How Green is Your High Street?

Just watched the Money Program’s “How Green is Your Street” on BBC2. I have to say, it wasn’t too bad as factual TV goes these days. We are suffering from a bit of Greenwash here in the UK, as the supermarkets try to salve our consciences. As you jump into your low carbon transport to the shops, what are they doing for the environment?

We have access to a range of produce and products beyond our grandparents wildest dreams, but at what cost do we have all this nice stuff? This episode of the Money Program dived in to try and provide some answers. A good range of issues were touched on in the program, from the rubbish a family produces each week to the energy used by the supermarkets.

Marks & Spencer lead the charge, with Plan A. A few days later, Tescos launched their initiative. Then Boots, Asda, Sainsbury… even the banks are getting on board. Can you say ‘bandwagon’?

The program set out to reveal who are the greenest, although the careful viewer may have walked away with the complexity of the issues throbbing in their head. I mean that in a good way. Why are the high street retailers doing it? Because of customers. They are convinced that their customers are demanding that they go green. Consumers 1, retailers nil. Or perhaps not.

Marks & Spencers are spending £200 million (about $400 million) on Plan A, while the program points out that Tescos are spending about £500 million. It is a shame that M&S haven’t answered any of our email questions about Plan A – so much for interacting or being accountable to your consumers guys!

Do companies risk alienating their customers with all this ‘green stuff’. From the GfK NOP poll of 1,000 people , it would seem not. The majority wanted shops to go green. However consumers were also cynical: 49% said it was all hype, whilst only 19% believed their claims had substance.

What is the high street doing? The leading shops are looking to cut air pollution. The BBC calculated ‘food miles’ how far the food for a family had travelled – 100,000 miles! Even one individual item had travelled 11,000 miles. That is a huge amount of aviation fuel. South African strawberrys are flown 6,000 miles to get to our shops, but this is where the issue gets complicated for us at ResponsAble. Tesco’s is marking this travelled goods with a plane sticker, but people avoiding these goods has concequence for foreign growers and workers in poor countries. Each of the workers at the featured South African farm is supporting families and improving the local economy. Tesco is reducing reliance on air transport (aiming for <1% from 2% today), other supermarkets are looking at alternative transport.
Chris Goodall, the author of How to Live a Low-carbon Life: The Individual’s Guide to Stopping Climate Change popped up a few times, so that sounds like a book for our wish list!

The program touched on local sources, featuring a farmer suppling ASDA, only 8 miles from farm to supermarket – it looked like a free range farm, the chickens looked happy! But British produce may not be better for the environment. For example, tomatoes grown in the UK have to make use of heating. The program found a very interesting Tomato farm in the UK that uses excess heat from an adjoining sugar plant to support the growing. Very cool, or should I say very warm?

Tescos claims it will eventually ‘carbon label’ every product. They will be spending 5 million pounds on this. I have seen this covered elsewhere and it still makes me groan. Boots have tried this (and were featured on the program), they only managed to do it for two products, with a team of 5 people! It took months! They estimate it cost them 250,000 points (nb Boots worked with the Carbon Trust – more on that in a future post).

There was a magic moment during a street interview “carbon foot print – what’s that?” said a bemused person on the street. I have to say, I think I know where he’s coming from. How about less jargon and more on using less of our planet’s limited resources. 72% of the people in the poll said that retailers weren’t doing enough to cut back on waste. Their expert said that supermarkets could be more ambitious in reducing packaging. I would really like to see all of the results of the poll and how the questions were constructed – how about publishing it on your website BBC?

There was a good hat-tip to an observation we have made: We are going back to what green grocers used to do! Farmer’s markets have been doing this for ages – locally sourced, open goods, with little to no packaging

Riverford Organic were featured, with their fruit and vegboxes. They have done away with almost all outer packaging. They use ‘nature’s packaging’ – by leaving on outer leaves on etc to protect the product. They have also developed 100% recycled paper compostable packaging for where they have to use it. What was not mentioned was that they also collect their boxes for re-use.
Tesco’s didn’t come across too well. They covered Tesco’s experiment with electric delivery vans (3 of them) and their store with Photovoltaic cells – that just powered the tills. How about doors on the fridges guys? Tesco’s are aiming to 1/2 the carbon footprint of their buildings by 2020. Does the increase in efficiency offset the growth? Tescos is opening hundreds of new stores. It is a huge shame that the BBC didn’t feature Waitrose, I feel I have to redress the balance somehow, by doing a post on them. Waitrose seem years ahead, but weren’t mentioned at all. Co-op came out very well, they are using 98% green energy today.

