggests that ecosystem services can replace some of the dependence on chemical inputs, preserving the soil, producing food and sustaining farm profits. One state away in Salina, Kansas, researchers have spent decades refining the idea that the key to soil health is not a matter of inputs, but rather keeping the ground well covered. Plant geneticist and agrarian philosopher Wes Jackson maintains that about 10,000 years ago our early farming ancestors got it all wrong. Before humans left their bold imprint on the earth, perennial plants dominated much of the globe’s landscape. But the

Photo: SOIL Haiti

Non-profit SOIL took its composting toilet to Haiti’s National Carnival, celebrating the potential of human waste to restore wealth to the earth

harms to the earth. To date, plant breeders have not succeeded in producing perennials that yield on a par with annuals, and widespread planting of perennial grains may be 15 to 20 years away. While agricultural economics tends to focus strictly on yields per hectare, Reganold says that if ecosystem services, like soil conservation, drought resistance and carbon capture, were taken into account, perennial varieties would be of greater value, even if they produced less. Their advantages would be especially apparent in regions with marginal soils, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, where annual crops and their reliance on chemical inputs and machinery can hasten erosion and degradation. The research does not only hold promise for the teaming microbial populations underfoot. It also supports what Reganold describes as the implicit connection between healthy soils and healthy people. The soil is a storehouse of essential nutrients, which are delivered to humans and other creatures through plants. Soil loss and diminishing fertility pose a direct challenge to the food supply, limiting both how much can be grown, and the level of nutrients contained in crops. Emma Hockridge, head of policy at the UK-based Soil Association, says that there has been a downward trend in the level of nutrients in edible plants, citing research by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs showing that the trace mineral content in foods dropped significantly over the course of the 20th century. Artificial fertilisers tend to saturate the earth with the elements required for plant growth – namely nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium – but they don’t restore the other nutrients lost with plant cultivation, like calcium, magnesium and zinc. Maintaining the nutrient levels of soils may require closing the loop. According to Seth Itzkan, president of Planet TECH Associates, a consultancy focused on trends and innovations, the key to keeping soils healthy and fertile is animals. While today livestock are commonly associated with overgrazing and erosion, Itzkan says their biological waste is necessary to bring soils back. Livestock, managed “holistically”, can serve to mimic the environmental benefits of the great herds and their predators that once roamed certain grassland regions of the world – through the continual return of organic matter to the soil. Holistic land management is a method developed by Allan Savory, restoration ecologist and president of the Savory Institute, which engages in large-scale grassland restoration through livestock. Savory also oversees the Africa Centre for Holistic Management, which uses livestock to restore degraded soils and kickstart arid grounds into health. “Grasslands need animals, but they need them in [the] correct way”, says Izkan. “The only way not to have deserts in arid areas, in the presence of domesticated animals, is to have grazing done holistically, using a plan that accommodates the diversity and complexity of each situation.” Managed in this way, he says that livestock “can effectively and affordably restore vast areas of the world’s degraded grasslands with the additional social and climate-related benefits.”

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Livestock are not the only means by which to restore nutrients to the earth. In Haiti, centuries of poor land management and poverty have steadily impinged on the country’s ability to feed itself: between 1979 and 2001, per capita cereals production fell by 34%, and between 1998 and 2000, imports and food aid comprised more than half of the cereals consumed. To boost food security, ecologist Sasha Kramer founded Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL), a non-profit organisation that builds composting toilets to help carry organic matter and fertility back into the earth. The EcoSan toilets have separate compartments for liquid and solids, and when they reach capacity, SOIL workers collect them to process the waste into rich dirt, which is then sold to local nurseries and farmers. Kramer, who refers to her work as “liberation ecology”, is addressing two problems: the absence of proper sanitation facilities and worn out soils. The solution, which introduces human by-products into the food supply by way of the soil may, rightly, arouse concerns over safety. However, improved methods of destroying pathogens serve the composting process. Kramer’s model may be effective, but it is not new. In China, ‘night soil’ was used for millennia, and the agricultural terraces of Peru also received ample helpings of man-made fertilisers. “But today we’re squandering human waste”, says David Montgomery. “A long-term vision of sustainable agriculture returns all organic matter to the soil.” Especially as the world’s population becomes increasingly city bound, Montgomery contends that societies will soon need to radically rethink urban plumbing and re-evaluate waste for what it really is: the building blocks of soil and new life. Katherine Rowland writes about health and the environment from New York.

Managed correctly, grazing could restore vast areas of degraded grassland

Toilets to tomatoes: a SOIL project in Port au Prince

Green Futures April 2013

GM: solution or distraction?

The more nuanced aspects of this debate are beginning to find voice

What is a person with a conscience to think about the fraught and complex issue of genetic modification (GM)? Picking sides used to be easy: if you were green, you were against GM because it was unnatural and industrial. It was a weapon of the same corporate behemoths who brought us the Green Revolution and its ensuing ecological devastation; who were using the patent system to force farmers to buy new GM seed every year – and who were exploiting their control of world commodity markets to impose “Frankenstein foods” on unsuspecting citizens. If these were the developers and guarantors of genetic engineering, then their safety assurances were not to be trusted. If you were green, you preferred organic, low-input, agro-ecological methods of breeding and food production that maintained traditional landscapes and socio-economic structures, provided safe, tasty and nutritious food, combated climate change and protected wildlife. If you were a green activist, you risked prison to rip up GM crops. On the other side were the free market capitalists and biological engineers, optimistic about GM, unfazed by its presence in the food chain, and in favour of field trials. For the big seed companies and their biotech partners, the business opportunities were breathtaking: a huge potential market; a range of products that had to be bought and used together, and could be protected by patent; and a political climate that favoured big agribusiness over small-scale, mixed farms. The products themselves addressed issues related to industrial agriculture only: the lack of natural predators to control pests, and the fact that industrial herbicides can also be toxic to the crops themselves. Now, though, the more nuanced aspects of this debate are beginning to find voice. Leading environmentalists, including two of the UK’s highest profile ones, Jonathon Porritt and Tony Juniper, say that their minds are not closed as to the future of GM. Former anti-GMO activist, Mark Lynas, shocked delegates at the latest Oxford Farming Conference by saying: “For the record, … I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I … assisted in demonising an important technological option which [sic] can be used to benefit the environment.” Although a group of leading environmentalists – including Porritt and Juniper –

Green Futures April 2013

criticised Lynas for overstating his role in the anti-GM movement, many now believe that GM may be part of the solution. “We are trying to question the scourge of either/or-ism”, says Porritt. “The condition of the world is so powerless now, and the additional pressure of feeding a potential population of nine billion so great, that we have to optimise every available resource.” These environmentalists, however, do not advocate GM as we have known it until now, with its concentration on pest resistance and herbicide tolerance in intensive monoculture. The claimed benefits of GM crops have been used, they say, to fuel the expansion of industrial agricultural techniques, which have contributed to a host of environmental and social problems, including declining soil fertility, water pollution, climate change and ecological devastation. Extinctions are running at between 100 and 1,000 times their natural rate. Agricultural bird populations in the UK have almost halved in the last 25 years. In the last 40 years, tropical biodiversity has dropped by 60%. The world’s richest savannah, the Cerrado, which covers 21% of Brazil’s land mass and is home to a staggering 5% of all known species, is being cleared faster than the Amazon rainforest to make way for soya, 80% of which is fed to livestock. Such alarming consequences are associated more with the industrialisation of agriculture and the global food system than with genetic modification per se. Gary Hirshberg, founder of the leading US organic dairy brand, StonyField Farm, says: “I’m not biased against genetic engineering. The potential is there for nutritional and other benefits to citizens; but there haven’t been any yet, and many of the promises have been disproven or have not come to pass. For example, despite predictions to the contrary by the patent holders, GM has led to substantial increases in herbicide and pesticide use. Consequently, weeds and pests develop resistance and farmers have had to move to ever stronger chemicals, in ever higher quantities. The US Geological Survey reports that citizens in rural communities are now routinely breathing herbicides and finding them in the groundwater. We don’t know what the consequences will be for human health of these higher concentrations of environmental toxins, and we need to find out. At the very least, citizens need to know whether or not they

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Photo: Science Photo Library

Anthony Kleanthous asks whether genetic modification is the future, the past, or a red herring in the race for sustainable agriculture.

are purchasing and eating these foods. Since there is no requirement to label products that contain GM, most Americans are unaware.” The answer, he says, is compulsory labelling. Dan Crossley, Director of the Food Ethics Council, agrees: “Most people do not want to eat GM food, so when labelling is introduced, demand collapses. When producers in the US were forced to label GM milk that had been produced with the aid of a genetically modified growth hormone called bST, sales plummeted and Monsanto was forced to sell the subsidiary that produced it. The horsemeat scandal [in which horsemeat has been found in many European products that are marketed as 100% beef] will force multiple retailers to be honest about where their meat and dairy products come from.” Although the European Commission’s attitude to GM seems to be softening, public attitudes in most European countries remain staunchly anti-GM, or deeply sceptical. As a result, no GM crops are grown in Europe. However, around 50% of grain imported to Europe for animal feed is genetically modified, and campaigners are calling for that, too, to be labelled. If GM has let us down so badly to date, how might it contribute more positively in the future? For a start, Jonathon Porritt cites the potential ability of nonleguminous crops to fix nitrogen. Fossil-based nitrogen fertilisers are a major cause of climate change and water pollution, so the potential ability of commodity crops to fix nitrogen without the use of artificial fertilisers could bring great benefits. Unfortunately, it is likely to be 20 or 30 years before they succeed, if they succeed at all, and plants cannot live on nitrogen alone; they also need phosphorous and potassium, so if they are to be grown in monoculture, or even in three-year rotation, they still risk exhausting soils. The second advance might come in GM’s ability to improve resistance to environmental stresses, such as drought. The first such crop – a droughtresistant variety of GM maize – was launched last year by Monsanto and, with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has been distributed to an estimated two million farmers in 13 African countries, including Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria. According to the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, a research partnership dedicated to agricultural development, these farmers have obtained higher yields, improved food security, and increased incomes. According to Porritt, the expansion and improved productivity of small African farms is far more important than whether or not the crops they use are genetically modified. While Porritt and some of his fellow environmentalists are open to the potential benefits of GM crops, they consider genetic modification itself to be something of a red herring. Far more important is whether or not a new crop variety brings additional benefits for humans and the planet. If GM crops can prove themselves safe, effective, nutritious, ecoefficient and profitable, there is no reason why they should not be used. Food manufacturers are also agnostic. “We don’t have a view on whether GM is a good or a bad thing in itself”, says Andrew Kuyk of the UK’s Food and Drink Federation. “We want raw materials at competitive prices that we can turn into products for our consumers. GM comes into that debate if we’re priced out of the market by it. There’s a risk of that happening

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Drought-resistant GM maize has been distributed to two million farmers in Africa

in the UK and other European countries if we’re not more supportive of some of these new technologies, subject to objective scientific assessment and appropriate controls on use.” However, Mike Childs, Head of Science, Policy and Research at Friends of the Earth, believes that the most promising solutions are not technological in nature. Childs’ top seven “hits” for a sustainable and secure food system are: eating less (and better) meat; restoring wild fisheries; cutting waste; growing a greater variety of crops (including ‘orphan crops’); replacing monoculture with agro-ecology; empowering women; and reducing poverty. WWF-UK also considers GM to be a red herring, too fraught with emotion and political posturing, and prefers to talk of solutions such as ‘less but better meat’, and waste reduction. Eating healthily, WWF-UK points out in its recent ‘Livewell’ report, means eating more sustainably, too. One thing on which everyone seems to agree is that GM is not the only technology worth developing. Perhaps the most promising alternative is Marker Assisted Selection (MAS). This is a non-GM bioengineering technique, made possible by our ability to map entire genomes. Once you have the genome of a crop fully described, you can use that information to identify traits that you want to import to the target crop from a related species. This might be a less popular commercial variety, a wild relative, or a so-called “orphan species” – an old variety that was abandoned by breeders looking for other traits. After marking the genes that express the desired traits, scientists can use conventional breeding techniques to transfer those characteristics into high yielding varieties of the same species, relatively quickly. If technologies such as MAS can be used to promote the proliferation and improvement of organic, mixed, agro-ecological and other traditional or alternative farming systems, then there may come a day when the arguments over GM have lost their relevance, as they have for the development of medicines. For now, GM remains a highly emotive issue for those on both sides of the debate, and those left in the middle still struggle to be heard. Anthony Kleanthous is an independent expert on food sustainability and a Trustee of Sustain.

