PSFK Author:
Clownfish

Within the sustainability arena, energy use and carbon emissions have been in the spotlight for a long time, however the next big trend to hit the agenda is an increasing focus on water. Already most companies’ CSR reports will have a section pointing to their policies or stance on water issues, but in the future you will rarely be able to open your newspaper without seeing some reference to water matters.

So far, water has not been quantified in the same way as carbon, or indeed received anywhere near the same amount of media attention as CO2, but the prediction is that you will soon see people measuring their ‘hydro’ footprint and thinking about the environmental impact of water use. Some investors have even suggested that water will eventually be commoditised and traded as a futures contract in the same way as oil or sugar.

The United Nations estimates that a worrying 1.1 billion people lack access to safe water and that by 2050 that figure will double to more than two billion. Countries like China are already facing an imminent water crisis. The country has long suffered from alternating periods of severe flooding and drought, which combined with high pollution levels and unrealistic policies on water management, means that demand significantly outweighs supply and they simply don’t have the resources to cope.

The water issue should provide a whole new world of opportunities for technology firms and investors. The problem is that water-saving initiatives are expensive to implement, in everything from the treatment of contaminated water supplies to efficient irrigation methods. For consumers, it may also be costly if the added financial burden has to be passed on. However the cost of not taking action will be much higher if we wait until further down the line.
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The HumanCar is being launched on April 22^rd 2008 (Earthday) in South Menlo Park, Ca. This bi-directional human power interface harnesses all the large muscle groups of up to 4 people allowing users to easily cruise at speeds of up to 20 mph (45 mph with power assist). The machine offers a viable (preferable) alternative to the car in a wide range of scenarios.

A prototype vehicle (aka The Trouble Maker) can be seen on YouTube here. This vehicle has been taken up to 80 mph on downhills. As well as cooperative power drive, coordinated leaning from the front is required to steer the vehicle. There are currently 4 pre-production prototypes of The Imagine, the next generation of HumanCar. This includes features such as: a exoskeletal safety cage and chassis that has been tested at up to 100 mph on salt flats; duel electric motors and variable human power input. It will also carry regular vehicle extras like a radio a trunk and wi-fi. It will retail at $15,000.

The HumanCar started life as a flash of inspiration in the mind of Charles Samuel Greenwood, an engineer and drag racer in the late sixties. The project has been passed down a generation to Charles’ son Chuck. Chuck has been making the most of the Silicon Valley’s explosion of clean-tech resources. He is a member of the Green Technology Alliance and part of the Green Alley Project, which is taking over defunct car dealerships in South Melno and turning them into green-tech showrooms (including for the Tesla and Zap cars). His passion has made the HumanCar a reality and he clearly believes the machine has more to offer then simple transportation; test drivers regularly come back with their friends the following day, desperate for another ride. By all accounts the act of moving the vehicle together is a powerfully unifying and life affirming activity.

We have highlighted the multiple benefits of human powered transport before. The ubiquity of cheap energy from trapped sunlight, captured by prehistoric plants and now distilled into gas, has retarded the evolution of human powered transportation devices. Our mass dependence on this cheap energy has profoundly changed the landscapes in which we live (urban sprawl, congested cities and out of town shopping malls) as well as the landscapes of our bodies. Rising gas prices (and the threat of peak oil), environmental damage (including global warming), new urbanism and health concerns now present a real opportunity to go back to the drawing board to explore new ways of getting around using human power.

The bicycle remains a triumph of human ingenuity and a supremely efficient way of moving from a to b. However, there are drawbacks for the cyclist, you are alone and vulnerable on your bike and when it rains… you get wet! The HumanCar changes all that by offering communal pulling power and a roof. In the future we may return to walkable communities in which we can shop, work and live without the need for machine transportation. Until this time the HumanCar offers a great solution, allowing us to travel on existing road infrastructure without emitting green house gasses and with a range of personal benefits, from exercising the heart to putting an enormous smile on your face. Something tells me that even if we construct walkable eco-communities we will keep the HumanCars not for efficiency… just because they are fun.

The average speed of journeys across London today is slower then 100 years ago when most journeys where by horse and cart! Millions of people travel into central London every day to work and the car simply isn’t an efficient way of moving these people around; this has been acknowledged by the Mayor who has further disincentivized car use with the notorious congestion charge. If you want to avoid the dehumanizing effects of riding the tube the bicycle is next up for many commuters.

Cycling has multiple benefits for individuals, society and the environment. The modal shift to cycling in urban centres can in one fell swoop reduce obesity, congestion and pollution whilst freeing up space in cities and improving well being. The UK treasury may have calculated that the money it saves on treating heart disease, asthma and traffic makes investing in private bike ownership a good use of funds. You can now buy a tax-free bike in the UK through the bike to work scheme.

