I recently had a one week trip to Arizona. It was a fantastic week of mountain biking and hiking. While visiting the Grand Canyon I took this picture in one of the stores on site. It is for Minute Maid ‘Lemonade’, showing a couple of nice yellow lemons, and then clearly stating that it is 0% juice. I was so amazed I had to take a picture. Is it really possible that you can call it “Lemonade” when it has 0% juice? Could they not have put in even 5%? A few weeks ago it was Honey, this week Lemonade. What is this trend of food items that are not food at all?
Archive for the ‘General’ Category
0% Lemons
Monday, February 20th, 2012Willing to pay
Monday, February 13th, 2012
In Harbin, the tenth largest city in China, there are two parks that breed Siberian Tigers. Visitors to the park can purchase a variety of animals from a Chinese Duck ($5) to a whole cow ($330). But these aren’t to bring home. Once purchased tourists can watch their animals being fed to the tigers while snapping pictures (disturbing but true). This seems like a good win win situation to me, tourists pay to go into the park which helps support the parks operations, and then those same tourists pay to feed the cats!
To me this is a bit like plastic bags in stores. By not providing plastic bags for free, stores are now making a profit by selling something that had always been seen as their responsibility to provide. There are many studies around sustainability and what consumers are and are not willing to pay extra for. Generally people say they aren’t willing to pay more, but then they do. If a Siberian Tiger Park can get customers to pay to feed the cats, what else are we willing to spend out money on, in particular in sustainability, if marketed in the right way?
‘Taxi’washing
Monday, February 6th, 2012
I’ve taken two taxis in the city of Houston, Texas in the past week. My experiences in both were pretty much exactly the same. I get into the taxi, tell the driver where I want to go, the driver turns on the meter, locks the doors and then says “so how do I get there”. Since I have no idea, this is the beginning of 5 minutes (which I am paying for) of the driver I’m guessing pretending now to recongnize any of the streets I mention and then asking me if I can take out my iphone and look for it on the map and show him.
I have taken my fair share of taxis around the world and to me the definition of a taxi is a car that has a driver in it that is knowledgeable about the roads in that particular location and that if you give them an address their primary job is to know where that address is (or find out themselves) and then get you there in the shortest amount of time possible. Seems that is not the case here in Houston. In the world of sustainability if you look green, talk green, smell green but aren’t actually green in any way that is called greenwashing. So perhaps this is ‘taxi’washing?
Worst thing is that at the end he expected me to leave a much bigger tip than I was prepared to leave. Paying extra for service that wasn’t rendered. Sounds a lot like greenwashing to me!
The law of common sense
Monday, January 30th, 2012
There are some great laws around the world. China has a state ban on films or TV programmes depicting time travel because they “treat serious history in a frivolous way”. It is illegal to wear armour in parliament in Britain and all males over the age of 14 must carry out two hours a day of longbow practice. In Australia children may not purchase cigarettes but they can smoke them. It is also illegal to wear hot pink pants after midday Sunday. In the US it is illegal to wear a fake moustache that causes laughter in church, boogers may not be flicked into the wind and (luckily) it is illegal for a driver to be blindfolded while operating a vehicle.
Apparently there is a law in Texas that says when two trains meet each other at a railroad crossing, each shall come to a full stop, and neither shall proceed until the other has gone. Not sure how that law is enforced, practically speaking. Same goes for the new law that Bolivia has recently passed granting the planet legal rights, a Bill of Rights for Mother Earth that grants nature the same rights and liberties as human beings and treats resources as blessings. It is a great idea, a great story, but isn’t it already governments role to do this, with or without a law? How exactly are they going to do that?
The most powerful law of our times is Murphy’s law, that anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and for that reason we need laws to protect everything. That is the challenge because even with rules people often do the minimum. New York had a law that said that new office buildings had to put in parks around new developments. Builders proceeded to just put in a concrete area next to the building until individuals within City Hall reworked and reworked the law specifying EXACTLY what they meant by park (i.e. it has to have grass, trees and a certain number of park benches).
Whatever happened to the law of common sense? That if we destroy the world around us we won’t have a world to live in.
