Cities for kids - Forum for the Future

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greenfutures
No.92 April 2014
Cities
for kids
Children help urban
planners get smart
Old age: a source of experience and enterprise
Ruth Yeoh, YTL: why environmentalism isn’t a choice
Cities get serious about local food production
greenfutures
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In the run up to International Women’s Day, I was invited to the ‘Women on
the Move’ awards ceremony. There I met Tatiana Garavito, the 27 year-old Director
of the Latin American Women’s Rights Service, who that evening was named Young
Woman of the Year.
Tatiana came to London from Colombia aged 18, leaving the “bubble” of her home
community to learn what it’s like to be on the margins of a metropolis. She got a job
coordinating the Latin American Youth Forum, and then, at 25, took on the direction of
IRMO, a migrant rights organisation. Under her management, it grew from one member
of staff to nine, and its reach increased from 1,000 people to 5,000. “Migrant women
are not usually recognised for our hard work but instead very much portrayed as
second-class citizens, taking advantage of the system”, she remarked.
I found her story a humbling and powerful reminder of the obstacles people
overcome to pursue their goals. The freedom to do so is by no means a given, even
for many living in democratic countries. As I thought about the courage it takes, I was
reminded of a passage in the book ‘Emotional Equations’ by Chip Conley, founder of
the hotel group JDV (for ‘joie de vivre’). He says “Despair = Suffering – Meaning”.
Chip had seen five of his close friends and colleagues end their lives due to workrelated stress, and took the wellbeing of his own employees very seriously. He set
about calling on them to help define the business strategy, so that they would feel
the same sense of purpose at work that he enjoyed. As a result, he claims, JDV was
crowned the best place to work in the San Francisco Bay Area – “a remarkable feat
for a service company that’s full of people cleaning toilets”, he quipped. It’s a job that
many migrant workers – some highly skilled – are paid below the minimum wage to do.
If we value purpose, we also have to value people. Companies and governments
the world over are busy setting targets. Meeting them will depend on the commitment
of people, working together towards shared goals.
A year on from the collapse of the Rana Plaza garments factory in Dhaka,
Bangladesh, which killed over 1,129 people and injured many more, the way in which
business and brands value people – and the role they play in society – deserves
attention [see ‘Fashion fix’, p28].
For many businesses, India’s rapidly growing middle class is a target market.
A study by Edelman found that 79% of consumers in India “want brands to make it
easier for them to make a positive difference in the world”. For them, consumerism
is not an end in itself, but a means to greater social freedom.
What drives us, and what it means to be an active citizen, is an important question
throughout all our lives, from childhood to old age [see p16 and p21]. It’s one that
anyone with stretching targets – city planners and corporate strategists alike – would
do well to bear in mind.
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1
Contents
Number 92, April 2014
28
44
26
24
38
32
Features
16 C
ities for kids
Children need to be at the heart of
planning our future cities, says
Duncan Jefferies.
21 G
olden years
People with many years behind them
are a great resource of experience and
enterprise. We must make better use
of it, says John Turney.
26 F
arming the city
Cities worldwide are getting serious
about local food production – with good
reason, finds Anna Simpson.
2
28 F
ashion’s new front
The industry is gearing up for a systemwide shift, says Heather Connon.
30 S
torm defence
Offshore wind farms and tidal lagoons
may offer protection from the elements,
as well as a supply of clean energy.
Ibrahim Maigia reports.
7
12
17
Briefings
Regulars
Partner viewpoints
The latest in green innovation, including:
24 A thousand words
Life returns to a canal in Manila
38 Aiming up impact
How can we take transformative
solutions to scale?
Forum for the Future
43 Flight path
Radar study shows migrating geese
fly round wind farm
AMEC
35 Sally Uren
Why grey needs to be the next green
40 Clean means
Material and market innovation for
sustainable cleaning products
Ecover
44 Value added
Jaguar Land Rover on the fast lane to
delivering change
Kingfisher
9 Roaring trade
China’s carbon permit market
36 Tomorrow’s Leaders
Paul Miller, Partner
Bethnal Green Ventures
41 Show and tell
Global spotlight on sustainable fishing
MSC
12 Rags to napkins
India’s low-cost sanitary solution
46 Feedback
Readers respond online and in print
42 Cash back
Energy Saver Fund offers great returns
Bupa
15 Writ in water
Print with the same paper 50 times
48 Jonathon Porritt
Soil is the bedrock of national security
4 The chair carbon sinks into
Non-fossil polymer captures carbon
5 Micro computer
Graphene: the ‘miracle material’
7 Sun-loving currency
Digital currency to drive solar energy
32 T
he Green Futures interview
Ruth Yeoh, Executive Director
YTL Singapore
3
Briefings
Micro computer
Graphene nanoribbons promise more efficient electronics
An international research team has
produced graphene nanoribbons that can
transport electrons without interruption
for much greater distances than previous
versions, paving the way for more efficient
electronic devices.
Graphene has been called a ‘miracle
material’ due to its incredible toughness
and thinness – so thin, in fact, that it is
considered to be two-dimensional. It
can also carry electrons with almost no
resistance at room temperature – a process
known as ballistic transport. If used in
computing, it would be at least 10 times
more efficient than current silicon chips.
But the material lacks a ‘bandgap’,
which means that, although conductive,
it cannot stop electrons and be ‘switched
off’, making it impractical for use as
a transistor. Scientists have therefore
struggled to apply its properties to the
electronics field, where it could usher
in a new age of ultra-thin, light and
flexible computing.
The chair carbon sinks into
New non-fossil polymer captures carbon
A sustainable seat?
A new, cheap and biodegradable polyester
may offer a market-driven way to both reduce
the volume of greenhouse gases that enter
the atmosphere and lower our dependency on
oil. Made from captured carbon, the material,
dubbed AirCarbon, is the brainchild of USbased Newlight Technologies, and is to be
used in a variety of applications, including the
world’s first carbon-negative office chair.
Inspired by natural carbon-processing
systems, the AirCarbon polymer is made by
combining oxygen from air with carbon from
concentrated greenhouse gases, drawn
from energy facilities, farms, landfills and
water treatment plants. These gases – which
would otherwise end up in the atmosphere
– are diluted with air, and passed through a
special biocatalyst. This breaks the gases
apart and reassembles them as long-chain
plastic molecules (a thermopolymer), which
can then be used to create everyday goods.
The AirCarbon manufacturing process
can convert greenhouse gases into plastic
“at a yield that is approximately 10 times
… higher than previous biocatalysts”,
claims Mark Herrema, CEO of Newlight
Technologies. He adds that AirCarbon is
now able to out-compete oil-based plastics
on price. “As such, AirCarbon represents
a market-driven solution to sequestering
carbon.”
The finished product can stand in for
a variety of types of conventional plastic,
making it suitable for a wide range of
applications. Alongside the office chair,
which is being made in collaboration with
global furniture company KI, Newlight
Technologies is planning a wide variety
of products made from their AirCarbon
material, including food containers,
automotive parts and mobile phone cases.
The company plans to increase its
production capacity, establishing additional
manufacturing plants. “Our goal is to
replace oil-based plastics on a global
scale”, says Herrema, “so with commercial
scale-up behind us, all of our focus now is
on expansion.”
According to Newlight, AirCarbon
“has been verified by independent third
party analysis as a carbon-negative
material”: a status which reportedly factors
in the energy, transportation and end-oflife costs associated with the product.
Green Futures sought confirmation of
this appraisal, but Newlight Technologies
did not respond to requests to name the
unidentified third party.
Nonetheless, Alain Goeppert, a chemist
at the Loker Hydrocarbon Research
Institute, University of Southern Carolina,
asserts that “producing sustainable
polymers from waste products is still a very
interesting concept and should be pursued”.
– Ian Randall
4
Photos: John Hankinson; John Freidah
Research at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) could pave the way for
solar cells able to generate electricity to
match demand, by absorbing solar energy
in the form of heat.
A conventional silicon solar cell doesn’t
capture the entire spectrum of light,
because the semiconductor material’s
‘bandgap’ tends to not match photons in
the infrared range, and thus misses out
on their energy. To address this, the MIT
team has created a two-layer absorberemitter made of carbon nanotubes (CNTs)
and photonic crystals that sit between
the sun’s rays and the photovoltaic (PV)
Adding another layer
Photos: KI; Darren Pullman
Innovations like Gorilla Glass have
introduced chemically strengthened
touchscreens into the smartphone material
ecosystem. But the ‘mollusc’ glass
proposed by the Canadian research team
could be a more cost-effective alternative
for manufacturers, although it is still in its
commercial infancy.
Rodrigo Bautista, Senior Sustainability
Advisor at Forum for the Future, says
a “different business model, one which
promotes a more circular approach to
internal components and a continuation of
software updates for older devices”, is what’s
truly needed to address electronics waste.
However, he adds that: “less breakable glass
would make such a model more feasible by
significantly raising the life expectancy of our
electronic devices”. – Alex Fenton
nanoribbons. As the electrons don’t scatter,
their flow can be interrupted.
“This should enable a new way of doing
electronics”, says de Heer. “We are already
able to steer these electrons and we can
switch them using rudimentary means. We
can put a roadblock, and then open it up
again. New kinds of switches for this material
are now on the horizon.”
Professor Andrea C. Ferrari, Director
of the Cambridge Graphene Centre, says
that while the results appear to be “a huge
step forward” for graphene nanoribbons,
“they relate to materials that were created
on silicon carbide, so you are limited to this
substrate, and don’t have the diamond,
plastic or other substrates that you really
want to use them on”. – Duncan Jefferies
MIT device turns light into heat for solar electricity on demand
Mollusc shell design produces glass 200 times the strength
claim it is relatively economical to produce,
only requiring the laser and a precise hand,
or machine, to guide it.
The same technique could potentially
be applied to other brittle materials, the
researchers believe, such as ceramics
and polymers. However, one of the most
promising possibilities is the glass’s
application in handheld electronics: the
average lifespan of a mobile phone is a mere
18 months, with many of them discarded
due to cracked and broken screens.
Nanoribbons under
the microscope
Solar sparks at night
Muscular glass
Scientists at McGill University, Montreal,
have developed a way of making glass up
to 200 times stronger, which could increase
the longevity of smartphone screens.
The glass can be deformed by 5%
before snapping, as opposed to regular
glass, which can only handle 0.1%. The
solution is inspired by the way mollusc
shells are put together. A material called
nacre makes the otherwise brittle shells
incredibly strong, as well as shiny. It’s made
up of microscopic, interlocking blocks with
curvy boundaries. This means that any
energy from an impact is dispersed and
absorbed to prevent shattering.
The Canadian researchers engraved
the glass with curved microscopic
cracks using a pulsed 3D laser in order
to mimic the mollusc shell design. They
Recent research has focused on
graphene nanoribbons of 10 or 20 atoms
wide, cut from larger sheets for use in a
nano-sized circuit. However, this leaves
them with ragged edges, disrupting the
flow of electrons. The research by the
international research team offers hope that
there may be a way round this problem, as
well as the switching issue.
The scientists grew the nanoribbons on
silicon carbide substrate etched with circuit
patterns using standard techniques. The
silicone was then heated to 1000°C to melt
it off, leaving only the graphene nanoribbons
behind, uncut. This allows electrons to move
along the edges of the nanoribbons with
virtually no resistance, behaving “more like
light” according to Walt de Heer, a Regent’s
Professor in the School of Physics at the
Georgia Institute of Technology who coauthored a report on the findings.
Tests have shown they travel more than
10 micrometres without meeting resistance –
1,000 times further than in typical graphene
cell, absorbing solar energy in the form of
heat first, and then light. This results in a
three-fold conversion efficiency increase.
The system could lay the groundwork for
on-demand solar PV generation, as the
heat captured could be stored to generate
electricity once the sun has set.
While it is by no means the first solar
thermophotovoltaic (STPV) solution,
previous experiments have only produced
devices with conversion efficiencies of
around 1%, compared with the 3.2%
efficiency measured in the MIT device.
Work is now underway to scale up the
absorber-emitter device from a 1cm2 area
to 10cm2, which could increase efficiencies
to 20% due to the larger active area and
reduction in parasitic heat loss.
“One element that makes our approach
interesting is that it may be easier and
lower cost to store thermal energy than
electrical energy”, says Evelyn Wang,
an Associate Professor within MIT’s
department of mechanical engineering,
who worked on the research. This would
require phase-change materials or
chemical means to store the heat at high
temperatures. “The thermal storage would
allow the emitter to get to the desired
temperatures, so that the energy of the
thermal emission can match the band
gap of the PV cell, and generate efficient
electricity later on”, Wang explains.
To produce the absorber-emitter STPV
device, a photonic crystal layer is made by
depositing thin alternating layers of silicon
and silicon dioxide. A layer made from
multi-walled CNTs is grown by chemical
vapour deposition on the other side of the
substrate. When facing sunlight, the CNTs
absorb it and turn its energy into heat. As
the photonic layer gets hot, it ‘glows’ with
light at a wavelength tuned to match the
bandgap of the adjacent PV cell. Most of
the energy collected by the absorber is
therefore turned into electricity.
Fatima Toor, a solar research analyst
at Lux Research, thinks STPV technology
is needed in the long term to achieve a
low levelised cost of electricity ($/kWh)
for solar energy. Electricity generation
could occur at a competitive cost during
the entire 24 hours instead of just sunlight
hours. “STPV incorporates low-cost
conventional PVs with additional material
components to enhance the efficiency
of PV cells, resulting in overall cost
reductions”, she says. – Sara Ver-Bruggen
5
Sea carpet
Two for one
Seafloor wave-to-energy ‘carpet’ offers improved wave power efficiency and survivability
Modified material could double solar cell efficiency
mechanics at the University of California,
Berkeley, has entered the fray.
They have developed an underwater
‘wave-to-energy carpet’: a thin sheet of
synthetic material on the seabed, sitting
on top of hydraulic actuators, which are
pumped by the motion of the carpet
in the waves. The resulting hydraulic
pressure is then piped onshore for
conversion to electricity. Wave tank tests
found the seafloor carpet was able to
Beneath the waves, out of harm’s way
absorb 90% of the incoming wave energy.
Unusually, the system’s efficiency increases
when waves are stronger. As Carl Larsen,
a professor at the Department of Marine
Technology at the Norwegian University
of Science and Technology, points out,
many of the costs of wave power units
are associated with survivability in
rough weather conditions. But as these
weather conditions are relatively rare,
such precautions aren’t particularly
cost-effective.
The water column above the modular
seafloor wave carpet acts as a buffer zone,
making it a more financially sound solution.
Another advantage of the device, which
will be located in shallow coastal waters
about 60-feet deep, is that power can be
harvested with minimal visual impact. The
operational depth means it also poses no
danger to fishing or leisure boats.
Alam’s team is using crowdfunding to
develop the wave energy converter, and
hopes to prove its functionality with a pilot
system at the Northwest National Marine
Renewable Energy Center in Newport,
Oregon. The system is expected to be
ready for commercial operation within
10 years. – Andreas von Schoenberg
Researchers from the University of
Pennsylvania and Drexel University have
demonstrated a new material that can both
capture photons from visible light and get
current to flow, paving the way for cheaper,
more efficient solar photovoltaic (PV) cells.
Conventional silicon solar panels are
based around the interface of two materials.
The interface which the excited electrons
pass through is called the semiconductor
p-n junction. Once an electron has crossed
over, it cannot return the other way, thus
creating the necessary flow.
However, some of the energy from
photons is lost while electrons wait to
make the jump through the junction.
There’s even a name for the maximum
theoretical efficiency of cells that use p-n
junctions: the Shockley-Queisser limit.
Multi-junction cells are able to overcome
it, but this increases the complexity of the
solar cell structure, which has a knock-on
effect for production costs.
A small category of materials are
able to send electrons off in a particular
direction independently, without a junction;
this is known as the ‘bulk’ photovoltaic
effect rather than ‘interface’ effect. The
phenomenon has been known about since
Photos: Marcus Lehmann; National Institute of Agricultural Technology
In the past 10 years a string of ingenious
technologies that harness the power of
ocean waves have been developed. Many
use floating devices, such as buoys, but
reservoir and wave chamber systems are
also being commercialised. Such innovation
is driven by the prize of generating large
amounts of clean power close to coastal
areas, where more than 40% of the world’s
population lives and works. Now a team led
by Professor Reza Alam, an expert in wave
the 1970s, but has previously only been
shown to work with ultraviolet (UV) light. As
most of the energy from the sun is in the
visible and infrared spectrum, it hasn’t been
utilised for conventional solar cells.
A new material compound has been
shown to generate the flow of electrons
without a junction across a much wider
spectrum of light. The compound created
by the US researchers is a combination
of a ‘parent’ material, potassium niobate,
that lends it a bulk photovoltaic effect
and a secondary one, barium nickel
niobate, that lowers the threshold at
which photons are absorbed, allowing it
to capture more rays. The two materials
are ground into fine powders, mixed and
heated in an oven to create a ‘perovskite’
crystal that has the properties of both. The
researchers fine tuned the ratios involved
until they hit upon the ideal combination.
“A solar cell based on the discovery
could double power conversion
efficiencies possible with conventional
solar cells, theoretically”, says Professor
Andrew Rappe at the University of
Pennsylvania. It could also help to reduce
the amount of materials used in a solar
cell, and as perovskites are easier to
Methane capture
Sun-loving currency
‘Backpack’ for cows could provide energy for rural communities
SolarCoin rewards you with digital currency for generating solar energy
6
balloon-like bag on the animal’s back.
Methane has a high calorific value (the
amount of heat produced by its complete
combustion), meaning it is a potentially
valuable source of renewable energy. Over
a 24-hour period, one cow produces the
methane equivalent of 300ml of oil, or
enough to power a refrigerator for a day,
according to Guillermo Berra, Head of
INTA’s animal physiology group.
Berra suggests that capturing the
gas and using it at as an energy source
could benefit rural communities where
conventional energy is difficult to access,
or appeal to developed countries eager
to reduce their carbon footprint. “As an
energy source it is not very practical at the
moment”, he admits, “but if you look ahead
to 2050, when fossil fuel reserves are going
to be in trouble, it is an alternative.”
A significant barrier to scale is animal
welfare, given that the process involves
the surgical placement of a tube into an
animal. “I doubt public opinion would be in
Cow pack
favour of this on welfare grounds”, says Dr
Jon Moorby, Principal Investigator at the
Institute of Biological, Environmental and
Rural Sciences, Aberystwyth University,
who is currently developing nutritional
additives to reduce methane emissions
from ruminants. – Rohan Boyle
Photos: Boshu Zhang, Wong Choon Lim Glenn, Mingzhen Liu/University of Oxford; SolarCoin
Greenhouse gas emissions associated with
livestock supply chains account for 14.5%
of all human-caused releases, according
to a report published by the UN Food and
Agriculture Organization in 2013. Of this,
39% is produced by ruminants – mammals
that acquire nutrients from plant-based
food by fermenting it in a specialised
stomach prior to digestion. The average
cow produces 1,100 litres of gas each day,
of which around one-fifth is methane.
Previously, scientists have looked
at ways to minimise the amount of gas
ruminants produce, with nutritional
additives a popular approach. But
researchers at Argentina’s National Institute
of Agricultural Technology (INTA) have
come up with a novel solution: harvesting
the gas as a renewable energy source. The
team at INTA has shown that it is possible
to capture the gas by inserting a tube into
a cow’s stomach (using what they stress
is a pain-free procedure) and storing the
gas produced by its digestive system in a
Have you ever sought to support
sustainability through your purchasing
decisions? How about through the very form
of currency you spend? SolarCoin is a new
digital currency launched to incentivise the
generation of solar energy. Each solar coin is
awarded for the proven generation of 1MWh
of solar energy to anyone who presents proof
within four years of generation. Upon launch,
claims can be backdated to 2010.
Like all electronic currencies, SolarCoins
will bypass the banking system to allow
transactions between individuals and
companies at very little cost – rather like the
impact of email on postal services. Since
they lack a central bank, however, a key
challenge of non-state-backed currencies
is distribution. Bitcoin, the most famous
(or even notorious) digital currency of the
moment, manages this through rewarding
‘miners’ who use computing power to solve
difficult cryptographic problems with coins.