For the real diehards who want to shrink their ecological footprint to within a stiletto heel the embedded energy of their bicycle may be a concern. This has all changed with the launch of a bamboo bike created by Calfee design. To get the low-down we got in contact with Craig Calfee.

Amazingly these bikes are actually more tolerant then your average carbon fibre bike. The bamboo is sourced from Taiwan where it is prepared by smoking and heat treatment to prevent splitting and even some of the attachments are available in hemp for an added natural touch. Aside from the natural feel and flexibility of the frame there is something very cool about growing a bike! The frame will absorb carbon as it grows making the machine itself almost as green as the transport mode.

Craig says “We are selling direct to early adopters. Those that ride them are fanatics about it!” Decide for yourself at www.calfeedesign.com

A recent post entitled ‘Why build Sustainability into your business’ highlighted some great profit centred arguments for building sustainability into business strategies. The basic premise behind them being that “greed got us into this mess and greed will get us out”… “being green means making more profit”. Piers Fawkes illustrated this paradigm with some exciting contemporary examples of win-win scenarios arising from corporate responses to the sustainability agenda. Yet there seems to be something rather unsettling about the notion that our last hope should be greed. Einstein once said that you can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that gave rise to it. Was this to be the exception?

In the late 1950s and early 1960s we saw the mass produced, mass prescribed drug Thalidomide given to tens of thousands of pregnant women to combat morning sickness, resulting in a generation of children born with severe malformities including phocomelia. Last year we saw results published confirming that yet another widely distributed antidepressant (Seroxat) was shown to actually increase the risk of suicide in adults and teenagers alike, and last month Scientists found traces of poisonous pesticides in 70% of samples of free fruit and vegetables destined for schoolchildren. Add this to the unimaginable damage caused by our simplistic linear economic systems that extract resources at one end and pollute and dump at the other, and you can’t really blame consumers for being sceptical about companies having our best interests at heart. Yet Peter Drucker reminds us that our opinion really does matter; it has always been the customer who determines what value a brand has, and whether it will survive:

“It is the customer, and he alone, who through being willing to pay for a good or a service, converts economic resources into wealth, things into goods. What the business thinks it produces is not of the first importance—especially not to the future of the business and to its success. What the customer thinks he is buying, what he considers ‘value’ is decisive—it determines what a business is, what it produces and whether it will prosper.”

This is especially significant now that consumers are looking for ways to become change agents in the context of global social and environmental issues… yet leveraging this requires companies to build a more fundamental form of trust among consumers. We, the customer, have not only to believe that companies are genuinely committed to helping us overcome global issues, but also that they are doing it for the right reasons. The idea that corporate strategy was the simple mechanistic product of a cost benefit analysis, although probably true in most scenarios, doesn’t really tell us that they now have our best interests at heart. We want to see them doing the right thing even where the ‘balance sheet says no’. This means adopting a longer-term perspective.

Too much focus on the bottom line has historically led to short-termism and has been attributed to the failure to capitalise on many fantastic brand-building opportunities. Elkington pointed out that in 1991 many green technologies remained uncommercialised simply because their payback period was longer than that of conventional alternatives. There’s also the very common mistake of values only finding expression in areas where they make short term economic sense, leading to compartmental ethics, and resulting in conflicting brand messaging. Ray Anderson also talks about how, for similar reasons, accountants often miss the bigger picture:

“the accountants can never get there on the investments in photo voltaics today. If the market place is telling us they’ll buy it, who cares if the electricity costs a little bit more. So we put on our marketing hat and it becomes an easy decision to invest in solar made carpet.”

Many of the word’s leading strategists also argue that obsession with efficiency and costs doesn’t necessarily lead to competitive advantage, and that instead, competitive advantage is derived from a company’s desire and capacity to change.

“Detailed case studies of hundreds of industries, based in dozens of countries, reveal that internationally competitive companies are not those with the cheapest inputs or the largest scale, but those with the capacity to improve and innovate continually.” (Porter, 1995).

A rationale for this philosophy was brilliantly encapsulated by the ‘creating passionate users’ blog:

Another thing that the profit driven approach often overlooks is the human element. Businesses are made of people, and people are motivated and inspired by more than just money. To this end, sound ethics and forward thinking business values can help inspire higher levels of productivity, participation, creativity, loyalty and retention, and can improve a company’s ability to attract the best talent.

