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creative disruption:
No.82 October 2011
strategies for a new paradigm Event + Intelligence: Green Paper | Benchmark Survey | Commodity Exposure Index | GREENPRINT
16th November. The Royal Society, London. SW1Y 5AG The next generation of Sustainability strategies are transforming business models, building platforms for revenue growth and better margins. Why are companies such as Nissan, M&S, Siemens and PepsiCo thinking differently, and seeing opportunities where others are seeing challenges? Green Strategy 2011 is designed for leaders in the strategy, operations, supply and Sustainability functions. It goes beyond CSR and compliance into change management and core business strategy.
Speakers: Steve Howard Chief Sustainability Officer, IKEA
Michael Liebreich Chief Executive, Bloomberg New Energy Finance
Mark Fulton Managing Director: Global Head of Climate Change Investment Research, Deutsche Bank
Andy Wiggins Group Innovation Director, Kingfisher
Horst Tore-Land Director, Ecomagination
Martyn Seal Director of Sustainability – Europe, PepsiCo
Our Summit event on the 16th November will give you:
Access to the leading business strategies on Sustainability Exposure to views from a variety of functions – including strategy and innovation Unique research allowing you to assess your company’s dependence on key resources – Commodity Exposure Index
Chance to analyse the leaders in depth – Green Paper
A personalised Benchmark report – Benchmark Survey
Opportunity to share and collaborate – round tables and a final group session. Chaired by leading experts from M&S, Diageo, Kingfisher, Tesco and more An ideas menu to build your change management programme – GREENPRINT
Green Strategy brings together the best of the Green Monday programme, which has brought in 7,000 attendees in the last 3 years. It is only available to 250 people and it will sell out. Please join us at www.greenstrategyconference.com Exhibitors:
Partners:
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James Cameron Executive Director & Vice Chairman, Climate Change Capital
Mike Barry Head of Sustainable Business, M&S
Material world What will we use to build the future?
Big brother gone green: can surveillance save the planet? Shopped out: a world of difference for tomorrow’s consumer Bouncing ideas: the creative power of warm bodies in a room
About Us
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Green Futures is the leading international magazine on environmental solutions and sustainable futures. It was founded by Jonathon Porritt in 1996 to showcase examples of practical and desirable change, and is published by Forum for the Future. Our readership includes key decision-makers and opinion-formers in business, government, education and non-profit organisations. We work with a select group of partners who demonstrate a strong commitment to sustainable development. In return for a contribution towards the cost of producing Green Futures, we offer our partners the
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True story. Some years ago, a friend of mine was standing at the edge of a Scottish loch on a glistening blue spring morning. The sun sparkled off the water, the hills rose soft and green around. My friend stood alone, drinking it all in. Suddenly a car drew up, and a man got out. He agreed it was a wonderful morning, strode briskly to the edge of the water, and lifted his video camera to his eye. He was just zooming in on a heron perched on a rock, when two children tumbled out of the car behind him and ran down to the water. “Hey, you kids get back in there!”, the man shouted. “You can look at it when we get home!” Never in human history has our relationship with nature been so mediated. Technology allows us to see more of the world than ever, to monitor and measure virtually every inch of it. And meanwhile, it seems, we spend less and less time away from the screen, experiencing it for ourselves. But that doesn’t mean we should cast our cameras and laptops into the nearest loch. On the contrary… In ‘Big Brother Gone Green’ [p20], we track some of the imaginative ways in which people are using the latest sensing and monitoring technology to guard endangered species, pinpoint pollution and even help rainforest tribes defend their birthright. Reassuringly, perhaps, some things are still better unmediated. Brainstorming, for example. In ‘Connect Force’ [p30], we discover how, when it comes to dreaming up bright ideas to tackle big problems, you can’t beat a bunch of warm bodies in a room. Such a phrase might also neatly describe one of tomorrow’s common consumer experiences. We’ve become so used to a world where big brands supply and we buy, that the future is sure to surprise us. Sally Uren’s ‘Shopping for Tomorrow’ [p26] unveils a range of possible scenarios that could see today’s shoppers become tomorrow’s swappers – or leasers, or even producers, too. It doesn’t mean that the big brands are shuffling off to a dinosaur graveyard. Far from it. They have a huge role to play in the shift to something approaching sustainable consumption. But they will have to adapt to some bracing new realities – or wither in the fire of smart competition. Smart upstarts are at the heart of some extraordinary innovations in materials, too [‘Material World’, p16] – promising a future where murals clean the air; where buildings heal themselves; and where roofs and windows change with the weather to warm us up or cool us down. Our homes might even respond to our presence – our movements, our heartbeat, our scent… Meanwhile, it’s easy to forget that for upwards of a billion people, the height of home lighting technology is still a dirty wick suspended in a saucer of highly inflammable kerosene. Which makes this issue’s profile [‘The man who put the sun in a box’, p32] all the more heartening. Andrew Tanswell’s business, ToughStuff, has now sold around 150,000 simple solar lanterns, many times brighter than their kerosene equivalent, and infinitely safer, too – and all without a penny in subsidy. If you’re after an example of genuinely sustainable consumption, you can’t get much better than that.
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Green Futures October 2011
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Contents 5
Number 82 October 2011
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32 13
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30
24
Features
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Briefings
Regulars
Partner viewpoints
4 The future in context Peter Madden
40 City break out When electric cars roam free Ecotricity
16 M aterial world Alex Goldmark and Anna Simpson profile the revolutionary new materials and designers who are reshaping our cities.
26 Shopping for tomorrow Brand loyalty is at the heart of today’s consumer culture, says Sally Uren, but could it also drive tomorrow’s sustainable living?
The latest in green innovation, including:
20 B ig Brother gone green? Technology is giving us unprecedented oversight of our environment – but are we losing sight of wisdom in a storm of data? Hugh Knowles and Martin Wright assess the evidence.
30 Connect force When it comes to creativity, discovers Adam Oxford, you can’t beat a bunch of warm bodies in a room.
7W hen plastic bags save lives Simple sanitation solution could boost crop growth, too
32 T he man who put the sun in a box Andrew Purvis meets Andrew Tanswell.
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6 They know when the wind will blow Why intermittent breezes won’t threaten the grid
8S almon and milk beat cotton and silk New materials and techniques to transform fashion 11 The only way is up Vertical farming set to soar
24 A thousand words A picture of the past, painted by satellite 35 Forum update Channelling corporate cash to low carbon communities; Bristol businesses slash CO2; Sally Uren: surviving a double dip 46 Feedback Readers respond online and in print 48 Jonathon Porritt Ray Anderson: sustainability hero
41 Paper chain Why recycled paper always adds up Arjowiggins Graphic
COVER SHOT Our photo shows the lattice-like structure of graphene, one of a range of new materials which holds out the prospect of a revolution in connectivity. Front cover: wavy graphene by Jannik Meyer
42 Spreading the word Awards help the good guys stand out from the crowd Skanska 45 Business from scratch The rise and rise of the smart upstart WWF-UK
13 Miracle material Skinny graphene sparks a revolution
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Green Futures October 2011
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Peter Madden
Briefings
The future in context
Iceland fires up energy exports Geothermal power set to sweep into Europe Iceland is poised to begin exporting its surplus geothermal energy to Europe, thereby boosting its economy and increasing the share of the continent’s power needs which can be met by renewable sources. Electricity utility Landsvirkjun has announced plans to build the world’s longest submarine high
Cities are getting smarter …but can those in charge keep up?
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Of course, optimising resource use and cutting waste will go a long way towards making our cities more sustainable. But there is no guarantee that their total environmental impact will be reduced in line with planetary limits. The danger is that managing individual problems more efficiently may, in some cases, lead to rebound or displacement effects – where new impacts are generated elsewhere. For example, smarter management of road space can just lead to more people driving on more parts of the road network for more hours of the day. And we know that when people save time and money in one area of their lives, they sometimes spend those savings on other stuff. And so city leaders can’t just put their feet up and expect new technology to solve our problems. They’ll have to set strict environmental limits and implement robust supporting policies if these technologies are to be developed and deployed in ways that are truly smart.
Biomass goes massive
Photos: Icer0ck/Thinkstock; Oleg Mitiukhin/Thinkstock
Peter Madden is Chief Executive, Forum for the Future.
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Clearly the sheer scale of the project provides an immediate hurdle, and financing would need to come from a range of sources. While Landsvirkjun has previously issued bonds and agreed loans with the European Investment Bank and state-owned Landsbanki, other options include the kind of club lending deals seen in the offshore wind sector. With concern over energy security and fluctuating oil and gas prices across Europe, an injection of ‘home grown’ renewable power has increasing economic and political appeal. Earlier this year, search engine giant Google bought a stake in the proposed $5 billion Atlantic Wind Connection. This transmission line is intended to carry up to 6GW of energy generated from offshore wind farms – a recent example of the growing scale of these projects, as well as potential costs. – Benjamin Chambers
Waste not
World’s largest gasification plant set to open in Finland
Photos: Thinkstock
In the future, most of us will be living in ‘smart cities’. Some of these will be brand new settlements, built from scratch in rapidly growing economies. Most, however, will be the outcome of re-engineering our existing cities, overlaying the physical infrastructure with digital information to help them function more efficiently. Our urban streetscapes may look the same to the naked eye, but they will be dense with data. Millions of embedded sensors will share information with software, which will transform intricate patterns into tools. Expect to see vehicles that drive themselves and select their own routes to avoid congestion, cut pollution and reduce fuel use. The very fabric of the city – its roofs, waterways and roads – will be used to generate energy, distributed through a finely calibrated smart grid. Cities will develop a collective consciousness, built from realtime mood mapping, collaborative online platforms, and an advanced understanding of millions of people’s everyday actions. There are trends taking us in this direction. The world is becoming steadily more urban. Cities demand ever more fuel and food, and are spitting out more pollution and waste. The pressure this places on the environment demands complex management – and this is where the explosive growth of information technology comes in. Our big cities already have a sophisticated digital infrastructure, with fixed-line broadband, mobile phone coverage and GPS pretty much everywhere. We can expect this capacity to multiply with the arrival of the so-called ‘internet of things’, with sensors embedded in everything, overlaying reality and producing massive amounts of data. Multiple smart city experiments are already underway. Billions of pounds are being poured into smart grid development. Existing information on how our cities function is being shared and analysed through initiatives like America Online and London Datastore, while low-impact communities are being built from Fujisawa in Japan to Abu Dhabi’s Masdar.
It’s hot up north
voltage direct current (HVDC) power cable, reaching up to 1,900km, which could interconnect with the proposed European offshore ‘supergrid’. If completed, this could see renewable electricity flow across the continent, including geothermal from Iceland, wind from the North Sea, and solar from southern Europe. Geothermal already supplies over a quarter of Iceland’s energy needs, including 90% of its heating. But this represents a fraction of its total geothermal potential, with accessible capacity estimated at around five times the current amount. According to Peter Rose, geothermal specialist at the University of Utah, the promise of export revenues via the new cable could provide the economic incentive needed to exploit this resource to the full. “It would provide a huge market that would spur development”, he says.
Finland has announced plans for the world’s largest biomass gasification plant, a 140MW facility running mainly on forest waste. Its performance is set to be closely watched by renewable energy experts, utility companies and governments across the globe, who will be keen to monitor both the robustness of the technology and its cost-effectiveness. The €40 million project involves installing a bio-gasification plant next to an existing 565MW coal-fired power station. The plant will mainly use forest residues for fuel, with the resulting gas then combusted alongside coal. It is due to begin operating by end-2012. If everything goes according to plan, it should replace between 25 and 40% of the coal currently burned – reducing carbon dioxide emissions by some 230,000 tonnes per year. The plant is being supplied by the global technology and services supplier Metso to the Finnish power company Vaskiluodon Voima Oy in the city of Vaasa. Mark Candlish, Director of the
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Renewable Energy Association, believes the project’s mix of fossil fuel and biomass, combined with the fact that the new facility was installed alongside an existing coalburning plant, makes it a very cost effective method of generation. It demonstrates a way of putting biomass into practical use very quickly, he adds, and its “evolutionary” approach would suit the naturally cautious line on technological advance taken by global utilities. “Future applications for gasification will be more sophisticated than this, but we have to accept that this is an important intermediate step... Biomass is a terrific and grossly underused resource. This is a world first, so everyone will be watching it.” David Fulford, Director at Kingdom Bioenergy and Consulting Technical Assessor at the Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy, agrees, but warns that there have been problems in the past with biomass gasification. He points to the failure of the £30 million Project Arable Biomass Renewable Energy (ARBRE) in
Eggborough, Yorkshire. The plant closed after only eight days of operation following technical difficulties with blockage of the heat exchangers. However, says Fulford: “If this works, it will be fantastic, and the Finns are the people who know most about it.” As reported by Green Futures [‘Wood burner’, GF80, p31], the UK’s largest coalfired power station, Drax – also in Yorkshire – has invested in turbine upgrades allowing a coal-biomass mix. It is now considering the conversion of one of its six 660MW coal-fired units to run entirely on biomass. – Andrew Collier
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Turning tide
Funding boost for small-scale renewables
A new stream of income and power for Wales
CDM reforms could release carbon finance for pro-poor projects
The Welsh First Minister has hailed tidal as a long-term business opportunity, following new EU funding to develop and install the country’s first full-scale array off the Pembrokeshire coast. The European Regional Development Fund grant, worth £6.4 million, means a new 1.2MW energy generator will be built. Designed by Welsh company Tidal Energy, DeltaStream is expected to generate enough power for 1,000 homes. “There is huge potential for marine energy in Wales”, said the minister, Carwyn Jones, as he announced the funding. “Projects like DeltaStream will not only help
meet our energy targets, but will provide further opportunities for local communities as well as businesses.” Studies estimate that the UK could draw from 25-30GW from its tidal currents – enough to supply around 12% of its present electricity demand. This is based on the performance of the SeaGen turbine, installed three years ago in Northern Ireland’s Strangford Lough. The new DeltaStream design features three separate horizontal axis turbines, each measuring 15 metres in diameter, and mounted on a common triangular frame. The rotors respond to the flow of the tide, so that the turbines can generate electricity from
Wet Welsh wizardry
both the ebb and the flood. The array will be installed in the Ramsey Sound in 2012, generating electricity for the nearby town of St David’s. An environmental assessment is already underway, thanks to an additional £389,000 grant from the Carbon Trust. Operation Celtic Odyssey will study marine wildlife, develop 3D models of the seabed and turbulence, and measure background noise. The Welsh scheme joins others along the western coast of the UK, from Scotland down to Cornwall, and across the Irish Sea in Ireland. Scotland is particularly keen to harness its tidal potential. A £40 million investment in the Sound of Islay is set to become the world’s biggest tidal turbine array, with the capacity to generate 30GWh a year [see ‘A wave to the future’, GF81, p7]. So will tidal win out over wave, as marine energy developers vie for investment? RWE nPower’s decision to pull out of its involvement with Siadar – WaveGen’s wave technology promised for Scotland – would suggest so. But the UK Government is reluctant to take sides, with ambitions for a marine energy sector that, according to the Carbon Trust, could be worth £76 billion and support 68,000 jobs by 2050. – Mark Williams
Simple, small-scale green technologies, such as clean cookstoves for poor households, could soon find it easier to get carbon funding, thanks to changes in the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Set up under the Kyoto Protocol, the CDM allows industrialised governments and businesses to meet their carbon reduction commitments by buying credits from schemes in developing countries which have been proven to cut carbon, while also providing some social benefit. The lion’s share of the funding has gone to large scale projects, such as those reducing emissions from factories, or investing in huge new wind farms. Many such schemes are in major emerging economies, such as China, India or Brazil. These provide substantial, easy-to-calculate carbon savings. Critics point out that smaller, household or community level projects – including cookstoves and biogas plants – might actually be more effective at delivering both lasting carbon savings and lifting people out of poverty. But the administrative and technical challenge of calculating precise savings in each case often proves prohibitive. Now, however, the CDM Board has
