Reinventing Fire – new book from Amory Lovins

This video introduces Amory Lovins new book. The leader of the Rocky Mountain Institute outlines how the U.S. can replace oil by 2050.

Here is a link to the Reinventing Fire website.

Take action for a sustainable tuna fishery

Greenpeace are spotlighting the destructive fishing practices in the Pacific tuna fishery. You can take action by adding your support here. Here is the video from that site.

Peter Bruce

LanzaTech to supply Virgin with low-carbon fuel

The New Zealand company LanzaTech have made a deal with Virgin Airlines to supply low-carbon jet fuel. The Lanzatech process recycles waste gasses from sources such as steel mill flues – gases that would have otherwise been a pollutant. There is potential for 60 billion litres of jet fuel to be produced from steel mills.  The potential reduction in Virgin’s carbon footprint is estimated at 50%. Here is a video of LanzaTech’s work in the steel industry.

Image credit: http://rhodylady.wordpress.com/tag/virgin-atlantic/

Excellent sustainability videos – the White Dog Cafe

Judy Wicks transformed her Philadelphia restaurant into a Community Food Enterprise. She has created multiple environmental and social good. Restaurant profits are sourced from local farms  – farmers are featured on some of the menus. From a simple start of looking for free range pork, her enterprise has snowballed into a huge range of sustainability projects.

Here is a link to another video with more info. Do you have a similar enterprise in your city?

Excellent sustainability videos: Willie Smit's rainforest

Willie Smits tells the inspiring story about how his organisation transformed an area of cleared land back to rainforest, sustaining both local communities and wild life, including orangutan. Willie Smits typifies a leader who is deeply moved by the tragedy caused by human activity, and how this motivation generates great vision and energy to do better. You can also watch this video at TED.

This video is especially inspiring as Willie Smits demonstrates how the climate is transformed when people take steps to re-establish forest cover.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeankern/257830958/lightbox/

Stakeholder engagement drivers – Part 2: Self-interested organisations

In the first part of this series of posts we looked at three levels of commitment to stakeholder engagement, self-interest, enlightened self-interest and altruism. This, and the following posts will expand on these and illustrate them with examples.

The antithesis of engagement

Lets start by looking at an extreme level of disengagement – methamphetamine (P) production and distribution. This example shows how the core business impacts negatively on a range of stakeholders.

The classic approach to stakeholder engagement is to look at categories of stakeholder engagement – owners, employees, suppliers, customers and the community. If we consider P production from a suppliers perspective, raw ingredients are sourced either in bulk from unscrupulous suppliers, or from chemists (drug stores). Chemist shops (in New Zealand) have collaborated with Police to restrict this source. As a consequence, medicines, once readily available for genuine consumers are now difficult to access. Chemist shop staff have additional layers of security checking to cope with when selling the product.

People that rent houses that are used to “cook” P are another unwitting supplier and therefore stakeholder. These houses are left drenched in toxic chemicals and require detox processes to prepare them for the next tenant.

A high proportion of users get addicted to P and their behaviour and priorities change. This might include resorting to gambling, stealing from employers, family and others. The families of P addicts often despair at the changes that the drug induces in the addict. The increase in crime, generated by the need to secure funds for the continued supply of the drug, diverts police resources as does the activity required to counter the drug production and distribution. Other crime fighting initiatives may well be under-resourced exposing citizens to more crime.

Without expanding further, we can see that in this case, the “commercial activity” has negatives that cascade through the community. The stakeholders of the illegal drug industry are many and varied and the impacts can reach deep into our communities.

Other examples

Sadly, examples of organisations disregarding the well-being of stakeholders in their pursuit of profit are all too common. Here are some examples:

• The tourist operators along the Gulf Coast became stakeholders of BP and Halliburton when oil washed on to their beaches.
• Those of us that carelessly discard plastic waste may well cause marine life to be consumers of the waste, and therefore stakeholders. Albatrosses in the Pacific consume plastic, thinking it to be food. Their gut can fill with plastic, leading to certain death.
• Alcohol companies and their marketing agents that target young people with promotions help to foster a binge-drinking culture with sometimes devastating social outcomes.

An unwitting stakeholder – a young albatross killed by plastic waste  

While the illegal drug industry is an extreme example, it illustrates that organisations that operate from self-interest, can generate significant unintended misfortune for stakeholders. We can expect that organisations that operate from higher motives can generate significant good, as we shall see in subsequent posts.

image credit: Science News for Kids

A breakthrough in hydrogen production

Researchers at Penn State University have developed a method of hydrogen production that could generate unlimited supplies of hydrogen gas.

