tag:www.jonathonporritt.com,2010:/pages//1 2010-07-29T15:00:30Z Movable Type 3.34 tag:www.jonathonporritt.com,2010:/pages//1.139 2010-07-28T15:38:05Z 2010-07-29T15:00:30Z

Thanks to everyone for those empathetic responses on the government pulling the plug on the SDC. Crass, unfounded, self-defeating, ideologically-motivated – that just about sums it up! Which brings me to the role of the Lib Dems in this wretched...

Jonathon Porritt now, before the pattern is established, becomes all the more important. And the parallel idea that we might set up some independent, web-enabled scrutiny function (under the compelling title of ‘ GreenestGovEverYeahRight.com!’) is beginning to sound more and more attractive. ]]> tag:www.jonathonporritt.com,2010:/pages//1.138 2010-07-23T11:20:02Z 2010-07-23T11:28:03Z

As the former Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission from 2000-2009, I’m clearly going to be a bit biased about the Government’s decision yesterday to get rid of the Commission. So I’ve been working really hard to put myself in...

Jonathon Porritt As the former Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission from 2000-2009, I’m clearly going to be a bit biased about the Government’s decision yesterday to get rid of the Commission. So I’ve been working really hard to put myself in Ministers’ shoes in terms of the ‘rationale’ they’ve advanced for this reprehensible decision. They’ve put forward four justifications: 1. It will save money The SDC costs the taxpayer around £4 million a year, around 50% of which come from Defra. The rest comes from the Devolved Administrations and other Whitehall Departments – all of which wanted to carry on working with the SDC. As George Monbiot has pointed out, the SDC’s advice on reducing costs through increased efficiency has already saved the Government many, many times that negligible amount, and would have gone on doing so year after year. 2. Sustainable development is now mainstreamed across government. Defra Ministers are now claiming that sustainable development has been embedded in every department. In other words, no specialist capability at the centre is any longer required, simply because the Government ‘gets it’. Like hell it does. To hear Caroline Spelman, Secretary of State in Defra make such a totally fatuous claim after a few weeks in power is irritating beyond belief. She clearly knows nothing of the constant slog required (of the SDC and many other organisations) to achieve the limited traction that is all that can be laid claim to today. There’s a rich irony here. The SDC is a UK-wide body. Neither Wales nor Scotland was in favour of getting rid of the Commission, no doubt because both Countries have done an infinitely better job than Whitehall on ‘mainstreaming’ sustainable development. 3. It will avoid duplication This is a bit trickier, simply because the SDC does a number of different things. It advises Ministers – and there are indeed lots of other people who do that. But rarely if ever from an integrated sustainable development perspective. It helps countless public sector bodies (from the Audit Commission to the Department of Education, from Local Authorities to Primary Care Trusts in the NHS) to make sense of sustainable development, and no other government body does any of that. And it scrutinises government performance on a completely independent basis across the whole sustainable development agenda – not just on climate change. And no other body does that. 4. Sustainable development is too important to delegate to an external body It’s worth recording Caroline Spelman’s actual words here: “Together with Chris Huhne, I am determined to take the lead role in driving the sustainable agenda across the whole of government, and I’m not willing to delegate this responsibility to an external body.” Even after nine years working with dozens of Government Ministers, I’m astonished at such utterly brazen cynicism. The only thing Mrs Spelman has done so far as Secretary of State at Defra is publish a new strategy for the Department. This has not one serious reference to sustainable development in it. Such is the depth of her concern. If Defra’s next step is to get rid of what’s left of it’s own internal Sustainable Development Unit, then it will have literally no capacity to ‘drive the sustainable agenda’ even within Defra, let alone ‘across the whole of government’. And how can you drive anything if you haven’t the first clue what it actually means? And it just got rid of the only part of the system capable of providing you with a basic primer for beginners? So let’s not beat around the bush: their justification for getting rid of the SDC is transparently vacuous, if not downright dishonest. This is an ideological decision – in other words, a decision driven by dogma not by evidence-based, rational analysis. And the only conceivable reason for allowing dogma to dominate in this way is that the Government doesn’t want anyone independently auditing its performance on sustainable development – let alone properly-resourced, indisputably expert body operating as ‘a critical friend’ on an inside track within government. I don’t suppose the Prime Minister was even consulted about such a footling little matter. But it’s clear that his advisors hadn’t the first idea about the kind of signal this dogma-driven decision sends out, ensuring that his claim that this will be the ‘greenest government ever’ is in deepest jeopardy. It’s too early to make any definitive judgement about how the Green agenda will fare under the Coalition. But it’s not encouraging. ‘Greenest ever’ has to mean something substantive. Simply smearing a sickly ideological slime over everything just won’t cut it. tag:www.jonathonporritt.com,2010:/pages//1.137 2010-06-02T18:40:43Z 2010-06-03T09:36:59Z

