Mind the Integrity Gap

The furore about inappropriate behaviour at the Presidents Club fundraiser raises many questions - the most obvious of which is why, in the wake of the Weinstein scandal, the rise of the #MeToo campaign and the emerging conversation about sexual misconduct, some of the most powerful men in UK business felt they could continue to get away with it. The fundraising dinner outed this week by Financial Times journalists who had hostessed there has taken place annually for 33 years, founded in the eighties and perpetuating anachronistic social attitudes. Surely, at some point in the planning stage for this year's event, somebody must have considered the context and questioned whether some adjustment to the format might be appropriate? Apparently not - or perhaps, if they did, they were bullied into submission.

Even the event's fundraising mission seems cynical, given the apparent lack of any kind of relationship between it and the charities it benefited - a fig leaf of respectability applied to justify a night of testosterone-fuelled excess that could be charged to the expense account. It represents the worst kind of corporate philanthropy, a point of view clearly shared by the charities that have decided to return its donation. It's alarming to think that the leaders of some of our most powerful institutions considered it appropriate to invite to such an event those they wished to influence or befriend.

To those who choose to run their businesses responsibly, who aspire to high standards of professional conduct and integrity, the Presidents Club is a sobering reminder that there are still many large and powerful organisations which, at best, only pay lip service to those concepts. Whose leaders revert to type when they think nobody is looking. Where the culture is based on saying one thing publicly and then doing something different behind closed doors. My favourite definition of integrity is "doing the right thing even when nobody is watching" - on that basis, the Presidents Club exposes a massive integrity gap at the very top of UK business. It remains to be seen whether that will become a catalyst for change.

On Trump and integrity

I was shocked to hear a female taxi driver interviewed on BBC World Service excusing Donald Trump’s deplorable comments about women on the basis that “everybody does it”. Her argument was that everybody has conversations about the opposite sex in private that they would not have in their presence or in public. This is a depressing observation from one who, as a driver, is often disregarded by those in her vehicle and therefore is in a better position than most to comment on “hidden” behaviours.
 

Trumps comments weren’t just indiscreet, they suggested a disturbingly predatory and exploitative attitude to women. In my experience, this is not something “everybody” does – my friends and colleagues certainly don’t – but I have no doubt that it happens. The point is, we should expect our leaders to display the best attitudes and behaviours that exist in society, not the worst. Just because something is commonplace does not make it right, and the definition of integrity is doing the right thing when nobody is looking. We need leaders to behave with integrity, and Trump’s leaked conversation betrays a total lack of that quality.

Is the CSR manager really dead?

In recent months I have seen a number of opinion pieces asserting that, since CSR should ideally be embedded in corporate strategy and culture, there should no longer be any need for CSR managers. In my view, this completely misses the point. There are other areas of business that are considered to be everybody’s responsibility and yet nobody is suggesting that the subject-matter experts are not needed. A company where all staff take responsibility for controlling costs does not fire its finance team, nor does a company with a strong health and safety culture dispense with the services of its health and safety manager. Indeed, one might argue that companies with senior subject-matter professionals are more successful at embedding the principles of their area of expertise into the business, since there is a dedicated person or team creating the structure, narrative and performance metrics that are necessary to weave it into the daily work of people in other disciplines.

There may still be companies where having a CSR manager is seen as a kind of “ethics offsetting” – making CSR the responsibility of one person so that none of the others need concern themselves with it - but this approach is simply untenable in these days of the connected consumer with strong views on fairness and transparency. But effective CSR is too complex – and arguably too important – to be approached by simply writing it into everybody’s job description. Somebody needs to be scanning the horizon for emerging social or environmental risks, keeping abreast of new legislation, looking for opportunities to demonstrate leadership and drive momentum towards ever-higher standards of ethics and transparency, not just in their own organisation but across business in general.

Of course, whether CSR Manager is the correct title for somebody with this role remains moot. Terminology has long been a challenge and no doubt will remain so, not least because the landscape is constantly changing. When I first began working in this area, the headline issue was the ozone layer and the internet hadn’t even been invented. These days enlightened business leaders are expected to deliver data-driven responses to a wide range of environmental and social priorities, voluntary initiatives and disruptive business models in an era of radical transparency and consumer activism. In setting their strategy they have to determine materiality, align with frameworks like the UN Sustainable Development Goals, engage meaningfully with disparate stakeholder groups and embed processes and metrics that deliver against publicly-stated goals and targets. Whatever name we choose to give them, it’s hard to see how all of this could be achieved without the support of experienced subject-matter experts.

COP21 - does it really matter whether global leaders sign up?

Before, during and after COP21 I was struck by the increasing number of positive stories about low-carbon and resource-efficient innovation. It finally seems that the majority of businesses have woken up to the fact that sustainability can be a source of commercial and competitive advantage, rather than a compromise made to pacify policymakers. And, at the same time, policymakers finally seem to be coming round to the point of view consistently put forward by former Treasury advisor Lord Stern that climate change action and economic growth are not competing alternatives.