announced two new guidelines which should go some way to overcoming these barriers. The first allows for the use of ‘standardised baselines’ in calculating emissions levels for particular technologies, such as a given type of cookstove, based on laboratory and field tests. The second provides for the use of a broad ‘business as usual’ approach to estimate how much CO2 would have been produced in the absence of the low-carbon alternative under consideration. (For example, how much carbon would be emitted by a typical ‘dirty’ traditional cookstove – the sort that could be replaced by a clean burning version.) This should make it easier for smallscale schemes to apply for and win CDM funding. And it could make them more appealing to governments and companies, too, many of whom would prefer to buy credits from projects which help African women enjoy healthier lives than ones which make marginal reductions to pollution from vast Chinese power plants. Edward Hanrahan, Executive Director at carbon offset providers ClimateCare, says the CDM’s new guidelines could save smallscale schemes “weeks of man hours” in research and administration, and encourage
They know when the wind will blow
When plastic bags save lives
New forecasting techniques minimise intermittency problem
Cheap and simple sanitation solution for slums and disaster areas
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Green Futures October 2011
match surges in demand. This is also necessary to make up losses in supply, such as when other power stations break down, or when wind power fails as the breeze drops. The more confident National Grid can be about exactly how much electricity the wind can produce at any given time, the fewer stations will need to be kept running as backup. Since these are typically coal
or gas plants, this will result in substantial savings in carbon as well as cost. Wind currently meets about 5% of the UK’s electricity needs, but this proportion will need to grow significantly – mainly through offshore wind farms – if the UK is to meet the EU target of 15% of energy from renewables by 2020. So the importance of precise forecasting will grow, too. – Maria Stone
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Photos: Martin Wright; Peepoople
It’s alright if they stop
Photos: Delta Stream; mark yuill/Hemera
Improvements in forecasting techniques could allow wind power to contribute a greater share of the UK’s peak electricity demand – perhaps as much as an additional 1.5GW, which would allow three medium-sized coal plants to be turned off. That’s according to National Grid, which runs the country’s electricity network. It is trialling a new weather forecasting system, which it claims can predict when wind will blow (at electricitygenerating speeds) in any given location 87% of the time. This helps to minimise the thorny problem of ‘intermittency’ (the fact that wind doesn’t always blow when power is needed). The main challenge for any electricity network is to match supply with demand. Since demand fluctuates, and large amounts of electricity cannot be stored, some generating capacity needs to be kept running on ‘spinning reserve’, ready to feed into the grid when needed to
Plastic bags are normally much derided by environmentalists, but they could be about to save millions of lives every year. The Peepoo bag, invented by Swedish professor Anders Wilhelmson, allows for the safe disposal of human waste in areas without toilets or easy access to running water. The bag is manufactured by a company set up for the purpose, Peepoople. The technology itself is remarkably simple: a biodegradable plastic bag with a thin lining coated in urea. The urea breaks down pathogens found in both urine and faeces, and after about four weeks the contents of the bag – known as ‘humanure’ – can be used as a rich nitrogen fertiliser. After extensive tests in Kenya and Bangladesh, the bags are now being sold by a network of local women microentrepreneurs in the Kibera slum district of Nairobi, where small scale manufacturing of the bags is also under way. The Peepoos cost four Kenyan shillings each (about
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3p), with one shilling refunded if the bag is dropped off at a collection point. Peepoople is also exploring the possibility of local entrepreneurs collecting and selling the ‘humanure’, too. Currently, nearly 40% of the world’s population is without basic access to sanitation – a prime cause of diarrohea, which is the leading killer of children under five in developing countries. The UK Department for International Development is looking at the Peepoo bag as one of a number of solutions, but says there are still questions to answer. Stephen O’Brien, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development, says they are working to “understand the context this product operates in, people’s attitudes to using it, and seeing whether it results in an overall improvement in people’s health and its impact on the wider environment.” After successes in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and ongoing work in Kenya,
investment from industrialised countries. But not everyone is convinced. Ben Garside, researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development, is more sceptical. He’s concerned that standardised baselines place too much emphasis on estimates of future carbon savings, which may turn out to be too optimistic. He would prefer to see funding directed to helping poorer countries adapt to climate change by developing resilient agriculture, as well as clean energy. – Nick Huber
Peepoople are preparing to launch high scale production to serve the emergency aid sector in 2012. – Sarah LewisHammond
Green Futures October 2011
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Salmon and milk beat cotton and silk
Slippery path to sustainable palm oil
Designers use new materials and techniques to revolutionise fashion
Global food companies pursue responsible sourcing of a notorious commodity
“When you say to yourself, well, I’m going to ignore all the evidence of climate change,you’re saying, I’m going to ignore the best idea anybody’s ever had.” Bill Nye ‘the Science Guy’ attempts to explain climate science to the viewers of Fox News
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Green Futures October 2011
years. They argue that if enough people wore it there could be a “noticeable reduction in the level of pollution” in cities. Reducing pollution in a more low-tech way is also possible, thanks to a new breed of fashion ‘locovore’. Textile artist Rebecca Burgess is creating a “bioregional wardrobe” using only clothing that has been spun, dyed (naturally), or knitted within 150 miles from her front door. She aims to show that “beauty and fashion can function handin-hand with sustainability, local economies, and regional agriculture”. Vicky Murray, Sustainability Advisor at Forum for the Future, believes that innovative fashion designs can reach people turned off by other sustainability messages. “If you get a greenie in a hemp suit telling you what to do, you’ll be less inspired than by your beautiful best friend”, she says. But for the moment such innovations remain stuck in the niche. “There’s still a big gap in the market for mainstream fashion brands to really integrate sustainability into their business”, says Murray, who helped develop a new module for young designers at the London College of Fashion’s Centre for Sustainable Fashion. – Sylvia Rowley
Top international food companies – including Unilever, Kraft, General Mills and Nestlé – have made a pact to procure only palm oil that has been produced in a sustainable way. All four multinationals have committed to sourcing 100% of their intake from sustainable sources by 2015. They have all taken the decision to drop Indonesian palm oil producer Sinar Mas from their supply chains, after it was caught illegally clearing orangutan habitat and peatland. But beyond this, their roads to sustainable sourcing vary. Unilever, the world’s biggest buyer of palm oil, is a key supporter of the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). The RSPO has three key principles for palm growers: that forests defined as having ‘high conservation value’ must not be converted into palm plantations; that dangerous pesticides should not be used and other pesticides must be used sustainably; and that growers must show proof to right of land, in order to protect the interests of indigenous people. But for Kraft, questions hang over the
$72 billion The amount invested in renewable energy, notably solar and wind, by developing countries in 2010: $2 billion more than the total spent by the developed world. China alone accounted for $50 billion worth of investment, mainly in wind power.
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Nineteen food and animal feed companies, including Unilever, Cargill, ADM and Nutreco, have united under the Dutch Initiative for Sustainable Soy (IDS) to buy the first 85,000 tons of soybeans produced to standards set by the first Round Table on Responsible Soy (RTRS)-certified soybeans. Estimates put the production capacity of RTRS-certified farmers at 500,000 tons by 2012, and 1.8 million tons by 2015. The Netherlands is one of the main gateways for soybeans in Europe, mainly for animal feed. Globally, its imports are second only to China’s. The RTRS’s certification standard for production was agreed in 2009 by 150 stakeholders, including NGOs, producers and traders. It aims to ensure that no native forest, or land of ‘high conservation value’,
standards and enforcement mechanisms of the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). The global food group “supports the goals and efforts of RSPO”, but it believes that “more needs to be done to enforce guidelines and address deforestation. RSPO needs to reach broad consensus on its certification standards, in particular with regard to climate change impacts of palm oil production.” Kraft, Unilever and Nestlé are all looking to work closely with their existing suppliers to find ways to ensure that palm oil is sourced sustainably. Nestlé has announced guidelines to ensure a
will be cleared for soy farming. WWF, which helped set the RTRS standards, believes the scheme is a vital tool in limiting deforestation, although critics, including Friends of the Earth, fear that it will encourage the expansion of unsustainable soy farming elsewhere, and criticise it for failing to outlaw genetically modified soy. – Christine Ottery
“no deforestation footprint” – a move welcomed by Greenpeace. “Fortunately some companies, such as Nestlé, are pressing ahead beyond the RSPO standard, and engaging directly with suppliers to deal with issues around stopping deforestation and protecting carbon rich peatlands”, says Ian Duff, Greenpeace Forest Campaigner. Sandra Mulder, the WWF Palm Oil and Soy Officer, says: “Strong procurement policies, like those of Unilever, are a very important driver of the RSPO process. But having the policy is one thing. You also have to implement it.” – Christine Ottery
Photos: Francios Lariviere/Thinkstock; iStockphoto
from casein, an odourless protein found in mammalian milk, this has the consistency of silk but with naturally antibacterial properties. It’s been around since the 1930s, but the latest version, developed by German designer Anke Damaske, is chemical-free and biodegradable. Then there’s salmon leather – a dyeable textile made from the skin of farmed fish, which is normally landfilled after the salmon is processed. It’s said to be stronger than ‘land leather’ and, importantly, free of any fishy smell. But other designers have even bolder ambitions for their materials. Catalytic Clothing is coated in a substance that removes pollutants from the air. It’s the brainchild of designer Helen Storey from the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, and chemist Tony Ryan. They are developing a ‘photocatalyst’ which becomes reactive when light shines on it. It breaks down water molecules in the air into highly reactive radicals, which then interact with and neutralise pollutants such as nitrogen oxide. It can be added to detergents and binds to clothes as they are washed. Storey and Ryan hope it will be ready within two
Photos: Fedor Kondratenko/iStockphoto
If the term eco-fashion still conjures up images of dresses made out of newspapers or hemp, then think again. A flurry of fresh designs and innovations – from clothes that change shape to suit the occasion, to new fabrics that neutralise air pollution – seem set to prove that sustainable fashion is no longer either a gimmick or an oxymoron. Take the Malaysian brand ULTRA, that won one of this year’s Ethical Fashion Forum Innovation awards. The idea behind their ULTRA 10 modular collection is that you wear only ten pieces of clothing for an entire year. Featuring a 3-in-1 coat that can deconstruct into a skirt, shirt and a shirtdress, among others, the collection is the antithesis to fast fashion. Such an approach wins praise from Lucy Siegle, author of ‘To Die For: is fashion wearing out the world?’: “I tend to admire the designers who are not only designing out waste, but [also rejecting] the ferocious planned obsolescence in fashion [by] moving away from trend and micro trend”, she says. But what about the material these clothes are made from? Many designers are trying out surprising alternatives to cotton and leather. Take milk fibre: made
Better beans
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Green Futures October 2011
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Line up for sustainable fish
A good catch
The only way is up
UK leaves the lousiest fishing practices behind
Fish and vegetable farms take to the skies in Chicago
One of the biggest players in the UK market for canned tuna has committed to sustainable sourcing. By 2016, John West will source 100% of its tuna for sale in the UK through a combination of poleand-line vessels, and from fisheries that have pledged not to use Fish Aggregation Devices (FADs). Tuna, and other marine life including sharks and turtles, are drawn to these floating objects, resulting in about one kilogram of bycatch (non-target marine life which is later discarded) for every nine kilograms in the can. John West – which is owned by Thai Union, the world’s largest seafood producer – joins a host of mainstream retailers, including Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, M&S, Tesco and the Co-op, in cutting FAD-caught tuna from its supply chain. However, it will continue to use purse seines. These are large floating nets, up to a mile long, which also bring in a significant bycatch. “There is growing recognition that this is not a sustainable way to fish,” says Andrew Kuyk, Director of Sustainability and Competitiveness at the Food and Drink Federation, whose members include seafood processors. “It’s pleasing to see companies like John West publicly acknowledging this.”
John West is also launching an online application to let consumers track the exact source of the fish in their can, down to the boat that made the catch. Traceability is a key concern for the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), whose Chain of Custody Standard ensures that its label only appears on seafood from fisheries it has certified as sustainable. To date, six tuna fisheries have been certified: four in the US and Canada, one in New Zealand and one in Japan. – Andrew Purvis
Forget roof gardens; the only thing to have growing on a city centre building these days is a farm. Businessweek magazine has ranked the vertical farm [see ‘High rise horticulture’, GF77, p26] as one of its top 20 businesses of the future, and leading the charge is The Plant in Chicago, which opened this summer. Created by entrepreneur John Edel, this former meatpacking factory is now home to a nascent fish and vegetable farm, along with several small food businesses. It’s an innovative solution, based on a principle known as aquaponics, where everything exists to work together. Tilapia fish waste is high in ammonia which nourishes the plants; the plants clean the water, which can then be returned to the fish. The businesses within the building work in symbiosis, too. So, waste from the brewery provides the perfect growing material for the mushroom farm. All the building’s energy needs will come from an onsite biodigester, producing methane to fuel a combined heat and power plant. The digester will consume all the building’s food waste, as well as taking some from neighbouring food manufacturers. The Plant was recently awarded a $1.5 million grant from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity to develop the energy system.
Fishing by numbers 26 million: the number of fish meals sold by McDonald’s in the UK in 2010. As of September 2011, all fish products served in McDonald’s UK restaurants carry the MSC label. 46: the additional tonnes of ‘alternative’ species (coley, pouting, hake, megrim) sold at Sainsbury’s in the two months following its Switch the Fish campaign in June 2011. 207: the percentage increase in sales of Cornish pollack at Waitrose following Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s Fish Fight programme on Channel 4 in the UK. 6: the percentage of the global catch that is certified as sustainable by the MSC.
The humble African honey bee is proving an effective deterrent to marauding elephants
Diversification yields benefits for tobacco farmers in North Carolina
Growing elephant populations in Kenya have been a conservation success story, but for the villagers who have inadvertently settled along the animals’ ancient migration routes, they’re a crop raiding menace. Locals resort to shooting or poisoning the animals in an effort to preserve their livelihoods. The green solution? Beehive fences. A team from the University of Oxford and charity Save the Elephants has completed a two-year trial project in the Samburu Game Reserve, where they placed fences studded with beehives as a barrier around 17 farms. The simple wooden beehives were suspended on wires in the fences, with a flat roof to protect them for the sun. The team were testing the theory that the African honey bee is an effective deterrent to elephants. While the sting can’t penetrate their hide, the bees often
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sting around the eye and inside the trunk, causing considerable discomfort to the vast creatures. The trial has been a striking success, turning away elephants in 97% of attempted raids. It’s a win-win-win situation: farmers have been able to grow crops in peace; elephants haven’t suffered any lasting harm; while the bees have produced honey, sold in branded ‘elephant-friendly’ pots. It’s a high income, low maintenance crop which has contributed to the farmers’ livelihood. “It’s a fantastic result,” said Shelley Waterland, Programmes Manager at conservation charity the Born Free Foundation. “Human-elephant conflict is a key focus for our African Elephant Action plan, and inexpensive solutions like this, where everyone’s a winner, are great.” Another unlikely piece of conflict resolution is taking place in Sri Lanka: passion fruit
farming. The fruit has a good market value and the elephants don’t like them, so again, farmers generate an income and protect their crops. – Laura Dixon
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Photos: Bubbly Dynamics; Guy Sagi/iStockphoto
Fag end
Photos: Antonio Balaguer soler/Thinkstock; Mike Smith/Thinkstocl
Buzz off, jumbo
A fund to help small-scale tobacco farmers in North Carolina diversify their crops and income is working wonders for rural economies. The Tobacco Communities Reinvestment Fund (TCRF) aims to reward innovation and high profit potential in farms with a historic dependence on tobacco. With awards of up to $10,000 per individual or $30,000 per community project, tobacco farmers are turning to fruit, veg and poultry. Matthew Garrett is one of them. With a $10,000 grant from the TCRF, he is converting a 40 acre tobacco farm to organic vegetable production, for sale at a local farmers’ market. He is just one of many whose livelihood is being squeezed by competition from tobacco grown more cheaply abroad, while he struggles to bring ageing facilities up to date.
