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Transparency is the New Black
2008-06-09 21:39:00
Greg Owsley, Chief Branding Officer of New Belgium Brewery spoke today at the Sustainable Brands 2008 conference in Monterey, CA on his company’s sustainable branding success story. New Belgium’s quest to showcase their sustainable practices began in hopes of inspiring other breweries or companies with similar values to embrace environmentally-conscious practices and culture from the inside out. Naturally, the quirky, fun-loving company faced trials and tribulations in defining its sustainable image, including marketing efforts developed both internally and externally that showcased their core values but failed to tell their whole, quite impressive, sustainable story. One challenge that often arises in this space, is ‘walking the talk’ - incorporating sustainable practices within the organization to coincide with marketing sustainable products or services to customers. Companies often jump ahead to the marketing part and forget that the proof truly is in the pudding,...
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The Eco Method
2008-06-07 03:26:00
Everyone at the Sustainable Brands conference in Monterey was talking about the speech given by Eric Ryan, Brand Architect of ‘Method ‘, an eco-friendly home products company, which is growing very fast in the USA. Method is a good example of the amazing proliferation of US-based companies offering a vast array of new eco-products - everything from recyclable dry cleaning hangers to solar-powered mobile phone chargers. The home product range, in particular, appears to be undergoing a green revolution in the US, in a way which is not so apparent, I believe, in Europe. Here is Eric talking to me about Method’s mission of engaging consumers who have never used eco-products before - by focusing on good product design, safety, efficacy and fragrance as well as the environment. I’d call that a true ‘Blue Ocean‘ strategy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeR-6Hz4u1 I

Sustainable beer from Colorado
2008-06-06 11:14:00
How does a brewery become sustainable? The nature of the business places heavy demands on natural resources, so it’s one of the more difficult green challenges. In this video from the Sustainable Brands conference in Monterey, Greg Owsley of the New Belgium Brewery in Colorado talks about the company’s commitment to becoming more sustainable, and the insights gained from an environmental life cycle analysis of one of its beers, Fat Tire. Greg’s entertaining presentation at the conference was one of the most talked about events during the week. Another Green Wolfie will be posting her impressions of that a little later. You can read more about New Belgium’s sustainability initiatives here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ouum2HUWr s
More About: Beer

eBay’s ‘world of good’
2008-06-06 07:17:00
One of the most interesting ventures featured at the Sustainable Brands conference in Monterey was worldofgood.com, a new eBay community which allows consumers to buy products which have a positive social, environmental and economic impact around the world. This is a remarkable project which will connect third world producers with customers who want to make a difference when they shop. It’s a partnership between eBay and World of Good Inc, which was founded by Priya Haji. Here is Priya, with Robert Chatwani from eBay, talking about their partnership. We wish them every success. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owQr5rTU4F Q
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Gap’s eco strategies
2008-06-06 06:24:00
Kindley Walsh Lawlor, Senior Director of Strategic Planning & Environmental Affairs at Gap Inc spoke at the Sustainable Brands conference in Monterey. There was much interest in Gap’s activities. Here is Kindley talking to me about the company’s ‘eco-strategies’. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSwu9cDoQw Q
More About: Strategies

What’s a hip investor?
2008-06-05 05:15:00
The answer, according to one speaker at the Sustainable Brands conference in Monterey, is an investor who wants both a high return on capital and help the world become a better place - ethically, environmentally or socially. Paul Herman is the CEO of HIP Investor , a San Francisco-based company which advises both investors and companies on how to be more sustainable AND profitable. Here is Paul talking to me about the fact that the mainstream financial world on Wall Street and the City of London isn’t paying enough attention to the potential for highly profitable growth which also has a positive human, social and environmental impact. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDDatDdhQH g

Oscar helps California fight fluorescent light pollution
2008-06-05 00:56:00
What does Oscar the Grouch, the Sesame Street character who lived in a trash can, have to do with the California Environmental Protection Agency? We discovered at the Sustainable Brands 2008 conference in Monterey that Oscar is helping the California EPA tackle the serious issue of pollution from old fluorescent light bulbs, which contain mercury. California has created a highly innovative ‘Take-It-Back’ Partnership, fronted by Oscar, which is demonstrating the state’s firm commitment to environmental initiatives. For those in Europe who think we are doing so much more than the Americans on the environment, take a look at what California is doing. At the conference, we heard from Leonard Robinson, chief deputy director for the EPA’s Department of Toxic Substances Control. In the video below he is talking to me about the ‘Take-It-Back partnership. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo9nV5k290 Q
More About: Pollution , Fight , Light

