greenfutures No.93 July 2014
Global connectivity A new direction for Green Futures
Bio logical: how tiny organisms could transform land use Can our systems keep up with the fallout of migrating species? Jeremy Rifkin on the rise of the collaborative commons
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A new direction for Green Futures Founded in 1996 by Jonathon Porritt, Green Futures has been the go-to magazine for lively and engaging debate on environmental solutions and sustainable futures for 18 years. Forum for the Future is now taking Green Futures to an exciting new level of scale and impact. From January 2015, we will no longer publish quarterly Green Futures print issues. Instead, fresh and archive Green Futures content will be available on a brand new interactive futures
platform, hosted by Forum’s forthcoming Futures Centre in Singapore. Offering the real time content, deeper exploration and richer debate our readership requested in our 2013 review, the new platform will continue to showcase cutting edge solutions through high quality, accessible journalism. Combined with the wealth of Forum’s futures expertise, the platform will be a powerful force for change, with Green Futures at its heart. To capture the best of this futures platform, and more,
we will publish a yearly Green Futures Compendium: a beautiful, collectable print volume, drawing together key insights and future-shaping trends from each year. All our valued subscribers can look forward to the first edition of this new Compendium in January, following a special edition this coming October. If you’d like to join us as a partner in the futures platform and the Green Futures Compendium, please contact Anna Simpson: a.simpson@forumforthefuture.org
Our Partners AMEC www.amec.com
Food and Drink Federation www.fdf.org.uk
Skanska www.skanska.com
Arjowiggins Graphic www.recycled-papers.co.uk
Ingersoll Rand www.ingersollrand.com
Target www.target.com
Ashden www.ashdenawards.org
Kimberly-Clark Europe www.kimberly-clark.com
Telefónica UK simon.davis@O2.com
BSkyB www.sky.com
Kingfisher www.kingfisher.com
The Crown Estate www.thecrownestate.co.uk
Bupa www.bupa.com
Marine Stewardship Council www.msc.org
TUI Travel Plc www.tuitravel.com
ClimateCare www.climatecare.org
Marks and Spencer Plc PlanA@marksandspencer.com
Unilever Plc www.unilever.com
Ecover www.ecover.com
Pureprint Group www.pureprint.com
WWF-UK www.wwf.org.uk
On the cover: The cover image is a painting by Greg Dunn called ‘Cortex in Metallic Pastels’, illustrating the layered structure of the cerebral cortex. The style is derived from Asian principles, using gold leaf, aluminium, acrylic dye and other materials to unravel the beauty of microscopic cells in the brain. “The neurons are painted by a technique wherein pigments are blown across the canvas using jets of air, a technique that closely emulates the spontaneous, random branching patterns of actual neurons”, says Dunn. Unprecedented connectivity – linking people, data and objects – is transforming how we communicate as a global community, and presents a terrific opportunity to convene conversations about the challenges we face. Green Futures is taking a
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new direction in response, and so this is the final issue ‘as you know it’. It celebrates the rich journey we have taken since Jonathon Porritt founded the magazine in 1996.
By using Cocoon Silk 100% recycled paper, the environmental impact was reduced by: 1837 kg of landfill, 247 kg CO2 and greenhouse gases, 50946 litres of water, 4695 kWh of energy and 2985 kg of wood. Carbon footprint data evaluated by Labelia Conseil in accordance with the Bilan Carbone® methodology. Calculations are based on a comparison between the recycled paper used versus a virgin fibre paper according to the latest European BREF data (virgin fibre paper) available.
Cortex in Metallic Pastels 21K gold, palladium, ink, mica, enamel and dye on aluminized panel Dr. Greg Dunn, 2011 www.gregadunn.com
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greenfutures Published by
Editor ANNA SIMPSON Production RUTH PRIOR Assistant Editor DUNCAN JEFFERIES Production support SARAH VENIARD
Last year, swarms of moon jellyfish disrupted a nuclear reactor in Sweden. Huge numbers of them were found clogging up the cooling water filters. It wasn’t the first time. In 2011, two nuclear reactors were shut down in Scotland, thanks to a jellyfish invasion. It’s no surprise that rising sea temperatures are causing species normally found in the Mediterranean to move towards the poles. But you’d be forgiven for not anticipating nuclear blackouts as a fall-out. It’s an example that John Sweeney, Deputy Director of the Center for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies, uses to illustrate the concept of ‘global weirding’. For Sweeney, what’s going to happen (the prognosis) is a more interesting and urgent question than ‘why’ (the diagnosis). ‘Weirding’ is his prognosis: the massive changes affecting the very life systems we have come to rely upon. As these systems fall out of kilter, understanding them becomes more important than ever. If we’re going to have any chance of preparing for the implications – both the risks and the opportunities they present – then we need to know what affects what. Mapping these webs of influence is no easy task. They weave in and out of our neatly defined sectors, and disrupt any sense of a value chain with a beginning and an end. If we’re living in ‘postnormal times’, then we need to find new ways of talking about them. Linear news stories are out of their depth. ‘News’ is a misnomer: every development has a complex history as well as complex future implications. We need to become good listeners so that we can both detect changes in all sorts of unlikely places and be awake to implications that we could never anticipate. Difficult questions will emerge, and so we need to become very comfortable with debate. There may not be a right answer, but there will very likely be a more sustainable one. For a magazine like Green Futures, with 18 years’ experience of tracking change, spotting promising solutions, and analysing the implications for sustainability, this is an incredible opportunity. In response, we are working with Forum’s forthcoming Futures Centre in Singapore to build a new futures platform. Through it, we will help people across the world understand how external changes might affect their future, so they can make better decisions today. In January we will publish the first annual edition of a new Green Futures Compendium, showing how the future is changing from one year to the next, and delving into the implications. You can read more about this new journey on pages 14-21. Come with us.
Finance administration JENNY HAMMOND Founding Editor MARTIN WRIGHT Founder JONATHON PORRITT Design THE URBAN ANT LTD Green Futures would like to thank: Janika Collatz, Anna Rice & Joe Pickles (interns) Helius (proofreading), Shelley Hannan (web) Editorial Overseas House,19-23 Ironmonger Row, London, EC1V 3QN, UK Tel: +44 (0)20 7324 3660 Email: post@greenfutures.org.uk Subscriptions AASM, Unit 8 Earlstrees Court, Earlstrees Road, Corby, NN17 4AX, UK Tel: +44 (0)1536 273 543 Email: greenfutures@aasm.co.uk Green Futures is published by Forum for the Future Registered Charity Number: 1040519 ISSN No: 1366-4417 The opinions expressed in the magazine are not necessarily those of Forum for the Future, nor any of its associates. © Forum for the Future 2014 Our environmental impact At Green Futures, we strive to produce a gorgeous, glossy magazine whilst maintaining the highest environmental standards. We are printed by Pureprint, using their environmental print technology and vegetable based inks, developed back in 1990. Since then, Pureprint has gone on to win numerous awards for their environmental achievements, including the Queens Award for Enterprise 2013 – Sustainable Development.
Photo: Nick Woodford / Forum for the Future
We print Green Futures on 100% recycled and FSC® certified Cocoon Silk paper, supplied by Arjowiggins Graphic.
Anna Simpson Editor anna@greenfutures.org.uk @_annasimpson The magazine is mailed to you in SUPERECO bags, made of a biodegradable biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) film which is recyclable, and non-toxic in landfill. Forum for the Future is certified to the ISO 14001 standard.
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Contents 24 13
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Features 14 A new direction for Green Futures In an eight-page special section, we celebrate 18 years of Green Futures and reveal our plans to be the interface between a sustainable future and the people who can build it.
22 C ausing a disruption Existing markets face disruption not just from new technology but from new business models promoting access to it, says Duncan Jefferies. 26 O n the move Species are shifting their lifestyles in response to habitat loss. Now we must plan for the fallout, says Jeremy Lovell.
Briefings 28 B io logical The tiniest organisms on the planet could change the way we use land, says Fiona Harvey. 30 C lear the air Air pollution solutions need strong local and transborder policy to succeed, says Ibrahim Maiga.
The latest in green innovation, including: 5 Health check Lidl removes junk food from checkout aisles 6 Wear fabric, not forests Leading clothes retailers say no to fabric from endangered forests 9 Download on the farm New app helps US farmers use land more efficiently 10 Home Printer China prints 10 houses in one day 15 Closed loop latte From waste coffee grounds to milk
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Number 93, July 2014
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Regulars
Partner viewpoints
24 A thousand words A precious chance to connect
38 C ompetitive edge Collective intelligence should win sustainable innovation prizes Forum for the Future
42 Butterfly effect Interative bugs put the spotlight on e-waste Telefónica
39 C ounting on design In sustainable construction social impact must measure up Skanska
43 Mill to mill Successful energy management requires best practice beyond the factory wall Arjowiggins Graphic
32 T he Green Futures interview Jeremy Rifkin discusses his new book, The Zero Marginal Cost Society 35 S ally Uren The future is curation 36 T omorrow’s Leaders Menka Sanghvi, Partner at Reos Partners 47 F eedback Our favourite letters over the years 48 J onathon Porritt Long may we celebrate innovation
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40 S ource it up No food and drink company can afford to be without a sustainable supply strategy Food and Drink Federation
44 Using data well Innovations in direct marketing allow brands to build better relationships Pureprint
41 C alling card Businesses must lobby for long-term thinking, says Ian Cheshire Kingfisher
45 On stewardship Businesses can protect their own future as well as the planet’s WWF
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Briefings Water stewards M&S, Ecolab and General Mills adopt new water stewardship standard A new water stewardship standard has been successfully piloted with flower and vegetable growers in Kenya, and is now being used by companies in South Africa, China, Australia and Peru. A pilot project involving WWF identified water scarcity and quality threats, including sanitation issues for farm labourers, affecting nine South African suppliers of stone fruit (peaches, nectarines and cherries) to M&S and Woolworths. The Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) standard aims to provide the framework for working with local communities and authorities to solve these problems. AWS – a partnership of major NGOs and leading businesses, including General
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became the first mining company to adopt the standard. And in China, Ecolab, a leading supplier of water, hygiene and energy technologies and services, is using the standard to gain a more nuanced understanding of its water use within a heavily degraded catchment, and target resources appropriately. Betsy Otto, Water Initiative Director for the World Resources Institute, believes the AWS standard is an important first step towards defining what water stewardship should actually look like. “The standard does a good job of considering sitespecific information and the local context of water resources”, she adds, “while still providing a comparable and scalable approach that is applicable for global decision-making.” Water stewardship is increasingly recognised as an essential element of managing risk in retail supply chains, as well as preserving natural assets for the benefit of all those who rely upon them. The AWS standard defines criteria for good water stewardship at both a site and catchment level, and aims to provide a framework that will support sustainable freshwater use internationally. AWS plans to launch a verification system by the end of 2014. According to Alexis Morgan of the WWF, who leads the AWS Global Water Roundtable, companies that partner with NGOs on the AWS standard can help to make it scalable, while boosting their credibility on water stewardship issues. “The AWS offers a win–win solution which can provide mutual benefits by addressing shared water challenges”, he says. – Ken Whitehead
The contribution of wind power to global electricity demand in 2013. During that year, 119GW of wind power capacity was installed both in Asia and in Europe. By the end of the year, the total global capacity was over 318GW.
Photo: Shirley Plowright
Cleaning the holiest (and perhaps dirtiest) river in Nepal: the Bagmati
Mills and Nestlé – is also collaborating with Coop, a Swiss retailer, and a major Peruvian asparagus grower to reduce the impact of Peru’s fresh asparagus industry on the country’s water resources. Adrian Sym, Executive Director of AWS, explains: “The work we have done in the asparagus sector here highlights how international demand for more and different foods can threaten the water resources that communities and companies depend on, and the need to work collectively to safeguard these resources and the livelihoods they support.” Mintails, which processes South African gold mine tailings, recently
Source: World Wind Energy Association
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Health check Lidl UK removes junk food from checkout aisles Lidl supermarkets in the UK have taken one of industry’s biggest steps yet in dealing with obesity and other health problems in children. The retail chain has banned junk food and sugary treats from the checkout aisles of its 600 stores, replacing chocolate and other sweets with dried and fresh fruit, oatcakes, nuts and seeds. “We congratulate Lidl for making this move and leading the way on removing unhealthy snacks from checkouts”, says Malcolm Clark, Coordinator of the Children’s Food Campaign, an anti-junk food organisation. “The onus”, Clark continues, “is now on other supermarkets and retailers to follow suit; and we and the British Dietetic Association will keep up the pressure for them to do so”. Fiona Dowson, an expert in sustainable nutrition at Forum for the Future, echoes the call for others to follow: “Lidl has taken a brave step and shown that it makes business sense to use this prime retail space near checkouts to drive sales of healthier foods.
It rewards brands that make healthier food products with opportunities to boost sales and might even encourage a new wave of ‘check-out-friendly’ healthier snacks. And personally, I’d find shopping trips with two young children much less stressful!” Lidl’s move follows a ten-week Healthy Checkouts initiative that it conducted in 2013 at several stores. The junk food at one checkout per store was replaced with the non-treats, and the results were encouraging. The non-treats sold 20% more than the junk food. Lidl’s research shows that 68% of parents were sometimes pestered by their children demanding junk food, and that one in six were pestered every time. The junk food isn’t merely unhealthy; it’s also expensive, with 15% of the parents spending £20-40 a month on it. The Lidl initiative is one of the biggest anti-junk food efforts ever undertaken, but as yet it only affects UK stores. In Germany, home of the retail chain, a child nutrition
Less sugar, less stress
expert complains that the junk food there “still cries ‘buy me’ at the ‘whining zone’, right at the eye level of children”. Two other British chains, Tesco and Sainsbury’s, have removed sweets from some checkouts, but only at larger outlets. Mexico has tried to discourage sugary drinks by taxing them. A similar effort in New York State has not yet succeeded; but Michelle Obama has joined the fight in the US, calling for a ban on the sale of junk food in schools. – Ted Shoemaker
Telly vision
Photos: Lidl; Nastco/iStock/Thinkstock
BAFTA enhances carbon calculator for film and TV A carbon calculator dedicated to film and TV productions is being ramped up, following enthusiasm from the industry. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Albert Consortium, the industry body for environmental sustainability, is working with Greenstone, a provider of non-financial reporting, to enhance a free service to measure and reduce the environmental impact of their projects. Greenstone aims to make BAFTA’s Albert Carbon Calculator more user-friendly, in order to improve the transparency, consistency and comparability of carbon reporting for both big and small productions. “As engagement with the tool has grown, people want more from it”, says Aaron Matthews, Sustainability Manager at BAFTA. “Investing in the launch of a new version will make understanding a carbon footprint and how to act on it significantly easier, and is therefore more likely to lead to wider action.” The UK film and TV industries have a substantial impact on the environment. The production of each hour of on-screen content is responsible for an average of 5.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, based on data from the Albert Calculator. This is equivalent to the emissions produced by
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one passenger flying around the equator in an aeroplane. “Although media products are intangible, we still require many raw materials to power and make them – steel, timber, textiles, energy”, says Matthews. More than 120 production companies already use the Albert Carbon on camera Calculator, and the carbon footprint of over 1,000 individual productions has been calculated. It works by asking users (usually production managers) to answer a series of simple questions relating to how they make their programme. Once the data is collected, the tool can then calculate the carbon footprint of any TV show. Production teams are awarded an Albert+ rating of one, two or three stars, depending upon the range and complexity of ‘green’ initiatives they have implemented. BBC programmes which perform well across
the rating scheme will carry the Albert+ certification badge on their credits later this year, allowing audiences to see for the first time which TV programmes are meeting higher environmental standards. “Like all industries, the film/entertainment industry can only really get a grasp on its environmental impacts by measuring them”, says Alison Tickell, Chief Executive of Julie’s Bicycle, which works with arts organisations to help them measure, manage and reduce their environmental impacts. – Anna Rice
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Red light A new piece of in-car technology could see the rush to the red light become a thing of the past – and reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the process. It’s called the Audi Traffic Light Assist. Essentially, it uses Wi-Fi to connect to a city’s smart traffic light system and displays the speed you should be driving at to get through the next light. Ideally it would mean drivers will no longer
accelerate needlessly, burning gas and CO2. Audi has trialled the system in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, home of its headquarters. “It’s still very much a work in progress”, says David Ingram, PR Manager for Audi UK. “But the initial trial results were positive. The estimate is that it will reduce CO2 emissions at traffic lights by 15%. Given that 20% of the 50 million tonnes of CO2
Green light to cruise
that is emitted by German cars each year is created by stopping at traffic lights, it could well be significant.” Audi is currently in the process of testing the system in Berlin and Verona, and plans to test it in the US soon. Mark James, a journalist on popular motoring website UK Car News, broadly welcomed the system but pointed out that its success depends on whether governments and local authorities are prepared (and can afford) to invest in the infrastructure required to make it work. “Certainly in the UK we’re seeing expenditure from the local authorities capped. What perceived benefit do they see from [the investment]?” Nonetheless, James admits it’s a “bold move” – one that could set Audi apart as a market leader in behaviour change technology to reduce fuel consumption. “Here is a manufacturer that’s not just looking at how to reduce a particular model’s fuel consumption or even across a range but for other manufacturers as well. It’s got potential to provide massive fuel and CO2 savings,” he says. – Will Simpson
Wear fabric, not forests Leading clothing retailers say ‘no’ to pulp from endangered forests Two of the world’s biggest clothing retailers, H&M and Inditex (owner of Zara), have committed to ending the use of pulp from ancient and endangered forests in their rayon and viscose production processes. They are among 20 brands to sign up to the Fashion Loved by Forest campaign, launched by environmental organisation Canopy in October last year. Canopy, a not-for-profit dedicated to protecting the world’s forests, species and climate, estimates that 30% of the 70-100 million trees felled for fabric production each year are ancient and endangered species. Its research also shows that the dissolving pulp industry, which supplies the key raw ingredient in fabrics like rayon and viscose, has grown by 11% each year during the past five years, and is anticipated to double again in the next 20 years. “It is increasingly clear that unless we are able to shift the trajectory of the market, the clothing and the fashion industry will become a significant driving force in global deforestation, with implications for forestdependent communities, endangered
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species and ecosystems, and our global climate”, argues Catherine Stewart, Communications Director at Canopy. As well as Inditex and H&M, the brands now signed up to Fashion Loved by Forest include Stella McCartney, Quiksilver and Loomstate, and together represent $45 billion in annual sales. Canopy is also in talks with around 40 other brands, and expects the campaign to gain more signatories in future. A spokeswoman for H&M said its target is to eliminate the use of ancient and endangered forest-fibre supplies by 2017. “We encourage the development of alternative fibre sources for man-made cellulosic fabrics, such as agricultural residues and recycled fabrics that reduce environmental and social impacts, consistent with our other sustainability initiatives.” Rodrigo Bautista, who works with brands on sustainable innovation at Forum for the Future, calls the initiative “a positive example of how brands need to act to end practices that are evidently problematic for the environment, such as using pulp from
ancient or endangered forests”, adding that brands must also look for long-term solutions: “Can they also produce clothes that last, and that are designed for reuse or recycling?” – Heather Connon
Photos: Ingram Publishing/Thinkstock; Mayer George/Shutterstock
Can Audi end the rush to beat the lights?
