You are currently browsing responablemark's articles.
On the rejesus blog there is a review of Black Gold. It is a documentary film by Nick and Marc Francis that looks at the coffee bean industry, or more particularly its effect in Ethiopia. We haven’t see the film ourselves yet, other than the trailer:
The coffee industry, like others we have mentioned here, is beset with social responsibility issues. Many of these have come into the public spotlight, receiving more attention than other industries. As a result of this public attention and consumer demand, people are responding. There are now a number of ethical coffee suppliers, including companies like our friends at Eve Coffee.
Think before you drink… You have a choice.
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
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.
Recent Comments