Tag Archives: sustainability

Sustainability: Breaking on through to the other side

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“Break on through to the Other Side”  sang Jim Morrison in the Doors way back in the 60s.

Listening again recently started me thinking of how ‘sustainability’ could be ‘breaking through to the other side’ … to a time / place where sustainability and CSR is the norm rather than something we strive for.

This, however, begs a number of tricky questions and answers

Just what does sustainability and social responsibility really look like? When or how will we know we have arrived? What exactly do we have to ‘break through’? What is the tipping point?

What we should find really exciting is that we dont really know, we dont know where the boundary or tipping point is. Where, what or indeed how far we need to push.  Are we nearly there or light years away?  This makes sustainability an adventure and exploration.

And of course many argue, quite rightly, that sustainability is a journey not a destination or a state of business.

A tipping point may well come when organisations move across a rubicon, from trying to do good whilst making a profit, to making a profit from doing good.  (I am reminded here again of Yvon Chouinard at Patagonia “every time we do the right thing for the environment we make a profit”)

Have we made sustainability and CSR too intellectual? I fear so. Is it now far too embedded in checklists, processes and systems. We have lost connection with the natural world, with planet earth, the very reason we need sustainability, resilience and CSR?

Perhaps the tipping point to breaking through to the other side is re-igniting this connection, where we dont need a tag, or a label, but doing the right thing as an organisation or individual is the norm and ‘feels’ right, rather than something we do because we are encouraged, nudged or told to do.

Through fairsnape, organisations are supported in understanding their Route to Zero, where zero is a target, the route the more important, and supported in breaking through barriers.

If you are interested in learning more, I invite you to join me in the sustainability and CSR conversations on twitter, to subscribe to this blog or to get in touch at fairsnape for more information

And a thought for the built environment in 2012… what do you see as the sustainability boundaries that we need to break through and move beyond?

Reinvigorating built environment sustainability leadership

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An excellent blog post on sustainability.com suggests what a reinvigorated agenda for change may look like.

We could learn a lot from this, for new and reinvigorated leadership in sustainability within the Built Environment sector, particularly in the UK as we move into a new era of green deals, PAS 2030’s and a renewed focus on improving our existing building stock:

Simple: For most, the discussion remains new, the lexicon confusing. We need to quickly and clearly cut through that to reach new audiences.

Fresh: People are jaded. They haven’t given up, but need to be convinced that the next change effort will be different, more meaningful.

Connect: Too many experience sustainability as intellectual, abstract, not very well connected to the here and now. (We need to revisit our understanding and connection to natural cycles of the earth, seasons, solar and lunar, the core purpose of sustainability)

Systemic: Progress to date has been limited because it is too often a single company or other actor leading only within a narrow scope. Solutions must now begin to cross traditional boundaries, create new coalitions and value networks and drive change to scale.

Adaptive: Uncertainty abounds, and yet cannot remain an excuse for further delay or loss of momentum . We must anticipate and react quickly to setbacks, sharp curves and emerging issues, and above all, keep moving.

Collaborative: Even with the explosion of supporting technology, collaboration remains a messy and difficult affair, but if new coalitions are to propagate and succeed, the agents involved must embrace and practice vastly more of it.

Distributed: Globalization and the democratization of communications run counter to the old “cult of the elite.” Leadership is perhaps now far more likely to be bottom-up than top-down, but even if not, the crowd will have the final word.

Policy-Independent: There is consensus (and frustration) that government remains either unwilling or unable to respond. We need a pathway to success that welcomes government if they will play a role, but is not in any way dependent on political leadership.

Re-Generative: While we can – and should – start by revisiting and distilling the wisdom of those who pioneered the sustainability movement, we must also invite present-day and future leaders to augment, refresh and build upon it. In this way, we may create a virtuous cycle of innovation and insight needed to propel us forward.

And I would add:

Visibility, Let’s make use of the explosion and ubiquity of the communication and dialogue tools that social media provides, to increase visibility of best practice, to learn and to share.

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Sustainability in Built Environment dominates Guardian Sustainable Business Awards

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Sustainability in the Built Environment dominates Guardian Sustainable Business Award winners:

At British Land – winner of the Guardian Sustainable Business built environment award:

As the relationship with Camden council shows, British Land takes its corporate responsibility seriously and this is reflected in the goals for Regent’s Place. From design to construction, the project team has been expected to apply the highest standards of ISO 14001 certified sustainability brief for developments. As a consequence, all the new office buildings have Breeam “excellent” sustainability ratings.