An underlying problem of hydrogen gas production has been the energy equation. Splitting hydrogen from oxygen requires as much energy as is gained. The process uses microbial electrolysis and improves on the efficiency of earlier experiments with this technology. The raw materials required are sea water and river water or waste water. The process takes advantage of the chemical differences in these water sources.

Click here for more information.

Stakeholder engagement – what are the drivers?

If you want your organisation to engage better with stakeholders take some time to understand why. This blog explores three levels of commitment to stakeholder engagement – self-interest, enlightened self-interest and altruism. As with any classification system, these levels are arbitrary and could be endlessly debated – they are simply offered to stimulate thinking about your motives and drivers.

Implementing an initiative, such as stakeholder engagement is more likely to be successful if there is congruence between your thoughts and your actions. According to Sue Knight, our behaviours (what we say and do) are driven by the sub-surface factors of purpose, identity, beliefs, values and capabilities (see The heart of sustainability for more detail). So, for example, if you are just desperate to make money, and for your business to survive, your behaviours will reflect this.

Self-interest, enlightened self-interest and altruism

Self-interest: These are businesses that want to make money and survive – and that includes most business. But those who pursue this solely, will use any means within their ethical and legal boundaries (most of the time). Broader considerations are sublimated to the profit motive.

Enlightened self-interest: Businesses that want to make money and be more sustainable attempt to operate in ways that are not just financially sustainable, but also factor in the well-being of others and care of the environment. They look for synergy in these aspirations.

Altruism: These organisations are either established with altruistic missions or develop those as their owners turn from business-success to deeper motivations.

In this diagram, these levels are presented in a matrix. Notice that the self-interested motive persists in the other two levels – all organisations want to survive. And enlightened self-interest is compatible with altruism – successful businesses have more resources to give. Following blogs will look at examples of each of these levels of business and the behaviours they engender.

What drives your organisation?

Here is a series of statements based on the factors in the diagram above. They can be used as discussion starters, or for a quick evaluation of your organisation. If you want to add numbers:

0 = my organisation is not like this
1 = my organisation is a little like this
2 = my organisation is like this
3 = my organisation is a lot like this

Singular focus on profit: Our primary motivation is to contribute to a better world.

Transactional relationships: The success of our organisation depends on our ability to create great relationships with our stakeholders.

Public relations focus: Good public relations are important to us, but more important is open and transparent engagement.

Engagement focus: We see engagement as a core organisational competency that underpins our success.

Value chain: We work with staff and suppliers to add value for both parties, valuing long-term relationships.

Sustainability aspirations: We are driven to maximise the triple-bottom line, for prosperity, people and the planet.

Values driven decision-making: Our values guide our decision-making – if an opportunity doesn’t sit well with our higher values, we won’t pursue it.

Driven by the greater-good: Our primary motivator is to contribute to the well-being of humanity.

Results:

0 to 8: At the low range, your organisation has a singular focus on profit, if you are at the higher, perhaps your organisation is on the cusp of enlightened self-interest.
8 to 16: Your organisation shows signs of enlightened self-interest and could well be on a trajectory towards sustainability.
16 to 24: Your organisation is manifesting altruism.

There are clear examples of organisations in each of these three categories. We will look at them more closely in following blog posts. And I would love to hear of your organisation’s journey towards altruism.

Back yard angels

Di Celliers was concerned about the increasing demand on food banks to feed the poor. She was also aware that a lot of fruit goes to waste in back yards. She drew on her social and church networks and workmates at the ASB bank to inspire and mobilise people to pick fruit in backyards.

In a little over a month, Di’s initiative has spread across Auckland and the idea has been picked up in other regions in New Zealand. Auckland City Mission now collect the fruit weekly and distributes the fruit to 70 foodbanks.

Community Fruit Harvesting now has a Facebook presence and a website is hopefully on its way.  The Facebook page is a great example of community engagement and social networking’s capability to connect people in a cause. You can hear Di talking about the initiative on National Radio. Here’s Di picking citrus.

Another Auckland initiative is ooooby.org, (Out of our own back yards). It has been set up as a social business that harvests produce grown in backyards, micro growers and from local farms. Customers sign up for a $27.90 weekly box of fruit and veges.

