Issue 19: the sustainability issue featuring some good news, algae, lunch options and even Man City
Over the last year or so we have been doing a lot of work with clients in the sustainability space, with the most visible being the Waitrose Unpacked trial that's now rolling out across a number of stores. The challenges are complex as it is not simply about removing unnecessary packaging but also about consumer behaviour change, supply chain innovation and re-engineering what has been optimised brilliantly over many years. Quite often the challenges around climate change can feel insurmountable, and so with this in mind we thought it would be good to pull together some stories to make us all hopeful, showcasing some of the innovative solutions and approaches that are beginning to make a real difference.
Hypergiant Industries
The power of algae
Lets start with something you might more readily expect to feature on a set for the new series of Star Trek. Infact this bioreactor sits on a metre square footprint and uses algae to sequester the same amount of carbon as an acre of trees. To get rapid uptake the makers, Hypergiant, are releasing the blueprints so that anyone can start to produce their own versions with a particular focus on urban homes. So on your next home improvement plans, make sure you’ve made space for your Tesla battery unit and one of these…we think we’ll be seeing a lot more of this type of technology moving into the pages of Elle Deco and Living Etc in the coming months.
FAO
Saving the mangroves and supporting local populations
And now for something at the absolute opposite end of the technology scale. In Avengers: Endgame, Thanos clicks his fingers and saves his beloved environment by disintegrating half of life in the universe…the terrible result of sitting in a dark place and having ideas on your own frankly. If only he’d spent a bit of time exploring the problem a bit more he’d have found some fantastically elegant and simple ideas such as this: a straight-forward reworking of food smoking technology that is saving mangrove forests and much more across 13 countries in Africa and Asia already. This UN-backed innovation is a great example of solving multiple issues in one - increasing yield whilst also reducing food waste, reducing health hazards, and ensuring a significant reduction/replacement of fossil fuels. Bringing together a load of smart innovation principles, this is a great example of finding creative ways to simplify processes and utilise what is at hand rather than requiring new and/or more complex systems to deliver the advance.
Getty/Man City Train To London
How the beautiful game is tackling sustainability
Now let’s get a bit closer to home. Football is hugely influential and when it takes on an issue it can really make a difference – the rise of womens football and the demands for equal pay being recent cases in point. The BBC in association with the Sport Positive Summit have (of course) compiled a league table of how far Premier League clubs are going to help the environment. It is still early days but you might be surprised at how much is already being done, and although issues like travel remain a challenge, this is a massive step towards transparency whilst engaging and inspiring fans to not only do their bit but also to encourage their clubs to do even better.
HolyGrail Project
Revolutionising recycling one invisible barcode at a time
Currently we are incredibly poor at recycling… current estimates are that only 10%* of stocks are successfully recycled with the rest going to landfill, incineration and one third leaking into our environment. (*Ellen Macarthur Foundation/World Economic Forum). These invisible barcodes are a great start in how we answer this problem and start to recycle and reprocess much, much better. With applicability for both consumers, waste management and recycling providers as well as for manufacturers (who will very soon be charged for the disposal of their packaging), this has the potential to help step change where we’re at. We’ve already been considering more uses for the technology, so have a look at this short video and see what it inspires for you
#KERBPactLunch
And finally, is your lunch the next climate battleground?
As our working lives demand more of us, food to go has become the norm…but it comes with a huge amount of single use packaging with every meal. To have any chance of success in reducing the waste this creates it is no longer enough to offer compromised solutions and hope our inherent altruism will be enough to paper over the product deficits: frankly we’re all too lazy/too busy/too distracted by twitter. So, in common with all good sustainable innovations, what is needed are ideas which come at no cost to the customer financially, stylistically or in convenience. Lovemoney has pulled together some of the reusable lunchbox ideas out there, ranging from the prosaic to the stylish and covering a variety of business models from bring your own to deposit/return schemes. Why don’t you see if you can find some of these to try near you as although these initiatives are all, by their nature, small scale right now they are critical as opportunities to test and learn how we might elicit change at scale.