Discovery Channel launches Planet Green Network
2008-06-04 10:19:00
In the first of our video reports from the Sustainable Brands conference 2008, Claire Alexander of Discovery Channel’s new Planet Green Network , talks to be about what we can expect to see when the channel launches tomorrow, June 4th. Claire and I are sharing a panel tonight on the ‘Greening of Media’. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAC1EyhCK3 A
More About: Discovery Channel

Green Brands study 2008 launched in Monterey
2008-06-04 09:25:00
On the first day of SB 2008, my colleague Annie Longsworth and Russ Meyer from our WPP sister company, Landor, unveiled our Green Brands study 2008, examining consumer perceptions of environmental issues and companies in both the UK and the USA. The findings are remarkably similar. In both countries, it’s body care companies and supermarkets who are really capturing the imagination of the public with their environmental initiatives, such as Marks & Spencer’s ‘Plan A’. The Guardian has picked up on the supermarket angle in its report on our study: High-profile green advertising campaigns by supermarkets appear to be paying off with five of the country’s biggest grocers coming out top in a survey of the most environmentally friendly brands. Campaigns to discourage plastic bag use and an emphasis on less packaging helped Marks & Spencer, Waitrose, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda take five of the top six places in a survey of 1,500 people. What st...
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Sustainable Brands Conference, Monterey
2008-06-03 01:52:00
  Greetings from the Hyatt Regency, Monterey , California, on the first day of the Sustainable Brands Conference 2008. Cohn & Wolfe is proud to be a sponsor of this event, which has brought together an outstanding cast-list of leaders in sustainability, media commentators and (of course) consultants. We have representatives here from big corporates like Dow Chemical, sustainability gurus like Andrew Winston (Green to Gold), and Claire Alexander from the Discovery Channel’s new ‘Planet Green’. Claire will be joining me tomorrow for what promises to be a great topic: The Greening of Traditional Media’. Also on the panel will be Betsy Rosenberg, executive producer of ‘EcoTalk’, Anya Kamenetz of ‘Fast Company’, and Nick Aster, the media artchitect of ‘Treehugger’. Cohn & Wolfe, along with our WPP colleagues at Landor and PSB will also be launching our ‘Green Brands’ study 2008, which looks at current ...

Al Gore’s ‘nine Inconvenient Untruths’
2007-10-12 02:13:00
Americans will be interested to read that an English High Court judge has ruled Gore ’s famous film contains nine key factual errors, and should only be shown in schools with guidance notes to prevent ‘political indoctrination’. It’s worth repeating the ‘nine errors’ identified by Judge Michael Burton, as reported in today’s Telegraph: 1. Mr Gore claims that a sea-level rise of up to 20 feet would be caused by melting of either West Antarctica or Greenland “in the near future”. The judge said: “This is distinctly alarmist and part of Mr Gore’s “wake-up call”. He agreed that if Greenland melted it would release this amount of water - “but only after, and over, millennia”.”The Armageddon scenario he predicts, insofar as it suggests that sea level rises of seven metres might occur in the immediate future, is not in line with the scientific consensus.” 2. The film claims that low-lying ...
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Green plans for London 2012
2007-09-27 00:41:00
We are hearing much about how Beijing 2008 is going to be a showcase for China’s commitment to a cleaner energy future, with the city full of hydrogen buses and the like. What most people don’t yet know is that our own London Olympics in 2012 will also have sustainability built into the core of its development. The London Olymic Delivery Authority’s Sustainability Strategy is available for viewing here, with probably the most impressive feature being how the carbon issue is placed in a much broader context, which includes everything from water and waste to biodiversity, employment and health.
More About: Green , Plans

How green is the PM?
2007-09-25 23:58:00
Very green, according to this passage in his speech to the Labour conference yesterday: Perhaps the biggest challenge for the new politics is to show how we as a community can join together to safeguard the environment, to turn the silent, rising tide of global warming. And I am proud that Britain will now become the first country in the world to write into law binding limits on carbon emissions. But I am not satisfied: so I am asking the new independent climate change committee to report on whether the 60 per cent reduction in emissions by 2050, which is already bigger than most other countries, should be even stronger still. And by investing in energy efficiency, renewables, carbon capture, clean fuels and new environmental technologies, I want Britain to lead in carbon-free vehicles, carbon-free homes and carbon-free industry. And I want the new green technologies of the future to be the source of British jobs in British businesses. And I commit to work tirelessly for a new post-...
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Bjørn Lomborg causes global warming - of blogs
2007-09-19 14:25:00
The ’sceptical environmentalist’ Bjorn Lomborg has written a new book called ‘Cool It’. Bjorn Lomborg argues that many of the elaborate and expensive actions now being considered to stop global warming will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, are often based on emotional rather than strictly scientific assumptions, and may very well have little impact on the world’s temperature for hundreds of years. Naturally, this has resulted in a deluge of blogging arguing that Lomborg has, yet again, presented the science in a misleading way. I liked today’s article from Joseph Romm, Clinton’s former director of renewable energy: On Planet Lomborg, free from the restrictions of science, global warming is kind of delightful (p.12): The reality of climate change isn’t necessarily an unusually fierce summer heat wave. More likely, we may just notice people wearing fewer layers of clothes on a winter’s evening. On planet Earth, a major study in Na...
More About: Global Warming , Blogs , Global , Armin