Encountered my first Minister in the new Coalition government – in the shape of Grant Shapps, Minister for Housing – on Thursday last week at the ‘Opening Ceremony’ for a new housing development getting underway in Swindon. Not just any...

Jonathon Porritt “Hemp is the second fastest growing crop on the planet, after bamboo, so it can be slotted in between other crops during a growing season. It also requires almost no inputs, and enriches the soil. It’s non-combustible, breathable, tough and flexible, and has remained our first choice ever since we saw it being used.” It also makes a hell of a difference in terms of greenhouse gas emissions when compared with traditional brick or concrete blocks in a normal wall section – to the tune of around 130kg less in terms of CO2 per m2 . Which makes it a genuinely ‘carbon positive’ material – as in more carbon locked up than emitted. What really excited me about all this is the way in which innovation is, at long last, beginning to impact on a hugely conservative, risk-averse industry. There were even some leading Private Equity Investors present at the opening ceremony – and that has to be a good sign! ]]> tag:www.jonathonporritt.com,2010:/pages//1.136 2010-05-10T13:06:37Z 2010-05-10T13:11:47Z

So it’s happened: the Green Party has its first MP. The look on Caroline Lucas’s face as her result in Brighton Pavilion was announced pretty much said it all: elation, exhaustion and huge relief all rolled into one. She’d been...

Jonathon Porritt So it’s happened: the Green Party has its first MP. The look on Caroline Lucas’s face as her result in Brighton Pavilion was announced pretty much said it all: elation, exhaustion and huge relief all rolled into one. She’d been talking during the count of feeling “sick and nervous with the weight of so many people’s expectation on me”. For me, it’s just the elation without the exhaustion. Thirty-one years after I first stood as a Green Party (or Ecology Party, as it then was!) candidate, the near-insurmountable barrier of our first past the post electoral system has been shoved aside by a wonderful, utterly dedicated and very inspiring politician. But I don’t imagine Caroline has any illusions about the electoral implications of this breakthrough for the Green Party. Without a move to proportional representation, Green Party candidates will continue to be the victims of a deep-seated ‘wasted vote’ phenomenon which this general election, like every general election before it, has demonstrated all over again. tag:www.jonathonporritt.com,2010:/pages//1.135 2010-05-06T10:19:58Z 2010-05-06T10:24:03Z

Today just has to be the day when the Green Party breakthrough the UK’s wretched first-past-the-post electoral system. There are four possible candidates who might be able to do that: Caroline Lucas in Brighton Pavilion; Adrian Ramsay in Norwich South;...

Jonathon Porritt winning is massive. Campaigning down in Brighton last weekend I met a reassuring number of voters who are definitely planning to vote Green today. But I was also taken aback to discover two ‘floating voters’ who’d been so impressed by the ‘Nick Clegg phenomenon’ that they were going to vote Lib Dem for the first time in their lives – despite the fact that in Brighton Pavilion the Lib Dems have no chance whatsoever of coming anywhere other than fourth. Whatever happens, it’s going to be a very close call. It won’t be the end of the world for the Green Party if Caroline doesn’t win. Its votes will undoubtedly be up across the country as a whole, and since Caroline became leader, there’s been a new sense of confidence and authority. But the convergence of factors in Brighton Pavilion is quite unique: a constituency that is ‘naturally sympathetic’ to progressive politics; the long-term success of the Green Party across Brighton and Hove in the shape of 13 councillors, ensuring that large numbers of people see Green politics as a normal part of the political mix; and a candidate of compelling quality and integrity (having been voted The Observer’s Ethical Politician of the Year in both 2007 and 2009) at a time when people are looking for distinctively different and honest representation in parliament. Earlier in the campaign, I would have added another factor: high levels of public concern about climate change and other critical sustainability issues. But I fear that these issues have yet again been moved to the backburner. That really doesn’t help. So this is a moment of high drama for the party. Green Party sympathisers across the country (which includes a very large number of people who will be voting for another party, often for tactical reasons) will be watching intently to see what happens in Caroline’s constituency. For me, after nearly 35 years in the Green Party, with my own impressive record of electoral failures back in the 70s and 80s, and having been through the usual mix of hope and despair that all members of minority parties so painfully feel, it will be a quite magical moment. ]]> tag:www.jonathonporritt.com,2010:/pages//1.134 2010-05-05T14:05:51Z 2010-05-05T14:51:22Z