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Like a field, only better
Currently in phase one of development, The Plant plans to be fully operational, with a net income of $300,000 from food sales and business rents, by 2016. The technology was developed with the aid of students at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and their professor, Blake Davis. He was particularly attracted to Edel’s entrepreneurial approach. “I agreed to work with John because he indicated that he wanted to build a profitable vertical farming business,” he said. “Representatives of The Plant have visited almost all of the vertical farming enterprises within 500 miles, and the vast majority of these do not have a sustainable business model. They are either not profitable, or they are only profitable because of [government support].” To help spur entrepreneurial as well
as vertical farmers, The Plant will host a full business case study online, including all financial information and a complete technical spec. Slowly but surely, vertical farms are taking shape elsewhere in the world. In Britain, urban farm Alpha is in development in a derelict tower block in Wythenshawe, Manchester. The brainchild of local sustainability groups URBED and Creative Concern, it aims to produce lettuce, tomatoes, vegetables and even chickens, bees and fish in time for the city’s International Festival in 2013. The ancient walled city of Suwon in South Korea already has a working model in a small, threestorey building. Vertical farms are also being planned for Paris, Abu Dhabi, Bangalore, Beijing and New York. – Laura Dixon
Next year, it could all be chickens
In the past three years alone, the Fund claims to have created or preserved more than 4,100 jobs. All these benefits come from a relatively modest investment: $3.6 million of Tobacco Trust Fund money distributed to 367 innovative farmers. The Fund originates from the Master Settlement Agreement, in which the four largest US tobacco companies paid $206 billion to 46 states to compensate for the impact of tobacco on public health. The Rural Advancement Foundation International USA, a non-profit established to promote sustainability, equity and diversity in agriculture, sees North
Carolina’s shift away from tobacco as an exemplar for diversification. It’s not all about markets: a greater variety of crops brings resilience in the face of unpredictable weather, reduces the risk of disease, and can improve soil quality. Unfortunately, the TCRF funding could be slashed next year because of drastic cuts in the budget of the North Carolina Tobacco Trust Fund Commission. “We will do everything in our power to ensure farmers get access to this capital, through whatever sources we can secure,” says Program Director Joe Schroeder. – Christine Ottery
Green Futures October 2011
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Brand bribes
Sparking up the nano grid
Big business wakes up to the nudge
Researchers plan lossless electricity network
In these tight times, consumers are reluctant to pay premiums to be green. But a new trend shows they won’t have to: quite the opposite. Brands are teasing green behaviour from consumers with the offer of rewards. At the 2011 V Festival, Coca-Cola got happy campers to bring 66,000 PET bottles to recycle bins by offering T-shirts and waterproofs at ‘Swap for Swag’ stalls. The same concept is the business model for RecycleBank, which recently topped The Wall Street Journal’s ranking for cleantech companies with the capital, executive experience and investor knowhow to succeed. RecycleBank awards households who recycle by giving them reward points, which can be redeemed with a range of retailers and brands, including Dunkin Donuts, Footlocker, Macy’s and Unilever. The
more waste that is diverted from landfill, the greater the rewards. The company works in partnership with municipalities and waste hauliers to calculate how much waste each participating household has recycled (usually by recording the weight of recyclables in a specially supplied container). The city of Hollywood signed up in 2010 to encourage residents to recycle. During its first year, it saved nearly $500,000 in waste disposal fees while generating more than $250,000 in recycling revenue. Such gains more than offset the participation fees municipalities pay to Recyclebank. A similar model is driving domestic water conservation in Brazil. Ambev, South America’s biggest brewery has teamed up with Sao Paolo water utility Sabesp to create Banco Cyan, which they are advertising as a new currency based on water. Over 26 million people have signed up for their household water use to be measured and targets to be set for cuts. As they meet their targets, they are rewarded with credit that can be spent at high street stores such as Blockbuster. It’s a new application of an old idea, comments Frances Buckingham at consultants SustainAbility: “Companies have long embraced ‘choice architectures’ to optimise profits, [but] it’s a new idea to aim these techniques at sustainability”. The benefits for brands are better conversations with consumers about values – a great
foundation for a long-term relationship. Other brand nudges are aimed towards healthier lifestyles and stronger communities. Amazon Kindle allows purchasers to ‘loan’ books to friends to nudge them towards collaborative consumption, and US insurance giant Humana rewards customers who exercise. Some companies are also finding ways to bribe employees to make greener lifestyle choices. The Greek brand Coco-mat – which sells bedding from natural materials such as goose down, sea grass and coco fibre – is offering employees the opportunity to earn 5% more if they cycle to work. Whether these nudges can drive any long-term shifts in behaviour is another question. When the reward is taken away, will people spring back to their former ways, spoiled and disillusioned? It’s possible that – if incentives are kept up for long enough – habits will also shift. “We are influenced by what is considered ‘normal’ or what is expected of us by others”, says Lorraine Whitmarsh, Lecturer in Environmental Psychology at Cardiff University. But she is concerned that policymakers should not rely on the nudge alone. “Nudge is great for small-scale, shortterm behaviour changes, [but] we also need to change infrastructures and institutions. You can’t nudge someone onto a bus service that doesn’t exist...” – Christina Madden
Carbon nanotubes could one day replace copper wire in electricity networks, leading to significant energy savings. Our current copper-based energy transmission system is massively inefficient. As power travels over the grid, up to 15% of the electricity can dissipate due to heat loss. It’s as if, day and
night, invisible shoplifters are pilfering a significant chunk of the inventory from our global energy store. With funding support from the US Air Force, nanotechnology researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas, are developing a high-tech solution to this problem. Their answer: metallic nanotubes
– very long, artificially manufactured molecules made out of carbon with a structure not unlike chicken wire. Unlike copper, says Andrew Barron, professor of chemistry at Rice and one of the team’s lead researchers, the tubes offer no resistance to the passage of current. As a result, “there’s no power loss due to the conversion of electricity to heat”. With a nanotube transmission grid, he says, wind farms in Texas could deliver electricity to east coast cities with virtually 100% efficiency. Solar farms in the Sahara could send energy to Paris. Visual pollution could be eliminated, too, says Barron, as the cables can be easily buried. Commercialisation is still years away. The main technical challenge involves creating miles and miles of material out of a structure that is 50,000 times smaller than a human hair. But the Rice researchers are making headway. They’ve developed a technique to enlarge metallic nanotubes and are now fine-tuning the process. “How fast we make progress depends in part on our funding level,” Barron says. “We’re not the only ones working on this, though. Eventually this will happen.” – Carl Frankel
Miracle material
The park in the dark Deep beneath the streets of New York City, a new green space
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‘linear park’ was originally an elevated railway threatened with demolition. Now it’s a grassy ribbon stretching over the streets. Its redevelopment has preserved some of the city’s most striking industrial heritage and lifted almost six million visitors out of the traffic. It is no surprise that similar projects have begun to spring up in Philadelphia, Chicago and Rotterdam. The Delancey Underground is certainly more audacious than the High Line, but is it practical? “It’s a totally bizarre, fun idea but I think it makes a lot of natural sense”, Ramsay insists. But there are many questions to be answered, says Dr Nikolaos Karadimitriou, expert in urban regeneration at University College London. “Is this project going to generate an income stream of some sort and from what kind of activity or levy?” Community support could be crucial.
It was that which made the difference in the case of the High Line. In this instance it could yet transform a “bizarre, fun idea” into a unique green space for the Lower East Side. – Tom Forster
Photos: Mike Williams; Dmitry Knorre/Thinkstock
Under Delancey Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side lurks 60,000 square feet of vaulted ceilings and cobbled streets, sitting unappreciated in the dark. The Williamsburg Bridge railway terminal was abandoned in 1948, and has now become the focus of a group of entrepreneurs with an ambitious plan: to pipe natural light underground and create a subterranean park. The precise technology developed by James Ramsey, architect and co-founder of the project, is being kept under wraps until a demonstration is set up. But Ramsey has hinted at the use of fibre optic cables to channel sunlight. Will New Yorkers take to this unconventional idea as they have done with other urban parks? The bar has been set uncommonly high with the completion of the second phase of the High Line in July. This
Photos: Thinkstock; Delancey Underground
A new super-conductor strikes
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Efficiency is one grail of the grid. Speed is another. Graphene, the strongest material known to science since its discovery in 2004, trumps copper on conductivity and nanotubes on speed, thanks to a quirk that means electrons can move almost as though they were massless: it has just two dimensions. The innovation won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, both of the University of Manchester, who first peeled a single flake off graphite. A 2D material is a strange thing to try to comprehend in a 3D world. A piece of paper is maybe 30,000 atoms thick; a pencil stroke on the paper is around 100 atoms thick. A sheet of graphene is one carbon atom thin, neatly arranged in a honeycomb lattice. In structure, it’s like a nanotube opened out flat like a template. This makes it easier to manipulate and to join together in a chain. Potential applications include advanced photovoltaics, flexible touch screens, high speed computing and super-strong fabrics
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to name but a few – ideas that are proving a magnet for research and development funding. MIT has just set up the Center for Graphene Devices and Systems (MIT-CG), the UK has pledged £50 million towards a
national research programme to develop spin-off technologies, and the EU intends to roll out its €1 billion Graphene Flagship research project over the next ten years. – Tom Forster
Green Futures October 13 The lattice2011 of least resistance
Variable speed thrills
greenfuturesinspire:
VSDs can cut energy use by 70% Multinational engineering giant ABB is promoting the use of a technology that has existed for more than four decades, in a drive to help organisations reduce their energy consumption. The Swiss-Swedish firm says that employing variable speed drives (VSDs) in industrial pumps, fans and other devices, can reduce energy bills by as much as 70% with a payback of less than 12 months. Although by no means the only major manufacturer making VSDs, ABB (which developed its first VSD in 1969) has embarked on a mission to encourage their use in the UK after establishing a 50-person Energy Appraisal Team in the country, providing organisations with free assessments to identify applications that can benefit from the installation of VSDs. ABB points out that around 65% of the total electricity used at industrial sites is consumed by electric motors, so widespread adoption of VSDs would lead to substantial savings over traditional, fixed-speed motors. These have two problems, says independent energy consultant Trevor Floyd. “The first is that they are often overspecified and oversized for the application, so you are constantly wasting energy from normal use,” he says. “The second is that the relationship between the load and the power consumer
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is curved, rather than linear.” So when you reduce the load, the power consumed isn’t proportionally reduced. This means that a 50% load could consume something like 90% of the power used when the motor is working at its full rate, explains Floyd. VSDs, on the other hand, can achieve that linear relationship between load and power, so that energy used is directly proportionate to the work being done. Floyd suggests key energy saving applications could include boiler rooms and air handling units. “Pumps and fans are also ideal for VSDs, because the drives are so easy to fit into the supply circuit”, he adds. The UK’s Carbon Trust has long promoted the use of VSDs in industry. UK businesses can even make use of interest-free loans from the Trust to invest in VSDs, along with other energy saving equipment. In one case study, the Carbon Trust showed that fitting a VSD to just a single boiler forced-draught fan at Dairy Crest Severnside, saved the milk producer £1,840 annually as well as 5.2 tonnes per year in carbon savings. Brian Horne of the UK’s Energy Saving Trust is similarly positive about VSDs’ potential, describing them as “a major opportunity for saving energy in the industrial sector”. – Jon Mainwaring
“I love GF Inspire – it gives you a real kick of hope” Paula Owen, Director, POC Group
Scan the flashcards for the brightest solutions in: greenfuturesinspire brings you quick hits from the frontline of green innovation.
Sci-fi … or just high?
Energy Business Land & water Smart design Lifestyles
E-bikes look for a new image
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Then use the stars to tell the world how inspired you are.
Photos: xxxxx
mainstream manufacturers announcing electric bikes is growing. Until now, this market has been the preserve of Chinese companies, or recent US start-ups. But high street brands like Honda, Yamaha and Peugeot have all announced electric scooters this year. The latest entrant is BMW, whose eScooter claims to offer the same performance as the equivalent petrol model, with a comfortable cruising speed of 70mph, rapid acceleration up to 40mph and a battery range of 60 miles. It will recharge from flat in less than three hours, and includes regenerative braking – meaning the battery gets a small recharge as you slow down. It will be on sale within two years, and should cost the same as an equivalent petrol scooter – about £6,000. And the Lightcycle? Don’t hold your breath. – Peter Henshaw
Photos: David Lee/Thinkstock; Parker Brothers; BMW
The market for electric motorcycles is looking to spruce up its image – but, like any adolescent, doesn’t know whether to stand out or fit in. New designs range from a sci-fi inspired bike, to a practical, high performance scooter. On one hand, there’s the Lightcycle (above right), built in the US and inspired by the computer animated two-wheeler in the 2010 film, ‘Tron: Legacy’. And at the other end of the scale, there’s BMW’s eScooter (below right). You can’t buy a Lightcycle, but it does work, using a 96-volt lithium-ion battery set and electric motor to reach a claimed top speed of over 100mph, and a range of 100 miles between recharges. It’s an outlandish machine, the rider lying prone, and it doesn’t look like the most practical transport, but the neon-lit wheels and bodywork certainly make it a striking sight. Back in the real world, the number of
www.apple.com/uk/iPhone iPhone, iPhone touch and iPad are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries
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Material world Alex Goldmark tours a new urban landscape with a mind of its own. The next breakthrough in architecture may not come from the likes of Frank Gehry, whose designs – from the Guggenheim in Bilbao to the Walt Disney Concert Hall – draw tourists from across the world. It’s more likely to come from a chemist. Why? Because our future buildings will be shaped as much by the materials on offer as by the visionaries whose work we come to hate or love. Scientists are developing new compounds that aren’t just stronger, cheaper or cleaner than their predecessors, but are also smarter. They interact with the world around them, responding and adapting to it. They react to stimuli such as heat or light, stress or moisture – even to pollution. The potential benefits are impressive. Some of these so-called ‘smart materials’ reduce a building’s energy consumption by maintaining stable temperatures without the need for air conditioning. Others have resilience built-in, actively mending wear and tear. Still others can change the world around them. From self-repairing bridges to airfiltering paint, here’s a look at the technologies likely to transform the spaces in which we live. Below: Spray it clean: Manila’s mural soaks up pollution Right: Venetian skin care: a foundation treatment could seal the city
Street cleaners The simplest innovations are already on the market. These aren’t the building blocks themselves, but the final layers we put on them. Several companies, including Johnstone’s in the UK and Sto® in the US, are offering external wall paints that clean
themselves, thanks to a structure that repels dirt, inspired by the humble lotus plant. The rough surfaces of its leaves, whose cells are arranged in extensive folds with tiny wax crystals jutting out, cause water droplets to form little balls which attract dirt particles as they roll to the ground, nudged along by microscopic pockets of air. This new generation of paints draws on the same principles, so that the slightest shower washes away any build-up of dust and dirt. It doesn’t just make for a brighter, more attractive building: it also cuts maintenance costs, and reduces chemical runoff from cleaning products. Other paints go a step further: purifying the air around them. It’s a technology well suited to the Philippines’ capital, Manila – the world’s most densely populated city, where high nitrogen oxide (NOx) levels result in more than 4,000 premature deaths a year. In 2010, the Metro Manila Development Authority teamed up with WWFPhilippines, the Global Campaign for Climate Action and paint company Boysen to create a 200 square metre mural at a metrorail station. Artists covered this vast surface with Boysen KNOxOUT, a paint made with ultrafine titanium dioxide. This acts as a photocatalyst, harnessing energy from light to break down NOx in the air as it meets the painted surface, giving off negligible amounts of water, carbon dioxide and calcium nitrate. Tests carried out by the Philippine Institute of Pure and Applied Chemistry suggested the mural can reduce pollutants equivalent to those emitted by 30,000 vehicles a day. The mural doubled up as an anti-pollution campaign, overlooking the city’s busiest highway and poignantly facing the Marikina River which burst its banks in 2009, flooding the city with dirty water and displacing almost half a million people.
Her smart materials Visionary scientist Rachel Armstrong talks to Anna Simpson about bringing the built environment to life.
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Photo: Iykola Velychko/Thinkstock
Keeping clean is one thing; keeping healthy another. What if our built environment could have the same resilience as our bones? “Throughout your life”, explains Janine Benyus, Head of the Biomimicry Guild, “your bones form and reform to reinforce lines of stress.” She envisions structures that mimic this by responding to the stress of frequent use. It’s a vision which might soon materialise, thanks to research into innovations in structural concrete led by Carolyn Dry, Emeritus Professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois. “Concrete is brittle”, Dry explains, and so “the usual repairs do not hold.” She
Photo: EDSA
Wear and repair
We all respond to our surroundings: green space prompts us to feel calm and to breathe more deeply, just as small cluttered spaces can send our stress levels soaring. But imagine living in a space that responds just as actively to your presence. Its walls shiver or convulse as you wander by; the colours change as they pick up on your body heat, or the perfume you’re wearing... Eerie, perhaps, but also very engaging. For Rachel Armstrong, who has turned this vision into a reality with an award-winning installation, this interaction between people and place is the way forward. First displayed at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2010, Hylozoic Ground is a jungle-like immersive environment embedded with a primitive neural network. Sensors respond to the temperature and chemical presence of visitors, and to changes such as airflow in the gallery caused by their movements. The physical impact we all have on the world around us – through the air we breathe and the ground we actually tread, as much as through our carbon footprint, is often difficult to envisage. Responsive surroundings have great potential to bring it home. But the real value, says Armstrong, is in a new understanding of our built environment as a living system, of which we are a part. “I’m unashamedly human-centred”, she declares. It’s not what her techie CV might lead you to expect: she’s a senior lecturer in architecture and construction at The University of Greenwich, Co-Director of the Advanced Virtual and Technological Architectural Research Group, and a senior Technology Entertainment Design (TED) fellow. But, she points out, her background is medicine. “Medicine is optimistic science applied to the body; architecture gives
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you the chance to improve health and wellbeing in society.” “Have you heard of Shusaku Arakawa?” she asks. “He was a Japanese architect who proposed that challenging interiors keep the body and mind active, helping people to stay alive and fitter for longer. Modern architecture, on the other hand, is static: it lets us be passive. In some ways, Hylozoic Ground represents this challenge…” But surely, given our changing climate, the challenges we face are great enough? Yes, says Armstrong, which is why it is so important that our designs for the built environment are interactive – and so able to respond to change. “I’m not an architect at heart”, Armstrong insists. “I’m reluctant to propose an aesthetic.” Instead, she sees her work as a collaboration between the science she draws upon and the environmental context in which it’s applied. She may offer some structural guidelines – rather like a skeleton, but the design itself is fleshed out by the elements and biological systems at play. “There is a form, but it’s yet to be decided.” This isn’t merely a philosophical treatise: “It’s a necessary survival strategy.” Given how little we really know about the future climate, it would be mad to set our future cities in stone, as it were... Take Venice. “Of course, everyone wants to save Venice! It taps into our cultural imagination.” But it does have wider relevance. Beyond the rising sea levels and floods faced by many coastal towns, Venetian buildings have struggled against the elements since their first days. Their brickwork has been reduced to dust by the build-up of saline crystals where they meet the canals. And where they aren’t exposed to saltwater, they are desiccated by the sun.