From fit-out to property maintenance the developer has worked with occupiers and on-site teams to use natural resources efficiently, with a waste guide and sustainability brief for management – leading to 8% less like-for-like energy use since April 2010.

When the masterplan is complete, the Regent’s Place estate will double in size, providing 2m sq ft of office, retail and residential space for 14,000 workers and residents. What an opportunity, then, for a showcase site with sustainability at its core.

At Sainsbury’s – winner of the Guardian Sustainable Business energy award:

Crayford Sainsbury’s biggest UK store … is a breakthrough project – the first time a UK supermarket has used the so-called geo-exchange system to tap natural geo-thermal energy trapped deep under the ground.

At the heart of the system is an advanced ground-source heat pump that is linked to boreholes that capture and store waste heat from the store. This is released, when needed, to provide heat and hot water for the store and on-demand cooling for refrigeration.

Most importantly, it has allowed the supermarket group to increase the size of the store with no increase in either energy use or carbon emissions. The expanded store has exactly the same footprint as the smaller store it replaces.

As such, Crayford provides a blueprint for the UK’s second biggest grocer as it plots its future store development. The system will be used on several new and redeveloped stores now being planned.

At Tescos: winner of the Guardian Sustainable Business carbon award:

An all-timber new look store in Ramsey, Cambridgeshire, is meanwhile creating a zero-carbon template for future store development at home and abroad.

A range of new technologies is being tested, including sun-pipe lighting, renewable combined heat and power (CHP), harvested rainwater to flush toilets and run carwashes, the first ever LED car park lighting system and on-site renewable energy production. Similar stores in the Czech Republic and Thailand will be built in the coming months.

Some 614 UK stores have also been fitted with electronic energy boards showing staff at all levels, and in real time, if their store is operating in an energy efficient way and suggesting ways to improve the results.

The Livingston distribution centre in Scotland will soon be equipped with a six megawatt CHP plant, while the California distribution centre has one of the largest roof-mounted solar installations in North America.

And

at InterfaceFLOR – winner of the Guardian Sustainable Business waste and recycling award:

In 1995 InterfaceFLOR, a carpet tile and commercial flooring company, launched mission zero, a promise to eliminate all of its negative environmental impacts by 2020.

Born from an “epiphany” that founder and chairman Ray Anderson had on reading Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce, the mission moved the company away from the “take, make, waste” cycle of manufacturing towards a more sustainable business model.

The path to mission zero is made up of seven clear and ambitious goals, ranging from eliminating waste and using wholly renewable energy to maximising recycling and using resource-efficient transport.

For InterfaceFLOR, eliminating waste meant eliminating the concept of waste, not just incrementally reducing it. Recycling is seen as a last resort and only considered in cases where waste cannot be prevented or reused in any way. It’s an approach the judges thought eminently replicable.

At Capgemini – short-listed for the Guardian Sustainable Business built environment award.

Capgemini has established a new approach for building energy efficient data centres. Rather than build from scratch, it has used an existing building ‘shell’ and populated it with prefabricated modules, similar to those used as mobile hospitals by the British army in Afghanistan.

This in itself minimises the environmental impact that would come with a new-build project and cuts development time from 18 months to just 22 weeks.

Merlin aims to achieve a step-change in every aspect – from the smart engineering of the building to the use of many innovative features, such as fresh-air cooling, battery-free uninterruptible power supply (UPS) and use of recyclable or reusable materials.

The key feature is the cooling system, which combines fresh air and pre-evaporative cooling. It is set up to ensure the tightest possible real-time control of temperature, humidity and air-flow at minimum energy cost.

Merlin includes new “flywheel technology” in its UPS system, with kinetic energy replacing high-carbon batteries.

towards a be2camp sustainability manifesto

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This post was originally written for and appeared on the be2camp website

Last weekend I bought and read a copy of Charles Leadbeater’s We Think. “the web is a platform for mass creativity and innovation”.