It’s been amazing to see the vested interests of the right wing media, the City, and the political establishment going into overdrive on the prospective horrors of a hung parliament. One day the world is ticking over on a more...

Jonathon Porritt A Vote for Democracy?, analyzes the manifestos of all the major parties (as well as the Greens, Plaid Cymru, SNP, UKIP, Respect and the BNP) and scores them against five principal areas of interest: - Fair, free and honest elections - Rights, freedoms and written constitution - Stronger parliament and accountable government - Bringing power closer to the people - A culture of informed political interest and responsibility The headline scores emerging from that are as follows: Lib Dems 81 out of 100, Greens 80.5, SNP 57, Conservatives 46, and Labour 45.5. The rest are not really in it. ]]> tag:www.jonathonporritt.com,2010:/pages//1.133 2010-05-04T16:31:42Z 2010-05-04T16:54:54Z

For various reasons, I haven’t been able to watch any of the three TV debates. I saw the endless playback snippets on the news the day after each debate (which quickly got exceptionally tedious) but had no total emersion in...

Jonathon Porritt www.Avaaz.org) is to put an end to the scaremongering in the right-wing, pro-Murdoch) press, about ‘the horrors of a hung parliament’. More on that tomorrow, but do please get involved with this campaign today – while there is still a chance! www.38degrees.org.uk ]]> tag:www.jonathonporritt.com,2010:/pages//1.132 2010-04-29T12:17:06Z 2010-04-29T12:21:03Z

It’s certainly a more exciting election than any I can remember for years. But it’s a bit of a nightmare from a sustainability point of view. The party manifestos themselves are OK – a considerable improvement on the 2005 manifestos....

Jonathon Porritt always been like this. It could have been different this time around, given all the serious political interest in climate change over the last few years. But then Copenhagen crashed, scientists started messing up all over the place, and our wretched rightwing media seized their moment to intensify their promotion of the near-bonkers babbling of Nigel Lawson, Ian Plimer et al. And all that pretty much blew any prospect of climate change featuring in any serious way in this election. Happily, beyond the Big Party Circus, there’s an astonishing foment of political activity going on elsewhere, touching on every conceivable aspect of sustainable development territory. I’ll be focusing on one or two of these over the next week or so. If your principal concern is about policies, instead of personalities and presidential debates, then the Vote for Policies initiative has thrown up some fascinating findings. If you go onto their website you’ll be asked to compare policies in nine main areas without being told which political party they come from – and then you are asked to ‘vote’ for the policy you prefer. The parties those policies belong to are then revealed to you. It’s highlighted the general popularity of Green Party policies. At the last count, it was ahead on 26% with Labour on 19%, the Lib Dems on 18%, Conservatives on 16%, and UKIP and BNP bumping along at the bottom. What’s astonishing me, looking at voters’ preferences, is how well the Green Party did on other policy issues apart from the environment: top on education, health, crime and welfare, and second (behind the Lib Dems) on democracy and the economy. I’m not sure how much that will help Green Party candidates on the ground – but there could be a few surprises here too. I was in Cambridge on Tuesday, when a local poll put the Green Party’s Tony Juniper ahead of all the other parties! A win for the Greens in Cambridge would be one of the biggest election shocks of all time! Caroline Lucas, Green Party Leader and candidate in Brighton still has the best overall chance of being the first Green Party candidate to beat our despicable first-past-the-post system. I’ll be down in Brighton on Saturday – so more on this next week! I'll be blogging every day in the run up to the election so watch this space. ]]> tag:www.jonathonporritt.com,2010:/pages//1.131 2010-04-28T17:35:09Z 2010-04-29T09:29:57Z

Last week I witnessed two wonderfully windy ‘inaugurations’. On Friday, I cycled down to the Springbank Community Resources Centre in Cheltenham to ‘turn on’ a neat little wind turbine, precisely 17.5 metres high. Not much wind to start with, but...