Armstrong is working towards a vision of a future Venice in which its structures and foundations aren’t eroded by the constant ebb and tide of seawater, but rather ‘activated’ by it: strengthening their defences and expanding in response. At the crux of this vision is a technology that combines self-assembly with the ability to respond to natural surroundings. So how would it work? Rather like scar tissue, explains Armstrong. With her colleague Neil Spiller, also at Greenwich, she is developing tiny droplets that can be programmed to create little ‘skins’ when they come into contact with the city’s foundations. These tiny shells would reinforce the vulnerable structures, forming a protective reef. The droplets are synthetic protocells, programmed to respond vigorously to light, moving away from it towards the shade offered by woodpiles and brickwork, even against the flow. As they knock against these foundations, a chemical process is activated, drawing on the minerals and dissolved carbon dioxide in the water to build insoluble crystalline ‘skins’. Initial field tests conducted by the city’s lagoon itself, sponsored by RedBull in collaboration with the European Centre for Living Technology in Venice, have been successful. “But the project has many real world challenges”, Armstrong admits. “We don’t have the scale and momentum. We need investment, and we need to raise awareness of different ways of building at the shoreline.” And yet Armstrong is optimistic. “Science is changing”, she says. Her work is just a small part of a new field in which nanotechnology, biomedicine, information technology and cognitive science converge. “You have to admit it’s likely that the coming together of these disciplines will come up with something useful.”
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has developed an adhesive repair material, which can be embedded in similarly brittle, hollow fibres in the concrete. These crack when they come under strain, releasing the adhesive which penetrates the fissures and sets to form a new bond. It’s an automatic infusion of structural integrity, cutting repair costs and increasing safety. Of course, prevention is better than a cure, and this is where Dry sees the real benefits of her invention, which she has tested on four full-size model bridges. The ones embedded with self-repair fibres performed better than the control bridge. “The entire structure [was transformed] into a ductile material,” she explains, with “energy … dissipated all over.” The result was not only the prevention of catastrophic failure, due to the enlargement of any one crack, but greater resilience overall, thanks to the fibres’ ability to dampen down vibrations. It’s something that should be particularly attractive to US government bodies, which are facing an estimated $2.2 trillion bill for infrastructure repairs over the next five years, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. But although Dry’s selfrepair concrete product is ready to sell, there haven’t yet been any takers. Construction firms in the US, her current target market, are incentivised to use cheaper conventional concrete and rebuild roads more frequently, she explains. However, she hopes that plans by the US Department of Transportation to
Green Futures October 2011
enforce lifecycle budgeting will mark the beginning of a shift to longer life materials. Funds are already forthcoming for another application of Dry’s work, though: self-repair aircraft. The US Air Force Small Business Innovative Research programme is supporting the development of self-repair fibreglass and graphite laminates. Dry believes that the weight of planes (and therefore, their fuel consumption) could be reduced by using materials that are thinner, yet more resistant to stress. And she sees huge potential for further applications, from offshore pipelines that can remain intact under extreme pressure at the ocean floor, to boats that can heal dangerous ruptures quickly enough to stay afloat. Professor Pradeep Rohatgi, Director of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Composite Center, is working towards similar goals – but with a different approach. His focus is on metal matrix composites (MMCs), an industry already worth $100 million a year. MMCs are made by combining a metal with a different class of material, resulting in new properties and behaviours. Rohatgi is working on a new form of metal which, he claims, could withstand the intense heat of a bomb blast, or the impact of a car crash. Like Dry, he wants to keep the strength of the material, but make it less brittle. He is creating a foam-like metallic structure, with little hollow pockets – micro-balloons, he calls
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them. “The cells are smaller and more regular than air bubbles, which make them better at energy absorption”, he explains. “They are also very light.” These micro-balloons are filled with a secondary material, such as fly ash – a by-product of coalburning power plants. This recycled dust behaves like Dry’s adhesives, leaking out to fill cracks and breaks when stress, impact or heat causes the balloons to burst. Rohatgi is looking for ways to take his new metals into production, with funding for the next stages of his research from General Motors and Ford.
Energy savers
Photos: ©/PBAI
It knows you’re here: Armstrong’s installation senses your presence
Black roofs trap heat. White roofs repel it. A difficult choice in an unstable climate, but one that architects may no longer have to make. New roof tiles can modify their surface to be dark or light, responding to the temperature outdoors. Former MIT researcher Robbie Barbero has co-founded Thermeleon to commercialise a coating for roof tiles that changes its properties to keep the building warm or cool, “with no input or thought required from the building owner”, he says. So how does it work? The coating contains a polymer which dissolves in gel when temperatures drop, revealing a black background which absorbs light. The process is reversible, and so as the temperature rises, the polymer separates itself from
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the gel to form a white mixture that reflects light. Barbero expects a commercial product to be ready next year, and says he has investors lined up. Roofs are a good starting point for improvements in energy efficiency, but office workers are perhaps more likely to notice and appreciate smart windows. Several universities in the US and China are working on thermochromic windows which, like Barbero’s roof tiles, respond to outdoor temperatures. The most common method uses a vanadium oxide (VO2) film coating. The properties of VO2 change dramatically in response to heat, increasing its opacity and reflectivity. Yes, the increased opacity may dim the view – but this could be useful in contexts where blinds themselves are too clunky or costly to operate. The benefits of a built environment that does some of the thinking and facility management for us shouldn’t be underestimated. As the climate shifts, the task of predicting and preparing for volatile conditions isn’t getting any easier. Our ability to master the logistics of a quick response to a sudden shift (a natural disaster, for instance) is, at best, unreliable. Building a new landscape that will respond instantly for us could save billions in repair and rehabilitation costs. The technology is there: the question is whether today’s investors can respond soon enough.
“The benefits of a built environment that does some of the thinking for us shouldn’t be underestimated”
Alex Goldmark is Contributing Editor at GOOD. Anna Simpson is Managing Editor, Green Futures.
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Big Brother gone green?
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Opposite page photo: Martin Shields Science Photo Library; This page photo: EUROSENSE CIR Woluwe
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With remote monitoring of everything from osprey nests to entire rainforests fast becoming the norm, we’re witnessing a revolution in the way we interact with our environment, say Hugh Knowles and Martin Wright. It could help us avert catastrophe – but might it also drown wisdom and experience in a flood of data? Deep in the rainforests of eastern Cameroon, someone’s moving swiftly through the trees. He has the practised tread of a man who knows every inch of this land – as his people had before him for generations past. And he’s in a race against time. He pauses by the buttressed roots of a towering tree, rummages in his pouch, and pulls out what could be a vital tool for the future of his way of life: a customised GPS device, ‘forest-proofed’ in a tough rubberised plastic case. On its screen, a series of icons, enabling the illiterate forest dweller to record essential information – such as the location and size of a valuable hardwood tree. The forest tribes have fished and hunted these lands since the mists of time, and now they’re logging them. Not logging as in chopping wood: this version of the word has precisely the opposite goal. They’re compiling a digital map of their homeland, marking trees and other landscape features. This is in theory protected land, but it’s been at risk from incursion by timber companies, benefiting from confusion as to just where boundaries – and rights – lie in the remote forests. Now the data gathered on the ground will be matched with satellite observations to provide a highly precise map of the area. The device and its software have been developed by Helveta. This UK company uses a range of monitoring techniques, from satellite imagery to handheld devices, to track assets – from timber to soy to coffee – through increasingly complex and tangled global supply chains. Or, in this case, help a forest community define its traditional rights. And there’s more. By using barcodes and implanting tiny radio frequency identification (RFID) chips in the bark of valuable hardwoods, it’s now even possible to trace the timber all the way from
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the forest to the consumer, providing an electronic chain of custody. Satellite monitoring has already revolutionised our ability to tell what’s going on in the most remote regions of the world. Brazil’s Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) is keeping an eye on the state of deforestation in the Amazon, checking pretty much every hectare of standing forest for signs of disturbance. But, warns Helveta’s Philip Briscoe, “there is only so much you can tell from a satellite”. Some illegal loggers, he says, have managed to take out trees in a way which, for a time at least, appears to leave the canopy more or less intact as far as the satellite image is concerned. “You need people who can see changes on the ground – what we call ‘ground truthing’ – and log them.” That makes it “harder and harder to hide behind unsustainable or illegal practices when sourcing raw materials”. There’s growing demand for such services from companies keen to prove they’re not complicit in rainforest destruction. Gibson Guitars, for example, was shocked when FBI agents raided its Nashville factory accusing it of using illegally harvested hardwood. The court case is still ongoing, but it’s stung Gibson into exploring ecologically responsible alternatives. The use of monitoring technology could have prevented the issue arising in the first place. Jean Paul Vooght, who blogs at Citizen Sensing, says that to make the most of the technology available, we need a mix of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ sensing. Hard sensing is what can be measured and monitored solely by machines, such as sensors connected to vast databases, or remote viewing from satellites. The soft variety involves humans going out into nature, noticing changes and logging them, sometimes with the help of automatic sensors.
Tree surgeon in the sky: infrared imaging charts canopy health in a Dutch town
“The rainforest tribes have fished and hunted these lands for generations. Now they’re mapping them on GPS”
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Bird watched: RSPB’s osprey camera attracted many, worried some
hazards, too. Apple has just announced that its new operating system, iOS 5, will include the ability to connect to Japan’s earthquake warning system, hinting at the functionality our phones might have in the future if linked up to huge environmental sensor networks. With mobile use almost universal among Asia’s coastal communities, for example, there’s every chance of avoiding a repeat of the horrendous casualties in the 2004 tsunami. Remote sensing’s ability to warn us of catastrophes before they happen needn’t just apply to freaks of nature like earthquakes or tsunamis. With increased monitoring of the environment, we might also stand a greater chance of being able to predict tipping points in entire natural systems, possibly in time to avert a catastrophic crash. A 2009 paper in Nature suggested that a wide range of systems, from fish populations to financial markets, display some “generic early-warning signals”, including a range of unusual fluctuations, “if a critical threshold is approaching”. Spotting those signals needs some pretty extensive and sophisticated monitoring. A new initiative by the National Science Foundation in the US is aiming to do just that. Its National Ecological Observatory Network, to be launched at a cost of $434 million, will help scientists use the latest sensor technology deployed at ‘nodes’ in 24 states to gather and synthesize data
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Opposite page photo: Thinkstock
“Future smart phones could include pollution sensors”
And there’s no reason why such activities should be restricted to rainforest tribes with custom-made gizmos. Many of us carry around some impressively powerful ground truth monitors in the shape of our (smart) mobile phones. Their combination of GPS and cameras is already being put to use by initiatives such as Project Noah, whose motto is ‘citizen scientists everywhere’. Its apps allow users to map animals and plants in their local area to feed into scientific research. Other uses are more down to earth. Urban Edibles encourages folk across the world to go foraging by mapping local sources of wild foods such as fruits and herbs [see ‘An app a day’, GF80, p12]. There’s no technical obstacle to putting this sort of software on mobiles everywhere, allowing millions to map community assets. Future smart phones could connect to wearable pollution sensors, or even have them embedded in the phone itself. The University of California, San Diego, is developing a pollution-sensing chip for just such a purpose. While the Android app ‘Visibility’ uses the phone’s camera to take a snapshot of the horizon, then analyses it to estimate the amount of pollution in the haze. Such inventions could allow us to build up detailed pictures of air quality on a street-by-street basis, spotting hotspots, and navigating around them. Our phones could alert us to more serious
on everything from invasive species to the effects of climate change. It should be operational by 2013. All this has been enabled by a surge in the power and sophistication of monitoring technology at the same time as it has tumbled in price. In less than a decade, it has brought us to the point where, without leaving our laptops, we can keep tabs on a corner of a distant rainforest, map the migration of whales, and track the progress of tropical hardwood from tree to forest to furniture store. Whether we’re doing so as nature lovers, supply chain managers, or both, we are becoming a collective Big Brother. But it’s no coincidence that our capacity to monitor nature remotely is growing at a time when the number of us who experience it directly, with our senses rather than our sensors, is shrinking. In 2010, humanity passed a significant milestone. Over 50% of us now live in cities – and it’s starting to show. In one of the more populist uses of remote monitoring, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds placed a camera on a rare nesting osprey and its chicks, high in a tree on a remote Scottish hillside, offering round-the-clock viewing online. RSPB staff were delighted that tens of thousands of enthusiasts logged on to watch. But when one of the chicks appeared to start choking as it fed, the organisation was flooded with anxious messages from viewers, demanding that someone do something to stop it. They were reacting not as privileged observers of nature in the wild, but as horrified witnesses of the callous neglect of a cherished pet. Conversely, it is possible to sit transfixed as hurricanes whirl across your computer screens in real time – yet their hypnotic beauty from above does little to connect you to the devastation below. The same technology which can help us zoom in on nature, in other words, sometimes serves to reinforce our lack of connection with – or understanding of – natural realities. Seventy years ago, the poet TS Eliot asked: “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” As humans, we notice and absorb a huge, eclectic range of information about our surrounding environment at any one time, some of it easily quantifiable, some not. Over generations, this builds up into a vast store of experiential wisdom which helps us navigate our surroundings. But in our information-rich age, it is all too tempting to use the latest technology to apply a reductionist view of the world around us. We break it down to its constituent bits, and end up with ones and zeros where once there were rivers, forests, whole ecosystems – things of incredible beauty and complexity… Gathering data is, by definition, a reductionist enterprise. Whether we’re a Cameroonian forest dweller pinpointing a tree, or a climate modeller painstakingly correlating the readouts from a host of temperature sensors, we are of necessity trying to narrow our focus. You have to define specific parameters, then zero in on your target with laserlike precision – ignoring everything else. It’s hard to record what you’re not looking for. Say you’ve given rainforest dwellers portable loggers to map specific trees, but there’s no icon to press to say they’ve become diseased as a result of drought weakening
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their defences. It would be a valuable early warning of possible ecosystem collapse, an indicator of a much more serious problem than any illegal logging. But in this particular data monitoring exercise at least, it will remain invisible. So amidst all the excitement over the potential of this benign Big Brothery, we have to stay awake to what it won’t tell us. In part, that just means keeping a sense of perspective – looking up from the laptop now and then to see what the weather’s doing; going for a walk in the woods. But we can also look for ways to subtly modify our data gathering, too, deliberately ‘softening’ some of the parameters so as to pick up what we’re not looking for, as well as what we are. And we can learn from people whose experience of the natural world is still largely unmediated. In Cameroon, Helveta has established long-term relationships with 15 different forest communities. It started by finding out what was important to the villagers in maintaining their way of life, and only then designed the software to record it. As a result, local people now have GPS devices designed to map their land in terms of the various uses and meanings it holds for them. So, they record the sources of their medicinal plants, their fishing waters and hunting grounds, their ancestral homes, and so on. In doing so, they not only provide valuable hard data, which can help establish legal rights over their land and defend it against illegal incursion; they also provide something of a record of their way of life, and so, to some degree at least, capturing wisdom and knowledge, as well as information. TS Eliot would be proud.
Logging on: electronically tagged from forest to store
“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
Hugh Knowles is a futures and innovation specialist at Forum for the Future. Martin Wright is Editor in Chief of Green Futures.