By contrast, more than 99% of
SolarCoins are ‘pre-mined’: that is, they
are ready to be distributed to solar energy
generators. There are already 99 billion
SolarCoins, a number based on the IEA’s
forecast of how many megawatt hours of
solar energy will be produced over the next
40 years. The SolarCoin Foundation aims
to accelerate this, hoping SolarCoins will be
valued at $20-30 each within the next few
years – although this is impossible to predict.
“After 40 years, if we’ve given out the
number of coins we expect to give out, solar
energy will be a dominant form of energy
in the world and will have a tremendous
impact”, says John Dolan, Chair of the
SolarCoin Foundation.
Dolan hopes sustainable companies,
such as Whole Foods, will accept SolarCoins
to enhance their branding.
SolarCoin has been broadly welcomed
by the renewables industry, while
acknowledging that it has some way to
go before becoming a key incentive. “The
advent of SolarCoin is interesting and we’ll
certainly keep an eye on how it develops,
Compound evidence
process than silicon, make them more
cost-effective too. The next step, Rappe
says, is to create a solar cell that uses the
modified perovskite, which should happen
in the next couple years.
Other types of engineered perovskite
materials have been introduced as
alternative light harvesters, replacing
the layer of molecular sensitisers usually
found in these cells. Efficiencies are
already in double-digit figures and are
growing rapidly, according to Professor
Michael Grätzel, a solar cell pioneer at
the École Polytechnique Fédérale de
Lausanne, Switzerland. – Sara Ver-Bruggen
99 billion SolarCoins are up for grabs
but Government support schemes, such as
FITs, ROCs, CfDs and the RHI, will remain the
key financial incentives for UK renewables
developers for some time yet”, says Richard
Ingle, Head of Renewable Energy Finance.
Security, however, will remain a key issue,
as demonstrated by the apparent theft of
750,000 Bitcoins from Mt Gox, Tokyo, one
of the world’s largest Bitcoin exchanges.
Coming from a Wall Street background,
Dolan claims no ideological attachment to
keeping SolarCoin unregulated, unlike some
proponents of other digital currencies. “I’m
familiar with the notion that the regulators are
there”, he says, adding: “It’s important to deal
with them, and in time there will be regulation
related to digital currencies.” – Ibrahim Maiga
7
Newtown Creek’s ‘digester eggs’
Gas supply
Waste biogas reclamation project will heat 5,200 homes in New York City
The recently announced Newtown Creek
Renewable Gas Demonstration Project
aims to turn New York City (NYC)’s
mounting food waste problem into a
solution, diverting organic food waste
from landfill and mixing it with wastewater
sludge to increase biogas production.
Around 40% of the biogas by-product
from the municipal wastewater treatment
process carried out at the Newtown Creek
Wastewater Treatment Plant is currently
reused, helping to power the facility’s
operations. The new project will convert
biogas from food waste and wastewater
into pipeline-quality renewable natural gas
that can also be used for residential or
commercial purposes. The ultimate goal is
to reclaim 100% of the biogas produced
by the plant and convert it into power,
meaning it will not contribute to the plant’s
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
The project is the first in the US to
directly introduce renewable biogas
produced by a wastewater treatment
plan into a local distribution system.
The predicted outcomes are impressive:
enough energy to heat 5,200 homes and a
90,000 tonne reduction in GHG emissions,
the equivalent of removing almost 19,000
cars from the road according to NYC’s
Department of Environmental Protection.
Dr David Fulford, Director of Kingdom
Bioenergy Ltd, believes this is an
important step in the development of
sustainable energy sources: “Shale gas is
a quick solution, but leads to longer-term
environmental impacts such as climate
change. Energy from waste is a longerterm solution, with positive environmental
benefit, as recycled carbon can be used to
offset fossil [fuel] carbon [emissions] and
pollution is reduced.”
The Newtown Creek Project is the
result of a public-private partnership
between NYC, Newtown Creek
“Annual 13-15% increases in energy demand
require the exploration of as many
supplementary energy alternatives as possible”
Wastewater Treatment Plant and National
Grid. According to the last, which is
funding the project, the capital investment
required to deliver the renewable gas
across its entire network, which covers
four states, would be almost $7 billion.
However, this would deliver significant
economic and environmental benefits,
including 9,000 new local jobs and a
16 million tonne annual reduction in GHGs.
“When you think about the sustainable
energy future and renewables”, says
Don Chahbazpour, Director of Network
Strategy, National Grid, “it’s not just solar
and wind. Renewable gas is a unique
solution that utilises existing waste
streams from a variety of resources and
leverages the natural gas network to
deliver a renewable fuel.”
The Newtown Creek project forms
part of NYC’s PlaNYC goal of reducing
municipal GHG emissions by 30% by
2017. Other initiatives include a city-wide
extension of the bus service network,
support for urban agriculture and turning
underutilised spaces into playgrounds.
– Tess Riley
Nguyen Anh Tuan, National Energy Institute of Vietnam Representative
[source: Voice of Vietnam Radio]
Roaring trade
Cleantech firms set to profit from China’s C02 permit market
PV parasol
8
The Urban Parasol’s solar photovoltaic
panels track the sun as it moves across
the sky, and reorient to maximise energy
absorption. Energy is stored in a battery
pack, and the designers claim the system
could also be fitted with an inverter to send
excess back to the grid. Space blanket
insulation lines the underneath of the panels
in order to reflect heat back towards users
instead of letting it escape. Moreover, an
absorbent material on its ground-facing
surface will remove cigarette smoke from the
air and dampen noise pollution.
The device will soon be trialled in Paris
– the result of a request by the city’s Deputy
Mayor, Jean-Louis Missika, for solutions to
the patio heater problem. When no French
firms stepped forward, the city issued a
global request through Citymart’s Living Labs
Global Award, which aims to match cities
with innovators, leading to pilot projects that
benefit both parties. Citymart claim that the
companies involved reduce the time-tomarket for their products by 70% and save
an average of €240,000 in the process.
Street heat
Professor Derek Clements-Croome,
an expert on environmental engineering
architecture and sustainability at Reading
University, believes that umbrella or canopytype designs have the potential to do
more than simply protect people from the
elements. He says that the Urban Parasol
marks “a step in this direction”.
It will initially be installed on restaurant
terraces and patios, before being rolled-out
to bus stops and service posts. An advisor
to the Deputy Mayor has affirmed that:
“If Parisians like the parasols, we’ll take
them large-scale.”
– Alex Fenton
Photo: Electrical and Mechanical Services Department Headquarters Photovoltaics
A small American design firm claims it can
solve a problem rife on the streets of Paris,
among many other cities: the patio heater. On
average, one of these produces 50kg of CO2
per year, warming small patches of air on
chilly streets, where the heat soon dissipates.
Smoking exacerbates demand for
them: according to the New York Times,
30% of Paris’ inhabitants smoke, and since
the indoor smoking ban was introduced in
France in 2008, patio heaters have become
ever more popular.
Amorphica’s new Urban Parasol won’t
help smokers quit, but it does offer a lowcarbon way to keep warm on the terrace. The
design, which resembles a synthetic forest
canopy, would fit easily onto restaurants and
other buildings, providing shelter as well as
heat. The large parasols incorporate energyefficient heating and LED lighting with motion
and thermocouple sensory technology. This
means they can adjust to provide more
shelter during colder, wetter weather and also
turn themselves off when no movement is
detected in the vicinity.
Photos: Victoria Belanger/flickr Gas Supply; Amorphica Design Research Office
‘Urban Parasol’ provides low-carbon heat for Parisian café patrons
Firms dealing in pollution control and
sustainable construction are set to profit
from Government initiatives in China
that aim to reduce the country’s carbon
footprint. According to a recent Reuters
report, the Ministry of Environmental
Protection will also be granted new
powers to enable it to crack down on
law-breaking polluters, bolstering Beijing’s
attempts to encourage investment in its
green industries.
In December, China’s largest province,
Guangdong, introduced the second-largest
C02 emissions trading scheme in the world,
trailing only the European Union in terms
of the amount of carbon dioxide covered.
Together with other regional schemes
launched last year in Beijing, Shanghai and
Shenzhen, China hopes this will help to
reduce its greenhouse gas emissions per
unit of GDP to 40-45% below 2005 levels
by 2020.
On its debut, the volumes in
Guangdong’s carbon permit market
surpassed full-day totals for the launches
of the country’s three other carbon
exchanges. The 120,000 permits – each
one initially priced at 60 yuan (£6) and
representing 1 tonne of carbon dioxide –
sold out within 20 minutes.
“Natural gas utilities are likely to benefit
from the migration from coal – companies
like ENN and Beijing Enterprises”, says
David Li, Asia Pacific Head of Strategy at
Impax Asset Management. “In terms of
sustainable building, Xinyi Glass, which
creates low-emission glass for green
buildings, Green Electric, with its energyefficient air conditioners, and Epistar, with
[its] LEDs, are set to gain from these new
emission trading schemes.”
Wind power developers Longyuan and
Huaneng Renewable could also see high
returns and long-term benefits from the
scheme. Foreign companies are expected
to profit too. In fact, environmental
equipment producers such as the UK’s
Atkins and Fuel Tech, and the US firm LP
Amina, are reportedly struggling to keep
up with demand in the Chinese cleantech
market, which is estimated to be worth
US $555 billion by 2020.
According to the International Energy
Agency, China has the largest coal-fired
power plant fleet installed in a single
country and the youngest generators
currently in operation – an ideal retrofitting
scenario. Coal currently accounts for
more than two-thirds of China’s primary
energy consumption, but the Government
is keen to reduce nitrogen oxide (NOx)
pollutants from power plant emissions,
and is offering subsidies to get firms
on board.
LP Amina, which produces equipment
to reduce emissions from coal plants by
retrofitting burners, has already doubled its
sales to China this year, according to the
firm’s Marketing Manager Jamyan Dudka.
He believes it will cost around $11 billion
to retrofit all of China’s power plants over
a five-year period.
In another sign of increasing global
investment in the Chinese cleantech
market, Doug Bailey, CEO of the US-listed
firm Fuel Tech, a developer of air pollution
control technologies and solutions, says
the company has boosted its China-based
staff by more than 30 people in order to
make the most of the opportunities on
offer. – Peter Shadbolt
Chinese carbon permit markets are
capturing international attention
9
Plant power
Second harvest
Flow battery based on plant chemicals improves storage of renewable energy
Food processing unit could help supermarkets cut waste
Renewables like solar or wind power
depend on intermittent sources of supply
– so what do you do when the demand
for energy exceeds the amount of sun or
wind available? A new type of flow battery,
based on the chemicals plants that use to
store energy, may provide one answer.
A group of small and inexpensive
organic molecules, called quinones,
are used to store and transfer energy
within plants. Researchers from Harvard
University screened the properties of
over 10,000 such molecules, and found
a good candidate for energy storage in a
quinone similar to those found in rhubarbs.
The team used this as the basis of a flow
battery, which stores energy in the form of
chemical fluids.
Unlike solid-state batteries, flow batteries
have separate power-conversion hardware
and chemical storage components, which
determine the peak power capacity and
energy storage capacity, respectively. This
means that the power-to-energy ratios
of flow batteries can be adjusted to suit
particular applications, allowing them to store
larger amounts of energy than solid-state
batteries, and at a lower cost.
However, most flow batteries use
valuable metals such as platinum or
vanadium in their design, and are therefore
expensive to buy. The Harvard team’s
research “has the potential to greatly
reduce the cost of [flow] batteries,” says
Brian Huskinson, author of the paper
detailing the breakthrough, adding that
this will make them “more appealing for
commercial applications, with the ultimate
goal of increasing grid reliability and easing
the integration of renewables like wind and
solar into the grid”.
With such a device, commercial-scale
tanks could be used to store energy from
solar or wind farms for later use. On a
smaller scale, a flow battery the size
of a household heater unit could store
a day’s worth of energy collected by a
solar-panelled roof – potentially enough to
power a home from late afternoon to the
following morning.
Poor harvesting, storing and transporting
practices, combined with market and
consumer behaviour, lead to an estimated
30-50% of the four billion or so tonnes of
food produced per year going to waste,
according to the Institution of Mechanical
Engineers’ ‘Global Food’ report. Solutions
to date have generally focused either on
reducing waste levels or on making use of
the organic waste matter,
for example to generate energy [see
‘Gas supply’, p8]. One emerging solution
does both.
The Harvester is a food-processing
unit designed for use in supermarkets and
already up and running in several Seattlebased stores. It uses oxidative conversion
technology to break down all types of food
scraps – including those not fit for traditional
composting, such as baked goods, oils
and animal proteins. What’s more, unlike
composting, it retains the majority of the
nutrients from the input material, converting
food scraps into a nutrient-rich liquid stored
in a holding tank: no sewage connection is
“This is a very exciting development,
and it brings much-needed innovation to
the flow battery field,” says Yushan Yan,
a chemical engineer at the University of
Delaware, who notes that the fast kinetics
of the quinones leads to a high power
density. However, he cautions that the use
of bromine in the demonstration battery cell
could raise some safety issues.
The Harvard team is now working to
improve its battery design (pictured), and
together with its collaborators, Sustainable
Innovations, LLC, hopes to develop a horse
trailer-sized portable unit capable of storing
enough power for a commercial building
within the next three years. – Ian Randall
required. Once collected, this is then further
refined into the most nutrient-rich fertiliser
approved for organic food production,
packaged and ready to be sold locally.
Alongside the direct conversion of food
waste into organic fertiliser feedstock, the
Harvester offers a significant opportunity for
data capture. Sensors and cameras inside
each unit gather information which helps
supermarkets, commercial kitchens and
other larger-scale food outlets recognise
trends in what is being discarded and
when, enabling them to reduce ‘shrinkage’
(unnecessary inventory loss) and save
money in the process.
“You need to understand the data before
you can start to tackle the issue of food
waste”, says Emma Marsh, Programme
Area Manager for consumer food waste
prevention at WRAP and Head of Love Food
Hate Waste. “Obviously, the best thing that
can happen to food is that it’s eaten, but
for anything that can’t be used, then finding
alternative solutions is much better than
sending to landfill.”
Intelligent charger cuts electricity supply once gadgets are fully charged
Handheld scanner solution reveals food ingredients
A colourful, pocket-sized charger which
addresses the issue of ‘vampire power’ –
the power wasted when devices are left
plugged in when fully charged – is set to
go into production, having exceeded its
$25,000 funding goal on Kickstarter.
Currently, 25% of average household
electricity is wasted due to devices being
left plugged in when fully charged, costing
the US $3 billion per year according to the
US Department of Energy. And according
The UK Energy Saving Trust, “A typical
household could save between £45 and
10
£80 a year just by remembering to turn off
appliances left on standby.”
Powerslayer, created by the US
firm Velvetwire, is equipped with a
microprocessor that monitors when the
energy supply for charging a device is no
longer required, stopping the flow without
the need for human intervention. It could
therefore reduce electricity waste and bills
by a substantial amount.
A series of algorithms is used to detect
when a connected device is full charged.
“Our embedded software intelligently
powers off and back
on, automatically,
delivering energy
only as needed
to protect against
overcharging and
energy waste”,
the Velvetwire
team state on their
Kickstarter page.
The eyecatching design
Pocket-sized
includes a single
power plug
triangular LED that
glows through the surface of the device.
Orange means charging, green is fully
charged, and no light means the device
is charged but not drawing power. Part
of the aim of this aesthetic – as well as
the bright cloth that covers the USB and
charging cables – is to draw attention to
the device and spark conversations about
energy use.
Jennifer Lee, a former Motorola
employee, dreamt up Powerslayer with
Eric Bodnar, another Motorola veteran,
during a break from their corporate day
jobs. They intend to charge $75 for it when
it enters commercial production, and
have managed to secure manufacturing
suppliers within 70 miles of Velvetwire’s
Santa Cruz headquarters in order to keep
the supply chain local.
The 597 people who backed the
device on Kickstarter will be the first
to receive one. However, widespread
adoption will be needed to generate a
significant improvement on current rates
of energy wastage – perhaps through
incorporation into future electronic
devices. – John Duffy
Photos: WISErg; Tellspec
Self checkout
Photos: Eliza Grinnell/Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences; Velvetwire
Vampire slayer
One year on from the horsemeat scandal,
which brought to light how little we know
about food supply chains, there is still
widespread uncertainty about the way many
products are sourced and produced. Could
a new solution from a Canadian start-up end
our ingredient ignorance?
TellSpec, founded by Isabel Hoffman
and Stephen Watson in Toronto in 2013,
has developed a product that can scan
your food and tell you what it contains,
flagging up, in particular, the presence of
gluten, pesticides and preservatives. The
scanner itself is built around a handheld
spectrometer. A low-powered laser
passes different wavelengths of light
through the food molecules during the
scanning process, providing the device
with information on the compounds in the
food. This information is converted into an
electrical signal, then digitised and sent to
the user’s smartphone via Bluetooth.
The digital spectrum of the user’s food
is sent online to TellSpec’s ‘analysis engine’
– a programme on one of the company’s
servers which processes the data and
compares it with reference spectra. An
algorithm then selects information about
the food from a large database and
customises it for the user. A phone app,
able to display the results within seconds,
provides them with a list of the ingredients
and their quantities.
The product is primarily aimed at the
diet market, allowing users to monitor their
daily calorie and essential vitamin intake. In
future, it could also be used to help allergy
sufferers. But for conscientious consumers,
its appeal lies in the ability to “go beyond
the label”, as Hoffman puts it, and find out
exactly what’s in their food.
Food companies can currently exploit
regulations to withhold certain ingredients
from the list on the packet: traces of
dangerous food dyes such as tartrazine are
not always noted, for example. Solutions
like TellSpec’s could nourish an appetite
for transparency among consumers, and
might ultimately prompt companies to
interrogate their own supply lines to avoid
being caught out.
“This is a good example of an innovation
that will help consumers who are concerned
with both the sustainability and health
The harvester can break down any food scraps
The Harvester is a product of WISErg,
a Washington-based technology company
founded by two former Microsoft engineers.
Having refined and trialled its technology,
the company is now aiming for scale, with
five Harvesters already in use in the Seattle
area and a target of 74 to be deployed by
the end of 2014. The space required for
the Harvester, which is over 2.15m high
and 1.2m wide, may deter some potential
clients. The smart technology offers
organisations like PCC Natural Markets, a
nine store strong member-owned
co-operative, a significant opportunity to cut
food waste and therefore disposal costs.
The fertiliser produced, WISERganic, sells
at all nine PCC locations. – Tess Riley
A sustainably sourced sundae?
aspects of their food to make more informed
choices”, says Mark Driscoll, Head of Food
at Forum for the Future.
TellSpec claims its solution can
successfully identify foods and their
ingredients about 97.7% of the time, and
plans to partner with university researchers
to test the product further. It is also
attempting to crowdfund a smaller, sleeker
version of the scanner. – Alex Fenton
11
Rags to napkins
A better log
Low-cost sanitary solution for rural women and girls in India
an estimated 23% of girls to leave school
upon reaching puberty. The barrier to
girls and women pursuing their goals
represents a huge missed opportunity for
society as a whole.
Using Muruganantham’s machines and
distributed business model, women now
produce and sell directly to customers.
Each machine provides employment for
10 women, who are able to produce up
to 250 sanitary napkins each day. This
keeps costs low (from less than Rs 1 for
one napkin) and the advocacy of local
saleswomen has converted thousands of
women to sanitary napkins. It also enables
an easy sharing of information about
menstrual hygiene, otherwise absent in
the country.
Muruganantham believes that
women’s empowerment needs to start at
a young age – “Why does nobody speak
20%
12
The percentage of new car
parking spaces in New York
which are required to provide
EV-charging facilities
A new data platform launched by the
World Resources Institute and over 40
cross-sector partners aims to tackle
deforestation and illegal logging around
the world. The platform, called Global
Forest Watch, provides near real-time,
high resolution satellite data of forest loss
and gain, prompting businesses to keep
check on their supply chain.
Up to now, the Forest Stewardship
Council (FSC) has certified businesses
that could demonstrate a chain of
custody for products from sustainably
managed forests, but they did not have
the possibility to track forests in real time.
This left a dangerous margin for error,
recently illustrated by IKEA’s wholly owned
subsidiary Swedwood.