Green Futures April 2013

Future stakes

There’s increased pressure for cultural change at financial institutions

There can rarely have been a better time for proponents of sustainable investment to make their case. This year started with the scandal of horsemeat being passed off as beef, exposing fraud and a lack of rigour in the (often tortuously complex) food supply chain; in the last two years, environmental catastrophes – including hurricanes Irene and Sandy, the prolonged US drought, and flooding in Australia and the Americas – have added to evidence of global warming; and the financial crash has exposed flaws in the banking system so substantial that they threaten the existence of the global economic system. Awareness of the need for new ways of investing is growing, and there are some tentative signs that it is having some impact on investor behaviour. EIRIS, the environmental consultancy, calculates that British investors had almost £11 billion invested in ethical funds in 2012, a 10-fold increase since June 1996, and a survey by the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association in 2011 found “early signs of a step change in the number of … corporate pension funds that are responding to the case for responsible ownership and investment”. Across the world, investment institutions now have $13.6 trillion of assets incorporating environmental, social and governance concerns into their strategies, according to the latest report from the Global Sustainable Ethical Alliance, accounting for more than a fifth of total assets under management. Investment managers responsible for $6.5 trillion of foreign capital investment have signed up to the United Nations-backed Principles for Responsible Investment, launched in 2006. Many initiatives fall under the umbrella term ‘socially responsible investment’ (SRI), used to describe everything from strategies based around negative screening (‘no guns, no gambling’) to those which positively select sectors, such as renewable energy generation. Nick Robins, a veteran of the SRI movement and head of the climate change centre at HSBC, thinks momentum on this particular approach is gathering: “The financial crisis has shown that financial markets can exhibit huge systemic risk. That puts the question of SRI into a bigger arena”, Robins told Green Futures. He believes SRI has moved beyond being a niche area of investment, and is now “about asking what sustainability means for the resilience of the whole financial system”. For Simon Howard, Head of Sustainable Financial Markets at Forum for the Future, this is indeed the question we need to ask. “SRI is a welcome step in the right direction, acknowledging the need for smarter

Green Futures April 2013

investment, but it isn’t enough”, he warns. “Forum for the Future wants to see investors taking into account more than just short-term monetary returns, through new models in which financial gain is considered along with the investment’s contribution to environmental and social sustainability.” Even those who do profess to consider SRI issues in their investment strategies often pay little more than lip service to it. The FTSE4Good ethical index, for example, which institutions can use to screen their investment, has only limited exclusions, and allows oil and mining companies. Jamie Hartzell, Managing Director of the recently launched ethical investment exchange Ethex, points to research showing that, in 2011, the biggest holdings in many retail ethical funds included companies like gas producer BG Group, and HSBC, which has been fined for breaches of money-laundering regulations in the Americas. Howard would like to see mainstream capital markets embrace the principles of SRI, but within their core operations. “There is a business case, but the stock market rewards need to be more widely recognised. Leading companies, such as M&S with Plan A, are working to demonstrate the benefits of sustainability to investors.” But this is easier said than done. Seb Beloe, Head of Sustainability Research at WHEB Asset Management, points out that the average holding time for shares is now just seven months; in the 1970s, it was five to six years. “If you are holding a share for five or six months, you don’t look at [SRI] stuff, and why should you? It is not relevant to that kind of time horizon.” While there is a growing recognition that controlling the costs of energy, waste management and water provision makes sound business sense, there is not yet a clear and widely recognised stock market reward for those companies which manifest optimal behaviour on such things. That said, shareholder engagement does seem to be increasing. The ‘Shareholder Spring’, as increasing activism at company annual meetings has been dubbed, has seen executives ousted, pay packages blocked, and increased pressure for cultural change at some financial institutions. There has also been an increase in specific campaigns, such as that in the US to persuade university pension funds to pull out of investment in fossil fuels, or campaigns by groups of investors against labour market exploitation or extracting oil from shale (fracking). It may be easier to engage pension funds in this kind of activism; after all, their role is to manage people’s finances for the long

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Photo: iStockphoto / thinkstock

More investors are coming forward with ‘socially responsible’ funds, but their impact is equivocal. Could a new form of investment make a difference? Heather Connon reports.

term – as many as 50 years ahead, when many of the environmental consequences (of, for instance, fracking) may have crystallised. However, as Beloe points out, the vast majority of investors are still more focused on short-term financial performance, rather than the wider long-term needs of pension holders. Moreover, fund managers consider it their legal (fiduciary) responsibility to asset owners to maximise short-term gains – though Freshfields, a leading London law firm, and The UNEP Finance Initiative have jointly challenged this narrow interpretation, saying that it can incorporate social and environmental considerations. Now, the financial crisis, and disillusionment with the financial system, is increasing interest in positive investing – as opposed to negative screening. Will Dawson, Principal Sustainability Advisor at Forum for the Future, defines sustainable investment as “the allocation of capital into activities which are needed to create a sustainable economy”. Such activities range from companies whose products and services have a positive impact (in, say, water conservation) to local initiatives, such as community-owned renewable energy projects. Dawson is seeing more interest from mainstream fund managers in these kinds of projects. James Vaccaro, Head of Market and Corporate Development at Triodos Bank, one of the leading funders of renewable, microfinance and other impact investments, says there is increasing interest in this area from institutions, too. For example, the Dutch pension fund service company PGGM and Ampere Equity Fund have a stake in the UK’s largest wind farm, Walney, off the Cumbrian coast. Of course, it’s difficult to judge whether their motivation is environmental or financial, or both. The parallels between the energy, food and finance systems are striking. Ask yourself where your food and power really come from, and then try and name three companies your pension is invested in. Most of us can’t answer. This wouldn’t be a problem if we had full trust in those managing the systems for us and the rules that guide them, but crises of late show that would be naive. Among the Forum’s initiatives is an investigation with Barclays into the potential of ‘impact investment’, in which investors are motivated primarily by the positive impact that the companies they invest in create, rather than by financial returns. “This concept of ‘impact investment’ is catching on fast”, says Dawson. Pension funds and banks are now starting to tentatively enter this sector, embracing the opportunity to lower their overall risks by investing in new areas of the world and sectors of the economy. “The prospect of this ‘big money’ entering impact investment is exciting”, says Dawson, pointing to the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation as one of the pioneers: “They see that investing a relatively small amount of their capital into innovative new schemes can shift the market in the future, simply by proving alternative concepts.” The returns on such investment may be smaller, potentially reducing the capacity of their grant programme, but the effect of their programme in the round, including the social benefits of the impact investing, is arguably increased. This new trend in impact-focused investment takes a number of forms. Esmee Fairbairn invested in the world’s first Social Impact Bond: a new concept

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which pays returns to investors based on the impact they have, rather than the income they generate. One example is Prison Bonds, piloted in the UK and the US, which reward investors depending on the reduction in re-offending rates by released convicts. For example, in Peterborough, £5 million was raised from 17 social investors to fund work with 3,000 male, short-sentence prisoners following their release. If the Social Impact Bond delivers a drop in re-offending beyond 7.5%, investors will receive an increasing return capped at a maximum of 13% per year over an eight-year period. The return is paid by the authorities out of the savings they make by not having to deal with the current, high re-offending rate. For example, a 10% reduction in reoffending would result in a 7.5% annualised return. Energy generation projects are a key growth area for sustainable investment, not only by large funds but also by local communities. In Germany, 25% of renewable energy projects and 40% of wind ones, are community owned. Abundance Generation is one of the companies striving to increase local ownership of renewables in the UK by asking individuals to subscribe to projects with a minimum investment of just £5. Abundance now has 2,000 members, and 500 investors who have already backed two projects: a solar project in the South Downs, which raised £500,000 with a capacity of 266kW, and a 0.5MW wind project in the Forest of Dean, which raised £1.4 million. Details of the third will be revealed shortly. Louise Wilson, Managing Director of Abundance, believes projects of this kind should also appeal to those who want a financial, not just a social, return, given the growing disillusion with banks and fund managers. She points out that these institutions are charging high fees, yet failing to provide returns. The good news is that investment models with an eye to positive change are emerging, and pioneers are coming forward to prove them. But scale remains a challenge. Will ‘big’ investors be able to embrace them, without repeating the mistakes of the past? The growing number of financial and governance scandals in recent years have underlined the fact that irresponsible behaviour cannot be divorced from financial returns. Investors have a golden opportunity to demonstrate that they can not only offer attractive financial returns but social and environmental benefits. Heather Connon is a freelance journalist specialising in finance and investment.

A 10% reduction in re-offending would result in a 7.5% annualised return

As interest in social impact grows, will more investors look to the long-term needs of pension holders?

Green Futures April 2013

Fruitful intervention “Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature”, said Michael Faraday, whom some call the best experimentalist in the history of science. It’s a logic that takes nothing from the wide eyes of school children as they fashion a potato, a galvanised nail and a copper wire into a battery capable of powering a small LED. Photographer Caleb Charland uses everyday objects in simple experiments to recreate this experience of wonder. “An energy vibrates in that space between our perceptions of the world, and the potential the mind senses for our interventions within it”, he says. Charland’s ‘Orange Battery’ is a powerful reminder of the endless possibilities for renewable energy generation. However, food and fuel are often pitted rather crudely against each other when it comes to land use. Could a renewed sense of wonder prompt a higher level of debate about the best future for the planet’s resources?

Green Futures April 2013

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Photos: xxxxx

Image: ‘Orange Battery’ from the series ‘Back to Light’ by Caleb Charland

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Green Futures April 2013

Market watch

Green Futures April 2013

reach 9 billion by 2050, rising standards of living, increasing urbanisation, weak infrastructure in developed countries, lack of infrastructure in developing countries, water in the wrong place, high costs of energy outside the US, the political risk for Asia in particular of importing fossil fuels… Put all that together, and you can see why there’s growth and demand for products and services addressing these problems – from LEDs for efficient lighting, or filters for water recycling, to wind turbines, PV and so on. It’s clear those are going to do well.” The question begs: if the case for investment in these areas is so obvious, then why aren’t more asset managers crowding the space? Partly, Simm believes, because a lot of individuals with similar expertise (a combination of environmental management and business nous) have set up venture capital firms. He wasn’t tempted to join them. “It’s actually very difficult to make money from venture capital. The regulations in our markets can change with no notice, and many business plans depend on the successful development of technology. In addition, there’s also a shortage of high quality management teams in this area.” Impax isn’t the only asset management firm investing in this space; others include clean energy and resource solutions in broader portfolios. However these markets are complicated and, Simm argues, recognising the opportunities requires an in-depth understanding of the technology, regulation and the wider market context in different parts of the world. So, how does he spot something worth investing in? “Fundamentally”, he explains, “the underlying market has to be growing at an attractive rate. A good example is the demand for water infrastructure in China. Then, the business model of the company has to be compelling. A small business in the China water industry is not going to get many contracts, because it’s going to be undercut by bigger companies. In that type of environment, you want to go for a big company that’s going to be able to satisfy the regulators, and meet contracts to build the new infrastructure. Or, you may want to think about backing the company which is supplying the equipment which will go into those projects. This may not be a Chinese company at all: it may be an American or a Japanese one. So, the market comes first, the business plan comes second, and then obviously we want to see that the management team has all the expertise – and a track record.” But even when all of these factors line up, some

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Photo: iStockphoto/ thinkstock

“When the rains fall in the Sahel, the pasture can be quite dense for a short window. But if the herds go to the wrong place they’ll overgraze, and this makes the desert spread.” Ian Simm began his career in West Africa, using satellite imagery to study the spread of the Sahara Desert, with funding from the European Commission. It’s a far cry from Pall Mall, where grand offices stand shoulder to shoulder with gentlemen’s clubs, and where Simm now heads up an asset management firm managing assets of some £2 billion. And yet the fundamentals of his role haven’t changed: it still requires precision in observing and mapping resources, and specialist expertise and insight in valuation. After five years in environmental consultancy, with McKinsey, and a Masters in public administration, Simm was convinced that the one of the best ways to help solve environmental problems was via the private sector. He found a way into corporate finance (“a lumpy, unpredictable business, particularly at small scale”), and specialised in renewable energy until 1998, when he was awarded a contract from the World Bank to help design and run a solar investment fund in India and Africa. This was the beginning of Impax Asset Management, which now invests in “the opportunities created by the scarcity of natural resources”. From the vantage point on St James’s Square, Simm observes global markets for resource efficiency, from energy to water to waste and food and agriculture, and persuades mainstream institutional investors – pension funds, insurance companies and rich individuals – that this can be a good place to graze. “We don’t have an ethical mandate per se”, Simm is quick to assert. “We’re trying to make money for investors in this area. We are often attractive for ethical investors, because what we do fits their objectives, but we also manage funds for investors who would say they are agnostic on ethical investing, at best! They’re attracted by exposure to a high growth area with a manager who knows what they are doing. They ought to be able to make good, if not better, returns in the long term from this area than from anything else.” So why focus on resource efficiency at all? Does it come down to Simm’s personal sensitivity to strain in the Sahel and pollution on Pall Mall, or are there more hard-nosed, market-based factors at play? “If you stack up the drivers of business growth linked to environmental problems, it’s a pretty compelling story. World population estimated to