Fashion and forests: a new love story?
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Biodegradable battery
Brainwave: first let the pain melt away, then the battery
Transient energy storage for short-lived electronics A biodegradable battery which dissolves in water has been developed by researchers at the University of Illinois. The battery design could be scaled for a variety of uses, from powering temporary medical implants to other limited-duration electronics. The recent development in transient electronics has opened the door for a revolution in medical devices. Traditionally, electronic medical implants – such as cochlear devices, for improved hearing; or brain pacemakers, used for pain relief – have been semi-permanent. Once installed, additional surgery has been required to remove them. Transient electronics, on the other hand, can dissolve within the body – allowing implants to degrade once their function has been fulfilled. This could enable a new generation of applications: from temporary, internal monitoring to support for healing a wound or tumour. With a magnesium foil anode, phosphate-buffered saline electrolyte and a cathode made from iron, molybdenum or tungsten, the battery developed by John Rogers and his colleagues may be the ideal
solution. The device is biocompatible, can be scaled for a variety of uses and dissolves away with time. The demonstration battery, for example, degraded completely in water after three weeks, leaving behind only a tiny amount of residual magnesium hydroxide. Beyond implants, such batteries could have a wide variety of non-medical applications. One possibility is in wireless sensors for environmental uses, such as to monitor ongoing clean-up efforts following an oil spill. Alternatively, the batteries could be employed within limited-use devices, so that they could safely decompose in waste streams. While the researchers have not conducted a cost-analysis of their design, Rogers claims the price should be reasonable compared with other solutions. Christopher Bettinger, a Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University who was not involved in the project, says, “Fabricating power supplies that have unique combinations of biocompatible materials and adequate charge storage capacities is an exciting new direction for materials scientists.” Late last year, Bettinger and his colleagues reported
the creation of a similar, biodegradable sodium-ion battery, with melanin anodes made from squid ink. Reza Montazami, a biomedical device expert from Iowa State University, who was also not involved in this study, calls the idea of transient batteries “game-changing”. These, he adds, are “of utmost importance in the development of transient electronics, which will have a paramount impact on the future of electronic devices”. With their prototype tested, the researchers are now investigating ways to increase the duration of their battery, alongside developing designs for use with both environmental sensors and implantable devices. – Ian Randall
Remote power pack
Photos: Digital Vision/Digital Vision/Thinkstock; Panasonic
Panasonic offers electricity on demand in remote Indonesia A new stand-alone photovoltaic power package which could solve electricity problems for remote off-grid areas is to be trialled in Indonesia in July. Many inhabitants of the country’s 13,000 islands currently lack access to electricity. The Power Supply Container [pictured], which does not require professional assembly, contains 12 Panasonic HIT 240 solar modules capable of generating approximately 3kW of electricity, and is equipped with 24 leadacid storage batteries which can supply stored power (17.2kWh total). “Island communities are at the forefront of many sustainability challenges, and solutions like this can point the way to a sustainable economy for the rest of the world”, says Will Dawson, Head of Energy at Forum for the Future. Panasonic’s newly developed Power Supply Control Unit will act as an energy management system, monitoring the surplus electricity level of the lead-acid batteries and controlling supply and
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demand, which Panasonic claim will heavily reduce deterioration, life-cycle cost and the maintenance requirements of the batteries. The container itself has been designed to be easily assembled, expandable and portable – measuring 3m x 2.4m x 2.6m with a mass of 3000kg – which Panasonic hopes will encourage its adoption on the smaller islands of Indonesia. The retail price of the equipment has not yet been publicised, but the company is hoping to reduce it to affordable levels for remote populations through mass production. As part of Indonesia’s ‘Educational Environment Improvement Policy for
Isolated Islands’, The National Elementary School Karimunjawa, located on a tiny island to the north of Java, has been chosen as the first test site. It is being developed with funding from the Official Development Assistance budget of the Embassy of Japan in Indonesia. Nighttime electricity on the island is currently produced by diesel generators, and there is no supply available during the day, which impacts upon educational facilities. Excess energy generated outside of school hours will be used to stabilise the power supply in the local community. “It is the right solution for this community”, says Dawson. “It gives pupils access to electricity for better education, reduces polluting diesel fuel burning in generators … and powers local businesses.” An Indonesian manufacturer has been chosen to oversee the manufacturing and quality control process for the container. This should allow Panasonic to monitor both the technical development and the maintenance of the system during trials, which has proved a challenge in the past. – Anna Rice
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Home storage A hybrid solar energy and earth storage heating system A new building concept that generates solar energy and stores it in the ground for use during the winter could help the UK Government to meet its target for all new homes to be zero carbon from 2016. The system is based around an array of hybrid photovoltaic and thermal (PVT) solar panels, and an underground earth energy bank (EEB) and heat pump to store and retrieve excess heat generated during the summer months. The EBB, situated beneath the house, is constructed by drilling a series of boreholes using a standard fence post fixture. Polyethylene (PE) piping and bentonite are used to create good thermal contact. Caplin Homes, the UK sustainable construction company that developed the system, has set up a venture with Newform Energy, which supplies the hybrid solar panels, in order to provide it to the construction sector. “The joint venture, Zero Carbon Solution, will act as a one-stopsource for house builders and commercial developers, providing all the technologies and expertise needed for the solar homes, including heat pumps, the EEB and the PVT solar collectors”, explains Michael Goddard, a director at Caplin Homes.
Three in one: power station, battery, home
The system adds about 8% on to the build cost for self-builders, and 10% for commercial builders, though these percentages should be lower in two years’ time. The return on investment is estimated to be around seven years. De Montfort University has been monitoring the performance of Caplin’s pilot project, Great Glen, a five-bedroom solar house in Leicestershire which was recently sold to a private buyer. So far, results have shown that the building is able to achieve a mainly stable temperature throughout the winter heating season – drawing on stored energy and whatever the sun can offer. Average temperatures in the bedrooms during winter 2013 and spring 2014 reached 19°C, and 20°C and 21°C in the lounge and kitchen, respectively. An immersion heater is installed at the
property, but Caplin Homes insists it is purely for emergencies. “The solar home saves carbon and also assists in reducing energy running costs”, says Tassos Kougionis, Technical Manager at the Zero Carbon Hub, which works with government and industry to raise building standards and supports the UK construction industry’s transition to building zero carbon homes. “We were particularly impressed with the way the different systems were working in tandem to increase the overall efficiency.” A further 12 projects are in the pipeline for 2014, including two three-bedroom pitch-roofed homes, more standard housing as well as an office, targeting the architect-designed self-build, lowrise commercial and volume commercial housing markets. – Sara Ver-Bruggen
Something in the water A US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) team has turned seawater into a hydrocarbon fuel, and used it to power a radio-controlled aircraft with an unmodified internal combustion engine. According to Dr Heather Willauer, the team’s leader, the fuel could eventually be used to power
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the Navy’s fleet of ships, allowing them to stay at sea longer and avoid travelling to dangerous refuelling regions. The process takes the CO2 and hydrogen in seawater and recombines it over a catalyst, similar to those used for Fischer–Tropsch reduction and the hydrogenation of carbon monoxide, to create the liquid fuel. Although initial production costs are expected to be high (between $3 and $6 per gallon), its longterm potential for the US Navy is huge, says Willauer: “The potential payoff is the ability to produce fuel at sea, reducing the logistics tail on fuel delivery with no environmental burden and increasing the Navy’s energy security and independence. But the scope extends beyond the Navy’s fuel security. Depending on the base metal used in the catalyst (iron, cobalt, nickel or copper, for example), seawater
could be turned into methanol and natural gas, which could be used for green energy generation. “Another potential benefit”, says Will Dawson, Head of Energy at Forum for the Future, “would seem to be a slower rate of ocean acidification, which is killing habitats such as coral reefs”. The logic runs that, by using a fuel made from already emitted carbon, we wouldn’t be increasing the ocean’s CO2 content further. The long-term outcome could be that the ocean’s increasing pH levels slow down, and even eventually stop. However, the fuel has only just passed the proof of concept stage and the NRL believes it won’t be commercially viable for another decade. “It’s not necessarily going to be the one and only solution to alternative fuels”, says Willauer. “It’s just one solution that hopefully many people are going to use.” – Amanda Saint
Photos: Paper Cut; Stocktrek Images/Stocktrek Images/Thinkstock
US Naval research team produces hydrocarbon fuel from seawater
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Essential oils GM plant could provide alternative source of omega-3 oils for aquaculture Field-trials of a genetically modified plant which could provide an alternative source of omega-3 oils for the aquaculture industry have been given the go-ahead by the UK’s Department for Energy, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Oily fish such as tuna and mackerel obtain omega-3 fatty acids through feeding on marine algae, and in turn pass them on to humans when eaten, delivering health benefits such as a reduced risk of coronary heart disease. Farmed fish are given fish oil in their feed to replicate the effects of the marine algae. Currently, around 80% of all the fish oil harvested from the sea is consumed by the aquaculture sector, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. Sources of oil-rich fish feed range from ‘feed-grade’ fish, which is unfit for direct human consumption, to fish-offal waste products – with some more sustainable than others. As the aquaculture industry grows (it already accounts for nearly 50% of all fish consumed globally), alternative sources of omega-3 oils might be needed to protect marine food chains.
Scientists from Rothamsted Research, the largest agricultural research centre in the UK, may have developed one such solution. The team successfully recreated the genes responsible for omega-3 oil synthesis in marine organisms, and inserted them into Camelina, oilseed plants, which belong to the cabbage family. The plant has been shown to accumulate the desired oils within its seeds in lab settings. The new trial will investigate whether this also occurs in the field. “We are delighted to be in position to carry out the field trial and to further assess the potential of these GM plants to contribute, as one of many solutions, to the important environmental sustainability issue of providing omega-3 fish oils”, said Professor Martin Parry, Acting Director of Rothamsted Research. However, James Simpson of the Marine Stewardship Council believes it would be unwise to overestimate the plant’s potential. “It is very difficult to determine the current impact the harvesting of fish oils is having on marine ecosystems”, he says, “and therefore
New origins for omega
it would be impossible say if this terrestrial source of fish oils could impact positively on wild fish populations”. The Camelina plants project is being funded through the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the largest public funder of non-medical bioscience in the UK. A small amount of the plants’ seeds will be analysed for their oil content over the course of four growing seasons, and the remainder of the seeds (and the rest of the plant material) will be destroyed under the conditions of the trial. – Patrick McKenna
Download on the farm
Photos: sergeyryzhov/iStock/Thinkstock; Farmlogs
New app helps US farmers use land more efficiently
A sleek new data app developed in the US has the potential to radically change the way farmers and agricultural suppliers aggregate information, helping to create more efficient use of agronomical land. FarmLog uses GPS technology to capture and distil all kinds of farming data, including information on the best market price for grain and insights into the performance of the farm, right down to the level of rainfall an individual field
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has received. It also supports softer skills such as planning and budgeting for the following year. The app is already in use in all 50 states in the US, helping farmers to maximise yields by eradicating inefficient methods. Data can be synchronised with both the iOS and Android operating systems, even in remote areas of the farm where connectivity is traditionally an issue. The information is presented in a smooth, user-friendly interface, overcoming one of the barriers to the adoption of traditional desktop farm management software, which is often clunky and complex. It is completely free to use with no restrictions or advertising. FarmLog was created by Jesse Vollmar, who grew up on a mid-size family farm in Caro, Michigan, and his friend Brad Koch, after graduating from university in 2011. The following year it received support from Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley accelerator programme that provides seed money, advice, and connections for up to three months. It has also been funded by Drive Capital,
an Ohio-based venture capital firm set up to fill the local need for investment in technological solutions in the US Midwest, where the FarmLog team is based. Apps like Farm Manager and Monsanto’s Field View hold similar places in the market. FarmLog stands out thanks to its ability to bring together such an array of complex information and link that directly to a farmer’s bottom line, while also future-proofing farming practices. By quantifying data sets the app can help farmers make more informed decisions about crop and nutrient management, along with soil and water conservation. James Taplin, a digital expert at Forum for the Future, believes that this type of app has the capability to not only increase efficiency but to transform farmers’ livelihoods. In the next stage of development, he’d like to see the app help farmers work together to tackle common problems. “By strengthening independent small-scale farmers in tough markets, this collaboration could provide much needed resilience for the industry”, he says. – Kester Byass
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Green bond Skanska diversifies its investor base to fund green build Skanska, the Swedish property company, has become the latest organisation to issue a green bond in a move which underlines the growing interest among mainstream investors for sustainable financing. The 850 million Swedish kronor (£76 million) proceeds of Skanska’s bond will be used for green commercial property developments under a framework endorsed by Norway’s Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research. Staffan Haglind, Skanska’s Green Business Officer, said the issue was Brent Civic Centre: the greenest public building in the UK
important because it will help the company diversify its investor base, adding that a high level of investor interest meant it was able to set an attractive interest rate. “We think [the green bond market] will grow quickly. The interest [in Skanska’s issue from investors] was really big and so we were able to raise more than we had expected”, he added. The company had originally expected to raise SEK 500 million but, due to the high level of interest from investors, it increased the amount to SEK 850 million – and, even then, the issue was oversubscribed. It is a floating rate note, with a margin of 0.85% above the three-month Stibor (the Stockholm Interbank Offered Rate). Skanska is the latest entrant in a market which, until recently, was largely the province of financial institutions like the World Bank. In March, the consumer products company Unilever issued a £250 million bond which it will use for reducing waste, water use and greenhouse gas emissions. This followed similar issues from the French energy group EDF, which raised €1.4 billion for
Green sheets
investment in renewables projects, of which 25% went towards solar, and Toyota, which launched a $1.75 billion bond issue to finance car loans for electric and hybrid vehicles. A May 2014 report by Standard & Poor’s Rating Services estimates that, based on year-on-year growth trends, the corporate green bond market in 2014 will be double the size of last year’s total green bond issuance, at around $20 billion. Will Dawson, Head of Energy at Forum for the Future, remarked that Skanska’s issue “shows that companies are innovating financially for sustainable projects which are needed to meet the challenges of the future. It also shows that there is really good demand from institutional investors for green infrastructure and buildings. This is a good way for companies to go direct to market to meet investor demand for such projects.” The total raised through green bonds in 2013 was $11 billion. The current flurry of issues suggests that the prediction by World Bank President Jim Kem, that the market could reach $50 billion by 2015, could easily be met. – Heather Connon
Platinum: Cavallo Point, San Francisco
A programme to help travellers choose accommodation on eco grounds is being rolled out to Europe later this year, following success in the US. The GreenLeaders scheme from online travel portal TripAdvisor gives hotels and B&Bs a rating based on a number of requirements, including energy use, recycling and environmental education for guests. More than 80% of travellers want their hotels to have environmentallyfriendly practices, according to a survey of customers and businesses by TripAdvisor. It has already given a GreenLeaders rating to more than 3,700 US hotels and B&Bs, of which 5% have achieved the highest, platinum. A number of European chains have already signed up to be assessed under the scheme, including Hilton, Marriott, Red Carnation and Macdonald. The initial assessment is carried out through a questionnaire, devised by TripAdvisor in consultation with the Carbon Trust, but applicants may also be assessed by a third-party auditor. The green rankings will be shown on the website, and users will
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be able to access details of environmental policies at individual hotels. Travellers can also give feedback on how hotels match up to their green policies on the website. TripAdvisor is currently conducting research into its users’ attitudes to green information, and how they use it, which it will release when the European rankings go live. Since the launch of the GreenLeaders programme in US, over 200,000 users have searched for green properties. The criteria for the scheme were drawn up in cooperation with the Carbon Trust, and are aimed at highlighting best environmental practices. To qualify, hotels and B&Bs have to meet seven basic requirements: track energy use at least every quarter; use energy-efficient light bulbs in at least 75% of relevant appliances; have a current and active plan for reusing towels; a similar policy for linen; recycle at least two type of waste; have green training for staff; and offer green education for guests. Underlying these seven core criteria are 50 recommended practices – including elements like electric car charging points,
solar panels and green roofs. To qualify for a bronze award, hotels have to use 30% of these practices; for platinum award holders it is 60%. John Alker, Director of Policy and Communications at the UK Green Building Council said: “Green should be viewed as another aspect of quality. The GreenLeaders programme will help consumers – and indeed investors – understand who is taking this seriously.” – Heather Connon
Photos: MorleyVonSternberg; TripAdvisor
Hilton, Marriott line up for TripAdvisor’s GreenLeaders scheme
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Home printer Chinese company prints 10 homes in one day
Photo: Contour Crafting/University of Southern California (USC)
Rig it up quick
Shanghai WinSun Decoration Design Engineering Company, based in Suzhou, China, has shown it is possible to construct 10 homes in one day, using a supersized three-dimensional (3D) printing rig. According to footage and images published by the company, each building, measuring 200 square metres, was created in a few hours using recycled construction and industrial waste extruded through a giant nozzle as cement, layer by layer. A widely reported cost of less than $4,000 per house has not been confirmed. Following a computer-aided design (CAD) architectural plan, the additive deposition process builds the main structure, leaving space for insulation materials, plumbing, electrical lining and windows, which are added later. The concept proposed by WinSun is
similar to a layered fabrication technology being commercialised by Contour Crafting, a spin-out from the University of Southern California (USC), based on a design by Dr Behrokh Khoshnevis, a professor of industrial and systems engineering at USC. However, whereas WinSun fabricates the building in parts, housing its 3D-printer rig in a factory, Contour Crafting has fully mobilised its technology so that it can build directly on the construction site. This localisation will be key to bringing the costs down, Khoshnevis observes: “Compared with prefabricated construction, 3D printing is not much cheaper, unless it can occur locally, onsite, eliminating costs of transporting materials and labour.” By automating the construction of whole building structures as well as subcomponents, Contour Crafting aims
to build houses, or colonies of houses, in less than 24 hours per dwelling. The technique, which uses the company’s proprietary cement to make structures and walls, eliminates labour costs, but also construction-related injuries and fatalities, claims Khoshnevis – although he would not give a cost per house estimate. According to Khoshnevis, Contour Crafting is looking at various potential markets and opportunities, one of which is deployment in slum cities, such as India, China and parts of Africa, where there is a need for low-cost, safe and structurally sound homes. The technique should be ready to roll out in about one year, once the company can prove that its 3D-printed dwellings can meet building code standards in various target markets. – Sara Ver-Bruggen
“Collaboration without foresight is dangerous, and foresight without collaboration is pointless.” John A. Sweeney, Deputy Director of The Center for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies, modifies a comment by Long Now Research Fellow Stuart Candy on innovation.