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Painting by satellite It could be a splash of abstract gouache. But this isn’t art, at least not deliberately so. It’s a satellite image of the Tassili n’Ajjer National Park: a ‘plateau of chasms’ rising from the sands of southern Algeria. Rich in both human and geological history, its constituent rock types are picked out in contrasting colours through a mix of infra-red, near infra-red and visible light. Granite is red, sandstone yellow and tan, and the blue shades reveal salt deposits. The deep ravines running across the picture were formed by ancient rivers. Before the climate turned against them 2,000 or so years ago, people hunted, farmed and were buried here, leaving thousands of inscriptions perfectly preserved in the bone-dry rocks, along with relics of their houses and graves. Today’s satellites and remote sensing devices give us an unprecedented oversight of every inch of the planet, enabling us to chart and track everything from the slow stories of ancient geology to the sudden impacts of a volatile climate. Whether they make us agents of change, or mere observers of catastrophe, is up to us. Photo: Michael Taylor, Landsat Science Project Office/NASA
Shopping for tomorrow
Sally Uren asks what sustainable consumption will actually mean come 2020.
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Opposite page photo: John Slater/Thinkstock
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When you walk into a shop, what’s the very first thing on your mind? Are you thinking: “Right, I need to decide just how sustainable this toaster, or jacket, or apple is”...? Well, maybe, if you’re one of the few percent who put environmental and ethical concerns right at the top of their shopping list. But for most of us, sustainability is just one of a whole tangle of considerations we wrestle with when making purchasing choices – along with price, quality, style and many more. Most people would like to do the right thing, but we don’t always know how to go about it. Meanwhile, the pressure to keep acquiring more stuff is ever present. In the tuneful words of Lily Allen: “I am a weapon of massive consumption, It’s not my fault, it’s how I’m programmed to function.” So how do we get sustainable shopping out of the eco-niche and into the mainstream? That’s not just a challenge for environmentalists. It’s one for leading retailers and brands, too. They know that addressing issues from climate change to food, water and energy security will need dramatic shifts in consumption patterns and consumer behaviour in the coming years. This can’t be left to the whim of individual shoppers. Responsible brands have to play their part. And that means finding new ways to deliver quality products and services to demanding consumers in a world bumping up against natural limits. Knowing what that means in practice is far from easy. Brands are used to drawing on recent market data and near-term market projections to help develop products and services, but this tends to encourage only incremental change. However, if they shift their focus ahead to 2020, and consider what kind of world they will be operating in, they can start to grapple with the scale of changes needed. And they might even find they can help shape that future along more sustainable lines. That’s the thinking behind Forum for the Future’s ‘Consumer Futures’ project, undertaken in partnership with Sainsbury’s and Unilever [see box, ‘2020 x 4’]. What will the world look like in (just less than) a decade’s time? As Niels Bohr acidly commented, “Prediction is notoriously difficult – especially about the future.” So ‘Consumer Futures’ deploys a range of four very different possible scenarios as a way of helping stimulate thinking about how things might unfold. But there are some aspects in common: realities which, our research suggests, will be inescapable features of 2020. Here’s what we can, grimly, count on. Global population will have ballooned to around 7.6 billion. Climate change impacts will be increasingly in evidence, and starting to disrupt global supply chains. We are also fairly certain that the cost of key resources such as wheat, oil, water and energy will continue to rise as demand grows and supplies fail to keep pace.
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We will be living in a resource-constrained world. All of which means that the fundamental imperatives of sustainability will still apply – but with bells on. We will need sustainable consumption more than ever. So, just what exactly is this elusive creature? In essence, it can be summed up as follows: • Smart growth. Economic prosperity is not delivered at the expense of the environment, and the overall footprint of business is shrinking, not expanding. Smart growth is characterised by ‘decoupling’ commercial success from environmental impact, typically by delivering more economic value per unit of resource consumed. An example? Electric cars, recharged by solar power, which can also double as a means of balancing supply and demand fluctuations in the grid. •S mart use. Products create as little impact as possible at all stages of their life, from manufacture to disposal: nothing goes to waste. So, smart use is characterised by closed loops (where the materials get reused to make new products), or even open loops (where someone’s waste is another’s raw material). Take-back schemes abound, with everything from shampoo bottles to clothes being scooped up by retailers for resale. It’s the opposite of a throwaway society. Early movers include outdoor gear retailers Patagonia, who already take back clothing for remanufacture, and are now encouraging customers to ‘buy less, buy to last’. A smart use approach also encourages a shift from selling products (a disposable nappy, for example) to services (such as one providing a regular supply of freshly laundered nappies). And it nurtures different ownership models, too: you don’t need to possess something in order use it. We can already see the first signs of that in the spread of car clubs.
“Brands have to take sustainable shopping into the mainstream”
•A better choice of choice… ‘Freedom of choice’ is a free-market mantra, but it’s a misleading one. The idea that the consumer is sovereign – that each of us has unlimited choice – is a fiction. By deciding what to stock, and what to make, retailers and manufacturers have already made choices on behalf of their customers. In a world where sustainable consumption is the default mode, these would be dictated by environmental and ethical considerations, as well as the traditional ones of economics and marketability. ‘Choice editing’ is already underway, of course. Take Marks and Spencer’s commitment to stock only fair trade varieties of coffee, or restaurants like London’s Fish, which only serves seafood fish certified by the Marine Stewardship Council. •… and a positive social impact. A future of smart consumption will be one in which what,
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2020 x 4
Photos: BDS/Thinkstock
Any attempt to describe the landscape against which consumption will take place in 2020 has to acknowledge some pretty major uncertainties. Just where will the consumer be on sustainability? Willing to make lifestyle and consumption choices that reduce environmental impacts, or expecting brands and retailers to do it for them? What will the regulatory landscape look like? Will there be a global agreement on climate change? Or will the market rule our response? Will we be at peace or war? And will economic growth have returned to the developed economies, or will these still be flat-lining? Our four scenarios tease out different plausible futures across this spectrum, each of which has its own consumer culture – and its own approach to more sustainable consumption. None of these are nirvana – nor are they a dystopia either. There are pluses and minuses to each. ‘My Way’ is a high-tech world, in which smart products promote patterns of consumption that use less energy and water and generate less CO2. Much fresh produce comes in smart packaging that keeps it refrigerated, and changes colour when it passes the use-by date. Online micro-energy managers keep our homes optimally configured to smooth out our power use and keep our bills to a minimum, switching off the fridge for half an hour, pausing the car recharge until demand has peaked, and making sure our solar watts trickle into the grid at just the
Photo: Vertical Farm Project
and how, we buy promotes lasting wellbeing – in ourselves, and in everyone involved in producing our purchase, all the way down the supply chain. This doesn’t just mean ensuring decent working conditions for producers and a minimal environmental impact. It could also change the nature of what we buy, too. There’s plenty of evidence that simply acquiring more and more ‘stuff’ doesn’t make us any happier. And as inequalities grow, it certainly doesn’t promote community cohesion. In fact, analysis of the recent riots in the UK tells us that the pursuit of shiny stuff can be an indication of communities in distress. So, in a sustainable future, we might find that the endless search for novelty and the implied personal status that goes with it are far less important than they are today. Instead, we could find ourselves buying local food from inner-city vertical farms, say, which provide jobs for our unemployed neighbours and fresh veg for our children’s school. So, armed with all this analysis and future-gazing, what should leading businesses be doing today to prepare for a ‘smart consuming’ future? First, they should be flexible: tomorrow is not going to be ‘today plus’. Innovative companies, alive to new business models, will be the ones that prosper. This might involve shifting from selling products to services, giving consumers access to what they need without the material ownership. It might also mean developing a much more ‘closed loop’ approach – sustaining a long-term relationship with customers, rather than simply selling something to someone once. Some of the changes highlighted in our scenarios could pose formidable challenges to the old way of doing things. Take the shift to more local consumption: a feature of the scenario ‘From me to you’. In a world where people buy directly from producers, for example, what will be the role of retailers, whether online or operating bricks and mortar stores? Second, smart businesses will realise they cannot crack this alone. In a world where resource scarcity is increasingly prevalent, they’ll need to work much more closely with the whole value chain. That means farmers, producers, suppliers, designers, retailers, and the consumer. In two of the scenarios, long linear supply chains which criss-cross the globe have been superseded by shorter, more local ones: the boundaries between the producer and consumer have blurred, so we can expect more circular and sometimes simpler value chains. All of which means that new partnerships will be vital to business success. Which leads on to the third recommendation: to strengthen local brands, and local production capacity. We’ve become so used to the idea of globalisation as an unstoppable force that to suggest a change of course may come as something of a shock. But there is no guarantee that global brands will continue to win hearts and minds. In two of our scenarios, communities have built up their own, more resilient systems to source the products and services they need. In ‘My way’ they club together to buy direct from producers to save money; while peer-to-peer exchange and trade networks are a feature of ‘From me to you’. Even in the absence of consumer demand for locally resonant brands, strengthening local
right time to get maximum rewards. ‘Sell it to me’ is a personalised consumer world dominated by brands. We might be fitting our homes with brand-sponsored bathrooms that provide us with personalised supplies of toiletries on demand. It sounds like an Orwellian nightmare, but such slavish brand loyalty could be a route by which business can fine tune its offering to provide just what each individual customer needs, exactly when they need it, at minimum cost in terms of resources. It’s a closed loop economy, too: everything’s taken back for reuse or remanufacture; nothing goes to waste. ‘From me to you’, by contrast, is a world where communities, collaboration and innovative business models are the key to a low-carbon lifestyle. With resource prices spiralling, global tensions on the rise and trust in government fading fast, there’s little alternative. Peer-to-peer lending exchanges are common, and we see property owners banding together to loan money for mortgages. With many food imports prohibitively costly, this is a grow-your-own world: community-owned farms flourish, and repair and ‘remaking’ workshops spring up in the shells of bankrupt malls. Finally, ‘I’m in your hands’ is a tightly regulated world in which consumers trust brands to provide what’s best for them and for the environment – and trust the government to make sure that they do so. Resource constraints and tough carbon targets help create a culture of
production will still make sense, as it reduces the risk of supply chain disruption from resource shortages and climate impacts. It all points in favour of businesses diversifying their brands to embrace this trend, giving products and services a local, authentic story which will resonate with consumers and strengthen the local economy. Then there’s transparency. We’re already familiar with a world where, thanks to the spread of social media and IT generally, companies find it harder to hide. In the future, they’ll find it harder still. Each of our scenarios sees a time where ‘green’ and ‘ethical’ are no longer niche, and robust standards on environmental and social performance are mainstreamed into everyday products and services. This is a world where skeletons simply won’t stay in the closet. A mix of tight product regulations, and growing consumer savviness, will favour those companies who freely open up their supply chain to scrutiny. Finally, we recommend that smart businesses start to use their brightest marketing and communications people to prepare the ground for a
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willing conformists. It’s brought about an economy where services, as opposed to products, are the stuff of commerce. Rather than buy things, like fridges, food and clothes, people lease services which guarantee their beer will be cold, their diet healthy and tasty, and their bodies clad in the right mix of fashion and functionality, whatever the season. Innovative products provide personal health solutions: our clothes are impregnated with vitamins; our shampoo lather changes colour to indicate mineral deficiencies. To explore the scenarios in full, discover how to use them in practice, and see how Suzy our consumer archetype sources her shampoo in a range of possible 2020s, visit: http://www.forumforthefuture.org/ project/consumer-futures-2020/overview
world where sustainable consumption is the norm. Some brands are beginning to have conversations with consumers on the sustainability agenda, but that tends to focus on today’s issues: too many marketing teams use yesterday’s insight data to make decisions about what tomorrow’s consumers will want. More savvy brands will look to steal a march on the opposition by helping create a demand now for the sort of new products and services outlined above which will become the norm in a decade or so’s time. To sum up, you cannot overestimate the role which today’s dominant brands will play in helping make consumption sustainable. Many brands have built up a loyalty from millions of consumers which often lasts a lifetime. This gives them both the power and the responsibility to help these people lead more sustainable lives. In fact, it’s hard to see sustainable consumption becoming mainstream – unless brands take the lead.
Left: Harvest at home: local production could surprise global brands Above: Hair wash, health watch? Shampoo could be a different story come 2020
Sally Uren is Deputy Chief Executive of Forum for the Future.
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Connect force
people move around and interact with spaces in a very different way to the engineers.” “It’s an extremely interesting process”, says Chris Wright, Co-founder of Moixa Energy, which is now leading the Building Banter Project. “We were put with people who you wouldn’t normally have worked with, and have ended up with a new job.” The sandpit itself takes place within the confines of a hotel over the course of a week – because that’s how long it takes to break down delegates’ preconceived ideas about a problem, says Miller. A team of speakers and facilitators structures the days in creative sessions around a theme, which in this case was energy efficiency. The aim is to have collaborative pitches worthy of public funding ready by the last day. For Wright, it was the structure, location and timescale that made it such an intense experience. “On the last night you’re up until four writing the project brief, calculating a budget, arguing about the money and who’s going to lead the team. And then at 11 o’clock on the Friday, you pitch, and you find out an hour later whether or not you’ve got the money.” The Technology Strategy Board isn’t alone in getting a diverse group of people sparking off each other in a room. Other events in the space range from Rewired State’s ‘hack days’ [see ‘Making meaning’, GF81, p26], which bring computer whizzes together to find novel uses for publicly available data, to ‘unconferences’ – where the content is generated by the participants, rather than by the event organisers. These include ones run by US non-profit CityCamp, which assemble local government staff and officials together with independent experts to share perspectives and insights about the cities in which they live – and find ways to improve them. Just as for the sandpits, CityCamps start off with space to get creative juices flowing, and then the delegates are organised into groups to make concrete plans and pitch for funding. The first CityCamp was at the University of Illinois Chicago Innovation Center, in January 2010. Since then, they’ve popped up all over the US, from San Francisco to Raleigh, North Carolina.
“The rarest thing now is the deeper, slower tempo conversation which is pithy and rigorous”
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Two decades of the web, and several years’ frenzied pursuit of crowdsourcing and social media haven’t changed one basic fact of human society: when it comes to creative problem solving, we do it best face to face. Pretty much the same rules apply as they did back in the 1950s, when a journo turned ad salesman from the Bronx made ‘brainstorming’ a corporate phenomenon. The term had actually been coined a century earlier, but it was Alex Osborn’s book ‘Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Problem Solving’ that made it something of a science. A very rough guide to it is this: first embark on a broad, unconstrained search for many possible solutions. Then pick out the best of the bunch. In today’s data-packed digital world, searching can be a bit of a passive task. Few of us spend our days rooting through undergrowth for nuts or panning for gold. Instead, we sit at our desks, tap in a few keywords and click a button. Thanks to brilliantly programmed software, this can be a very efficient way of accessing a precise slice of information. But when it comes to generating new ideas, we still need actual brains, bouncing off each other, to get the best results. That’s brains, plural. Interest in the potential of a group to come up with new ideas and solutions has soared recently, both in academia and in the office. “Group creativity”, says Marc Runco, Editor of the Creativity Research Journal, “is vital for innovation and organisational efficacy, and increasingly so.” And there’s a growing consensus that, if you want to crack complex problems once and for all, you have to stop asking the same old questions of the same old people. You have to bring new faces into the room. But why not have a virtual room? It’s tempting to believe that we can have such creative conversations online. Not so, says Seth Godin, whose bestseller, ‘Tribes’, looks at how inspirational leaders can use social media to marshal swathes of followers. Contrary to popular belief, he argues, “the internet isn’t fabulous at crowdsourcing solutions. It does a good job of communicating problems. [But] solutions require commitment and persuasion, [which are] hard to create in a digital space.” Commercial pressures, intellectual property laws, academic rivalry and lack of time all get in the way of online brainstorming, Godin argues. There are conferences, forums and journals which aim to share best practice, but for really creative thinking there’s nothing better than putting an eclectic mix of people together in a room. But knowing just who to invite, and how best to get them sparking off each other, is a skill in itself, says Richard Miller, Head of Sustainability at the Technology
Green Futures October 2011
Strategy Board. Innovation is the raison d’être of this UK arms-length government agency, set up in 2007 to find new ways to generate wealth sustainably. “I see the UK as this vast resource of business acumen and skills”, declares Miller. “But to find the best ways forward, we really need key people to be in one place, sharing facilities and working closely in a multidisciplinary way. It’s the only way they are going to break away from current thinking.” Alongside its web-based Knowledge Transfer Networks, in which people from business and research institutes can share ideas and experience within a specific field – from biosciences to financial services to transport – the Technology Strategy Board is setting up six Technology and Innovation Centres. The aim of these elite institutes is to create a space in which professionals can come together to focus on an area where there is a need to drive commercialisation, such as offshore renewables, or high-value manufacture. A space for creative collaboration is one thing. Finding time for it is another. Which is why one approach that the Board takes to generate new ideas is to recreate the ‘stranded on a desert island’ scenario: throwing people together in what it calls ‘sandpits’ – “an intensive, interactive and free-thinking environment. The idea is to give them a good amount of time away from their everyday worlds, to immerse themselves in creative problem-solving.” It sounds fun, but what actually comes out of it? Crucially, each sandpit comes with a pot of public money for further development of the best idea. It takes place over a week – which, the organisation admits, is no small commitment – and so it’s a method that the organisation uses sparingly, to solve a specific problem. One sandpit, tasked with finding a way to engage employees in energy-saving measures, resulted in the £820,000 Building Banter Project, cofunded by the Technology Strategy Board under the User-Centric Design for Energy Efficiency in Buildings programme. The aim of the project is to cut energy use in factories by 10%, mainly by stimulating behaviour change among workers. It uses existing infrastructure, such as CCTV, IT servers, and phone and time management systems to provide visually striking analyses of energy consumption, and encourage staff to find new ways to reduce it. Thrown into the sandpit were Moixa Energy, a clean tech company that designs smart monitoring systems, four universities, two engineering companies, including Arup, a design agency, and some less usual suspects, too. “Our choices turned out to be lucky ones this time round”, Miller says. “One participant was a professor of dance, who thought about how
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Photos: John Foxx/Thinkstock
Adam Oxford harnesses the creative power of warm bodies in a room.