Photo: Impax Asset Management

Ian Simm, Chief Executive of Impax Asset Management, tells Anna Simpson why resource shortages offer fertile plains for investors to graze. green investments don’t take off. Why not? Because, says Simm, investors don’t always see eye to eye on the likely growth of a market, or a company’s longterm potential, making stock market reactions hard to predict. Take biofuels. “Six or seven years ago there was a flurry of new biofuel businesses in the US. We knew it wasn’t a particularly difficult sector to enter: people have been making alcohol in their kitchens for thousands of years, so doing that at scale is not the proverbial rocket science! However, it takes a huge amount of capital to build a shiny new biofuels plant, so someone else could easily come in, with just slightly lower costs, and steal market share. The key issue for an investor is not whether biofuels will be consumed or not, or whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. If you take the law and targets as they stand, and believe the regulations are going to be robust, then you have to ask, who’s going to make money? Clearly, it’s not the ones building expensive kit in a world where kit is not giving you a competitive edge. So, we didn’t invest in any biofuels businesses, and we were not surprised when the stock prices collapsed.” Long-term, stable regulation is a topic to raise groans from many in the UK. In 2011, the Government back-pedalled on feed-in tariffs for solar photovoltaic panels, cutting them by half, and causing demand for installations to drop by almost 90% in three weeks. Is Simm looking for more clarity on policy? Would he like to see more regulation, or less? “The absolute golden rule is that regulations need to be reliable and robust over the long term. It doesn’t really matter what they are, within reason, because if the market doesn’t work financially, then we and everyone else will just invest elsewhere. If you take the case of the European renewable energy sector, a huge volume of money has gone into German renewable energy over the last 20 years – not only because the feed-in-tariff prices been high, but because they’ve been stable and reliable.” Simm now watches shifting appetites for energy across the world in the same way as he used to watch the rains in Africa. But not all markets are subject to such flux: demand is much less “patchy and volatile” for water-related goods and services, he notes. Moreover, “companies in this sector span a nice spectrum, from utilities, which perform well in weak financial markets because they’re seen as safe, through to high-growth, technology-driven businesses, which do well in buoyant markets.” The firm’s investments include technologies to clean water

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used in shale gas exploitation. While Simm admits that US interest in shale could stifle its renewables market in the short term, he sees no conflict of interest in directing money both towards solutions that contribute to the efficiency and regulatory compliance of fracking, while rooting for growth in renewables. I’m reminded that a keen eye for opportunity can be reluctant to see the wider implications in full colour. Recently, Impax launched a new listed equity fund investing in food and agriculture: a sector hungry for solutions to support a growing population, and one that’s consuming ever more calories per capita. Simm admits that the impetus came from the firm’s investors, who were drawn to opportunities to improve production. Of course, I prompt, one of the key ways in which we’re going to meet growing demand for food is through cutting waste in the supply chain. “Absolutely”, Simm affirms. “We’re investing in both food production and efficiency. ICT is one of the most interesting areas, even for optimising ordering systems between supermarkets and wholesale packagers. Appropriate packaging for transportation has made a huge difference, and refrigeration is key in warmer climates [see ‘Sun-cooled tomatoes’, p5]. Then there’s the simple feature of road infrastructure in places like Brazil: it takes a lot of time and money to implement, but reducing the shipping time between the hinterland and the ports is very important.” Often, it’s the seemingly simple questions that lead to the most surprising and significant new ideas in business. Impax is sponsoring the new Ashden UK Award for Energy Innovation. It’s clearly an opportunity for the company to raise its profile in this space, but Simm believes Impax can bring something to the party. “We firmly agree with Ashden that if you back the right entrepreneurs, you’ll facilitate the transition to a cleaner world. With our experience of seeing how clean energy companies grow, we’ll be able to contribute to the selection of the most compelling innovative and commercially viable proposition, and offer a little bit of coaching and guidance to the winner. In the past we’ve funded many very early stage businesses, and we’re familiar with the sort of challenges they face.” An award-winning innovation combined with a high growth market, a sound business plan and a mentor to boot… Investors had better get in there, while the pastures are dense.

A rainbow over resource scarcity – led by opportunity, not ethics

Whether biofuels are a good thing or a bad thing, who’s going to make money?

Anna Simpson is Editor, Green Futures.

Green Futures April 2013

sensors and microanalysers which monitor stool and urine samples for indicators of liver and kidney function, glucose levels, and viruses. The data is combined with read-outs of body temperature, heart rate, sleep patterns, calories used in exercise, all from discreet miniature body sensors, and analysed against the background of each individual’s health records, perhaps including their genetic scan and family history. Since, by 2030, everything is connected to everything else, the results can be displayed in the bathroom, or on your mobile phone. Anything out of the ordinary can also be relayed to the GP’s surgery, without that tedious visit. A virtual consultation may follow, or the system may just repeat, say, the dietary advice you haven’t quite been following – perhaps with a few new recipes and a shopping list to encourage better eating. If this is the direction, how far down the road are we, and what will need to change? The basic technology for the tests already exists. Taking it to scale and linking the different elements together – at an affordable price – is probably only a matter of time. How they will fit into the complexities of healthcare systems is much harder to fathom. Some of the trends forcing change come from our success in combating infectious diseases, changing patterns of illness. Rachel Maguire, who works on the future of hospitals at the Californiabased Institute for the Future, points out that more people now have a chronic disease, dealt with not by cure, but through long-term management. “With the burden shifting to account for an increased number of chronic conditions (especially now that many view HIV, assuming there is access to drugs, as a chronic condition), our systems will need to be redesigned to provide almost constant, or at least consistent, care to treat such illnesses, including mental health conditions, more effectively”, she says.

Health at hand A combination of mobile technology, proactive cities and bold brands is taking healthcare out of the hospital, with cost and efficiency savings, says Jon Turney.

Green Futures April 2013

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Photo: iStockphoto / thinkstock

drugs, more tests) have generally increased costs. But information and communication technologies which offer more personal solutions might prove the exception. They could even speed a reorientation of the whole system. Paul Grundy, Global Director of Healthcare Transformation for IBM, predicts “a profound change” in how health solutions are going to be delivered. He talks of shifting medical practice away from “an episode of care” towards management of health across populations, made possible by “the patient-centred medical home”. He doesn’t mean a ‘care home’ of the sort you visit when something’s up: he means everyone in their own home. Such a home would include some version of the ‘bathroom GP’ envisaged in a report published by Which? in January [see ‘Dr Where?’, p35]. Today’s house may have bathroom scales linked wirelessly to a smartphone app. But come 2030, it could have

Impetus comes from marketers selling smart phone apps

Seeing the body for its parts

Photo: Photos.com / Jupiter Images / thinkstock

Your imaginary medical drama, like mine, probably begins one of two ways. There’s an emergency call, blue lights and sirens, and a frantic dash to hospital. Or a bored receptionist ushers you toward the consulting room with a routine: “The doctor will see you now.” This is healthcare, old style. You go where the doctors are, either by appointment, or when you suddenly have no choice. The systems we have built on that assumption aren’t going to stop any time soon, but they are under increasing strain. Populations are ageing, and costs rising. Health inequalities, whether measured across region or class in one country or across the globe, are stubbornly persistent. Relieving the strain will need new approaches, from health professionals, governments, brands and businesses – but technology could be the key enabler. Until now, medical technologies (more

Others wonder how well existing systems can promote such a shift. “What’s needed is radical transformation”, says Gemma Adams, a Principal Sustainability Advisor specialising in innovation and behaviour change at Forum for the Future. “Ultimately, we need a health service that avoids and reverses illnesses before they become serious, rather than focusing on urgent treatments. However, it’s difficult to talk about this because the idea of anything but continuity and stability is alarming. The impetus for this kind of change almost definitely won’t come from inside health services such as the [UK’s] NHS.” Some impetus comes from eager marketers trying to sell thousands of smart phone apps – which more people are buying. Internet giant CISCO Systems estimates there were 44 million worldwide downloads of personal health apps in 2012, and this will rise to 140 million by 2016. At the moment, most of these offer dietary advice and exercise regimes, as opposed to broader health monitoring. In the pipeline are apps that turn your phone into a portable electrocardiogram to monitor heart disease, and the likes of Skin Vision, which will upload a photo of a mole on your skin for automated analysis. Users get reassurance if the algorithm judges the mole benign, and a message to visit the doctor if it looks suspect. Ancillary products for smart phones are also under development. For example, if you want to pee on a chip connected to your phone to check if you have a sexually transmitted disease, sparing you an embarrassing conversation at the clinic, a team at St George’s Hospital in London is working on it. More generally, a host of mobile phone apps, with names like LifeWatch or Doc@home, offer to help people monitor their health or lifestyle, or get access to medical advice. And there seems willingness to use them. An international survey,

Take kidney or liver disease. Often these are caused by the presence of toxins in the body, and could best be treated in the wider context of the individual’s lifestyle and diet – but medical solutions tend focus on the organ itself. As Forum for the Future’s Gemma Adams points out: “Hospital treatments are geared towards slowing down or dealing with the symptoms of an illness even when it’s still possibly reversible, because acute care specialists aren’t qualified and can’t refer people for life-style type interventions.” Public health initiatives and community services are starting to interconnect in more sophisticated ways. For example, liver specialist Sir Ian Gilmore set up the Alcohol Health Alliance UK in 2007 to increase awareness of unhealthy alcohol use and its ramifications on health and society. The Centre for Sustainable Healthcare also promotes joined-up thinking. Dr Frances Mortimer, its Medical Director, set up The Green Nephrology Network, where patients, clinicians, renal technicians and industry partners share ideas for sustainable kidney care, and she is planning the same model for mental health. Her colleague Rachel Stancliffe stresses the importance of preventing illness by looking to the wider environment;

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bringing together professionals working in green space, urban planning, architecture, transport and health. “We need crosssector groups which understand that what they do always has outcomes for health”, she says. – Mary Zaccaroli

Green Futures April 2013

New kit for the flying doctor

published in March 2013 by CISCO, found that about 40 % of people would be interested in receiving recommendations about doctors, hospitals or medication through mobile devices. At the moment, around a quarter of people with health care apps on their mobiles use them for chronic disease management, and around the same proportion get health-related reminders on their phone or tablet. Shiny gadgets are all very well, but they’ll never be the whole answer as ‘stand-alones’. There is already evidence of the benefits that incorporating them into healthcare can bring to patients, and plans to build on this. The Department of Health in England, for one, wants to incorporate ‘telehealth’ into the NHS. It ran a controlled trial of remote health aids from 2008 to 2011, which involved 6,000 patients in 288 general practices. Different aids were used in different places, but all were chosen to help patients already diagnosed with diabetes, heart failure or chronic lung disease. Results published in the British Medical Journal in 2012 showed that the patients using devices at home to help monitor their condition had 20% fewer emergency admissions and, impressively, a 45% difference in mortality over 12 months, compared with the control group. The Department has launched the ‘Three million lives’ initiative to bring such technologies to more people with long-term health conditions or care needs. The UK trial did not demonstrate any major cost savings. However, other studies have shown reductions in cost. Analysis of a heart patients’ programme in Boston – which adopted home monitoring of weight, heart rate, pulse and blood pressure, and transmitted the data daily to cardiac