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You don’t have to be tea to be green
Closed-loop latte Starbucks Japan recycles waste coffee grounds to feed dairy cows
It’s never too latte to up your game – a point Starbucks is milking with the introduction of a system that turns waste coffee grounds into cattle feed. Not just any feed indeed, but that given to the cattle producing milk for coffees in over 100 Starbucks coffeehouses across Japan. With over half of the world’s grain currently used to feed livestock, the food recycling loop is a great example of a closed-loop approach returning valuable nutrients into productive use in the food system. “Tackling food waste is critical to fixing our broken food system”, says Fiona Dawson, Senior Sustainability Advisor at Forum for the Future. “As much as 1.3 billion tonnes of food is lost or wasted throughout the world every year. We can’t eat coffee grounds, so it’s exciting to see a technology that seems to be turning coffee grounds into nutritious cattle feed – previously this has been off limits, even in countries like the US
that permit feeding of food waste to animals.” The process is a relatively simple one: waste coffee bean cakes are collected from Starbucks outlets in Kanto and Kansai in trucks which are already delivering chilled products to the Japanese coffeehouses, minimising storage and transport costs as well as carbon emissions. They are then dehydrated, processed using a lactic acid fermentation technique, and turned into a substance which can be fed to cattle or be used as compost fertiliser. The resultant milk and vegetables are used either as ingredients for beverages and sandwiches served in Starbucks stores or sold by other food businesses in the Greater Tokyo area. At present, there are no immediate plans to expand the programme beyond Japan. “The programme gives us an opportunity to be part of an innovative solution in this particular community when it comes to recycling used coffee grounds”, says a spokesperson for Starbucks. “It has received two certifications for food recycling under the Law for Promotion of Recycling and Related Activities for the Treatment of Cyclical Food Resources, and is the first recycling loop ever certified in Japan where coffee grounds are recycled as feed and fertiliser. Customer
Bottle neck
feedback on the milk has been positive, and it meets the high standards we have for all Starbucks ingredients.” Coffee is one of the world’s most traded products, with global production totalling approximately 131 million 60kg bags in 2010-11, according to the International Trade Centre. Traditionally, concerns over sustainability have focused on the front end of the supply chain, from Fairtrade status to soil conditions. High volumes of coffee ground waste however, combined with factors such as the rising cost of landfill, greater environmental awareness and ongoing research into innovative sources for fuels and food, means that solutions to the back end of the chain such as the food recycling loop are starting to emerge. “Starbucks has had pretty bad press to date where social and environmental responsibility is concerned”, says Dotti Irving, CEO of Four Colman Getty Campaigning and Culture. “The food recycling loop project has the potential not only to enable Starbucks to reduce its environmental impact but also to begin to build its profile as a brand making tangible steps towards better practice across the supply chain.” – Tess Riley
Ooho: light on litter
Waste plastic bottles and cups are a major source of litter – most noticeably perhaps when discarded by hasty racers on marathon routes, but they also drift down water courses far out to sea, contributing to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which measures 7 million square miles. In response to the problem, Skipping Rocks Lab, a London-based start-up, proposes ‘Ooho’: a cheap, edible and fully biodegradable packaging design for drinks. Ooho is an edible drinks sachet, costing just $0.02 per unit. The drink is frozen and then surrounded by a membrane of sodium alginate and calcium chloride. Consumers can puncture this membrane to drink the contents, and swallow the membrane too. The innovators have made their solution open source, claiming it’s easy to make at home, and so putting the power for plastic waste reduction in the hands of the consumer. You just pick up some sodium alginate and calcium chloride in your local drugstore or online, freeze the water, put it
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in a bowl with a solution of calcium chloride, and then into a bowl of fluid sodium alginate. Whether it will catch on remains to be seen. Ooho is not the first edible packaging: Lavazza has developed edible cappuccino cups in Italy, working with Amarettini on sugar glazing, and WikiFoods, Inc. is now selling ice cream in edible packaging in selected Whole Foods markets in the US, with sales three times higher than anticipated. Its bite-size portions are surrounded by a ‘skin’ which adds to the experience: mango ice cream, for example, comes wrapped in a nutritious layer of coconut. Such designs could disrupt the current landscape of drinks containers. However, people need to get used to the idea of edible packaging, and this could be the biggest hurdle. Ooho’s designers are thinking of mimicking an orange to make their design more familiar and appealing, covering several bite-size segments with a stronger outside membrane. With plastic recycling slow to reach scale,
new packaging solutions are called for. In the UK, just 58% of plastic household bottles were recycled in 2013, reports Recoup. The fact that 96% of local authorities provide a kerbside collection service that includes plastic bottles suggests the problem is more to do with behaviour than infrastructure. As Antoine Mahy from WikiFoods, Inc. says, how we transport food and drink is a critical question on the way towards a plastic waste-free world. High-profile races offer the chance to test solutions with runners and spectators alike. Ooho says its drinks can be infused with electrolytes to offer runners a burst of energy with their water – giving both the athlete and the innovation a competitive edge. – Janika Collatz
Photos: Bong Grit/Flickr; Skipping Rocks Lab
Have your drink, and swallow the packaging too
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Walk of stars ‘Glow in the dark’ illumination for paths and cycle lanes The Starpath mixture can be applied to concrete, tarmac, timber or any hard stand substrate. It can be sprayed on and ready for use in under four hours, has no ongoing energy costs and creates no light pollution. The technology can also breathe new life into old surfaces which might otherwise need to be removed and disposed of. Hamish Scott, owner of Surrey-based Pro-Teq Surfacing, which created Starpath, believes it represents a breakthrough in public lighting. “It’s not just something that’s a nice idea”, he says, “this is a real alternative”. He feels there are “endless” applications for the technology. “You could apply it to the side of buildings; if the power goes, Starpath will be the best option. It’s environmentally friendly, non-offensive, and it’s magical.” A 100 square metre area of Starpath costs £7,500, which Scott claims is “significantly cheaper” than conventional street lighting. The company has also reported interest in the product from developing countries with intermittent power supplies.
Gazing down at the stars
However, Armin Mayer, Marketing Manager of GE Lighting, has doubts about its potential to replace traditional forms of street lighting, which tend to be costly to maintain as well as energy-inefficient. “There is a huge challenge in upgrading and transforming existing lighting infrastructure in our cities, especially dense urban centres, and there are high existing standards in terms of brightness”, he says. “I don’t know if glow in the dark applications really meet these.” – Will Simpson
Photo: Pro-Teq
A low-energy glow in the dark path trialled in a municipal park in Cambridge could be expanded to other areas of the UK city. Around 150 square metres of path in Christ’s Pieces park was coated with a polyurethane glue, ultraviolet (UV) absorbent photoluminescent particles and a biodegradable sealant in October last year. The aggregate material absorbs and stores energy from ambient UV light during the day. At night the particles release the UV energy, creating a soft blue glow that varies in intensity depending on how dark it is. Cambridge Council Technical Officer Declan O’Halloran says that the council was “pleasantly pleased” with the Starpath system, adding: “We do see scope for using it elsewhere in the city.” He feels it is most likely to be used in other park areas, as well as on golf courses and around certain historic locations. “I’ve heard through the grapevine that some park managers are exploring this in certain spaces”, he adds. “It’ll be a niche product to begin with, but it has definite potential.”
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A new direction for Green Futures “ Change is the only constant in life” So said Heraclitus, some 2,500 years ago. And yet change is also a stubborn mule, as failures to set and meet much-needed global carbon reduction targets show. For 18 years, Green Futures has sought to inspire change by showcasing innovations for a sustainable future and leading the debate on best practice to take us there. And with some success! In April this year, for instance, we featured the transformation of the Estero de Paco canal in Manila, thanks to a collaboration involving Filipino organisations and the Scottish solutions provider Biomatrix. We published a beautiful double-page photo of the project on the magazine’s centre spread. In May, I received an email from a board member of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority, telling me that they were keen to use a similar approach in Mumbai, where slums border the mudflats. This is just one example. Our July 2013 cover feature ‘Global land plan’, inspired a member of the Sustainable Sourcing Advisory Board for one multinational to pick up the phone to a Forum sustainability advisor to discuss the need for a global governance system for all land-using
“I first learned about International Synergies and the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme through an article in Green Futures. Since then, I have reviewed materials posted on their websites with great interest and shared these materials with colleagues in Wisconsin.” Janet Meissner Pritchard, Clean Wisconsin
sectors, and the limitations of commodity-specific certification schemes. Each time I hear such anecdotes, the gratification I feel is mixed with a slightly frustrated sense of urgency. Our extensive collection of sustainable solutions, alongside analysis of the routes to scale, seems to me a powerhouse of relatively untapped potential. Now, we have the opportunity to transform it into a valuable online resource. In collaboration with Forum’s forthcoming Futures Centre, headquartered in Singapore, we are building a vibrant online platform to connect future shapers around the world with crucial information about change. We will delve into complex topics, bringing together communities to discuss the challenges, the solutions and, crucially, what to do about them. In January, we will launch this platform together with the first annual edition of a new Green Futures Compendium. This will be a collector’s item, a stunning publication designed to tell you how the greatest changes each year have transformed the future. The next few pages of this final edition of Green Futures as you know it are dedicated to celebrating its achievements and the change we’ve witnessed over its lifetime. Since 1996, global communities of sustainability practitioners have emerged. More than ever before, governments and business strategists the world over recognise the importance of thinking long-term and integrating sustainability into decision-making. Our mission, as part of the Futures Centre, is to be the interface between a sustainable future and the people who can build it. We hope you’ll join us on the journey. Anna Simpson is Editor, Green Futures.
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Reported speech In the very first issue of Green Futures, Joan Ruddock, the UK’s then Shadow Minister for Environmental Protection, put her faith in “a groundswell of public opinion and the assiduous attention of pressure groups” [p16]. Since, we’ve seen industry respond to high-profile campaigns, from Franny Armstrong’s 10:10 movement to Greenpeace’s Detox Campaign [see p19]. But we’ve also seen leadership from within business. In 1997, Unilever’s Iain Anderson introduced the company’s sustainability goals to our readers; 15 years later, its CEO, Paul Polman, described to Martin Wright the experience of setting the renowned target to double the size of the business by 2020 – while reducing environmental impact by half. “If you don’t start with something uncomfortable, I don’t think you’re moving the needle far enough…” The opportunity that sustainability presents to society has seen more activists turn to social enterprise to deliver the answers to their campaigns. Marjora Carter, founder of Sustainable South Bronx, is one. She told a Green Futures correspondent how she’d burst into tears when she realised she’d have to challenge Al Gore for missing this point. She had asked him how environmental justice advocates were going to be included in his new marketing strategy, and his response had been a grant programme. “I don’t think he understood that I wasn’t asking for funding. I was making him an offer.” [GF83, p31] However, politicians remain slow to take up the offer of a sustainable future. One year on from his election as Tory leader, David Cameron told Martin Wright, “If we have that climate change bill, with
binding annual targets, then the Government will be judged every year on how we’re doing. We really will be held to account in terms of hitting those targets.” The bill materialised, but the binding annual targets did not… In 2004, John Kerry put sustainability at the heart of the US security debate, telling Green Futures: “After September 1, I think Americans understand as never before that energy security is American security”, [GF34, p59]. Yet it was another ten years before the US committed to a carbon-intensity target, setting a 2030 goal earlier this year. – Anna Simpson
Overheard: Tony Blair, 15 November 2006 Let me read [the right hon. Gentleman, David Cameron’s] position, which he gave just the other day in an interview in Green Futures. He said: “I want to give every opportunity for green sources of energy to come through. If they do, well and good, if they don’t, and we have to keep the lights on, then nuclear might come into the picture.” So what is he going to do? He is the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Secretary comes in and says, “I am afraid the renewables haven’t generated as much as we want. I am afraid we won’t be able to keep the lights on.” So what is the right hon. Gentleman going to say—“Rustle me up a nuclear power station”?
Photos: World Economic Forum; Martin Wright; James Burling Chase
12 strides towards sustainability in Green Futures’ lifetime
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1997 Kyoto Protocol is established at the third Conference of the Parties 1999 Dow Jones launches its Sustainability Index 2000 The United Nations sets the Millennium Development Goals for 2015 2001 Projects for sustainable food, energy and water in Nigeria, Rwanda, Honduras and Kenya win the first Ashden Awards 2002 104 world leaders and thousands of delegates meet at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg 2004 Wangari Maathai becomes the first environmentalist to be awarded the Nobel Prize
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2006 Nicholas Stern examines the costs of ignoring climate change in an influential report 2007 The fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report hits international headlines, finding global warming “unequivocal” and “very likely” due to human activities 2009 10:10 Campaign launched by activist Franny Armstrong, Director of ‘Age of Stupid’ 2010 Unilever sets out its Sustainable Living Plan 2012 London claims to host the “most sustainable” Olympic and Paralympic Games “ever” 2013 China sets a carbon-intensity target for 2020. The EU and US follow in 2014 with 2030 goals
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Energy futures Looking back at the early days of wind and solar, as reported in Green Futures. Towards the end of the 90s, wind energy held the most promise for renewables. Solar seemed a small-scale solution, by comparison. Here’s a retrospective of the emergence of the two technologies, handpicked from our archive. GF28, p4 Wind energy in Britain has just had its great leap forward. Planning permission has been given for 18 new offshore wind farms – providing enough energy for one million homes. Each farm will include 30 turbines, with an average output (per site) of 60MW.
GF17, p15 Wind energy has passed the 10,000MW threshold, according to the OECD’s International Energy Agency, having been the fastest growing renewable energy source for four years running. GF17, p15 The Danes are taking the lead in offshore wind, recently announcing a series of offshore wind farms on an unprecedented scale.
GF33, p9 Germany sets a goal of meeting at least a quarter of its domestic electricity needs with wind power by 2025.
GF49, p9 Ford opens the first citybased wind scheme in Europe, at its Dagenham plant in East London.
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GF28, p14 BP Solar is gearing up for what it describes as the largest solar project ever, providing power for 150 villages in the Philippines.
GF55, p5 The 5MW Espanhain plant in Saxony is the world’s biggest solar plant, backed by Shell Solar and Geosol. A 15MW plant is under construction in South Korea, scheduled for 2006. Portugal is planning a 62MW solar power plant, made up of 350,000 panels, to come on stream in 2009.
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GF17, p15 A programme to fit 200 petrol stations with solar photovoltaic panels, in Australia, Japan and Europe, is going to turn BP Amoco into one of the world’s largest users of solar power in the next two years.
Photos: Jui-Chi Chan/iStock/Thinkstock; Klaus Leidorf/Flickr
GF33, p4 The UK announces a major demonstration project for solar power, with £20 million in grants to help develop the market.
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GF64, p9 The Bahrain World Trade Centre is reckoned to be the world’s first commercial development to integrate large-scale wind turbines with its design. The 29m-diameter blades should provide 11-15% of the Centre’s energy needs.
Dr. C. Dhakshayani, Harita-NTI Creation
“The editorial coverage we’ve received from Green Futures has been invaluable.” Rupert Howes, Chief Executive, Marine Stewardship Council
GF73, p8 The UK’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds puts a micro wind turbine on its visitor centre in Rainham Marshes: a small sign of a big shift in opinion. (Birds need protection against climate change, too!) GF73, p8 The US leapfrogged Germany to the top of the world wind league last year, when it added 50% to its installed wind power capacity. The frontrunner in this young sector is the locally controversial 420MW Cape Wind scheme off Massachusetts’ coast.
Photos: Allan Donque/Flickr; Green Prophet/Kuraymat/Flickr; BarnettImaging/iStock/Thinkstock
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GF76, p26 Plans are underway to transform swathes of the Sahara into a glittering sea of mirrors, with the goal of piping cheap, clean and efficient solar energy into the heart of Europe. The $240 billion Desertec venture will create vast fields of concentrated solar power plants, designed to meet as much as 15% of Europe’s electricity demand by 2050.
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GF91, p5 Over the course of 2014, China expects to install a record 12GW of solar power, according to a report by the Chinese Bureau of Energy – more than twice the amount (5GW) the US is expected to install over the same period.
GF84, p30 Solar is, in a surprisingly large number of places, poised to compete directly, unsubsidised, with the grid. Hawaii has already hit grid parity for commercial solar! (Italy, Germany, and Spain followed in 2013.)
GF79, p9 South Africa confirms plans to build a 5GW solar power station, the world’s largest to date, in the Northern Cape – one of the sunniest regions in the world.
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“Green Futures is amazing in focusing environmental issues and, through contributions from developing countries like India, is popularising both the issues and the solutions globally. My heartfelt thanks.”
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Creative futures James Goodman discusses where the practice of futures is heading next.
“I’ve always been impressed with Green Futures’ ability to straddle the fine editorial line of being business-friendly and practical, without resorting to the simplistic greenwash that pervades much of the sustainability business press.” Sami Grover, The Change Creation
Photos: John Lund/Marc Romanelli/Blend Images/Thinkstock
‘Futures’ is a field that, since it was conceived in the 1960s, has existed to make the future better. Why have all those conversations about emerging change and how to prepare for it otherwise? Over Forum for the Future’s lifetime, however, there has been a noticeable convergence of futures practice with sustainability. These two fields are now more closely aligned than ever before. Increasingly, businesses are using futures techniques to build resilience in the face of external
changes that may affect their chance of success. They may not directly associate this with sustainability – and yet that’s what it boils down to. Sustainability is all about long-term trends and long-term value creation, and so, if you talk about the future, you are inevitably having conversations about sustainability. The internet means businesses can engage with global communities to crowd-source both signs of change and ideas for responding to them. More designers are using futures to envision the world in years to come, and create new products and services that will thrive in very different contexts. Forum for the Future has always been about seeing the long-term view. We saw the opportunity to use futures practice to reach out to a more mainstream audience. For many in the business world, the term ‘sustainability’ simply fails to resonate, or they associate it with a land of risk and guilt. The future, by contrast, is a land of opportunity. No one in business is going to say they aren’t interested in it! By talking about the future rather than sustainability, we could instantly change the story away from sacrifice and loss (or cords and kale), something that alienates many people, towards something that everyone has a stake in: a positive vision, something we should be really excited about and desire and aspire towards. We have found this to be a very powerful process for building sustainability into business strategy. Too often, strategy ignores long-term issues, and fails to see how they connect to the status quo. Futures techniques prompt you to think much more creatively about your direction, and identify unexpected risks. They create a mindset which acknowledges change and uncertainty, and help people make decisions differently, reaching new
“A marvellous collection of articles on a very complex and misunderstood subject.” James Pruden, Cotton Incorporated
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Early days of the future conclusions about the best thing to do. We then help them translate this new mindset into strategy. One of our earliest projects was with Finlays, the global tea and flower producer. In 2008, it commissioned our futures team to help the company understand its operating context in Kenya over the next 15 years. Another was with PepsiCo, developing a set of global scenarios to understand the plausible worlds in which they might be operating in 2030. Yet no single organisation will be able to get us to where we need to be. If you want a sustainable strategy, you need to tackle the whole system. And so we began to experiment with collaborations, using futures as our starting point. The future offers a great shared space for creative thinking – not just within a business but across an industry or value chain. It can bring people together to discuss trends, see how they connect, create shared visions, and come to joint decisions. Some of our biggest success stories are the result of such a process: the Sustainable Shipping Initiative, for example, is now an independent company. Fashion Futures is another example – used by over 300 fashion schools to help students innovate. Now, we’re embarking on a new wave of experiments: prototyping the future. If we can work with others to create an element of what we want – even if the world isn’t quite ready for it – then we can expand the bounds of what’s possible. The very act of trying uncovers which elements of the current system need to change. And you won’t know which approaches might succeed until you try. Glocal, a project with Ecover, is one example [see GF92, p40]. We set out to create a local closed loop cleaning system in Mallorca, and found out exactly what barriers (values, market, regulations, technology) we need to overcome. We’re also exploring more ways to scan the horizon for signs of change and become more sensitive to weak signals. The web offers all sorts of new possibilities for this, from social media and crowd-sourcing to data-driven ‘pulses’ around a question or topic. We’re keen to understand how to anticipate opportunities to innovate for a sustainable future, and draw them to the attention of people who can amplify change. Our new futures platform will serve our network with fresh insights, and the means to take action. Through it, we will strengthen the connection between exploring the future and creating the future we want.