I’ve been frustrated in the past by the amount of focus placed on the risk factors associated with climate change and resource constraints instead of the opportunity that these challenges present for business. The visionary entrepreneurs had the right ideas, but not the scale needed to drive rapid transition. But the tide really seems to be turning and mainstream businesses are blazing a trail towards ambitious targets, game-changing technologies and disruptive business models. Consider this handful of examples from some of the biggest global corporations:

Coca-Cola is on track to be water neutral by the end of 2015

Ikea stopping sales of all except LED light bulbs

H&M launching recycled jeans and a €1M competition to close clothing loops

Nissan unveiling a concept for the 'fuel station of the future'

All of these were announced the same week in late August 2015, simultaneously with the publication of a report from the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) concluding that the private sector could cut more than five hundred megatons of greenhouse gas emissions in the next five years, simply by scaling up existing green initiatives, and another from Citi that calculated the global savings from energy efficiency to be worth $1.8trn to business.

As we wait to find out whether sufficient countries will sign up to the pledge that emerged from COP21 the signs are that big business is finally ready to seize the initiative from policymakers, grasping the commercial opportunity and press ahead regardless - towards a future where policy scoops up the laggards rather than propelling the front runners. Given their track record it’s hard to be optimistic that global governments will finally sign up to binding and ambitious carbon targets  they agreed to in Paris. But if big business is already off and running towards the big prizes, perhaps – just perhaps - it no longer matters.

What's YOUR plastic bag?

A conversation with a hospitality industry professional at a sustainability breakfast recently touched on the subject of the plastic bag ban and its value in the transition to a resource-efficient, low-carbon economy. We concluded that, while there a numerous activities that undoubtedly have a greater adverse effect on carbon emissions, the ban has value as a highly visible activity that takes place in the mainstream, thereby hopefully acting as a gateway to more meaningful action by consumer.

That got us thinking about our own sectors and our respective equivalents. The hotel sector was among the first to encourage its customers to help it reduce impacts – I can no longer remember a time when the ubiquitous “leave it on the floor and we’ll wash it, hang it up and we won’t” sign didn’t appear in hotel bathrooms. In office imaging it’s paper – signified, for many of us, by the “think before printing this email” footers. These have become so commonplace that their impact is often dismissed, but that doesn’t necessarily negate their subliminal power to contribute to the nudge effect of gradual behaviour change, especially when considered cumulatively.

I can now catch a bus that is conspicuously powered by renewables, ride into town past numerous houses with solar PV panels, do my shopping using re-usable bags – even choose for my supermarket shop to be delivered at a time when the vehicle is already in my area. There’s an active local Freegle group and, off the end of the main shopping street, a repair café and bicycle kitchen. Each of these small, incremental steps towards a more sustainable future may contribute little individually but together increase the visibility of low-impact options and edge us towards the tipping point where sustainable choices become the norm.

As sustainability professionals in businesses, we’re advised to analyse our emissions and focus first on the actions that will have a direct positive impact, but perhaps we’re missing a trick. For most organisations, the greatest opportunity for positive change lies in galvanising our customers into action – and, as M&S shows, if we do so with sufficient commitment it can transform our commercial outcomes too. It every business identified its own “plastic bag” and sought to engage its customers in a symbolic, highly visible act of sustainable living – better still, if it incentivised and rewarded it – then behaviour change might just become an unstoppable force.

WEEE isn't working

The world is full of perverse incentives and misplaced interventions, and the UK WEEE legislation is the embodiment of both. The EU’s aim for its waste legislation is to drive resource efficiency and create a circular economy, and at the beginning of July it announced new, more ambitious targets but without major adjustments to the UK’s application of the directive we will surely miss them.


The WEEE producer compliance system is fundamentally flawed, for several reasons. Firstly, because it operates on the basis of volume targets so it is geared towards collecting the maximum amount of ewaste, not deriving the maximum value from the resources contained within it. Secondly, because it doesn't measure whole device re-use or parts re-use, both of which are preferable to recycling from the point of view of the waste hierarchy and essential components of a circular economy. And thirdly because it imposes a cost on the EEE producer which is based purely on market share and takes no account of how easy it is to recover value from the device. As a result, the most expedient process for recyclers is to bulk up ewaste and shred everything, resulting in low-grade recyclate that has little value as a manufacturing resource. Even if a device is working, or repairable, the collection process damages it beyond repair. And there is no incentive on WEEE producers to improve the design of their products to facilitate repairability or material recovery at end of first use.


Compare that with an ICT asset recovery company that inspects devices to determine what can be refurbished or cosmetically improved and resold for second use, what can have spare parts harvested for use in repairing other devices and what can be dismantled so that single metals or polymers can be recovered and returned in as-virgin quality for other manufacturing processes. A large proportion of ICT equipment has sufficient intrinsic value to fund the recovery processes, generate a profit margin for the asset recovery company and even return some value to the producer or the user. Many such programmes offer social value, by making donations to charity or funding education projects. This approach supports the resource stewardship agenda, returns value to the economy and creates jobs, but no account is taken of it in the government's WEEE targets.