Green Futures April 2013

nurses – noted a 50% reduction in hospital readmissions for heart failure patients, and savings of millions of dollars. Good news for existing health systems, but mobile technology also shows promise in places where healthcare for most people falls far short of US or European standards – facilitating tasks such as collecting public health data, monitoring vaccination campaigns, or reminding patients to take medication. A well-known pioneer is ChildCount+, led by Matt Berg of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, which uses phones to monitor pregnant mothers and young children in rural villages. It has been adapted to suit local goals, such as to prevent mother-child transmission of HIV in Kenya and Ghana: simple SMS reminders were sent to community health workers, who then passed on clinic appointment alerts to expectant mothers. Other applications include tracking pneumococcal vaccination in Kenya. This kind of thing does seem to get results. A MedicMobile project, run by an organisation launched by Stanford physician Nadim Mahmud, found immunisation coverage among children in one neighbourhood in India increased by 20% when mothers were prompted by an SMS reminder to get the vaccination. More sophisticated devices will help gather information from patients – and could speed diagnosis. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is supporting ‘point of care diagnostics’. Star Trek-style tricorders aren’t on the horizon yet, but a health worker could soon have a handheld device which can identify pathogenic organisms like those causing tuberculosis or HIV. Such testing

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Photos: Hemera / thinkstock; iStockphoto / thinkstock

Meanwhile, Oxford scientists and Nova Bio-Pharma Technologies have developed a way of preserving vaccines for at least six months at up to 45°C without refrigeration, by suspending the viruses in a thin film of sugar molecules. Taking it one step further, scientists from Kings College, London have contained this dried live vaccine in a microneedle patch that would allow patients to administer the vaccine painlessly without the need for medics or hypodermics. Benefits, according to research scientist Dr Linda Klavinkis, could include reduced costs in manufacturing and transportation, and a reduced risk of transmitting blood-borne disease from contaminated needles and syringes. Innovative technology to help remote populations access medical services is just part of the solution to rural care. Other initiatives embrace the great outdoors as a resource offering health benefits, for both body and mind. Carefarming, for example, which is prevalent in the US and Europe, brings together farmers with health and social care personnel to provide social, educational, therapeutic and development opportunities. Meanwhile, NHS Forest aims to improve health by planting trees on and improving access to rural and city NHS green spaces. “There is mounting evidence that patient recovery rates improve even if they only view trees from their hospital window”, said project coordinator Sarah Dandy. – Mary Zacaroli

Photo: Kings College London

The challenge of providing effective, efficient healthcare in cash-poor rural settings with diffuse populations is inspiring innovation. GE Healthcare engineers have developed an electrocardiograph machine for the rural Indian market using technology from a 15lb machine costing $5.4 million. Adapting some off-the-shelf products, such as a bus terminal printer, they produced a portable device that is easily transportable on public transport or motorcycle and costs $1,200 less than a conventional machine.

kits, if they stand up to trials, will generate results on the spot in minutes, instead of sending samples to a distant laboratory where they join a queue for processing. In countries which benefit from more developed health systems, flexible medical technology could be offered by intermediaries outside the hospital, lowering costs. Will we see people pop into their pharmacy and come out with an app? Andrew Bonser of Boots does not rule it out. In future, he suggests a transfer of care away from hospitals towards the high street. “Much of what you have to go to the doctor for now could be done in the community pharmacy”, he says. Boots has already launched a Type 2 diabetes risk assessment service with Diabetes UK. Although this screening system uses an online tool, it is offered in the pharmacy, and illustrates how access can aid prevention. For Anthony Townsend of the Institute for the Future, personal and environmental sensors are potentially a crucial part of a larger shift in urban planning, providing the data needed to ensure cities are healthier places to live and work. The city of Rio de Janeiro has presented its plans for integrated healthcare to the Living Labs Global Award ‘Cities Pilot the Future’ programme, which aims to discover and implement the most promising solutions to pressing social and urban challenges. Rio has been working on data collection to become a ‘smart city’ in preparation for the 2016 Olympic Games, and is looking for ways to enhance quality of life by integrating social support and health systems with mobility and other network services. Proposals include SMS-based information on alternatives to

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drugs, early detection of public-health risks, such as pollution hotspots, and remote mobile image-based diagnostics, such as teledermatology. The ultimate goal – for megacities like Rio and rural villages alike – is to integrate preventative health, treatment and care into daily life, relieving the strain on hospitals and clinics by enabling communities and individuals to keep a check on their wellbeing and take simple actions to improve it. When patients do need to see a doctor, the queue should be shorter, and they should have a lot more information about what ails them.

Above and below: Rio is looking for smart ways to integrate health and social support into public places

Jon Turney is a science writer, and author of The Rough Guide to the Future.

Green Futures April 2013

Minding our business

Corporate managers usually excel at producing real-world results. Not always, though. As the deputy general counsel for packaged-food giant General Mills, Janice Marturano pushed herself past burnout during the company’s protracted merger with Pillsbury. She repaired to a meditation retreat to recuperate, and emerged impressed by the power of the training. This led to an in-house mindfulness programme at General Mills, and ultimately to her leaving the company in 2011 to launch the USbased Institute for Mindful Leadership, where she has helped executives at over 75 organisations, including Target, Medtronic, and Saatchi & Saatchi, learn how to become more ‘present’ and self-aware. The executives may come away with greater mental resilience – but Marturano is among a growing crowd who think there’s a much bigger prize, for the corporations and for the planet... The corporate genius for achievement shrinks

Green Futures April 2013

when the challenge is global and massively complex. A merger is one level of complexity. Sustainability is another. As Anna Birney, Head of the System Innovation Lab at Forum for the Future, observes: “The sustainability crisis is a spaghetti junction of cause and effect. It’s the quintessential ‘system’ problem: you can’t just pick out one strand and straighten it out. So, to effectively address it, we need system-based solutions. Introducing green products and services won’t be enough, no matter how useful they may be.” It’s a challenge that demands a new skill set if businesses are going to be part of the solution. Corporate managers will have to be comfortable with complexity, and develop problem-solving skills in the context of the massive interconnectedness of the world’s problems. Could it be that we need to learn to use our brains differently? Is a new ‘executive operating system’ required? Some think so. As Barrett C. Brown, the leadership consultant

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Photo: Kenneth Garrett / National Geographic Stock

Corporations are journeying towards the inner mountaintop. No, this isn’t an April fool. Carl Frankel reports.

who heads up the San Francisco-based Integral Sustainability Center, puts it, “How a leader knows is at least as (if not more) important than what that person knows.” For Birney, it means a new understanding of leadership. “Currently, the term ‘leader’ suggests a person who shows the way on their own”, she says. “It’s individualistic and typically top-down. We need something different from sustainability leaders. They need to be skilled at intervening in systems. They need to be system innovators.” No corporate product-development team, no matter how talented, can fabricate a new executive ‘brain-frame’, or upgrade executives to system innovators. Inner work is required for these things. This isn’t exactly a corporate core competence. The very phrase ‘inner work’ brings to mind a culture that, if only in caricature, stands for everything corporations aren’t: think loincloth-clad sadhus mouthing mantras

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on a mountaintop. Yet it is precisely this – inner work leading to inner growth – that seems to be the missing link if corporations are to play their part in addressing the sustainability crisis. Might they one day take to heart Einstein’s astute (and cited to the point of banality) observation that “You can’t solve a problem at the level at which it was created”? It’s beginning to look like they might. Google, Apple, Nike, McKinsey & Co., Procter & Gamble, Deutsche Bank, Yahoo! and the Brazilian cosmetics company Natura are on the growing list of companies that have underwritten training programmes that support the emergence of a new executive brainframe, which includes, among other benefits, the ability to better address sustainability challenges. ‘Mindfulness’ is the common theme that unites these programmes. The term, which comes from the Buddhist tradition, refers to being present to what is actually going on around one instead of being caught up in the whirligig of one’s thoughts and emotions. Meditation, an approach to quieting the mind that has been practised for thousands of years, is probably the best-known way to do this, but it’s not the only option. ‘Presencing’ (described as ‘becoming one with one’s deepest source of future potential’ by its principal theorist, Otto Scharmer) and ‘action inquiry’ (a way of simultaneously conducting action and inquiry to increase the effectiveness of our actions, according to developer Bill Torbert) are among the approaches that have helped managers at companies like Microsoft and Eli Lilly become more mindful, without specifically requiring them to meditate. Mindfulness has four main benefits, according to Marturano. The first is focus: “the ability to sustain attention when we choose”. Second, clarity: “understanding that I’m more than my thoughts and emotions and that I can behave more skillfully than if I simply react to each thought and emotion”. Third, creativity: “having the spaciousness to find solutions that are best for everyone”. And, finally, compassion: “the capacity to be present to, and truly understand, the needs of people in our families, our workplace, our communities, and ultimately the world”. Can mindfulness training help executives better address complex sustainability issues? Absolutely, says Marturano. “By training people in leadership roles to have more focus, clarity, creativity and compassion, we help them see the big picture more consistently and make choices that recognise that we are all inextricably connected.” An increasing body of research is making it easier for corporations to take mindfulness training seriously. Proven benefits include reduced emotional reactivity, more cognitive flexibility, and greater satisfaction with relationships. There is also preliminary evidence that mindfulness makes people more effective at dealing with complexity. “The increasing body of empirical research is one reason for the rapidly growing corporate interest in mindfulness programmes”, says Mirabai Bush, Head of The Center for Contemplative Mind. Executives who undergo mindfulness training are usually glad they did. Among leaders participating in a 2009 mindfulness training course led by Marturano, 80% reported a positive change in their ability to make better decisions with more clarity, while 89% said they had grown more skilled

Google, Apple, Nike have underwritten training that supports a new executive brain-frame

Green Futures April 2013

Forumupdate

as pretty much solved? Er, no. The shift to mindful, system-sensitive leadership has barely begun. Still, the mere fact that the boat has been launched can only be good news for sustainability advocates. For them, there is no downside in a training technique that makes leaders more appreciative of the interconnectedness of all things and likelier to address sustainability challenges as system innovators. When astronauts travel into outer space, many experience a sort of revelation. “This indescribably beautiful planet looks like a living, breathing organism”, recounts International Space Shuttle astronaut Ron Garan, before adding a cautionary note: “It also looks extremely fragile.” From their tin-can perch in outer space, astronauts experience the interdependence of all things and are seized by the desire to protect the planet. While not everyone can have the Astronaut Experience, mindfulness training seems able to deliver something similar. It takes people not into outer space, but to the mountaintop – the inner mountaintop. And now mindfulness training is coming to corporations. From one perspective, it’s an unlikely development: suits alongside sadhus. Yet if Forum for the Future’s Anna Birney is correct, leaders may need to have the mountaintop experience en masse, if the sustainability crisis is to be effectively addressed. All together now! Attach those crampons and say ‘om’.

Dr Where?

Report imagines ‘bathroom GP’ to meet future consumer needs.

Carl Frankel has been covering issues related to business and sustainability for over two decades.

Green Futures April 2013

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Photo: Creatas Images / thinkstock

Coming soon: ‘Continuum’, a feature documentary about our interconnection with each other, the biosphere, and the cosmos, by Guy Reid – a graduate of Forum’s Masters in Leadership for Sustainable Development.