Martin Wright looks back to the beginnings of Green Futures. In the future, in 2014 say, we could be driving our hydrogen cars to a microwind-powered community telecottage deep in the countryside, where thanks to the magic of ISDN lines we will be able to connect to the World Wide Web and enjoy the holographic telepresence of distant colleagues… Such might have been the picture conjured up in “We always value the the mind’s eye of an early breadth of stories profiled and reader of Green Futures. the positive tone provided.” Although we were careful not to trade in predictions, Matt Crossman, we enjoyed speculating Rathbone Greenbank Investments as to possibilities, projecting technological breakthroughs that were just on the horizon into everyday life, and asking what it would look like as a result. Some distant glimmers on the horizon have shot towards us far faster than we could have imagined. The internet and mobile communications, in particular, have transformed the world at a pace and scale few predicted. I can well recall one early subscriber (and fervent environmentalist) decrying the spread of ‘yuppie phones’ as a symbol of all that was wrong about modern Britain. Today there are more SIM cards in India than there are people. On the sustainability score sheet, the social impact of mobiles, particularly in Africa and Asia, has been stunning. They are arguably the single most effective piece of intervention for development of the last 30 years – and delivered for the most part by the market, not by any aid programme. But in terms of environmental impact, the ‘digital dividend’ of which we talked so much in the 90s has yet to appear. Confident predictions that IT-enabled ‘dematerialisation’ would decouple economic prosperity from environmental degradation haven’t really materialised. Yet… Because, as a cursory glance through those early editions of Green Futures reminded me, it can take a while for bright ideas to shine. That dream of decoupling is now at the heart of Unilever’s business strategy. Other trends, too, are on the slow burn: concern for energy and food security is shaping geopolitics; the potential of local energy generation to disrupt the world’s power networks is emerging; and the question of our wellbeing, even – whisper it – our spirituality, is becoming a legitimate concern for responsible business. When it comes to the future, it’s still early days. Martin Wright is Founding Editor, Green Futures.
James Goodman is Director of Futures at Forum for the Future.
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A new mindset for systems change Futures can help transform the world today.
There’s a buzz around systems in the US, says Helen Clarkson
“I still can’t work out how you manage to put such a brilliant mix of innovative subjects together with such consistency. It’s a genuinely inspiring read which I genuinely look forward to.”
The futures platform we are building will do three things. It will listen out for signs of the emerging future and curate these for the public. It will bring communities together to explore difficult questions with a very Neville White, Senior SRI Analyst, long-sighted lens. And it will offer up insights to Ecclesiastical Investment Management support people to make better decisions today for a sustainable future. Why use futures to create change in the present? Because the changes we need to make are complex: they cut across whole systems. In order to imagine how these systems could work differently, it can help to think of a very different world – one that’s not constrained by all the reasons why such a change wouldn’t be possible today. This demands a new way of thinking. You could think of futures as a different mindset: it allows us to escape the things we take for granted in the present. It can help us to identify new ways to achieve our goals – and to rethink what those goals should be. The overall goal, as far as Forum for the Future is concerned, is systems change for sustainability. We have to experiment with current systems to find out how to change them, Futures is a tool that we can use to open our minds to new tomorrows. – Anna Simpson
The same year Forum was founded Fritjof Capra published his book, The Web of Life (1996). It challenges the conventional views of how we see the world, and was seen by many as a foundation for a new way to understand the challenges of sustainability. The founders of Forum were inspired by work like this, and wanted to find practical ways to implement this more coherent and positive approach to sustainability. Over the last five years we have seen an upswell of people and organisations making explicit their intentions and practical implementations towards systems change. Forum’s own system innovation strategy was initiated in 2010. We are at a moment where our collective power is starting to come together to really address the systemic challenges that Fritjof Capra identified back then.
In April, a $100 million Closed Loop Fund was announced at Wal-Mart’s inaugural Sustainable Product Expo, backed by the likes of PepsiCo, Unilever and Goldman Sachs, with the aim to transform the recycling system in the US. It’s a huge step. Five years ago, sustainability wasn’t really on the agenda for big business. There was no push coming from the White House, but some concerted activists were beginning to be heard. In 2011, Greenpeace launched its Detox Campaign, exposing the use of hazardous chemicals in the textile supply chain. Six brands, including H&M, Nike and Puma, responded – committing to a Joint Roadmap towards Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals (aka ZDHC). The appetite for this sort of collaboration, where brands come together to drive change, seems to be growing. Another is the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), founded by business leaders who recognise that addressing the fashion industry’s current social and environmental challenges is both a business imperative and an opportunity. Forum for the Future worked with SAC, bringing insights from two projects – Cotton Futures and Fashion Futures. Another sign of interest is Sustainable Brands; its flagship conference, first held in San Diego in 2007, has grown to over 2,500 attendees, with others in Rio de Janeiro, Istanbul, and Buenos Aires. But too many businesses still equate sustainability with corporate social responsibility or think it’s a tickbox exercise: they’re aiming for compliance. It’s different when you talk about innovation. Business culture in the US is incredibly innovative, and businesses recognise that new ideas emerge when people get together in new ways – so there’s a real buzz around systems innovation. Forum’s forte is systems innovation for sustainability, and our work with SAC is just one example of that. In October we’ll be launching a set of scenarios that we’ve developed with the Retail Industry Leaders Association, sponsored by Target and Unilever, called Retail Horizons. It offers a toolkit to help businesses explore the future of US retail, and so make better decisions today.
Anna Birney is Head of Forum’s System Innovation Lab and author of Cultivating System Change: a practitioner’s companion.
Helen Clarkson is Director of Forum for the Future in the US.
The time’s ripe for systems change, says Anna Birney
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Systems visionary Anna Simpson meets Fritjof Capra at the launch of his new book, The Systems View of Life. students would learn it in their first or second year! Our book is really a textbook to teach such a course.
Fritjof Capra’s work can’t be reduced to a profession or discipline. He has dedicated the last 40 years to demonstrating the limits of trying to understand life by breaking it down into various parts, from medicine to art to spirituality. Instead, he advocates a holistic approach, based on the interconnectedness of all things. His most recent book, co-authored with Pier Luigi Luisi, aims to show the evolution of systems thinking, and outline the economic, ecological, political and spiritual implications of seeing life through a systemic lens. I spoke with him for an hour before the London launch of his book. Eyeing the recent Green Futures edition ‘Where Science Meets Art’ on the table, Capra launches in...
Photo: Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo
Leonardo da Vinci was a systems thinker. For him, to solve a problem meant to connect it to other problems. He always looked for relationships, interconnections. I studied his work over ten years, and believe I discovered his main quest: to understand the nature of life. In order to paint he needed to do science and in order to do science he needed to draw. Today, our academic institutions are so fragmented that it’s very difficult to write and teach a book like ours, which is multidisciplinary. How would you redesign society and education, to make room for perspectives like yours? This would be the realisation of a dream that I’ve had for the last 20 years or so: to redesign education in such a way that it’s multidisciplinary. If you think of the major disciplines at our universities – humanities, law, medicine, architecture, life sciences, psychology, economics – what do they all have in common? They’re all to do with living systems: individual organisms, social systems and ecosystems. I envisage a common language to enable people to understand each other across these disciplines;
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And what difference do you hope this new approach to education would make? One of the great challenges of our time is to build and nurture sustainable communities. The word sustainability has often been misused and has become controversial. What is sustainable in a community? It’s not economic growth or competitive advantage; what is sustained is the very breath of life on which our long-term survival depends. In other words, it must be designed in such a way that its economy, its social institutions, its technologies and so on do not interfere with nature’s ability to sustain life. In order to do this, we first have to know how nature sustains life. It turns out that this involves a whole new concept of life. Where do you see such a concept emerging? At the forefront of contemporary science, the universe is no longer seen as a machine composed of building blocks. The view of the human body as a machine and of the mind as a separate entity has been replaced by one which sees the brain, the bodily organs and even each cell as a living cognitive system. Evolution is no longer seen as the competitive struggle for existence but rather as a cooperative dance, in which the creativity inherent in life and the emergence of novelty are the driving forces. How can people join the dots? One very important influence on how we think is the experience of community. Urban life is designed in such a way that it doesn’t nourish communities: everyone lives separately, and there are not many places where people can actually talk and be together. Community, I’ve come to realise, is extremely important to move towards sustainability. Ecosystems are communities: they’re communities of plants, animals, microorganisms. But the current global economy depends on consumption; we convince people that their happiness depends on buying more stuff. This is a very pernicious system, and the best antidote for it is community. If I spend an evening with friends, I don’t need to buy some sort of gadget to feel happy. Fritjof Capra PhD is most recently author of The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision, with Pier Luigi Luisi (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Anna Simpson is Editor, Green Futures.
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Causing a disruption Existing markets face disruption not just from new technology but from new business models promoting access to it, says Duncan Jefferies.
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THE ENERGY SECTOR IS PRIMED FOR AN UPHEAVAL
Electric vehicles, 3D printers, nanomaterials and the Internet of Things are all poised to reshape the world, just as the steam engine, telephone and car did before them. Although it’s hard to predict exactly what kind of impact these potentially disruptive technologies could have on today’s products and services, they are likely to be driven forward by small, innovative companies that have spotted a window of opportunity in an existing market and prised it open – a quality that marks out several of this year’s Ashden Award Winners. Thanks to the rapidly falling cost of solar panels and improvements in energy storage, the energy sector, for example, is primed for an upheaval that could shift power away from the energy giants and spark a revolution in the way energy is produced, distributed and consumed, while giving millions of people in the developing world access to a reliable source of electricity. It’s a revolution that Off Grid Electric is spearheading in Tanzania. The company is supplying solar-as-a-service in a country where 85% of households have no access to the grid, and it’s doing it with the help of another disruptive technology: the mobile phone. For Jonathon Porritt, Founder-Director of Forum for the Future, this encapsulates “what’s really exciting about today’s sustainable energy innovations: the degree to which they are simultaneously giving rise to new business models, seriously weakening the stranglehold that today’s incumbent players in the world of energy have had around our throats for decades”. Whereas it could cost a household around $700 to connect to the national grid, a basic Off Grid Electric plan costs $6 to install and $1.25 a week for two lights and a mobile phone charger, with customers able to
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top-up their system through their phone. The service has already helped more than 15,000 homes do away with inefficient, dangerous and environmentally damaging kerosene lamps, and the company hopes to raise this figure to 10 million within a decade. “Our value proposition is simple: switch to solar and get far better service for less than you are already spending to light your home”, says Raphael Robert, Head of Expansion at Off Grid Electric. An all-day customer care telephone line and ongoing support from local agents has helped to allay the fears of customers who have previously had reliability issues with their own solar energy system or who are reluctant to switch from kerosene. “People can use our product without the risk”, says Robert. “They can just call our customer care number and say ‘our light is broken’, and an agent will go and change it for a new one. And those are the customers who go out and spread the word.” Word of mouth has also played a vital part in the success of Greenway Grameen’s biomass cookstove, which has been designed to replace the traditional mud stoves used by 87% of rural Indian households. The World Health Organization recently reported that 4.3 million people die from the results of indoor air pollution each year, the majority of which comes from cooking smoke. As well as reducing this smoke by 70%, Greenway Grameen’s Smart Stove cuts cooking times by around 30 minutes and household wood use by around 1.1 tonnes per year. According to David Bent, Director of Sustainable Business at Forum for the Future, “seeking feedback and quickly improving” plays a key part in the success of many disruptive technologies – something Neha Juneja, co-founder and CEO of Greenway Grameen,
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a business, according to the World Bank. There is very little access to electricity in the country, and until now farmers have irrigated their crops by lifting water in buckets from wells and carrying it in watering cans to their fields. Proximity’s foot-operated treadle pumps, drip irrigation systems and water-storage tanks, refined through extensive farmer feedback, are now helping to dramatically increase crop yields and incomes across the country, which has suffered from decades of technological isolation. Using one of the social enterprise’s pumps, people can achieve the same water outputs in half or even a third of the time. They’re designed to be affordable to someone earning $2 a day, costing between $25 and $38 each. Around 90,000 people in 5,000 villages now use the pumps, and farm incomes are increasing by an average of $250 per season. “Farmers were already looking for alternatives to backbreaking, time-consuming work”, says Jim Taylor, co-founder of Proximity Designs. “One of the priorities was affordability, since farmers knew they could use diesel pumps, but these were totally of reach financially. It was then our mission to design something that truly presented a better way to lift water from wells that was also affordable.” Proximity is always trying to improve on existing solutions, hence its next project: a low-cost solar water-pumping system. Looking even further ahead, advanced 3D printing could also have a huge impact on global industry, allowing anyone to quickly ‘print’ replacement parts for existing products or assemble new ones from designs available online. Although 3D printers are dropping in price (you can pick one up in the UK for £700) they are still largely the preserve of hobbyists, rather like the microcomputer was in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But once the range of ‘printable’ materials increases and 3D printers move into the mainstream, innovative organisations the world over will be able to harness yet another disruptive technology for sustainable ends.
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Duncan Jefferies is a freelance writer and Assistant Editor, Green Futures. Ashden is a Forum for the Future Partner. www.ashden.org
THEY RETAIL AT A SIMILAR PRICE TO CHARCOAL, YET BURN FOR LONGER
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knows only too well. “We did about 10 different designs with feedback for each”, she explains, “and for every different design we would do about 15-20 prototypes”. Having trialled some of them in stores to see which designs customers were most happy to pay for, the company established an aspirational marketing campaign for the final design. “It makes your kitchen look modern, you’re a modern woman, hence this is the product for you” is the message that Greenway Grameen aims to communicate to potential customers. It seems to be working: more than 120,000 stoves, which retail for $23, have now been sold. Over twothirds of these sales have been through partnerships, particularly with microfinance institutions – another recent disruptive innovation. Greenway Grameem’s approach illustrates that sustainability focused technologies with disruptive potential are most likely to gain mass appeal by offering something new, desirable or cost-effective. As Bent says: “There is potential for examples like ZipCar to shake up existing markets, but not because they are sustainability focused. They’ll be successful because they deliver better value for customers. In ZipCar’s case, that’s providing flexible urban travel without the hassle and heartache of owning a car. The sustainability outcomes will be a result of uptake, rather than a reason.” Sustainable Green Fuel Enterprise (SGFE) charbriquettes also illustrate this point. This pioneering Cambodian business turns coconut shells and other waste organic matter into clean-burning briquettes, which are used as cooking fuel in Phnom Penh’s homes and restaurants. Around 80% of Cambodians cook on wood charcoal, despite the fact that the country has one of the worst rates of deforestation in the world. SGFE charbriquettes are produced in low-emission kilns, and have saved an estimated 6,500 mature trees to date. However, the success of the business relies upon the fact that charbriquettes retail at a similar price to charcoal, yet burn for longer, are sturdier (allowing street food vendors to transfer them between stoves) and produce fewer sparks and less mess. As Carlo Figà Talamanca, CEO of SGFE, says, for a new market entrant to win over sceptical consumers and retailers “you have to have a better product than the conventional one. People won’t bother to change their habits otherwise”. Like Greenway Grameen, SGFE has modified its product in response to customer demands, tweaking the amount of binder in its charbriquettes to get the perfect mix of hardness and heat. During the process through which biomass is turned into char, the greenhouse gases that are produced are burned off using technology devised from clean cookstove designs, rather than vented into the atmosphere, and the heat used to dry the charbriquettes – an innovation that helped the company to win an Ashden Award. “I would say the biggest design element in our case was not just the end product … but also the production process”, says Talamanca. Technologies that are well established in Western countries, or have even been surpassed, can still prove disruptive in developing economies. Proximity Designs, for example, is working to introduce treadle pumps and other sustainable agriculture technologies to Myanmar (Burma), one of the hardest places in the world to start
Top left: SGFE’s charbriquettes could burn a whole in Cambodia’s charcoal market Below: Neha Juneja demonstrates Greenway Grameen’s biomass cookstove
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This man, stooping down to feed swans in the snow, is a humble sight in contrast to the raucous throng. It’s an image to put the relationship of man to bird, beast, food and water into perspective. A reminder that people aren’t masters of ecosystems: they are co-dependents, and, as such, need to give as good as they get. The alternative is a breakdown of the resource systems we need, and the services they render – from pollination to carbon storage. More businesses are beginning to realise their role as ‘stewards’ of natural resources. This has nothing to do with charity: it’s a precious chance to connect. ‘Man feeding swans in the snow’ by Marcin Ryczek www.marcinryczek.com
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On the move
Puffins on the Faroe Islands now face competition for food from mackerel for their dietary staple, sand eels.
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EVEN TREES, NOT KNOWN FOR THEIR MOBILITY, ARE ON THE MOVE
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In the air, on land and under the sea, species are battling a devil’s brew of climate change and human activity that’s rapidly altering their ranges, migration times and feeding grounds. As waters and the weather warms, rainfall patterns change and the rapidly expanding human population encroaches increasingly into remaining habitats, birds, insects, fish and even plants are being pushed towards the poles in their relevant hemispheres, and to higher elevations too. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the key East Asian-Australasian flyway migration route, used by more than 200 species of water bird, which move from feeding areas in Australia and New Zealand to breeding grounds in the Russian and Alaskan Arctic via stop-over wetlands along the coastlines of East Asia. “The main issue for the flyway at the moment is habitat loss”, says Richard Fuller of the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Queensland. The coastlines along the flyways – particularly in the middle section where birds pause en route to the Arctic – have been heavily developed over the last 50 years. “Any sea level rise that happens now is really going to squeeze out the remaining habitat”, says Fuller. Species under dire threat include the Great Knot and Eastern Curlew, formerly abundant but now categorised as globally threatened. The highly threatened Spoonbilled Sandpiper is also declining due to the loss of important flyway stop-over sites for feeding and roosting. The answer to these problems, Fuller says, is careful planning and targeted action to mitigate climate change through global agreements, while adapting to its inevitable impacts on already fragile ecosystems. “We can use techniques in decision theory and
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conservation planning to work out where we can invest our limited resources – and that includes political will – in protecting the habitats that we do have left. Mitigation is vitally important longer term, but we need adaptation right now to save habitat before it is too late.” In March, Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its fifth report on assessing and managing the risks of climate change. It stated that many land and water species had already shifted their geographic ranges, migration patterns and numbers in response to climate change. It also warned that the current pace of anthropogenic change in the climate was far faster than the natural rate, which had itself led to major ecosystem shifts and species extinctions in the past. While the picture for migratory species is overwhelmingly negative, some have managed to adapt to the accelerating rate of change by altering their range, diet or even genetic make-up. At least one species of coral in the Pacific, for example, acclimatised to the warming temperature of the ocean and its higher acidic content (due to increased C02 absorption) by apparently activating genes that were previously dormant, according to a team of Stanford University scientists. While in Mexico and California, the Quino Checkerspot butterfly has defied predictions of its imminent demise due to habitat loss caused by climate change. It has simply moved its range to higher altitudes and changed its diet to a totally different plant. But it remains to be seen how long such measures will last, and what impact they might have on other species. Steve Brooks, an entomologist at London’s Natural History Museum, says many insects are highly mobile and adaptable, moving their ranges
Photo: Tsuguliev/iStock/Thinkstock
Species are shifting their lifestyles in response to habitat loss. Now we must plan for the fallout, says Jeremy Lovell.