What this all points to is that, although an understanding of how going green can benefit companies economically is undoubtedly a catalyst for improvement, they’ll enjoy it more and have a much greater chance of success if their efforts are not driven by greed, but by a genuine and holistic desire to change, stemming from a shift in corporate values in response to global social and environmental agendas. This requires companies to look beyond cost structures and profit margins, and like Ray Anderson (who Piers credits for pointing out that sustainability is not the holy grail), to really think about how to profoundly re-engineer their operations into formats that are more compatible with nature, building on their ability to make a positive impact on individuals, communities and the environment.

The proliferation of greenhouse gases (GHG) - and specifically carbon dioxide –
both in the media and the atmosphere – is a ubiquitous issue at the moment. This
article will provide product and brand managers a concise overview of the GHG
landscape, with the objective of identifying the issues and levers most critical
to their work.

A warming planet will cause enormous environmental and
climactic problems for large swaths of the world’s population – especially the
poorer ones who live at sea level, or who are subject to the whims of changing
weather patterns for their livelihood. GHGs – both natural and man-made –
contribute to the “greenhouse effect”, or global warming. Naturally occurring
greenhouse gases include water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide,
and ozone. Certain human activities, however, add to the levels of most of these
naturally occurring gases. (Source: EPA report on climate change).

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The world is warming. No matter
what you believe, its true.

We needn’t be a world-renowned
scientist, a mathematical genius or an over-enthusiastic sandal wearing,
bearded Gaia-loving, holistically minded, ecological whole-earth muesli eating,
Rachel Carson reading Green to see and believe it (phew!). Take a look around –
people sunbathe in England during what has become more of a ‘tropical July’
where temperatures reach Mediterranean highs of 31 degrees C (91F). There is
blossom on the cherry trees in mid-December. Blossom!! Mid-December!! That
can’t be right, right?

Britain has experienced its 10
warmest years in the past 18 with 2006 having been the warmest ever. The steady
rises in temperature over the past 50 years can only be explained by the
correlative rise in greenhouse gas emissions. Summers have become increasingly
warmer and drier and winters noticeably warmer and wetter.

Our attachment and servitude to
the material: our electrical gadgets; motorised vehicles and gas-guzzling SUV
monster-trucks; floodlit homes; in-your-face Christmas decorations, rapping
paper and socially embedded compulsory consumerism (for things we don’t need or
want) are some of the main causes of this problem.

However, none of this is news. It is more than likely that
you are reading this and thinking ‘oh no, not another rant about global warming
from yet another person sitting behind a desk in an office with nothing better
to do than state the bloomin’ obvious’.

Well hopefully the increasingly common sight of things
like blossoming trees in the middle of winter should be sufficient to convince
those last few remaining deluded sceptics that the world is warming, that this
is actually a bad thing, and we are the only ones who can reverse it. By
altering the way that we consume, dispose of our waste and zoom around we may
be able to create new solutions to the problem.

I don’t have kids yet, but I hope one day I will. There
are two things I really fear when that moment comes. Firstly, I fear is that
when they get to an age that they are able to vocalise their thoughts they will
start correcting my English! Secondly, and more unnerving still, however, is
that they are more than likely going to ask me: “mummy if you knew this was
going to happen then why didn’t you do anything about it”.

We can do something about
it: small changes in lifestyle coupled with advances in technology can play a
huge part. If climate change starts at home then the solution also lies there.
This alone should be enough to jolt us into action. With any luck articles like
this should fade away and be replaced by something less sterile and more
uplifting.

Global Warming is not the new
marketing plot from brands, despite what people may believe. However, brands
can play a vital role by providing goods and services that enable us along the
path of sustainable consumerism. The mutual investment into the realm of value
and ethics on the part of both brands and consumers, that we are starting to
see, is only the start of what will hopefully become a full-blown revolution of
the mind from an anthropocentric consumerism and lifestyle to one that will
enable us to help turn around the ‘container-ship’ of bad habit that we have
created towards fulfilling the goals and aspirations that we, as a species, are
only now starting to strive for in great force.

‘Greenwash’ is a pejorative term that some
environmentalists and critics use to describe the activity of brands and
corporations that portray a positive public image of putatively environmentally
unsound practices. Greenwashing can take many guises ranging from lies of
ommission to misleading labelling systems; from empty mission statements and
voluntary codes of conduct to sustainability reports that offer only partial
disclosure and transparency right through to the arbitrary sponsorship of good
causes and events.

It’s a whitewash of the green
variety, a sham, a hoax, a scandal that dazzles consumers with the blinding
beauty that is GREEN - the holy grail of sustainability - that warm feeling you
get when you do something ‘good’. The power of ‘green’ is so tremendous that it
has often been channelled into another symbol of hope: the good old green
American $: a fast ‘buck’ or two billion wrapped up in a green blanket of hope.