Photo: Science Photo Library

While not everyone can have the Astronaut Experience, mindfulness training delivers something similar

at listening to themselves and others. Melinda McDonald, a distribution manager for Target and self-described A-type personality (associated with competition and self-criticism), took Marturano’s training and reports that it “made me better able to sit and listen, paying attention to the thoughts and emotions that may be driving my instincts on the next decision to be made. I’ve been told I’m a more impactful leader, while I feel more confident in my decision-making and ability to lead.” With the cultural winds shifting, corporate mindfulness training may be about to take off. Marturano facilitated an overflow session on her curriculum in Mindful Leadership at the World Economic Forum’s 2013 Davos gathering, while at the 2012 global gathering of the prestigious Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), consultants Rand Stagen and Diane Hamilton led 1,700+ CEOs and corporate presidents in an exercise which, reports Hamilton, “took them through expanding levels of awareness, from egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric, in which we are able to identify with all humanity, to ‘kosmocentric’, where we are able to access the peace and stillness that is innate to being. For CEOs, this experience is rare. At the event, the vast majority of members participated in true meditative stillness for about ten minutes. Many were deeply moved. One YPO executive told me this would not have been possible five years earlier.” Simon Preston, who served as Global Chairman of the YPO in 2009-2010, attended the session. It “was a breakthrough for many”, he reports. “For me, it reinforced that when leading globally, a sustainable outcome can only flow from a world-centric perspective.” Is it a done deal, then? With Davos on board and all those corporate leaders communing with the kosmos, can we check off the sustainability crisis

What if your bathroom acted as a GP service, discreetly screening your urine and saliva, connecting to a microchip inside you to measure vital signs against your DNA, and then creating personalised health and dietary recommendations? A great idea, but it seems a long way off. Or so we think. Actually, the beginnings of this technology already exist, and by 2030 it could be a reality. Long-range projections of economic, social and environmental trends are regularly used by businesses and political institutions, but consumers themselves are frequently left out of the conversation. The ‘bathroom GP’ is just one of five imagined products and services that Forum for the Future came up with in collaboration with consumer body Which? for a recent report called ‘Consumers in 2030’. By looking at detailed historical analysis of consumer trends from the mid-1950s to the present, and modelling these trends forward to 2030, the report asks what sort of world consumers will be living in by then. It projects that, in the UK, resource scarcity and rising commodity prices will have become the norm, with the greatest impact on those in the lower- to middle-income earning brackets. It also projects that over 65% of household income will be spent on essentials by 2025, higher than in 1964 when comparable records began. “Our research and concepts bring the future role of the consumer into sharp relief”, says James Goodman,

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Deputy Director, Systems Innovation at Forum for the Future. “Resource and water scarcity, changes in the age structure of the population and a stagnating economy present challenges, but smart innovation and awareness of what people might need to lead sustainable lifestyles can help overcome them.” Other concepts include a ‘rechargeable kids’ system, which enables children to power their gadgets through physical activity, and a handheld molecule scanner that tells you which of your old belongings could be transformed into something new with a 3D printer. Which? is also pondering how trust is established and maintained, what ‘value for money’ will mean in years to come, and how international consumption will prompt brands to talk across borders. Julia Margo, its Director of Consumer Insight, remarks: “Working with Forum allowed us to explore new methodologies and ways of working outside our comfort zone, to take a long-range view of our current policy positions, and to identify areas where we can work with experts from a range of sectors and regulatory bodies to protect consumers in 2030.”

New to the Forum Network Since the last issue of Green Futures, Aimia joined Forum for the Future as a Partner; L’Oréal USA joined as a US Partner; Armor, DNV, Namura, Shell Foundation and U-Ming Marine Transport Corporation joined as Members, and The Coca-Cola Company joined as a Global Member.

To find out more and access the report and further resources, search for ‘Consumers in 2030’ on: www.forumforthefuture.org Interested in creating futures scenarios for your own industry? Contact Gemma Adams: g.adams@forumforthefuture.org

Green Futures April 2013

Tomorrow’s leaders

SallyUren

Forum for the Future’s Masters in Leadership for Sustainable Development has shaped the career of some of the most ambitious and influential people working for a desirable future. In this regular interview, they tell Katie Shaw about the choices they made. www.forumforthefuture.org/masters

Caroline Twigg Class of: 2003 – 2004 Currently: Director, World Business Council for Sustainable Development in India Why I chose the Masters I knew I needed to specialise in sustainability after my undergraduate degree, but the options for purely academic courses didn’t appeal. I was really drawn to the work placements offered through the Forum Masters, and the variety of approaches I would see being based in different sectors. What I learnt I’m still using the practical skills I learnt on the Masters in my work, eight years later: facilitation, group work, communication, implementation. It was quite a rude

Career to date I began at the London-based consultancy Good Business, running sustainability projects on behalf of companies, such as the J8 Summit (the junior version of G8) in partnership with Morgan Stanley, UNICEF and the G8 governments. Then, after roles in Geneva at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, I moved to Delhi to set up the Council’s India office. Working in India has been challenging, but I’ve really enjoyed learning how sustainability issues are faced in a vibrant, emerging economy. One issue is the lack of formal structures to support sustainability solutions. For instance, we worked with leading companies to develop ideas for efficient and ‘water smart’ cities, yet officials were struggling with providing consistent energy

Net positives must be system innovators

supplies and 24/7 water to the population. The focus there is on poverty alleviation for a population of over one billion: a different perspective from Europe. What I plan to do next I move back to London this summer, and hope to connect my international experience with the lively sustainability movement there. Nowadays, no large company can focus on its country of location alone, with international supply chains and commitments, and global consumers. I hope my experience of such a key economy as India, as well as some insight into international collaborative processes, will help a company in London steer its own sustainability agenda more successfully. Advice for future leaders Never underestimate the value of building relationships and ‘bringing other people along with you’ as you move forward on sustainability. There’s no point in charging ahead with a seemingly great initiative if nobody else understands its value. For more on India, read the accompanying Special Edition, ‘India: Innovation Nation’.

There is a new sustainability pioneer on the block: those businesses with an ambition to be net positive. These businesses are absolutely critical for a sustainable future, as their ambition is not just to be a little less harmful – not even to get to ‘zero harm’ – but to put something back. Putting something back, when it comes to natural capital in particular, has never been more important. The bad news is that the stocks (which include renewable and non-renewable resources, and sinks – such as rainforests, which absorb, neutralise or recycle waste) are perilously low. You’ve all heard the saying that, ‘If nature was a bank, it would have been bailed out ages ago’. Just cutting carbon emissions, reducing waste – even going to zero – won’t rebuild the value of natural capital. We need to reverse the damage that’s been done. This means enhancing biodiversity, re-establishing eco-systems, and switching the supply of commodities to allow the non-renewable resources not to disappear completely. Social capital also needs some urgent attention. As social inequalities rise, as the chronic disease burden in society

Photos: Nick Woodford / Forum for the Future; iStockphoto / thinkstock

awakening, realising how complex sustainability is. It’s not possible to separate one sector from another: any influence you have in one area has impacts in another. I also value the alumni network, and continue to learn from the experiences the friends I made are having in other work environments.

Can digital technology make sense of complex horizons?

Green Futures April 2013

Industrial Biotechnology Leadership Forum (IBLF) and launched at the UK IB Showcase event on 22 January, organised by the chemical industries’ Knowledge Transfer Network (www.chemistryinnovation.co.uk). The focus of the report is on progress. “This is exactly the right time to establish a set of sustainability principles to help guide companies – ensuring a win both for the UK economy and for a more sustainable, lowcarbon future”, says Porritt. However, he argues, IB must be properly supported with investment, and needs to overcome public opposition to GM technology and issues with land use. Government support will be key to its success, and there are marked contrasts in approach across the UK, EU and US governments. Overall, the US spends nearly

10 times as much as the EU on research and development in this area. Forum for the Future and the IBLF are exploring the best ways to maximise the potential benefits of IB, from engagement work to digital communications. Download ‘Sustainable Returns: Industrial Biotechnology Done Well’ here: www.forumforthefuture.org

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Photos: Nick Woodford / Forum for the Future; fotoVoyager / iStockphoto

What next for industrial biotechnology?

Sally Uren is Deputy Chief Executive at Forum for the Future. @sallyuren Watch Forum’s animation about system innovation: www.forumforthefuture.org/blog/what-system-innovation

Far-flung focus

Biotech best Industrial biotechnology (IB) already plays an important part in the UK economy, and its potential for growth and impact is enormous. According to the UK Government’s Industrial Biotechnology Innovation and Growth Team, IB could be contributing £150-360 billion to the world economy by 2025. So where does all this promise spring from? “At its simplest, IB is all about transforming biomass into bio-based products – in sectors as diverse as chemicals, food, textiles, fuels, detergents, pulp and paper”, explains Jonathon Porritt, Founder Director of Forum for the Future, and author of the recent report ‘Sustainable Returns: Industrial Biotechnology Done Well’. The report was commissioned by the

balloons, the groupings in society that allow it to function effectively are put under ever-increasing strain. And we all know that, right now, the stock of financial capital in developed nations is, well, not high (triple-dip recession anyone?). Rebuilding the value of natural and social capital will help address this, too. So, a big hurrah for the net positives! But let’s not forget that they operate in a wider system, one in which there are significant barriers to becoming a truly sustainable business. Investors aren’t exactly falling over themselves to ask probing questions about a company’s sustainability endeavours, which means capital markets have yet to figure out how to reward the sustainability pioneers. And wider civil society isn’t yet demanding sustainable products and services, which is a brake on product and service innovation. Not to mention the global policy framework, where a depressing picture of incoherence and perverse incentives is emerging. These barriers mean any business with net positive ambitions needs to understand its role in the wider system, and work to create the conditions in which it will be successful. And this is where system innovation comes in: when a set of actions shift a city, sector or an economy onto a more sustainable path. To achieve this, the net positives will need to be very deliberate about the change interventions they make. Ultimately, they will need to embrace a new model of collaboration: one with greater co-operation within sectors before competition becomes the norm, and one where partnership characterises interactions along value chains. This, in turn, will mean a shift in mindset, from tactical to strategic, and from short to long term. And business very much not as usual.

How can we build a sustainable future for our organisations when there are so many issues and trends to think about? It doesn’t help that these issues all mean different things to different people and industries, and our interpretations are always changing too… You could go through reams of research and think about how each element presents a risk or an opportunity. Or you could take a look at Horizons – a digital tool developed by Forum for the Future in collaboration with the Technology Strategy Board and Aviva Investors. Horizons builds on an earlier piece of research called the Sustainable Economy Framework. By exploring over 40 sources, including the concept of ‘planetary boundaries’ coined by Rockstrom et al., it

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brings together complex factors in a userfriendly interface to help shape long-term strategies, inform commercial decisions and stimulate new innovations. Horizons presents each issue as a ‘card’ with an explanation of why it’s important and suggested actions that you or your organisation could, should or must take – with key facts, links to external

resources and case studies. Forum will be running a series of workshops to explore the tool across a number of industries. If you’d like to be involved, or try Horizons yourself, visit www.forumforthefuture.org or contact Madeleine Lewis: m.lewis@forumforthefuture.org

Green Futures April 2013

Bulk benefits

Forum for the Future’s Network is a global community of leaders, united by their ambition and capacity to create real and lasting change. For more information, visit www.forumforthefuture.org

ABN AMRO www.abnamro.com Aimia www.aimia.com AkzoNobel Elizabeth Stokes, +44 (0)1928 511 695 Alliance Boots Ltd Richard Ellis, Richard.Ellis@allianceboots.com AMEC Francesco Corsi, +44 (0)1912 726 128 Arjowiggins Graphic Shannan Hodgson, shannan.hodgson@arjowiggins.com ARMOR SA Sean Loftus, UK New Business Development Manager Sean.LOFTUS@armor-group.com Ashden Jane Howarth, +44 (0)20 7410 7023

ClimateCare +44 (0)1865 591 000, business@climatecare.org www.climatecare.org Crest Nicholson Plc Dr Elizabeth Ness, +44 (0)1932 580 555 www.crestnicholson.com Delhaize Group Megan Hellstedt, mhellstedt@delhaizegroup.com www.delhaizegroup.com Delphis Eco Mark Jankovich, +44 (0)20 3397 0096 www.delphisworld.com DNV www.dnv.co.uk DSME www.dsme.co.kr/epub/main/index.do eBay Inc Lorin May, lmay@ebay.com

Aviva Investors Steve Waygood, +44 (0)20 7809 6000

Ecology Building Society www.ecology.co.uk Anna Laycock, alaycock@ecology.co.uk +44 (0)1535 650 773

Azaria International priyanka.kripalani@azaria.in +91 22 2285 6161 www.azaria.in

Ecover Philip Malmberg, +32 3 309 2500 www.ecover.com

Bank of America Merrill Lynch Matt Hale, +44 (0)20 7996 2054

EDF Energy Darren Towers, +44 (0)7875 110 289, darren.towers@edfenergy.com

Barclays Bank Plc Lauren Iannarone, www.barclays.com BASF Geoff Mackey, geoff.mackey@basf.com www.basf.com Benchmark Software Simon Harvey, +44 (0)1458 444 010 BP Shipping www.bp.com/shipping BSkyB Daniella Vega, daniella.vega@bskyb.com BT Plc Eric Anderson, +44 (0)7730 426 189 Eric.Anderson@bt.com Bunge www.bunge.com Bupa Andrew Smith, +44 (0)20 7656 2343 Burberry Limited Jocelyn Wilkinson, +44 (0)20 3367 3100 Cafédirect Whitney Kakos , +44 (0)20 7033 6022 Capgemini Ltd James Robey, +44 (0)870 904 5761 Cargill Fiona Cubitt, +44 (0)1932 861 916 Carillion Plc Louise Perry, +44 (0)1902 316 258 Carnival www.carnival.com Certis Europe www.certiseurope.co.uk Chi Group www.chigroup.co City of London Simon Mills, +44 (0)20 7332 1431