Many suppliers of ICT equipment in the B2B sector now find themselves in the same position as Kyocera. We are compelled to pay into a compliance scheme which hardly any of our customers use because the alternatives are preferable from both an economic and an environmental point of view. Indeed, when we retire old IT kit we use a free asset recovery service with added social value in preference to the WEEE compliance scheme we offer our customers. The current WEEE legislation will miss its targets because it serves nobody but the compliance partners - and yet according to recent press reports they can't make it pay either. We need a better system, and quickly.

The ice bucket challenge and water scarcity

There’s an emotive internet meme that illustrates the contrast between a group of Americans dousing themselves in ice water for the #icebucketchallenge and an African child being fed a bottle-cap full of water.  A serious point made about the relatively scarcity of that precious commodity in two geographies, but sadly eschewing the challenge in aid of Motor Neurone Disease (the UK name for that debilitating and fatal condition) will not help those who are thirsty. Yes, I’ve done the challenge, but not without considering the wider impact of my actions. After reflection, on balance, I decided that to support those with the disease was a good thing and that – after a year in which flooding was more of an issue in my country than drought – we could afford a bucket of water.

It’s easy to criticise symbolic acts taken to raise awareness and funds for charity, but the important thing is that, on balance, the good strongly outweighs the cost. Everybody who participates should understand that the action does not in itself benefit anybody – it’s the giving it prompts or the awareness it raises that counts. I know when I do the Live Below the Line challenge that I’m not really experiencing what it’s like to live below the breadline, but I get to raise a little cash for organisations that support those who do and I spend more time reflecting on their situation than I otherwise might.

The #icebucketchallenge has really captured the public imagination. Some are doing it for their own preferred charities, others are finding creative ways to make it their own with costumes, props and crazy scenarios and as long as nobody puts themselves in danger that’s all fine too. I’ve found it uplifting to check my Facebook account and see it filled with my friends doing crazy things for charity. And yes, it’s good that we’ve having fun while we do it, too.

So my advice is do the #icebucketchallenge mindfully, and if any aspect of it tweaks your conscience then find a way to alleviate that with appropriate action. If you’re worried that it encourages people to waste water, use what’s left over from washing up, collected in rain butts and so on, and invite your friends to find creative sources of used water (hygienically, one hopes!). Concerned that the charity concerned may be associated with animal testing? Choose a charity you’d prefer to support and give the friends you nominate the reasons why.

In a world where selfishness, prejudice and inequality cause so much conflict, the viral nature of the #icebucketchallenge has kindled a generous spark in many of us. As such, it has enormous power to be a uniting force for good – so let’s not dismiss and criticise it, but look for ways to make the good just that little bit better.

The trouble with WEEE

As one of the biggest metal recyclers announces that it plans to withdraw from WEEE recycling, the cracks are beginning to show in the legislation designed to promote recycling of ewaste. Fears have been raised that Sims departure from the market puts achievement of the UK's WEEE targets in jeopardy, but actually the problem goes deeper than that.

The real reason the government compliance schemes can't meet their targets is because there are much more commercially appealing options available. WEEE producer compliance schemes charge the producer a membership fee and a handling fee. Customers typically pay for collection of their WEEE. Yet in many market sectors - especially IT equipment - there are services available which actually return revenue to the organisation returning the unwanted kit. These services are fully compliant with waste legislation, and typically operate higher up the waste hierarchy than WEEE producer compliance schemes. But the WEEE they process doesn't contribute to the government compliance targets.

The WEEE producer compliance system is fundamentally flawed, for several reasons. Firstly, because it operates on the basis of volume targets so it is geared towards collecting the maximum amount of ewaste, not deriving the maximum value from the resources contained within it. Secondly, because it doesn't measure whole device re-use or parts re-use, both of which are preferable to recycling from the point of view of the waste hierarchy. And thirdly because it imposes a cost on the EEE producer which is based purely on market share and takes no account of how easy it is to recover value from the device. As a result, the most expedient process for recyclers is to bulk up ewaste and shred everything, resulting in low-grade recyclate that has little value as a manufacturing resource. Even if a device is working, or repairable, the collection process damages it beyond repair. and there is no incentive on WEEE producers to improve the design of their products to facilitate repairability or material recovery at end of first use.

Compare that with an ICT asset recovery company that inspects devices to determine what can be refurbished or cosmetically improved and resold for second use, what can have spare parts harvested for use in repairing other devices and what can be dismantled so that single metals or polymers can be recovered and returned in as-virgin quality for other manufacturing processes. A large proportion of ICT equipment has sufficient intrinsic value to fund the recovery processes, generate a profit margin for the asset recovery company and even return some value to the producer or the user. Many such programmes offer social value, by making donations to charity or funding education projects. This approach supports the resource stewardship agenda, returns value to the economy and creates jobs, but no account is taken of it in the government's WEEE targets.

Many suppliers of ICT equipment in the B2B sector now find themselves in the same position as my employer. We are compelled to pay into a compliance scheme which hardly any of our customers use because the alternatives are preferable from both an economic and an environmental point of view. Indeed, when we retired old IT we used a free asset recovery service with added social value in preference to the WEEE compliance scheme we offer our customers. The current WEEE legislation will miss its targets because it serves nobody but the compliance partners - and yet apparently they can't make it pay either. We need a better system, and quickly.