Finding the Balance
Wednesday, January 25th, 2012
Yesterday I was riding my bike in the park and I saw these two women out walking in their full walking gear. They were both holding very large takeout mugs from Starbucks which they were sipping as they walked. As I kept passing them (they were walking counterclockwise around a loop meant for bikes which was mildy annoying) they had me thinking about balance. Is that balance, when you are drinking back the fat and sugar exactly at the same moment you are walking around to burn the fat off. Does this result in equilibrium? Not getting skinnier but then not getting fatter either?
I spent a lot of time thinking about this (I was riding for a while) but this is also something I think about often when it comes to businesses involved in sustainability. There are a lot of businesses that are doing some great things when it comes to sustainability and those initiatives are well known and much talked about. On the other side when you are in the store or actually experiencing the brand you see a lot of things that are pretty unsustainable. A product packaged in a plant based, minimal packaging but the product inside is full of harmful chemicals. A supermarket with a strong sustainability strategy around sourcing but when you enter the store you are hit by a wall of excessive plastic packaging.
Does one thing cancel the other out and create balance? Not moving forwards but not moving backwards either? Perhaps this is how it starts and then the coffee cups will get smaller, the walks with get longer and we will really see some changes.
Starting from scratch
Wednesday, December 14th, 2011
A few weeks ago I was the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona. The theme of the event was all about making a difference, and it looked at all of the natural disasters that have occurred in the past year and the work that is now being done to rebuild those cities and neighbourhoods affected.
One of the many interesting speakers was from New Zealand. The majority of Christchurch was destroyed in the 2011 earthquake, 45% of the buildings in the central city have safety problems and 1000 of the 4000 buildings are expected or have been demolished. (10,000 houses would also need to be demolished). As they begin efforts to rebuild the city they are realizing that they have the chance to get things right this time. Despite the tragedy of the loss, it is an amazing opportunity to rebuilt the city in a more sustainable way. Some of the discussions are around how it is important not to move too fast. It is important to take the time for reflection, for conversation and that is exactly what they are doing.
I found these discussions very positive but also very exciting. If you had the chance to change something about your city, to rebuild part of it from scratch, what would you do? What makes a city strong and vibrant. Would it be to create more parks? more pedestrian spaces? to make space for farmers and artist markets? to mix business premises and living residences? How would you build sustainability concepts into the buildings and infrastructure right from the start?
Something Sweet
Monday, November 28th, 2011
I’m a big fan of honey. When I was doing my MBA, a group of us even put together a business plan around selling honey. At the time I was amazed at all the health benefits that honey provides; it boosts energy, builds immune systems, has cancer preventing properties and is a remedy for quite a few ailments such as sore throads, sleeplessness and even hangovers. Despite many attemps to create honey from scratch using artificial ingredients such as corn and rice syrups, they haven’t been able to. Only the bees can make it properly. Such a simple thing, but quite magical really.
Problem is, that jar of honey you have in your cupboard at home is probably not honey at all. Recently 60 samples of honey were tested in the US and the majority, three-quaters, were missing the one key ingredient that actually makes it honey; Pollen. The World Health Organization, the European Commission and dozens of other organizations including the U.S. Food and Drug Admnistration all say that if the honey has no pollen, then it isn’t honey.
It is the pollen in honey that has nutrients and antioxidants. You can trace the origin of honey and even the conditions in which it was produced through the pollen. Without the pollen you can’t know anything about the honey.
So what happened to the pollen? The pollen has been filtered out because consumers don’t like cloudy honey, they like clear honey which looks cleaner. So then new things are added into the honey to make it do the things that it already does, naturally.
Companies are doing so much work today making information available about their products, cleaning up their supply chains, creating healthier products, giving consumers the ability to learn about how that product was made and where. Honey has all these already built into it, so why mess with it? Some things are good just the way they are.
(tip for buying honey? Look for unfiltered and buy local. For more on the study click here.)
Type this
Monday, November 14th, 2011
There is a little store on a quiet little street in Copenhagen called Playtype. Playtype sells fonts, yes those little letters we use when we type an email or see when we open a newspaper. They have a whole store which opened last December that sells 200 or so fonts.