Green Futures April 2013

Ella’s Kitchen Sarah Bright, sarah@ellaskitchen.co.uk

Jaguar Land Rover Fran Leedham, fleedham@jaguarlandrover.com

Skanska Jennifer Clark, +44 (0)1923 776 666

John Lewis Partnership Moira Thomas, +44 (0)20 7592 4413

Small World Henry Rawson, +852 2799 3998 www.interiorsourcing.com

Johnson Matthey Sean Axon, +44 (0)20 7269 8400 The Jordans & Ryvita Company Ltd David Webster, +44 (0)1767 319 415 Kingfisher Becky Coffin, becky.coffin@kingfisher.com Kyocera Document Solutions Tracey Rawling- Church, Tracey.Rawling.Church@KyoceraMita.co.uk Lafarge UK Emma Hines www.lafarge.co.uk

L’Oréal USA Pamela Alabaster, www.lorealusa.com

Hammerson www.hammerson.com Heineken UK Richard Heathcote, +44 (0)1432 345 277 HSH Group Natalie Chan www.hshgroup.com IGD Dr James Northen, +44 (0)1923 851 919 Ingersoll Rand www.ingersollrand.com

Technology Will Save Us www.technologywillsaveus.org

Marks & Spencer Plc Rowland Hill, PlanA@marksandspencer.com

The Coca-Cola Company April Crow, www.coca-colacompany.com

Maersk Line www.maersk.com

The Co-operative Group Chris Shearlock, www.co-operative.coop

Mondelez www.mondelezinternational.com

OgilvyEarth Kathleen Enright, +44 (0)20 7309 1226 kathleen.enright@ogilvy.com

GSH Group David Whiteley, +44 (0)20 7015 0350 david.whiteley@gshgroup.com www.gshgroup.com

Tesco Plc Helen Fleming, +44 (0)1992 806 790

Tetra Pak Ltd Gavin Landeg, +44 (0)1978 834 018

Finlays Michael Pennant-Jones, +44 (0)20 7802 3239

The Geo Group UK Limited Paul Starkey, pstarkey@geogroup.co.uk

Tata Global Beverages www.tataglobalbeverages.com/

Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) James Simpson, +44 (0)20 7811 3315

Nike Inc Sarah Severn, sarah.severn@nike.com

Gearbulk www.gearbulk.com

Target www.target.com

Telefónica UK Simon Davis, simon.davis@O2.com

Energy Saving Trust +44 (0)20 7227 0398 www.energysavingtrust.org.uk

Food and Drink Federation Nicki Hunt, +44 (0)20 7420 7132

Swire – China Navigation Co www.cnco.com.hk

Levi Strauss & Co www.levistrauss.com/

Namura http://www.namura.co.jp/en/index.html

FirstGroup Plc Katie Smart, katie.smart@firstgroup.com

Sustaination Ed Dowding, ed@sustaination.co.uk

Taylors of Harrogate Simon.Hotchkin@bettysandtaylors.co.uk

EnergyDeck Benjamin Kott, www.energydeck.com

Firmenich SA Neil McFarlane, +41 227 802 435

Sony Europe www.sony-europe.com

Leeds City Council www.leeds.gov.uk/

Lloyd’s Register www.lr.org

The Converging World Wendy Stephenson, wendystephenson@theconvergingworld.org The Crown Estate Sustainability@thecrownestate.co.uk www.thecrownestate.co.uk Triodos Bank William Ferguson, +44 (0)117 980 9770 Tsakos www.tsakos.net

Panasonic UK Ltd Simon Eves, +44 (0)1344 853 325

TUI Travel Plc Jane Ashton, +44 (0)1293 645 911

PepsiCo UK & Ireland Andrew Slight, Andrew.Slight@pepsico.com

Twin Jessica Frank, jessicafrank@twin.org.uk www.twin.org.uk

Pret A Manger Ltd Nicki Fisher, +44 (0)20 7827 8888 Pureprint Group Richard Owers, +44 (0)1825 768 811 Quintain Estates and Development Plc Louise Ellison, +44 (0)20 7478 3430 lellison@quintain.co.uk Rail Safety and Standards Board Shamit Gaiger, +44 (0)20 3142 5380 Rexam Plc sustainability@rexam.com, www.rexam.com Rio Tinto www.marine.riotinto.com Royal Dutch Shell Plc Elfrida Hughes, +31 610 974 798 RSA Insurance Group Plc Peter Collins, www.rsagroup.com RWE npower Anita Longley, +44 (0)1793 892 716

Innovia Films Lucy Cowton, +44 (0)1697 342 281

Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd Stuart Wright, stuart.wright@sainsburys.co.uk

Interface Europe Ltd Ramon Arratia, +44 (0)20 7490 3960

Shell Foundation www.shellfoundation.org

In the UK, high commodity prices, landfill tax and some surprising collaborations are boosting recycling rates.

Twinings Maxine Shields, www.twinings.co.uk U-Ming www.uming.com.tw/ Unilever Plc Karen Hamilton, Karen.Hamilton@unilever.com +44 (0)20 7822 5917 United Biscuits Alice Cadman, Alice_Cadman@unitedbiscuits.com Veja Aurélie Dumont, aurelie@veja.fr Volac Andy Richardson, +44 (0)1223 208 021 Wärtsilä www.wartsila.com Wessex Water Plc Dan Green, +44 (0)1225 526 000 Willmott Dixon Ltd Rob Lambe, +44 (0)7814 003 046 WWF-UK Dax Lovegrove, +44 (0)1483 412 395

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Photo: iStockphoto / thinkstock

3M Pip Frankish, www.3m.com

As waste rolls along the conveyor belt, infrared beams sort one type of plastic from another, and bursts of air set them on the right path to melt-down – and eventual reincarnation… Optical sorting, as this process is known, is one technology helping to drive a sharp improvement in the UK’s household recycling rates. Last year, for the first time since records began, local authorities recycled, composted or reused more waste than they sent to landfill. According to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 43% of household waste was recycled in 2011/12, up from just 11% a decade before. Despite the extra complexity and cost in collecting and sorting different kinds of refuse, forward-thinking local authorities are finding that their waste bills are falling as their recycling rates rise. One success story comes from north-west England. The authorities that formed Cheshire West and Chester, a new unitary council, four years ago, budgeted for a 15% cut in annual household waste collection costs. Following a tender in which bidders had to show how they would maximise income from recycled material, the new body is set to save more than 30%, or₤£3.5 million – while also lifting recycling rates. The tender was one of the first of its kind in the UK to recognise the economic value of waste, says Phil Scott of engineering and project management group AMEC, the lead technical advisor to the council. And the winner? The infrastructure services company May Gurney. One particular innovation in the new contract sees the company sub-contract a local non-profit furniture reuse network to collect bulky goods. It’s one of the first times a third-sector organisation has been involved in a major waste collection procurement for a council. The furniture network will, in effect, now be paid for work it was already doing: namely collecting and selling unwanted but reusable household items donated by the public. Under the previous contracts, virtually all bulky waste across Cheshire West and Chester went to landfill. The network is now finding a use for almost half of it. There are wider benefits, too, such as new jobs. Gary Cliffe runs a charity within the network that aims to create jobs for ex-offenders, disabled people and others struggling to find work. “You can’t underestimate the difference financial stability makes”, he says. Amongst other things, the income from the contract has subsidised a new recycling line: mattresses.

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Importantly, says Helen de Lemos, the council’s Waste Strategy Manager, the service is a powerful reminder to the public of the value of recycling. And there’s plenty of value to recognise. Aluminium beverage cans top the pile, fetching £700 per tonne, up from £450 in 2009. The scale is rising, too. Growing quantities of recyclable material are, in turn, supporting large-scale processing. A plant in Essex that processes nearly 10% of plastic bottles collected for recycling in the UK, for example, is set to double its capacity this year. However, the biggest economic factor in favour of recycling is landfill tax, says Dr David Greenfield of Iese, a local government consultancy. The UK’s levy is set to rise to £80 a tonne in 2014, which means it will soon cost £880 to send one lorry with an 11 tonne load to landfill. Like AMEC, and Cheshire West and Chester, Greenfield sees tenders which promote ‘competitive dialogue’ between the procurement team and a range of bidders as a key way to inject innovation into recycling. He’s not the only one looking forward to a new culture around old stuff. – Virginia Marsh

Aluminium cans fetch £700 per tonne, up from £450 in 2009

AMEC is a Forum for the Future Partner. www.amec.com

Green Futures April 2013

Health counts

Report card

Lessons from carbon finance could bring private funding to ‘development’ projects.

Is sustainability reporting worth the time and effort it takes?

Green Futures April 2013

ClimateCare is a Forum for the Future partner. www.climatecare.org

www.greenfutures.org.uk

the time, effort and cash put into producing a report, it’s vital to get this right”, warns the report. This year, Anglo American came first of five companies selected by Radley Yeldar for its particularly impressive sustainability reports, ahead of Centrica, HSBC Holdings, Diageo and Siemens. But does a good report necessarily indicate good practice? Critics are sceptical, as New Economics Foundation fellow Andrew Simms makes clear: “Sustainability reporting is only of real use if it is hard-wired to companies becoming part of the rapid transition to an economy which lives within our global environmental budget. There’s no guarantee that, just because you are good at reporting, you are doing any good.” But could sustainability reporting help to drive change? David Aeron-Thomas, Sustainable Metrics Specialist at Forum for the Future, considers setting a standard to be a positive thing, but not in isolation: “Ultimately, having to prepare a sustainability report helps organisations work out their priorities. Change can develop from there. In the past, it was only big extractive companies which were winning reporting awards, in part because they had to recover their reputation. Now, new players are entering the field, and some good things are emerging to help build up the required expertise – such as the Global Reporting Initiative. There’s more to it than wrapping a report around a company and hoping that will be enough.” This is where ‘How Does It Stack Up?’ comes to the fore. Radley Yeldar hopes that, by establishing a benchmark of best practice, companies can pool their reporting expertise, learning from one another in the process. – Tess Riley

Being good at reporting is no guarantee you’re doing good

Pureprint Group is a Forum for the Future partner. www.pureprint.com

Photo: Wavebreak Media / thinkstock

In Kenya, health workers with smart phones and questionnaires will call on every family that received a LifeStraw water filter (pictured) in a recent project developed by health experts Vestergaard Frandsen in collaboration with ClimateCare. That’s nearly 900,000 families in total. Each one will be asked questions about the incidence of water-borne disease. This data, combined with reports from regional health centres, will be checked against a pre-project baseline. The same families will receive another visit six months later, and six months after that… This sort of rigorous impact measurement is opening up the possibility of new project funding streams that are health related and paid by result. Investors seeking specific health impacts can provide pre-agreed payments for health outcomes. For example, in the case of the water filters, payments could be made if the project achieves a 25% reduction in the odds of diarrhoea within one year. This is the vision of Edward Hanrahan, Director of ClimateCare, who believes such a model could unleash funding for development projects on a scale never seen before. As calls for the private sector to contribute to the hundreds of billions of dollars needed to tackle

Corporate behaviour is under intense scrutiny, not least in the context of sustainability. Diverse audiences, from board members to final consumers, are showing increasing interest in understanding a company’s environmental impact. Bloomberg, for example, now includes carbon data in its reporting. But how valuable is sustainability reporting? It’s a crucial question, both to help us work out what sets the leaders apart, and if we’re to understand the role of reporting in driving change. A recent report from corporate communications agency Radley Yeldar offers a useful starting point. The authors of ‘How Does It Stack Up?’ surveyed 35 companies from the FTSE Eurotop 100 to pinpoint trends in sustainability reporting. They found that the overall quality of reporting continues to improve, citing an increase in the number of companies disclosing their progress against short, medium and long-term targets. However, they also point out that important narratives are being obscured by increasingly standardised disclosures. The past year has been marked by high-profile corporate malpractice, raising questions about the role and value of the sustainability report. Ben Richards, Radley Yeldar’s Head of Sustainability, maintains that one of the main motivations is communicating with clients and stakeholders – but acknowledges that “the act of disclosure has value, both positive and negative”. Despite this, Richards is in no doubt about the overall business benefits of producing a report, particularly if it gives competitive advantage over less transparent peers. These disclosures must be accurate and honest, however, if they are to avoid being discredited as greenwash. “With a simple accusatory tweet wielding enough power to discredit

Photo: Kate Holt

Solution filter: resultsbased funding funnels money where it will matter most

climate and development challenges become louder, the results-based approach pioneered in the carbon market over the last decade could offer a way forward. Donors are increasingly looking to fund organisations and specific projects based upon the results they achieve, rather than the proposals they submit. Such ‘results-based payments’ are hailed as a way to unlock private sector finance, but are often considered a concept rather than accepted practice. However, carbon finance, where payments are only made once a project has delivered quantified CO2 reductions, is an example of such a model in action. The Carbon for Water project is one of the first schemes in the world to attempt to monitor and verify health outcomes with the same rigour as for carbon reductions, although, for the moment, the financial structure remains a carbon-based one. Vestergaard Frandsen put forward $25 million to deliver the LifeStraw water filters [see GF Special Edition ‘Water Works’, p14], on the basis that there would be a return from selling the emissions reductions generated over a 10-year period. However, it represents a crucial step towards Hanrahan’s vision of large-scale private investment based on health and other development outcomes. While it’s by no means a simple task, Hanrahan believes that developing an internationally accepted mechanism to measure and value such outcomes could be the quickest way to unlock the private sector finance required to meet development and climate change targets. The risks for investors could be reduced through ‘blended finance’ models, bringing together traditional funders like development finance institutions and governments with private sector investors. For instance, the model mentioned earlier – in which traditional funders commit to pay for pre-agreed development outcomes – provides assurance to private sector investors that the project has a long-term revenue stream, reducing risk and encouraging initial investment. ClimateCare is working with corporate, government and NGO partners to develop projects that reduce carbon, tackle poverty and improve health. As large corporations start to recognise their roles and responsibilities with regards to international development, it is no longer a question of dragging finance from a reluctant private sector. Strategic, innovative businesses are looking for the kinds of funding mechanisms and partnerships that ClimateCare cultivates. With the right models in place, they could change the scale of development, for good.