Doing the Moonwalk with the KYOCERA Walkabillies

On the night of Saturday 10th May, 9 KYOCERA Document Solutions UK staff and 3 of their friends and family members walked round London in their bras as part of the Moonwalk to raise awareness and funds to fight breast cancer. As it was our first time, we opted for the “half moon” – a power-walked half marathon distance of 13.1 miles. The Moonwalk is designed to be a personal fitness challenge as well as raising funds and awareness to fight breast cancer and we were keen to ensure that even those who take little exercise could get around the course in a reasonable time. Thursday became training day, with 10 mile walks along the banks of the River Thames after work for those based at our Reading HQ. Some members of the team have also been attending Zumba and body conditioning classes together, and we’ve all seen our fitness levels increase. As the big day – or night – approached, we were feeling confident we could set a pace of around 4 miles an hour and finish comfortably within our target time of 4 hours.

Our training schedule was interrupted by the KYOCERA partner conference which took place over the preceding three days. The early starts, late nights and tempting food and drink were perhaps not the ideal final preparation but at least the conference gave us the opportunity to let our channel partners know what we were doing and to boost our fundraising with their generous donations.
On the day, we were dismayed to see that the weather was not going to be kind to us – strong winds and heavy rain showers were forecast and as we were shivering as we queued to get in to “Moonwalk City”. Things were more comfortable in the huge pink tent that is erected on Clapham Common as Moonwalk HQ – we enjoyed a hot meal, shed the layers covering our decorated bras and applied eyeliner and red lipstick to complete the rockabilly look that was this year’s theme. The Moonwalk’s founder, Nina Barough, introduced videos about the support for cancer patients made possible by grants from organisers Walk the Walk and two bands entertained us with music from the 50s. Then after a warm up session, we were off.

The start is divided into groups to avoid overcrowding but unfortunately some of the participants either didn’t respect or didn’t understand the instructions. Our group – the third out of six – had to be held back as too many people had left in the first two waves and it was just past midnight when we finally passed the start line. The congestion meant that the first two miles took us over an hour, and being made to stand still while overcrowding eased meant that we got very cold. The route snaked backwards and forwards across the Thames and up on the bridges the wind was really biting, although it wasn’t so cold when we were sheltered by buildings and it hardly rained at all; as the miles passed we got up to our training pace and began to enjoy ourselves.

We certainly got to see a different side of London – we passed iconic landmarks like the Millennium Wheel, Houses of Parliament and the Shard and saw the lights from the bridges reflected in the Thames. We got plenty of support from the volunteers, who must have got much colder than us as they stood for several hours along the course to ensure our safety, and from passing vehicles. It must have been quite a sight to see 17,000 people – men as well as women – walking through London in decorated bras, and it certainly felt like we were part of something special. In the coldest hours just before dawn, that camaraderie was important in giving us the will to keep going, especially in the final mile which was uphill. We felt elated as the pink tent came back into view, and emotional as we passed the finish line just after 4.30 am and collected our medals.

We completed our challenge, but more than that – it feels like a lasting bond has been created between the team. The shared experience of training together, decorating our bras and then supporting each other through the night as we walked has definitely brought us closer. Everybody completed the course, and thanks to our thorough preparation we didn’t even suffer a single blister, although one team member has since been diagnosed with a stress fracture in her foot. We’ve already smashed our fundraising target of £1,300 – the total is already over £2,300 and we still have pledges to collect. And some of us are already talking about attempting the full moon next year …

A big, warm “thank you!” to everybody who supported us, from the KYOCERA Walkabillies: Audrey Pickering, Coralie Coppock, Lou Marris, Mandy Hinton, Michelle Dunn, Olivia Stokes, Sandra Rogers, Sarah White and Tracey Rawling Church from KYOCERA Document Solutions UK, plus Debbie Skinner, Gillian Beeson and Leona Quinn.

To support the KYOCERA Walkabillies you can pledge here : https://moonwalklondon2014.everydayhero.com/uk/kyocera-walkabillies

Why the 3Rs model is no longer fit for purpose

Those of us who have been around green issues for a while are very familiar with the 3Rs mantra – reduce, re-use, recycle – and that waste hierarchy also forms the foundation for the work of bodies such as WRAP which support companies that want to use resources more efficiently. But as we approach a resource-constrained not-so-distant future there’s a growing body of thought that we need to go further than the incremental improvements that the 3Rs model supports.

Certainly, that’s the view of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which works to promote the concept of the Circular Economy. MacArthur argues that our traditional economy is founded on an essentially linear take-make-dispose model which relies on an abundant supply of raw materials that can be manufactured into consumer goods with a finite life that will be discarded as soon as something newer and shinier comes along. The Circular Economy model strives to create a system where mineral and organic resources are endlessly cycled through the economy, reducing our need to find new raw materials and freeing ourselves from the issues of resource scarcity, price volatility and so on that are the inevitable outcome of a rapidly growing and urbanising population combined with an undeniably finite planet.