In 2012, Swedwood was found to
be logging and clear-cutting old growth
forests in Russian Karelia while IKEA was
promoting its sustainable wood sourcing
policies; wood is a primary material for
60% of its products. In February, as a
result, Swedwood lost its FSC certificate.
Global Forest Watch could reduce
the potential for companies to claim
ignorance, prompting them to pay closer
attention to their
sourcing policy and
its implementation.
As the service is
open to everyone,
companies can
easily track where
their raw materials
come from, and
follow up with their
suppliers if materials
are unaccounted
for. Moreover,
Screening out
consumers can use
deforestation
the platform, which
uses algorithms developed by Google, to
track where their goods come from.
Businesses and indigenous peoples
living and working with forests can upload
real-time data from mobile phones and
GPS when encroachment on their lands
occurs. An alert service will then notify
campaign groups and governments. It is
still unclear how quickly they can respond.
This is the first time companies have
had access to universal public forest cover
data, which can facilitate their efforts
in sourcing material sustainably. Global
Forest Watch draws its information from
satellite data and crowdsourcing but also
from business archives and efforts.
Simon Counsell, Executive Director
of Rainforest Foundation UK, sees
strong synergies between Global Forest
Watch’s satellite image-based maps
and on the ground efforts. Rainforest
Foundation is supporting this through the
MappingForRights programme, which
aims to map important data such as local
community ownership and rights to the
forest. “This data is not normally visible
but is essential in planning how to counter
threats to the forest”, says Counsell.
– Janika Collatz
Parking charges
Nissan scheme uses EV cars to power office buildings
Photos: CADEM; [email protected]/Flickr
Jayaashree Industries, a start-up founded
by Arunachalam Muruganantham, a
school dropout from Coimbatore in south
India, has created a machine to produce
sanitary napkins at a fraction of the
market price. Muruganantham’s interest
in the subject started in 1998 when he
noticed his wife using rags during her
menstruation cycle.
Only 12% of over 355 million women
in the menstrual age group in India can
afford branded sanitary napkins, priced
from Rs 25 (£0.24) for a pack. Of the
remaining, the lucky ones use cloth. The
others resort to unclean rags, straw, ash,
mud or husk. Deaths due to infections
caused by rusty hooks on an old blouse
or insects that have travelled into the
body through a handful of dry leaves are
common. Add to this the lack of sanitation
facilities across the country, which forces
of girls’ empowerment?” he says. “Why
wait till they grow up?” He also has girls
working on these machines at school.
He says, “To speak with rural women, I
need to go through so many barriers, like
her husband, brother, village head and
community leader. But if the girl makes a
napkin at school, she takes it home and
convinces her older sister and mother
much more easily.”
The business model has allowed this
innovation to reach an impressive scale.
The machine is now used in 1300 villages
across 23 Indian states. Muruganantham
believes that it can be replicated in 110
countries all over the world, especially
in Africa and Asia. The model is also
impressively self-sufficient: “I don’t believe
in charity or donations. I started off with
my own meagre funds, aided by bank
loans”, says its founder. The machines,
which cost Rs 75,000 (£730) upward,
are mostly owned by women’s self help
groups, which buy them with the help of
bank loans. Each of them is free to brand
and price the products according to
market needs.
Cellulose (an organic compound available
from wood pulp and cotton) is usually the raw
material for these sanitary napkins. However,
Muruganantham encourages the use of
banana fibre, bamboo fibre, jute, linter cotton
and other materials available in surplus locally
as a substitute.
Cynthia Stephen, State Programme
Director at Mahila Samakhya, a women’s
education and health project supported
by the Indian Ministry of Education,
says, “His work is crucial because, apart
from lowering the cost, this will also
promote economic activity among women
everywhere. However, there also a need
for education on how to use and discard
used sanitary napkins correctly.” Creating
the infrastructure for this will demand a
wider cultural shift. – Charukesi Ramadurai
Photo: FXB International
The machine
allows 10 women to
produce 250 sanitary
napkins a day
Real-time data on logging prompts transparency in the supply chain
Office buildings could soon be partially
powered by employees’ cars, thanks
to a new cost-saving vehicle-to-grid
programme from Nissan. The ‘Vehicleto-Building’ scheme – which recently
completed a successful pilot test – uses
staff cars as a temporary power supply,
minimising the building’s dependence on
the electric grid during peak energy hours.
Six of Nissan’s all-electric LEAF cars
are connected to the building’s power
distribution board, with charging of the
cars’ batteries varying throughout the day.
During peak hours, when grid electricity is
the most expensive, the building can draw
stored power from the vehicles, lowering
electricity costs. But when grid electricity
is cheaper, power flows the other way,
ensuring the cars are fully charged for the
workers’ commute home.
The scheme has been running at the
Nissan Advanced Technology Center,
in Japan’s Atsugi City, since July 2013.
According to Nissan, “the facility [has]
benefited from a reduction of 25.6kW
during peak summer periods … with no
impact on the workers’ daily commute, or
their vehicles”. The reduction in electrical
power usage – reported at 2.5% during
peak times – is predicted to result in a
total saving for the Nissan Advanced
Technology Centre of almost 500,000 yen
(£2,950) per year.
The office-based scheme has been
adapted from Nissan’s ‘LEAF to Home’
system, which was unveiled in March
last year. Working in a similar manner to
the ‘Vehicle-to-Building’ concept, the
home system uses a power station that
encourages charging at more economical
times, such as overnight, and returns
power to the home in peak hours to
take the edge off of the electricity bill. In
addition, the LEAF can also be used as an
emergency power source in the event of a
power outage.
However, the charging/discharging
process could have a detrimental effect
on a car battery. “The Vehicle-to-Building
[scheme] saves a certain amount of
electricity cost, but it would definitely cause
wear”, says Sekyung Han, an electric
vehicle battery expert from Hanbat National
University. He adds that: “Although the
energy cost is minimised, the overall cost
– including the battery wear cost – could
be higher than the saved electricity cost.”
Something he feels would need to be
assessed in future tests. – Ian Randall
Nissan LEAF: a powerful car
13
Sun roof
Writ in water
Ford concept vehicle offers improved solar panel efficiency
Printing invention allows paper to be reused up to 50 times
solar panels are well positioned under the
concentrating lens.
The C-Max Solar Energi has a
maximum range of 620 miles – the same as
the grid-charged C-MAX Energi model that
the solar concept is based on – including
up to 21 electric-only miles, which Ford
claims should ‘power up to 75% of all
trips made by an average driver in a solar
hybrid vehicle’. Also, like its predecessor,
the vehicle will sport a standard charging
port, allowing drivers to top up the car’s
batteries directly from the electric grid.
The annual reduction in greenhouse gas
release through use of the solar-charging
feature should equal around 4 tonnes,
according to Ford, which is equivalent to
the emissions produced by an average US
household over four months. What is still
unclear, however, is how practical the stand
alone charge unit will be, especially as it
requires a parking footprint larger than the
vehicle alone. Hopefully these questions will
be addressed when Ford begins real-world
testing of the prototype.
Thomas Bräunl, an electromobility
expert from the University of Western
Anyone who’s balked at the sight of bags
of wasted office paper or cursed the high
price of ink cartridges will appreciate a new
Chinese printing invention that uses water
instead of ink, allowing a single sheet of
paper to be reused up to 50 times.
The paper is coated with a
hydrochromic ‘switchable’ dye, which
colours when it becomes moist. The
technology works with standard inkjet
printers: ink cartridges are simply
replaced with water-filled ones. Print
disappears after 22 hours, and the paper
can then be reused.
The technology could dramatically
reduce waste and deforestation, says
Dr Sean Xiao-An Zhang, who led the
Jilin University scientific team. “Around
40% of office prints are single-use. This
technology will help those who prefer to
read on hard copy once and discard, and
could dramatically reduce waste from
daily newspapers.”
With the paper industry responsible for
35% of deforestation, slashing wastage
from daily newspapers would be an
environmental coup. But is 22 hours really
Australia, also has reservations about the
concept, and remains sceptical about its
potential, given the limited information
available to date. “According to Ford, the
car can only do 21 miles electrically in the
first place … so this makes the car more
of a mild hybrid than a real plug-in hybrid
electric vehicle.” However, he adds, Ford’s
claim to have developed an eight-fold
improvement in solar panel efficiency
would – if true – “revolutionise electric
vehicles and the whole solar photovoltaic
industry”. – Ian Randall
Bright idea: the Ford C-MAX
Solar Energi Cincept
Filtered water
14
Use today, reuse tomorrow...
Fancy finding out how community energy
could benefit your local area?
Then join us at Community Energy Fortnight!
The Community Energy Fortnight runs from 13th – 28th September 2014
right across the UK. From tours of hydro plants or wind turbine sites, to
community heat workshops, there’s bound to be an event that suits your
interests. There will also be advice on the technicalities of making your
community energy vision a reality.
Y
ENERGY
Visit ukcec.org for details of events near you.
Photo: moodboard
Photos: Ford C-MAX; antikainen/iStock/Thinkstock
presence of compounds in the wastewater
that can bond chemically to the active
surface of the catalyst. Or a high viscosity
of the treated wastewater could hamper the
motion of the micromotors.”
This isn’t the only water pollutant
cleansing solution to emerge recently.
Last autumn, for example, there were
reports that a scientist from the National
Taiwan University had developed a
technique that used zinc oxide from
old CD cases. But the micromotors solution
could be more versatile.
Dr David Robbins, an Independent
Consultant in water and sanitation, believes
it has plenty of potential: “They probably
wouldn’t be used for municipal sewage
treatment”, he says, “but I can certainly
see some specific commercial and
industrial applications.”
It seems they could even be engineered
to address some pre-treatment issues –
i.e. targeting a specific chemical in the
water. “As the technology develops it
will be interesting to see how it is used”,
Dr Robbins concludes. – Will Simpson
RTNIGHT
FO
Micromotors could target
specific chemcials
micromotors were released into polluted
water containing hydrogen peroxide,
the platinum inside them converted the
hydrogen peroxide into oxygen bubbles.
This acts as a propulsion system, while
the iron within the device creates hydroxyl
radicals that oxidise pollutants in the water,
in effect cleaning it.
The self-propelling nature of the
micromotors suggests they could also be
used to clean larger bodies of water than
previous solutions. They leave behind a
concentration of iron that is three times
lower than that left by the traditional ‘Fenton’
process for cleaning pollutants from
wastewater – no small advantage, given that
this iron must be removed in order to meet
drinking water regulations.
There are drawbacks to the solution,
however, as team member Samuel Sanchez
from Stuttgart’s Max Planck Institute
explains: “The lifetime of the micromotors
is limited by the amount of the external iron
layer remaining and the amount of hydrogen
peroxide in the solution. Also, there could be
poisoning of the platinum layer due to the
hang on to. Also, laser printers are more
common in offices due to the cheaper
price per print-out compared with inkjet
models, which could further limit uptake
of the technology. – Sue Wheat
Community Energy Fortnight: 13th – 28th September 2014
Self-powered ’micromotor’ solution could clean pollutants from industrial wastewater
A German research team has come up
with an ingenious way to clean polluted
water: tiny self-propelled ‘micromotors’.
These structures – nano-sized cores of
platinum surround by iron – could be
used to clean organic pollutants from
industrial wastewaters that are resistant
to conventional biological or chemical
treatments, as well as from pipes and
other hard to reach places.
The team carried out its research at
the Institute for Integrative Nanosciences
in Dresden. It found that when the
a long enough lifetime for a print-out?
The print is temperature-sensitive too:
it will disappear more quickly in a
hot environment.
Julian Long, National Key Account
Manager at Arjowiggins Graphic, an
environmental paper manufacturer,
also points out that: “To assess the
environmental benefits, we have to look
beyond paper reuse and investigate
the impact on the environment of the
chemicals used to treat the product.”
However, Zhang insists the chemicals are
non-toxic and the paper recyclable.
In the office, a switch between water or
ink cartridges and normal or hydrochromic
paper would need to be incorporated into
existing printer mechanisms. Nevertheless,
the paper, although not yet in production,
should only cost 5% more than regular paper,
according to Zhang. While the low cost
of water compared with ink would reduce
overall costs to around 1% of inkjet printing.
This may be the biggest obstacle –
the high profits made on ink cartridges
are likely to be something the printer
companies will make every effort to
MMUNIT
CO
Ford has unveiled a new hybrid car that
can run on solar power alone. The C-MAX
Solar Energi Concept, which made its first
public appearance at the 2014 Consumer
Electronics Show in Las Vegas, features
a bespoke solar panel on its roof. Ford
claims the car offers the benefits of a
plug-in hybrid without depending solely on
the electric grid for fuel.
Other companies have designed
solar powered cars in the past. However,
these have tended to harness the sun’s
rays for low energy requirements such as
air conditioning; the small surface area
available on a car’s roof doesn’t allow for
solar panels that can quickly charge a
vehicle’s entire battery.
To solve this problem, Ford’s concept
includes a stand alone concentrator.
It works like a giant magnifying glass,
focusing the sun’s rays onto the solar
panels and enabling them to harness
eight times more energy. A day under the
concentrator provides the same charge
as four hours of mains connectivity. When
parked, the car can even move backwards
and forwards automatically to ensure the
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15
the point that cities also have much in common,
regardless of where they are in the world. “In terms
of child survival rates, it’s usually not about what city
you live in, but where in the city you live.”
In the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, for
example, 57% of children live in poverty – a greater
proportion than in any other borough in England. The
£7 million regeneration of the Borough’s Brownfield
Estate is part of a wider plan to improve life for
people in the area. It was recently commended in
a survey by the Royal Institute of British Architects
(RIBA), and illustrates how both children and adults
can benefit from child-friendly planning. The mostused routes on the estate have been turned into
‘green grids’, lined with grass and trees. The parking
system has been revamped to make the streets
easier for pedestrians of all ages to navigate. And
several new play areas have been created, including
a courtyard where children can play informally and
mingle with other members of the community.
This last element – a traffic-free square or
courtyard at the heart of a village-type neighbourhood
– is a crucial part of any child-friendly environment,
according to Suzanne Crowhurst Lennard, Founder
and Director of the International Making Cities Livable
Conferences, and a consultant to cities in the US
and Europe on child-friendly communities and public
space design. “There are three things that children
need in their normal everyday world”, she says: “faceto-face social interaction with a community of all
ages; direct interaction with nature; and the chance to
develop independence at every age.”
“
CHILDREN
ARE A KIND
OF INCUBTOR
SPECIES
“
live in cities and towns. Cities, in other words, are
the frontline in the war against childhood poverty,
disease and restricted opportunity.
Crucially, a child-friendly city doesn’t just benefit
the youngest inhabitants. As Enrique Peñalosa,
former mayor of Bogotá, Columbia, has said:
“Children are a kind of indicator species. If we can
build a successful city for children, we will have a
successful city for all people.” Consider, say, the
benefits of Peñalosa’s own efforts to transform
Bogotá: while in office he helped create over
186 miles of bikeways, 1,200 new parks and
playgrounds and the Bus Rapid Transit system that
carries half a million passengers a day. It’s now a
safer, cleaner, greener city for children and adults
alike. As UNICEF director Anthony Lake has rightly
said, it’s also important to remember that “when
society fails to extend to urban children the services
and protection that would enable them to develop
as productive and creative individuals, it loses the
social, cultural and economic contributions they
could have made”.
In the West, the development of child-friendly
cities tends to focus on the creation of parks and
green spaces, safe and easily navigable streets,
well-proportioned family homes and improved child
services. But in the developing world, where one-inthree city dwellers live in overcrowded, polluted and
unhygienic slum conditions, children’s lives can be
vastly improved by access to health, sanitation and
education services. Nevertheless, Kerry Constabile,
an urban planning specialist at UNICEF, makes
Left: Streets that are
safe for play are key
to child-friendly cities
Below: Count on it:
Bristol City Council
encourages street play
Cities for kids
BY 2050, 70%
OF PEOPLE
WILL LIVE IN
CITIES AND
TOWNS
“
16
“Get these cars out of the way, we want to
play!” a child chants through a loudhailer, as he
and his young comrades march down a street in
the Pijp area of Amsterdam. This remarkable scene
comes from a 1972 documentary, which follows a
group of inner-city Dutch children as they attempt
to turn a busy through-road outside their homes
into a play street. Adults in the area are both
supportive and dismissive of the children’s plans.
“All these cars are unbearable”, says one small
boy, in an effort to explain their actions. “There
is no space left. Thousands die in accidents and
air pollution increases. Everything is devoted to
parking. Why don’t we all ride bicycles?”
It’s a lament that many children could still voice
today. Their need for space, for the freedom to
play and socialise within their local environment,
is often overlooked or ignored by city planners.
Parental fears about their safety – both legitimate
and exaggerated – can also lead to them spending
the majority of their time indoors, unable to explore
independently and develop the skills that will help
them become healthy, well-adjusted members of
society. Instead, many children are spending up to
eight hours a day staring at a screen, according to
some studies.
To prevent this from happening, and ensure that
safe, healthy and well-educated children are a key
part of urban governance, UNICEF launched its
Child Friendly Cities Initiative in 1996. However, as
its report ‘The State of the World’s Children 2012:
Children in an Urban World’ highlights, almost 20
years on, city planning still doesn’t take enough
account of children’s needs. A number of other
projects, such as the EU’s Cities for Children,
also aim to highlight best practice and guide local
government towards child-friendly urban planning.
The focus on cities makes sense: every year the
world’s urban population increases by about
60 million, and by 2050 around 70% of people will
Photo: 1000 Words/Shutterstock.com
“
Photo: Roger LeMoyne/UNICEF
Children need to be at the heart of planning our future
cities, says Duncan Jefferies.
17
“
Photo: Suriya Wattanalee
Involve children in city
planning, and you’re
building the next
generation of active
citizens
UNICEF says a child-friendly city
guarantees the right of every young
citizen to:
• influence decisions about their city
• express their opinions on the city they want
• participate in family, community and
social life
• receive basic services such as health care,
education, and shelter
• drink safe water and have access to
proper sanitation
• be protected from exploitation, violence
and abuse
• walk safely in the streets on their own
• meet friends and play
• have green spaces for plants and animals
• live in an unpolluted environment
• participate in cultural and social events
• be equal citizens of their city with access
to every service, regardless of ethnic origin,
religion, income, gender or ability
18
Photo: meunierd/Shutterstock.com
IN THE PAST
WE’VE DONE
A BETTER JOB
OF BUILDING
cities for
cars THAN
PEOPLE
to promote after-school street play sessions – wheelie
bins and road closure signs keep the traffic out for a
few hours, with local residents acting as stewards.
A community-led movement in the US known as
Intersection Repair brings children and adults together
to paint intersections, with the aim of making drivers
more cautious; the bright, playful artwork on the
surface of a road makes them question their ownership
of the space, and whether children might be at play
nearby. And in the Netherlands, special ‘woonerf’
(recreation) streets even give pedestrians and cyclists
legal priority over motorists.
Such schemes run hand-in-hand with efforts
to return inner-city neighbourhoods to more mixed
functions, with low densities of family-friendly houses
and flats situated alongside schools, child care
centres, workplaces and leisure space. As well as
making life easier for families by reducing the time it
takes to transport children to good schools or care
facilities, the hope is that this will prevent the ‘dead
zones’ found in many urban centres outside of normal
working hours. Driskell believes that there is “still
a lot of work to do to recreate some of that family
supportive infrastructure”, but says “some cities
have really been at the forefront of trying to do that”,
including his own hometown of Boulder, which has
set up a project called Growing Up Boulder to ensure
young people’s views on local transportation issues,
child-friendly housing and even a youth-friendly
farmer’s market are included in planning decisions.
Rotterdam is also worthy of a place on any
child-friendly city list. Its own scheme saw housing
corporations, project developers, district councils,
parents and children collaborate to create more
child-friendly housing (with a room for each child in
the family), extended school activity programmes,
and pavements with a minimum 10ft width on one
side to encourage play. Containers full of roller skates,
skipping ropes and go-karts were also placed in some
neighbourhoods for children to borrow.