April 2013

Reading between the sheets

Retrofit: the fourth ‘R’?

A company’s choice of paper says a lot about its priorities, but is everyone on the same page?

Recycled paper

FSC

Carbon balancing

Landfilling (kg)

1,603

C02 (kg)

174

Water (litres)

41,856

Energy (kWh)

3,941

Wood (kg)

2,605

The sustainably sourced, the 100% recycled or the carbon neutral: like an over-long pizza menu, all the options look good at a glance. So how do you know if you’re making the best decision? And what does your choice say about you? If you want to demonstrate how serious you are about sustainability, then recycled is the way, avoiding landfill, water use, energy and carbon emissions. Graham Prichard, Print and Production Manager at the National Trust, says his choice of Cocoon Silk and Cyclus paper (both manufactured from 100% post-consumer waste) for newsletters, property leaflets and direct mail – supplied by Arjowiggins Graphic – helps the charity to achieve its overall objective: “We’re focused on ensuring the materials we use are closely aligned with one of our strategic aims, to reduce the environmental impact of our operations.” However, not all recycled papers are equal, and the triangle of green arrows, though widely recognised, offers little clarity. In some cases, it indicates that the paper can be recycled, not that is has been; only when it comes with a percentage does it tell you how much recycled content is in the mix. High-quality recycled graphic paper depends on careful sorting in the supply chain, and sophisticated

Green Futures April 2013

Arjowiggins Graphic is a Forum for the Future partner. www.recycled-papers.co.uk

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Photo: Impington Village College

Green Futures is printed on 100% recycled paper, resulting in these savings. See inside cover for the full Environmental Benefit Statement.

Photo: Photos.com / Jupiterimages / thinkstock

Paper in the balance

de-inking, but the environmental gains far outweigh the resource costs involved. They can be maximised through attention to the full cycle of the paper, including the proximity of the waste source to the mills. For instance, Arjowiggins Graphic sources up to 26% of its waste paper from the UK (matching the volume of recycled content it sells within the UK) – and finds the balance within a 250km radius of its Greenfield mill in northern France. A familiar mark is the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), but people can get muddled about that, too, says Shannan Hodgson, Marketing and Corporate Communications Manager at Arjowiggins Graphic. For everything ‘forest’, from flooring to furniture, FSC is the most credible certification for sustainable forest management. However, it doesn’t offer any necessary savings in water, wood, or waste to landfill. Moreover, there’s not just one FSC label: there are three. Two certify the source of virgin fibre, whereas the third guarantees there isn’t any: it’s 100% recycled – hence no forest to manage, sustainably or not. Nor are labels the only game in town. Offsetting has been around for a while – and, Hodgson observes, is attracting some interest under a new name: ‘carbon balancing’. A printing company might offer (for a modest fee) to finance offset projects, saving the equivalent carbon cost of producing the paper for the brochure – but not mitigating the impact of the printing process and delivery. Only by using a carbon balanced printer can a publication offset its carbon footprint, before distribution. If you are a time-poor procurer with money to spend, carbon balancing is a neat-sounding package, but not one with which to impress an audience of sustainability leaders. The ‘check your paper’ facility on WWF’s website can help you to know whether you are making the most sustainable choice. Arjowiggins Graphic has committed to cut carbon emissions by 10% per tonne of paper by 2014 under WWF International’s Climate Savers initiative. – Roger East

Carbon cuts bring schools financial rewards, but the real value is in the education. With the potential to reduce carbon consumption by more than 50%, and make £120,000 a year, retrofitting its school is an investment that Impington Village College, near Cambridge in England, can’t afford not to make. Especially given that its annual carbon emissions – currently at 101.33kgCO2/m2 – are double the national average. The retrofit will require an investment of £1 million. It’s not a sum many schools have in their coffers – it is challenging for academies to engage in financial leases. The solution is an Energy Performance Contract (EPC) with Skanska, the contractor, who will fund the upfront costs through private investment, and expect to recoup the outlay over a seven-year period, through a combination of savings on bills and revenue generated through the sale of any surplus energy, drawing on government incentives. Once the investment has been paid off, the additional revenue should – Skanska estimates – bring the school an additional £3 million over the following 15 years. If the savings don’t add up, Skanska will assume the shortfall. It’s an attractive offer. But, says Vice Principal Fran Difranco, it was the educational benefits that really sold the retrofit project to the school governors. Three biomass boilers, due to be installed over the summer holidays, will provide 85% of the thermal load usually supplied by gas, reducing carbon emissions by an estimated 30% and generating £60,000 a year through sales. But Difranco is equally pleased with the vision panels to be added to the boilers. The pupils will be able to see exactly how they work, and follow the energy trail from the boiler to the swimming pool, as well as analyse the data in the classroom. Replacing all lamp fittings with low-wattage lights or LEDs will reduce carbon emissions by a further 10%, and smart meters will enable the school and Skanska to analyse the energy usage and decide whether further changes are required. “Predicting energy usage based on standardised behaviours is fairly accurate, but nothing compares to using real data [generated by the occupants]”, says Skanska’s Associate Director, Richard Byers. “And it’s a fantastic way to engage the students”, says Difranco. Screens around the college will display the energy peaks and troughs throughout the day, and students will collect and interpret this data as part of their science and maths classes.

www.greenfutures.org.uk

Global Action Plan (GAP), which has worked with 3,000 schools over 20 years, has been asked to provide a behaviour change programme. Teaching students to turn off lights and computer screens has been shown to yield between 3 and 10% annual carbon savings, but the benefits reach further than this. In a survey following one of GAP’s sustainability programmes, 83% of teachers reported improved selfesteem in pupils. Following another project, students worked with Ealing Council to improve its waste collections. “What is really interesting is being able to create a dialogue around retrofit and sustainability between teachers, pupils and the local authorities”, says Sandrine Dixson-Declève, a director of the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership. “It can create a real paradigm shift in terms of local authority buy in and action on the ground.” As was the case for the De Kariboe school in the Netherlands. With local and governmental support it was able to do a full rebuild, from solar panels to compost patches. The school is now used as a centre for cultural exchange, and its redesigned gardens are open to the public. De Kariboe and Impington Village College are both piloting the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership’s carbon reduction toolkit, Atlas, which Skanska was heavily involved in developing. Students input data on mobility or gas usage into the web-based system, and discover ways to reduce their carbon footprint. The toolkit can be used at home to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions there too. As Difranco says, “The retrofit is proving almost boundless in terms of its educational benefits.” – Lizzie Rivera Skanska is a Forum for the Future partner. www.skanska.com

The pupils will follow the energy trail from the boiler to the swimming pool

Grassroots engagement: Impington Village College

Green Futures April 2013

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Green Futures April 2013

institutions have established track records of success when it comes to moving companies down a path towards more sustainable and responsible practices. – Robert Walker

Got it. And let’s stop calling ourselves ‘consumers’. A name can become a selffulfilling prophecy. What behaviour and role would be more appropriate for the people in a conscious, sustainable world? – Elsie Maio

Pricey diesel, cheaper sun Talking of change Along with Jonathon Porritt [see GF87, p48], I too have been astonished by the lead the corporate world is taking. But I have come to a different conclusion. I was drawn recently to an investment announced by the University of Oxford into a resource efficiency-based equities strategy. I tracked down the investment company to see if I could learn more, and was surprised to see that the portfolio consists of [some of] the largest companies in the world who are implementing efficiency strategies to mitigate resource consumption, from what appears to be an economic, not a social imperative. Companies we have all heard of – Boeing, Unilever, L’Oréal, Procter & Gamble, eBay and Accenture – appear to be doing something fundamentally different to their peer group to make themselves more efficient. This seems to be providing better returns to shareholders as well, so it appears to be a win-win. So we can moan about buying brown versus green, but unless we take greater steps to understand and celebrate what some of the biggest companies are doing and continue to do, we will end up shooting ourselves in the foot. Some change is better than no change. – William Jones

We should distinguish between conventional investment institutions that do nothing to address environmental and social challenges, and those socially responsible investors with corporate engagement programmes in place. Many of these

I do not believe that diesel, even in Tokelau, is [as much as] $10 a litre [see ‘First solar state’, GF87, p6]. You must have the numbers wrong. £500,000 a year on diesel and only 200 litres a day? Maybe it is 200 gallons a day? – Louise Robb Anna Simpson replies: Thanks, Louise, and apologies: you have spotted an inaccuracy. The text should read: “Sound economics, as well as environmental concerns, inspired the switch. Each of Tokelau’s three generators previously burned 200 litres of diesel a day…” The source for the cost quoted is the Pacific Islands Development Programme. The writer, Christina Madden, adds that: “The cost remains steep, but is elevated because the fuel had to be transported thousands of miles by boat.”

www.greenfutures.org.uk letters@greenfutures.org.uk @GreenFutures Comments may be edited for publication.

A place for GM in food’s future? I thoroughly agree with Andrew Kuyk’s analysis in ‘Why food needs science’ [GF87, p42]. And I wonder, given the need for science in our food system, how do you feel about GMOs (genetically modified organisms)? Is it not better to fight pests and increase yield through genetic means rather than spraying huge amounts of chemicals, whether natural or synthetic? – Cindy Railing

Watery warning Peter Madden talks a lot of sense [see ‘Flood warning’, GF87, p4]. He and others might be interested to read the Blueprint for Water (www.blueprintforwater.org.uk), which is a ‘manifesto’ for a fundamental and complete revision of our relationship with water, compiled by a coalition of environmental NGOs over the past few years. –M ark Lloyd, Chief Executive, Angling Trust & Fish Legal

Peter Madden

The future in context

Youthful inspiration

Flood warning We’ll do well to adapt

In the last couple of years, communities across the world have experienced devastating floods. As the threat of flooding becomes even more severe in future decades, how will we re-engineer our towns and cities to be resilient? We will see huge steel gates that automatically rise up from the earth to block floodwaters. River-mouth barrages, many kilometres long, will hold back storm surges, while giant self-inflating bags, that mould themselves to contours, will seal off tunnels and underground railways from encroaching water. Many people will live in houses that, quite literally, float up as the water rises, trailing flexible cables and pipes. These will keep the occupants and their possessions dry, and then return to their original position as floodwaters subside. Recent floods – from Ohio to Venice, Argentina and the Philippines – have brought enormous financial costs and human misery. According to the Environment Agency, floods are now the number one natural hazard facing the UK. And the risks will get worse, both here and overseas. Throughout human history, we have built our major settlements on low-lying land near rivers and harbours. Climate change is already bringing sea level rises, and more severe weather events, threatening these settlements. Population growth and continuing urbanisation will increase the number of people at risk from flooding; while deforestation, intensive farming and concreting over ever-more land mean there’s less natural drainage for heavy rain and bursting rivers. The world is going to have to adapt. Important infrastructure will have to be placed more intelligently in flood risk areas. Computer servers, switching-gear and back-up generators can no longer live in basements. Electricity substations and water treatment plants will have to be lifted out of danger zones. Utilities will begin to invest in micro-grids, limiting electricity outages, water contamination or broadband disruption to smaller areas. Planning

Bravo Kingfisher! ‘Youth on board’ [GF87, p39] is inspirational stuff. But is there a typo in the article - ‘complete transformation by 2050’. Is that really the timeline? – David Relph Anna Simpson replies: Glad you like the piece, David. It’s not a typo, although you’re right to question the word ‘complete’. The details are set out in Kingfisher’s ‘Net Positive’ report, which says that in each of four priority areas (timber, energy, innovation and communities) “and across the business,

Weird water

we will transform the way we operate to become Net Positive by 2050”. You can download the report and watch a video here: www.kingfisher.co.uk/netpositive

Green Futures January 2013

laws and building regulations, across the world, will increasingly require such design changes. This will mean that, as well as cultivating their land for crops, farmers will be encouraged – or paid – to plant trees and dig ponds that slow down, store and soak up water. Natural defences, such as salt marshes, will provide wildlife havens as well as acting as giant sponges. And in cities, new parks and playing fields will provide civic amenity for most of the year – and a harmless place for water during floods. All this will mean finding money to pay for improved protection and resilience. There may be some low-hanging fruit (the odd tweak to design specs when swapping-out existing infrastructure), and there’ll also be win-wins with ecosystem enhancement. Some defence costs will be paid for by concerned individuals and localities. Ultimately, though, the big schemes will require investment from public authorities. Given the value of urban land and the costs of economic disruption and human misery, it will be money well spent, and the sooner the better. In coming years, we can look forward to a host of smart flood protection technologies and solutions. Among them, the cleverest will be the systemic ones: those that, rather than trying to hold back the rising tides, reassess our relationship to water in the first place.

