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April 29, 2008 - Good News Week

It’s a bit gloomy out there at the moment: climate change, food shortages, very high oil prices, the credit crunch, impending recession – little wonder that people are beginning to look as downcast as our Prime Minister must be feeling.

Against the odds, however, last week was stuffed to the gills with good news as far as I was concerned. To start with, I spoke at a conference organised by a little office supplies company in Cheltenham (called The Commercial Group), where more than 250 other small businesses were regaled with what is one of the most inspiring case studies of a company going from almost nowhere to being a serious player in just 2 years. They also heard from the redoubtable Eugenie Harvey, of “Save the World for a Fiver” fame, who I reckon could cheer up even Jim Lovelock in his gloomiest “Death of Gaia” moments.

Then I went to open a state-of-the-art new building near Stroud, where a group of companies collectively known as The Green Shop Group are being re-housed. “If you want to change the world, you must begin from where you are”, says Roger Budgeon, Founder of The Green Shop, and the modest, unassuming inspiration behind this amazing initiative. Check it out – and if you have ever despaired at getting alternative building and DIY products, I guarantee that you’ll find them there.

At the start of the week, the 2008 Queen’s Awards for Enterprise were announced and included in the Sustainable Development category are two of the outstanding exemplars of year-on-year corporate excellence on all things sustainable (namely, Wessex Water and BT), as well as (somewhat less predictably!) Permanent Publications, publisher of the wonderful Permaculture Magazine, which was launched in the UK in 1992 with a reach of just 600 people, and now has more than 100,000 readers all over the world.

artistsimpression.jpgAnd lastly, sitting on a train checking emails, I found myself bursting out with laughter at an email from my colleagues on the South West Regional Development Agency, informing us that no less a global figure than George Bush had explicitly name-checked a big wave project the RDA is investing in off the coast of Cornwall, called Wave Hub. My cup positively overflowed at the knowledge that even George is now out there routing for renewable energy schemes in places he’s probably never even heard of!

Picture: Artists impression of the Wave Hub by www.ind-art.co.uk

Posted by JP on April 29, 2008 2:27 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

May 1, 2008 - Greenpeace

It’s difficult to imagine my world without Greenpeace in it. They have been such a force for good over so many years on so many critical issues.

But sometimes one does wonder what makes them tick – especially when they make strategic decisions about the best corporate targets through which to pursue their campaigns. Back in 1991, I was doing some work with Sainsbury’s on the accelerated phasing-out of CFCs. There was widespread agreement that Sainsbury’s was well ahead of the rest of the pack. One weekend, Greenpeace campaigners turned up and super-glued the doors of a lot of Sainsbury’s stores as part of its CFC campaign – using the simple argument that administering a good kicking to the acknowledged leader would send a very strong signal to all the laggards.

They got excellent press coverage. But what they never saw was the serious setback to Sainsbury’s work on CFC phase-out: far from encouraging the key individuals involved to do more, the reaction was “Sod it, why bother?”

Fast forward 17 years. Last week, Greenpeace campaigners dressed up as orang-utans to occupy three Unilever premises as part of their campaign against the continuing destruction of the rainforest as a consequence of palm oil production.

I have to declare an interest here as an adviser to Unilever (on palm oil, amongst other things!) So I’m biased, by definition. But I must say that Unilever is an odd company for Greenpeace to be picking on. It is, of course, a major user of palm oil. But it was instrumental in setting up the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil (the principal international body trying to do something about this critical issue), and currently chairs it. It is working closely with NGOs like WWF and independent academics to make faster progress where possible. And most importantly of all, it has been spearheading corporate efforts to alert policy-makers to the insanity of mandating and then subsidising new schemes to increase the production of first generation biofuels. Including biofuels from palm oil.

In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if Unilever didn’t get on top of this particular biofuels challenge before Greenpeace. It wasn’t so long ago that Greenpeace was out there very actively campaigning for the wholesale substitution of biofuels for hydrocarbon fuels, in order to help reduce emissions of C02. It’s gung-ho enthusiasm in those days was entirely unscientific (as in Greenpeace had done no proper life-cycle analysis, and entailed Greenpeace chumming up with some strange players – including Bob Shapiro of Monsanto who once fronted the bill at a Greenpeace Business Conference in 1999 to talk about the benefits of biotechnology.

So if you put together an historical ‘public policy balance sheet’ on biofuels, over the last decade or so, it could even turn out to be the case that Greenpeace was indirectly responsible for the deaths of more orang-utans in the Indonesian rainforest than Unilever. Given that public policy tends to be influenced more by Greenpeace than by big companies.

That may of course be a little unfair. But if Greenpeace is out there today claiming credit for Unilever’s new commitments on palm oil (announced today, but which have been under consideration for months inside the company and under discussion with its external advisers), then I just have to point out that they deserve no such credit on this particular occasion.

Posted by JP on May 1, 2008 4:59 PM | | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

October 1, 2009 - Cadbury fights for "principled capitalism"

The Cadbury versus Kraft takeover battle can be characterised in all sorts of ways: UK versus the US; medium-sized multinational versus mega-multinational; “brash and blousey” (as one commentator put it) versus lean and green. But the characterisation that matters most is what kind of capitalism these two companies stand for.

Forum for the Future has been working with Cadbury for a long time, on a number of pioneering sustainability issues. So there’s no doubt I’m just a bit biased. But there are few really successful companies out there that are so overtly values-led. And even fewer Chief Executives whose words make me get up out of my seat and shout “Yes, Yes, Yes!”

Todd Stitzer (the man in question) would be quite embarrassed at that idea. He doesn’t do over-the-top. Which is why his recent speech at a Fair Trade conference in London on September 24th is so important.