Lib Dems plan to ban gas-guzzlers by 2040
2007-09-18 19:48:00
At their annual conference in Brighton, the Liberal Democrats have passed a whole range of proposals which they are calling ‘Zero Carbon Britain’. Under the party’s proposals to make the UK carbon neutral by 2050, the Liberal Democrats would also set a target for 30 per cent of UK electricity to come from non-carbon emitting sources by 2020 and 100 per cent by 2050. I wish politicians would not throw phrases like ‘Zero Carbon’ around with such abandon. It is misleading to suggest that we can run economies like ours without producing some CO2. The objective should be to reduce it as much as possible. Whatever solution we end up with, I defy anyone to show me how we can produce the amount of energy we are going to need by 2050 from purely renewable sources.
More About: Lib Dems , Plan

Media attacks on wind farms - again
2007-08-30 18:59:00
I switched the BBC news on this morning and was greeted with pictures of a reporter standing in front of a wind farm. It was a live broadcast, therefore one imagines the story was given more than one airing on BBC Breakfast. It turns out he was talking about this: The government is paying hundreds of millions of pounds to subsidise wind farms that are not economically viable, it has been claimed. Michael Jefferson, from the World Renewable Energy Network, says farms are being built in areas of England, Wales and Scotland without enough wind. But the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) says the claims are “nonsense”. It says subsidies are not paid for the building of plants, only per unit of electricity to the National Grid. As someone raised in Scotland, it’s hard for me to imagine anywhere in my home country which doesn’t have enough wind! Therefore, I will be interested to tune into the Radio 4 programme tonight which expands on this news report. It&rsqu...
More About: Media , Attacks , Farms , Tacks

China says one-child policy helps protect climate
2007-08-30 18:19:00
This story highlights a little discussed aspect of the climate change debate: the greenhouse gas problem is created by people! The inescapable logic, therefore, is that the less people you have on the planet, the less your emissions will be. China views this as a positive aspect of its birth control policy. But credible voices in the west have also raised the issue at this UN Conference: “Population has not been taken seriously enough in the climate debate,” said Chris Rapley, incoming head of the Science Museum in London. He favours a greater drive for education about family planning to avoid unwanted births and slow population growth. But tougher birth control runs into opposition from the Roman Catholic Church, and from some developing nations which favour rising birth rates and have per capita emissions a fraction of those in rich nations. Harlan Watson, the chief U.S. negotiator, said that high immigration to the United States makes it harder to slow its rising emis...
More About: Climate , Policy , Child , Poli

Rich ‘can pay poor to cut carbon’
2007-08-23 17:43:00
Now here’s a story designed to enrage the NGO community, from from Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): The UN’s binding global climate agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, currently requires industrialised nations to reduce the majority of emissions themselves. But Mr de Boer said this was illogical, adding that the scale of the problem facing the world meant that countries should be allowed to invest in emission cuts wherever in the world it was cheapest. What he’s saying, or trying to say, that reducing emissions in ‘developing’ countries will be cheaper for the world as a whole, because those nations are not as dependent on fossil fuels as we are. It’s the same logic which leads telecoms companies to invest in wireless networks in emerging economies where no landlines exist - move straight to the most technically advanced solution where you don’t have a legacy infrastructure to deal with. In the case of...
More About: Rich , Carbon , Poor , Carb

Furious debate on ethanol
2007-08-16 16:46:00
There is a fantastic website I have joined called The Oil Drum where scientists and engineers who know much more about the energy question than I do write about the most important issues such as Peak Oil and the pros and cons of the various green options. Yesterday one of the site’s editors wrote a fascinating article about ethanol which has sparked an enormous debate. The editor, Robert Rapier, makes it clear that he doesn’t think ethanol is the answer to anyone’s problems - for lots of reasons, including the argument that the fuel is ‘marginally above energy neutral’. In other words, it takes just as much energy to produce ethanol as it provides as a fuel, compared to gasoline which is energy positive. You can disagree with the guy, but his reasoning and sourcing appear very sound. That hasn’t stopped a whole avalanche of people disagreeing with Rapier, including the Renewable Fuels Association of America - who object to the argument line by...
More About: Ethanol , Debate , Ethan , Furious