Peter Madden is Chief Executive, Forum for the Future.

www.greenfutures.org.uk

I entirely agree with the points made by Adam Kingdon [see GF Special Edition ‘Water Works’, p3]. I work in innovation in the UK and European water sector, and see much evidence of excellent technology development at the company level. But of course there is no point developing the kit/software/infrastructure if there are regulatory barriers or a lack of market drivers. Where the full economic value of water is recognised and priced accordingly, then innovative ways to treat, pump, conserve, reuse and generally manage water will follow. These will be ways that cost less or achieve more for the same money. The water sector is a weird quasimarket. How weird depends on where in the world you are located and how much direct political interference there is in the sector, along with how strictly abstraction rights are enforced, whether the private ownership of utilities can be arbitrarily over-ridden and so on. In the absence of a free market (and I am not aware of any) there are mechanisms to promote and encourage innovation. I am involved with a number in the UK and aware of many such initiatives worldwide but in the main they are organised from the ground up (they are supply-chain initiatives). Three cheers for (smart) regulation and incentives! – Jonathan Abra

Desalination has to be part of the solution. It’s going to become necessary anyway as natural aquifers deplete faster than they can be replenished. It really isn’t rocket science, although it is noticeable that there is a strong Luddite element in environmentalism that simply does not want solutions to problems, certainly not technological solutions. – Euan Gray

Futuristas stuck in the past? I am a woman and mother of two boys and two girls, but both as a woman and as the man I could have been I am absolutely shocked by the implications of medievallike sexism in ‘They’re worth it’ [see GF

a greenfutures Special Edition

Published by

FUTURISTAS WHY WOMEN ARE CRUCIAL TO CHANGE

Special Edition ‘Futuristas’, p3]. We’re told that balance, responsiveness, sensitivity and intuition are “feminine values”. Since when have values, character, gifts and skills had a gender? It is so frustrating to keep reading this sort of stale, biased, backward and ignorant militant feminist generalisations. It sounds like you’re stuck in the Middle Ages. – Laura Cartwright Anna Simpson replies: I absolutely agree that to ascribe a gender to values and character traits is to generalise, and that this can be very unhelpful. The point author Oliver Balch makes is not that we should think of values in this gendered way, but that this is often the case. Assumptions about how men and women do and should behave become institutionalised and are reinforced in professional contexts. Balch recognises that some business writers, such as Tania Ellis, are calling for a more diverse range of values in the business world, and that this is an opportunity to rethink the leadership styles, and open up boardrooms to a broader range of participants. As I understand it, Ellis doesn’t endorse the ‘feminine values’ line, either. As Balch writes, Ellis clearly states that these characteristics are “associated with women, but are not their exclusive preserve”. I am sorry that you didn’t find the article more clear on this front. As the

editor, I am concerned not to reinforce generalisations about women or men. However, I am keen to recognise the difference gender does currently make in the business world, and to present the case for moving forwards.

There is no business case for driving more women onto corporate boards. You’re confusing correlation with causation. Driving more women onto corporate boards is a left wing social engineering exercise. It’s doomed to failure, in common with all such exercises. When you’ve managed to come up with an alternative to capitalism for wealth creation, call me. –M ike Buchanan, Chief Executive, Campaign For Merit In Business

Great piece on women [see ‘Problem solvers’, p4]. I think more women in STEM [science, technology, engineering and maths] jobs will add a huge value in problem-solving. This is absolutely key. – Ramon Arratia, Interface

“Congratulations on ‘Futuristas’. Very well and artistically produced.” –R obert Engelman, President, Worldwatch Institute

Problem solvers More women in science and technology could mean better solutions, finds Katherine Rowland.

Small hands, big imagination

More women means more diversity, more innovation and better results

Educational bias, workplace policies and lack of encouragement may go a long way to explaining why only 27% of scientific researchers worldwide are women. But while equity is reason enough to tackle the issue, the world may have a lot more to gain from a better balance. “We have to ask what we are trying to achieve by recruiting more women in science and engineering for sustainability”, asserts medical doctor, architect and TED Fellow Rachel Armstrong of the University of Greenwich. “Is it just a matter of greater representation, or is it a matter of seeking women’s influence in these disciplines?” Armstrong’s own work is driven by the need to find solutions for 21st century life. It’s not just about industry, she argues: it’s about reimagining human identity. “We need new answers for urban spaces and the way we use resources, especially as they become more constrained. Will introducing more women bring about that change?” Quite possibly, says Jeremy Greenwood of Lafarge Readymix, a global leader in building materials. At the most basic level, he explains, bringing more women into STEM translates into increased diversity, leading to more innovative problem solving, and better results overall. Others, including Armstrong, maintain that women display qualities which are needed in the field. “Women tend to facilitate, cooperate, nurture and orchestrate,” says Armstrong: “Their approach is less ‘top-down, fix the broken machine’ than it is holistic and collaborative, a great asset in science and engineering.” Melissa Sterry, Head of Technology at Earth 2 Hub, concurs, pointing to the social roles women play by way of explanation: “As family members and mothers, women understand sustainability as a way of securing the future.” For Sterry, yesterday’s bias against women in STEM could even be today’s advantage. “The time is now to make progress as a woman in science”, she argues. “Yes, women have to push to be heard. When they introduce new and creative ideas, they’re subject to more scrutiny, and so forced to look at issues more closely. This has a

Green Futures January 2013

powerful impact on building the future.” Whether the motivation is sustainability, diversity or research for its own sake, the question remains: how can we address STEM’s gender gap? Claire McNulty, Director of Science and Sustainability at the British Council, calls for a closer look at what could drive women to go into science, while addressing the perception that it’s geeky and dull. “Science is about discovering new answers, from how the brain works to generating clean energy. We need to show that science can be applied to the issues that really make a difference,” she says. Indeed psychologist Amanda Diekman of Miami University, Ohio, found that many women find science out of sync with their professional ambitions. “Women tend to have ‘communal goals’”, she says. “[They] want careers where they’re helping others and solving social problems. The perception of science as a profession of lonely lab hours can be irreconcilable with women’s aims when they want to engage with the world.” Are women more likely to pursue careers on the solutions side of science – just as they are more likely to assume leadership or managerial roles in companies with a focus on sustainability, rather than in general industry? Could better information about the application of science to real world issues help to raise the proportion of undergraduate applications from women to the Institute of Physics from the baseline of just 35% in 2011? Silvia Giordani of Trinity College Dublin, who was recently awarded a L’Oreal-UNESCO fellowship for Women in Science, believes it could: “It’s important to send the message to young women that science gives you tools to take on the world’s problems.” For Carmel McQuaid, Climate Change Manager at Marks and Spencer, solving the world’s problems can be a strong motivating factor for women who face conflicting pressures, she observes: “Women may find it easier to be happy with the career choices they make knowing that they’re working to ensure clean air and water for future generations.” Nonetheless, having children or caring for elderly dependents often coincides with the opportunity for women to progress in science, business and in wider society, acknowledges McQuaid. “Without access to affordable care, and to good role models and mentors, and without efforts to overcome real or perceived barriers”, she warns, “we may fail to maximise the potential of women and their experience to drive change.” Katherine Rowland writes about health and the environment from New York.

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JonathonPorritt

Green Futures April 2013

part of 40 years. During that time, people mostly responded with contempt, incredulity or patronising jocularity. Now it’s happening. My forecast is that PV and its sister technology – concentrated solar power – will provide around 30% of total global electricity by 2030. But it has been a long time coming. If we have to wait an equally long time for every one of the new technologies on which a sustainable economy depends, then it may well turn out to be too late. By all accounts, that was part of President Obama’s thinking at the start of his first term in 2008. He opted out of any pitched battle with Congress, and used his regulatory powers instead (on vehicle efficiency standards, for instance). At the same time, he pumped money into ARPA-E, a new incubator for alternative energy technologies, funded out of the $800 billion stimulus from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This has kickstarted what some describe as a ‘silent green revolution’ in the Department of Energy. More than 150 different projects and programmes – many on the cutting edge of research – have been funded. A few of these have failed, to be sure, but more than a dozen have been picked up by venture capitalists and are showing real promise, including the solar cell manufacturer 1366 Technologies. Everyone agrees that ARPA-E is great. But the rest of Obama’s first term was a miserable failure when it comes to addressing climate change. As was his presidential campaign in that regard. The only saving grace was his eloquent reminder of the importance of climate change in the Inaugural Address. This was classic Obama: part moral homily, part economic advocacy, all draped in the American flag. As author Thomas Friedman puts it, “green is the new red, white and blue”. Both Friedman and former Vice President Al Gore (in his excellent new book, The Future) are out and about reminding people of the economic cost of accelerating climate change. For instance, it looks as if the damage done by hurricane Sandy will exceed $60 billion – precisely the sum of money Obama fought so hard to get by marginally raising tax levels on the richest US citizens for the next four years! What’s missing is any real sense of urgency – in the US and Europe, let alone anywhere else in the world. And the only way to get lead times down is for politicians to press down on that urgency button as hard as they can, and keep on pressing. Jonathon Porritt is Founder Director of Forum for the Future. www.jonathonporritt.com

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Our future depends on how long it takes to negotiate this transition

If plants can use sunlight to split water into its constituent parts (hydrogen and oxygen), and turn them into stored energy in the form of carbohydrates, why can’t we? Well, we probably can. Around the world, dozens of universities and research institutes are hard at work trying to mimic the phenomenon of photosynthesis. There’s so much ‘blue sky thinking’ going on at the moment, that it’s hard to know how much of it will eventually translate into applied solutions on the ground. I sometimes struggle with this in the Briefings section of Green Futures: does it matter that some of the brilliant ideas and technologies the writers report on are unlikely to get off the drawing board? This is all about lead times. The direction of travel is clear: we are in the early stages of transitioning from the age of fossil fuels to the solar age. But many scientists now believe the future of humankind depends on how long it takes us to negotiate this transition. I was struck by this at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi in January. The vast exhibition space bristled with sustainable energy solutions of every kind, lifting my spirits at the sight of real industrial muscle lending its weight to the renewables revolution. Solar technologies were particularly visible. It’s only four years since the first World Future Energy Summit, but in that short time the market has grown massively. So much so that even Saudi Arabia has set a target for meeting a third of its electricity from solar power by 2032! Much of that growth is down to the success of a handful of large photovoltaic (PV) manufacturers in China. They have been able to drive down the cost of PV by around 6.5% per annum over the last few years, to the point where it’s beginning to compete with electricity generated from fossil fuels. Those costs will continue to fall for a long time to come; the reach of solar will spread, the scale will increase, and the impact on people’s lives will be massive. It’s difficult to explain just how thrilling it is to be able to write those words. I’ve been talking about this transition to a solar economy for the best

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Green Futures April 2013