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This has inevitably led to disputes between fishing fleets who find that either they now have access to fish that were previously not within reach, or that the fish they used to catch are no longer where they used to be. “Mackerel – usually found around Scotland and Norway – has recently shifted its distribution north to Iceland and the Faroe Islands”, says Pinnegar. “There is a battle raging over who has the right to catch them.” They’re also causing the collapse of the local sand eel population, on which puffins depend for feed. French and Spanish fishermen recently argued for the right to catch anchovies of the cost of Southern England, claiming that the usual populations they take from the Bay of Biscay had simply moved north. But the row was defused when it was found that the anchovies now teeming in the Channel were genetically different from those in the Bay of Biscay: a small and previously overlooked indigenous population had boomed in the warming waters. For certain industries, for the moment at least, the changes come with new profit potential. A thriving seabass and squid fishery has also begun to develop in northern England, and anglers are catching colourful triggerfish more commonly associated with tropical waters. On the other side of the globe, Australian winegrowers are moving south into Tasmania, where grapes associated with warmer climates can now be grown. As accelerating climate change alters the physical distribution and abundance of more species, value chains will need to adapt. Can collaborations to secure the future of land and marine resources take shifting populations – and new demands on them – into account?
The Spoonbilled Sandpiper is struggling to find places for a stop-over
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NEW MIGRATORY PATTERNS COULD LEAD TO NEW PLANT POPULATIONS
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and colonising new territory as the climate changes. “Some insects are better colonisers than others … the less fussy, the bigger the range.” But there can be a downside to this – as in the case of the Harlequin ladybird, dubbed the most invasive ladybird in the world. It first arrived in the UK in 2004 from Continental Europe, where it was introduced from Asia as a natural form of aphid control. It now covers a large area of the country and there is evidence that indigenous ladybirds are starting to decline as a result. New research has found that birds migrating between the Arctic and South America could also be carrying plant fragments in their plumage and distributing them across the tropics, thereby establishing new plant colonies in areas where they have previously been absent – a kind of long-range version of localised seed dispersal. If the findings are applied to entire populations of migratory birds, it means they could potentially be transporting hundreds of thousands of plants parts around the world. The disruption of their migratory patterns could therefore have a knock-on effect on how, when and where new plant populations are established. Even trees, not known for their mobility, are on the move: in northern Norway, conifer species have been found 100 kilometres north of what was previously the northern edge of their range. Fish are altering their ranges too. In the northern hemisphere they’re expanding northwards and in the southern, southwards. Species of fish once confined to the Mediterranean such as Seabass, Red Mullet and Anchovies can now be found as far north as Scotland due to the fact that the seas around the country have warmed, according to John Pinnegar, programme director of the Marine Climate Change Centre at the UK government’s Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science.
Jeremy Lovell is a freelance writer specialising in energy, environment and climate change.
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Bio logical The tiniest organisms on the planet could transform the way we use land, says Fiona Harvey. now also hard at work developing ways of using enzymes, plant proteins and organic acids to increase the productivity of the plants themselves – that is, to encourage them to grow faster, or bigger, or to emphasise certain traits, such as their crop yield. While advanced biofuels have taken a long time to come to any commercial production, the market for these other applications of agricultural biology appears to be taking off. So-called agricultural biologicals are currently worth about $3 billion a year globally, according to a report from the investment house Piper Jaffray, and will likely double within five years. Much of the growth is likely to come from pest control. Companies with existing expertise are fast taking up the challenge. Novozymes is a Danish company that has been working on enzymes for use in medicine, detergents and food for decades, then turned to second-generation biofuels a decade ago, and now has its sights set on an even more ambitious goal. The company is working to
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Fallen trees: exemplars of resource efficiency aided by enzymes
Wood is tough stuff, as any lumberjack will tell you. All that lignin makes for a fibre that takes years to break down under natural processes – one of the reasons why fallen trees are such hotspots for biodiversity. Achieving just that has been a key goal for research scientists for decades, as it would open up ways of converting fibres currently wasted into valuable liquid biofuels. In the last few years, discoveries of enzymes that can be used to catalyse the process have spurred forward the industry. The world of resource efficiency aided by the development of enzymes and other novel biochemical techniques, such as microbial-based products, is moving fast. Making the most of agricultural residues is a key plank of sustainability: not only can it be a form of clean energy and a store of carbon but it also avoids methane emissions from the uncontrolled breakdown of organic matter. And this is only the beginning of what is possible. Researchers are
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To increase the productivity of our crops. To combat infectious crop diseases and pests. To reduce the current massive waste of agricultural residues. These are all important goals, and so there’s a logic to making the best use of enzymes and harnessing other natural processes to achieve them. Anna Warrington, who works on innovation in business at Forum for the Future, agrees: “Synthetic biology and GM are here, whether we like it or not. There are legitimate concerns, including the potential impact of ‘terminator’ seeds [ones that don’t reproduce] on smallholder farmers’ livelihoods, or the affordability of seeds under patent. However, it’s important to explore what would need to be true for synthetic biology to help us move towards a sustainable future - especially given the challenge of meeting basic needs for both accessible nutrition and warmth for an expanding global population.” If agricultural biology can be just as effective without GM, then we’re already on the way to a scalable solution. However, if GM could make it faster or cheaper for us to solve the crucial issues facing farmers and value chain managers, then any environmental objectors will have to ask themselves if this is so unthinkably far from the green enhancements known as agricultural biology.
What if lab-grown fungus can control a destructive crop?
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AGRICULTURAL BIOLOGICALS ARE CURRENTLY WORTH ABOUT $3 BILLION A YEAR GLOBALLY
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raise crop yields by using naturally occurring plant components in attacking pests, tackling diseases and enhancing plants’ ability to uptake nutrients. For instance, this can involve developing fungi that discourage pests and weeds, or harnessing the parts of a plant that aid in the absorption of phosphate and nitrogen. Novozymes is working with Monsanto on some of these projects, through a joint venture that kicked off last year. The biotech giant Syngenta is also getting in on the act, seeing this as a potential growth area. Already, though, there are signs that using novel development along such lines may not be straightforward. Currently, the key to agricultural biologicals is that they are based on plants’ own naturally occurring processes and chemicals, and discovering natural processes such as the way some fungi discourage pests or diseases. Agricen, for instance, boasts of using its fermentation process to generate a “diverse community of microorganisms and their biochemical byproducts”, such as enzymes and organic acids, which interact with the soil system to increase the availability and uptake of nutrients from fertilisers. Another company, Arzeda, uses powerful software to design and evaluate new enzymes. There are also potential risks in this area, however: generating biofuels from wood is one thing, but utilising one microorganism to wipe out another as a form of biocontrol could have unintended consequences. And what if it were found to be easier to directly manipulate some of the plant genetics to achieve the same goals? What happens if a lab-grown genetically modified (GM) fungus or bacteria is proven effective in controlling a destructive crop disease such as wheat stem rust? Agricultural biologicals are another form of biotechnology: different in detail, but not so far from other forms of biotech in research terms – as the involvement of Monsanto and Syngenta points up. That could prove controversial. Ecover has long been held in high regard by the environmental movement, a much-praised champion of sustainable goals. So when the company was pilloried recently on the internet over its use of GM technology, it came as a shock. The company was found to have used GM algae, which some activists took issue with. Ecover defended its use, saying that there was no “synthetic biology” involved in the making of the algae, which it is developing as an alternative to palm oil. “The genetic modification process used by the supplier of our algal oil employs the natural mutation process of algae. No human-made DNA is inserted into the algae”, the company said. The public treatment of Ecover, despite its algae using the natural processes of the algae itself, shows the potential for controversy in agricultural biologicals. Some people who are unhappy with the idea of GM may find the notion of designing enzymes and manipulating plant and soil processes uncomfortably close to it. Others will argue that it is much closer to traditional agricultural methods, such as breeding plants to enhance certain traits.
Fiona Harvey is the Guardian’s environment correspondent.
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Clear the air
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SINGAPORE’S HAZE BILL WOULD ALLOW IT TO PENALISE COMPANIES BEYOND ITS BORDERS
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The World Health Organization (WHO) recently sounded the alarm about global air quality. In the 1,600 cities it monitors, only 12% of people breathe air that falls within its quality guidelines. In February this year, the concentration of pollutants in the air in Beijing and Shanghai was more than 20 times the WHO’s limits. But Delhi was the city found to have the world’s highest annual average concentration of PM2.5 – fine particulate matter measuring less than 2.5 microns, and considered the most harmful form of air pollution to human health – the WHO reported in May. These are just the statistics we know about: the WHO recently told the Guardian some of the worst cities for air pollution “are not collecting data regularly”. The good news is that the policies and technologies that are needed to address the two main causes of all this air pollution – heavy industry and vehicles – have been tried and tested for decades now. “Effective policies restrict the amount [of pollutants] that various polluters can emit, and then companies have options about how they choose to do it”, says Deborah Seligsohn, an environmental policy analyst specialising in China and India, based at the University of California, San Diego. Vehicle emissions standards, for example, can be used to limit the emissions coming out of tailpipes. “You can do that by putting catalytic converters and particulate filters on vehicles”, Seligsohn continues. “Or you can do it by running electric vehicles that
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eliminate all of the pollution directly from the tailpipe.” Similarly, scrubbers on power plants and switching to clean sources of electricity generation also reduce air pollutants. Applying effective policy to effective solutions gains another layer of complexity due to the correlated but non-linear relationship between climate change mitigation and air quality improvement: diesel, for example, emits less CO2 than petrol but is more of an air pollutant. In addition, the political motivation to deal with air pollution tends to relate to visible pollution, which is often very localised. Political impetus can fade along with the smog, though invisible pollutants may still remain in the air. In South and East Asia, crossborder pollution also presents a challenge that can’t be dealt with on a purely national level. A small city-state like Singapore is in the midst of a region where only a handful of poorly enforced air quality treaties exist. As such, it has proposed a tough new Transboundary Haze Bill, which would allow it to penalise companies beyond its borders – criminally, civilly, to the tune of $450,000 – for activities that generate haze over its territory. The main target of the bill is the slash-and-burn palm oil producers in neighbouring Indonesia. Part of the challenge facing Singapore is that, if pollution only flows one way, it is hard to incentivise the polluter to stop. Indonesia is also the only Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member
Photo: Donyanedomam/iStock/Thinkstock
Air pollution solutions need strong local and transborder policy to succeed, says Ibrahim Maiga.
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Urban travel cards, such as London’s Oyster, could be used to open club car doors; scrappage schemes could offer free membership of a vehiclesharing club; parking permit cost structures could act as disincentives to multiple-car ownership (e.g. the permit for the first car costs £150, while a second car costs £500). The start-up ParkatmyHouse (soon to be Just Park), which allows people to rent out their driveway as a parking spot, is also addressing the problem of drivers circling to find a free space. The company runs ChargeatmyHouse too, a website allowing the public to get electric vehicle (EV) charging points worth up to £1,500 installed in their driveway for free, courtesy of a subsidy from the Office for Low Emission Vehicles. This could help to address some the infrastructure barriers to EV adoption. Established brands – and particularly those offering quick fixes, from personal inhalers and masks right through to low-emission vehicles – could also gain from taking a more prominent stance on air quality. If they are proposing a quick fix, surely they should also look to remedy the root cause? Tom Morton, Director of ClimateCare, makes the point that “companies that wish to take action to improve air quality should seriously consider offsetting their carbon emissions through innovative climate and development projects, which make a measurable and immediate difference on the ground, improving air quality and saving lives”. Such projects, he says, can help to dramatically reduce air pollution at a local, household level – as in the case of ClimateCare’s Clean Cookstoves initiative, which aims to reduce the two million deaths caused each year by household air pollution from inefficient coal and biomass stoves. Part of the problem with air is that we don’t see it. We breathe over 20,000 times a day, on average, but pay little attention to the steady rise and fall of our lungs – unless we are struggling to inhale, of course. More research is needed into the economic impacts of poor air quality on health and productivity. Meanwhile, policy-makers need to pre-empt incidents of smog, not just react to them. Ibrahim Maiga is a freelance journalist, writing about sustainability and enterpreneurship.
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CHINA HAS MANDATED THAT 15,000 FACTORIES DISCLOSE THEIR AIR EMISSIONS IN REAL TIME
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country that is not a signatory to the legally-binding ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution established in 2002. Nevertheless, the bill has found early support from the provincial government of Riau on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, where many of the offending forest fires occur despite its ‘zero burn’ policy. Riau itself, as well as Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, are also badly affected. Monitoring technology continues to be central to establishing an evidence basis for reducing air pollution – particularly the invisible kind. Perhaps the most iconic example is the electron capture detector (ECD) invented by James Lovelock, the father of Gaia theory, in the 1960s. He used the ECD to prove that invisible chlorofluorocarbon pollutants were blowing in seemingly clean air from the Atlantic to the west coast of Ireland. Technological advances since then have increased our ability to identify levels and sources of pollution. Satellite monitoring technology, for instance, allows scientists to pinpoint ‘hot spots’ where forest fires occur. Google and NASA provided data for a study led by the University of Maryland and published in Science, that showed that annual forest loss in Indonesia doubled in 2011-12, partly due to fires, whereas it halved in Brazil. However, without updated maps on land ownership, responsibility for addressing the fires cannot be established – information which Singapore has struggled to obtain from Indonesia and Malaysia. In an example that further illustrates the importance of local context as well as modern monitoring technology, China has jumped ahead of its peers in terms of public scrutiny of pollution by mandating that 15,000 factories disclose their air emissions in real time. As part of its next five-year plan, beginning in 2016, it will also cap CO2 emissions. Democratic countries can struggle to move as fast as China on these issues. The environment is rarely at the top of the electorate’s list of concerns, observes Seligsohn. And so (in the absence of bouts of smog to bump it up the agenda) it falls to campaigning organisations like Clean Air London to generate public pressure for political action. New crowdsourcing technology, like Air Casting, a device that connects to an app to aggregate air quality data, could also raise awareness. Prosecution might help too: the UK is facing the prospect of embarrassing court appearances and fines of up to £300 million a year, for its failure to meet the EU’s Air Quality Directive. Perhaps this looming prospect is part of the reason why Transport for London (TfL) and London councils are partnering with Zipcar to expand the use of car clubs in the capital, and hopefully lessen the number of cars on the road. According to independent research commissioned by Zipcar, for every extra car made available by a car club at least 14 privately owned cars are taken off the road. Car club members also make seven times fewer journeys of less than five miles than private car owners. “Whereas a car owner is aware, either consciously or unconsciously, that they own an expensive depreciating asset, and are therefore motivated to get as much use out of it and value out of it as possible, when people join a car club they tend take a more portfolio approach to getting around”, Mark Walker, General Manager, UK, Zipcar explains.
Left: Delhi: something to learn from air quality solutions elsewhere in Asia? Below: Masking the problem: can companies be part of the solution, too?
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Rise of the collaborative commons Anna Simpson asks Jeremy Rifkin how an era of nearly free goods and services could lead to a more efficient global economy.
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IF YOU DIDN’T HAVE COOPERATIVES, YOU’D HAVE TO INVENT THEM
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Jeremy Rifkin talks at the speed of a visionary who sees the path to salvation, and knows the entrance gate is on a timer. As President of the Foundation on Economic Trends and author of 20 books on the impact of scientific and technological changes on our economy, society and planet, he’s well aware of the problems facing humanity: “We had five extinctions in 450 million years: there was a sudden shift in the chemistry and temperature of the planet, and each time it took about 10 million years to get back that biodiversity. We’re now in the real-time sixth extinction.” He looks to present-day China for an example of how we might mitigate this process. “In December [2013], China announced an $80 billion, four-year initial commitment to lay out the new energy internet so that the Chinese people can produce their own solar and wind-generated electricity and share it with each other across the country.” If all goes according to plan, millions of people in neighbourhoods and communities, and hundreds of thousands of businesses, will be able to produce their own renewable electricity locally and share it on a ‘national energy internet’, just as they now share information. Rifkin claims some credit for the move: “When my book, The Third Industrial Revolution, came out in China, it was endorsed by Premier Li, and resulted in the sale of over 400,000 copies! Clearly the Chinese have now mapped out an economic plan.” In this 2011 bestseller, Rifkin argued that a new distributed
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model for energy will replace the elitist, centralised, fossil-based economy that currently dominates the planet. This revolution, he proposed, would depend on five convergence factors: the commitment from governments to encourage the shift to renewable energy; the conversion of millions of buildings into micro-power plants, generating renewable energy; the installation of energy storage technologies, including hydrogen systems, batteries, water pumping, flywheels, etc.; the transformation of the current electricity transmission grid to a digitalised energy internet to allow millions of small producers of renewable energy to share surpluses with one another; and the establishment of an automated transport and logistics internet comprised of electric and fuel cell vehicles powered by renewable energy [see ‘Are we on the cusp of a third industrial revolution?’, GF83, p26]. His most recent book, The Zero Marginal Cost Society, picks up on an emerging economic phenomenon that he believes will speed up the shift, and could herald “the democratisation of everything”. He describes this phenomenon as an era of “extreme productivity, in which each additional unit introduced for sale approaches near zero marginal cost”. How will it come about? Through the rise of the ‘collaborative commons’, he explains, where people produce their own renewable energy and 3D-printed products and share them with one another at nearzero marginal cost, making them virtually free. “Neoclassical economists argue that new technologies increase productivity, allowing the seller to produce more goods at a cheaper cost per unit”, he says. “As you increase the supply of cheaper goods, you create demand and force competitors to increase productivity in order to sell their goods even more cheaply. But what happens when ever-leaner technology boosts production to a point where the goods can essentially be produced for free? Profit
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the likes of Google, eBay, Amazon and Airbnb. The risk is that the collaborative commons develops too great a dependence upon this elite, which then monopolises access. Does Rifkin really believe the rise of the collaborative commons will see the demise of these new corporate giants? “The commercial enterprises that created the social commons are certainly starting to look like global monopolies”, he concurs. “Google has two-thirds of the search engine market in the US and 90% in Europe; nearly one out of six human beings on the planet is on Facebook; Twitter has 640 million people gossiping on it. They allow all of us to engage with each other at near-zero marginal cost, but what they then do is secure and sequester the data, which they can sell to third parties for commercial gain. If we want to take advantage of the social commons created by the likes of Google, Facebook and Twitter, we have to make sure that these giant enterprises are treated as global social utilities and regulated to ensure the common good.” He points to the success of the internet, which is founded upon network neutrality: “For zero marginal cost we can send our information to anybody and we are treated like everyone else: no one is discriminated against.” For Rifkin, if network neutrality is compromised, it will invariably lead to the monopolisation of everything. If, however, network neutrality is preserved, “it will likely lead to the democratisation of everything”. Like many visionaries, he’s an optimist: “My sense is that the democratisation of everything will eventually win out, because it’s too sweet to ignore.” Anna Simpson is Editor, Green Futures.