Jonathon Porritt their turbine, and are reinforced in that association by the fact that the energy bill for their Resources Centre will be £850 lower every year. I’d encountered a rather different community operation earlier in the week – on a visit to Eurotunnel HQ just outside Calais. Obviously a much bigger operation, with a much bigger investment in three 800kw turbines. (It should have been six, but the local planning committee objected!). Representatives of the local community were there in force, not least because of the decision by Eurotunnel to dedicate 10% of the revenues from electricity sales to an organisation called Secours Populaire France – which works with some of the most deprived communities across the country. Eurotunnel’s got a really good environmental story to tell anyway – and has had right from its creation because of the strict conditions put upon it both by the UK and the French Government. More details of this are available in the Eurotunnel Sustainability Report. Interestingly, it had taken Eurotunnel almost exactly the same amount of time to move from initial idea about its wind farm to inauguration as it had taken Hesters Way Partnership! French citizens are no more enthusiastic about wind power than they would appear to be here in the UK – despite having vast stretches of not particularly distinctive landscapes with almost limitless potential for windpower – and I know how popular that statement will make me with the legions of French NIMBYs who sound and think very much like our own home-grown NIMBYs! But there’s one simple message here: the more actively local communities are involved in new wind developments, the greater the likelihood of their success. Even if things still take a ludicrously long period of time to get delivered on the ground. ]]> tag:www.jonathonporritt.com,2010:/pages//1.130 2010-04-22T13:00:20Z 2010-04-23T12:23:01Z

There’s a great episode of The Simpsonswhich has been much in my mind this week. Lisa Simpson is asked by her teacher to do an essay on what her hometown of Springfield would look like in 2050. Lisa’s vision is...