CityCamp Raleigh offered a $5,000 prize – generated by a host of sponsors, including IBM, Microsoft and Raleigh Economic Development – for the best idea. The money went to a team called ‘Open It Up’ that found a way to make publicly available data on schools – from report cards to teachers’ salaries – easily accessible to members of the community. The team included a software architect, a journalist for Raleigh Public Record, and a systems engineer. The really great thing about this format, adds Miller, is that you don’t just go away with the one prize: the winning solution. “All that time spent talking and sharing is bound to generate an immeasurable sum of new ideas and ways of working.” And unusual connections can bring novel solutions. One roundtable organised by the London-based Dialogue Project took on the problem of pain management. Organiser Karl James invited a dominatrix to talk with both doctors and critically ill patients. As a result, at least one doctor now uses a ‘safe word’ to help patients find the threshold of movement in damaged limbs. This is a pre-agreed phrase which the person being stimulated through pain can use to stop the proceedings. James is just as careful about terminology when it comes to describing his own work. He rejects Osborn’s ever-popular notion of ‘brainstorming’: “It’s the ‘storming’ bit that worries me. The rarest thing now is the deeper, slower tempo conversation which is pithy and rigorous.” Whether they welcome the storm or not, the importance of real engagement is something that all ‘professional connectors’ seem to agree on. Creative thinking doesn’t just happen because people are in a room. It’s a complex bit of chemistry, demanding enough focus and direction, as well as the best creative juices and a nice lab. But when all this comes together, the result may be just what you hoped for: new approaches to old issues that really merit that criminally overused word – ‘solutions’. Adam Oxford is a freelance writer specialising in technology and efficiency.
Bright ideas bounce off each other
The man who put the sun in a box
So far, after a year of trading, ToughStuff has sold over 140,000 solar products, reaching nearly 730,000 people – and saving them $2.8 million in fuel, candles, batteries and mobile charging costs. On the environmental side, it has meant savings of over 9,000 tonnes of carbon and an impressive 4.5 million batteries. And these are early days. By 2015, the company aims to reach 33 million people, put $2.2 billion back into the pockets of the poorest, and create 10,000 jobs. With such figures, ToughStuff has attracted a second round of investment from Norfund, the Norwegian Investment Fund for Developing Countries. “We were on a trajectory to break even with continued growth,” says Tanswell, “but we’ve been able to get further investment because of our success and our impact. It will take longer to break even, but we’re scaling up significantly.” Some development purists may be put off by the unashamedly capitalist language of ToughStuff’s operation: entrepreneurs, markets, undercutting on price, and villagers described as ‘consumers’. But Tanswell, a former management consultant who worked for Ernst & Young before building up and eventually selling his own successful consultancy business, believes tough-minded social enterprises like this are the way forward. “People value things they pay for”, he insists. “If a community is just given something, there is no sense of ownership. If someone pays only a few dollars, as they do with our [kit], they own that: it’s theirs. They’ve had to make some sort of sacrifice, but they know they will get a financial return through savings.” “We have layaway schemes,” he adds, “where people put money aside to buy, or they get the product first, and through the savings they make are able to repay the cost. We work with large NGOs in Africa and with savings and credit cooperatives, where people save money together and hold each other to account for repayment of loans. There’s a system whereby people put in a dollar each week, and one of the 12 in
“People value things they pay for”
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“Entrepreneurship brings dignity, it brings hope for the future”, says Andrew Tanswell, CEO of ToughStuff, winner of one of this year’s Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy [see GF81, p40]. The company has ignited private enterprise across Africa and Madagascar with its unique model for distributing affordable solar electricity. At its core is the ‘Business in a Box’, which sets up village entrepreneurs with solar panels, LED lamps, mobile phone chargers and radio connectors. The result, says Tanswell, is “to bring solar power within reach of the poorest of the poor”. Over 1.5 billion people in the developing world have no access to mains electricity. This means the only way to work, read or cook after dark is via kerosene lamps or candles. These are not only expensive – they are also hazardous. Fires caused by kerosene kill or disfigure tens of thousands every year; the fuel is also notoriously smoky, leading to breathing disorders for millions of women and children across Africa and Asia. Kerosene is a major source of carbon emissions, too. People without electricity are highly dependent on disposable batteries, particularly for radios. These batteries are discarded in their millions, and leak, polluting local water supplies. Now there’s another pressing reason for speeding the spread of power in developing countries: the mobile phone. Invaluable for market intelligence, information-sharing and banking, the humble mobile can play a key role in lifting people out of poverty. Over 500 million people who live off-grid now own one of these modern miracles. But first it has to be charged. “In Malawi, people were travelling for an hour each way on average [to do so]”, Tanswell explains. “They would walk for an hour, then wait 3.5 hours while it charged because they couldn’t trust people not to steal their battery. They’d lose 5.5
Green Futures October 2011
hours and pay US $0.25 – and they would do that once a week, maybe twice.” That adds up to a costly investment in terms of both time and money. Enter the Solar Village Entrepreneur (SVE), a local person equipped with 20 or 30 sets of robust, easyto-use ToughStuff kits costing less than $30 each, typically bought with a microcredit loan. “These entrepreneurs charge up the lamps in the daytime, then rent them out to people in the village for less than the cost of kerosene”, Tanswell explains. “So if that costs ten cents, they rent them out at nine cents. The entrepreneurs now have a healthy income, and every one of those consumers has something that costs less than the alternative: they have a clean energy product which they can use for several hours during the night. Their children can read and study, while the parents can increase their productivity.” Tanswell and his team have calculated that ToughStuff products pay for themselves within two or three months – and that a typical solar customer saves around $100 a year. The average solar entrepreneur, meanwhile, earns $450 a year: a respectable income in the developing world. In similar fashion, SVEs will charge up mobile phones for less than the 25 cents paid elsewhere – further income to help pay back their loan. Individuals or groups can also buy their own ToughStuff kit from one of 40 sales staff in Kenya and Madagascar, all of them locals. It’s what Tanswell refers to as a “triple bottom line business”, an approach that brings social and environmental benefits at the same time as it delivers financial returns for everyone concerned, including investors. “We’re a for-profit organisation, not a charity”, he explains. Because we have taken a commercial, business-based approach, we’ve been able to recruit fabulous people – but we’ve also been able to get the kind of investors who want to see [us grow to] scale.” Bill Gates recently described solar as “cute”. For Tanswell, it’s anything but. “If you really want to have an impact,” he says, “you have to think about tens of millions, hundreds of millions [of solar kits] … You have to think about getting to the billion level. We set out from the beginning to think about global scale. That way, we got good investors who could see where we were going.”
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the group then has 12 dollars to spend. We even have a distribution innovation lab in Kenya where we’re thinking about things like the Tupperware parties model.” It’s a far cry from change management and making money for big business, Tanswell’s previous stock-intrade. But, he maintains, as a Christian he never forgot the broader picture. “I took a sabbatical from Coopers & Lybrand at the time of the first Gulf War and worked in the Kurdish mountains doing relief work”, he reveals. “I took another sabbatical and worked in Somalia for a year, on a huge project flying in medical aid. I ran that, and I was only 28. These two [activities], business and aid, have been constantly intertwined in my life. This is what I believe God wants me to be doing – and the reward isn’t earthly success. It’s being able to face God, my Maker, and for Him to say, ‘Good and faithful servant, you did well with the resources I gave you.’ That’s my mission.” Andrew Purvis is a freelance journalist who writes regularly for The Daily Telegraph, National Geographic Traveller and The Observer.
By replacing kerosene, ToughStuff lights save children’s eyes – and lives
Photos: Toughstuff
Andrew Purvis meets Andrew Tanswell, founder of solar entrepreneur ToughStuff.
“If you really want to have an impact, you have to think about tens of millions, hundreds of millions”
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Green Futures October 2011
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A swimming pool in Newcastle could soon be heated by solar power, thanks to a new scheme that helps companies invest in local communities. The pool, which first opened in 1938, was recently saved from closure by a group representing schools, residents and health providers. Now, the Fenham Swimming Project wants to invest in solar thermal, which would make a huge difference to energy bills, as well as cutting carbon. But first they have to meet the hefty capital costs. Couldn’t they raise the money from businesses who want to fund carbon reductions to balance out their own unavoidable emissions – and benefit the local community, too? Until recently, the answer would have been ‘No’. Why? Because, before the launch of the UK Carbon Reporting Framework (CRF) in September, the only credible way for a business to account for ‘externalised’ carbon reductions was through accredited offset schemes. And, for good reasons, many worthy UK projects – including the Fenham pool – do not qualify. Offsets rely on the guarantee that no two investors are paying to cut the same tonne of carbon, through the same project. To ensure this is the case, projects must be able to give simple and transparent information about their impact. But many small-scale local schemes simply don’t have the sophisticated accounting skills to guarantee that a particular sum of money will prevent the emission of a particular tonne of carbon. It makes for a frustrating stalemate, both for
businesses wanting to support their local community, and for non-profits trying to get their plans off the ground. The CRF was launched to address just these issues. It has been developed by a partnership of the Building Research Establishment, Forum for the Future, British Airways (BA) and Deloitte, with technical support from the consultants Sustain. It offers clear guidelines to help projects account for benefits in three key areas: woodland creation, domestic energy efficiency and renewable energy generation. The information covers carbon cuts, as well as broader environmental and social benefits. Significantly, these are all balanced against the investment required by the project. The CRF allows supporters to identify projects that resonate and align with their priorities and strategy. It must be emphasised, though, that no one should invest in projects listed on the CRF under the illusion that they can claim full credit for making it happen, or that their own carbon footprint is reduced as a result. What they can do is use the CRF as part of a holistic carbon management plan, in which the first step should always be to manage and reduce their direct emissions. The investment in renewable energy for Newcastle’s community-run pool will be funded by BA’s One Destination Carbon Fund. As Michael Lee of the Fenham Swimming Project puts it, “It’s not just giving to this pool today, but it’s giving to us tomorrow and the day after…” Ben Ross specialises in energy at Forum for the Future.
In association with
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Green Futures October 2011
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SallyUren
Tomorrow’s leaders Since 1996, Forum for the Future’s Masters in Leadership for Sustainable Development has been training the sustainability leaders of the future. Each issue, we track the career of a Forum alumnus.
Class of: 2000 – 01 Currently: Director of The Moneygrower Why I chose the MProf It seemed such an obvious step. I had studied biology for my undergraduate degree and was heavily involved in green politics at Manchester University, as the leader of the green group and as the President of the Student Union. So when I heard about this Masters in Leadership through a friend, I just thought, “Yeah, that’s what I want to do.” There was never any debate in my mind. What I learnt The work placements at The Co-operative in Manchester and the RSPB were
Career to date Straight after the Masters, I cycled to the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg with fellow scholar Ruth Hollinger, covering about 8,500 miles. We did it in support of Water Aid: access to safe water and sanitation was a major theme at the Summit that year. Returning to the UK, I joined Environmental Resources Management, a corporate consultancy. Then, after a couple of years, I left to set up Better Generation with Seb. Our (rather lofty) aim was to demystify home renewable energy. The core product is The Power Predictor, which makes it easy to
Innovation India Martin Wright reports back from Mumbai. a greenfutures Special Edition
Published by
IndIa: innovationation innovation
on a fast track to sustainability?
An invitation to be part of a
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16/9/11 16:59:25
“Sustainability cannot be seen as some kind of optional extra” … “This isn’t about philanthropy, this is about profit”… “Either you’re a sustainable business, or you’re out of business.” These comments came from business leaders at a recent Forum for the Future event. They might sound familiar, but they stand out because they all come from Indian companies – often seen as laggards in sustainability. Forum’s first event in Mumbai, held in September, brought together businesses such as YES Bank, Tata Consulting Services and Hindustan Unilever, with journalists, politicians and NGOs.
Green Futures October 2011
assess the potential of a site for small-scale wind or solar installations.
How to ride high through a double dip…
What I plan to do next I’d like to stay in the renewables space, but apply what I’ve learnt through my first business venture to developing markets. I am setting up a company called The Moneygrower to commercialise a solar irrigation pump, which could make a huge difference to smallholder farmers. The potential for renewables in Africa, where a big grid may never be put in place, makes the UK renewables industry look like a sideshow!
Gloom. It’s everywhere at the moment. A double dip recession is on the cards, with a prolonged period of slow to no growth the best case scenario for the US and Europe. From the board room to the living room, spending is being squeezed. Sustainability cynics will seize this as a chance to kick green issues into the long grass, claiming they are irrelevant to both the economic crisis and the cash-strapped consumer. But they couldn’t be more wrong. Now is not the time to downgrade sustainability efforts. Quite the contrary. Here are three reasons why sustainability will help any business to defy yet another dip. First, it saves money and creates new markets. Many multinationals have wiped millions off their operating costs: Tesco
Advice for future leaders Focus and believe in yourself. I think the perception in mainstream business is still that environmentalists are a bit naïve and don’t have a good business head on them. Whereas, actually, the instinct that most people have in this sector is to do the right thing – and that makes for good business, as well.
An English region rises to the challenge.
The Forum Network Membership of the Network gets you a direct line to Forum for the Future, invitations to exclusive events, communications opportunities, and the chance to get involved in collaborative projects. If you join as a Partner, you also benefit from a tailored advisory programme for your organisation, with director level support. If you work for a leading light which wants nothing but the highest level of engagement, join as a Pioneer. www.forumforthefuture.org/forumnetwork
The theme, ‘The Next Business Wave: Profiting from Sustainability’, reflected a growing sense that sustainability on the sub-continent is breaking out of the ‘philanthropy ghetto’ and into the mainstream. The event was staged in partnership with the Indian Merchants’ Chamber, the country’s longest established business organisation, along with the UK Deputy High Commission and Deutsche Bank. Further events are planned for 2012, along with a Green Futures Special Edition, India: Innovation Nation. Martin Wright is Editor in Chief, Green Futures.
www.greenfutures.org.uk
Sally Uren is Deputy Chief Executive at Forum for the Future. @sallyuren
Carbon gone West
Toby Hammond was in conversation with Katie Shaw.
Photo: Christian Lerke/Hemera
Toby Hammond
particularly rewarding, as I had the chance to spend time with really senior people. The RSPB also gave me a tour of its parliamentary lobbying for conservation in Northern Ireland – targeting (veteran Unionist leader) Ian Paisley in particular – which was great, given my background in student politics. I’m not sure how much I contributed, but I learnt a lot. I also made friends with Seb Wood, a fellow scholar with an entrepreneurial streak that matched my own, and we started to bounce around various ideas for our own business.
reckons that carbon management has saved the company around £200 million a year. Other household brands have shown that sustainability can create value. M&S calculates that Plan A created a net benefit of £70 million to the business in the last year. Sustainability also prompts innovation. Asking how viable a company will be in a dramatically different operating environment can generate new business models, products and services. Many businesses have concluded their current model doesn’t stand up with oil at $300/barrel (and yes, this is where we could end up). New models such as leasing could provide the consumer with what they want at a fraction of the environmental impact. Ian Cheshire, Kingfisher’s visionary CEO, is on record saying that, “instead of the goal of maximum linear growth in GDP, we should be thinking of maximum wellbeing for minimal planetary input”. B&Q, Kingfisher’s UK subsidiary, could be the first retailer to make leasing mainstream. Finally, sustainability allows new conversations with consumers. Some classic issues, such as packaging and sourcing, are only ‘must-haves’ for a small percentage of consumers. But they are ‘nice-to-haves’ for many more. Offered a simple choice, a significant proportion will opt for the more sustainable product. Some companies are listening. In the US, Unilever has launched its Suave shampoo with the message, “Shower for less and save $100 off your utility bill”. And there’s Sainsbury’s in the UK, with the slogan, “Live well for less”. As we said back in the early 2000s – in hard times, people value values.
