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.

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?

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.

This month has been a little crazy for me. One of my many stops was an event at Daimler headquarters in Stuttgart where I had the chance to spend a few hours at the Mercedez Benz museum. When we were dropped off I remember thinking 3 hours…what am I going to do in a car museum for three hours?? I picked up my audio guide (which apparently has 13 hours of information contained in it) and took the elevator to the top floor of the building where the self guided tour begins. For the next three hours I slowly made my way down the spiral building, starting with the invention of the car and the first models all the way down to the basement where the concept cars of the future were housed.

Believe it or not I didn’t get through everything and I blame it on the audio guide. The guide is a small mechanism that you point at an object you want to learn more about, click the button and then listen to the commentary. For each object you have 4 options of commentary. The first is Technology which goes through the specifications of the item you just clicked (I assume, I didn’t touch that button …). Second is fundamentals which gives you a little bit of an overview of both the car, the moment in history that it was born in and some interesting anecdotes about that specific car and its owners. third you can choose social trends which doesn’t really talk about the car at all but what was happening in society at the time that car was in circulation. Finally there is a special button for children which says all this in a more upbeat, lighter tone. It was addictive, I wanted to learn more and clicked everything I could click on until I stopped in the lobby to write this blog.

As a consumer one of the challenges I face is wanting to pick sustainable brands and products. Some I know well but, and in particular when I move to a new country or am traveling, others I don’t know at all. It is often frustrating standing in the supermarket staring at a row of products and wanting to choose the right one but not knowing the difference. Labels are often overly complicated, unclear and sometimes even misleading. Is that green dish detergent really worth 4 times the price of that other one?

Could we not have a point and click device like Daimler has for everything? You could click on a product and get either a very indepth account of the sustainability strategies of that company, perhaps another button could talk about the ingredients and another button could be a very brief introductory commentary on the sustainability background of that product. I know Good Guide is starting to look at doing something like this through the iphone and the internet but having an audio guide could turn a trip to the supermarket into an experience, learning about 100+ year old companies or small family owned companies, learning exactly where those bananas came from and what kind of conditions they were grown in. You could click on one of 100s of ecolabels found on products on the aisles to get more information about what exactly (if anything) that label means. All this in real time through your headphones, just by pointing and clicking.

Business students represent an incredible untapped resource to bring about real change. We often hear accusations that management education is training future leaders to be the exact opposite of what we need to build a more sustainable society. This is not necessarily the case.

The challenge is that the majority of business students although increasingly aware of sustainability issues in general, are not aware of how sustainability will affect their future jobs and businesses. At the same time, while business schools are keen to bring sustainability and responsible leadership into the curriculum, they are not always sure how to do so. So how do we mainstream sustainability into business education in a way that is meaningful and effective? How do we develop the next generation of globally responsible leaders?

A few weeks ago I had the chance to meet up with the team at the UN Global Compact and Principles for Responsible Management Education Secretariat in New York. We discussed the challenges that educational institutions face when putting the Principles into practice. We discussed how there are, on one hand, many universities around the world testing out some really interesting and innovative ideas that others could learn from and, on the other hand, many others that are interested in these issues but are not sure where to start. We wanted to create an interactive space to gather, share, and discuss these issues, and PRiMEtime was born.

PRiMEtime brings together and shares best practices on how to mainstream sustainability and responsible leadership into management education globally. The blog will serve as a platform to share and discuss inspirational activities that promote the development of responsible leaders. The blog will feature examples from around the world and will include both success stories and lessons learned. Posts will cover a wide variety of activities, ranging from efforts to embed sustainability and responsible leadership into curricula, student led initiatives, and the outcomes of partnerships with business, NGOs and other schools.

I will be writing this blog and am always on the lookout for good examples to feature. For more information visit http://primetime.unprme.org/

There is a house being torn down in the neighbourhood. It is old and semi-falling apart but it has a charm to it. The good old fashion wooden terrace, there are some interesting details around the windows, the garden is full of plants and shrubs all in good condition. Although the house may not be good to live in anymore, all the bits and pieces of the house still look like they are in good condition. Problem is, like in many construction projects I assume, this will all be torn down and thrown away.

So I had a business idea that I can’t follow through with but hopefully someone will or has. Why not have an open house right before you are about to tear down a house or building. During the open house individuals can pick out parts of the house that they would like, it could be the old bathtub, the windows, the intricately carved front door. Then you have a website where individuals interested in those bits and pieces can go online and bid for those parts they want or just claim them if you want to give them for free. It means less work for the de-construction company, less waste to landfills and cheap parts for other home owners, artists or individuals doing DIY projects at home.

While I was in Shanghai a few months ago I went into a local business that was collecting and re-selling beautiful traditional doors that were from old buildings that had been destroyed. They would go in there the night before and take them and it is so good that they did. What a shame if these beautiful pieces, some of which deserved to be in museums, had been destroyed.

Like I always say in my workshops, there are opportunities everywhere when it comes to sustainability, it is just about looking at the world from a slightly different angle.