TheLaughingDog's Blog
Article in the Irish Times about the Danish island of Samsø which is billing itself as the 100% Renewable Energy Island: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0425/1224295410384.html
Samsø’s own website, Danish Energy Academy: http://www.energiakademiet.dk/default_uk.asp
I know I harp on about happiness quite a lot but this is the final post that I’ll specifically mention it in. On April 7th of this year I married my beautiful finacee, overlooking the sea in Kerry with our daughter beside us on a warm sunny day. It just doesn’t get better than that.
I didn’t think about a bike or an iPod gadget for a week afterwards. That’s happy. If we were all that happy, all of the time, then there’d surely be anarchy. Or society would find a way to appreciate the new found satisfaction and use it wisely.
Who’s going to effectively measure this? The company themselves? Used (abused) correctly CSR’s can be a source of genuine competitive advantage for a company or it can be another tool to be managed by a company so that they can hide a multitude of sins to people in the developed world. How much credence or attention is given to the validity of a company’s reported CSR’s for it’s operations in the developing world by governments in the developing world?
Who is going to police the validity of a company’s CSR’s? NGOs? There appears to be a multitude of organisations vying for the position of top dog for the policing of CSR’s. What does this mean? Could it be that there is a lucrative market for consulting in the field of compliance? Companies cannot conduct business without some form of accreditation these days and for many customers it is a requirement that their supplier be accreditied to a particular standard. As such the need for a company to achieve and subsequently maintain a particular certification is of paramount importance to their survival. Without a question of doubt this does lead to some sustained improvement in a company’s operation or behaviour. However accreditation & compliance to standards is also another item to be managed by companies. Invariably there is a rush of activity leading up to an audit in order to put on a good show for the auditor and once certification or recertification has been achieved, it’s mostly forgotten about until the next audit. I have witnessed and been party to such activity in the past which makes me very sceptical about CSR’s as they currently stand in large multinational companies.
SME businesses tend to be a different case as they are typically owner led and therefore the management of an SME is closer to the community and may also have quite strong views about certain issues which will be reflected in the company’s operations.
In relation to large multinational’s some sort of rigourous program with genuinely punitive consequences for failure to comply with CSR’s should be introduced. The Sarbanes–Oxley Act is one such example. Introduced to prevent companies folding in the manner that Enron and several others did, it genuinely made board of directors, CEOs, CFOs etc. sit up and notice. I never experienced anything as thorough as a Sarbanes-Oxley audit.
I absolutely hate that term. The very idea of it in fact. In two words you have described all that is crappy about our modern day throw away society. I wasn’t always thus. I love my gadgets and things. I loved the periodic iterative updates that manufacturers made to their products which I had lusted after and eventually purchased. And repurchased. And repurchased. Then I became cynical. Who needs an iPod Mini, an iPod Touch and an iPhone? I can only use one of them at a time. By allowing planned obsolescence to even exist, not to mention functional obsolescence, we allow ourselves to be led around by the noses by companies and their marketing departments, and we will never be happy. Now I value quality above all else and will happily pay extra for something which I know will last for God knows how many years and which if it every does break for whatever reason, I can return it to the company to be repaired so that it’ll last another very very long time. Isn’t that sustainable? Build less, of higher quality and which don’t end up in a container bound for some poor third world country where people will spend their lives eeking out a shitty existence trying to recover some precious or rare earth elements from the item in a totally unhealthy environment.