If you think there is no life in fonts think again. There was a documentary in 2007 (a hit apparently ) called Helvetica and even suggestions of an iTunes ap for fonts where you can buy them for a dollar. There are currently over 150,000 fonts in the world and a lot of businesses that specialize in fonts, but none have a store front.
The store was originally only planned to be in place for a limited amount of time but because it has turned out to be a success they are thinking of keeping it. The partner and strategic director of the company behind the store (as you can expect a company that creates fonts) Rasmus Ibfelt said in an interview in Monocle magazine (issue 47) “Sometimes, it’s important to do something which doesn’t make sense.”
A lot of the innovations that are inspired by sustainability start off a little bit like that and then become so normal that we are amazed no one thought of them sooner. I wish people did that more often.
London Bridge
Tuesday, November 8th, 2011
Once upon a time London Bridge was put up for sale at a ridiculously cheap price. A man, thinking it was an incredible deal, offered to buy it right away only to discover that it wasn’t the bridge he thought it was. The fancy bridge that is one of the key symbols of London is Tower Bridge (pictured here). London bridge is a less popular concrete bridge from where you get a fantastic view of Tower Bridge.
Recently we have been shopping for a new energy provider so naturally we took a look at alternative energy plans; wind, solar etc. There are two options. First there are small independent energy providers that provide 100% renewable/alternative energies at quite high prices. Second are the mainstream energy providers. They provide two plans, either their standard energy plan or a renewable energy plan. So our question is, which do we choose?
The dilemna is this. First is it better to support the independent small business that is providing this service (but at a premium) or to support the mainstream business so that they can continue to build on providing green energy solutions in their standard offerings reaching a much larger group of consumers?
Second It doesn’t matter how much I try to be more eco conscious, paying twice as much for eco energy is something I just can’t afford at this point in my life. So even thought I would love to support the independent group and be assured I am getting 100% renewable energy it just isn’t a viable option. The green energy option provided by the major energy provider is more expensive than their standard plan but significantly less than the other group.
Third how can I be sure I am getting green energy? The energy coming into the house is the same that everyone else is getting but I need to trust that the company is actually sourcing a certain amount, at least the amount I am using, from green energy sources. How can I be sure?
I imagine that the guy who sold London Bridge knew that Robert was really after Tower Bridge but sold it to him anyways. That night I’m sure he went to the pub and told this story over roars of laughter. That’s the problem still with some sustainable products; how can we be sure we aren’t being sold London Bridge?
How things start
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011
If you take the bridge in London over the Thames that connects Waterloo station and Southbank with Charing Cross Station, maybe a third of the way across look down over the side. Below the bridge just before the water you will see a sort of platform with lots bits of broken skateboards. Considering that minutes away just next to Southbank there is a small grafitti covered (and quite interesting) skatepark this is perhaps not so surprising, but why would the broken skateboards end up here?
I stopped and wondered how it had started. The fact is that it probably started when someone dropped their skateboard by accident there and it broke into a million different pieces or perhaps they broke their skateboard at the park, were walking home with it thinking that they could fix it, realized they wouldn’t be able to and just threw it over the bridge where it landed there. Chances are, maybe a few months later someone else was walking over the bridge with a broken skateboard, saw another one over there and threw theirs there as well. Over time more and more people started throwing their broken skateboards over the edge until, perhaps a few years from now, it will be a new cultural rule that if you break your skateboard at the park, you must lay it to rest over the bridge with the other bits of skateboard.
Who knows how, or why it started but I doubt that the first person who threw their skateboard thought that they were starting something and that is what I find fascinating. Isn’t this how so many things start, sustainability of course being one of them? We can sit and think about the perfect strategy, the perfect initiative but sometimes the most interesting and successful initiatives are the ones that just get started and grow. You hear this with Green Teams in businesses growing from 4 members to 4000 in a number of years or business schools organizing an initiative at the last minute that ends up engaging the entire campus.
In 1888 Beata Benz was apparently the first to drive a car across the UK. The challenge they faced was that there were not enough refueling stations along the way. Today electric cars face the challenge that there are too many petrol refuelling stations and not enough electric refueling stations. There are lots of things that don’t seem possible now, but all it takes is one person to plant that seed, whether by accident or on purpose to change things.
