Brighton Posse Serving Healthy Greens - But Will It Be In Time?
March 5, 2008 – Libby Davy – Print
What a great group of people there were at the Striding Out Ethical Pitch event last night, out at the end of the bitterly cold Brighton Pier.
After a brief catch up with Thea Allison from B&H Business Community Partnerships, I was co-opted onto the panel at the last minute to help four passionate organisations sharpen their focus. Without wanting to sound too much like a beauty queen, I honestly felt I had as much to learn from everyone there as they did from me. Humbling to say the least.
Some highlights….
Ethical Weddings - impressed with the potential of their niche politically and culturally. The environmental impact of the average wedding can be huge. The opportunity to have a couple and their friends ritualise their commitment to core human/eco values and each other is a catalyst for great things to happen. I’m a great believer in weddings, and was thoroughly chuffed by how well they are weaving their magic and owning their niche. Ranking extremely well with Google (the blog and dot com would be helping). Great to hear they will be doing more to bring their community together and help them help each other. Let’s see if Ning works for them.
Farm Fresh Express - again, great knowledge about the ethical complexity of their sector. No green wash here. Looking forward to seeing if they can develop a franchise model and start embracing the power of blogging to attract funders, customers and stimulate vibrant conversations about food miles, purity, sovereignty, community resilience, slow food and all the issues that matter. Whichever climate scenario you subscribe to, how we eat and what we eat is a core issue to be dealing with.
Magpie / Shabitat - for their anarchic, shambolic, no-compromise, co-operative cool. Let’s see if they can hang on to it, and take their octopus to the next level.
EcoEvents - Dear Sam. What a woman. Like weddings and eating together, events are another time we come together and share conversations, hopefully positive ones. Plus the consumption of energy to get people their, feed, water and entertain them is massive. Want to see EcoEvents do really well. They have everything it takes. Come the rebranding and refocus onto great events first (which they no doubt can do - can’t wait to refer people to them), green BS8901 standard stuff second - they will be flying. Another dot com ranking well for key search. Well done on that front too.
Main thing is, we can’t shop our way out of global warming. Wish I had kept my big mouth shut and let brainy young futurist Hugh Knowles from Forum for the Future talk more from the panel. Wish he had spelt out in no uncertain terms that their ain’t no time for weighing up the benefits of frilly organic knickers - bleached or unbleached right now.
During a sideways conversation his call to arms hit home and I’m off to start reading Climate Code Red. Hugh reckons the IPCC (Nobel Laureatte Al Gore and Co) are being conservative.
Sadly, I think I agree with him.
Climate Emergency
- Raise the Alarm
Maybe the most important thing for ethical enterprises to be doing right now - other than being fully future aware in how they operate and contribute - is to raise the alarm among their sensitized stakeholders by blogging up the Code Red conversation. We wouldn’t want them to be shunned by those wanting to hide in the bunker. They need to read the signs and focus on the positives, helping us see ourselves as capable of taking on the enormous challenges we are all facing right now in coming back from the brink of destruction.
It needs to be handled sensitively. But without a livable climate, there might not be weddings or enough food to go around. We might not even be here.
Don’t shoot the messenger, bury your head in the sand or blame someone else. Got informed, and start raising the alarm.
“There is an urgent need to reconceive the issue we face as a sustainability emergency, that takes us beyond the politics of failure-inducing compromise. The feasibility of rapid transitions is well established historically.
“We now need to “think the unthinkable”, because the sustainability emergency is now not so much a radical idea as simply an indispensable course of action if we are to return to a safe-climate planet.”
Where’s Winston when we need him.
I enjoyed the event too, and agree with your comments but I am, as an entrepreneur myself, frustrated by the lack of goody bags at these kind of events. Yes, we get the information and inspiration, but what exactly am I supposed to DO now?
I believe one thing is to create an ethical sustainability policy for my business, but what I really want is to walk away from these kind of events with a template for creating my own, with links to appropriate help if I need it (even if that means paying for that help).
I was inspired by Sam Wilson of EcoEvents who has done so much homework in creating ways for events to be more ethically run, but also (and just as important) defined systems and mechanisms for measuring the successes and failures, and making the organisers of the events accountable,
And if businesses want to not just be part of the `Green Wash’, they should be accountable, at least to themselves.
What is the point of me creating a sustainability policy if my vision is not balanced by my commitment to achieving deadlines? And buffeted by the realities of every day life, will I not need to make constant revisions for my ethical goals to still be attainable?
