This year marks GreenBlue’s 10th anniversary. At the end of our first decade, what will the next decade bring for the sustainability movement? We’re asking this question of visionaries, thought leaders, business innovators, scientists, and educators. Read other interviews from the Next Decade series about the future of the sustainability, products, and business.
Legendary business thinker John Elkington recently suggested that he might declare the years 2012-2022 “The Decade of Sustainable Capitalism.” Two decades ago, the co-founder of SustainAbility introduced the now-standard concept of the “triple bottom line,” the proposition that business should be judged through not just economic but also social and environmental measures. In Cannibals With Forks (1997), he questioned whether capitalism itself is sustainable, and now Elkington proposes that this could be the central question of the next decade. We asked him to elaborate.
Fifteen years after Cannibals, have you decided whether capitalism can be sustainable, or is it inherently unsustainable?
It’s amazing how much has changed in that time, but also how much hasn’t. Capitalism is both inherently myopic, focusing on some capitals at the expense of others, and at the same time unstable and open to change. We are entering a period of increasingly intense creative destruction. Our key challenge is to ensure that what emerges by way of 21st-Century capitalism—or perhaps capitalisms—offers our rapidly expanding human populations greater resilience and sustainability.
Is business important to advance sustainability, and why?
Business is among the very top necessary conditions for transformative, systemic change. Too often, incumbent industries with sunk capital lobby furiously to stall change, for fear that they will be left with “stranded assets”.
Define “sustainable capitalism.”
For me, sustainable capitalism is value creation that would work for 9-10 billion people, within the limits of our one planet, and create blended (or shared) value across multiple forms of capital—financial, physical, human, natural, social, and cultural.
You’ve declared this next ten years “The Decade of Sustainable Capitalism.” Why now? What is critical about this point in history and the evolution of sustainability?
On the downside, if we don’t do it now we’re—to use a technical term—screwed. On the upside, many of the building blocks are more or less in place—all we need is the political will to change things. And the shocks that will both create that political will—and risk driving the whole system into darker responses like protectionism and xenophobia—are coming. Declaring this “The Decade of Sustainable Capitalism” signals the sort of extended timescales we need to think and invest across.
What actions and priorities would you point to as most essential in the coming decade?
We need to transform global governance, tax and legal systems, and the incentives for investors, managers and consumers. We need to create the cultural context within which the appropriate behaviors become second nature.
Are there particular barriers that need to be overcome?
This is a subject I dig into in my new book, The Zeronauts: Breaking the Sustainability Barrier. The book looks at a series of risks and opportunities, including the challenge of driving population growth, pandemics, poverty, pollution, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction down to zero. I look at the changes that will need to happen at the level of the citizen, the city, the corporation, the country and, ultimately, our entire civilization.
What are the top goals for this next decade, and how will we recognize success?
A key task is to break away from the incrementalism that has marked the past 25 years and push towards systemic change. While the politics could end up being off the scale, scaling solutions will require us to embrace new politics. That’s why I say business is only a necessary condition of success. Our decision as to whether or not we want to survive as a species, insofar as it is in our hands, is ultimately political.
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A New Consumer Bill of Rights
Fifty years ago today, John F. Kennedy gave a special message to Congress about protecting consumer interests: “The march of technology—affecting, for example, the foods we eat, the medicines we take, and the many appliances we use in our homes—has increased the difficulties of the consumer along with his opportunities.” He listed four basic principles, which he called the “Consumer Bill of Rights,” to safeguard against the risks of an increasing number and complexity of new products—the right to safety, the right to be informed, the right to choose, and the right to be heard.
The speech was well ahead of its time. Delivered eight years before the US EPA was founded, it anticipated growing concerns about public health and producer responsibility. Yet, in a 5,000-word talk, JFK didn’t mention the environment at all. Three months later, The New Yorker began publishing a series of articles about the chemical industry’s harmful effects on the environment. Written by a relatively unknown government biologist, the essays were published that September in book form, as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. The modern environmental movement was born.