Of course we like our models to be alliterative whenever possible, so the MacArthur adaption adds “rethink and redesign” above the apex of the traditional 3Rs model. In MacArthur’s diagram they share a box, but I’d go one step further and place rethink above redesign in a separate box. Our mindset tends to be firmly centred on products and redesign can easily be assumed to apply to a product; using “rethink” as the first prompt makes a more explicit point that we need to go right back to basics and reconsider what human need we are trying to meet and in what form. For example, to use an example borrowed from Kingfisher, customers who visit a B&Q store to buy a drill don’t necessarily need one. What they need is a hole, and B&Q is focusing on finding better ways to meet the need for a hole rather than simply redesigning a more efficient drill.

There’s scope to improve the waste hierarchy at the bottom of the pyramid, too – and WRAP is already using a model that includes recovery of energy from waste as the step below recycling. But it’s widely accepted that 80% of the environmental impacts of a product are determined at the design stage. So once we’ve re-imagined the customer need there’s a compelling case for making sure that, if a product is the appropriate way to fulfil it, then it’s designed to not just use resources efficiently but make it as easy as possible to recover them when the product is no longer fit for re-use.  Kyocera has been thinking this way since 1992, when it launched its first ECOSYS printer, designed to both reduce consumables waste and to facilitate disassembly and recycling at end of life. Ahead of its time? Perhaps – but it’s reassuring to see that such ideas are finally becoming mainstream.

Extreme Freegling and the waste-free office move

When my employers decided to move offices, I set myself the challenge of ensuring that we could achieve it without sending anything to landfill. A significant challenge, since we had decided that we would have all new IT equipment and furniture, but we've managed to achieve it.

If the new kit sounds extravagant, it's worth bearing in mind that most of our furniture has been in the business longer than me - and I celebrated 20 years with the company in June. Our IT assets have been seriously sweated; most of our PCs were more than 8 years old and were proving difficult to keep running. We were moving to a building that we had refurbished to SKA Gold environmental standard after it had stood vacant for several years and it would have been a pity to fill it with a mish-mash of aged furniture and IT equipment. But how to make sure we minimised our waste?

First port of call was our own staff. Reading-based colleagues were offered the opportunity to take things for their home offices - and many did. Next, we talked to our local community foundation. Connect Reading acts as an interface between business and the third sector and was happy to let its charity members know that we had items to donate. Five of its members, plus two charities with which staff had family connections, expressed an interest and were given the opportunity to visit and tag anything they wanted. Our relocation contractors, ActiveFM, agreed to deliver these items free of charge which was a major consideration - transport costs often exceed the value of second-hand furniture, making it uneconomic. Thanks to Connect Reading and Active FM, I estimate that more than half of our furniture was re-homed with local charities.

Next, ActiveFM offered second-hand furniture dealers the serviceable furniture that charities didn't want, providing some income to offset our removal costs. Some of the remaining items were adopted by our neighbours and some heavy duty racking was sold on eBay. This left us with a handful of furniture items plus sundry office supplies, kitchen and cleaning equipment. Somewhat hesitantly, I began to list these items on Freegle and was blown away by the response. We quickly found homes for two glass display cabinets (taken by a local school) and our portable wheelchair ramp (taken by a Freegler for her wheelchair-bound mum) and encouraged by this success I became more ambitious. I listed some of our less ancient monitors and these were taken by the local Freegle branch, some for the use of its volunteers and some to raise funds to keep the scheme running. Other Freeglers turned up for one item and having had a look around asked about others that hadn't been listed - as a result of which the balance of our racking was dismantled and taken away. In the end even our reception desk was Freegled - and in the process I met some lovely people and heard some great stories.

Finally, we invited Return on IT to recycle all our redundant ICT equipment. Return on IT processes e-waste according to a strict waste hierarchy that prioritises re-use and recovers materials that can be re-used in manufacturing other goods. The free service is fully WEEE compliant and sends nothing to landfill - what's more a donation to charity is made in proportion to the volume of equipment recycled.

In all I did "extreme freegling" over a period of about a week, including a Sunday spent sorting and segregating to separate the items that were suitable for re-use from those that would have to be recycled. And because the network had been decommissioned at the old offices, some late nights were spent on my home PC processing Freegle requests and making contact with those who wanted the things we no longer needed. It was more time-consuming and demanded more thought than simply getting a clearance company in, but as a result we've managed to minimise the cost of moving, deliver real community benefit and not a single item has been sent to landfill.

Serendipity and shared values

I spent today with a bunch of like-minded people exploring the barriers to a circular economy and sharing ideas for catalysing change, under the auspices of the Circular Economy Task Force convened by Green Alliance. At the moment I think it's fair to say that we have more questions than answers, but we're definitely making progress. One of the key challenges we've identified is how to incentivise the behaviours that support a circular economy, for example returning end of life products to a recycling centre. Work done for the day, I headed home and met my 12-year old son at Reading Station for an artisan ice-cream at the fabulous Tutti Frutti.