Some serious carbon cutting is underway in the West Country, thanks to a Forum for the Future initiative. Launched in May 2009, the West of England Carbon Challenge aims to bring public and private organisations together in a collective commitment to cut carbon and save energy. The target was an average annual cut of 2.5% in emissions over four years, to reach a cumulative total of at least 10% by 2012. To date, over 80 organisations, representing one-fifth of the workforce in the region, have come on board. Over the course of 2010, this sizeable group achieved combined emissions cuts of 1.3%. Admittedly, this isn’t enough to hit the target – but some businesses have excelled, winning Carbon Champion Awards at a celebration hosted by Bristol Zoo. Coda Architects, based in Bristol, made a 14% reduction between 2009 and 2010, while increasing staff numbers. They showed that it’s not rocket science, using an energy monitor to track consumption, removing bulbs from strip units, and replacing waste bins with paper recycling points. Law firm Burges Salmon achieved a 10% cut
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through two simple measures. First, it switched from 130 office-based IT servers to just 35 virtual ones – and then it launched a campaign asking staff to switch off all equipment at night. So, what made these leaders stand quite so far out from the crowd? Three things, says coordinator Madhulika Goodey: “One, they have a real handle on the numbers and are using it to drive change. Two, they have all successfully engaged their workforce. And three, they have all taken advantage of technology.”
Bristol: bridging the gap to a low-carbon future
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Forum for the Future’s Network brings together business and government to create a sustainable future; inspiring new thinking, building creative partnerships and developing practical innovations to change our world. We aim to transform the critical systems that we all depend on, such as food, energy and finance, to make them fit for the challenges of the 21st century. For more information, visit www.forumforthefuture.org ABN AMRO www.abnamro.com
Carillion plc Louise Perry, 01902 316258
Gearbulk www.gearbulk.com/
AECOM Daniel Hobbs, daniel.hobbs@ aecom.com www.aecom.com/
Carnival www.carnival.com
GSH Group Lee Price, 01782 200 497 www.gshgroup.com
AkzoNobel Elizabeth Stokes, 01928 511695 Alliance Boots Ltd Andrew Jenkins, 0115 968 6766 AMEC Francesco Corsi, 0191 272 6128 Arjowiggins Graphic Shannan Hodgson, shannan.hodgson@arjowiggins.com Arup Will McBain, Will.McBain@arup.com Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy Jane Howarth, 020 7410 7023 Aviva Investors Steve Waygood, 020 7809 6000 Balfour Beatty plc Jonathan Garrett, 020 7216 6837 Bank of America Merrill Lynch Matt Hale, 020 7996 2054 Benchmark Software Simon Harvey, 01458 444010 Birmingham City Council Sandy Taylor, 0121 303 4026 Bottletop Cameron Saul, cameron@bottletop.org British Council www.britishcouncil.org BP Shipping www.bp.com/shipping BT plc Richard Spencer, 0773 663 6882 Richard.a.spencer@bt.com Bunge www.bunge.com Bupa Andrew Smith, 020 7656 2343 Cafédirect Whitney Kakos, 0207 033 6022 Capgemini Ltd James Robey, 0870 904 5761 Cargill Fiona Cubitt, 01932 861916
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Certis Europe www.certiseurope.co.uk Chi Group http://www.chigroup.com City of London Simon Mills, 020 7332 1431 The Co-operative Group Chris Shearlock, www.co-operative.coop Danone www.danone.com David Lloyd Leisure www.davidlloyd.co.uk Delhaize Group Megan Hellstedt, mhellstedt@hannaford.com www.delhaizegroup.com Delphis Eco Mark Jankovich, 02033970096 www.delphisworld.com DSME www.dsme.co.kr/en Ecotricity Helen Taylor, 01453 761316 Ecover Mick Bremans, +32 3 309 2500 EDF Energy Darren Towers, 07875 110 289, darren.towers@edfenergy.com Ella’s Kitchen Alison Lindley, alison@ ellaskitchen.co.uk Energy Saving Trust 020 7227 0398 www.energysavingtrust.org.uk The Environment Agency Brian Francis, brian.francis@environmentagency.gov.uk Fife City Council www.fifedirect.org.uk Finlays Michael Pennant-Jones, 020 7802 3239 Firmenich SA Neil McFarlane, +41 227802435 FirstGroup plc Terri Vogt, 07748118343 Food and Drink Federation Nicki Hunt, 020 7420 7132 Friends Life Sandra Latner, 08452 683135 GallifordTry Infrastructure Guy Wilson, Guy.Wilson@gallifordtry.co.uk
Green Futures October 2011
Heineken UK Richard Heathcote, 01432 345277 Hewlett-Packard Nancy Keith Kelly The Highways Agency Dean Kerwick-Chrisp, Dean.Kerwick-Chrisp@highways. gsi.gov.uk http://www.highways.gov.uk/ IGD Dr James Northen, 01923 851919 IBM Siobhan O’Sullivan, SULLIVA@uk.ibm.com www.ibm.com/uk/en/ Ingersoll Rand www.ingersollrand.com Innovia Films Lucy Cowton, 01697 342281 InterfaceFLOR Europe Ltd Ramon Arratia, 020 7490 3960 Interserve Constuction Ltd Peter Marsden, peter.marsden@interserve.com Jaguar Land Rover Fran Leedham, fleedham@jaguarlandrover.com John Lewis Partnership Moira Thomas, 0207 592 4413 Johnson Matthey Sean Axon, 020 7269 8400 JT Group John Pontin, 01275 373393 Kingfisher plc Christina Allen, 0207 644 1142 Kraft Foods and Cadbury Jonathan Horrell, 01242 236101 Kyocera Mita UK Ltd Tracey – Rawling Tracey.Rawling.Church@ KyoceraMita.co.uk Lafarge UK Emma Hines www.lafarge.co.uk Leeds City Council www.leeds.gov.uk/ London Borough of Croydon Bob Fiddik, Bob.Fiddik@croydon.gov.uk Lloyd’s Register www.lr.org
Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) James Simpson, 020 7811 3315 Marks & Spencer plc Rowland Hill, 020 8718 6885 PlanA@marksandspencer.com
Skanska Jennifer Clark, 01923 776666 Small World Henry Rawson, +852 2799 3998 www.interiorsourcing.com
Maersk Line www.maersk.com/
Sony Ericsson Gustaf Brusewitz, gustaf.brusewitz@songericsson.com
Mars Drinks www.marsdrinks.co.uk
Sony Europe www.sony-europe.com
National Grid Mike Elmer mike.elmer@uk.ngrid.com
Swire – China Navigation Co www.swireos.com/
O2 plc Simon Davis, simon.davis@O2.com Panasonic UK Ltd Simon Eves, 01344 853325 PepsiCo UK & Ireland Andrew Slight, Andrew.Slight@pepsico.com Powys County Council Heather Delonnette, 01597826165 Pret A Manger ltd Nicki Fisher, 020 7827 8888 Pureprint Group Richard Owers, 01825 768811 Quintain Estates and Development Plc Louise Ellison, 020 7478 3430 lellison@quintain.co.uk RAC Foundation Elizabeth Box, Elizabeth.Box@RACFoundation.org www.racfoundation.org Rail Safety and Standards Board Shamit Gaiger, 020 3142 5380
Tata Global Beverages Ria Kearney +44 (0)20 8338 4596 Tesco Ltd Ruth Girardet, 01992 644053 Tetra Pak International Rupert Maitland-Titterton, 0870 442 6000 Thames Water Utilities Ltd Helen Newman, 0118 373 8343 Thomson Reuters Julia Fuller, julia.fuller@thomsonreuters.com Triodos Bank William Ferguson, 0117 980 9770 Tsakos www.tsakos.net
The Guide features over 120 climate change and ethical funds, articles from leading fund managers, including Pictet, Sarasin, Henderson, Cheviot, Impax, Meteor, Osmosis, Quadris, Goldfield Partners, Terra Global and Future Capital Partners, plus the unique Holden Runes Ratings.
Unilever UK & Ireland Helen Fenwick, 01372 945000 United Utilities Gary Adkins Gary.Adkins@uuplc.co.uk
Rio Tinto http://www.marine.riotinto.com/
Volac Andy Richardson, 01223 208021
RWE npower Anita Longley, 01793 892716
Guide to Climate Change and Ethical Investing
TUI Travel plc Jane Ashton, 01293 645911
Vodafone Group Joel Roxburg www.vodafone.com
RSA Insurance plc Paul Pritchard, 020 7337 5712
Find out what on earth you should be investing in.
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Rexam Plc sustainability@rexam.com, www.rexam.om
Royal Dutch Shell plc Elfrida Hughes, +31610974798
Investment opportunities don’t get much bigger than this.
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three-pin slow charge socket is an option for those on an overnight stopover. Welcome Break’s CEO Rod McKie is right behind the initiative which, he calculates, could help his customers make big savings on fuel. The network itself is free to use, and home-charging works out at just over 1p a mile. “A driver doing a year’s typical 8,500 miles of motoring could save almost £1,000 in petrol costs at today’s prices”, he calculates, “and around two tonnes in CO2 emissions.” Of course, an EV isn’t necessarily low carbon: it could have nearly as large a footprint as a petrol car, depending on how the electricity is generated. In this case, though, the carbon saving is certain. Ecotricity is feeding enough wind and solar power into the grid to cover the charging stations’ requirements. If you stop off on the M4 at Reading, you can even recharge at a point connected directly to the Green Park wind turbine. As Ecotricity Founder Dale Vince puts it: “You’ll now be able to get around Britain using only the power of the wind. We’re creating the infrastructure to get Britain’s electric car revolution moving.” But with UK motorists currently driving 250 billion miles a year, how would the UK’s electricity supply cope if everyone switched to EVs? The additional requirement would be nearly 60 terawatt-hours, 16% of the UK’s current annual grid demand. Vince’s answer is robust. “We could power all that with 12,000 of today’s wind turbines”, he says – or 6,000 of the next generation of higher output models. Ecotricity figures suggest this would save 23 million tonnes of oil every year, and 71 million tonnes of CO2 emissions. Most cars would charge at home overnight, so the impact on peak demand would be minimised. Smart systems should allow for many EVs to be sitting at home, feeding power back into the grid at the times when electricity use for other appliances is highest [see ‘Grid solution’, GF81, p10]. That vision may seem some way off, with only 2,000 electric-only vehicles and just a few hundred plug-in hybrids on Britain’s roads so far. But the economic argument is tilting in their favour. The price premium, while still substantial, is offset by fuel cost savings that look ever more attractive in view of recent petrol and diesel price hikes and the reasonable expectation of worse to come. Public confidence in the recharging infrastructure, however, remains critical. Until now, the UK’s 400-odd EV charging points have nearly all been in cities, more than half of them in London. The new network could give electric drivers the guts to go further. – Roger East Ecotricity is a Forum for the Future partner. www.ecotricity.co.uk
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Photo: Arjowiggins
“Even if all UK motorists switched to EVs, we could power them with 6,000 of the next generation wind turbines”
Think electric car, and what you probably see is a nippy vehicle in a quirky colour being parked with expert precision and zero revs in a tiny space in a crowded city. But recharging points at service stations up and down the UK’s motorways could change this vision altogether. Launched this summer by renewable power company Ecotricity, it’s being called the world’s first national electric highway, offering drivers a free low-carbon top-up for their batteries in the time it takes to drink a cappuccino. Now picture a sleek sedan cruising up the M1 for a weekend in the Dales… Until now, an understandable fear of getting stranded has made drivers highly cautious about taking longer journeys in an electric vehicle (EV). This so-called ‘range anxiety’ issue has been a major brake on their take-up. It has also seen EVs stereotyped as suited only to short urban hops – though it’s worth noting that 99.6% of all UK car journeys are less than 100 miles, which is within – or only a little above – the range of most modern EVs. Using the new motorway recharging network sounds like simplicity itself. You register online with Ecotricity for a free swipecard to access the charging points, which can be found at a growing number of Welcome Break service stations. South Mimms on the M25 was the first, and all 27 will have them by 2013. A fast top-up can take around 20 minutes, which can get some modern batteries up to 80%, or there’s a full charge available if you’ve got two hours, a more likely option for those enjoying a lazy lunch. The regular
Choosing recycled paper over virgin fibre saves waste, energy and water – but just how much?
Photo: Darren Baker/iStockphoto
A green power network on the UK’s motorways means new horizons for battery cars.
Over 80% of UK companies now have a corporate social responsibility strategy, according to research by Future Thinking on behalf of Arjowiggins Graphic, a leading manufacturer of environmental papers. So, it’s fair to say that most want to do the right thing. Understandably, most want to be seen to be doing the right thing, too. This is particularly true when it comes to sustainable procurement. With today’s long supply chains, though, it can be hard enough at the best of times ensuring that your suppliers meet demanding environmental and social criteria. Demonstrating to the outside world that they’ve done so can be harder still. It doesn’t help that many good acquisitions go unnoticed. Take recycled paper. Once upon a time, you could tell it at a glance – that off-white colour and textured appearance. Now, corporates can opt for recycled paper that’s whiter than white, and often they do – for their annual reports or direct mail. For companies seeking to wear their green credentials on their sleeve, ‘natural’ shades still prove popular. Of course, it’s great that the more sustainable option can match the best when it comes to quality. But it can also be a wasted opportunity: the fact that it is recycled may be missed; the merits of this choice over virgin paper may not be taken on board; the procurement manager may never get that green trophy... Which is why a label displaying the benefits of choosing recycled over virgin is such a good idea. The Environmental Benefit Statement (EBS) tells you just how much wood, electricity, water and CO2 were saved, and how much waste diverted from landfill, thanks to producing a given publication on recycled stock. The EBS is the result of a free, easy to use online environmental calculator developed by Arjowiggins Graphic. You enter the number of pages, size, paper type and print run, and it automatically calculates the various environmental savings. This information is developed into a statement that can be any shape or style you like, and is then shared as a PDF for inclusion in your own designs. “The EBS is fantastic because it shows exactly how you are helping to reduce environmental impact”, says Veronica Ferguson of Heedi Graphic Design. “And you can produce it so quickly.” It was seeing the savings their own paper mill was making that prompted Arjowiggins Graphic to get their calculators out. “We wanted to measure our own impact and to see how our recycled papers compared to the European average for virgin fibre pulp”, explains Sustainable Development Manager, Gilles Lhermitte. For instance, to calculate the amount of waste saved by using recycled papers, the volume of waste paper (which would have otherwise been sent to landfill
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or incineration) is compared to the 800kg of fibres (on average) that make up each tonne of virgin fibre paper. Arjowiggins Graphic worked alongside the Carbon Neutral Company to provide a credible and accurate assessment of CO2 savings. The data did what was expected, offering the company valuable insights into its own savings. But it also promised to do much more. It struck a chord with many of Arjowiggins’ customers, who were looking for a way to trumpet their green endeavours. It’s not just a vain boast: experts on behaviour change agree that a public commitment is much more likely to result in a lasting shift [see ‘The persuaders’, GF80, p26]. And so the EBS was born, combining the online data-crunching tool with a statement that customers could wear on their sleeve. “At first we tested it with a sample of clients, but demand grew rapidly and so we made it available to everyone through our website”, says Shannan Hodgson, Corporate Affairs Manager at Arjowiggins Graphic, who was responsible for developing the EBS for the UK. The Arjowiggins Graphic website now includes a running total of the savings that have been made in the UK since January 2010 by choosing to print on its recycled papers. To date, these amount to: • 101,758,705kg of waste diverted from landfill • 2,099,454,100 litres of water • 281,179,434kWh of electricity • 26,250,726kg of CO2 • 165,340,020kg of wood. Now surely that’s something to pin to the mast?
Like a tree, but lighter
“It’s such a good idea: a simple label showing how many resources are saved by using recycled paper”
Arjowiggins Graphic is a Forum for the Future partner. www.recycled-papers.co.uk To see Green Futures’ EBS, take a look at the inside cover of this issue.
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Prize supplies
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Skanska is a Forum for the Future partner. www.skanska.com
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Dax Lovegrove reveals the tricks of a few new trades.