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THE SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY IS THE OPTIMALLY EFFICIENT ECONOMY
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dries up, and we move much of our economic activity from a capitalist market based on scarcity to a collaborative commons based on shareability.” For Rifkin, this is the democratisation of economic life. For example, he cites the power utilities in Germany which couldn’t scale to match the growing collaboration of millions of ‘little players’ coming together in green electricity cooperatives: “If you didn’t have cooperatives, you’d have to invent them”, he quips. “They allow small players to come together with a non-profit frame of reference and create economies of scale.” But don’t economies of scale tend to lead to the production of greater quantities? How will nearly zero-cost production help our economies to thrive, while alleviating growing pressure on limited resources? Rifkin’s comeback is that economic productivity is decoupled from material resource use: “Extreme productivity will allow us to use the minimum amount of material resources and energy in order to provide goods and services. It’s like the ecosystem of the Amazon: everything is recycled, everything is redistributed. If everyone is buying less and sharing more, it means less of the earth’s resources are being used up: it’s a circular economy.” The architecture behind this new model, Rifkin continues, is the Internet of Things (IoT), which will connect billions of devices the world over. Already, he says, the IoT is disrupting the communications and information markets: “More than one-third of the human race is producing its own information on relatively cheap smartphones and computers, and sharing it via video, audio and text at near-zero marginal cost in a collaborative networked world.” At the same time, we’re seeing the emergence of the Energy Internet, through the development of smart grids and distributed renewables, and the Logistics Internet, whereby sensors embedded in our homes, offices and transport systems transmit information to data hubs to maximise efficiency and increase productivity. For Rifkin, this platform is the ideal device for cooperatives to realise their potential, allowing “millions of people to come together directly in realtime, [bypassing] the middle men in big vertically integrated corporations”. We shouldn’t underestimate the scale of this, he insists: “1.5 billion people on the planet are already members of cooperatives – we don’t pay much attention to them because they’re non-profit, but [there are] agricultural cooperatives, housing cooperatives, banking cooperatives, construction cooperatives, electricity cooperatives, etc. … The sustainable society – where everyone on the planet produces their own green energy, information, 3D-printed goods, and so on, and shares any surplus – is the optimally efficient economy. The IoT platform for the Third Industrial Revolution democratises the global economy and gives rise to a more ecologically oriented society.” It’s an attractive prospect, but the path towards it remains unclear. For now, at least, we’re in a hybrid economy: the collaborative commons exists alongside the conventional capitalist market, and few governments share China’s ability to mandate a new model. The sharing economy is emerging, but it’s funded by investor capitalists and facilitated by
Above and below: 3D-printing puts manufacture in the hands of communities
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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 New to the Forum Network
Ingersoll Rand www.ingersollrand.com
RSA Insurance Group Plc Peter Collins, www.rsagroup.com
Since the last issue of Green Futures CIWF (Compassion in World Farming), Coca-Cola Enterprises, Direct Line Insurance Group, Fairtrade Foundation, Innocent drinks, Neal’s Yard Remedies and The Co-operative Energy all joined the network.
innocent www.innocentdrinks.co.uk jessica.sansom@innocentdrinks.co.uk
Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd Celia Cole, +44 (0) 207 695 8382
Innovia Films Lucy Cowton, +44 (0)1697 342 281
SC Johnson Kelly Semrau, +1 262 260 2000 www.scjohnson.com
Interface Europe Ltd Ramon Arratia, +44 (0)20 7490 3960
Shell Foundation www.shellfoundation.org
Colep UK Limited grant.coupland@colep.com +44 (0)1427 858491, www.colep.com
Jaguar Land Rover Fran Leedham fleedham@jaguarlandrover.com
Sime Darby www.simedarby.com
Compassion in World Farming jonty@ciwf.org.uk, www.ciwf.org.uk
John Lewis Partnership Moira Thomas, +44 (0)20 7592 4413
Alliance Boots Ltd Richard.Ellis@allianceboots.com
Crest Nicholson Plc Julia Plaskett, +44 (0)1932 580 499 www.crestnicholson.com
Johnson Matthey Sean Axon, +44 (0)20 7269 8400
AMEC Francesco Corsi, +44 (0)1912 726 128
Cultura Technologies Ltd. www.culturatech.com
Annie’s Inc. www.annies.com
Delhaize Group Megan Hellstedt, mhellstedt@delhaizegroup.com www.delhaizegroup.com
3M Pip Frankish, www.3m.com ABF Plc Rosalyn.schofield@abfoods.com Aimia www.aimia.com AkzoNobel Elizabeth Stokes, +44 (0)1928 511 695
Arjowiggins Graphic jeremy.taylor@arjowiggins.com ARMOR SA Sean.LOFTUS@armor-group.com UK New Business Development Manager
ClimateCare business@climatecare.org, +44 (0)1865 591 000 www.climatecare.org
Delphis Eco Mark Jankovich, +44 (0)20 3397 0096 www.delphisworld.com
Julie’s Bicycle www.juliesbicycle.com Kellogg Europe Trading Limited www.kelloggs.co.uk Kimberly-Clark Europe Tom Berry www.kimberly-clark.com Kingfisher becky.coffin@kingfisher.com
Diageo Plc carolyn.panzer@diageo.com
Kyocera Document Solutions Tracey.Rawling.Church@KyoceraMita.co.uk
Aviva Investors Steve Waygood, +44 (0)20 7809 6000
Direct Line Insurance Group ashley.taylor@directlinegroup.co.uk www.directlinegroup.com
Lafarge Tarmac Ltd Emma Hines, www.lafargetarmac.com
Bank of America Merrill Lynch Matt Hale, +44 (0)20 7996 2054
eBay Inc Lorin May, lmay@ebay.com
Barclays Bank Plc Lauren Iannarone, www.barclays.com
Ecover Philip Malmberg, +32 3 309 2500 www.ecover.com
Ashden Kinga Várnai, +44 (0)20 7410 7023
BioRegional www.bioregional.co.uk Blue & Green Tomorrow alex@blueandgreentomorrow.com simon@blueandgreencommunications.com www.blueandgreentomorrow.com Bowman Ingredients www.bowmaningredients.co.uk BP Shipping www.bp.com/shipping BSkyB fiona.ball@bskyb.com BT Plc Eric.Anderson@bt.com +44 (0)7730 426 189 Bupa Andrew Smith, +44 (0)20 7656 2343 Burberry Limited Jocelyn Wilkinson, +44 (0)20 3367 3100 C&A philip.chamberlain@retail-sc.com Cafédirect PLC John Steel, +44 (0)20 7033 6034 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 Cathay Pacific www.cathaypacific.com Certis Europe www.certiseurope.co.uk
EDF Energy darren.towers@edfenergy.com +44 (0)7875 110 289, Ella’s Kitchen www.ellaskitchen.co.uk EnergyDeck Benjamin Kott www.energydeck.com
Marks & Spencer Plc Rowland Hill PlanA@marksandspencer.com McDonald’s Corporation www.mcdonalds.com Mondelez www.mondelezinternational.com
Fairtrade Foundation www.fairtrade.org.uk
NewsUK www.news.co.uk
FareShare Mark Varney, www.fareshare.org.uk
Nice and Serious Ltd www.niceandserious.com
Finlays Michael Pennant-Jones, +44 (0)20 7802 3239
Nike Inc sarah.severn@nike.com
Firmenich SA Neil McFarlane, +41 227 802 435
Novelis john.gardner@novelis.com
FirstGroup Plc Kate.Broome@FirstGroup.com
OgilvyEarth kathleen.enright@ogilvy.com +44 (0)20 7309 1226
Food and Drink Federation Nicki Hunt, +44 (0)20 7420 7132 FoodTrade Ed Dowding, ed@foodtrade.com FrieslandCampina Nederland B.V. www.frieslandcampina.com GlaxoSmithKline Claire Griffin, www.gsk.com Green Ink Simon Chater, s.chater@greenink.co.uk www.greenink.co.uk
China Navigation Company simon.bennett@swire.com.sg
Hammerson www.hammerson.com
City of London Simon Mills, +44 (0)20 7332 1431
Heineken UK Richard Heathcote, +44 (0)1432 345 277
Clarks International www.clarks.co.uk
HSH Group Natalie Chan, www.hshgroup.com
Coca-Cola Enterprises www.cokecce.co.uk
IGD Toby.Pickard@igd.com
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Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) James Simpson, +44 (0)20 7811 3315
Neal’s Yard remedies susan@nealsyardremedies.com www.nealsyardremedies.com
GrowUp Kate Hoffman, +44 (0)7862 259 566 www.growup.org.uk
Green Futures July 2014
L’Oréal USA www.lorealusa.com
Energy Saving Trust +44 (0)20 7227 0398 www.energysavingtrust.org.uk
Chi Group www.chigroup.co
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Levi Strauss & Co www.levistrauss.com
PepsiCo UK & Ireland Andrew.Slight@pepsico.com PHS Group emmawood@phs.co.uk www.phs.co.uk Plexus Cotton Limited Peter Salcedo, +44 (0)151 650 8888 Pret A Manger Ltd John.Isherwood@pret.com +44 (0)20 7827 8888 Pureprint Group Richard Owers, +44 (0)1825 768 811 Quintain Estates and Development Plc Rebecca Beeson, rbeeson@quintain.co.uk
Skanska Jennifer Clark, +44 (0)1923 776 666 Swire Oilfield Services Richard Sell, www.swireos.com Swire Pacific Offshore simon.bennett@swire.com.sg Target www.target.com Tata Global Beverages Ltd www.tataglobalbeverages.com Taylors of Harrogate Simon.Hotchkin@bettysandtaylors.co.uk Technology Strategy Board Michael.Pitts@tsb.gov.uk www.innovateuk.org Technology Will Save Us www.technologywillsaveus.org Telefónica UK simon.davis@O2.com Tesco Plc Helen Fleming, +44 (0)1992 806 790 The CarbonNeutral Company www.carbonneutral.com The Coca-Cola Company April Crow, www.coca-colacompany.com The Co-operative Energy www.cooperativeenergy.coop The Co-operative Group Chris Shearlock, www.co-operative.coop The Crown Estate Sustainability@thecrownestate.co.uk www.thecrownestate.co.uk The Hershey Company www.thehersheycompany.com The Jordans & Ryvita Company Ltd David Webster, +44 (0)1767 319 415 The Walt Disney Company www.disney.com Thomson Reuters www.thomsonreuters.com TUI Travel Plc Jane Ashton, +44 (0)1293 645 911 Twin and Twin Trading Ltd Nicolas Mounard, +44 (0)20 7375 1221 www.twin.org.uk Unilever Plc Karen.Hamilton@unilever.com +44 (0)20 7822 5917 United Biscuits Alice_Cadman@unitedbiscuits.com United Coffee Beth Langley, Hazel@unitedcoffeeuk.com www.unitedcoffee.com University College London Stephanie Chesters, s.chesters@ucl.ac.uk Virgin Unite www.virginunite.com Volac Andy Richardson, +44 (0)1223 208 021
Rail Safety and Standards Board Shamit Gaiger, +44 (0)20 3142 5380
Whitworths www.whitworths.co.uk
Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc www.rb.com
Willmott Dixon Ltd Rob Lambe, +44 (0)7814 003 046
Rexam Plc John.Revess@rexam.com www.rexam.com
WWF-UK Richard Eaton, Head of Media Relations +44 (0)1483 412383
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SallyUren The future is curation. In many ways, it has been successful. Now, we want to help people not just to imagine a sustainable future but to create it. We are building a new digital platform which will be the interface between a sustainable future and the people who can build it. The content of Green Futures will form the central nervous system of this platform, where we’ll spot connections between signals of the emerging future, and place them in the context of wider patterns of change. Crucially, we will offer a vibrant, interactive space for debate around the most pressing issues of tomorrow, leading to that overwhelming question, ‘What is it we can do?’ The most valuable insights, difficult questions and inspiring stories to come out of these conversations will be brought together in an annual Green Futures Compendium: a collector’s item to both treasure and depend upon. You can look forward to the first edition next January. Change is never easy, but we all have to navigate it. We are offering you a compass.
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WE’LL SPOT CONNECTIONS BETWEEN SIGNALS OF THE EMERGING FUTURE
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Sally Uren is CEO, Forum for the Future. @sallyuren
Photos: Nick Woodford; bestdesigns/iStock/Thinkstock
There is no shortage of data, from an amazing variety of sources, telling us in no uncertain terms that we are in a perilous state, both environmentally and socially. Yet where is the equivalent magnitude of action? Strangely absent. Pioneers in civil society, governments around the world and some businesses are definitely ‘doing their bit’, but there are still too few making real progress to add up to real change. Why? Vested interests, lack of the right policies, market failures: pretty big reasons. However, I think there’s another reason. We’ve become overwhelmed by data. There are megabytes of the stuff every time we switch on our phones, our laptops, our tablets. But it isn’t compelling us to do anything differently. Well, not really. Which is where curation comes in. Instead of just dumping data on our laps, we need skilled curators to dive deeper into the high seas of information, handpick some pearls, help us see them in a complex context, and use these insights to spark interesting conversations. This way, we can begin to explore what to do differently. The interactive nature of the web means we now have an unprecedented capacity to bring people together across sectors and geographies to discuss and, critically, to act on curated content. And so, after 18 years of publishing Green Futures as a quarterly print magazine, we are making a change. This magazine was born from a desire to inspire people, through stories of innovation and visions of the future, to create a wave of change.
www.greenfutures.org.uk
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All change Menka Sanghvi charts her varied career path, from UN associate to global innovation consultant. Tomorrow’s leaders Forum’s MA in Leadership for Sustainable Development is a fast-track, intensive experience, split between seminars, project work and 6 months of practical work placements. The course immerses students in sustainability in a variety of contexts, and opens their eyes to the breadth of possible careers where they can effect change. www.forumforthefuture.org/masters
a master’s in sustainable development, and Forum’s was (and still is) the leading course in that space.
Menka Sanghvi Currently: Partner at social innovation consultancy Reos Partners, Advisor to the Secret Seed Society. Class of: 2003 – 04 Individual leader I most admire: Mahatma Gandhi for his ability to bridge the gap between inner peace and contentment and wanting to change and improve the world. Organisations I most admire: IDEO, for helping boost designthinking and the idea of rapid prototyping for solutions across the board.
Why did you choose the Forum Masters? In my final year as a natural sciences undergraduate, we ran some mock scenarios in which we all had to take on different characters – from farmers, community members and local business people to representatives from environmental groups and corporates. I found it fascinating to see how important it is to understand the whole system in order to negotiate a positive change. I realised then that I wanted to do
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What did you learn from it? The focus on leadership throughout the course was a completely new concept to me. Throughout my career I’ve held the basic idea that who you are as a person is completely fundamental to how successful you will be in creating systemic change. There’s such a strong emphasis on this aspect of the course, and I’ve noticed that, ever since, I’ve always been the first person to ask for feedback so I can learn and grow. It’s something I crave. What made you move from working at the United Nations to Barclays Bank? Although I worked on a great project with an inspiring team at the UN (identifying and celebrating community-led sustainable development initiatives), I struggled to turn ideas into tangible projects. The bureaucracy and risk aversion slow things down, especially in a junior role. I thought the private sector might be more dynamic, and for me that turned out to be true. Although Barclays has its own system that you need to learn to navigate, if you have a great idea your boss’s boss will want to hear it. The private sector tends to be more open to innovation and move faster to respond to opportunities. How does the process of innovation in the social enterprise sector compare? In my hunger to be at the cutting edge of where new ideas come from and how innovation happens, I later moved on to work at the Impact Hub. Through my work there, I got to know so many amazing innovators, and to see how they test and prototype ideas, picking themselves up with incredible
resilience when things don’t go according to plan. The difference between small social enterprises and large organisations is that their success or failure is entirely dependent on the market; there’s not much internal bureaucracy to negotiate, so the market alone decides whether an innovation will be successful. When you study the most successful social innovations of our time, most of them have started off in very small organisations, which have then been iterated, prototyped, before being taken up by larger organisations at scale. It’s at that stage that they really start to make an impact. What do you plan to focus on in the future? I’ve always been open to working on different challenges – from cotton farming to children’s health – because all these complex problems call for innovation. What I’m most interested in is the process of collaboration and how to get different people working together effectively, something I do a lot of in my current role at Reos Partners. If more NGOs, government agencies and businesses knew how to work together effectively, we’d be able to solve so many more problems. Increasingly, I see the question of how to bring the best out in people – their resilience, wellbeing and health – as a crucial part of all the collaborations I work on. When people are in a good place, they’re so much more receptive to new ideas, they’re more open. They’re willing to think more long term about what is good for them and for others, even if it is not optimal for them right now. It’s a huge shift. Menka Sanghvi was in conversation with Katie Shaw.
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Community Energy Fortnight: 13th – 28th September 2014
Fancy finding out how community energy could benefit your local area? Then join us at Community Energy Fortnight! MMUNIT CO
Y
ENERGY RTNIGHT FO
From tours of hydro plants and wind farms, to workshops on generating and saving energy, the Fortnight will run right across the UK. Meet the communities taking control of their energy and find out how you can get involved. Visit ukcec.org for details of events near you.
In association with
@UKCEC | Find us on Facebook: facebook.com/communityenergycoalition
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Competitive edge
Collective intelligence should win sustainable innovation prizes.