I feel however that some of this behaviour falls into a classical chicken and egg scenario. Companies conduct R & D to improve their products or if it’s marketing led to create a new product or an updated version of an existing products. Obviously this incurs a cost to the company. In many cases quite a substantial cost. This cost needs to be recouped by the company before they can make a profit on the product. But, depending on the type of product, the life cycle before the next update is introduced is only a year. In that year they have to sell as many of the item as they possibly can, without impacting sales of the next update or alienating customers who bought the last item and who are now being told that the item they bought last year is inferior in every way, so that they can recoup the investment in the existing product, make it pay for itself before they introduce the next updated version and the cycle begins again. And they do. They perhaps make the item with components which will only last some incremental time more than the life cycle of the product creating a ready market for the next updated version. CYNICAL, ain’t I!? Anyway, why are they doing this? Because the measure of a company’s worth, and by extension it’s CEO/MD etc. and their salaries & bonuses is the profit and growth of the company. In order to keep their profits growing in a market that at some point must become saturated, they need clever marketing departments and R & D departments. Where did this all start? With the consumer wanting more choice? With an advertising campaign introducing us to choices we didn’t know we needed but now feel we can’t live without? With a shareholder demanding to know why the company’s turnover didn’t grow 10% in the last year? By a greedy society that expects everything to grow year on year, quarter on quarter?
Sustainability and Sustainable Development are nothing new, just a new name for common sense activities that have been happening since the 1800′s.
When the industrial revolution began there was little concern for the environment or the people who lived in it. Primarily the drivers of the industrial revolution appear to have been the ability to produce more for less thereby increasing a company’s or individual’s profit levels exponentially. With little concern for the environment, some places must litterally have looked like hell on earth.
The scene depicted in de Loutherbourg’s painting, “Coalbrookdale by Night”, painted in 1801 gives us an insight in to what it must have been like to live near these new hubs of industrialisation. The air quality must have been very poor indeed. Water quality and sanitation were also extremely poor and the cause of significant disease. Not very good if you are a company depending on your workers being healthy in order to extract maximum productivity out of them. Beer was popular for a reason – it was safer to drink, because of the brewing process, rather than the water of the time.
Thankfully even at this time there were individuals who were concerned about the environment and had the money and influence to do something about it. A social conscience. Preservation and conservation were seen as key issues. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Sierra Club in America are two examples of early environmentalism.
In the decades leading up to the second world war things gradually improved, however most people were living a life of relative frugality. People grew their own veg, raised animals etc. I firmly believe that society was better of.
I just purchased Michael O’Kelly’s book Tales from the Home Farm. I’ve long harboured a desire to follow in Hugh’s River Cottage footsteps of becoming a small hold farmer, growing my own veg and rearing my own animals for meat. This has become even more important to me since the birth of my daughter, Eve. And now thankfully there’s an Irish book on the subject. Along with his first book Trading Paces, I should have some interesting reading for the summer. Watch this space, I could have some livestock and a polytunnel before it’s all over ;o)
I’m really beginning to love EV’s. Regardless of how they are powered (hybrid/battery only etc.), the humble electric motor seems to be well up to the task of propelling us. In fact it is extremely well suited for use in transport applications as the motive source. An electric motor develops it’s max torque pretty much from the get go, meaning excellent acceleration potential, provided the size of the motor is suitable to it’s task. And that it get’s enough juice. The technology available nowadays, both battery and electric motors, in the hobby (as opposed to toy) side of R/C cars is really stunning in comparison to only a few years ago. In fact there are a lot of committed hobbyists who formerly only raced with petrol engines who have now converted to purely electric set-ups. Will this shift be mirrored in full size cars? Already we’re seeing some interesting cars available now, not just prototypes or showcars. And thankfully they’re a million miles away from the G-Wiz/REVA .
Tesla and Fisker are making EV’s sexy, Honda have made a huge step in the right direction with their CR-Z. Then there’s the more radical side of EV’s which is more towards the cutting edge and also more centred around personal transport. At the cutting edge side of things we have the TTZero – it’s the Isle of Man TT motorcycle race except on battery powered, electric motorcycles.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xds1lx_tt-zero-iomtt2010-isle-of-man_auto
Whilst not exactly pretty you know when you’ve been Tango’d. This vehicle addresses the fact that most of us when driving anywhere, except on a family outting etc., usually drive alone. We have a four/five/seven seat vehicle to carry one person……Stupid. The future of the automobile lies in making in occupy a significantly smaller footprint to accommodate one person only and their luggage. The majority of car journeys can be made in vehicles like that. Their production would consume significantly fewer resources, they’d be lighter so need less motive power, would place a lower demand on the road infrastructure and would allow people to get around, in the absence of a credible public transport system, in a much more sustainable fashion.