As with other child-friendly cities initiatives in
Melbourne, Vancouver, Liverpool and Amman,
children’s views were central to the development
of the scheme. This ties in with the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states
that children should have the right to freedom of
expression, including the freedom to seek, receive
and impart information and ideas of all kinds, through
any media they choose.
Children typically provide their opinions and
ideas for improvements to their environment
through drawings, walking interviews, photographs
and by taking part in children’s councils. Like
Boulder, Vancouver also operates an online site,
vancouveryouth.ca, digitally engaging young residents
in municipal decisions which affect their communities.
By participating in this way, children don’t just benefit
from an improved urban environment; they also grow
as people and form strong bonds with their home city.
As Driskell says: “It builds the kind of social capital
and community that is part of a child-friendly city, and
the feeling that they can make a change in the world
they live in, be a steward of the environment, and
work together with other people.”
In order to foster these kinds of opportunities in
the developing world, UNICEF helped create Ureport,
a social monitoring tool based on SMS messages, for
young Ugandans. Uganda has the world’s youngest
population, with more than half of its population
under the age of 18. The tool aims to strengthen
community-led development and citizen engagement
by helping young people speak out on what’s
happening in their communities, amplifying their
voices through local and national media, and alerting
local politicians about the issues their constituents
face. Useful information is fed back to ‘Ureporters’,
empowering them to improve their areas themselves.
In Kibera, Nairobi, where around two-thirds of
the population live in crowded informal settlements,
UNICEF is working with Map Kibera, by Open
Street Map, on a youth-led digital mapping pilot
program. A group of volunteers helped young people
– particularly young women and girls – to create a
digital map of their area, identifying vulnerabilities
related to their health and protection. This kind of
data is vitally important for bridging gaps in childhood
equality, and ensuring no child is left behind.
“Really, the more desegregated data we are able
to obtain on how children are living, in terms of the
wide breadth of things such as respiratory health,
water and sanitation access, but also play spaces and
mental health, the better we’ll be able facilitate these
things”, says Constabile.
The value of such projects is backed up by
research from the UK Economic and Social Research
Council, which has found that children are adept
at driving sustainability projects, often contributing
valuable insights and opinions that adults may
overlook. Its 2009 study ‘Exploring the role of
schools in developing sustainable communities’
claimed that children are keen to take on wider roles
and responsibilities, helping to shape and improve
their communities. “With their dynamism, energy
and new ideas, children demonstrate considerable
potential as agents of change”, says Dr PercySmith, a member of the research team at the time
of the study’s release. “But as a society we neither
encourage nor harness that energy and creativity.
We have too little respect for the abilities of children
and too many people feel that children either can’t or
shouldn’t take a lead on change.”
Hopefully, in future, their opinions will be sought
on an increasing range of subjects – not least the
cities where many of them will one day raise their
own children.
Nairobi: it’s their future
to map
“
UREPORT
EMPOWERS
CHILDREN
TO IMPROVE
THEIR AREAS
THEMSELVES
“
“
Pedestrian-friendly streets, protected bike routes
and good public transport links make it easier for
children (and the elderly) to get around independently.
Street trees, as well as neighbourhood parks and
gardens within a ten-minute walk of where children
live, are also vital for their development, and have
the added benefit of improving urban air quality.
Ideally, outdoor spaces should include a rich variety
of natural features, such as streams, ponds and
climbable trees. “Interaction with nature is important
for physical exercise and health”, says Crowhurst
Lennard, “but it also opens the senses, it sharpens
them – hearing, sight, smell, taste, touch and so on.
So it’s very important for developmental tasks, and
also for cognitive development [for instance, through
learning the names of trees, plants, animals, etc]”.
Opportunities to play safely outdoors with other
children have never been more in need. The RIBA
survey also found that in Liverpool, Newcastle,
Nottingham, Birmingham and London more than
one in five children are now obese. While in the US,
around one-third of children and adolescents are
overweight or obese, greatly increasing their chances
of developing diabetes and other medical conditions
in later life. Without regular exercise and contact
with nature, children are also more likely to suffer
from metal health problems, as well as have trouble
sleeping or concentrating at school.
In the past “we’ve done a better job of building
[cities] for cars than people”, says David Driskell,
Executive Director of Community Planning and
Sustainability for Boulder, Colorado, and former chair
of UNESCO’s ‘Growing Up In Cities’ project. But like
the children of Pijp, many child-friendly schemes are
reclaiming the streets for play. Playing Out Bristol, for
example, is a community interest company that aims
Duncan Jefferies is a freelance writer, and an editor
for Green Futures.
19
Golden years
“Engaged children become engaged adults”
Duncan Jefferies meets Abid Aslam, Editor of
‘The State of the World’s Children’ at UNICEF.
How can this situation
be improved?
I think this boils down to partnership
and accountability. When government
and businesses work in partnership
with people in a city’s poorest areas,
and especially when children and
young people in those areas are able to
participate in planning and evaluating
policies and programmes, we see
better results for entire cities: safer
neighbourhoods thanks to improved
lighting, for example, or lower burdens of
disease thanks to improved sanitation.
Likewise, children and young people
have valuable roles to play in holding
decision-makers and service providers to
account. Formal accountability – whether
through government ombudspersons or
the courts – should be made accessible
to children and young people, but social
accountability is also important.
Could social media enable more
children to speak out?
Yes. Young people are using social
media and mobile technology to
express themselves, to draw attention
to problems and solutions within their
communities. There are tremendous
opportunities but also challenges – for
example, how to ensure that children
are safe from bullies or predators when
they go online. But what does it mean
to speak out if you are not heard?
This is a matter of principle: under the
Convention on the Rights of the Child,
children have the right to participate in
decisions affecting their lives. It’s also
a practical matter. After all, no one is
in a better position to understand their
needs and evaluate the response than
children and young people themselves.
What form might that social
accountability take?
It takes various forms. In Brazil, under
the Municipal Seal of Approval initiative,
children’s councils have monitored and
influenced municipal budgets and held
authorities’ feet to the fire on priority
children’s programmes. Members of
South Africa’s Soul Buddyz youth clubs
have schooled themselves in children’s
rights and teamed up with TV camera
crews to goad service providers to
fix neglected problems. What’s also
20
Can children be a force for
engaging businesses in their
communities?
In many places they are, for example
by approaching companies to sponsor
sports activities. Of course, corporate
social responsibility is about more than
philanthropy. It’s about operating in
a sustainable and child-friendly way.
And it’s very much a part of everyday
business – or should be. Does a
company pay a living wage that allows
employees to raise their children well?
Does it stay and pay its taxes or flee the
jurisdiction once its tax holiday ends?
Is there a danger that childfriendly urban elements will
suffer in today’s economic
climate?
Austerity is driving up inequality and
child poverty, including in high-income
countries, not just in the developing
world. In many places we have seen
good work put on hold and even
retrenchment in public spending and
provision. This is troubling not only
because families are hurt today but
also because it takes longer to revive
infrastructure and services than it does
to gut them.
People with many years behind them are a great resource
of experience and enterprise. We must make better use
of it, says Jon Turney.
Getting on a bit. You know, long in the tooth.
That’s most of us in the future, according to
demographers.
With the usual caveats about calamity, those
in the know about population dynamics now
seem pretty confident that falling birth rates and
increased life expectancy will have only one
outcome: an ageing world. The two trends are
more advanced in some countries than others [see
box, ‘The demographic transition’], but generally
apply to most of the world’s population. And their
implications are likely to have a profound effect on
the way we view old age.
Instead of seeing the elderly as a demographic
that have already made the majority of their
contribution to the planet, we’re more likely to think
of them as a valuable source of enterprise and
experience. Indeed, many of the future’s ‘old’ will
belie our current stereotypes. There will be far more
active, fit people in their 60s and 70s, and they’ll be
planning to stay that way in their 80s. Old age will
no longer be synonymous with frailty, isolation or
dependence.
But the scale of the shift now under way calls
for some serious adaptation. Societies with higher
numbers of older people will need to develop
innovative health and education systems, as well
as new housing, transport, employment, financial
planning, architecture and urban design models, to
suit their needs. Many of these changes will benefit
everyone. Cities could be made easier to navigate,
for example, with improved public transport
Some people say that the
lean periods are an impetus
for innovation…
That may be true. What’s needed are
innovations that make it possible for
children who have been excluded from
services and opportunity to be included,
innovations that address the needs of
marginalised and vulnerable children,
that are accessible and affordable
for the poorest, and that do not
exacerbate disparities by benefiting
only the well-off.
How do you reach those people?
Contrary to what some might think, poor
people in cities tend to be well organised.
This stands to reason: how else to survive
under incredibly difficult circumstances
if not by pooling resources and filling the
vacuum where municipal governance
and services are lacking? So it’s a matter
of mustering the will to meet them,
understand their situation and include
them in infrastructure development and
broader efforts to reduce poverty – in
other words, to recognise them as the
rights-holding residents and economic
contributors they are.
How can we build more of
a community feel within
urban areas?
Often, the most profound obstacle to
the improvements we all seek is not
knowing from one week, month or year
to the next whether you will be forcibly
evicted and your home bulldozed.
Ensuring that poor people have adequate
housing and secure tenure must be a top
priority because this is their right but also
because this is a proven way to kick-start
community investment. Granted secure
tenure to their homes, impoverished
families start to scrimp and improve their
surroundings. And their children can go
to school because they no longer have to
stay near home to alert their parents if a
demolition squad shows up.
systems. And many more retirees will be able
to put their time and experience to good use as
volunteers. Different people living in different places
will make different choices. And we can be sure
they will want to choose: whether that’s to continue
working, to learn new skills or to have a varied
social life. All of which runs counter to pessimistic
notions that an army of dependent, non-productive
elders will overwhelm health services and care
workers in future.
Getting on: an ageing
world needs innovation
for access and mobility
Why the world is ageing
Photo: monkeybusinessimages/iStock/Thinkstock
happening is that children are getting
into the hang of participating, of making
demands, of being citizens and enjoying
the actual rights and privileges of
citizens, and this then makes them
more engaged adults as well.
Photo: Giacomo Pirozzi/UNICEF
Why are some cities further
ahead than others on childfriendly initiatives?
Resources play a major role, but even
wealthy cities, home to a country’s
political, commercial and cultural elites,
fail children, most noticeably the girls
and boys who live in slums cut off
from the housing, electricity, working
toilets, schools, clinics, parks and
public transportation taken for granted
in better-off precincts. So clearly this is
also about political will and governance.
Some places have relatively participatory
municipal governance, and in some
cities, members of the public even get to
determine how a portion of the municipal
budget is spent. Other city governments,
however, yield to vested interests or are
too ready to accept a status quo that
excludes large numbers of families from
the benefits of urban life.
In general, countries move from high birth and death rates to low
birth and death rates as they develop – which is known as the
demographic transition. Why does this occur? Primarily because
you don’t need to have as many children to ensure that some
will survive to look after you in old age; in developed nations, any
offspring are much more likely to make it past the key milestones
of their first and fifth birthdays. Therefore, people tend to raise
smaller families.
Result: a population with proportionately fewer children,
and more adults. But beyond the reduction in infant mortality,
life expectancy for adults is now increasing too. In Europe, for
example, a 70-year-old has the same probability of dying as a 57
-year-old had half a century ago. And this trend is ongoing, with
life expectancy in the developed world increasing by two years
per decade.
In fact, 25% of the global population will be over 60 by 2050,
outnumbering those aged under 15. Some countries are well
ahead of this curve already. In Japan, for instance, 25% of the
population is already over 65, and life expectancy for men is 80,
and 86 for women.
As the number of old people increases worldwide, the ageing
effect will shift to developing countries, with rapid changes in
India and China. By 2050, 68% of the world’s population over 80
will be living in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.
But the increase in the very old will continue in existing
developed countries too. The number of centenarians in the UK
alone went up from 2,500 in 1982 to 12,300 in 2012. Only a start,
says Professor Sarah Harper of the Oxford Institute on Ageing,
who estimates there will be around half a million UK centenarians
by 2050, and potentially a million by the end of the century.
21
Workplaces
must adapt
to retain the
knowledge of
older staff
“
22
The increase in the number of older adults
is provoking some innovative thinking from
designers and social entrepreneurs. The
UK’s innovation think tank Nesta has begun
to catalogue ideas to help old people stay
connected and increase their well-being by
staying active. Their list covers a ‘virtual’ tea
room, trialled by Intel, one of a number of
schemes connecting old people with others
from their homes – in this case, by using a
simple tablet interface to talk to friends and
neighbours. Other solutions include IT support
for carers, using movement sensors to
monitor elderly people remotely, and a private
social network to connect the carer with the
individual should they have any concerns.
The Austrian supermarket chain Adeg has
also introduced wider aisles and improved
lighting to suit older customers – something
that will benefit shoppers of all ages. Early
trials of the new layout and lighting features
resulted in a 20% increase in sales, and the
design has now been rolled out across all the
retailer’s stores.
Nevertheless, an overall increase in the
number of older people, and the eventual increase
in what we now regard as the really old (those
in their 90s and centenarians), will mean more
people living with chronic conditions and needing
regular care, which of course costs money.
Supporting people with dignity throws up a host
of moral issues: what quality of life, for instance,
does a centenarian with poor health enjoy? And
is it right that younger generations will have to
bear the brunt of the social and financial costs
of caring for them?
Figuring out the finances of a greying planet
already preoccupies numerous governments, think
tanks and old age advocacy groups. There are two
big trends to consider. Developed countries with
state pension provision, faced with a cohort of
ageing baby-boomers, are cutting back; benefits
are static or decreasing, and the age at which they
are payable is rising. The age when pensions start
is set to increase in the US, France, Italy, Spain,
Britain and Japan, currently the country with the
world’s oldest population.
That means retirement comes later. Employers
will have to manage the workforce differently,
balancing the needs and insights of older, more
experienced employees against those of younger
staff. Currently, the valuable contributions of
many fit, older workers are simply lost when
government legislation forces them to retire sooner
than they might wish. Some governments are
taking steps to address this, however. Singapore,
which had a retirement age of 62, brought in
the Retirement and Re-Employment Act in
2012. Backed by some government money, it
requires companies to offer re-employment to
fit, capable employees until they are 67. It makes
sound economic sense: in countries with ageing
populations, employers will increasingly have to
draw from a smaller pool of young workers.
More employers are also finding that older
workers have skills that are hard to replace. In
some cases, workplaces might need to adapt
to retain their knowledge. BMW recently staffed
an engine production line in one plant to give an
average age of 47, in order to study how to adapt
the line’s design to their needs. Answers included
more comfortable seating, a schedule for short
breaks, alternating sitting and standing, and
some visual aids. Altogether, the changes they
made as a result allowed the line to increase
productivity to the same levels as others run by
younger employees.
Tomorrow’s employment landscape will need to
allow people to change jobs, opt for working from
home or flexi-time hours, and mix part-time paid
work, voluntary work and caring for grandchildren.
After all, well-being relies on feeling connected and
contributing. With childcare costs rising in many
Western countries, a happy, healthy grandparent
who’s willing to lend a hand will be a godsend
for families.
Acknowledging this, the light-hearted ‘Men’s
Sheds’ movement that began in Australia aims to
create spaces where people – most often elderly
men, but not exclusively old or male – can share
facilities to work on projects that need the kind of
equipment often found in the shed. It also allows
them to learn, as well as teach, new skills, thereby
benefitting the wider community. Activities include
woodwork, metalwork, bike repairs, gardening,
electronics and photography. However, the bonds
of even the strongest family can be strained by
the costs of caring for elderly relatives. With this
in mind, 101 countries have introduced noncontributory state-funded ‘social pensions’,
Photos: Andresr/Shutterstock; Mikael Damkier/Shutterstock
“
Staying connected
Photo: Steve Mason/Digital Vision/Thinkstock
Right: Grandparents
alleviate the rising cost
of childcare
Far right: Social schemes
support the adage, it’s
never too late to learn
according to HelpAge International – some with
a greater reach than others. They include China,
whose New Rural Pension Scheme launched in
2009 and applies to 133 million over 60-year-olds.
These schemes typically guarantee a minimum
of support, and can have a big impact on families
with stretched resources. A third of these have
started since the year 2000, but the first was
introduced in South Africa back in 1928, finally
achieving racial parity in 1996. A Massachusetts
Institute of Technology study in the year 2000
found that granddaughters of families whose
elderly members received the social pension
were 2-4cm taller than a comparable group. By
reallocating resources in this way, governments
can provide greater support for the ageing
population while helping younger generations.
In future, technological and medical advances
could also help to address many of the issues that
can prevent the elderly from contributing to society.
Exoskeletons that can help people walk, lift heavy
objects and generally remain as capable as any
younger person are currently in development, and
new treatments for Alzheimer’s and other diseases
that afflict the elderly are expected to arrive in the
coming decades.
The simple fact that there are more old
people around may mean that isolation is less
of a risk too. Future centenarians will be able
to have something almost none had before:
friends their own age. Hopefully, the social and
technological changes that will help keep people
active for longer will also transform them from an
under-stimulated cohort into what they really are:
a growing resource of experience and enterprise.
Rise of the silver surfer
While some older people remain offline, many are enthusiastic users of the
internet. These ‘silver surfers’ are able to keep in touch with children and
grandchildren, as well as the wider online world, offering their insights and
opinions no matter where they happen to live. And to paraphrase a line
from a famous New Yorker cartoon, “on the internet, nobody knows you’re
an OAP”. In other words, age discrimination, mobility problems and other
age-related issues typically have little relevance in your online life.
Plenty of grandparents already use Skype and its emulators to make
video calls to distant children, and the market for connecting families is
attracting more innovators. A company called Ceiva has developed a
digital photo frame that allows you to send pictures wirelessly for display
to whoever owns the frame – a grandparent, perhaps?
Elderly people who don’t wish to be hooked up to the internet can
still make use of the Presto mailbox, a phone-linked printer which delivers
documents or photos from authorised senders without an internet
connection. Messages can be scheduled to help organise the recipient’s
day, and friends and family can also monitor how many messages are
coming in.
Jon Turney is a freelance writer and author of
‘The Rough Guide to the Future’.
23
Photos: xxxxx
Photos: xxxxx
Root canal treatment
Long used to rats and cockroaches, residents along the Estero de Paco canal
in Manila are welcoming more appealing wildlife. “We now have butterflies”, says
Gloria Solomon, 53, who lives beside the 2km waterway, effectively an open sewer for
some 10,000 people. It is dramatically cleaner thanks to a patented treatment system
designed by a Scottish company, Biomatrix Water. Floating ‘active island reactors’
oxygenate the sewage-laden water while providing a habitat for pollution-digesting
bacteria on the roots of aquatic plants. Fish are also returning.
Image: Galen Fulford, Biomatrix Water
24
25
Farming the city
Growing underground
Cities worldwide are getting serious about local food production
– with good reason, finds Anna Simpson.
Unlike its neighbours, Singapore does not
consider itself an agricultural nation. Rightly so
– for now, at least. Whereas Malaysia is self-sufficient
in poultry, pork and eggs, cultivates fruit such as
mango and papaya for domestic consumption, and
exports cocoa, cereals and flour – Singapore depends
on imports for 90% of its food. Too many people and
not enough land has long been the situation, but are
perceptions of what’s possible within limited resources
about to change?
Michael Doherty thinks so. He’s the founder
of a US-based company called Bitponics that
aims to simplify local growing, using sensors to
measure pH levels, nutrients, temperature and
humidity. In 2013 he came to Singapore for a residency
with the Art-Science Museum, exploring local
responses to ‘aquaponics’ – a closed-loop system to
grow edible plants in nutrient-rich water. (The detritus
in the water is eaten by little fish, whose excrement
in turn nourishes the plants.) Doherty focused on the
aesthetics of the system, looking to improve its cultural
fit by working with local artisans and materials.
Since then, he’s been working with the start-up
Homegrw to turn the concept into a local reality – and
it’s taking root. By the time Chinese New Year came
round, it had rice and red fruit at the ready, grown at the
People’s Park Complex in Chinatown. “Didn’t we say
these systems produced culturally relevant food?” –
the team boasted to hundreds of fans on Facebook.
The challenge, for Doherty, is familiarity. “There
is a huge disconnection between food and how it
is produced. I’ve worked with many students here.