On the bus home, he told me he'd discovered his favourite place in the entire world - a city in Brazil with many green spaces, a cheap and efficient public transport system and impressively high recycling rates achieved through the issue of "green tokens" that can be exchanged for public transport tickets and fresh produce. He couldn't remember its name, but I have since found out that it's Curitiba. My son had no idea how I had spent my day, and I hadn't planned to discuss it with him, but his observation prompted a lively discussion about the merits of a circular economy. And I genuinely learned something new that is of direct relevance to my work.

I suggested, jokingly, that perhaps next time the Task Force meets, he should come with me. He was so excited by the idea that I'm beginning to think seriously about suggesting it. And not just him - perhaps a whole cohort of young people.  After all, it's their future we're trying to safeguard. And, as my son reminded me today, they might just know more than we give them credit for.

Disco for good

As disco, humour and tolerance are all high on my list of favourite things, the English Disco Lovers' mission resonates strongly with me. There's something pleasingly barmy about trying to reclaim the abbreviation EDL and dislodge a racist organisation from internet search engines through the medium of disco. Like-minded followers on Facebook have embraced the English Disco Lovers' lighthearted, pun-ridden "pro-disco, anti-racism" manifesto and responded with tweaked lyrics and puns of their own.

The aim is to attract more Facebook "likes" and Twitter followers than the English Defence League, in order to bump it off the top spot on the major search engines. The more people who visit the English Disco Lovers website - and especially link to it - the more successful the project will be. So if you, too, would like to see a world with less racism and more disco please like, tweet, +1 and blog in support of the English Disco Lovers and help bump racism out of cyberspace. Do good, have fun - and keep on dancing!

Introduction to the Circular Economy

While businesses have largely embraced the notion that they must manage their direct carbon emissions – in terms of gas, electricity and vehicle fuel – there is a growing awareness that embodied carbon has an equally significant, although less direct, effect. For every mobile phone, washing machine or vehicle that is produced, carbon emissions are created at every stage of the lifecycle; from extracting the raw materials used in its manufacture to managing its disposal at end of life. And as the global population grows, urbanises and becomes increasingly prosperous, the amount of goods we consume grows, too. This has the dual effect of both increasing carbon emissions from the manufacture, transport and use of the products and also putting stress on the raw materials used to manufacture and transport them. This stress leads to prices of raw materials becoming both higher and more volatile, creating clear economic risks for business through the whole value chain from raw material extraction right through to the retailer.

The concept of the Circular Economy is a provocation to move from the traditional linear “take-make-waste” model of consumption to a model where resources are used more efficiently and can cycle through the economy multiple times. A Circular Economy describes an industrial system designed to be restorative or regenerative, where end of life products become a source of materials for other processes. It is consistent with a transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, the elimination of toxic chemicals that impair re-use of materials and promotion of product design that seeks to reduce waste, facilitate repair and make disassembly and materials re-use the norm.

A Circular Economy is based on three core principles. Firstly, it aims to ‘design out’ waste. In a Circular Economy waste simply does not exist—products are designed and optimised for a cycle of disassembly and all resources are re-used. These resource cycles define the Circular Economy and set it apart from disposal and even recycling where large amounts of embodied energy and labour are lost. Secondly, circularity differentiates between consumable and durable components. In the Circular Economy consumable components are largely made of biological ingredients or ‘nutrients’ that are at least non-toxic and possibly even beneficial, and can be safely returned to the biosphere—either directly or in a cascade of consecutive uses. Conversely, durable components such as engines or computers are made of technical nutrients, like metals and most plastics, and are designed from the outset for reuse. And finally, the energy required to fuel this cycle should be renewable by nature, to decrease resource dependence and increase system resilience.

The Circular Economy also redefines the customer’s need as functionality rather than necessarily the ownership of a product. This can lead to a new relationship between businesses and their customers based on product performance. An economy where users usually buy products outright encourages industry to make them “to a price” which can lead to longevity being designed out in order to remain competitive at the point of sale. In a Circular Economy, durable products are leased, rented or shared – and if they are sold, there are incentives in place to encourage the return of the product or its components and materials at the end of its period of primary use, so that they may be re-used. The innate resistance to paying more for a durable product that will last longer may be addressed by new “pay as you use” pricing models.

From a business perspective, the Circular Economy doesn’t just address the risks of resource scarcity and price volatility, it offers the opportunity to create new customer value through disruptive innovation. It invites businesses to re-think how they fulfil customer demand and to develop new business models that continue to create wealth and provide employment while at the same time conserving resources and reducing carbon emissions.

 

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation has fantastic free resources for educators and businesses who want to learn more.

Falling out of love with the Kindle

An article in last weekend's Observer brought into focus my growing ambivalence about my Kindle. When the Kindle was launched I gleefully joined the early adopters, revelling in the fact that I could read without consuming paper and, with lifelong 3G included, get new reading material on demand without relying on WiFi. But over the last year or so, I've lost some of that early enthusiasm. I'm no longer the eager advocate that I once was, for several reasons.