Half a century later, Kennedy’s warning about the complexity of consumer products is more relevant than ever. On the anniversary of the speech, it’s appropriate to revisit the Consumer of Bill of Rights in light of five decades of environmental challenges and opportunities:
“The right to safety—to be protected against the marketing of goods which are hazardous to health or life.” Kennedy marveled that since World War II, the number of goods in a typical grocery store had quadrupled, from 1,500 to over 6,000. Today some 30,000 new products enter the market every year, and their exact contents and environmental and human health effects are generally unknown. While consumer interest in “green” products reportedly doubled from 2008 to 2010, a third of consumers say that the “low availability” of such products is why they don’t buy more of them. The demand for green products is growing, but manufacturers may not be keeping pace, in part because of limited access to better materials and information.
“The right to be informed—to be protected against fraudulent, deceitful, or grossly misleading information…and to be given the facts he needs to make an informed choice.” According to the environmental marketing firm Terrachoice, over 95 percent of products claiming to be “green” are committing at least one of what it calls the “Seven Sins of Greenwashing.” Increased transparency about a product’s contents and production is essential. Last year, Perkins+Will and Construction Specialties introduced a labeling system for building materials and products that aids the disclosure of environmental and human health data—a good model for other industries, as well.
“The right to choose—to be assured, wherever possible, access to a variety of products and services at competitive prices.” A 2011 study by Grail Research shows that price is by far the biggest deterrent to purchasing “green” products, with 74 percent of “non-green” consumers calling them “too expensive.” The same study also reveals a perceived lack of diversity in the market options: an abundance of products are marketed as recyclable, for example, while “non-toxic” products are scarce. These perceptions present a tremendous opportunity for producers to capture more market share by offering a greater variety of safer, healthier, more affordable products.
“The right to be heard—to be assured that consumer interests will receive full and sympathetic consideration in the formulation of Government policy….” Kennedy pointed out that while consumers represent the largest group in the economy, they are “the only important group…whose views are often not heard.” In the past, government has had to take the lead in protecting consumers—through, for example, the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Today, however, the market demand may be changing how business responds to consumer needs. The World Economic Forum’s 2012 report lists the primary strategy for scaling up sustainability as “transform[ing] demand through interactions with the consumer.” Social media, for example, gives business real-time feedback: as of this week, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is followed by nearly 57,000 people on Facebook, and more than 1,500 companies have pledged to meet its goals to eliminate harmful chemicals from personal care products. By listening to its customers, business can stimulate both economic demand and sustainable change.
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The GreenBlue Walk the Walk Challenge
As an organization that is committed to sustainability, we are always looking for new inspiration to improve our own environmental footprint. One way we are doing that is by participating in the Charlottesville Area Better Business Challenge, which is a friendly competition among local businesses to help them identify ways to reduce the impacts of their day-to-day operations on the environment. I have wanted to improve my own habits and being a part of the business challenge has motivated me to act. One area I would like to address is the packaging waste I create from takeout food (especially from work-day lunches). To take this one step further and get others involved, I came up with the idea for the GreenBlue Walk the Walk Challenge:
The concept: A new challenge is issued each month by one GreenBlue staff member to all staff, and the topic must relate to our work in some way. This is voluntary; so, each person will decide whether or not to commit to this year-long challenge.
The goal: To create better habits that can decrease our impact on the environment, with the intent that we build on each new good habit as the year progresses.
The kicker: If you slip, you have to put $1 in the donation jar for each offense. At the end of the each month, we write about how it went on this blog and total our funds. Then at the end of the year, we select an environmental charity to receive our “kicker funds”.
The twist: The person who initiates the challenge topic in one month tags someone for the following month.
March topic: Come up with creative ways to reduce waste from food and drink packaging.
Basic challenge: Do not use any disposable food/drink carry-out containers (That’s right, no coffee cups, pizza boxes, or Chinese food take-out boxes) or associated paraphernalia (plastic bags, plastic utensils, chopsticks, etc). At home or in the office!
Extra credit: Do not create any food/drink packaging waste.
So, get in the habit of bringing your reusable food and drink containers with you!
Hey, In the Loop Readers, you can participate in our challenge too! Don’t forget to let us know how you do each month. Also, we will solicit topic ideas from our blog readers for one of our challenges (keep your eyes peeled).
Who’s on board?