As consumers have become
increasingly aware of environmental and social issues, some brands have found
it hard to resist exploiting and profiting from the emerging ‘green market’. It
is big business.

‘Is that not a good thing?’ I
hear you ask. Well, yes. The green market is prospering for a reason - the
goods and services provided aim at remedying the bleak situation that we have
created for ourselves.

But, in true Tarzan style: green
products GOOD, greenwashing BAD. Greenwashing has a stifling effect. The market
becomes distorted if the information provided is not true, transparent and
fully encompassing, for it cannot represent consumers’ true preferences.

With huge budgets and marketing
power vast corporations can greenwash their way into dominating sections of the
green market without necessarily embracing the values at the heart of the
movement. They often overshadow the true green businesses that are struggling
to gain a foothold in the market. More importantly, greenwashing can also play
a huge role in persuading other businesses to invest in companies that aren’t
as responsible as they portray themselves to be. As a result business is again
denied to the true greens.

Greenwashing is not part of the
environmental movement but a huge environmental problem that will continue to
expand right up to the point that it ‘no longer pays’. Consumers must, and
will, make their choices based on accurate environmental information and
education. They will learn to see the broader picture and come to learn that
car companies that produce one hybrid car and 20 different models of SUV are not
green! Fuel companies that save 0.5 million tonnes of CO2 emissions from solar
power are not green if 1298 million tonnes of CO2 emissions radiate from the
rest of their products!!

Greenwashing is not green marketing. In order to market a green brand then the brand must be green in the first place. Green brand internalise environmental values and philosophy and embed them into their core - not only in the products they produce but in the way they produce them and how they run their business enterprise. Green brands take a serious and holistic approach to the environmental agenda - this is not the case with greenwash power!! Consumers are savvy and once greenwashing has exposed for what it truly is then the carpet will be well and truly swept from under the brands’ feet.

Maslow’s theory, published in 1943, created a hierarchy of
mans’ needs. The main thesis provides that once basic needs are met, then man
is able to fulfil his higher needs – the ‘growth needs’ that form the pinnacle
of man’s desires.

Basic ‘deficiency needs’
comprise the bottom four layers of the five-level pyramid. Basic needs
encompass (1) physiological necessities (air, food, sleep etc); (2) safety
needs, or basic human rights provisions which, once satisfied, establish the
threshold of happiness; (3) social needs (friendship, family, sexual intimacy
and so on); and (4) self-esteem (respect and a sense of achievement).

Once basic physical and
psychological needs have been satisfied then the opportunity to develop spiritual
needs is maximised. According to Maslow there is a desire to search for
meaning, which may include a transcendence of ego.

Intuition suggests that the idea
of self-development or a hankering after meaning and value in life remains true
to experience. If we are fortunate enough to enjoy the security that society
can provide us – if we have a secure job and the means to achieve a comfortable
level of subsistence protected by our fundamental rights – then there often
arises a desire, or we flirt with the idea, that there is more to life than
basic survival.

So what does all this have to do
with sustainability or social and environmental issues you might be asking
yourself? Is there a link to be made with the market, brands and companies?

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At the end of October KFC announced the biggest concession yet in the fast-food industry against hydrogenated fats. KFC have promised to remove trans-fats from their cooking oil and replacing them with “zero grams” oil in all 5,500 U.S. outlets by April 2007. However a deadline has not been set for any of the 711 outlets in the U.K. McDonalds has to date made no commitment to remove trans-fats, however, it has said its European restaurants will begin using cooking oils that cut trans-fat levels to no more than 2%. U.S. outlet Wendy’s has removed trans-fats from it fries and chicken. Despite the good news, all of the major fast-food outlets’ products still contain very high levels of saturated fat, salt and calories that exert strain on the heart and contribute to increased weight-gain.

The American Heart Association recommends the maximum intake of trans-fatty acids is 2-2.5g per day. A sample of fast-food products show that for some people this may be a very difficult target: 1 large portion of McDonalds fries contains 8g of trans-fat; their apple pies contain 4.5g. A large KFC ‘Popcorn Chicken’ has 7g; their ‘Chicken Pot Pie’ contains 14g where their 3-piece ‘Extra Crispy Combo’ meal contains 15g of trans-fats. It has long been known that fast-food outlets are not healthy, but this data confirms that they positively pose a danger to health. But are such outlets the only ‘bad guys’?

The main supplier of foodstuffs is Supermarkets. Supermarkets realise that health is fast becoming an obsession. ‘Alarmist’ bad press strongly affects sales of certain products whilst good press can boost sales. The recent boom in organic and fair-trade products is a good example. Trans-fats have become a major issue, one that supermarkets cannot ignore.