Disquiet about labour standards in the factory where the Kindle is made. Kindles are manufactured at Foxconn in China, which has been criticised for its poor labour conditions and its high suicide rate - and is now the subject of bribery allegations. I've avoided buying Apple products for several years because it manufactures there but only recently I was dismayed to discover that the Kindle is made there, too.

Concern about Amazon's tax status. Recently, Amazon has been criticised for its policy of tax avoidance. I now try not to buy from organisations that don't pay their fare share of tax but, once you've acquired a Kindle, it's not so easy to acquire your ebooks from another source.

Reluctance to trade with monolithic corporations. The problem with massive corporations like Amazon is that they squeeze smaller operators out of the market, reducing choice and damaging competition. By buying from them, we perpetutate a business model that will ultimately undermine our power as consumers.

Of course, other e-readers are available and may not suffer from the issues outlined above, but one inevitable drawback remains:

Ebooks remove the ability to share. One of the joys of paper books is that they can be freely loaned, borrowed and sold on - sadly not the case with ebooks. In my experience, most paper books are read only once by each person, but the more people that have the opportunity to become a pass-on reader, the more environmentally efficient the original production of that book becomes. Authors may, for this reason, prefer the ebook model but the passing on of paper books went on for many centuries before the invention of ebooks without any apparent damage to the livelihood of authors.

The pass-on readership of paper books has the potential to make them vastly more carbon-efficient than might otherwise be the case. And while the lending library quite rightly gets the final word as the most eco-efficient way of reading, it has the potential to erode the earning potential of authors. Maybe it's time to move to an entirely new business model for reading material - the rental of paper books, with a royalty paid to the author each time the book is rented. Circular economy thinking applied to the written word.

Whoops (no) apocalypse

Despite the warnings of the doom-mongers, the end of the Mayan calendar didn't bring about the end of the World on 21st December 2012. So now what? Life goes on as usual, no doubt. But while the end of the World may not be imminent, we seem determined to live our lives as if there was no tomorrow.

We consume as though resources are limitless, burn fossil fuels without consideration of their effect on the climate and relentlessly pursue material wealth as if it was the only measure of a life well lived. And yet we know that our planet is finite and that nobody dies wishing they had spent more time at work or bought more stuff. We're supposedly Earth's most intelligent life-form, and yet to observe us objectively one would have to conclude that we had a collective death-wish.

Some academics put a different interpretation on the fact that the Mayan calendar ran out on this day - they posit that the end of the calendar marks the start of a new age of enlightenment. Sadly, that interpretation doesn't seem to be any more accurate. It seems increasingly inevitable that the human race will ultimately bring about its own downfall by undermining the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

So as we celebrate the face that the World didn't end today, let's try to start living as if we intended to stay here.

(My thanks to @penny_walker_sd for the tweet that sparked this train of thought)

The Great Recovery versus the death of hardware

Yesterday saw the launch of The Great Recovery, a joint venture project between the Royal Society of Arts and the Technology Strategy Board to promote the role of design in accelerating the transition towards a circular economy. Designers came armed with examples of super-easy to recycle circuit boards that can be disassembled simply by immersing them in warm water and alarming statistics about the amount of e-waste we ship back to China which already controls many of the resources needed to make it.

To me, the role of design in promoting resource-efficiency is obvious – if we design products to both consume fewer resources and make the materials easier to recover at the end of the product’s life, then sustainability becomes systemic and the circular economy is a natural consequence. And yet a totally different design philosophy is being adopted in the far east, where the electronics industry is engaged in a race to the bottom.

Many of our most prestigious technology brands have become massively wealthy by outsourcing manufacturing to China and Korea where labour is cheap and policymakers less interested in workers’ rights. Their focus is on building the products as cheaply as possible so that they can boost their profit margin to the maximum their brand value can justify. Innovations like design for recyclability have no place in this business model – anything that adds cost is ruthlessly excised in the drive to minimise production cost and maximise revenue. As a result, those countries have developed a high level of expertise in low-cost manufacturing of electronic goods that is now becoming a serious competitive threat to the vendors that instigated it.

One blogger visiting China this summer was shaken to find that even for a one-off purchase, with no haggling, he could acquire a perfectly reasonable tablet running Android Ice Cream Sandwich – with wifi, a camera and all the appropriate trimmings – for just $45. Little wonder, then, that he was moved to conclude that hardware is dead. It’s impossible to make a profit on hardware alone when it becomes so commoditised; the only way to make money is to sell something else and convince consumers to pay for the whole experience of which hardware is only a constituent part.

The implications of this for product designers are profound, because every designer works to a brief and clients have to ensure that their products or services are commercially viable. Given a situation where one country both controls many of the raw materials and has perfected the art of manufacturing a product for a price nobody can beat, it’s just possible that China’s domination of the electronics industry could become absolute. Meanwhile, technology vendors face some tough challenges and a catch-22 situation: reducing reliance on rare earths requires innovation in product design, which is hard to fund when the country that dominates the supply of those rare earths is driving price erosion that reduces margins to levels which mitigate against investment in R&D.