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COMPETITIONS THEMSELVES NEED TO EXPERIMENT IN ORDER TO SUCCEED
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Competitors unite around social purpose
Competitions are making a comeback. The Longitude Prize, X Prizes, Virgin Earth Prize and EU Horizon 2020 are among those offering vast sums of money as a reward for solving today’s global challenges. Research suggests that prizes accelerate change by encouraging greater risk taking and sourcing winning ideas from outside the discipline most obviously connected to the challenge. “Competitions offer innovators structure, focus, and importantly, a deadline to work towards”, says Louise Armstrong, who works in the System Innovation Lab at Forum for the Future. “However, they typically play to individualistic instincts, rewarding one person or one team, when the likelihood is that the answers to today’s huge sustainability questions will lie in a collection of solutions.” Forum for the Future and the Technology Strategy Board are working together to explore how to give competitions this ‘additive’ factor, and reward collective intelligence. “Competitions themselves need to experiment and fail in order to succeed”, says Anna Birney, Head of Forum’s System Innovation Lab. “Organisers will find that small amounts of time and money spent today will help larger prizes have more impact tomorrow.” For instance, in 2012, the Technology Strategy Board committed £250 million to innovative projects through 60 competitions across a variety of sectors. Overall, the programme is estimated to have delivered £6.71 additional value for every £1 spent. Almost all (98%) of the projects say they would not have gone ahead without this funding, implying that spreading smaller investments across a number of potential solutions leads to greater impact in the long run.
Not all the money should go into the solutions though. Funding is also needed for spaces in which people can develop ideas and work together, such as hack days or opportunities for end users to contribute to the design and development process. This wider engagement is crucial, says Tris Dyson, Director of Nesta’s Centre for Challenge Prizes – not only for the development of the winning solutions but for the public impact of the award. The winner of the Longitude Prize is decided by public vote – but many also raise questions around the aims of the competition, she says: “There has been a lot of debate around who should win. Plus people are asking if we should be holding this competition at all – another very interesting conversation to have.” Longitude’s prize winner has access to a £10 million prize fund and up to five years to find a solution – but for all entrants there’s value in the days leading up to the award, through interim support and simply the space for participants to work together. “Competitors often unite around the social purpose and lose sight of the fact that they’re in a competition until the prize date draws near – by which time you could have had six months of support and testing”, says Dyson. Competition creators don’t just set the parameters but also support contestants to see the bigger picture, and find the links between potential solutions – a process which takes time. “We sometimes forget that the structure of competitions, as containers for innovation, is almost as important as the ideas themselves”, says Armstrong. Dyson agrees: “You need a very specific finishing line, but not prescribe how you get there.” – Lizzie Rivera
Forum for the Future is currently working with the Technology Strategy Board to inform where it should invest its future funding to catalyse the shift to a circular economy. After conducting a review of the Technology Strategy Board’s previous competitions, Forum is exploring how its competition and other innovation mechanisms can create new value networks to broaden the impact of its investments. By taking a system innovation lens to the Technology Strategy Board’s work, we think the potential for impact and change will be larger as a consequence. For Forum’s support in designing a competition, contact Louise Armstrong: l.armstrong@forumforthefuture.org
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Photo: 4774344sean/iStock/Thinkstock
Getting it right from the start
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Counting on design In a poll result almost as unsurprising as a North Korean election, 70% of respondents told a recent UK opinion survey that they believe good school design helps children learn. Over half also think hospital patients will recover faster in better-designed buildings. Yet these ‘no-brainers’ are seldom acted upon. Sustainable design in the built environment has tended to focus more on tackling energy inefficiency and emissions. Social considerations such as cutting crime may also motivate clients, but ‘softer’ wellbeing objectives like empowerment, sense of security and community are notoriously hard to capture in cost-benefit calculations. Now, a ‘sustainable schools’ project in Bristol is providing both evidence of success. “Staggering success”, in fact – says Jennifer Clark, Director of Environment at Skanska UK, the company that won the construction contract for the Bristol project. Involved in a similar venture for schools in Essex too, Skanska is developing crucial expertise in how social impact is experienced, as well as how it can be monitored and measured. Clark calls this “valuing our values”, an essential element for the company in promoting sustainable construction. “While some sustainability features [like energy saving] can clearly be cost effective”, she says, “in other cases there will be costs, and it matters that these are agreed to be worthwhile. Too often the costs of doing nothing – the social impact of pupils failing in schools, for instance – just go in the ‘too difficult’ box.” For Martin Hunt, an expert on sustainability in the built environment at Forum for the Future, “The holy grail of business cases is to demonstrate the impact that sustainable design, construction and use of buildings can have upon the core purpose and function of that asset – be that healthcare, education, your home or office. Saving carbon emissions or water efficiency just doesn’t cut it on its own.” As a headline indicator, schools in the UK can hardly avoid the importance of exam results. Pupilfriendly design and a strong emphasis on engagement can pay off handsomely in this respect. It may sound trivial, but when pupils help choose the colour of paint, or the names for each floor, it builds the sense that the school is ‘theirs’. In well-designed environments, truancy drops, discipline problems diminish, morale improves, and teaching and learning benefit. In the Bristol schools in the Skanska project, a quarter of pupils were getting five A*-to-C passes at GCSE five years ago; now those rates are between 69% and 94%. There, toilet blocks with no outside doors have helped tackle the fear of out-of-sight bullying, and other abuses too. Visual displays and
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environmental champions among the pupils encourage engagement with cutting energy, water, carbon and waste. Clark, though, is just as keen on the positive anecdotal evidence from pupils. “If it’s difficult to measure, we’re on the right track”, she says. In a similar vein, Skanska ‘designed in’ the engagement of parents and children at a hospital for terminally ill children in Orlando, Florida. Simple considerations, such as letting the children control the colour of lighting, or even raising and lowering the blinds, helped make it a ‘friendlier’ place. Teachers and managers, health workers and administrators, are recognised as key stakeholders for sustainable design. Both recruitment and staff retention get a boost as a result of improvements. Continuing the UK Green Building Council’s work on the business case for green buildings, Skanska is involved in developing a metric relating sustainable office design to productivity. Cost may still come highest in the hierarchy of factors for winning construction contracts, but Clark is keen to stress longer-term thinking, with an understanding of how the use of a building may change over time. Learning spaces, for instance, cannot stay stuck in the old rigid mould where rows of desks face the teacher and blackboard. There’s no greater enemy of sustainability than obsolescence. “We don’t do enough future-proofing”, says Clark, “if we can’t see who is going to pay. It’s a question of coming up with the financial solutions.” Valuing social impact can’t stay in that dreaded ‘too difficult’ box. – Roger East
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Skanska is a Forum for the Future Partner. www.skanska.co.uk
TRUANCY DROPS, DISCIPLINE PROBLEMS DIMINISH, MORALE IMPROVES
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Photo: Bristol Brunel Academy
In sustainable construction the social impact must measure up.
Writing on the wall: Bristol’s Brunel Academy
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Source it up
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UNILEVER AIMS TO SOURCE ALL RAW SUPPLIES SUSTAINABLY BY 2020
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Kenya: sustainable sourcing policies are changing life on the ground for tea farmers
The impact of climate change on crop yields is a major concern, both for the three-in-four people in developing countries who depend on agriculture for their livelihoods and for the global food and drink industry. Mark Driscoll, Head of Food at Forum for the Future, believes food manufacturers, along with their supply chain partners, have a societal responsibility to address these issues – a matter for debate. But they must also do so to ensure the success of their business, he says, securing supply chains “through sustainable sourcing and working with suppliers on continuous improvements.” Alongside this stick, there’s the carrot of increasing consumer demand for sustainably sourced products. The years 2007-2011 saw a 168% growth in UK sales of Fairtrade products. Many multinationals have already responded. Unilever, which buys around 12% of the world’s black tea, 3% of tomatoes and 3% of palm oil, has set a goal of sourcing all of its raw agricultural supplies sustainably by 2020. The partnership it has formed with the Netherlands-based Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) and the Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA) to co-fund farmer field schools is just one example of how this policy is playing out on the ground. Between 2007 and 2012, 450,000 smallholder tea farmers were trained to the Rainforest Alliance standard in preparation for certification – something that will benefit the entire tea industry. For SMEs, however, projects of this scale are simply beyond their means. Even attaining certification for sustainable sourcing can prove costly: the UK statement on sustainable palm oil [November 2013] noted that for companies which may only be using a very small amount of palm oil, the resources associated with membership of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and certification are “operationally and cost prohibitive”. This is not to say SMEs can’t make great strides towards sustainable sourcing, particularly if it is a key part of their brand strategy. Their agility and
flexibility can even lend them an advantage. Take Theo, a Seattle-based chocolate maker which pays between $3,800 and $4,500 per ton for the cocoa beans it sources from the Democratic Republic of Congo – well in excessive of the Fairtrade premium of $200 above the world cocoa price per ton (currently $3,050). Through its partnership with the Eastern Congo Initiative it is helping to train 2,000 farmers in a region most companies avoid, and has secured a supply of high-quality beans. Alter Eco, which sells quinoa, rice, chocolate and sugar, also works directly with small-scale, farmer-owned cooperatives, helping them to develop fair trade and organic practices. It offers long-term contracts at prices that are 10-30% higher than the local market price, with an additional fair trade premium, and prepays for crops so that farmers can plan more effectively for the future. To help more SMEs adopt similarly sustainable approaches to their supply chains, the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) is supporting a WRAP-led project to develop a sustainable sourcing commodity risk assessment tool, which is expected to be ready for testing within businesses later this year. It will help food and drink companies identify and address the potential environmental, social and economic risks within their current business model. A trial should begin later this year with a limited number of commodities, before being expanded to cover a much wider range. The FDF has also produced a guide, ‘Sustainable Sourcing – Five Steps Towards Managing Supply Chain’, to encourage manufacturing businesses to identify critical ingredients and other inputs: where they come from, how secure the source is, and what alternatives there are if it is disrupted. “There is a lot of longer-term gain for businesses of whatever size in asking these hard questions now up front”, says David Bellamy, Environmental Policy Manager at the FDF. He emphasises the importance of talking to suppliers and trade associations in order to “build up a map of your supply chain for each commodity”, which needs to be constantly reviewed over time. Many food and drink SMEs are at the beginning of this process. Indeed, the immediate pressures of surviving in a volatile market place can sometimes outweigh long-term commitments to sustainable sourcing. Driscoll insists on the importance of easy-touse tools, financial support and training to get buyers thinking “beyond cost-effectiveness and profit issues”. It’s no exaggeration to say that the future of these enterprises depends on it. – Duncan Jefferies The Food and Drink Federation is a Forum for the Future Partner. The Sustainable Sourcing guide is available from www.fdf.org.uk
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Photo: nevarpp/iStock/Thinkstock
No food and drink company can afford to be without a sustainable supply strategy.
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Calling card The job of the CEO is to scan the horizon and think about the long term. Clearly you must constantly balance this with attention to the short term – but if you don’t pay attention to the future, you will find that all too soon it becomes the present and you are unprepared for it. When I look forward I clearly see resource scarcity, energy price increases and extreme weather as real and growing threats to the long-term viability of business. These major trends pose a significant challenge to the business-as-usual model we operate, and perhaps the most significant of all is climate change. It is not necessary to be versed in the technical detail of climate science to realise that, when a body of experts are giving a clear warning, it is poor risk management not to listen. This is why I am a signatory to the Trillion Tonne Communiqué (www.climatecommuniques.com) and am actively encouraging other businesses to sign as well. The Trillion Tonne Communiqué has been drawn up by the members of The Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group, to send a signal from the business community to policy-makers gathering in Paris next year. It is asking the negotiators in Paris, and the governments they represent, to join business in thinking both about the short term and the long term by committing to decarbonise the global economy. Their decision is something that will impact business the world over. A successful business requires a little luck combined with three skills: a focus on risk mitigation, seizing the right opportunities, and meticulous execution of your priorities. When it comes to making decisions, I have rarely had the luxury of all the facts. Indeed, it’s far more frequent that I’m offered opinions based on the available evidence. To succeed you have to weigh up what you have and make a decision anyway. The way I see it, when you cut through the complexities, climate change is no different. We know global carbon emissions are rising. We know the world’s population is increasing. We know emissions from countries like China and India will explode as they develop in our footsteps. We know if our planet warms beyond two degrees the consequences are likely to be pretty bad. There’s a strong science-based case to support the view that our activities, rather than natural causes, are causing our planet to warm. There’s a strong science-based case that the best chance of keeping our planet from warming a further two degrees is to ensure we don’t emit more than a trillion tonnes of carbon as carbon dioxide. We know we’ve already spent around half of that trillion tonnes, which means that, if we want
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to succeed, we must urgently do things differently. When presented with a case like that – knowing that failure to act means risking the long-term viability of my business – then I know we need to collectively and boldly make the right choices and investment decisions. I’ve seen the devastating consequences for those that fail to respond to emerging threats: Woolworths, HMV and Focus to name but a few. Recent devastating floods cost billions to UK businesses, home-owners and the Government. More climate change means more extreme events like those floods. Businesses are already feeling the financial impacts of being forced to close and refit premises due to flood or storm damage. We’re already having to displace workers and invest in the clean-up operations of the affected communities we serve. For my business alone we are talking about costs to the tune of tens of millions of pounds. Businesses are the backbone to successfully growing economies: we can’t afford to be awash with floods because we aren’t only piling up sandbags, we are piling up costs – and neither are good. What we need is to hedge. We need to give ourselves the best shot at success and stability. We need the decision-makers in Paris next year to agree and come up with a plan for all the world’s global economies to urgently decarbonise. Business won’t be at the table in Paris next year when decisions are being made that will impact our planet, its people and those of us responsible for growing our economies. That’s why I’m urging businesses – regardless of their size or country – to sign the Trillion Tonne Communiqué. The greater our number and the more united we are, the more our voice will be heard around the table.
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WE AREN’T ONLY PILING UP SANDBAGS, WE ARE PILING UP COSTS
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Photo: Kingfisher
Businesses must lobby for long-term thinking, says Ian Cheshire, Group Chief Executive, Kingfisher.
Sir Ian Cheshire is Group Chief Executive to the world’s third largest home improvement retail Group, Kingfisher. He also chairs the British Retail Consortium and the Prince of Wales’s UK Corporate Leaders Group. Kingfisher is a Forum for the Future Partner. www.kingfisher.com
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Butterfly effect
New life can be born out of old technology
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MOST TECH COMPANIES FAIL TO RECOGNISE THE VALUE OF DISCARDED METALS
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Old mobile phones. They may not be the obvious material for designers building model butterflies, but these are no ordinary butterflies: they are interactive, digital ones purposefully built out of discarded smartphone components as part of a project to encourage more people to recycle old devices. Commissioned by O2 Recycle, these robotic creations were unveiled at London’s Natural History Museum ahead of World Environment Day in early June, and will be on display at The O2 arena over the summer. Advanced coding algorithms incorporated into the butterflies mean that each ‘creature’ responds in a unique way every time it interacts with a person. Their wings, for example, display a constantly evolving bespoke pattern across the handset screens from which they are built. Extendable antennae and laser eyes also feature in their make-up, representing different species. The World Bank estimates that approximately three-quarters of the global population now has at least one mobile phone – gadgets facilitating everything from microhealth payments in Kenya to earthquake early warning systems in Japan. But frequent phone discards are a massive problem: search for ‘electronic waste’ in Google Images for perturbing pictures of mobile phone mountains and children dismantling gadgets containing hazardous chemicals. The scale of e-waste is unknown – something the United Nations is addressing by mapping comparable, country-level data as part of its StEP initiative. Last year, a study by Telefonica UK – better known through its O2 brand – estimated that there are 70 million unused mobile handsets in the UK, for example, and an additional 30 million new phones sold annually. Aware of its role as a key player in the telecommunications world, O2 is looking for ways to influence consumer behaviour to reduce waste. In 2010, it launched the first scheme in the UK to rate handsets out of five according to their environmental impact, how they help people lead more sustainable lives and the ethical performance of the manufacturer. Now, it’s moving from the choice of handset to how
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the consumer uses it, and what happens when they no longer want it. The digital butterflies are part of O2’s up-cycling campaign to raise awareness of O2 Recycle, a project designed to minimise e-waste. “Many people underestimate the importance of recycling e-waste”, says Dr Gareth Rice, Head of Environment at O2. “Unwanted devices often end up languishing in drawers or, worse, are thrown in the bin and end up in landfill sites where they can cause huge environmental problems. We want to encourage more people to recycle their old technology through O2 Recycle. In creating these unique butterflies, we’re seeking to highlight how new life can be born out of old technology.” O2 Recycle, part of the O2 Think Big environment initiative, offers cash payments of up to £260 for unwanted gadgets to both O2 and non-O2 customers. To date, the project has recycled over one million devices and given a total of £77 million to customers in return for items such as mobile phones, tablets, MP3 players, digital cameras and SatNavs. It has invested a proportion of the profits into the Think Big youth fund, helping to support over 5,000 community projects across the country. But what’s in it for O2? According to Aaron Hay, Senior Sustainability Advisor at Forum for the Future, the business opportunity has never been greater: “Most tech companies don’t have a full handle on the sheer magnitude of the e-waste problem and its negative social impacts – not to mention the value of the metals being abandoned by leaving disposal choices up to consumers. There’s also real evidence to show that consumers with limited budgets are starting to tire of the endless treadmill of newest, brightest smartphones, instead looking to the secondary market for lightly-used, highly-trusted alternative kit. There’s clearly a business opportunity here, and O2 is tapping into that in a way that prioritises customers – by offering several financial incentives to recycle almost any phone from any customer, O2 or not.” Critics might argue that O2 could have put their time, money and upcycled phones to better use. But Chris Cairns, Creative Director at the design agency behind the butterflies, isthis.gd, argues that there’s a way to go before the real value and potential of e-waste is widely recognised: “We wanted to give the ‘old and forgotten’ a new lease of life, and showcase the fact that even the discarded can emerge as something new and beautiful. This is what upcycling and O2 Recycle is all about.” – Tess Riley Telefónica is a Forum for the Future Partner. www.telefonica.com
Photo: Telefónica
Interactive bugs put the spotlight on e-waste.