When they plant a seed and see it grow, and then
in a few weeks have a head of lettuce, it’s like magic
to them…”
26
Webster is looking to lease 600m2 for a pilot commercial farm
on a brownfield site this year, producing 20 tonnes of salad a year –
not to mention four tonnes of decidedly edible fish. The fresh salad
finds a ready market. The fish side, though, could be trickier to
scale. It’s not so much raising tilapia that worries Webster, but the
rules that govern fish farming may be extremely strict, he says.
Nonetheless, GrowUp’s close control of inputs makes him
confident about key issues like water purity. There’s also a
host of special requirements, from staff skills to certification,
if you want to process and sell fresh fish off-site. Barbequing
the whole batch from one GrowUp box is fine for a party at the
end of a demonstration cycle, but servicing regular clients means
delivering a steady flow of right-sized fish, and an investment
in equipment that’s hard to justify if you’re starting small.
– Roger East
Photo: GrowUp Urban Farms London
GrowUp in London, ECF in Berlin and New York’s Gotham Greens
are getting around the lack of land without racking up the food miles
and the carbon count. These start-ups have devised ‘container
farm’ solutions: aquaponic systems based on shipping containers
(see image, right).
The beauty is in the balance. GrowUp hardly adds any
supplementary (organic) fertiliser to what the fish provide. Their
chosen fish, tilapia, are omnivorous, so there’s no need to deplete
the oceans to provide them with fish meal. Rainwater harvesting
covers most, and sometimes all, of the water requirements. On
the right site, the plants could also use waste heat and CO2-rich
ventilation air – especially, as co-founder Tom Webster says, once
developers get over the hurdle of unfamiliarity and open the way for
building-integrated aquaponics. It’s now a case of spreading the
word – and taking it to scale.
Photo: ECF Farmsystems Berlin
Thinking inside the box
One customer is Bjorn Shen, a Singaporean
who trained as a chef in Australia, then came back
to found the restaurant Artichoke – the first in the
country to have a kitchen garden. He’s also expressed
an interest in sourcing ingredients from Comcrop,
another aquaponic vegetable and fish farm, occupying
6,000 square feet of roof space in the middle of the
shopping district on Orchard Road. It will be a more
pricey source than the supermarkets, but Shen says
he is willing to pay a premium for a fresh harvest. “We
believe in quality first ... as long as customers are
willing to pay a bit more for something of great quality.”
Comcrop claims it can produce eight to 10 times
more than traditional farms over the same area. But
urban farming at significant scale will require a more
mainstream change of mindset. Signs of one are
emerging. Speaking at a food industry convention in
October 2013, the Minister for National Development,
Mr Khaw Boon Wan, announced a further investment
of SGD 10 million (c. £5 million) for research and
development in local food farming technology,
the production capability of local farms and food
source diversification. He encouraged the industry to
“leverage” this fund to “boost Singapore’s food supply
resilience”, particularly in chicken, pork, fish, eggs,
leafy vegetables and rice.
Local production is a “core component of our food
security roadmap”, said Ms Tan Poh Hong, CEO of the
Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA), which runs
the national Food Fund. “Local farms can provide a
buffer in times of sudden import disruptions, and serve
as a platform to test-bed agricultural innovations to
increase food supply. Having an active local farming
sector also ensures that commercial farming skills
and expertise within the country are not lost.” She
also spoke of the need “to imagine what the future of
farming would be like”, asserting that “farmscrapers”
are already being tested around the world. Plantagon,
a Swedish company, has signed a memorandum of
understanding with Nanyang Technological University
to develop the first tropical prototype of their planting
system for Singapore, she noted.
In major cities cross the world, authorities are
exploring the possibility of urban farming at scale.
project could take over in time. Nutrients are all organic. Air
traps keep out pests. The produce from their tests has passed
taste and freshness tests with flying colours. Distribution? One
mile down the road to market at New Covent Garden, from
where it could be eaten anywhere in London within a day.
Testing the concept took two years, Ballard explains, but
interest surged as soon as they went public. With their pitch on
crowdfunding site Crowdcube going strongly, he’s confident
they’ll meet their first year’s £1 million funding target. Yearround production down on the farm is set to begin this autumn
on 1000m2 of three-tier growing benches.
Their first tunnel site, leased for 25 years from Transport
for London (TfL), should allow them space for a further six-fold
expansion. And after that? TfL has seven more spare tunnels,
says Ballard, but Zero Carbon Food has other urban growing
ambitions too, such as vertical farming in converted high-rise
blocks. Their key asset, it seems, is the ability to think laterally
about land. – Roger East
Vancouver has allocated funding to increase city and
neighbourhood food assets by 50% over 2010 levels
by 2020, raising the number of urban farms from 17
to 35 by 2020, and the number of community garden
plots from 3,640 to 5,000. Its goal is simply to develop
a just and sustainable food system – and become the
greenest city in the world.
By contrast, in Rosario, Argentina, urban farming
is seen as a means to redevelop the economy, provide
employment, empower women, and discourage
squatting on vacant land. Here, the drive comes from
the UN’s Urban Agriculture Program, which is working
with local businesses and organisations, funded by the
local authorities.
Whether the goal is food security, jobs and skills,
empowering women or winning global renown,
leaders expect more from their investment in urban
food production than simply home-grown pak choi
on demand. With new research, published in Nature
Climate Change, to show that global warming of only
2°C will reduce yields in temperate and tropical regions
from the 2030s, I suspect they’re right to do so.
Anna Simpson is Editor, Green Futures.
“
local farming
ensures
commercial
skills aren’t
lost
“
Disused for decades, the ex-air raid shelter tunnels underneath
Clapham have got a new lease of life, producing herbs, shoots
and microgreens for London restaurants. For Zero Carbon
Foods start-up founders Richard Ballard and Steven Dring, the
hydroponic, LED-lit, tunnel-based, central London sited solution
they’ve branded as “Growing Underground” ticks a surprising
number of sustainability boxes.
At 33m below ground, they start with a constant
temperature of 16°C. Banks of LED lights, switched on 18 hours
a day, give off enough heat to raise this to 20°C, ideal for plant
growth. The plants grow in trays, with nutrient-rich water fed
hydroponically to their roots, on a 3cm substrate of hemp and
recycled carpet. Post-harvest, they’ll recycle this again, locally,
as biomass fuel.
Hydroponics, says Ballard, is 70% more water-efficient
than conventional growing. Electricity needs, mainly to run the
lights and electric delivery vehicles, are currently sourced from
renewables through Good Energy, but a community-based solar
Left: Aquaponic peppers
Below: GrowUp brings
people closer to their
food using shipping
containers, but without
the miles.
27
“
Fashion
is about
creating
something
you can be
proud of
“
28
Strauss are all members of the Better Cotton Initiative,
which aims to mainstream sustainable production of
the fibre [see the Green Futures Special Edition ‘Cotton
Conundrum’], and Greenpeace’s Detox Fashion
campaign is working with Adidas, Nike and Puma to
reduce the use of toxics in their supply chain.
Williams has been working with the Fashion
Revolution, a cross-industry campaign established
in the wake of Rana Plaza to act as a catalyst for
change, prompting consumers across the world to
tweet at the brand whose clothes they are wearing,
and ask who made it. As Williams observes, just
as the severe weather events make us look at the
influence of the global climate on the weather, so
issues like Rana Plaza should make us all look at
the kinds of system in which we play a part.
“If you look at it on a systemic level, we
have not stepped forward an inch”, she asserts,
calling for “a consensus that the system must be
addressed”. This, Williams explains, means looking
beyond the mere choice and source of materials
– whether it’s organic cotton or conventional,
recycled or recyclable – to the foundations of fast
fashion, asking how over-consumption relates to
the exploitative production of cheap goods, and
seeking alternative ways to address our appetite
for style. “Fashion is about creating an identity,
something which you can be proud of”, she says.
“It is not simply a matter of having more legislation
on labelling, or concerning the use of chemicals.”
A key question is why there has not been
more progress. Four years ago, Forum for the
Future published a report outlining the issues
facing the industry and four potential scenarios
for development – some of which are starting to
unfold. Couture to ‘upcycle’ used fabrics is gaining
ground in hip cafes and on catwalks; Marks &
Spencer’s ‘shwopping’ campaign encourages
donations to Oxfam; and the UK House of Lords
recently held a ‘swishing’ event with the sustainable
communications agency Futerra, encouraging
consumers to swap clothes rather than bin them
and buy more. Alternative materials are also
nudging their way into the mainstream: last year,
Levi’s launched a pair of jeans made using plastic
from recycled bottles [see GF87, p15].
But reuse, recycling and upcycling only go so
far, says Nick Ryan, Director of the closed-loop
textiles organisation Worn Again. “If we want to
eradicate waste, we need to work with major
industry”, he says, stressing the complexity of the
supply chain. A typical pair of jeans, he points out,
might say ‘Made in Egypt’ on the label, but also
includes chemical dyes produced in Brazil, copper
Heather Connon is a freelance journalist specialising
in finance and investment.
“
Commodities
as we know
them will not
exist in the
future
It’s increasingly the
stories behind the clothes
that will steal the show
Photo: Mannequino at Best of Britannia / E60
The collapse of Rana
Plaza is prompting
fashion brands to think
about the people they
depend on
Fashion is one
of the world’s
most important
industries. It
is worth around
$1.5 trillion a year,
employs more than
25 million people, and
fashion-conscious or
not, we all wear its
products. Yet most
of us know very little
about where our clothes
come from or how they
are put together. Even
those who assiduously
read the labels will
glean only limited information: if a country of origin
is shown, this could be where the garment was
designed or assembled – but the source of the
raw material and the conditions under which it
was converted to fabric and then pieced together
remains pretty much invisible.
This ignorance was brutally exposed by the
disaster in Bangladesh last year, where more than
1,100 workers lost their lives when the Rana Plaza
factory collapsed. Even the executives of the
companies which sourced their materials from the
site were not fully aware of the appalling working
conditions and abysmal safety standards which
operate across far too much of the industry. There
are also significant environmental issues, from the
pesticides and water used in cotton production to the
chemicals used in the laundry of the products; and
from the culture of consumerism, which is encouraging
us all to buy far more than we actually need, to the
problems of disposing of discarded garments.
Yet fashion company reports are full of
commitments to sustainable sourcing policies
and ethical production – claims which can sound
hollow when Rana Plaza and other scandals
expose the industry’s failure to live up to these
standards. Dilys Williams, Director of the Centre for
Sustainable Fashion, points out that it is more than
a quarter of a century since the media first exposed
labour issues at Gap and Nike. Since then, some
important policies and frameworks have come into
place to support brands to take action, such as
the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human
Rights (2011), the California Transparency in Supply
Chains Act (2010) and the Alliance for Bangladesh
Worker Safety (2013).
Brands are also signing up to cross-industry
collaborations; for instance, H&M, Adidas and Levi
Photo: Ismail Ferdous
The industry is gearing up for a system-wide shift,
says Heather Connon.
third of the market, has a viable blueprint to reduce
the environmental and social impacts of apparel. In
December 2013, it launched the Higgs Index 2.0,
which poses a series of questions within a webbased wiki on areas like human rights, raw material
sustainability, energy efficiency and corruption. This
tool allows companies to evaluate the impact of
their business and supply chain, and quickly assess
how to make improvements.
Aditya Birla has made a public commitment to
become the leader in India for sustainable business
practices by 2017. When we spoke, Henshaw was
engaged in a series of visits to group companies,
helping them use a Higgs-based sustainability
roadmap. He is convinced that this is essential
business sense. He believes that large companies
will increasingly move towards choosing suppliers
with high Higgs scores. “If you are good enough
to be in a global supply chain you will do well, but
if you are not, you could find it difficult”, he warns.
“Over time, people will start to align around the
index and its requirements.”
This isn’t just a trend, he says: it’s a
fundamental shift in the commodities market.
“In my opinion, commodities as we know
them today will not exist in the future, because
sustainability issues will translate into product
attributes. We will move from commodities priced
according to the cost of production to a valueadded system. There could be a shake-out period
for companies that score poorly.”
An enticing prospect for early adopters of best
practice in the industry. The rest may find next
season is their last.
“
Fashion fix
rivets sourced in China, and buttons made in India
from zinc sourced in China, Peru or Australia.
Louise Armstrong, a Senior Advisor who
works in the system innovation lab at Forum for
the Future, says companies are realising that they
cannot conduct best practice in a bubble. “They
are experiencing pressure in their supply chains,
and looking for ways to create resilience.”
Some system-wide initiatives are beginning
to emerge, bringing together both sustainable
production and training to promote long-term
thinking in managerial decisions. Impactt, an
ethical trade consultancy, has just embarked on
its second Benefits for Business and Workers
(BBW) programme, which will scale up its initial
work with 93 factories in India and Bangladesh to
develop cost-effective and replicable systems for
more sustainable production. Funded by the UK
Department for International Development through
its RAGS (Responsible and Accountable Garments
Sector) Challenge Fund, the initial programme
included the Arcadia Group, Marks & Spencer
and Ralph Lauren, and it involved six months of
training for managers – with impressive results. In
those factories engaged, efficiency improved by an
average of 18%, absenteeism by more than a third
and worker turnover fell by more than 50% while
take-home pay rose by an average of 7.6%. Now
the programme is being extended to 100 factories
with seven companies participating, including
Tesco from the UK and the US giant Wal-Mart.
Tony Henshaw, Chief Sustainability Officer
of Aditya Birla – an Indian conglomerate whose
businesses range from plantations to production of
pulps and fibres through to retail brands – believes
that the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), a
trade organisation which represents more than a
29
Storm defence
Offshore wind farms and tidal lagoons may offer protection from
the elements, as well as clean energy. Ibrahim Maiga reports.
“
30
of storm damage, with the cost of investment in fossil
fuels. Turbines may also prove cheaper than erecting
a seawall to protect from storm surge, the study finds,
as the turbines pay for themselves through the energy
they generate. Moreover, seawalls won’t prevent
hurricane damage.
On the other side of the Atlantic, where floods have
alerted policy-makers to climate change risk, another
development could see tidal lagoons deployed to
both generate renewable energy and protect against
flooding. Tidal Lagoon Power submitted an application
to build the first tidal lagoon in the world in Swansea
Bay. Construction could start in 2015, with power
generated from 2018, providing power to 120,000
homes for 120 years – with an adaptation plan for likely
sea level rise built into the design. Early consultations
for further lagoons in Somerset, North Wales and
the North West identified strong interest from local
communities in the role that energy infrastructure of this
kind may play in enhancing flood and coastal defences.
The lagoon works much like a canal lock, keeping
the enclosed water out of step with the sea level, and
generating renewable energy by allowing water to
flow downwards through the turbines. The seawall
constructed to hem in the water would act as a barrier
against flooding by increasing the hydraulic gradient –
or the slope – any sea water would have to overcome
to flood the land. During a storm surge, the lagoon
operator could also hold water in the bay low while the
seawall keeps surge water out.
“Our intention is to supply 10% of the UK’s
domestic electricity by building at least five full-scale
tidal lagoons in UK waters by 2023, before the UK sees
any generation from new nuclear”, said Mark Shorrock,
CEO of Tidal Lagoon Power, which is considering
optimising subsequent designs for flood defence.
In the future, it’s possible that both offshore wind
turbines and tidal lagoons will be staples of the climate
change adaptation toolkit for coastal communities. For
now, proof of concept remains the greatest hurdle.
Ibrahim Maiga is a freelance writer on sustainability and
entrepreneurship.
The ultimate insider’s view of corporate responsibility and ethics
from the boardrooms of some of the world’s largest corporations
RESPONSIBLE LEADERSHIP
Lessons from the Front Line of Sustainability and Ethics
Mark Moody-Stuart
With Forewords by Mark Malloch-Brown, former UN Deputy Secretary-General,
and Sir Robert Wilson, KCMG, former Executive Chairman of Rio Tinto plc;
former Chairman of BG Group plc
Published by Greenleaf Publishing Available March 2014 366+xxii pp 234 x 156 mm
hardback ISBN 978-1-906093-96-9 £25.00 €30.00 $40.00
PDF ebook ISBN 978-1-78353-077-9 £20.00 €25.00 $35.00
ePub ebook ISBN 978-1-78353-078-6 £20.00 €25.00 $35.00
www.greenleaf-publishing.com/lessons
Photo: Mimadeo/iStock/Thinkstock
“
the hurricane
disSipates by
the time it
reaches the
turbines
Evidence is mounting that certain renewable
energy technologies can be deployed to defend
against floods and storms. This would significantly
change the investment case for those renewables.
Modelling by Stanford Professor Mark Jacobsen
published in the journal, Nature Climate Change,
suggests that an array of 10,000 offshore wind
turbines could cut hurricane wind speeds by up to
90 miles per hour by extracting kinetic energy from
the outer winds. This reduces air flow to the
hurricane’s centre, eventually slowing the hurricane
and causing it to dissipate more rapidly.
Jacobsen modelled the observed storm tracks
and peak near-surface wind speeds for hurricanes
Katrina, Isaac and Sandy both with and without wind
turbines. He found that “offshore wind turbine arrays
reduced storm surge by up to 34% for Sandy and 79%
for Katrina, mainly owing to the average wind speed
decreasing by up to 14% and 58% upwind of New
York and New Orleans, respectively”.
Jacobsen still has a way to go before convincing
some peers of the results, including Professor
Robert Falconer, Director of the Hydro-environmental
Research Centre in the Cardiff School of Engineering.
“I find it hard to imagine that offshore wind farms would
tame hurricanes. I would expect hurricanes to tear the
wind farms to pieces”, says Falconer.
Jacobsen counters that the paper acknowledges
“the potential for turbine damage as an issue”, but
the studies found that, “whether it’s in the Gulf Coast
or East Coast, the hurricane actually dissipates by
the time it reaches the turbines”. He adds that the
modelling was based on current wind turbine designs,
which cut out at very high wind speeds to prevent
damage. However, even with a ‘cut-out speed’ of 34
metres per second (a standard setting), the turbines
achieved “significant reductions in both wind speed
and storm surge”.
Such modelling, however successful, won’t make a
case for investment per se. However, if the cost savings
in hurricane avoidance, health and climate damage
are taken into account, the investment in offshore wind
turbines may compare favourably, for a region at risk
Sir Mark Moody-Stuart is as qualified as anyone on the planet to discuss the realities, dilemmas and lessons to be learnt
from the last 20 years of corporate engagement with sustainability, ethics and responsibility. In this unique book – part
memoir, part confessional, part manifesto for leadership – we hear of dealings with dictators and prime ministers, colleagues
and NGOs, rivals and friends. We travel from Syria to Nigeria; Iraq to Downing Street; and from the machinations of the
United Nations to those inside the boardroom of Shell. We see Shell’s annus horribilis in 1995 unfold
through the eyes of an insider, and how Brent Spar and the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa sent shockwaves
through the company, resulting in a complete reappraisal of its mission and principles. We hear lessons
from a life spent living in ten different countries and we come to realise that, for corporations, trying
to do the right thing can sometimes be almost impossible. We also come to know a deeply ethical and
thoughtful leader who has always tried to do exactly that.
RL_greenfutures_ad.indd 1
25/02/2014 14:55
31
32
of this Earth. ‘Sustainable living’ is simply a lifestyle
where we attempt to take as little from the Earth
as possible. The concept of reducing our carbon
footprint is the more modern way of looking at this
– as the world comes to realise that in many cases,
humans have not used resources sparingly or wisely.”
A simple enough concept, but Ruth is under
no illusion that it is easy to implement. “One of the
biggest challenges for businesses in pushing for
sustainable development is that not everybody is
going to get it right the first time. The movement
is still gathering momentum and we are all trying
to establish models and designs that are both
sustainable and cost-effective; it is still very much
in the experimental stage. Nor is it always easy to
convince external stakeholders and individuals in the
industry that discussions on sustainability should be
at the top of the agenda in business strategy.”