The ‘Big Four’ U.K. retailers, Sainsbury; Tesco; Asda and Marks & Spencer have promised to remove trans-fats from their own products by the end of 2006. Marks & Spencer originally promised that they would be removed by mid-2006, but this date was revised for the New Year. Waitrose has also committed to such a move - having been removing them since 2004 - but as yet they not set a deadline for the complete removal. The Co-op has promised to label trans-fats but is behind in the race to remove them completely.

In July 2003, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that it required mandatory trans-fat labelling of all conventional food and supplements from January 2006. All packaged foods must list trans-fat content on their ‘Nutrition Facts’ labels. However, the British government is yet to impose this on products sold in the UK, despite a group of Oxford Scientists writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ 2006; 333:214 (29 July)) strongly recommending their introduction. However, the U.K. Food Standards Agency is pressing for labelling on all foods sold in the E.U. So what are trans-fats, why are they so bad and how can we recognise them?

Trans-fats or ‘trans fatty acids’ are formed from the partial hydrogenation of vegetable oils (they are sometimes labelled ‘partially hydrogenated vegetable oil’). The process converts vegetable oils into a semi-solid fat that has no nutritional value. Trans-fats are used for margarines, commercial cooking and manufacturing processes. They are very attractive to the food industry because of their long shelf life, their stability during frying and their semi-solidity. The major sources of trans-fats are deep fried fast foods, baked products, packaged snack food, margarine and crackers.

There is substantive evidence that consumption of trans-fats leads to an increased risk in coronary heart disease, more so than any other ‘macronutrient’. By increasing the amount of low-density lipoprotein (“bad cholesterol”) in the blood, and reducing the amount of high-density lipoprotein (“good cholesterol”), they confer a substantially high risk through low consumption. The BMJ article refers to research that suggests that ‘a 2% increase in the energy intake from trans fatty acids was associated with a 23% increase in the incidence of coronary heart disease’ (p. 2).

More starkly, some scientific data has suggested that trans-fat consumption may increase the risk of sudden death from cardiac causes and some data exists to suggest that it may be linked to diabetes. As ‘bantransfats.com’ note:

One of the reasons that partially hydrogenated oils are used is to increase the product’s shelf life, but they decrease your shelf life. Trans fats cause significant and serious lowering of HDL (good) cholesterol and a significant and serious increase in LDL (bad) cholesterol; make the arteries more rigid; cause major clogging of arteries; cause insulin resistance; cause or contribute to type 2 diabetes; and cause or contribute to other serious health problems.

It is not all bad news however: intake can be controlled by consumer choices. Unfortunately, consumers cannot make informed decisions without knowing what are in certain products. Either a labelling system needs to be in place or there needs to be assurances such as those offered by the leading supermarkets that trans-fats will not make their way into products. This being the case, health conscious consumers will be able to make their decisions based on such knowledge. Brands that have made such commitments are bound to prosper.

If this is not the case the consumer can only guess. In the U.S., where products are labelled, consumers can look for partially hydrogenated oils: fully hydrogenated oils are typically listed as “hydrogenated” and often do not contain trans-fats (although some foods that contain hydrogenated oil may still contain trans-fats). This cannot be done in restaurants however, unless in New York where trans-fats are banned in all restaurants. The best method in the U.K. is a calculated one, although it is by no means conclusive. Typically, trans-fat content may be calculated by the gap between the declared “total fats” and the sum of poly-unsaturated, mono-unsaturated and saturated fats listed (if they are given at all). This method is not always accurate but it remains the only one. The consumer cannot make any kind of informed choice unless products are declared trans-fat free or quantities are declared – the onus is on brands.

It is clear from legislation in Denmark, in place since 2003 limiting the amount of trans-fats in food, that trans-fatty acids can be replaced by unsaturated fats without reducing the quality or availability of the food or by increasing the price. Huge progress has been made in the U.S. into researching alternative to partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. There is an expectation that it would cost very little to remove trans-fats from food – a small price to pay to please the increasingly suspicious consumer.

Whilst a push for labelling is a very positive step it remains a less fruitful exercise without continued consumer education. In America products that are labelled “trans-fat free” have in some cases enjoyed higher sales. The fact remains, however, that many of these products still contain high levels of saturated fats which can be considered only a little better: trans-fats are only one danger to the consumer. The move towards their removal is encouraging but what is even more important is awareness on the part of the consumer to make informed choices and eat healthily. The brands that make this process easier will build their own value and are likely to prosper.