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Mill to mill ‘Collaboration’ has been the buzz word among innovative companies for some time now, and as its benefits become ever more apparent, it’s gaining momentum across all industries. The voluntary and community sector is notoriously good at forming alliances. The economic downturn led the UK’s previously disparate housing industry to venture into new partnerships that are being upheld, such as those between developers and regeneration experts. Now, industries are realising that good energy management means collaboration within – as well as beyond – their own factory walls, and are starting to join up best practice internally. One standard established to support this is ISO 50001, a certificate from the International Organization for Standardization, which sets out the international standard for energy management system (EnMS) requirements. Successful implementation requires constant commitment from all levels and functions of a company, and is based on a Plan–Do–Check–Act continual improvement framework. Global paper manufacturer Arjowiggins Graphic has just received the ISO 50001 certificate for implementing best practice in energy management across all four of its manufacturing sites. Already a leader in the development of low-energy and lowcarbon paper, the systems the company is currently putting in place have the potential to save a further 30,000MWh – the equivalent of one week’s energy consumed by its three paper mills and de-inking plant, based in France. The target is to decrease the energy consumption by 2% a year. “Environmental performance and energy management are rooted in Arjowiggins Graphic culture and have been a priority since the creation of the company”, says Chief Executive, Agnes Roger. Achieving improvements in energy performance and efficiency in line with ISO 50001 required the company to approach these objectives in a more consistent and systematic way – crucially, with the individual production units sharing knowledge, expertise and best practices. This involved setting up a steering committee made up of representatives from each of the mills. Their first step was to conduct a comprehensive analysis of energy flow, from providing detailed reports on the energy consumption of machinery to examining support functions such as HR and purchasing. All data was made available to each site so that the most energy-consuming processes could be targeted and improved. By implementing a crossfunctional and cross-mill strategy, the committee was
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able to identify the most efficient solutions. In total, it earmarked more than 50 areas for improvement. Half of the projects relate to technical development or investments. The other half are linked to the sharing of information and providing training on energy issues at all levels across the business. So far, they have implemented more than 40% of the projects – including revamping the drying section insulation of the paper machine at one site, and training paper and coating machine managers, across all sites, on energy consumption and the standards that need to be followed. The committee is managed by Gilles Lhermitte, Brand Sustainabilty Director, and meets up once a month to follow up the global implementation of the project. Local actions are managed by each mill’s representative. Key performance indicators are used to continually measure and monitor each action, with regular energy audits carried out to evaluate potential improvements. The management of the ISO 50001 project has led to a powerful opportunity for team building and expertise sharing. Certification means that energy is now demonstrably an integral part of Arjowiggins Graphic’s management system, which already adheres to ISO standards in quality, environment, and health and safety. The company maintains that its green strategy and commitment to innovation gives its business a competitive edge and boosts its brand’s image. “By providing customers with the highest standard of recycled papers Arjowiggins Graphic is able to offer sustainable alternatives, helping to reduce our customers’ impact on the environment as well as that of our own business,” says Roger. – Lizzie Rivera Arjowiggins Graphic is a Forum for the Future partner. www.recycled-papers.co.uk
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THE TARGET IS TO DECREASE ENERGY CONSUMPTION BY 2% A YEAR
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Photo: Greenfield Mill, Arjowiggins Graphic
Successful energy management requires best practice beyond the factory wall.
Greenfield Mill: the European leader in premium quality recycled pulp production
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Using data well
Consumer data: there are commercial benefits in using it wisely
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THE FOCUS NEEDS TO BE ON THE VALUE THE CAMPAIGN ADDS, AND NOT SIMPLY ON SALES
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From multi-media campaigns enlisting the cream of Britain’s creative industries, to more effective targeting of data, brands are finding smarter approaches to direct marketing – to the benefit of companies and consumers alike, say experts. “It comes down to a balance of trust and a value exchange”, says Mike Lordan, Director of External Affairs at the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). For brands, this means the focus needs to be on the value the campaign adds, and not simply on sales: “Consumers today expect that if they give a brand their details, they are going to be used appropriately and they will get value back. We are seeing very much more sophisticated methods of direct marketing and companies are targeting much more effectively in order to meet their customers’ needs.” While consumers today face an unprecedented barrage of marketing messages from a proliferation of channels, they also want to find the latest products, get the best deals and maintain a relationship with brands they like. The triumvirate of permission, reward and control are key in forging lasting relationships, says Lordan. “The companies that are thriving are the ones talking to customers in the way they want to be talked to: using not too much information, and in relevant and timely ways.” Some 23% of UK sales are generated by direct marketing, according to 2011 figures, and almost three-quarters of UK business engage in some form of direct marketing. Marketers are increasingly taking time to hone their strategy and target thier audience before rolling out a campaign, saving money and often energy in the process by reducing paper and postage or cleaning up data. Direct marketers can use suppression files to bring their databases bang up-to-date. Richard Owers, Director of Pureprint, observes, “Using more accurate and more targeted data for printed direct marketing campaigns means that we print less and our customers get higher response rates. Less waste and a lesser use of resources means that better data is greener data.” For Lordan, there are also obvious commercial
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benefits in using data more wisely. “Blanket emails to people who might not have an interest in your products are more likely to illicit unsubscribes than positive actions”, he argues. “It’s a case of giving customers good deals, being reliable, transparent and contacting them in a one-to-one way so they don’t feel they have been mass marketed to.” Moreover, he adds, good marketers are being scrupulous in attaining the customers’ permission too: “The use of people’s data shouldn’t be hidden away on page 63 of the terms and conditions, but visible and clear. We don’t approve of pre-ticked, opt-in boxes. If customers want to opt in, it should be a positive action on their behalf.” Lordan cites the example of supermarket reward card schemes – a loyalty-based marketing programme – as one notable success. Shoppers get discounts while the supermarkets amass information about their customers’ preferences. In general, DMA research shows that email and brand websites are the most effective channels for information exchange. Cost is a driver too, with brands keen to maximise the return on their investment in financially straitened times. Here, creativity is king. Leading environmental paper manufacturer Arjowiggins Graphic launched its 100% recycled Cyclus paper range with a nine-week campaign in June. Childhood was the focus, and specifically children’s education, through a link-up with charity SOS Children’s Villages France. Targeting potential customers in 36 countries, the campaign comprised 56,950 mailers, a notepad, brochure, web banners, adverts and a dedicated website, and, for each free Cyclus notepad ordered, Arjowiggins Graphic committed to pay a child’s school fees. Included in the mailer was an origami fortune teller, inviting people to “step back within their childhood” and have fun personalising it with their own text. “We wanted something the recipient could interact with, a feel-good factor”, said Angela De Vorchick, Operational Marketing Manager at Arjowiggins Graphic. “We thought this had universal appeal. Marketing now needs to be something which resonates with your audience and really captures their attention.” As the DMA’s Customer Acquisition Barometer 2014 reads: “Consumers will forgive brands knowing a lot about them, as long as they get something back.” It seems that the more marketers can take the customer along with them, and the more each side understands the other, the better for both. – Lucy Purdy Pureprint is a Forum for the Future Partner. www.pureprint.com
Photo: LDProd/iStock/Thinkstock
Innovations in direct marketing allow brands to build better relationships.
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On stewardship The concept of ‘stewardship’ is well known within the corporate sustainability field, thanks to the work of organisations like the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). However, far too few businesses think about their own sustainability strategies in this way – something we at WWF hope to address by encouraging more of them to act as ‘corporate stewards’. There are three elements to the approach we advocate. First, businesses must recognise that sourcing natural resources presents risk and opportunity, in terms of supply chain resilience and reputation. Businesses must then manage this risk by changing supply chains and working in collaboration with other users of the resource. Finally, they need to advocate for better policy and implementation governing the management of the resource, in order to deliver long-term solutions. Our corporate stewardship model has evolved in part from our work on water stewardship with companies like SABMiller, one of the world’s largest beer producers. WWF is helping SABMiller address water risk in its hops supply chain through a project involving nine farmers and a conservancy in the George region of South Africa – a priority area for WWF as part of the Cape Floral Region, a biodiversity hotspot. For water-reliant businesses, water scarcity and quality issues pose real and long-term business risks. In the past, the tendency has been for businesses to focus on managing this risk by ensuring the efficient consumption of the water over which they have direct control. This has limitations. Businesses can be water efficient or even use relatively small amounts of water, but if they are operating in a water-stressed catchment where rules and allocations are non-existent, or where water is apportioned poorly to people and ecosystems, then they will be exposed to risk. The converse is also true: those pursuing efficiency in water-abundant areas may not be making best use of their capital, and could invest in other issues. We’ve shown the value of a different approach, one where businesses build on the efficiencies made to their supply chains by looking beyond their ‘factory fence’. Only by accepting the shared nature of the water risks faced and the mutual benefit of working with others – businesses, local communities, NGOs and governments – can long-term supply chain resilience be effectively built. The same goes for the management of forests, fisheries and other natural resources. This emphasis on collaboration in delivering stewardship is rapidly gaining traction within the financial community as a principle for ensuring
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responsible investment. For example, the Banking Environment Initiative recently kicked off a project, in partnership with the Consumer Goods Forum. It aims to mobilise the banking industry as a whole around the need to help transform ‘soft commodity’ supply chains, helping clients achieve zero net deforestation by 2020. The importance of collective action raises the case for sector-wide voluntary standards for sourcing responsibly – such as FSC, MSC and, more recently, the Alliance for Water Stewardship. It can also lead businesses to advocate for stronger rules and regulations governing the use of natural resources, rather than appealing for more deregulation. This is an important feature of the stewardship model. Why? Because any business that attempts to source in a sustainable way can find its efforts undermined by competitors who don’t play by the same rules. A levelplaying field ensures that all businesses can access the resource in the long run, irons out idiosyncrasies in the market, and ensures everyone is clear on what is expected of them. Take the EU Timber Regulations, designed to combat the trade in illegal timber. Faced with the competitive threat posed by businesses sourcing illegally and the reputational damage inflicted on the sector, a critical mass of timber businesses helped shape the case for regulatory reform. They changed themselves, and also acted as agents of change. The transition to a world of corporate stewards won’t happen overnight. But several of our partner businesses have already taken significant steps. Coca-Cola is working with WWF and other NGOs to improve its practice on the ground and advocate for better management of UK rivers. Another is M&S: through its commitment to responsible seafood sourcing, it’s performing the role of a key advocate for regulatory reform on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing practices. These companies aren’t just acting philanthropically. They understand that corporate stewardship is good for business as well as for the environment.
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STEWARDSHIP IS GAINING TRACTION WITHIN THE FINANCIAL COMMUNITY
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Photo: aaprophoto/iStock/Thinkstock
Businesses can protect their own future as well as the planet’s, says WWF’s Stuart Poore.
Cape Sugarbird: one of South Africa’s regional treasures
Stuart Poore is Director of Corporate Stewardship, WWF-UK. WWF-UK is a Forum for the Future Partner. www.wwf.org.uk
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Feedback You, dear readers, have always been valuable contributors to the debate, well before social media picked up. As we look forward to more interaction with you in the future, here are a few of our favourite letters from over the years. @GreenFutures
GF14, January 1999
You don’t have to be white Martin Wright’s piece, ‘Do you have to be white to be Green?’ (GF13, p24), was welcome and apposite. However, I am concerned lest it leave a feeling that there are not at least some examples of good practice in dealing with the ‘white’ image of green activities. For instance, Hackney Council is now hung, with the balance of power controlled by the Green Party. The local party has had candidates from all the Borough’s main ethnic groups, and the two Green councillors would not have got in if they had not had the votes of many ethnic minority voters. Of course, not all is sweetness and light. In fact, there are still many aspects where progress needs to be made, particularly in involving a wide audience in campaigning: avoiding the more esoteric aspects of ‘green trees and save the whales’ helps… It is imperative that we erstwhile Greens ensure that we are not mere
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cliques, but engage the widest community possible. Martin’s article will help, I hope. – David Fitzpatrick, one-time Green Party National Speaker
GF29, July 2001
Practice what you preach I find your magazine informative. However it concerns me that it arrives in plastic packaging. I am afraid I found it rather hypocritical, for instance, when you carried an article in your last issue, on envelopes not being suitable for recycling due to the plastic address window. However, the envelope which your magazine arrived in had the very same. I am also interested to know whether the magazine is printed on post-consumer waste paper? Why don’t you offer your subscription as an email or password access site to save on paper? I would like to see a government policy introduced making it compulsory for all magazines, newspapers, books, envelopes and fliers to be printed on postconsumer waste paper. These things don’t really need to be of the utmost quality, and are discarded very rapidly. Does your magazine believe that such a policy would be feasible? – Isobel Honeyborne We replied back in 2001, saying that we intended to look into the packaging issue – and we did! Shortly after, we switched to SUPERECO bags, made of a biodegradable biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) film which is recyclable, and non-toxic in landfill. Our aim was always to produce a gorgeous, glossy magazine whilst maintaining the highest environmental standards. From the start, we printed on 100% recycled paper, using the environmental print technology and vegetable-based inks of Pureprint (formerly Beacon Press), developed back in 1990. Since then, Pureprint has gone on to win numerous awards for its environmental achievements, including the Queen’s Award for Enterprise 2013 – Sustainable Development. Since 2011, Green Futures has been printed on 100% recycled Cocoon Silk paper, supplied by Arjowiggins Graphic. We have seen for ourselves the complex, but very efficient, process of turning waste paper into white pulp, into
the crisp sheets you’ll find in our magazine, at the Greenfield Mill near Paris. Arjowiggins Graphic produces a nifty tool to remind customers of the difference printing on recycled papers makes: an Environmental Benefits Statement (EBS) which lists the savings for water, electricity, greenhouse gases, wood and landfill, compared with the same amount of virgin paper. You’ll find one on every recent copy of Green Futures.
GF45, April 2004
Buildings can go to the sustainability ball Over 50% of your last issue was on the built environment. By coincidence, 50% of CO2 comes from our energy use in buildings – not 25% as stated on p31 [in GF44], where I am sure the author meant 25% from homes. A simple mistake, but worth labouring the point: buildings cause twice the annual CO2 of transport, and twice that of industry. Buildings, the Cinderella of the sustainability story, are the place where our most important lifestyle shifts will take place. As Robert Webb asserts in his calm and assured exchange of fire with Nico Macdonald, sustainability will drive innovation, improve quality of life, enrich our culture and create more beautiful things around us. I agree that the way the world will change is with a few people being seen having great fun (and doing well) while doing good. Hip not hippy, cool not cold, smart not smug, and sexy not sexed up. As Anthony Turner, Jonathan Reed and I wrote in a recent letter to The Independent, “Just as our unthinking use of carbon-derived fuel is the problem, so will changes to these habits be the solution. Our social herd instinct can yet save us! It will soon be cool to be ‘carbonlite’, de rigueur to switch to a green tariff, and passé to drive a gas-guzzling SUV. Solar energy meets our species needs many times over. The carbon fuel era is over. The writing is on the wall, if not yet in the papers.” I believe 2004 will see the world truly wake up to climate change, and we will see massive social change this year. Dave Hampton, ABS Consulting, Construction Industry Council (CIC) Sustainable Development Group
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AT THE HEART OF THE GREEN FUTURES STORY HAS BEEN A CONSTANT DESIRE TO CELEBRATE INNOVATION
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I first dreamed up the idea of Green Futures almost exactly 20 years ago – the year Forum for the Future was officially incorporated as a charity. Something like it had been in my mind since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992: the first time in my life where I’d maxed out on sustainable solutions, positive energy and putting the world to rights via ‘we can’ rather than ‘you can’t’. Green Futures was to be the physical embodiment of everything that Forum for the Future was to stand for – and has done since then: an upbeat celebration of all those individuals, organisations and technologies that are helping make sustainability happen. Looking back on that time, there wasn’t much ‘solutions brokerage’ going on – and certainly not harnessing the creative energy of the private sector or civil society, or actively promoting sustainable technologies. One of our most generous funders in those early days only supported us because he thought we were completely crazy. “I’ll be very surprised indeed if you can find enough ‘good news stories’, as you describe them, to fill that many pages. But prove me wrong!” Graciously, he was the first to acknowledge that we did. These days, the world is awash with sustainable solutions initiatives of every kind – in print, online, on the ground, in the ether, in business, in civil society and even (somewhat inconsistently) in politics. That’s one brilliant turnaround! But the weird thing is that only a tiny minority of people have access to this world – and that’s something that the next iteration of Green Futures will seek to address head-on, largely through a new online platform. At the heart of the Green Futures story has been a constant desire to celebrate innovation – in products, processes, technologies and systems. In issue after issue, we’ve set out to ‘showcase’ a handful of those innovations, tiny but significant pointers to the kind of high-tech, aspirational future which we so urgently need people to embrace. ‘Living more sustainably’ can be a rather dry and dusty idea. But language matters. And being true to the vision of sustainability matters, too. Over 20 years, Green Futures has seen different slogans and labels come and go with predictable regularity. I have to admit to a growing intolerance of people who talk about sustainability as ‘worthy’ or ‘boring’, or of ‘green’ as
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yesterday’s theme. This is just so much irrelevant froth, in my opinion. What matters is the continuing integrity of the big idea of ‘sustainability’, measured by the values it stands for, by change on the ground, and by bold and outspoken leadership. In that regard, Green Futures has been blessed. It was always part of the plan to support the magazine through a group of partners ‘investing’ in it. Their ‘partner pages’ have provided a different kind of showcase for corporate and NGO success stories. So profound is the prevailing cynicism in our media today that it gets harder and harder for organisations to celebrate the ‘good stuff’ they are helping to make happen. That inevitably means there is some risk of corporate ‘greenwash’ being sloshed around the pages of Green Futures, but we’ve had mercifully little of this – thanks in no small measure to ruthless editorial standards! Green Futures has had just four editors: Alex Goldsmith, Martin Wright, Roger East and Anna Simpson – all ably supported by a very small number of totally dedicated staff, interns and volunteers. For around 15 of those 20 years, Martin and I did the heavy lifting when money was tight, and kept evolving the magazine to fit the times. Both of us will miss the feel, quality and substance of the physical magazine. Personally, I’m just one of those dinosaurs whose brain operates so much better working off the printed page rather than reading things online – a disability compounded by a habit (that goes back to my time as an English teacher) of highlighting, annotating and generally defacing whatever it is I’m reading. Even the pristine pages of Green Futures! That said, there are very exciting times ahead for all that ‘futures content’, enabling us to achieve an even bigger impact, both through a new, annual Green Futures Compendium, and through the work of our forthcoming Futures Centre in Singapore [see p14]. Over the last 20 years, we’ve seen just how impactful ‘bringing the future into the present’ can be – not least because it is the best way of warding off feelings of despair and powerlessness in a world gone mad. From Save the Earth (a book I did with the wonderful Peter Kindersley at the time of the Earth Summit in 1992) through to my latest book, The World We Made, I seem to have spent a huge amount of time providing myself, and anyone else who would listen, with as rich a litany of ‘reasons to be cheerful’ as I could lay my hands on! Green Futures has been the rock around which a lot of that empowerment story has been constructed, and long may that continue. Jonathon Porritt is Founder Director of Forum for the Future www.forumforthefuture.org. His latest book, The World We Made (£24.95, Phaidon) is available from www.phaidon.com/store
Photo: Nick Woodford / Forum for the Future
JonathonPorritt
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Shaping our future together AMEC is a focused supplier of consultancy, engineering and project management services to its customers worldwide. With annual revenues of some £4 billion, AMEC designs, delivers and maintains strategic and complex assets and employs around 27,000 people in more than 40 countries worldwide. Sustainability is a guiding principal, central to our values as a business, and we are proud to support Green Futures as a partner organisation. If you’d like to discuss how AMEC can help shape your sustainable future, call us on 0800 371733 or email francesco.corsi@amec.com, your Green Futures partner contact.
www.greenfutures.org.uk One million UK homes provided with wind energy from consents obtained by AMECGreen Futures
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Co-chair of the Green Construction Board Mike Putnam President and CEO, Skanska UK
Work with inspirational leaders At Skanska, we believe construction with near-zero environmental impact is a realistic goal. We’re looking for people who share our values. Do you? More information about our roles and how to apply can be found at skanska.co.uk/careers.
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skanska.co.uk/careers
twitter.com/skanskaukplc
linkedin.com/company/skanska
youtube.com/skanskauk
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