Yeoh joined her family business, YTL Group,
in 2005 – 50 years after her grandfather started
it. The company is now Malaysia’s biggest major
infrastructure conglomerate, with over $3 billion in
cash. Over 85% of its revenue comes from abroad,
with extensive operations in Asia, Australia and the
UK, where it owns the utility Wessex Water. In the
early days it was a humble construction company,
building low-cost housing and hospitals for the
nation. For its founder Yeoh Tiong Lay, after whom
the group is named, the business was a way of
contributing to a wider, shared goal: building the
nation. Serving the community and developing better
living environments was the only way forward, and
he passed this intention onto all seven of his children,
including Ruth’s father. She confirms that it still comes
through loud and clear: “My Father, and our Managing
Director, Tan Sri Dr Francis Yeoh, consistently reminds
us to be a ‘force for good’.”
Little wonder, then, that Ruth – in contrast to
many sustainability pioneers – found her ideas to
protect the environment and serve the community
“well accepted and embraced by the board, senior
management and staff from the start”. She counts
this a blessing, and recognises that she also had a
lot to learn from them: “I am thankful for my mentors
in the various business units who have been with
the company for a long time and taught me about
Photo: Wessex Water
Ruth Yeoh:
environmental
evangelist
“One is an
environmentalist
whether one likes it
or not.” So says Ruth
Yeoh, Executive Director
for YTL Singapore,
Director at YTL’s inhouse carbon credit
and clean development
mechanism (CDM)
consultancy, and
winner of the inaugural
Singapore Environmental
Achievement Award,
conferred by the
Singapore Environmental
Council in 2012. It’s a
statement that many
executive directors might
struggle to endorse, and
certainly to illustrate. For
Ruth, it’s a question of
corporate strategy, as
well as personal belief.
As she sees it, business
is not only about survival
but also about caring for
your wider stakeholders,
employees and their
families. Being an
environmentalist, she says, is “symbiotic” to this.
She observes that sustainability is becoming
an increasingly important topic in corporate
boardrooms globally. For most, this is down to the
‘survival’ element: not only to ensure the resilience
of supply chains and resources in the face of severe
challenges, such as water shortages and crop failure,
but also to keep up with regulation and abreast of
the competitive edge that best practice brings. But
it’s the ‘caring’ aspect that makes it part and parcel
of life for Yeoh – something she believes should be
instinctive, even if the finer details of making it work
have to be learnt. She’s a Christian, and quick to
attribute her own conviction to her faith, which is also
that of her family. “I understand stewardship from
biblical scripture: we are meant to be God’s stewards
Photo: YTL Corporation
Ruth Yeoh, Executive Director YTL Singapore,
tells Anna Simpson why being an environmentalist
isn’t a matter of choice.
test done in the UK. In addition, GENeco has set up
the first food waste recycling and renewable energy
facility in Bristol to help businesses and community in
food waste management and reduce gas emissions
from landfill. The biogas produced from the recycling
is used to produce electricity and also power the
Bio-Bug vehicle.” Wessex Water was awarded the
“Queen’s Award for Enterprise and Sustainable
Development” twice in recognition of its efforts.
Given YTL’s global reach and sheer size, it’s
clear to Ruth that the more it can collaborate to
drive forward solutions, the more likely it is that such
innovations will have an impact at scale. “We find
that working cooperatively with NGOs and combining
forces to roll out a shared vision in conservation helps
us leverage our different skillsets and resources, so
that we can apply them to projects we undertake
worldwide”, Ruth observes. “The relationship
between corporations and NGOs has evolved from
one of conflict to cooperation. On the conservation
front, for example, YTL has strategic partnerships
with The Nature Conservancy, Rare Conservation
and Reef Check Malaysia, among others. With Rare
Conservation, we have developed the YTL-RARE
Fellowship programmes throughout South East
Asia, where we educate community leaders who
will go on to create their own ‘mini’ campaigns for
their communities.” Ruth was appointed as the
youngest Board Member of Rare Conservation (a USbased non-profit) in 2008, with responsibilities in its
Governance Committee. She is also a board member
at Reef Check Malaysia, dedicated to protecting
coral life in the Southeast Asian region, and works to
develop environmental protection strategies in Asia in
partnership with leaders and practitioners.
As a Fellow at Asia Society’s Asia 21 Young
Leaders Initiative, and a leader herself within a family
business, she is particularly interested in the role
of the next generation. For the last five years, she’s
been involved in the Climate Change Week Youth
Workshops. In 2010, she supported the launch of a
book co-authored by Gabriel and Raphaelle Tseng,
aged 14 and 11, which tells the story of ‘Billy the
Plastic Bag’. These siblings will now be young adults,
perhaps starting enterprises of their own…
Anna Simpson is Editor, Green Futures.
“
leaders in the
community
should pay it
forward
“
Strategic
stewardship
energy-savings in operations.” With the support of the
board, Ruth established the Environmental Division
(now known as the Sustainability Division) – to find
solutions across all the businesses to minimise the
group’s impact, and set in place formal reporting
mechanisms and sustainability targets, such as
reducing emissions for the group. The Division also
established a group-wide Sustainability Committee,
bringing its global network of businesses together to
share new innovations and report their sustainability
efforts. This ‘show and share’ approach is both a
mechanism for learning and for driving ambition – not
just in the company but across all the sectors and
geographies in which it operates.
“One of the biggest themes we emphasise at
YTL is environmental evangelism, and this is not
geographically constrained. It involves educating
the public about the environment but also placing
responsibility on key leaders in the community to pay
it forward. Personally, having led many sustainability
initiatives in Malaysia and other parts of Asia, and
also having visited our business operations around
the world, I have observed that countries approach
environmental sustainability in very different ways. For
example, compared with Malaysia, where initiatives
revolve around wildlife conservation, Singapore
takes a different approach. Being somewhat of
an urban jungle and land constrained, the country
has managed to turn itself into a garden city with
a good balance of both green and urban spaces.
Orchard Road is a case in point. Although the area is
Singapore’s most popular shopping district, the road
is lined with trees and flowers.”
For YTL, setting an example is not just about
establishing the brand as a global leader but about
bringing others along too. Ruth points to YTL
Construction, which was recently awarded the Green
and Gracious Builder Award, introduced by the
Singapore Building and Construction Authority to
set standards for green practice in the construction
industry. She also speaks with some pride of YTL’s
UK subsidiary, Wessex Water: “It was the first private
company to publish an action plan in 1998, following
the Rio Earth Summit, and to maintain it as a live
document, routinely updated following changes to
legislation – such as the UK Government’s Natural
Environment White Paper and Biodiversity 2020.”
During 2012, Ruth recounts, Wessex Water exceeded
government targets for biodiversity recovery, through
habitat management for birds, bats and bees on
nearly 300 hectares of land that it manages which
are designated as Sites of Special Scientific Interest.
Wessex Water also works with farmers to help them
manage their use of nitrates and pesticides to prevent
contamination of drinking water sources, and in 2013
partnered with the South Wiltshire Farmland Bird
Project, working closely with farmers along a new
pipeline route they are laying to protect some of the
UK’s rarest farmland bird species.
For Ruth, corporate stewardship needs to go
hand in hand with government legislation to advance
industry standards. But real leadership – beyond
the incremental – requires continual innovation, she
asserts. “Take Wessex Water’s subsidiary, GENeco.
It has developed a Volkswagen Beetle vehicle that is
powered by methane gas derived from human waste
during the sewage treatment process. the first such
Wessex Water’s Bio-Bug
runs on human waste
33
SallyUren
Forum for the Future’s Network is a global community of leaders, united by their
ambition and capacity to create real and lasting change. For more information,
visit www.forumforthefuture.org
3M
www.3m.com
Clarks International
www.clarks.co.uk
ABF Plc
[email protected]
ClimateCare
+44 (0)1865 591 000,
[email protected]
www.climatecare.org
Aimia
www.aimia.com
AkzoNobel
+44 (0)1928 511 695
Alliance Boots Ltd
[email protected]
AMEC
+44 (0)1912 726 128
Annie’s Inc.
www.annies.com
Arjowiggins Graphic
[email protected]
ARMOR SA
[email protected]
Ashden
+44 (0)20 7410 7023
Aviva Investors
+44 (0)20 7809 6000
Azaria International
[email protected]
+91 22 2285 6161
www.azaria.in
Bank of America Merrill Lynch
+44 (0)20 7996 2054
Barclays Bank Plc
www.barclays.com
Benchmark Software
+44 (0)1458 444 010
BioRegional
+44(0)208 404 6080
Blue & Green Tomorrow
[email protected]
[email protected]
www.blueandgreentomorrow.com
Colep UK Limited
+44 (0)1427 858491
[email protected]
www.colep.com
Crest Nicholson Plc
+44 (0)1932 580 555
www.crestnicholson.com
Sime Darby
www.simedarby.com
Interface Europe Ltd
+44 (0)20 7490 3960
Skanska
+44 (0)1923 776 666
Jaguar Land Rover
[email protected]
Small World
+852 2799 3998
www.interiorsourcing.com
John Lewis Partnership
+44 (0)20 7592 4413
Johnson Matthey
+44 (0)20 7269 8400
Julie’s Bicycle
www.juliesbicycle.com
Kellogg Europe Trading Limited
www.kelloggs.co.uk
Kimberly-Clark Europe
www.kimberly-clark.com
Kingfisher
[email protected]
Kyocera Document Solutions
[email protected]
Cultura Technologies Ltd.
www.culturatech.com
Lafarge Tarmac Ltd
www.lafargetarmac.com
Delhaize Group
[email protected]
www.delhaizegroup.com
Levi Strauss & Co
www.levistrauss.com
Delphis Eco
+44 (0)20 3397 0096
www.delphisworld.com
Diageo Plc
[email protected]
eBay Inc
[email protected]
Ecover
+32 3 309 2500
www.ecover.com
EDF Energy
+44 (0)7875 110 289,
[email protected]
Ella’s Kitchen and Earth’s Best
[email protected]
EnergyDeck
www.energydeck.com
Energy Saving Trust
+44 (0)20 7227 0398
www.energysavingtrust.org.uk
FareShare
www.fareshare.org.uk
L’Oréal USA
www.lorealusa.com
Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)
+44 (0)20 7811 3315
Marks & Spencer Plc
[email protected]
McDonald’s Corporation
www.mcdonalds.com
Mondelez
www.mondelezinternational.com
NewsUK
www.news.co.uk
Nice and Serious Ltd
www.niceandserious.com
Nike Inc
[email protected]
Novelis
[email protected]
OgilvyEarth
+44 (0)20 7309 1226
[email protected]
PepsiCo UK & Ireland
[email protected]
Bowman Ingredients
www.bowmaningredients.co.uk
Finlays
+44 (0)20 7802 3239
BSkyB
[email protected]
Firmenich SA
+41 227 802 435
PHS Group
[email protected]
www.phs.co.uk
BT Plc
+44 (0)7730 426 189
[email protected]
FirstGroup Plc
[email protected]
Plexus Cotton Limited
+44 (0)151 650 8888
Food and Drink Federation
+44 (0)20 7420 7132
Pret A Manger Ltd
+44 (0)20 7827 8888
[email protected]
Bupa
+44 (0)20 7656 2343
Burberry Limited
+44 (0)20 3367 3100
C&A
[email protected]
Cathay Pacific
www.cathaypacific.com
Cafédirect PLC
+44 (0)20 7033 6034
Capgemini Ltd
+44 (0)870 904 5761
Cargill
+44 (0)1932 861 916
Carillion Plc
+44 (0)1902 316 258
Certis Europe
www.certiseurope.co.uk
Chi Group
www.chigroup.co
City of London
+44 (0)20 7332 1431
34
FoodTrade
[email protected]
Pureprint Group
+44 (0)1825 768 811
Swire Pacific Offshore
[email protected]
Target
www.target.com
Tata Global Beverages Ltd
www.tataglobalbeverages.com
Taylors of Harrogate
[email protected]
Thomson Reuters
www.thomsonreuters.com
Technology Strategy Board
www.innovateuk.org
Technology Will Save Us
www.technologywillsaveus.org
Telefónica UK
[email protected]
Tesco Plc
+44 (0)1992 806 790
The CarbonNeutral Company
www.carbonneutral.com
The Coca-Cola Company
www.coca-colacompany.com
The Co-operative Group
www.co-operative.coop
The Converging World
[email protected]
The Crown Estate
[email protected]
www.thecrownestate.co.uk
The Hershey Company
www.thehersheycompany.com
The Jordans & Ryvita Company Ltd
+44 (0)1767 319 415
The Walt Disney Company
www.disney.com
TUI Travel Plc
+44 (0)1293 645 911
Twin and Twin Trading Ltd
+44 (0)20 7375 1221
[email protected]
www.twin.org.uk
Twinings
www.twinings.co.uk
Unilever Plc
[email protected]
+44 (0)20 7822 5917
United Biscuits
[email protected]
Quintain Estates and Development Plc
[email protected]
United Coffee
[email protected]
www.unitedcoffee.com
Rail Safety and Standards Board
+44 (0)20 3142 5380
University College London
[email protected]
Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc
www.rb.com
Virgin Unite
www.virginunite.com
GrowUp
+44 (0)7862 259 566
www.growup.org.uk
Rexam Plc
[email protected]
www.rexam.com
Volac
+44 (0)1223 208 021
Hammerson
www.hammerson.com
RSA Insurance Group Plc
www.rsagroup.com
Whitworths
www.whitworths.co.uk
Heineken UK
+44 (0)1432 345 277
Sainsbury’s Supermarkets Ltd
+44 (0) 207 695 8382
Willmott Dixon Ltd
+44 (0)7814 003 046
HSH Group
www.hshgroup.com
SC Johnson
+1 262 260 2000
www.scjohnson.com
WWF-UK
+44 (0)1483 412 395
FrieslandCampina Nederland B.V.
www.frieslandcampina.com
GlaxoSmithKline
www.gsk.com
Green Ink
[email protected]
www.greenink.co.uk
IGD
[email protected]
Ingersoll Rand
www.ingersollrand.com
Why grey needs to be
the next green.
Swire Oilfield Services
www.swireos.com
Shell Foundation
www.shellfoundation.org
Photo: Nick Woodford; Sydney James/Digital Vision/ Thinkstock by Getty Images
Since the last issue of Green Futures, Cathay Pacific, Novelis Inc, Julie’s
Bicycle, Nice and Serious, The Walt Disney Company, The Hershey Company,
McDonald’s, Sime Darby, Annie’s Inc, FrieslandCampina Nederland B.V.,
Clarks International, BioRegional and Kellogg Europe Trade Ltd have all joined
the network and Kimberly-Clark Europe are now Pioneer partners.
Innovia Films
+44 (0)1697 342 281
Green. Verdant, emblematic of life, the
dominant colour of nature’s assets, upon
which we are utterly reliant. But also
problematic when it comes to describing a
movement. While we continue to shovel all manner of
aspirations for a fair, equitable and resource-solvent
world under the umbrella of green, we continue to
put many citizens off from doing anything differently
at all.
Why? Because, fair or not, green today has
baggage. In its report ‘Mainstream Green’, published
nearly two years ago, Ogilvy Earth presented one of
the first sets of data from mainstream citizens that it
thought green wasn’t very normal, and was definitely
associated with granola-crunching hippies. Perhaps
fair enough in the 80s, but not anymore.
So green has a branding challenge. Many
everyday folk can’t get past an expectation of having
to give something up, possibly the mental equivalent
of going to live in a cave without a candle, and the
notion that green living could be desirable, nay
aspirational, is, quite frankly, a bad joke.
The ‘green movement’, and you could include
Forum for the Future in that broad descriptor,
has failed to mainstream green. The global eco
watchdogs are still less than 10% of any consumer
segmentation, ‘green’ products are expensive and
too often don’t work as well as their counterparts.
The mainstream benefit isn’t there.
We know we need to reframe green. The
conversation needs to be wider than environmental
issues. Sustainability isn’t just an environmental
story: it’s also about social wellbeing in all its
complexity. Key to this grand rebrand is learning to
love grey.
Why grey? Surely grey is a dreary colour, not
a beacon of vibrancy, not very remarkable. This is
all true, but grey also has many, many shades –
even making it sexy for some. One of the reasons
mainstream society has not fallen in love with green
is that there are way too many polarised views.
GM is good. GM is bad. Flying is evil. Flying is
necessary. Eating meat is terrible. Being a vegetarian
is responsible. Polarisation isn’t great for building
relationships. The song that goes “You like potatoes”
comes to mind…
Of course, every single one of us is entitled to an
opinion. That’s what makes us sentient, interesting
creatures. But being quite so black and white about
issues means that if, as an individual, you haven’t
formed a view, or you feel you don’t have enough
information to do so, ‘being green’ means adopting
a whole set of opinions that you might not
understand, never mind agree with. The result?
No engagement at all. And the global greenies stay
below 10% of the population.
I’m not saying don’t use green at all (and yes,
I know, this magazine is called Green Futures – an
ongoing debate). But, perhaps, it’s time to accept that
we live in a complex, messy system, with multiple
dependencies and interrelationships, where there
often isn’t black or white, just many shades of grey.
For all of us passionate about the environment
and committed to broader sustainability issues, I think
it’s time to be more sophisticated in our analysis of
what needs to happen to mainstream sustainability. It
isn’t about making people feel guilty; it’s about us all
becoming better system thinkers. Seeing the whole
picture, spotting patterns in order to identify the best
action to take, considering different time scales (short
term and long term), taking the time to understand
others’ view points, accepting that all models are
wrong, but some are more useful than others, and,
critically, learning to love ambiguity. Which means
learning to love grey.
Grey Futures anyone?
“
It’s time to
be more
sophisticated
in our analysis
of what needs
to happen
“
New to the Forum Network
Sally Uren is CEO, Forum for the Future.
@sallyuren
One direction, many shades
35
Starting out
THE BRAND STRATEGIST’S GUIDE TO
Paul Miller describes his journey from student
to start-up accelerator.
What did you learn from it?
I realised that the way policies develop is as
much down to organisational culture as it is
to logic. Think tanks play a big part in their
evolution, but in a more indirect way than I’d
expected. They help to establish the context
for more radical decisions to be made. I
learnt not to underestimate how important
this is.
Paul Miller
Currently: Partner at Bethnal
Green Ventures
Class of: 1999-2000
People who have inspired me:
Tim O’Reilly for urging techies to
work on stuff that matters
Organisations I most admire:
Y Combinator for creating an
amazing alumni network
Why did you choose the
Forum Masters?
I did physics at university but spent most of
my time as an activist working on the Jubilee
2000 debt cancellation campaign. I came to
see that, while campaigning is all well and
“
We want to
be the best
‘tech for
good’ investor
in the world
“
36
How did you get into social enterprise?
I started working as a researcher for Forum
for the Future and then Demos but found
myself attracted to techy start-ups like
Google. After a while I realised it cost about
the same to create a start-up as it did to
write a pamphlet, and the costs were coming
down. I wanted to start something that had a
social impact, and started thinking, ‘Why isn’t
there an eBay for education?’ – something to
match people who want to teach with people
who want to learn. With a group of friends,
we set up School of Everything. It started out
well: we won a competition for new start-ups
and got some publicity and initial funding
off the back of that. But we never made any
money. We tried lots of different business
models but none of them would work.
Where did the idea for Bethnal Green
Ventures come from?
Through School of Everything I learnt that
starting a new business is really hard work,
and rather lonely – and also that you need
to test the business model before you invest
in it. We went on to set up something called
Social Innovation Camp, bringing people
with ideas together. It was just at the time the
terms ‘hackday’ or ‘barcamp’ were emerging.
We started to build this great community,
and we knew there was a world of social
investment that might be interested in them,
but there was no bridge between the two.
That’s the aim of Bethnal Green Ventures,
which has helped the likes of Good Gym,
Mastodon C and Fairphone to get going.
How does it work?
Instead of picking a winner and investing
£150,000, we choose ten potential startups to come along, invest £15,000 in each,
and get them to work together and support
each other – and then see which succeed.
I like that idea that people start something
together and then see it through together.
At its most basic level, it means they’ve got
something to talk about in the pub, but they
also have a shared experience of learning
something, and they teach each other on top
of what they are taught.
What are your plans for the future?
My personal aspirations map onto BGV. We
want to be the best ‘tech for good’ investor
in the world. At the moment, we just do the
really early bit, but over time we hope to
invest further down the line.
Do you have any advice for start-ups
or investors?
For start-ups: just try it. Work out what’s the
least you could do to test your idea. If that
works, then find some people to help you.
For investors: take a risk. If you don’t there’ll
be less innovation.