Oh, and by the way, tag you’re it: Paul Giacherio! Stay tuned for Paul’s April challenge…
I’m armed with my reusable containers. My food container is made by To-Go Ware (to-goware.com) and I purchased it locally at the Blue Ridge Eco Shop, where they have a variety of reusable food containers. On the FAQ page of their website, To-Go Ware addresses what type of stainless steel is used in the lunch containers and where they are manufactured – for details, visit the To-Go Ware website.
Price fluctuation, demand exceeding supply and fibre strength are the main concerns for the US food packaging industry using recycled paper fibre, says research. Food Production Daily
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Top Five Fun Facts: March
Eric DesRoberts continues his monthly series of facts and tidbits he’s uncovered during his research to better understand products and packaging. You can also check out his past Fun Facts here.
1. Meat content in fast food hamburgers ranges between 2-14% on average. The other 85-98% includes fillers like: blood vessels, nerves, cartilage, and chemicals like ammonia to control bacteria.
2. One glass of beer (250 ml) requires about 20 gallons of water. Most of the water is used to produce the barley. Approximately 203,576,450 barrels of beer were sold US in 2010. At roughly 31 gallons a barrel and 3.79 liters per gallon, this equates to roughly 2 trillion gallons of water used to produce the beer sold in the US. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
3. The average American uses 40 pounds of toxic cleaning productseach year. Over 90% of all human poison exposure occurs in a patient’s own home. The substances most frequently involved include painkillers, cosmetics, and household cleaning products.
4. Cities are spending approximately $2,000 per trash can every year to collect waste. In the US, garbage trucks consume about 1.5 billion gallons of diesel fuel.
5. A recent report released by KPMG International Cooperative examines industry revenue (EBITA) with potential environmental costs. The study finds the highest environmental costs among food producers ($200 billion). Looking back to 2002 levels, this was the only sector observed where environmental cost growth rates exceeded revenue growth. Over the same time period, the automobile industry was the only sector with a reported negative growth rate for environmental cost. The report goes on to state that if industries were forced to internalize these costs, revenues could be cut by 40%.
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A Must Read: The Great Disruption
I read sustainability articles voraciously, in part to stay current since I work in the field, and in part because survival of the planet and its many species is near and dear to my heart and I want to know what’s going on. Of late, articles on “sustainable consumption” are in vogue and obviously reflect where the sustainability conversation is headed. While I couldn’t agree more that we need a new economic model—one that is not dependent on continuous growth based on selling more stuff to more consumers and one that changes the corporate sector focus from quarterly earnings to some longer time frame—I can’t help wondering if the pace at which we are moving is really fast enough. Are we headed for more than a climate change crises and towards a global economic or capitalism crisis?
Some thought leaders (although clearly not all) who spend far more time than I do thinking about these things are predicting the latter scenario, as Paul Gilding explains in his 2011 book, The Great Disruption. Subtitled, “Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring on the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World,” Gilding’s analysis and predictions are hard to argue with. As he demonstrates with rigorous analysis, we are already living as though we had 1.4 planet’s worth of resources. In other words, we have already surpassed the earth’s natural carrying capacity.
Short of a mid-course (or one might argue late-course) correction that is dramatic enough to reverse the consequences of where we are today, let alone where we are headed at the pace of change we’re currently making, we will be forced to make extraordinarily difficult changes abruptly. While he paints a picture that is anything but pretty, he also makes a logical, well-considered argument that when a critical number of us recognize we are in crisis, governments, corporations, NGOs, and even individuals will take action and mobilize fast. In other words, we will have no choice but to deal with the unintended consequences of a global economy based entirely on continuous growth. When push really comes to shove, we will unite as the intelligent species we actually are and implement aggressive solutions with resolve and precision.
To drive his point home, Gilding also references Joseph Schumpeter’s work. As many of you know, Schumpeter is the highly respected Austrian-Hungarian-American economist who popularized the concept of creative destruction, a theory upon which many successful companies have based their innovation strategies. I quote from the book: “Schumpeter’s creative destruction means that many of our current companies simply won’t make it, though many will. It also means that a good proportion of the world’s top one hundred companies in twenty years’ time are names you haven’t heard of yet but exist today and are champing at the bit for the race to start and the opportunity to knock over some of the old players. This is exactly what markets are good at. What the final shape of all this will be, with what technologies, what companies and which countries end up winners and losers, is full of uncertainty, but the outcome is not. When we act, we will eliminate net CO2e emissions from the economy in an amazingly fast transformation and then move on to the rest of sustainability.” And, he closes that passage with a refrain he uses throughout the book, to describe mankind and our response to the environmental warning signs: “Slow but not stupid.”