Jonathon Porritt The Simpsonswhich has been much in my mind this week. Lisa Simpson is asked by her teacher to do an essay on what her hometown of Springfield would look like in 2050. Lisa’s vision is a decidedly gloomy one, with most of Springfield under water as a direct consequence of accelerating climate change and rising sea levels. Her teachers are so appalled that they decide the best thing they can do is prescribe for Lisa a course of ‘Ignorital’ to ensure that she puts all her worst fears behind her! I encounter a lot of people who have clearly been on ‘Ignorital’ for quite a long time – and I sometimes wonder whether I’m self-medicating myself when I’m not concentrating! I find it hard to imagine what life would be like if I had genuinely come to the irrevocable conclusion that it was too late to do anything serious about preventing runaway climate change. I can’t imagine how I would persist with (let alone continue to feel excited by) the kind of advocacy work that I spend most of my life doing with Forum for the Future and the Prince of Wales’s Business & the Environment Programme. For me, this has been an ongoing internal dialogue for at least the last five years. It gets a little bit more painful, every year, with spikes of self-doubt obliging me to keep on checking the state of the science. And having just finished reading Clive Hamilton’s excellent (but deeply disturbing!) Requiem for a Species, I’m now going to have to think it all through all over again. Clive is one of those who has come to the conclusion that it is indeed too late – whatever we now do – to ensure that average temperature increases can be held below that 2C degree threshold by the end of the century. The truth of it is that this is a view that is gaining ground amongst more and more scientists and informed commentators. The worst case in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assumes emissions of greenhouse gases increasing by 2.5% per annum. In fact, they are currently increasing by 3% per annum. What’s more, that ‘worst case scenario’ takes no account of what are known as ‘natural feedback loops’ – where natural systems (such as the permafrost in the Arctic, or rainforests in the Amazon) begin to ‘adapt’ as a direct consequence of the warming that we humans have already set in train. And there’s now growing evidence of these feedback loops beginning to kick in. The IPCC has estimated the temperature increase that would result from its worst case as going as high as 4.6C degrees . More than twice the 2C degree threshold. And it’s worth bearing in mind here that at 3C degrees, the Greenland Ice Sheet is definitively in irreversible meltdown. We know all this. It’s the kind of analysis that underpined the Kyoto Protocol all those years ago, and which now informs the UK’s Climate Change Act and other policy interventions. But Clive Hamilton argues that: “Despite our pretensions to rationality, scientific facts are fighting against more powerful forces. Apart from institutional factors that have prevented early action – the power of industry, the rise of money politics, and bureaucratic inertia, we have never really believed the dire warnings of the scientists. Unreasoning optimism is one of humankind’s greatest virtues and most dangerous foibles”. The reasons not to subscribe to the ‘too late’ hypothesis get just a little bit weaker every year. Countervailing scientific (and majority) opinion indicates that we’ve still got a ‘window of time’ to ensure first that emissions peak as soon as possible and then reduce dramatically from that point on. That still allows us to think that we might manage this transition into an ultra low-carbon world without the traumatic dislocation that is otherwise going to beset us. This countervailing view depends, of course, on the assumption that the politicians will be able to do what needs to be done before that window comes crashing down on us. I haven’t entirely given up on that possibility. Clive has. With painful intensity, he describes how he went through that barrier himself, renouncing spurious optimism and ending up in profound mourning for the loss of hope, for his children, for the Earth, for the future of humankind – hence the Requiem. He is still sympathetic to those still on the other side of that line of hopefulness, but indirectly challenges our integrity: “Denial requires a wilful mis-reading of the science, a romantic view of the ability of political institutions to respond, or face divine intervention. Climate Pollyannas adopt the same tactic as doom-mongers but in reverse: instead of taking a very small risk of disaster and exaggerating it, they take a very high risk of disaster and minimise it”. But it is not all as bleak as it may sound. Following Joanna Macy’s powerful dictum, “Despair, Accept, Act”, the book ends with a very positive message as to how we just need to re-orientate ourselves in this more realistic world. But all very challenging stuff. Clive Hamilton’s Requiem for a Species; Why we resist the truth about Climate Change is published by Earthscan]]> tag:www.jonathonporritt.com,2010:/pages//1.129 2010-03-31T11:36:01Z 2010-03-31T11:49:42Z

Here’s a bit of vintage Blair for you: “Sustainable development will not just be a subject in the classroom: it will be in its bricks and mortar and the way the school uses and even generates its own power. Our...

Jonathon Porritt estate, Treasury and DCSF then spent the next decade scrapping over what could or couldn’t be done, from a sustainability perspective, through Building Schools for the Future, PFI and other capital programmes. Net outcome ten years on: pretty poor. Some brilliant (even ‘iconic’) examples of best practice on both new build and refurbishments; a somewhat larger number of projects that might be described as ‘good, but nothing special’, and a much, much larger number of projects that fall so far short of what could have been done as to make Tony Blair’s words ring very hollow indeed. It’s hard to exaggerate the scale of this missed opportunity – from an educational as well as a sustainability point of view. Here’s a very different kind of quote from an Ofsted Report last year: “In the sample schools, ‘hands-on activities’ in a range of locations contributed to improvements in standards, achievement, motivation, personal development and behaviour”. What’s being referred to here is what is known as ‘Learning Outside the Classroom’. Not just in terms of school visits and field trips, but in terms of the use of School Grounds designed specifically to promote good learning and excellent social interaction. In other words, proof positive of the kind of educational outcome that can be achieved by designing schools to the highest sustainability standards. During the election period, I’d like to see those words embossed in gold and hung over the desk of the Secretary of State at DCSF – in preparation for the next holder of that Office. They would remind him/her that schools that are well-designed, zero-carbon, super-efficient, bio-diverse and just great places to be, make a massive contribution to learning, motivation and even behaviour. What kind of money value should we put on that as taxpayers? I only ask because Treasury puts a zero value on it. It really couldn’t care less about the huge societal benefits that flow from that kind of educational uplift. Indeed, Treasury is so utterly dysfunctional that it still hasn’t settled on a standard way of accounting for the reduced operating costs of super-efficient, very low-carbon schools over the life-time of any new or even refurbished school. Time after time, as a direct result of this failure, the blindingly obvious case for spending more up front on capital costs (anywhere between 10% and 15%, depending on particular circumstances) is ignored – or eroded away as the inevitable cost-cutting kicks in during the design and construction phase for both new build and refurbishments. The sums involved here (in terms of capital programmes for the educational estate) are staggering: at least £45 billion over a ten-year period. Knowing what we now know about future energy costs and the likely cost of carbon, it’s criminally irresponsible not to be spending every one of those pounds as sustainably as possible in order to protect the interests of future taxpayers. A worthy case, perhaps, for the Taxpayers’ Alliance – if they weren’t so ideologically predisposed against anything progressive, let alone sustainable. One of the organisations that has been tracking this story close-up has been Learning Through Landscapes (LTL). LTL was set up 20 years ago, to get Head Teachers, the Department, Local Education Authorities and Ofsted to focus in on the importance of school grounds, both from a recreational and an educational point of view. During that time it’s advised and supported hundreds of schools, lobbied a stream of Ministers, and helped make life better, on the ground, for countless kids passing through those improved premises. It’s achieved a huge amount – as became very clear at its 20th Anniversary Conference in London last week. But it could have achieved so much more if it hadn’t come up against the Treasury’s reality-defying short-termism. ]]> tag:www.jonathonporritt.com,2010:/pages//1.128 2010-03-18T14:35:00Z 2010-03-18T15:22:37Z