How To Give Consumers What They Actually Want
From the Editor of Green Futures
Most
brands
trytry
to to
appeal
to to
what
consumers
think
they
want.
Most
brands
appeal
what
consumers
think
they
want.
This book reveals how brands can build sustainable
ButBut
fewfew
are
able
todesire.
understand
what
they
really
want.
brand loyalty
by tapping
into
consumer
are
able
to
understand
what
they
really
want.
“
Through
withhow
sociologists,
psychologists
Thisinterviews
book reveals
brands can
build sustainable brand loyalty by tapping into consumer desire.
This
book
reveals
how
brands
can build
brand
loyalty
by tapping
and
leading
brand consultants,
you willpsychologists
learn
how sustainable
Through
interviews
with sociologists,
and leading
brand
consultants,
youinto
willconsumer
learn how desire.
desires
Through
interviews
with
sociologists,
psychologists
and
leading
brand
consultants,
you
will
learn
how
desires
desires
consumers
to seek
new experiences
prompt prompt
consumers
to seek new
experiences
and explains how brands can best respond. Featuring case studies
Brands
with
purpose
can
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a
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and
explains
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Featuring
case
of leading
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follow
approach,
the book presents techniques and tactics for developing studies
and explains
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can
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respond.
Featuring
of
leading brands
that follow
this approach,
thetruly
bookfulfilled
presents
techniques
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desire-based
strategies
arguing
that a desire
is to
more
likely and
to betactics
felt again.
case studies
of leading brands
that– follow
this
transition
sustainable
business
desire-based strategies – arguing that a desire truly fulfilled is more likely to be felt again.
approach, the book presents techniques and tactics
models. The key to unlocking
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37
How can we take transformative solutions to scale?
There isn’t
time to think
small or
make the same
mistakes
“
38
But there are also ‘soft’ barriers: cultural and
human factors that can get in the way of change.
Addressing complex challenges means working
in new ways, sometimes managing complex and
(very) long-term projects and relationships, with
multiple stakeholders at different stages. You have
to overcome the fear of these projects failing, and
persuade people to commit to the process for the
long haul. It can mean finding partners with the right
skills and interest to take a solution forward, and
overcoming the ‘not invented here’ syndrome that
can be an issue for organisations that haven’t been
involved from the start.
Another barrier is the need for a better shared
understanding of how to measure and value ‘impact’
itself, especially as qualitative, large-scale and
systemic impact can be much harder to assess than
quantitative, shorter-term ‘project deliverables’ or
indicators. Edward Hanrahan, Director of ClimateCare
agrees, but is optimistic that such questions are
beginning to be addressed: “I think the government,
the aid sectors and businesses are slowly moving
more towards a more results-based system for
development outcomes. This will help to catalyse this
market for solutions, because it will give us an income
stream to really compete for, and start to bring costs
down through efficiencies.”
There are some success stories to learn from,
where different organisations and activities have come
together to achieve wider systemic change. In public
health, for example, concerted collaborative efforts
successfully led to the global eradication of smallpox,
and, more recently, multiple public and private sector
interventions have driven through legislation to make
smoke-free public spaces the new norm in developed
economies, reducing smoking overall.
Another notable success is increasing access
to pro-poor, micro-level financial services – from the
development of the Grameen bank in Bangladesh in
the 1970s, providing micro-loans to millions and in
particular to women, through to the recent success
of mobile-phone based banking such as M-Pesa in
Kenya and elsewhere. A further example is the Marine
Stewardship Council (MSC)’s work to build a market for
sustainable fish, with a scheme that now covers more
than 10% of all wild-caught seafood. Both Grameen
and the MSC share a very deliberate approach to
addressing a large-scale challenge, with a clear goal
in mind of what success looks like (for the MSC,
ultimately that’s 100% sustainable fishing of the world’s
oceans).
Three ‘musts’ for change
Drawing on what works well, and on the
experiences of leading organisations around the
Photo: Omeproka
“
Floods, water scarcity, biodiversity loss,
obesity, hunger, disease, inequality… Looking
hard at the major pressures facing our global society,
can we honestly say that all the time, money and
effort put into making the world a better place are
having enough impact?
There’s no lack of professional, ambitious and
experienced organisations focusing their expertise on
the big sustainability and development challenges,
from girls’ education and slum sanitation to access to
clean energy or financial services. Many of them have
been working on it for decades. Equally, there’s no
lack of workable solutions, whether it’s solar lamps,
micro-credit schemes or agro-forestry techniques. So
what’s missing from the picture?
This is the question that the Scaling Up Impact
project, a collaboration between Forum for the
Future and the Shell Foundation, has been trying to
address over the past year, to better understand what
achieving impact at scale really looks like and how to
bring it about more effectively, by taking a deliberate,
planned approach, both as individual organisations
and collectively.
Given the complexity, urgency and ripple effects
of major issues, from climate change to obesity, any
attempts to solve them need to be systemic: no single
organisation or solution will get to the heart of it. And
given the number of people affected, both now and
in future, solutions need to become mainstream as
quickly as possible. There isn’t time to think small or
for everyone to make the same mistakes over and
over: we need to get to a ‘new normal’, fast.
In particular, Scaling Up Impact explores marketbased solutions. Businesses are increasingly feeling the
consequences of global challenges, but also seeing the
commercial opportunities in addressing them – from
first-mover advantage to more resilient value chains
and relationships at all levels. The need for systemic
change offers businesses an ever greater role to play in
scaling up viable solutions that combine positive social
and environmental impact with financial success.
Scaling Up Impact draws on the insights of a
wealth of existing research and analysis (see, for
example, Oxfam America’s work on market-based
approaches, Shell Foundation’s report on enterprise
solutions, or insights from the Business Innovation
Facility) to provide practical ways to overcome the
barriers to progress, for both the more experienced
and those new to this agenda.
These barriers can be very practical ones – for
example, designing pilot initiatives to test specifically
for how solutions will work at scale; making a
different kind of business case for investment or for
collaboration between businesses when competition
is the norm; or securing financing for very long-term
projects with unclear or uncertain later stages.
want to bridge what some see as the ‘innovation
frontier’ by bringing environmental, social and
commercial impact together.
As Chris West says, “We certainly couldn’t do
this alone. If you want to achieve lasting global
impact you need to take a systemic approach to
test new ideas and to build new markets around
those that work – and that means looking beyond
short-term projects to far more effective forms of
cross-sector collaboration.”
So what next? Forum is using all these insights
to build and share simple tools and guidance to help
others take a more deliberate approach when bringing
market-based solutions to scale.
Anna Birney, Head of Forum’s System Innovation
Lab says, “We’ve seen a clear need to broker new
kinds of partnerships and collaborations for collective
action. We’re exploring how to do this in very practical
ways, enabling businesses, foundations and others to
come together around these complex challenges for
greater collective impact, at scale, faster.”
Anna Birney and Geraldine Gilbert lead the Scaling Up
Impact project at Forum for the Future. Find out more:
forumforthefuture.org/project/scaling-impact/overview
“
It is essential
to build
markets
for these
solutions
“
Aiming for impact
world, the Scaling Up Impact project has identified
three areas that require concerted activity if marketbased solutions are to reach scale: generating
better products and services; building and enabling
markets around those products and services;
and addressing the wider context through market
acceleration. Collective experience shows that only
addressing one of these areas on its own will not be
enough to guarantee scale, however well it’s done.
So what do we mean by ‘better products and
services’? An important factor is designing individual
solutions with scale in mind, by improving existing
products and services or deliberately disrupting
the status quo. It also means raising the bar across
the whole market through standards and ratings.
For example, Envirofit, in partnership with the Shell
Foundation, designs clean cookstoves to tackle
indoor air pollution in emerging markets, while the
Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves drives the
development of international standards to push the
whole cookstove sector in the right direction.
It is then essential to build markets for these
solutions and increase access to them, for example
by making them easy for others to replicate, or
by piggy-backing on existing infrastructure and
resources. It will also mean looking at particular raw
materials or processes in supply chains, and creating
‘market pull’ by encouraging demand or changing
consumer behaviours.
As Chris West, Director of the Shell Foundation,
explains: “Social innovation does not happen easily
and achieving scale or replication at an industry
level is rare. With clean cookstoves [and Envirofit],
designing a product that low-income consumers both
wanted and could afford was simply not enough; we
needed to build an entirely new value chain to foster
demand, reach rural customers and solve a host of
other barriers to achieve any sort of scale.”
Targeted partnerships can help cut roll-out
costs. Unilever’s recent Lifebuoy hygiene education
programmes weren’t proving cost-effective. By
working with strategic partners, from the health
ministry in Indonesia to UNICEF, Unilever has been
able to cut programme costs by a factor of 10, and
therefore take the impact of Lifebuoy soap on health
and hygiene challenges to a much greater scale.
Finally, market acceleration might involve
collaborations and coalitions that catalyse change
across an issue or an industry, or influence the
broader policy or regulatory context through advocacy
and campaigns. Take the global Sustainable Shipping
Initiative, which brings together the designers,
owners, users and beneficiaries of the shipping world
to drive improvements across the entire industry, or
LAUNCH, the collaboration between Nike, USAID
and NASA that’s revolutionising the materials industry,
by incubating innovations and influencing the wider
market to take them to scale.
While there’s plenty more work to be done, the
team behind Scaling Up Impact has uncovered an
encouraging appetite for systemic approaches and
collective impact, among foundations, government,
NGOs and businesses, that recognise the need to
work more collaboratively with others to succeed,
and have a real drive to do so. Foundations are keen
to be more than funders while supporting solutions
that can be financially self-sustaining; businesses
Taking the humble
cookstove to scale
requires great design,
international standards
and market pull
39
Seafood Expo Global puts spotlight
on sustainable fishing.
Ecover is working
with algae to produce
sustainable oils for
surfactants
“
You have to
overcome
mental
hurdles to
live bacteria
in products
“
40
Ever since Ecover
released its first
phosphate-free
products over three
decades ago, the
company has been
at the forefront of
pursuing solutions
to our cleaning needs
that don’t pollute
waterways or place
ecosystems under
strain. To succeed,
the company must
not only innovate in
their own goods but
also to establish a
competitive market for
sustainable products.
For Dirk Develter,
Head of Research and
Development at Ecover,
this means that engaging and educating consumers
is just as important as the rigorous process of product
improvement. But how do you do both at once?
Develter describes Ecover’s approach: it’s a constant
back-and-forth between the company’s ambitions, the
consumers’ expectations, partners and collaborators
in the industry, and the best available technology in
the lab. The goal is always to meet their customers’
expectations of quality products with minimal
environmental impacts, but there’s a constant iteration
and reiteration of the way there. For Develter, this
is inspired by the endless nature of evolution: if you
remain open to the possibility of new directions which
offer real benefits, you’re more likely to survive. It’s not
just about finding substitutes that offer incremental
improvements in an established framework; it’s about
experimenting with the best available technology, in
whatever guise it comes.
Take surfactants, for example. Traditionally,
these have been made using oil from petroleum,
or tropically sourced palm oils, which come with
a significant transport-related carbon footprint as
well as issues of deforestation. In 2009, Ecover
established oilseed rape as a viable alternative, one
whose ability to be grown globally vastly reduces
the need for transportation – but it is now working
towards an even better solution, producing oils
from micro organisms such as algae or bacteria.
These can not only be grown locally but avoid
competition for the same land space as food crops.
This development is already entering the product
lines, with soaps made by these algae; additional
surfactants are in the pipeline.
In the R&D lab, Ecover also turns to nature
for inspiration, seeking to recreate the kinds of
efficient biological reactions which rarely require high
temperatures, hazardous chemicals or fundamentally
unsustainable processes. One interesting angle the
company is pursuing involves the use of probiotic
cleaners. These products would actually contain live
micro-organisms as the active ingredient – ones which
are extremely proactive in the presence of stains or dirt,
but completely benign otherwise.
This is where education becomes a crucial part
of the innovation process. If you want to get cleaning
products containing live bacteria into people’s
homes, you first have to overcome the mental hurdles
established over many years of adverts claiming
a product ‘kills 99.9% of all bacteria’, without ever
stopping to ask whether those bacteria could work in
our favour. Develter realises this is calling for a big shift
in what ‘clean’ means to people: “We would prefer to
have a more symbiotic approach, in which we favour
good bacteria and good microorganisms, rather than
having to kill off everything that lives.”
The difference the company is trying to make
spans public education and market-shaping goals.
Past campaigns have aimed to shift behaviour on
waste, and remind consumers that what they discard
can come back – in their tap water, for instance. One
current topic on Ecover’s educational agenda is in the
correct usage of their products: how to avoid too large
a dose. Even with an environmentally friendly cleaner,
using too much is wasteful – or as Develter puts it:
“Just because you are using a green product, it does
not mean you are doing a green thing. The way that
you use the product is just as important.”
Ecover is also working on a ‘water-less’ range,
destined for release next year. The aim is to counter the
general market trend from powdered to liquid-based
laundry products – a transition which, while popular,
demands larger volumes of packaging, which is often
less recyclable due to the need to be water-tight, and a
weightier product to transport, per number of washes.
Liquid format also makes it easier for the end-user to
accidentally waste the product, Develter believes. By
contrast, Ecover’s water-less products will be lighter to
transport and require significantly less packaging.
It’s an innovation that links neatly to the company’s
interest in the efficiency of nature: why carry water
if you can access it on demand? But to get such a
product out of the lab and into people’s lives, the end
users have to see the benefits too. By adding an ‘E’ for
education to its R&D process, Ecover hopes to open
minds to new meanings for ‘clean’. – Ian Randall
Ecover is a Forum for the Future partner.
www.ecover.com
Photo: Wiki Commons
Creating a new market for sustainable cleaning products
means research, development and education.
Photo: defun/iStock/Thinkstock
Show and tell
Seafood Expo Global, the world’s largest
seafood trade event, takes place on 6-8 May
in Brussels. Around 25,000 buyers, suppliers and
processing-industry professionals from over 140
countries are set to attend, and between them the
1,690 exhibiting companies supply nearly every type
of seafood imaginable.
As Kate Wilcox, Corporate Affairs Manager at the
Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) says, the reason
this event is so vast is partly down to the value of the
global seafood trade: $217.5 billion in 2010, according
to the Food and Agriculture Organisation. It employs,
in primary harvesting and processing, around
200 million people worldwide – and that’s before
you take into account more upstream employment
like making and mending boats and nets, and
downstream employment in the retail sector. In short,
a big industry needs a big event to do it justice.
But what does such an event do for the industry,
particularly as it faces growing pressure to ensure fish
stocks are healthy for the future? For one, it provides
an opportunity for key people from across the global
supply chain to meet face-to-face, discovering new
products, approaches and industry trends.
One trend is the continued rise of MSC
certification. More than 22,000 seafood products
that can be traced back to certified sustainable
fisheries now bear the MSC ecolabel, and
representatives from many of the world’s 221 MSCcertified fisheries will attend this year’s show.
The fishing industry is a “truly global trade”, says
Wilcox, which is why it’s so important to have an
ecolabel that transcends national borders. Without
efforts to make the industry more sustainable as a
whole, there’s a danger that fish stocks could get
to a tipping point where recovery is no longer an
option, she adds. “Our programme is a bulwark
against that. It enables rational management to take
place, and for the seafood business, the supply
chain, to be able to choose from verified, sustainable
fisheries and keep feeding a growing world while
generating wealth and value.”
Wilcox believes that one of the reasons shows like
Seafood Expo Global are particularly valuable is that
“people are really willing to do business – to conclude
contracts and push things along. So if you are trying
to create a tipping point in favour of a particular policy,
then this is a good place to do it – not least because
people have invested quite a lot in getting there,
and in being there, so they want to come away with
maximum value from it.”
Henk Brus, CEO of Sustunable, an international
supplier of sustainably caught tuna, says Seafood
Expo Global also provides an opportunity for
different sectors of the seafood industry to compare
notes on their involvement with the MSC certification
programme. “Many people tend to think very much
within their own sector”, he says, “so it’s good to
see what activities are being undertaken in other
markets, and how these markets are reacting.”
The MSC aims to use the ecolabel and fishery
certification programme to recognise and reward
sustainable fishing practices, influencing the choices
people make when buying seafood, and to work
with its partners to transform the seafood market
– an ambition which will be reiterated during its
Commercial Market Update at Seafood Expo Global.
Ultimately, it envisages a world where the oceans
teem with life, and seafood supplies are safeguarded
for generations to come.
The successful MSC certification of a Russian
pollock fishery in September last year illustrates
how the MSC’s theory of change works. A number
European buyers, hoping to supplement their existing
supplies of MSC-certified pollock from an Alaskan
fishery, worked alongside WWF and the Russian
Federal Fishing Agency to demonstrate to the
Russian fishery that it would command a better price
for its product, as well sell more fish in the global
market, if it also joined the MSC’s programme. As
Wilcox says, “That is the kind of example we would
hope seafood buyers and fisheries in Brussels are
going to take note of, and think, ‘There’s something
here for us too’.” – Duncan Jefferies
Marine Stewardship Council is a
Forum for the Future partner.
www.msc.org
“
An expo is a
good place
to create a
tipping point
“
Clean means
The Seafood Expo
Global brings together
25,000 seafood
professionals
41
UK radar study shows offshore wind turbines pose
little threat to migrating geese.
Bupa’s £20 million Energy Saver Fund offers returns
for people, planet and the bottom line.
The main
migration
route for
the geese has
moved to one
side of the
turbines
“
Tens of thousands
of pink-footed geese
migrate past the turbines
each year
Iceland and Greenland. In 2007, a year before the
first two of the three wind farms came into operation,
researchers began to study their migratory patterns.
Radar tracks from the first four years of the study
show the main migration route for the geese has
moved to one side of the turbines. The birds then
continue south to their overwintering site in Norfolk.
“They tend to fly either around the wind farms
or over the top”, says Simms, who believes that the
study is unlikely to alter the siting of wind farms, but
feels “it might make the consenting process easier”.
The study is now in what is likely to be its
final year, making it the longest project of its kind,
generating an unprecedented amount of detail
about the behaviour of birds around wind farms.
Past studies of migrating birds have relied on a
combination of military data, which is less sensitive,
or weather radar, which can only pick up general
information on flock height and direction, backed up
by visual identification during daylight hours – but
migration often takes place at night.
Eagles have been hit by wind turbines in the US
and Norway, generating considerable publicity in
the process. However, Simms says: “Our empirical
evidence shows that while that might happen, we
have 80,000 birds that are migrating each year
and avoiding the turbines. This study is putting a
knowledge base out there that birds do avoid wind
farms without changing their migratory route.”
UK bird charity and lobbying group the Royal
Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), which
initially opposed most onshore wind farm planning
applications, has become more selective in recent
years, focusing on the need to identify appropriate sites
for turbine arrays, so that they don’t damage wildlife.
“We don’t know enough yet about bird behaviour
and wind farms”, says Nik Shelton, a spokesperson
for the RSPB. “But we are gathering evidence, and
studies like this one sound like exactly the sort of
thing we need.”
For Simms, another potential upshot from the
study could be the ability to monitor the longer-term
effects of climate change on migratory patterns
in all weathers and at all times of day. “The use
of radar to add to empirical evidence of sightings
can be a useful additional tool to help develop
an understanding of how bird migration timings,
patterns and even routes are being affected by
climate change”, he says. “If the radar study was
carried out for another 20 years, we would be able
to see the detailed changes that are going on.”
– Jeremy Lovell
AMEC is a Forum for the Future partner.
www.amec.com
42
While an increasing number of companies
are coming to recognise the long-term
benefits of environmentally responsible
practices, it’s impossible for them to invest
significantly in such practices unless there
is a coherent business case for doing so.
The good news is that such a business case
exists, in part thanks to the growing recognition that
carbon-based sources of electricity are only going
to get more expensive, while the cost of installing
renewables is already coming down. With that in
mind, companies from Microsoft to Boeing to Phillips
now measure the monetary value that sustainable
practices bring to their businesses.
Leading international healthcare group Bupa
has used such evidence to build a strong case for
investment in energy-saving measures, establishing
a £20 million Energy Saver Fund to invest in carbon
reduction projects during 2014. This will help it to
meet its public commitment to reduce its carbon
footprint by 20% by 2015, against a 2009 baseline.