These initiatives are inspiring steps to a more sustainable means of food production and supply. The benefits include providing free or inexpensive nutritious food, building community bonds through engagement and volunteering and providing micro-enterprise opportunities.

Here is Muhammad Yunus explaining the social business concept.

Images used by permission of Di Celliers

 

 

 

Sustainability depth – are you green from top to bottom?

Companies trumpet sustainability initiatives, but what is the significance of their sustainability initiatives? Another lens we can use to evaluate their efforts is a measure of sustainability depth. There are three levels of performance to consider:

• the company’s in-house sustainability performance
• the impact of the company’s products and services on society and the planet
• the company’s leadership role in sustainability in its industry or sector.

Lets look at examples of some industries to understand the significance of this approach.

Banking

You probably will have noticed banks that use advertising to announce their use of green cars. Or perhaps they have chosen to occupy green office space. While these initiatives are helpful, they are dwarfed by the impact the banks’ products and services have on the planet and society. The capital that they provide can support sustainable initiatives or more traditionally extractive initiatives. The flow of capital has tended to be more determined by risk analysis rather than an analysis of sustainability.

The practices and example of the Grameen Bank exemplify creative thinking and dedication to sustainable aspirations (in this case, the eradication of poverty). The achievements of the Grameen Bank leave most Western Banks looking homogenous and deficient in leadership. One notable exception (you may know of others) is Vancouver’s VanCity Bank. This statement from their Accountability report indicates their willingness to show leadership at all three levels.

Another evidence of their commitment to sustainability is their relative longevity – Citizens Bank, a subsidiary, was talking about sustainability before the turn of the century. Closer to home (New Zealand) the banks here were at least more conservative and responsible sheltering us from the worst of the financial crises.

In the banking industry, the impact of their in-house sustainability initiatives are miniscule, compared to the greater impact of their products and services and the banking industry’s huge influence on economies. The banks to support are, yes, those who run fleets of green cars, but more importantly are engaged in leadership discourse in their industries. The worst examples of banking were the junk-bond traders that were essentially corrupt and dishonest. Who are the banking leaders who will follow the example of Muhammad Yunus and position the industry to both serve and prosper?

Retail

As with banking, you can imagine retailers who focus on in-house sustainability, but are locked into the need to grow their business. They may be tempted to sell whatever they can to make a buck with little focus on the environment or wider society.

It appears that Walmart has become a very positive exemplar of deep sustainability. They have a long way to go – but are taking initiatives from in-house sustainability, through to industry leadership. Here are examples:

In-house sustainability – For Walmart, electricity is their number two operating expense. They are moving on two fronts. LED lights have been installed in freezer panels, providing a 70% reduction in energy consumption. LED lights will eventually be rolled out throughout stores and carparks. Walmart also have installations of solar panels underway. Over 30 stores are already installed with another 20 to 30 in the pipeline.

Another massive opportunity to improve in-house sustainability is with Walmart’s transport fleet. This video refers to a goal to increase transport efficiency by 100% from a 2005 baseline, by 2015. By the end of July 2011, they have achieved 65%.

Impact of products and services – Walmart aspire to improve the quality of food that their customers eat. Here is an extract from a recent article:

With more than 140 million customer visits each week, we have an opportunity to make a real difference in the nutritional quality of the food we sell, so we have a long-term goal to make food healthier and make healthier food more affordable.

First, we are reformulating thousands of our private brand packaged food items and working with branded products to do the same. By 2015, we will:

• reduce sodium by 25%
• reduce added sugars by 10%
• remove all remaining industrially produced trans fats in our packaged food.

And here is a video about organic lettuce production at Walmart.

Leadership role in sustainability – Because of its size, Walmart can be particularly effective as a leader in the retail industry. When they get interested in initiatives such as LED lighting, solar panels and transport efficiency, they indirectly accelerate the mass adoption of better technology by consequence of their size in the market place. Recently Walmart has turned its focus on food-waste, reacting to the news that approximately one-third of food produced globally is wasted and are working with the USDA on projects to reduce waste. They also are working to access produce closer to the point of sale.

The examples here are a sample of the great work that Walmart is doing and provide a great illustration of a company engaging with sustainability across the three dimensions identified here.

Drive and imagination is the key

In the positive examples here, including Professor Muhammad Yunus of the Grameen Bank and Walmart, we see clear evidence of a desire to create a better world. This drive in turn generates the cognitive resources of imagination and breadth of vision that create new possibilities and transform industries from the top to the bottom.

I would love to hear of more examples.