On March 2nd, Guardian columnist George Monbiot launched an extraordinary attack on feed-in tariffs and on solar photovoltaics (PV) in particular. Even for George, who has honed his invective skills to a fine point over the years, his language was...

Jonathon Porritt Solarcentury. For years, Jeremy has been flying the flag for the UK solar industry and for the benefits for introducing the kind of feed-in tariffs that have transformed the renewable energy scene in many other countries. Within a couple of days, Jeremy had mounted a robust defence of PV, feed-in tariffs and the importance of maintaining a long-term perspective. Citing 13 examples of inaccuracy, misrepresentation and hyperbole (reinforced by a further 12 points following up on a response from George), he has set out to set the record straight. Over the weekend I spent a happy hour reading through this four-phase battle, point by point. It matters. There’s a lot resting on the success of these feed-in tariffs, and that in turn depends on trust on the part of the general public. A George Monbiot polemic is purpose-built to undermine that trust. I really admire George. He’s a brilliant campaigning journalist, and a deep, persistent thorn in the side of today’s political and business elites. I often end up reading his Guardian articles metaphorically punching the air at the blows that he’s landed – on my behalf, as it were. This week’s article on biodiversity here in the UK is hugely impactful. But I’m sorry to say, on this occasion, that he’s way out of line. Jeremy Leggett’s detailed refutation of so much of what he was claiming in the original article demonstrates just how poor George’s initial research was, and how (on this occasion, at least) his love of adopting deliberately controversialist positions simply overwhelmed basic journalistic standards. This too is a serious matter. As one or two bloggers have already pointed out, if he’s got it this badly wrong on feed-in tariffs, what’s to say he hasn’t got it equally wrong on other critical issues? One of the talking points for me was that George declined on a number of occasions to meet with Jeremy and talk all this through – despite knowing full well the impact his article would have. More than anything else, this reveals a streak of know-it-all arrogance that has always been there in George, but which he usually keeps under control. But rather than take my word, why don’t you check it out for yourself on the Guardian and Jeremy’s own websites. If nothing else, it will help you get your head around the complexities of feed-in tariffs. George Monbiot's article http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/01/solar-panel-feed-in-tariff Jeremy Leggett's response http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/mar/09/george-monbiot-bet-solar-pv or http://www.jeremyleggett.net/solar-revolution/]]> tag:www.jonathonporritt.com,2010:/pages//1.127 2010-03-12T10:49:36Z 2010-03-12T11:25:52Z

I was sent this the other day by John Naish, author of Enough: breaking free from the world of more, and thought I might just pass it on. It’s really very entertaining! But also an indication of just how idiotically...