Although I read it on vacation and actually got excited and energized by it, most of you will probably not consider it great leisure time reading. But, I suggest it is a must read for serious sustainability practitioners.
GreenBlue is marking its first decade as a nonprofit sustainability-watchdog by looking ahead to its next. And it plans to mark the milestonewith a series of articles about the future of sustainability, products and business. Custom Home
Guidelines for Recycled Content in Paper and Paperboard Packaging outlines opportunities to use recycled content in 20 common retail packaging applications, including shopping and take-out bags, cereal boxes, toothbrush blister packs, software boxes, and coffee canisters. Green Retail Decisions
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A Film Review: Cool It
Last week we held a screening of the documentary Cool It at the GreenBlue offices as part of our monthly environmental film screening. The film, based on the book Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, is about the book’s author, Danish economist and political scientist Bjørn Lomborg, and his alternative (and sometimes controversial) approach to combatting climate change. The Los Angels Times notes, “If Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” left you feeling as if we’ve already lost the battle against global warming, “Cool It” is a tantalizing counterpoint that will make you wonder if maybe we’ve just been going about it the wrong way.” Below a couple GreenBlue staff members provide their insights on the film and some of Lomborg’s provocative ideas.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZR3gsY98VU
Development and Communications Associate Ashley Holmes: In Cool It, Bjørn Lomborg, who is largely against most conventional thinking on global warming solutions, proposes a more creative allocation of global resources to solve the problem by focusing on more cost-effective solutions. He suggests that the $250 billion the European Union spends per year on carbon offsets could be spent more wisely to alleviate poverty, disease, and lack of education in developing countries while simultaneously reducing global warming. The bulk of this budget (about $100 billion) would be spent on energy R&D to reduce the costs of these new technologies. Another $50 billion should be spent on adaptation for the unavoidable risks of climate change, and $1 billion would go to geo-engineering research. The remaining $99 billion would be spent in the developing world on necessities like clean water, education, and healthcare. While Lomborg makes a compelling case, I am not entirely convinced that the solution to such a complex problem can be summed up into such a tidy budget. Regardless of the cost of the solution (whether it will be $250 billion or much more than that), the film leaves you wondering how we will be able to garner the political will across so many diverse countries to invest in solving climate change without an immediately visible payoff.
Project Associate Danielle Peacock: In Cool It, Bjørn Lomborg appears to correlate concern for the world’s largest problems with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. He argues that the poor, hungry, sick, and jobless of the world are focused on fulfilling their basic needs (and rightfully so), while climate change is a concern of rich, developed societies. To reach the point of focusing on climate change is to reach fulfillment of all other needs – equating to the top stages of Maslow’s pyramid. Essentially, it is an expensive “first world problem” that we inefficiently invest our money in. What stuck with me the most was Lomborg’s failure to properly address the interconnected nature of climate change and the environment to these basic needs of food, health, education and income. Sincere sustainability conversations must focus on the systematic interconnection of these issues. They feed upon each other, and cannot be analyzed as isolated issues. It is a complexity that we must remind ourselves of in our personal and professional lives.
Project Associate Eric DesRoberts: I think the film appeals to many by talking about the sustainability agenda within a valuation framework. This is something more tangible and relatable to most people and at the very least increases awareness of the dialogues happening around environmental and social injustices.
One concern that was validated in the film was the polarization of the research community. Many of the proposed ideas identified by the film’s protagonist appear to have short-term or more immediate results. Some of the naysayers seemingly have a more long-term scientific grit and grind approach, but I believe there is need for both and I don’t think they are exclusive of one another. The long-term approach requires constant adjustment, which leaves plenty of opportunities for many short-term projects.
Read other film reviews from GreenBlue’s monthly environmental film series.
Optimizing the use of recycled content continues to rank among the key strategies by which brand owners and retailers strive to make their packaging more sustainable. This is true because, unlike some other strategies, the use of recycled content is something consumers relate to and generally understand. Packaging Digest