“Capitalism is characterised as a one-way relationship in thrall to profit margins and shareholder returns. But I have always believed that there is more than one type of capitalism. It is true that unbridled capitalism can be a destructive beast, not just to those it does business with but to the company itself. History shows that those who operate in this way inevitably come undone. They over-leverage and under-invest to the detriment of the whole enterprise. The recent past has presented numerous examples, which all business leaders and shareholders would do well to learn from.”

He didn’t spell it out in so many words on that occasion, but his fierce opposition to the takeover by Kraft arises out of that deep concern about the nature of capitalism itself – and the brutish acquisitiveness that drives so much theoretical “value-creation”. The Kraft bid is so transparently all about size, cash and clout, with little if any interest in heritage, culture and values.

Kraft has, of course, got a case to make on its own ethical and environmental performance. Any company that can market one of its many coffee products under the brand name of “Sustainable Development” clearly can’t be all bad. But compared to the way in which Cadbury has set about embracing Fair Trade (its recent accreditation for Dairy Milk is seen as a huge step forward in this regard) and committing to swathes of ambitious and community-based targets is just in a different league.

Stitzer describes this as “principled capitalism”, something which comes more naturally to Cadbury than to many companies, partly because of its extraordinary Quaker origins and progressive values:

“We see this principled capitalism, which has been woven into the very fabric of Cadbury over the course of almost two centuries, as fundamental to our ways of working and part of our identity and success. Take it away, or dilute it, and you risk destroying what makes Cadbury a great company.”

Despite the economic crash, despite the humbling of the arrogant, neo-liberal fanatics that brought the global economy to the edge of the abyss, and despite the recognition that the rapacious excesses of the last twenty years must now be driven out of the system, we just don’t hear many Chief Executives talking like that. Hardly any. Hardly ever.

More than ever, the world needs that kind of leadership. Capitalists need that kind of leadership. And Cadbury’s shareholders need to be mindful of that bigger picture as well as of the financial stakes involved.


Posted by Jonathon Porritt on October 1, 2009 11:44 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

October 22, 2009 - US position on Copenhagen may be treaty-wrecking

You can’t fault our Government for its ongoing efforts to get people to focus on the Copenhagen Conference. Both the Prime Minister and Ed Miliband are out there emphasising the ‘make or break’ nature of the event: governments either seal the deal now, or we could be into drift for a couple of years.

Personally I’m not so sure about this kind of rhetoric. It probably wouldn’t be the end of the world if it took another six or nine months to get the right deal sealed – and that means a deal with the US on board. And that probably won’t happen until some kind of climate bill has got through the US Senate.

That, at least, was the prevailing view at the end of the most recent round of talks in Bangkok a couple of weeks ago. The Senate is bogged down in health insurance stuff; Obama doesn’t want to use his political capital to try and force it through the Senate prior to Copenhagen; and he absolutely doesn’t want a re-run of the Kyoto process, where Al Gore signed off on the Kyoto Protocol only to find that the Senate would have nothing to do with it later on.

And that’s the reason Obama hasn’t accepted the invitation to go to Copenhagen himself in order to bring his own personal leadership to bear on the negotiations.

Because the focus of a lot of this discussion is about Obama and most people just seem to have bought into this approach. That’s just the way it is: unfortunate timing and all that. America doing its best in difficult domestic circumstances.

I must say, I don’t quite see it like that. I think this represents a massive failure on Obama’s part. As the rest of the world raises its game (particularly in key countries like China, India and Brazil), the United States’ negotiating position, in essence, doesn’t seem to have advanced much beyond George Bush’s negotiating position.

US negotiators still refuse to acknowledge historical responsibility. They’re still trying to force developing countries to do what America itself has totally failed to do up until now – and doesn’t show much readiness to do it even now. They’re still trying to change the baseline date from 1990 to 2005 – and, in essence, want to tear up Kyoto rather than build on it by allowing each country to determine its own path to greenhouse gas reductions.

For US negotiators, read Obama. I don’t know why everyone (and particularly Government ministers) is being so ‘understanding’ about this. It’s a despicable, immoral, self-serving, treaty-wrecking negotiating position which, in the current context, where the need for action is so much greater, and so many other countries are now playing ball, is no better than what George Bush was doing during his eight poisonous years in the White House.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on October 22, 2009 4:12 PM | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

March 11, 2010 - M&S set a sustainable benchmark for the retail world

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 – and every time I’m back there, I can’t help but recall that sense of consternation that so few people seemed to be prepared, at that time, to put their cross in the Green Party box!

Twenty-six years on and it seemed as if the M&S Suppliers were all voting enthusiastically for the updated version of Plan A! And that was not just because Sir Stuart Rose made a very powerful pitch telling them all that this was their reality whether they liked it or not. By the end of the day, they would certainly have had an unnerving sense of bars being raised all around them, in terms of production standards, transparency, reporting, innovation and so on.

Plan A was launched three years ago, and instantly captured people’s imagination. The combination of carbon neutral and zero waste to landfill pledges, the 100 Action Points, the commitment to invest £200 million, and the sense of all this being at the core of the company rather than being grafted on made an immediate impact. It also gave Plan A the kind of brand profile that took it way beyond the usual corporate responsibility strategies.

Three years on, the £200 million cost has been turned into a £50 million contribution to profit. Forty-five of the Action Points have been delivered, and another 80 have been added on. The ambition level has been ratcheted up several notches, with M&S now committing to becoming the world’s most sustainable (major) retailer by 2015.

Forum for the Future has worked closely with M&S throughout this time, so we are not exactly disinterested parties, but Plan A 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

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on March 11, 2010 11:50 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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