Not only does this fit with Bupa’s mission to have a
big impact on world health, with a positive impact
on the environment, supporting Bupa’s purpose to
deliver longer, healthier, happier lives – it will also
save the company money. David Bent, Director
of Sustainable Business at Forum for the Future,
outlines the advantages: “With the demands that
come with running a large organisation, it’s easy to
miss the profit opportunities that come with projects
that reduce carbon. Often when companies look
closely, they realise that saving carbon provides
good, if not better, rates of return. If something gives
you a good return and it is the right thing to do, then
why wouldn’t you?”
Bupa admits that its performance to date against
its 20% carbon emissions reduction target has
been slow. Recognising this, it held a companywide workshop in November 2013 to discuss
energy-saving options. It was here that CEO Stuart
Fletcher helped turn the concept of a central funding
mechanism for direct, on-site carbon reduction
projects into a reality, leading to the announcement
of the Bupa Energy Saver Fund the following
month. Applicants from Bupa’s global offices
must meet tight criteria around payback, speed of
implementation and carbon impact.
The majority of the £20 million fund has now
been allocated, to speed the implementation
of carbon reduction projects from Miami to
Manchester over the coming year, including
LED lighting, CHP and solar projects. Bupa’s
sustainability work prior to the implementation of
the Energy Saver Fund includes a care home in
Caulfield, Australia, which achieved a reduction
in use of 10,000kWh
of electricity between
2011 and 2012, or
Aus $12,000 (£7,000),
through measures
such as roof insulation
and energy use
monitoring. In England,
the installation of new
LED light technologies
at Care Services’
Richmond House
offices has reduced
lighting consumption by
9,000kWh, representing
a £1,000 annual saving.
Richmond House has
been used to test the
lighting technology
and to monitor the
savings for a wider roll
out across other Bupa
offices globally.
Bupa expects
that the Energy Saver
Fund, along with other
measures already
in place, will drive
rapid action towards
meeting its 2015 goal,
affirming its position
as a significant global
player in corporate carbon reduction. Its ambition
was recognised late last year with the award of
the Carbon Trust Standard, a global certification
scheme for commitment to measuring, managing
and reducing carbon footprints. Bupa is one of only
a handful of companies to achieve this standard
globally, and the first private healthcare company
to do so.
According to Bupa’s Chief Financial Officer,
Evelyn Bourke, sustainable energy measures go
hand in hand with beneficial economic impacts:
“Long-term growth can’t be separated from
economic, social, health and environmental issues.
As well as being the right thing to do for the
planet and health, the Bupa Energy Saver Fund
also makes business sense: we can cut costs
and enhance efficiency, mitigate risk, open up
new competitive and revenue opportunities, drive
innovation and develop our employees. It really
is a win all round.” – Tess Riley
Warmth for wellbeing:
Care Services invests
in a new pipe and boiler
service for the 100-yearold Southlands Nursing
and Residential Home
“
we can
cut costs,
enhance
efficiency,
mitigate
risk, drive
innovation
“
“
One of the major considerations any wind
farm application must overcome is the
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
The effect the development might have on local and
migratory birds is a key part of this process, and
similar concerns can also hamper the expansion
of an established wind farm, as happened recently
with the London Array. (The second phase of the
project has been scrapped due to uncertainty about
its impact on the local red-throated diver population,
a decision which will greatly reduce the array’s
proposed capacity.)
However, a recent radar study of a group of wind
farms off the coast of Lincolnshire in eastern England
found little evidence that the turbines have harmed the
tens of thousands of pink-footed geese that migrate
past them each year, giving hope to developers that
this stage of the wind farm consenting process could
become easier to navigate in future.
“The study has implications for geese species
in general and the way that they avoid wind farms”,
says Ian Simms of engineering services company
AMEC, which carried out the latest year of study for
Centrica Energy in autumn 2013. “But it also has
implications for bird monitoring and the effects of
wind farms in general.”
The pre-construction EIA for the Lincolnshire
wind farms listed 78 bird species in the area, of
which the migratory pink-footed goose is the one
of the most sensitive: it is protected under UK and
EU law. Almost 90% of the world’s population
overwinter in the UK from breeding grounds in
Photo: CS UK
Cash back
Photo: Richard Taylor Jones
Flight path
Bupa is a Forum for the Future partner.
www.bupa.co.uk
43
Carbon finance puts Jaguar Land Rover on the fast lane
to delivering change.
The key to
delivering
change on
such an
immense
scale?
Carbon
finance
“
44
Will Simpson is a freelance writer specialising in
environmental change.
ClimateCare is a Forum for the Future partner.
www.climatecare.org
The largest carbon finance project that Jaguar
Land Rover has supported so far is the
LifeStraw Carbon for Water project in Kenya.
By purchasing all the carbon credits generated
from the Busia region of the project Jaguar
Land Rover has supported provision of safe
water to over 700,000 people and funded a
carbon reduction equivalent to that generated
by UK manufacturing assembly for one year.
How does it work? Free LifeStraw Family
water filters were distributed to households
in the region by global health company,
Vestergaard. These filters use no electricity and,
crucially, mean that local people no longer have
to collect firewood to boil their water, thereby
reducing carbon emissions.
The project is monitored closely. Every
household that is given a water filter is
logged by number and geographic location,
and checked by a third party. The carbon
reductions are independently verified by the
Gold Standard Foundation, before being paid
for by Jaguar Land Rover.
A report expected later this year will detail
some of the health benefits being delivered,
but Morton has already seen the difference
for himself: “You can go to any household and
you will hear the same story again and again:
families are no longer getting diarrhoea, they
are not getting worms or diseases such as
typhoid, their babies are healthier.”
This project is proving transformative for
the community, and the aspirations of people
living there. “My children are now able to go to
school when in good health“, says local mother
Sarah Abwire. “The money I used to spend in
hospital I now use to pay their school fees. The
remaining money I use for household needs,
such as buying seeds for planting and washing
soap for my family.”
Talk about value for money…
“
Jaguar Land
Rover has
supported
provision of
safe water to
over 700,000
people
Find out more at www.jaguarlandrover.com
Photo: Jaguar Land Rover
“
Can a motor manufacturer make a difference
to millions of lives? That is the goal of Jaguar
Land Rover, which set an ambitious target to
improve health, reduce poverty and create new
opportunities for employment and education for
12 million people around the world by the end of
this decade.
It’s no pie-in-the-sky goal: the difference will be
felt by people living in communities with particular
development goals – such as the need for safe
water. These are being identified in collaboration
with ClimateCare, with the Busia region of Kenya
first on the list [see box, ‘Water for Busia’].
Consistent measurement frameworks are being
agreed with the London Benchmarking Group to
help report the impact consistently across a variety
of projects and global locations.
The key to delivering change on such an
immense scale? Carbon finance.
Traditionally, carbon finance is a method of
offsetting emissions through investment in clean
energy solutions. For ClimateCare, the climate
and development organisation which has worked
with Jaguar Land Rover since 2007, it’s about
going a step further, and using this money to
both cut carbon emissions and fund community
development. “Really it’s bringing a new source of
finance to projects that wouldn’t otherwise happen
without that revenue”, explains Tom Morton, Director
of ClimateCare.
Through ClimateCare, Jaguar Land Rover
has supported 50 climate and development projects
in 17 countries around the world, cutting
Photo: Jaguar Land Rover
In Busia, access to
clean water means more
money for household
needs and education
10 million tonnes of carbon emissions and
improving the lives of 2 million people. “We
wanted to learn from our experience to date and
set ourselves a challenge to do more”, explains
Jonathan Garrett, Director of Corporate Social
Responsibility at Jaguar Land Rover. He plans
to make smart use of carbon finance to both cut
carbon and as a cost effective means to deliver
almost half the new target and create opportunities
for five million people by 2020. A further 5 million
people will be engaged through humanitarian,
conservation and environmental projects and
2 million through educational initiatives.
As well as delivering on the new target, this
remains an important part of Jaguar Land Rover’s
wider carbon reduction strategy.
Since 2007, the group has reduced CO2 emissions
by 21% per vehicle produced, and cut waste to
landfill by 75% per vehicle. While identifying ways
to reduce the impact of production, the company
continues to operate one of the world’s largest carbon
offset programmes, covering the entire manufacturing
assembly process.
“At the moment, 20% of the company’s total
emissions can be traced to this production process”,
explains Garrett. “The remaining 80% occur in the
use phase of our vehicles. Obviously we are focused
on trying to reduce these, and that’s where new
stop-start technology, light-weight materials and
more fuel efficient engines come in”.
But reducing manufacturing emissions,
particularly in older plants, takes time. “Although
we work on reducing energy use in the first place,
there is still a residual element of carbon-related
emissions from the factory. So we created the offset
programme to help negate those emissions, by
advancing low-carbon solutions in another part of
the world.”
So this is how supporting climate and
development projects fits into the carbon reduction
strategy at Jaguar Land Rover, but how do you
choose the smartest way to use your budget,
with a specific focus on creating measurable
new opportunities for people, as well as carbon
reductions? Water is an obvious area to make a
big impact.
“If you want to do a hard-nosed, ‘best value for
money’ life-improvement calculation, then water
projects come out on top,” Garrett affirms. “It’s
because there are a whole load of other benefits that
flow on from access to water: including improved
health and increased economic productivity. Clean
water projects are very cost-effective.”
For funders like Jaguar Land Rover, the
business case for supporting integrated climate
Water for Busia
“
Value added
and development projects goes beyond mere
brand development. “Some of the companies we
work with measure value in other ways, including
an increase in staff engagement and retention”,
says Robert Stevens of ClimateCare. “And because
many of the projects are in developing countries,
supporting them can help businesses make
partnerships and demonstrate support for local
communities. For instance, supermarket chains
might want to support projects in regions that play
a significant role in their supply chain. There is also
an element of reassuring investors that a company
is working responsibly and understands the risks
associated with climate change.”
And of course, there is a simple value for money
argument. Climate and development projects deliver
multiple outcomes which help companies streamline
and focus activity, and make it possible to demonstrate
progress towards multiple targets through one initiative.
“It’s a win-win” explains Garrett. “It also fits with
our new parent company Tata: the Indian business
model gives back to communities in a big way, so
with the Tata group 60% of the profits go back to
community-related philanthropic projects”.
Jaguar Land Rover’s support for climate and
development projects is an integrated part of a wellestablished corporate social responsibility programme,
which saw it awarded Responsible Business of the
Year 2013 by Business in the Community.
Supporting the entire Busia area of the LifeStraw
Carbon for Water project is Jaguar Land Rover’s largest
carbon finance initiative to date, but only a first step in
the expansion of its programme.
“Our work with ClimateCare is going to teach
us all some interesting lessons that will help us
design and deliver the most effective climate and
development projects”, says Garrett. “We aim to
deliver bigger projects and also build on existing
methodologies to measure positive impacts in
communities. Hopefully”, he adds, “this will inspire
other companies to do the same.”
45
DRIVING THE GROWTH
OF LARGE-SCALE
SOLAR IN THE UK
Organised by:
29 APRIL - 1 MAY 2014
KELHAM HALL, NOTTS, UK
Feedback
You mention the significant volumes of
animal or plant waste that make farms
an obvious place to turn to for biofuel.
Not to mention the added benefits of
diverting manure and fertiliser runoff
that plagues our waterways!
– Nick Aster
Tess Riley writes that “Our food system
generates roughly a quarter of all global
greenhouse gas emissions, in large part
due to agriculture’s heavy reliance on
fossil fuels.” Really? That kinda blows
my mind. Can someone explain?
– Darius MC
EARLY
BIRD O
FFER
BOOK
NOW!
Farming for what?
29 APRIL:
Planners workshop
Site visit to Hawton Solar Farm
30 APRIL - 1 MAY:
Large Scale Solar UK conference
Networking drinks reception
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and the importance of involving the local community in future solar developments. This will be followed by a site visit
to a local solar park.
Conference programme will focus on:
• Solar market drivers in 2014
• The importance of site selection
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46
PROGRAMME AND BOOKINGS: LARGESCALE.SOLARENERGYEVENTS.COM
In response to Tess Riley’s feature arguing
that renewable energy can make farms
financially viable [see GF Special Edition
‘Energy Culture’, p 10-11], we must not
forget that the main purpose of farming
is to produce food for the nation. The
fact that farmers cannot make a living
from growing food for an increasingly
urban population should make us very
concerned. All food is grown in the ground,
so the more ground is taken up with other
uses, the less there is for food production.
The fact that we are being encouraged
to look to different foods grown abroad
makes us vulnerable to climate change,
which is hitting food production in some
areas of the world. We only have to look
at the floods in the UK at the moment to
realise that whole crops have been lost or
will have a reduced harvest. – Brian Tucker
Green Futures responds: This figure,
which comes from the World Resources
Institute, is the subject of some debate. The
food system does have a significant footprint;
factors include industrial input and changes in
land use (causing deforestation, for instance).
However, such a statistic can be misleading,
and you are right to question it.
Schooled savings
Great piece by Martin Wright on community
energy. Generation Community has launched
a £1 million solar PV project, Staffordshire
Sunny Schools. In the current marketplace,
the USPs include: free electricity for schools;
setting up two community benefit societies,
and a new community fund from the sales
of any excess. We’re also building a social
impact plan to engage the managers of the
premises in energy behaviour at school.
– Andy Heald, Director, Generation
Community Ltd
Join the debate
[email protected]
@GreenFutures
Comments may be edited for publication.
Wealth for wellbeing
As Anna Simpson correctly sees in ‘Family
valued’ [GF91, p16], we need to nurture
people for long-term prosperity. I have
observed that in India we generally want
to save and create wealth for our future
generations. To create wealth is one thing,
but in order to enjoy it and live happily
it’s important to have the blessings of
knowledge and wisdom: otherwise we end
up in poor health, bad habits, wars of ego
and so on. – Naveen Khajanchi, CEO &
Director, NKH Foundation Pvt Ltd
Reader survey
Last year we conducted a reader
survey to get your thoughts on Green
Futures. We wanted to know what you
love to read, what you would like to
see more of, and how we can make
Green Futures better for you. The
results taught us a lot.
Many of you told us that you enjoy
the positive solutions to sustainability
challenges that Green Futures offers:
25% of respondents said they value
the quality of the content, and 14.6%
admired the magazine’s inspiring
insights into innovation.
You also asked us for a greater
variety of interactive, digital content,
with 48% of readers preferring to
access content via the web. We’re
working on this so that we can offer
more debate around the big questions,
and a better sense of how the trends
and innovations uncovered could add
up in the future. Watch this space.
Top tweets
@AnneDyeResearch: Provocative post from @GreenFutures:
“#Energy economics as if #thermodynamics mattered”
(appeals to me!)
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47
“
Soil is the
bedrock
of national
security
“
48
A couple of weeks
after the torrential
rain in the south west
of England earlier
this year, I had to go
to Exeter, with the
train from Bristol
diverted the long way
round via Bath and
Warminster. It was
a fine day, with the late
afternoon sun glinting
off what looked like
stunningly beautiful lakes,
sometimes stretching all
the way to the horizon.
The birdlife was extraordinary, half-submerged trees
and hedgerows alien and dramatic.
It’s April now, and both the flood waters and the
intensity of the debate have subsided. Dredging in one
or two key places started as soon as water levels had
returned to something resembling normality, with the
Government intent on demonstrating that it was finally
‘getting on top of the problem’.
Such dredging is more or less symbolic – in that
it won’t make much of a difference one way or the
other when such an intensity of rainfall occurs again.
It’s a short-term solution with a misleading focus: what
those dredgers are taking out of the rivers is soil –
washed off the surrounding hills and fields. Although
local farmers were most vociferous in their demand
for the dredging to start, it’s actually the soil from their
fields that is causing the problem. As commentator
George Monbiot said at the time: “It’s like trying to
empty the bath while the taps are still running.”
Most of those farmers know that. And over a pint
of good Somerset cider, they will even acknowledge
that the millions of pounds a year which will be needed
to get that soil back out of the rivers and waterways
would be much better spent upstream, keeping the
ground in place on their fields, where its nutrients are
needed. But that’s not how farming subsidies work: in
effect, they’re being incentivised to farm in such a way
that their soil inevitably ends up in the rivers.
So what would it mean to deploy those budgets
to fix the soil upstream? It would mean restoring both
upland and lowland wetlands, replanting woodlands
and hedgerows in the uplands, and ‘de-canalising’
some stretches of river to recreate meanders and
oxbow lakes. It would mean paying farmers to store
water on their fields, incentivising them back to springtime sowing rather than in winter (which leaves the soil
exposed in the rainy season), and an end to growing
maize in all areas particularly at risk. And all that means
resisting the bullying tactics of the National Farmers’
Union to ensure that public money is only used to
secure public benefits, not unsustainable private gain.
Apart from a few articles by environmentalists,
this whole upstream/downstream dimension was
largely absent during the floods. But just at the point
when the flood water started to subside, Labour
leader Ed Miliband stirred himself into making a
powerful intervention, asserting categorically that
the floods should be seen as a direct consequence
of accelerating climate change. And he accused the
Coalition Government of allowing the UK to “sleepwalk
into a national security crisis”. A powerful political
soundbite, but he didn’t elaborate. He didn’t explicitly
draw out the links between accelerating climate
change, flooding, soil and national security.
But soil is the bedrock of national security. Any
society intent on sustaining itself indefinitely into the
future will always have regard to its ability to feed itself;
global trade in agriculture exempts us from having to
achieve 100% self-sufficiency, but at just 60%, the UK
has no reason to feel complacent. Especially as current
farming practices continue to erode that bedrock.
Even the most evangelistic free marketeers in the
UK, focused as they are on reducing the size of the
state, would still subscribe to the idea that security
remains an absolute prerogative of the state. If you buy
into the idea that national security means a lot more
than the percentage of GDP spent on defence through
one’s armed forces, then you might logically ask why
such an infinitesimally small amount of government
spending is devoted to soil science.
The irony of this was brought home to me very
powerfully when Philip Hammond, Secretary of State
for Defence, visited the Somerset Levels at the height
of the floods. He talked a lot about investing in flood
defences downstream (glossing over the cuts made by
his government at the Environment Agency), but said
nothing about investing in flood mitigation upstream by
changing farming practices.
So what does all this mean for the Somerset
Levels? The risk of severe, increasingly frequent
flooding is now so high that even moving our flood
defences upstream may be unlikely to protect the
Levels in the long term. Significant investment may still
be required in big engineering projects downstream.
And as costs rise, society may well decide that it
would make more sense to ‘let the Levels go’. But
that traumatic moment of truth will come a great
deal sooner if we stick to our reactive, short-term
downstream mindset. Increased resilience and security
depends entirely on shifting those mindsets upstream
as soon as possible.
Jonathon Porritt is Founder-Director, Forum for
the Future. His latest book, The World We Made,
is available to buy from theworldwemade.com.
www.jonathonporritt.com
Photo: Nick Woodford / Forum for the Future
JonathonPorritt
49
1-4 JUNE 2014
SANDS EXPO & CONVENTION CENTER
MARINA BAY SANDS, SINGAPORE
LIVEABLE AND SUSTAINABLE CITIES:
COMMON CHALLENGES, SHARED SOLUTIONS
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industry experts to address liveable and sustainable city challenges, share integrated
urban solutions and forge new partnerships.
WORLD CITIES SUMMIT SESSIONS INCLUDE:
World Cities Summit Mayors Forum
Will Mayors Rule the World?
Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize Lecture
Making Plans into Reality
Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize Forum
Innovative Urban Solutions for
Liveable & Future-Ready Cities
Plenary 1 : The Next Urban Decade Critical Challenges & Opportunities
Building Resilient Cities
Plenary 2 : Liveable & Sustainable Cities Fast Forward
Safe & Liveable Cities
Future Mobility
In-Focus Forums: China, India, Southeast Asia, Latin America
DISTINGUISHED SPEAKERS INCLUDE:
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Chairman, Nestlé SA
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CEO, Housing &
Development Board,
Singapore
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Secretary General,
OECD
Aníbal Gaviria Correa
Mayor, Medellin,
Republic of Colombia
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Cape Town, Republic of
South Africa
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Cities for kids - Forum for the Future

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