Despite this observation, I remain optimistic about the ability of the design community to propel us towards a circular economy. It certainly has the creativity and passion for the challenge. But vendors will have to adopt a long-term view that properly values the risks associated with strategic materials and resource scarcity, and be brave enough to make investments in design innovation that may take many years to pay back.

The ethics of conservation

A report published today lists, for the first time, the 100 species at the greatest risk of extinction, prompting a discussion on BBC Radio 4 this morning about whether or not species that offer no apparent benefit to mankind should be saved. If resources for conservation are limited, how should we prioritise? Is it right to focus on those plants and animals that have a positive influence on humankind, or does every living thing - including perhaps those that pose an actual threat, such as the malarial mosquito - deserve an equal chance of life?

The dilemma is challenging enough when applied only to animals and plants, but the choices we make could set a dangerous precedent for a resource-constrained future. Fast forward 50 years, to a population in excess of 10 billion trying to survive on a planet that can't produce enough food and water to nourish everybody. In a perfect world, we would adopt a collective approach that shares the Earth's resources equally among all its people. But humanity's record doesn't support such an optimistic outcome.

If we're prepared to let another species die out because it's not sufficiently useful to our particular species, can humanity be trusted not to do the same thing to a country or an ethnic group that doesn't contribute sufficiently to the economy of a resource-impoverished world?

The real Olympic legacy

Well, we did it. And what a boost to our collective confidence it has been to host an Olympic Games which managed to be at the same time both slick and idiosyncratic, both competitive and inclusive. The closing ceremony may have lacked the scale and the sentiment of the opening ceremony, but one moment last night seemed to encapsulate the spirit of London 2012 - the signing singers and their performance of Imagine. Never have Lennon's lyrics seemed more poignant, as the athletes gathered to celebrate the end of an event that embodied so many of the song's aspirations.

Over the last couple of weeks, we have welcomed athletes regardless of their nation, colour or creed in a show of global solidarity that celebrated their hard work, dedication and, in many events, their team spirit. Every one of the athletes was a positive role model, and every one was accorded the respect that he or she deserved. I couldn't help wondering whether the world would be a better, safer and happier place if it was governed by athletics coaches rather than politicians.

Perhaps it won't encourage our youngsters to get off their sofa and into their trainers, but inspiring a generation - as London 2012 set out to do - is not just about sport. Of course, the athletes' achievements are remarkable - but they weren't the only stars of the show. The volunteers who both delivered Danny Boyle's vision for the opening ceremony and acted as "games makers" - welcoming, directing and assisting athletes and spectators - demonstrated an altruism that seems to have been elusive in recent times.

So my hope for the Olympic legacy is that we hold on to those values that really made London 2012 an event of which we can be rightly proud: confidence, tolerance, respect and altruism. London in August 2012 seems a million miles from London in August 2011.

The ethics of employing prisoners

A solar energy company has come under fire for employing inmates from Prescoed open prison in its call centre in Wales. The scheme has attracted cricisim for two main reasons: the company pays the prisoners just £3 per day and it has also fired a significant number of workers since appointing the prisoners, inviting speculation that they were laid off to be replaced by cheap labour - an accusation the company has denied.

This issue may not be as clear cut as it first appears. On a recent Business Leaders tour, organised by the excellent Connect Reading, I heard how hard it is for former prisoners to find a job, which in turn leads to a higher risk of re-offending. So, in theory, anything that provides practical work experience and the opportunity to demonstrate that offenders can perform to the same standard as other workers should be a good thing. Is bussing prisoners into workplaces materially different to the kind of in-house programme run by Gordon Ramsay Behind Bars? Perhaps not - but for me, the core issue lies in the way prisoners are remunerated.

Just like offshoring jobs to developing countries, I feel that taking advantage of the opportunity to pay prisoners far less than the legal minimum wage is unacceptable. Especially in times of economic crisis, UK companies have a moral obligation to support their home labour force and invest in the domestic economy. Equally, I have some sympathy with the argument that work experience can help ex-offenders become productive and law-abiding members of society. So how to ensure that cheap prisoner labour doesn't erode the job prospects of regular workers?

One control already in place is a quota system - no more than 20% of a company's staff can be drawn from the prison community. But the fact that an upper limit is needed just seems to reinforce the notion that the main appeal to employers lies in the low cost of prisoner labour. So, what if the minimum wage legislation was applied to prisoners? While it might not be appropriate for those serving sentences to take home the same wage as a non-offender, the difference between what the employer pays and what the prisoner can keep could be contributed to a victim support fund.

This seems to me quite an elegant solution - it avoids the prison population becoming a source of cheap labour and it is likely to appeal to an entirely different segment of the business community. It moves the emphasis right away from low-cost labour and towards prisoner rehabilitation and it introduces a new element of social contribution - something that could sit quite comfortably with the CSR agenda of an ethical business.

Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke has declared an intention to double the number of prisoners working full time, but this is apparently the first time that prisoners have been allowed to work outside prison premises. Now that the precedent has been set, it's important to ensure that prisoner outworking is put on a proper footing.