The ultimate in EV’s – electric bicycles.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzsHFka92X8?rel=0&w=480&h=390]
Recumbent trikes fitted with an electric assist or all out electric drive could revolutionise personal mobility. Or better yet, just buy a good old fashioned bicycle and pedal damn it. The ultimate sustainable form of personal transport. And it’s good for you.
* Disclaimer – Please note I’m not affiliated to Niner Bikes or Unicycle.
The 5 Why’s is the best tool ever for making people think about a process. Having conducted and mentored a large number of projects using six sigma process improvement methodology, I can honestly say that the thing that used to make senior managers stop and think about what it was that they were doing wrong was the 5 Why’s. Process mapping ran it a close second in my mind.
I just watched a program on BBC called Great British Food Revival. Continuing in the current saving traditional cooking/food tradition of Hugh, Jamie et. al. (a great initiative in my book btw as it introduces the current generation to real food and reminds the older generations of what they’ve forgotten), tonight’s program featured Clarissa Dickson Wright of Two Fat Ladies fame speaking about pork and what classes as pork in our supermarkets. Basically, following a report in the mid 50′s which, for the sake of economies of scale, recommended that the diversity of pig breeds in the UK be dramatically cut to a handful of breeds. Subsequently these breeds have become specialised and bred to suit the requirements of the supermarkets, namely fast growing. This ensures a pretty tasteless meat when it hits the shelves. Now you might say that the pork chops you recently purchased at your local supermarket tasted great and the cost was quite reasonable. Tasted great compared to what though? Have you ever had a pork chop from a traditionally reared pig (nowadays they’d probably be called organically reared – so they can sell it to you at a serious premium, even though that still doesn’t live up to a traditionally reared animal)? A pork chop from such an animal simply tastes out of this world. The supermarket stuff isn’t even in the same general classification. And it’s not just pork chops. No no. Look at chickens – we now have broilers and layers, a distinction which never existed in the past. I won’t even go in to how they’re reared or selectively bred, again to suit the needs of the supermarkets as opposed to the stomachs of the consumer. Back in the day (BITD) you didn’t have the broilers/layer distinction. You simply had a few hens scratching around a patch in your back yard, consuming the food waste from the dinner table. Probably next to the pig, happily mucking around in it’s pen (if you were very lucky). The thing is we’ve forgotten these things. It’s too problematic, doesn’t fit in to our life style. How difficult would having a few hens make taking two weeks in the sun every year? There’s no such thing as boarding kennels for hens. Unless you count the local fox population. They’d certainly look after your few hens for you. So in the quest for convenient meat which we can have on our dinner table every night, we’ve slowly surrendered the notion of quality, good tasting, healthy food for selectively bred animals which produce the maximum amount of saleable product in the shortest possible time. And people are worried about GM crops. The meat you eat tonight has in all probability been manipulated in some fashion, probably through selective breeding, at the very least, to suit the needs of the supermarkets. It certainly isn’t as tasty or naturally nutricious for you as meat you would have traditionally reared yourself. In your own backyard. I’m not going to worry about GM crops for the moment. That threat is coming to a store near you soon. I’m more worried about the meat that’s on my plate right now. Eat less but eat better. And stay away from monoculture or highly specialised, highly bred items as they haven’t been bred with your best interest at heart. Only the profit margin of the company that sold it to you.
Again, I think that looking to the past needs to be part of the solution for the way forward. Just don’t let them sell it to you as something new and amazing. It’s not.
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