Photo: iStockphoto
“People need to be shaken out of their comfort zones”
We all do it. When buying something that matters, most of us stick to the places we know – the hairdresser, the car repair shop, even the takeaway. In business, it’s the same. When a building company wants to purchase concrete or windows, they go to familiar suppliers. Better the devil you know. So what happens when companies want to make a step change and source products that are greener? Enter the minefield. “If you’re starting from scratch it is pretty hard distilling what’s green and what’s not”, says Jonathan Hines from Ashden Awards winners Architype, which specialises in sustainable architecture. He recalls buying windows for a school built to rigorous Passivhaus standards (see image): “Getting the right window at the right price took a lot of effort.” The variety of accreditation schemes, drawing on different and complex criteria, didn’t make it any easier. “What’s more, we don’t trust many of them”, adds Hines. Architype isn’t alone in finding reliable information on suppliers’ standards hard to come by. Joe Ravetz of the Centre for Urban and Regional Ecology at Manchester University explains that some benchmarking studies are based purely on what the companies themselves say. It doesn’t help that increasing numbers are making green claims about their products. “They may have [what appears to be] a good green policy”, says Hines, “but it doesn’t mean that what they build is actually green.” So, it’s small wonder that when a building contractor wants to green up its act, it opts for the supplier it already knows and trusts, rather than approach a new one. Does this matter? The trouble is that the combination of greenwash on the supply side, and the
fact that many construction companies are unwilling, or unable, to do their homework, means the best suppliers are likely to be missed. “Who supplies what to construction companies tends to be a question of who you know and what favours are required for passing contacts on”, says Ravetz. “The industry is very fragmented, and information is poorly communicated.” Bad communication about good suppliers is something construction multinational Skanska, named Green Company of the Year 2011 by The Sunday Times, has decided to tackle. Skanska admits that even among its own staff it struggles to ensure everyone knows where to find the best buy. (To be fair, it does have 55,000 employees across three continents.) Its answer is the Supply Chain Green Solution Award, now in its second year, which encourages suppliers to come forward with their green products. The idea is that the profile given to shortlisted companies will raise awareness of their work around Skanska and encourage procurers to give them a go. “People need to be shaken out of their comfort zones”, says Sustainability Manager Daniella Holt. Skanska is also spreading the word about its green finds more widely, through collaboration with the Modern Built Environment Knowledge Transfer Network. This platform, led by BRE and funded by the Technology Strategy Board, aims to increase the application of innovation in the built environment. The first Green Solution Award winner was the design and installation service provider Prater. It won not because of any groundbreaking widget, but for really trying to embed green standards in its overall approach. Runners-up included The EcoCrib, a retaining wall made from 100% recycled plastic; a watertight manhole designed by drainage company CPM to last for at least 120 years; and Lafarge’s Extensia concrete flooring , which is strong enough to support a heavy load on a thin slab without adding steel fibres to the mix, so cutting carbon by as much as 20%. Both the range of innovations out there and the general ignorance of them are symptoms of the rapid growth of the green building industry. The number of people attending the Green Build trade show this year was double that of 2010, while the International Business Times describes green building as moving “in just a few years from obscurity to a significant trend”. And not too soon. The built environment accounts for 40-50% of our global draw on natural resources, and so the potential impact of truly green products and attitudes is huge. The UK’s Green Building Council publishes a statistic from which we should all take cheer: CO2 emissions caused by the built environment in the UK are down 20% in the last 20 years. Not a lot of people know that. – Charlotte Sankey
Photo: Architype
A new awards scheme helps green building suppliers stand out.
Gamechangers Some of the boldest critiques of big business are coming straight from the top. Should we be surprised? No. Leaders grappling with today’s economic and ecological challenges are among the best placed to see that the road ahead won’t lead to long-term success. In the words of BSkyB’s CEO Jeremy Darroch: “If you simply chase growth for the sake of it, without thinking of the broader impacts, ultimately, that is not going to be sustainable.” Or as Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever, presents the challenge: “We need to grow responsibly, we need to grow differently.” The search for new ways to do business is on. Expect to see a proliferation of ‘transformation’ plans, following the likes of Ian Cheshire, CEO of Kingfisher, who means “to fundamentally lower [the] impact” of the DIY giant. But are today’s big hitters our best hope? They could be, but while mainstream pioneers are looking for new ways to succeed within natural limits, WWF has identified some exciting new contenders with the potential to change the game. So, what are these radicals – some start-up businesses, others new alliances – doing differently? And what can the incumbents learn from them? For a start, new businesses and services are overturning the assumption that growth depends on producing more stuff. Businesses can cut their use of natural resources dramatically by harnessing the value of the things we, as individuals or communities, already own. Take peer-to-peer lending and leasing of goods and skills, facilitated by the likes of Ecomodo and Zilok. Anyone can sign up online in a matter of minutes, and offer to share household goods or skills with colleagues, friends or neighbours. So now others might benefit from the fondue set you use once a year, or the kite you never have time to fly. Or you could offer to be a cook for an evening, or give the odd language or music lesson, perhaps. And you choose whether, and how much, to charge. The facilitating website simply takes a small cut from the fee, at the expense of the borrower. It’s a clever model, bypassing the natural resource inefficiencies in most ‘buy and sell’ deals, from manufacture to sales to distribution. Some high street retailers are eyeing the idea with interest, but they are yet to make the leap. In time, we might even see partnerships emerging between peer-to-peer enterprises and retailers. Another innovation is around ‘open loop’, where one business’s waste becomes another’s resource. The UK’s National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP) pairs organisations that produce waste with ones that can put it to effective use. Founded by industrial solutions company International Synergies, it has brought together council recycling officers, housing associations, waste contractors and SMEs to identify opportunities for collaboration. Trevor Knipe, one of the company’s directors, calls it “speed-dating for wastes”.
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The possibilities he sees range from turning expanded polystyrene packaging into insulation, to converting old mattresses into bedding for cows. The NISP methodology is being replicated across the globe, from Hungary to the Chinese industrial zone of Tianjin. WWF has also found that new business is breaking away from fossil fuels. It is becoming increasingly evident that organisations and goods could be powered entirely by renewables by the middle of this century with today’s technology – and consumer demand is rising to the prospect. But some cutting edge players are looking even further. Not content with merely reducing their environmental footprint, they have ambitions to restore natural and social resources. Take Ecuador, where the Fund for the Protection of Water (FONAG), a private mercantile trust, is collecting payments from downstream water consumers to pay for watershed management, conservation and access to water upstream. The scheme’s success has sparked plans for ten other water funds in the region, as well as in Peru and Mexico. If these green gamechangers have one thing in common, it’s the readiness to ask seemingly simple questions: what can we fairly take, and what can we give in return?
“Peer-topeer lending and leasing is growing rapidly”
Dax Lovegrove is Head of Business and Industry at WWF. To browse WWF’s online bank of green gamechangers and read its new report on the top 50 innovators visit: www.wwf.org.uk/innovation For interviews with leading CEOs, visit: www.wwf.org. uk/talkingtransformations WWF-UK is a Forum for the Future partner. www.wwf.org.uk
Upstream Ecuador, funded by downstream consumers
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Feedback Mountains moved Moving Mountains [Green Futures Special Edition, July 2011] is very impressive and thought provoking. I was particularly moved by the piece on the sacred groves around the Shinto shrines. Such devotion to trees is an example to shame the Western world with its unremitting, rampant acquisitiveness. The Buddhist teachings, briefly mentioned with the quote, “What you do to the environment, you do to yourself” are well known, but apparently not to those who are presently destroying ecosystems in pursuit of profit. David Harvey
It is enormous credit to Green Futures that you published Moving Mountains. For too long the way that people from different faiths view the environment has been ignored or not given sufficient airing. CIWEM has a Faiths and Environment Network, within which we have been exploring many issues and encouraging people from all faiths to write about them through the platform of our WEM magazine. Faith is an essential part of our life and our belief systems, and should therefore be at the heart of the environmental debate. Moving Mountains helps to encourage this. The articles are both thoughtful and provoking. Paul Horton, Director, Membership and International Affairs, CIWEM
Moving Mountains paints an inspiring picture of the remarkable range of environmental initiatives under way by the world’s faiths. It’s a picture many of us can recognise from our own experience. It is not one of uniformity, but of diversity across varying agendas and approaches. Yet underlying these there is both a convergence of view on our responsibilities towards the natural world and also complementarity, where each can learn from the others, and even strengthen their own traditions. It’s worth pausing to identify the common terms increasingly shared between us, which can further build cooperation without settling for the lowest common denominator. Here are some: • acknowledgment of our historic and continuing failure to live up to our own precepts • respect for the entire natural world, as an expression of the divine • the connectedness of all things
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Join the debate
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• the Earth as our common home, and the conserving of its resources for benefit of all its inhabitants (present and future) • recognition of our present finitude whilst aspiring to the infinite • the cultivation of contentment in sufficiency • alliance of faith and hope with knowledge and realism • a synthesis of the contemplative and active ideals – reflection supporting engagement • the attainment of peace and reconciliation in place of strife and exploitation. Most of these paradigms are not novel in any way – best that they not be. Several are paralleled in secular commentary on the environment and sustainability. But they extend their application further, and address a wider audience. Together with the spiritual dimension and theological content that faiths bring to bear, is it too much to hope that a transition in human consciousness might at last begin to be effected? We need no less, if humanity and other living kinds are to survive and thrive together into the future. Brian Cuthbertson, Head of Environmental Challenge, London Diocesan Fund
EO Wilson wisely suggested that the two most powerful human forces are religion and science. Combine the two strengths, and I believe we can save our beautiful biodiverse planet and, with it, our own human spirit. Kim Stewart, mother of four, Trustee, Wildscreen
I think this contribution starts from the green agenda, and is trying to persuade greens to engage with faith communities. I think you would find this exercise could deepen by encouraging a similar statement from the different faith communities about how they see [their role in this]. Each major faith would have a different focus, and I’m sure that within any particular faith there would be quite a few different takes on the key issues. I also believe that the mystical and meditative strands within the different traditions (not just the Eastern ones) need a voice in all this. Best wishes with taking this initiative forward. Mark Dunn
society. Thus, Symon Hill writes perceptively on business, but I fear it is at the palliative (caring until death!) end of a spectrum. It should include the far more profound challenges of a curative process featuring new premises for corporate law designed to serve the common good. The present massive corporate hegemony commits the finite world to exponential growth, shot through with direct and indirect exploitation of people and planet. I do not detect anywhere in Moving Mountains references to the economic restructuring needed to reverse 400 years of the commodification of people, land, assets and resources, and the narrow accumulation of intellectual property rights. The breadth, depth and scale of the ecosystemic changes that now confront us suggest that specific action needs to be taken “in the fierce urgency of now”, as Martin Luther King put it. I do value Moving Mountains, and will bring it to the attention of many in my networks, but I fear it will lose effective momentum if it is not coupled painfully, frankly and courageously with the specific structural implications of the wisdom imparted. Canon Peter Challen, Chair, Christian Council for Monetary Justice
Land, water and war
I hate to say this, but what a grating, selective and wilfully rose-tinted special edition! While communications channels to ‘the majority’ of the planet and much-needed positive PR are clearly tantalising prospects for some greenies and faith leaders respectively, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Environmental stewardship with a bit of education and social agitation isn’t sustainable development. And nor is Western consumption the only arena requiring a change of values and behaviour. Indicative of the tone of the whole supplement [is the way] Ian Christie dismisses as ‘unrepresentative’ some, but by no means all, of a whole host of systemic abuses of power on the part of major religions, often towards women. These structural power issues are not, as Christie seems to imply, something to be addressed merely as part of the relativistic shopping list of ‘liberal societies’. They are arguably the major impediments to a more sustainable future for all societies. The world’s religious institutions are no further forward than any other of our civil, business or political institutions when it comes to practising more sustainable forms of power. I have great respect for everyone, of any or no faith, who mobilises their communities in discussion and action on how to live better, together. But to pick ’n’ mix a bunch of tiny, isolated case studies with a drag ’n’ drop scriptural overlay, whilst making barely any mention of human rights, priestly corruption and religious bigotry, simply hides the scale of the unsustainable mountain that needs moving within the religions themselves. Esther Maughan Mclachlan
Finding common ground
Exactly how are we to take ‘Of land, water and war’ [GF82, p16] seriously, given that it doesn’t mention oil – the chief resource used in food production throughout the world? This very simple and fundamental omission leads me to think the intention behind the article is either to misrepresent the facts of agricultural production, insult our intelligence, or simplify a problem in a way that makes us not come close to understanding it; in which case we are better off having not read it. All are highly egregious possibilities to be sure. David Prosser
We have to start bringing all people to the realisation of our mutual dependence on each other. Switching to a society where we are not in constant competition with each other is the key to changing our world and is an urgent necessity. The rules of the game have to change. We have to start bringing real issues, like the ones this article highlights, to the forefront of people’s minds. KD Dawson
I really enjoyed ‘Common ground’ [GF82, p42] and its account of the potential of Community Land Trusts (CLTs). I’m conducting masters research on local community-based food systems in Victoria, Australia. The concept of CLTs is directly relevant here, and I can think of endless cases of latent public and private spaces in Central Victoria alone that are crying out for community use. Justin Walsh
Moving Mountains is a treasury of eloquent explorations into faithfulness in our dire times. However, I have a severe reservation gained from my 52 years of participation in the formal ministry of the church. There is a marked tendency to speak of values without facing up to the obstacles to their reintroduction into our extremely complex modern
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JonathonPorritt
“Ray Anderson owned his sustainability in every fibre of his being. That’s why I loved him”
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Ray Anderson died earlier this year, on 8 August. As the founder and public face of a company called InterfaceFLOR, I suspect Ray’s name will be known to most readers of Green Futures. But his unique contribution to the world of sustainability may not be. I loved this man. Briefly, I was part of the ‘Dream Team’ that he pulled together at the start of Interface’s sustainability journey in 1995. We saw each other occasionally and corresponded regularly. He taught me a huge amount about the art of business leadership. InterfaceFLOR is not a glamorous company. It makes carpet tiles. Ray fell in love with the simplicity and economy of the carpet tile long before he fell in love with the elegance and economy of sustainability. Interface was born of that passion – and a fierce determination to thrash the competition. So here’s the potted version of how he became one of the pre-eminent business leaders in our world. In 1994, he read a book called ‘The Ecology of Commerce’ by Paul Hawken. He described that moment as “an epiphany” – one that drove “a spear through my chest – a spear that will always be there”. In true topdown style, he then enlisted the whole of the company. He put sustainability at the heart of their shared ambitions, and held their feet to the fire for the next 16 years. This leadership is special enough – but it isn’t what made Ray really stand out. There are, after all, a growing number of CEOs and chairs who can legitimately claim to be real leaders in this area. I’ve often reflected on what was distinctive about Ray’s style compared with that of his peers. For one thing, he read a lot. Most CEOs today just don’t read. They’re too busy. If it isn’t boiled down to two sides and no more, it’s just too timeconsuming. With the predictable result that a lot of them – however intelligent – are seriously ignorant. Ray devoured books. He didn’t just read stuff, he hunted it down. Having discovered The Natural Step (TNS), which remains the most rigorous of all the different models for understanding sustainability, he insisted on nailing it down to the last detail. Then he put every single employee in the company through a basic TNS training course. All this made Ray a bit of a geek. Back in 1995, he coerced his research department into a detailed
Green Futures October 2011
analysis of every input (by way of energy and raw materials) into Interface’s production systems – all 1,224 billion pounds of it! But this knowledge brought responsibility. Ray described himself as “a legal thief, convicted by myself alone as a plunderer of the Earth”, and this was no mere rhetorical flourish. It was a moral charge, demanding reparation. In wanting “to do well by doing good”, he had no truck with cornball corporate social responsibility, amounting to little more than marginal amelioration of the damage we do by living the way that we live. I’m just not sure how many CEOs today feel that personal, moral obligation. For many, making it ‘corporate’ just distances it, sparing the personal pain. I’ve talked with a lot of InterfaceFLOR colleagues over the years. Ray was also up there for them: not on a pedestal, but out ahead. Driven, but always modest, both about his own role (which, in religious terms, he thought of as a ‘vessel’, but never the fount of authority itself) and about the role of InterfaceFLOR – a tiny player, after all, in the heaving maelstrom that is the global economy. For Ray, it was always head, heart and soul. He was a deeply religious man. He had an epiphany, after all, not some bog-standard moment of truth. He described the basic systems of measurement that InterfaceFLOR adopted (its ‘EcoMetrics’) as “God’s currency – this being, after all, God’s Earth, not ours”. That didn’t always work for him when he was in full advocacy mode. Forum for the Future hosted a seminar for Ray with some of the chief executives of our partner companies back in 2003. He absolutely bowled them over with the business case, including the tens of millions of dollars that InterfaceFLOR was saving (even then) from its eco-efficiency initiatives. But as soon as he moved over to explaining why this was all so important, personally and spiritually, eye contact was lost, apprehension took over from approbation, and the energy went missing. Ray Anderson owned his sustainability in every fibre of his being like no other CEO I’ve ever met, with the possible exception of Anita Roddick. And that’s why I loved him.
Jonathon Porritt is Founder Director of Forum for the Future. www.jonathonporritt.com
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