Jonathon Porritt Enough: breaking free from the world of more, and thought I might just pass it on. It’s really very entertaining! But also an indication of just how idiotically wasteful our world still is. My favourites are the ‘Dryear Ear Dryer’ and the ‘organic cotton toilet tissue’! And quite controversial to see the ‘Kindle’ in there! Reproduced from www.enoughness.co.uk, here are the most pointless, wasteful and needlessly complex gadgets for 2010… 1. Digital fridge magnet Is scribbling notes with a pen on a whiteboard too complex, too onerous… too 20th century? Here’s the Digital Video Memo, a fridge magnet on which you can record a 30-second video message. Look into the camera, press the record button and start talking. You’ve only added a digital screen, a rechargeable battery system, a computer and a camera to the planet’s landfill potential. According to users’ reports, the screen is tiny and the volume’s too low, so you have to stick your mouth right near the camera… so all people get to see is a quietly talking ear. Nominated by Karen Varga, who says, ‘You can just picture the workers in overseas factories going "What the **** are these for and why do these mad westerners need them?’ http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/digital-video-memo/index.html 2. The Bra Dyer The makers say the “Bra Dryer is a simple device which is based on the presumption that the best way to dry bras without ruining their fabric, wiring and padding is to dry them on a shape which resembles female breasts. That's why Bra Dryer is shaped like a female torso”. Rea Cris, who nominated it, remarks: “What women is seriously thinking: ‘YES! Fantastic, this is what I have been waiting for: metalic dismembered hot breasts, they'll match the wallpaper perfectly!’” Nominated by Rea Cris, Edinburgh. http://www.bradryer.com 3. The Dryear Ear Dryer Wave goodbye to towels (almost). Here’s how you can spend a lot of cash, use electricity and create lots of energy waste – with a battery-operated hot-air ear dryer. 'Drying your ears has never been simpler or more effective'. Or, at £69, could it be more expensive? The device slots into the ear canal and blows hot air. Oh, and the instructions advise you to dry your ears with a towel first. Nominated by Anna, London www.dryear.net 4. The Uroclub Here’s one for the incontinent golfer in your life: it’s the Uroclub – a hollow plastic club in which you can urinate mid-round, instead of an eco-friendly bush or tree to pee behind in the time-honoured way. And that’s not all: there’s also a tie-on ‘modesty blanket’ which you can hide your putter behind while micturating. Imagine picking out a full Uroclub instead of a driver at the 11th hole. How your dampened playmates would laugh. http://www.uroclub.com/details.html Nominated by Robert Chamberlain 5. 100% organic cotton toilet tissue‘We can wipe our arses cheaply with something that is recycled from a renewable resource,’ says Julian Baggini. ‘So why set aside valuable agricultural land to grow cotton for us to do so? This is surely pseudo-green nonsense and not from some greenwashing multinational but an apparently lovely fluffy planet-friendly company called Spirit of Nature.’ Nominated by Julian Baggini http://www.spiritofnature.co.uk/acatalog/5180.html 6. Cuisinart Soup Maker‘When I saw it in a friend’s catalogue my jaw dropped,’ says Stephen Watson, who nominated this. ‘It’s clear that there's a growing trend to these products, namely the “this does one thing well” item. Instead of using a saucepan which can be used for soup, stews, custard, sauces and much more, you buy a £149 soup machine to make soup. Then you have to find a place to store it. Presumably in the same cupboard as the waffle maker, sandwich maker, ice cream maker, yoghourt maker and so on ad nauseam.’ Nominated by Stephen Watson http://www.lakeland.co.uk/cuisinart!REG-soupmaker/F/keyword/soup/product/13356 7. Reel Putter A golf putting club with an attached fishing reel, so you can reel in your putts. ‘I think They copied this idea from a Bugs Bunny cartoon,’ says Blacknose. Nominated by Blacknose http://www.reelputter.com/ 8. Operatic pasta timer So, you want to cook pasta, you have no sense of time – or even a kitchen timer – and you’ve never learnt how to tell if your pasta’s al dente (i.e. throw it at a wall and see if it sticks). You may be the one person on earth who needs the Al Dente Operatic Pasta Timer. It's a pasta timer in the shape of a little man, which has an inbuilt water-activated timer. When the water has been boiling long enough, the timer sings with an electronic computer voice. It sings opera. After seven minutes, it sings The Triumphal March from Aida; after nine minutes, The Chorus of Hebrew Slaves, from Nabucco, and after 11 minutes La Donna e Movile from Rigoletto. Here at Landfill Towers, we like fresh pasta that cooks in three minutes. Guess it would be soggy. Nominated by Philip Evans, France http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/silly/odd-gadget-al-dente-operatic-pasta-timer-089395 9. ‘The Stig' merchandise‘Putting aside the environmentally cavalier antics of Top Gear, it just ends up a million miles from anything to do with a racing driver, with bubble bath and duvet sets,’ says Jeremy Wilson, who nominated this: ‘It’s the worst kind of lazy tick-box merchandising, for equally lazy present buyers whose imagination doesn’t stretch beyond the ‘gift ideas for men’ shelf of the department store. If you received a Stig item for Christmas, you’ve probably already thrown it away. The least we could do is put it all in the bin in China and save ourselves the shipping emissions.’ Nominated by Jeremy Wilson http://www.officialproducts.co.uk/section.php/32/1/official-topgear-the-stig-merchandise 10. The Kindle‘Not only is it a completely unnecessary piece of electronic rubbish, it seeks to replace a design classic: the far-from obsolete, cheap and entirely reusable (ask any library!) book,’ says Ben Duncan, who nominated it. ‘It creates a whole new market in copyrighted material as it does so, meaning literature is reduced from being a pastime and an art form to being a piece of tradable intellectual property.’ Nominated by Ben Duncan, Brighton http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0015T963C/?tag=gocous20&hvadid=4139393477&ref=pd_sl_1a1t9bh4e6_e http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0015T963C/?tag=gocous20&hvadid=4139393477&ref=pd_sl_1a1t9bh4e6_e ]]> tag:www.jonathonporritt.com,2010:/pages//1.126 2010-03-11T11:50:17Z 2010-03-11T11:52:56Z