Recycling is a duty, survey for Defra finds
2007-08-15 14:21:00
The results of an interesting survey into UK attitudes on recycling are published in the newspapers today. The most interesting part is here: The survey, for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), revealed there is still substantial opposition to making lifestyle changes to bring about a cut in greenhouse gas emissions. While 29 per cent said they were making an effort to reduce travelling, almost 1 in 3 said they didn’t want to cut back on flights and car journeys. Almost 1 in 5 (19 per cent) said they hadn’t even thought about flying less and 13 per cent said the same about cutting their car use. I think the reporter is interpreting these results the wrong way. If it’s true only 13 per cent of people hadn’t given any consideration to using cars less, that shows some penetration of the environmental issue - to a greater or lesser degree - among the other 87%. Conversely, almost a third said they were making an effort to travel less -...
More About: Recycling , Survey , Duty

Environmentalists urge Brown to overhaul Britain’s energy policy to m
2007-08-14 11:10:00
Now here’s a story which sums up why I decided to start writing this blog. On the one hand, the renewable lobby says the government is not taking green energy seriously enough: “Our European colleagues will be looking to the UK to propose a realistic contribution, especially as we have the EU’s best resource of wind, tidal and wave energy. Such lowly domestic ambition also threatens to undermine the credibility of the new climate change bill, which puts into statute the commitment to long-term emission reductions.” From the government: Downing Street said in response to the Guardian report on the leaked guidance that the UK was fully committed to renewables. “It is no secret that these are ambitious targets and it will be a major challenge to meet them, not just for the UK, but for all EU states. It is now for the [European] commission to propose how the EU-wide targets should be met.” What is the public supposed to make of all this? Are we really...
More About: Britain , Energy , Brown , Policy , Poli

Protestors descend on Heathrow
2007-08-13 13:31:00
Tomorrow (Tues) sees the mass protest by Camp for Climate Action at Heath row Airport. The issue is that the protestors believe the new Terminal 5 should be scrapped, because it will increase CO2 emissions at the world’s busiest airport. Listening to Gemma Davis of Climate Action on the radio this morning, I was struck by how difficult it is for the airport authorities to get their messages across to the public. Here is a very articulate, passionate and media-savvy young person who knows exactly what she wants to say, and sticks to her key points like a true professional. Her insistence that there is an inconsistency in our public agenda - between the consensus on the need to reduce emissions, and the major expansion at Heathrow - came across loud and clear. Ms Davis is a hard act to follow. The airport authorities’ strategy was to say they agreed with Climate Action on the need to reduce emissions, but that the planned protest was ill-considered because it was taking pl...
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Mac turns cooking oil into biofuel
2007-07-05 15:55:00
MacDonalds has announced plans to recycle cooking oil to fuel its fleet of lorries in the UK. The Telegraph reports the company saying this initiative will reduce its local CO2 footprint by 75%. That’s an impressive statistic. I tried to find more facts and figures, but the Big Mac website in the UK doesn’t mention it. It’s interesting that they chose to launch here. Presumably if this creative solution proves to be successful, other countries will take it up.
More About: Cooking , Biofuel , Turn , Cookin

Environmental ‘degradation’ triggers conflict in Sudan
2007-06-26 16:15:00
The United Nations Environmental Programme has produced a sobering report about the link between the terrible conflict in Darfur and a deteriorating environment, especially increasing droughts. I reproduce the press release in full. More information is available here. Environmental Degradation Triggering Tensions and Conflict in Sudan Investments in Management and Rehabilitation of Natural Resources Central to Conflict Resolution and Peace Building in Sudan Says UN Environment Programme Geneva/Nairobi, 22 June 2007 - Sudan is unlikely to see a lasting peace unless widespread and rapidly accelerating environmental degradation is urgently addressed. A new assessment of the country, including the troubled region of Darfur, indicates that among the root causes of decades of social strife and conflict are the rapidly eroding environmental services in several key parts of the country. Investment in environmental management, financed by the international community and from the country&rsqu...
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China ‘passes’ US as ‘world’s biggest CO2 emitter&r
2007-06-21 20:34:00
There are times I get fed up with my former profession - journalism. This is one of them. Complete with a picture of black smoke and choking fumes, the Guardian reports a Dutch scientist’s estimate that China is now a bigger producer of CO2 than the United States. The finding will ‘increase anxiety’, according to the authors, about China’s role in ‘driving man-made climate change’. Driving man-made climate change? I think the Chinese could fairly argue that man-made climate change has been ‘driven’ by over 200 years of industrialisation in other countries. And even if China has overtaken the US as the biggest emitter of cO2, its per capita level is far lower than any western country. The Guardian buries this fact well down the story without providing any figures. So let me fill in the blanks, courtesy of the UK government’s Stern Report: This chart doesn’t require any elaboration from me. ALL countries need to take actio...
More About: World , Mitt , Mitte