An analogy that Charles uses in his prologue struck me as a good one as to what is emerging within the built environment sector, and chimes well with my call for a be2camp manifesto at be2camp brum last week.

Imagine a large sandy beach with a small number of big, very big boulders. Around each boulder are gathered crowds of people.

The scene changes, and slowly hundreds and thousands of people come to the beach and drop small pebbles on the beach, anywhere and everywhere, and increasingly no where near the big boulders.

Slowly the pebbles, some of them as small as grains of sand start to dominate the beach-scape. A few new big boulders appear but these seem somehow more attractive, more colourful than the original ones. And on close inspection these are not the mono-culture type as before, but a collection of smaller, independent pebbles.

The landscape has changed dramatically. The big boulders having no influence crumble, as the crowds of people are scattered across the beach.

Leadbeater uses the scenario to illustrate what is happening within business under the influence of social media and network developments. A move away from big corporate control, to the smaller emergent ‘long tail’

In the built environment I see this analogy as a potential shift of influence from the institutes, quangos, national strategy working groups, corporate websites, (the established boulders) to the emerging ‘conversations’ through twitter, facebook, blogs, networks … (the peebles).

The new boulders, the collection of groups, are the flickrs and slideshares and linkedins. We can also see the be2camps, AECnetwork and Archnetworks, as the new colourful, more attractive boulders with a very different culture.

Problems and innovations are increasingly addressed by the crowds themselves, through connections and connections across the pebbles.

The pebbles are independent in another important aspect, they are no longer tethered to the original big boulders of IT departments, software and internet providers.

The influence in the built environment is shifting.

Which is where I come back to a be2camp sustainability manifesto, (which incidently should really be a resilience manifesto.)

The influence of where the built environment goes in respect of sustainability/resilience should come from, be influenced by, be commented upon and monitored by the people with pebbles. That’s the twitters, the bloggers, the be2campers, ie those who learn, share, inspire through social media, and are slowly becoming the conscience or compass for the sector.

The original starting point for a manifesto, part of the introduction to be2camp London follows, but I have added the issue of resilience that emerged at be2camp brum.

A be2camp manifesto

Address sustainability as an issue of resilience – resilience to changing environmental, social, economic and technical issues.

Make sustainability in the built environment open source. Sustainability is too important an issue and cannot be done behind closed doors

Adopt and use the opportunities that web2.0 offers

Influence, comment, monitor built environment approaches and strategies

Embrace open communication through pedia and dialogue through discussion forums, blogs and twitter to allow for consultation and collaboration

Engage with all in the built environment sector. Unless there is open and representative approaches to sustainability, it will be largely lost, misunderstood or perceived as irrelevant to those at the sharp end of our industry.

Encourage the debate, the transition, the movement to help shape a resilient built environment that embraces web2.0

These points will be put up onto a wiki very shortly for collaborative development. I do hope you engage and shape an open and collaborative approach to sustainability and resilience.

A discussion session will also be held at the be2camp working buildings event in London Oct 7 and 8

There is also the opportunity to comment and add your thoughts here and through twitter using the #b2camp hashtag.

ISO9001:2008 … what will the changes mean?

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Shaun over at Capable People flagged up the changes to ISO 9001 on his blog over the weekend … Ah, here’s the inside information you’ve all been waiting for.

The changes are so not dramatic that the BSi are giving you … approximately one year after its publication to make any updates. There should not be any major disruption to your organization or your registration and your client manager will guide you through the process.

Sorry, but if the changes are minor, under whelming and very small, mainly relating to clarification, then why give a year to update, and why the need of a client manager to guide you? Is this a case of quality-wash? (We have white and green wash so what colour would quality wash be?)

Without ISO9001 moving forward in line with world of quality, which is now talking in terms of ‘experience’ rather than excellence, or just quality, can the standard remain at the core of the quality management systems paradigm? Or is its day over, and if so what will replace it?

maybe ISO 9004 …

ISO 9004 will undergo a more significant revision but not until end of 2009. According to the BSi the proposed updates focus on the economic sustainability of an organisation. The current suggested title is “Managing for sustainable success – a quality management approach.”

The cynic in me jumps at the sustainable success in the title – surely this will confuse with sustainability in the CSR, triple bottom line sense. Maybe thats the intention – time will tell – but we have to wait over a year to find out.

Meanwhile …