I spoke at the annual M&S Suppliers’ Conference on Tuesday, which took place in Kensington Town Hall. This venue has a particular resonance for me as it was where the votes for the 1979 and 1984 European elections were counted...

Jonathon Porritt does provide the benchmark for the whole of the retail world. It’s visionary, it’s applied, it’s comprehensive (as in covering all the sustainability bases), and it’s succeeding in getting whole-company buy-in, through the high level “How We Do Business” Committee, chaired (and driven!) by Sir Stuart Rose. So it’s well worthwhile checking out the new version of Plan A, available at: http://plana.marksandspencer.com/media/pdf/planA-2010.pdf ]]> tag:www.jonathonporritt.com,2010:/pages//1.125 2010-03-09T14:44:11Z 2010-03-09T14:48:34Z

It’s the scale of it all that is sometimes daunting. On energy, for instance, we have to transition from around 90% dependency on fossil fuels to around 90% on renewables – allowing a little bit of residual space for cleaner...

Jonathon Porritt scale in all those sectors to get the right drivers in place to make the innovation happen. From niche to mainstream. Easy! But scale means different things in different sectors. I spent a day last week at Ecobuild - ‘the biggest event in the world for sustainable design, construction and the built environment’. That absolutely wasn’t a claim that could have been made at the first Ecobuild, five years ago, which attracted no more than 1000 visitors. This year, there were more than 50,000 people there. Earls Court was flush with exhibitors, from some of the biggest companies in the UK to distinctly ‘alternative’ start-ups taking a massive gamble on enough people falling for their particular ‘breakthrough innovation’. There were countless meetings and debates going on the whole time, and the kind of buzz that one doesn’t always associate with events of this kind. For the politicians who’d dropped in, and wandered around looking a bit bemused, it all said one thing: no more niches. This was about scale. New orders. Expanding markets. Innovation (in the construction industry!). And even, dare one say it, new jobs. I won’t be churlish by pointing out that this supply-chain journey (from niche to huge, scaled opportunity) could have been stimulated by the political system many years ago – as it was in Germany, Scandinavia and so on. At least we’ve got there now, and it’s exciting. The UK Green Building Council has been a central part of that journey, and is now providing the kind of leadership (across this complex industry and beyond) that the politicians need in order to stay in touch with the developments on the ground. The UK Green Building Council launched its new Green Building Manifesto at Ecobuild – and it’s well worth a look. ]]>