There was good treatment of some of the less convincing activities by some players. For example, Barclays Breathe card, which is made from recycled plastic and donates money to global projects. Ah, tokenism at its best. Barclays do source 50% of their power from renewable sources, so there is good stuff going off there too.

Some players are still using Carbon offsetting. As the program points out, this was very fashionable in the 90’s, but is now very controversial. Jutta Kill from FERN spoke well, is carbon offsetting a license to pollute? Some of the newer ideas sounded interesting with good responsible outcomes, for example solar panels for 3rd world projects. However, carbon offsetting is a distraction from the main task: preserving our precious natural resources.

There was a piece was about shops being more ethical, this was very superficial as all it covered was cod farming in Scotland! This is perhaps almost offensive to those working to reduce bonded labour and poor working conditions – issues that weren’t even mentioned.

A well put together and informative program, kudos to the BBC. However, I think there will be some very cross supermarkets and some upset/unpopular PR people too. I must go and lay down, my head is dizzy from all the spin.

International Cocoa Initiative – chocolate watchdog?

We had an interesting question from Kimi yesterday, which I felt would be good to explore as a post in its own right, especially given the amount of traffic ResponsAble is getting specifically interested in the chocolate issue:

I would love to hear your opinions on the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI). The chocolate industries have been criticized for their delayed work in the fight against child labor…. Further, they continue their trade practices (”unfair” trade) as usual. Yet, they have pledged to end child labor…. What are their motives? Are they sincere?

I am very confused…

The International Cocoa Initiative (ICI) is the body that was set up to respond to the Harkin/Engel Protocol, which promised to end the Worst Forms of Child Labour (ILO Convention 182) ‘ to include all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery (the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage and serfdom, forced or compulsory labour including recruitment for use in armed conflict); the use or offering of a child for prostitution and/or pornography, illicit activities including the production and trafficking of drugs; as well as work which when performed is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of the child.‘

Their website states:

‘Created in 2002 under Swiss law in Geneva, ICI is a product of active co-operation between the global chocolate industry, concerned politicians, members of the labour movement and key civil society actors engaged in the fight against child labour. The foundation was staffed in the summer of 2003, and set about the research necessary to carry out its mandate.

Our mission is : “to oversee and sustain efforts to eliminate the worst forms of child labour and forced labour in the growing and processing of cocoa beans and their derivative products” ‘

They have worked mainly in Ghana, building awareness of what trafficking and WFCL is amongst the cocoa growing communities, helping a small proportion of children from cocoa growing families into schools and teaching farmers how to get more productivity from their crops. It sounds commendable until you consider that their remit was to end child exploitation on cocoa farms by 2005. They have singularly failed to do so.

A new report on the Ghana COCOBOD website shows that dangerous forms of child labour are still widespread even in that country, which is relatively advanced in this area by comparison to some of its neighbours. Although that report claims that trafficking is not major problem in Ghana, it does admit that there are significant numbers of children who are working on cocoa farms in debt bondage and far from their families – by UN definitions this is trafficking.

In Ivory Coast (where Stop the Traffik’s chocolate campaign is focused), almost nothing seems to have been achieved, which given that this is the country which produces more than 40% of the world’s cocoa, is not really a good record to date.

The problem is that although the ICI approach sounds good, it does not seem able to effect long term change. The main issue is that it assumes that the responsibility lies with the farming community, whereas, in fact, all the power is with the chocolate industry: the cocoa exporters and with the chocolate companies. In Ivory Coast alone there are 600,000 small cocoa farms and only 10 main exporters. Despite the fact that the Ivorian govenrments tax & investment policies are at best unhelpful, the real power remains with the cocoa exporters.

So, are the ICI sincere? A cynic would see business responding to consumer pressure in a way that appears commendable but moves the onus as far from them (and towards the farmers) as reasonably possible. Or maybe that is unfair and they are simply taking longer to ramp up than they at first envisaged. I feel we need to let them know we are watching and are expecting them to take responsibility.