Airline CO2 a ’scapegoat’?
2007-06-18 20:13:00
Now here’s a subject to get the blogs spinning: Britain’s commercial airline pilots have today handed a report to the government which ‘challenges the myth that air transport is the major cause of growing carbon dioxide emissions’. Citing the fact that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates airline emissions to be no more than 3% (and predicts they will rise to just 6% by 2050), Captain Mervin Granshaw, chairman of the British Air Line Pilots Association, says: ‘Our report clearly shows that technological advances now being researched will cut aircraft emissions still further. It would be inappropriate therefore, and premature, to restrict air transport at this time. The damage that would be done not only to our industry but to tourism and to the economies of developing nations would be enormous. ‘Our message to all air passengers is to stop feeling guilty about flying. Passengers going by high speed train to the south of Franc...
More About: Airline , Scape

Energy takes centre stage in the US
2007-06-14 20:15:00
The energy bill which has just been introduced before Congress promises to spark a spin-war which will make our British debate on these matters seem like a retired vicar’s tea party: “This is going to be harder than immigration,” said John B. Breaux, a former Democratic senator from Louisiana who is representing Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity firm that recently took control of the Chrysler Corporation. “This is going to be the mother of all bills. By that I mean, any one portion of it is important enough to affect completion of the whole bill.” The big fights are likely to be over targets for renewable power, fuel efficiency standards for cars and mandated production levels for cleaner fuels. At the same time, this is happening: A group of Senate Democrats from coal-rich states is drafting an amendment to proposed energy legislation that would provide as much as $10 billion in federal loans to pay for capturing and storing greenhouse gases produced by ...
More About: Energy , Stage , Centre , The U

Emissions trading failure?
2007-06-13 12:14:00
A new report from the WWF on emissions trading in Europe is making the headlines today. It’s about the second phase of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), a project which sounds bureaucratic but is actually Europe’s main tool for reducing CO2 over the next ten years. Phase one has been up and running for a couple of years now - imposing carbon limits on the bigger polluters, but also allowing them to trade in carbon ’credits’.  The virtue of the ETS was that, for the first time, it created a price for carbon. The downside, widely accepted, was that the emissions levels were set too high, which meant that the market was highly volatile, and many large polluters were actually able to make a profit from trading in it. Talk about the law of unintended consequences! Phase two is designed to address those teething problems, with the EU imposing much ‘tougher’ emissions targets on member states. And there’s been a real battle over whether a...
More About: Failure , Mission , Lure

UK taskforce to cut ‘cyber-warming’
2007-06-11 21:06:00
Interesting news today on a new government taskforce designed to cut CO2 emissions in the IT business. This is a topic which is only just starting to surface in the public debate over climate change, and one we will hear much more about. At the recent Essential Cleantech conference in London, I heard a senior figure from the IT world talk openly about the fact that his industry accounts for more CO2 emissions than air travel (the figure quoted was 4% from memory), and that it’s growing faster. When you think about all those server farms quietly humming away all over the world, it starts to make sense. A few of the big players in this business are beginning to talk to their stakeholders about energy consumption and CO2 emissions. But I believe it needs to become a much bigger priority for the management of those businesses.
More About: Cyber , Ming , Task , Armin

The G8 ‘breakthrough’
2007-06-08 12:19:00
Well that’s what the G8 itself is calling yesterday’s communique on climate change. The key points are in the opening sentence: The leading industrialised nations aim to at least halve global CO2 emissions by 2050. The Heads of State and Government agreed at Heiligendamm to achieve this goal together as part of a UN process. The big emerging economies are also to be incorporated in the process. The breakthrough, as I see it, is to make the target of a 50% reduction in emissions public and explicit. Whatever happens now, a 50% cut is the starting point for all future negotiations. The other achievement is to gain agreement that this should be a UN process. It’s very clear that India and China would not agree to participate otherwise, and it’s been very interesting to see those two emerging giants forming an alliance on the issue. So what happens now? Many difficult discussions lie ahead before we can get a sense of whether anything like a 50% reduction is pos...
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