I spoke today with Vania Phitidis, an elected member of the Green Party, who is working with Wealden District Council on awards for `green’ businesses. Vania is keen to give advice and encouragement. Businesses should not be shy to make use of their local green MPs to get feedback and advice.
I shall be asking for plenty of help to not only get my first ethical sustainability policy for my business into good shape, but I then want to encourage other businesses to do the same, hopefully providing a basic `template’ that they can use as a starting point. Though getting expert guidance would be even better.
Also at the talk last night were Green Rocket, a great PR company whose genuine ethical agenda is refreshing in the marketing industry. They have kindly allowed me to reprint some of their articles on how to be an ethical business in the blog section of my site at: http://www.certainshops.com/supportnetwork/index.php/category/supportnetwork/ethical-sustainable-business-practice/
Thanks for your indepth response Suzy and for adding in the reference to Green Rocket. Here’s a link for anyone wanting to find them. http://www.greenrocketgroup.com/ Just spoken at length with the very lovely Kim Stoddart. Feels good to have talented, committed people like her in the world right now.
I think the key message I got out of Climate Code Red was the need for imperative and opportunity discussed in equal measure. It is no use talking about huge sea level rise, chaotic weather and species extinction and then mentioning light bulbs and small reductions in CO2 in the same breath.
To empower people you have to talk about solutions that are commensurate with the challenge. And no, relying on future technological fixes is not the only solution. To paraphrase William Gibson “the solutions are here, they are just not equally distributed”. Lets see some radical policy and business interventions from entrepreneurs. Give us something we can get behind that actually measures up to the challenge. The government has show a startling lack of imagination and understanding on this issue. Lets hope we can leave them looking rather foolish.
Always keen to listen to William Gibson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson).
Like Alan Kay’s words too “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” See yourself as causal, not victim. Co-construct the future, together.
Thank you to everyone for their considered and honest comments about my business and website. Your input and support made for both an insightful and fairly challenging evening for me - which is great - I love to be challenged! After a great deal of thought I have decided to stand by my name for a number of reasons - but mainly because I firmly believe you cannot have great event management without inextricably linked effective sustainability processes - the two go hand in hand and I want this to be evident in my branding from first glance - I may have to grow into my name a bit but I am determined to wear it well!
What I absolutely will do though is make sure I get across our event management capabilities from the outset. That was very useful for me to hear - and am going to alter the tone of voice on my site to be more engaging and less like a thesis!! Watch this space…
Regarding the discussion about ethical sustainability policies. I agree that there is not enough support for small businesses here. I also agree that government led organisations are frustrating and somewhat disempowering in their top town techniques. Actually, at the risk of sounding too radical (!), I think this top down centrally-driven rule-based approach which is, of course, designed to embed certain behaviours in individuals and organisations, is the main reason we are now really struggling as a society (and I would hasten to add - as a planet). Certainly, my thoughts are with Hugh on this - it’s time for a radical shake up - not a technological tweak!!!
Rather than working towards rules and regs, I maintain that we should continue to be principle led - and nobody is more passionate about our principles than we are! So we absiolutely are in the best position to really make some inroads in regards to creative sustainability policy and process. A resounding YAY to inventing the future!
I have been thinking about the following very basic phase led progressive template which might be useful as a starting point:
1. Assessment of your company’s specific activities
2. Evaluation of the sustainability issues associated with these activities
3. Creating preferred solutions and drawing up measurable Key Performance Indicators (qualitative and quantitative - the latter may have to be an estimate)
4. Implementing the preferred solutions
5. Assess, review and conduct an internal audit with the information from your KPI’s
6. Modify your sustainability policy so that you progressively move towards full engagement with your sustainability principles.
My business partner, Daren Howarth of Brighton-based CLEVEL (www.CLEVEL.co.uk) is a pioneer in this area and will be offering his services in this regard for all EcoEvents clients. And I am very much looking foward to working with Suzy from certainshops.com in this regard.
Very best to you all
Sam
Hi all
Went to the recent conference about how to help SME’s write their environmental policies and develop adaptive procedures and gathered some really useful info that I want to share. The resounding message was to get businesses like ouselves together - particularly as there does not seem to be as much help for smaller organizations like ourselves as compared to the larger corps etc. - and to creatively support each other whilst accessing the help that is out there to guide us.
And there are great people around who can engage with us and assist us, but call ‘em quick as funding changes at end of this month and who knows if these people will be able to continue their good work for free. There are 2 main contacts:
1. BETRE project manager: Suzy Jesperson. Services include helpline, events, site visits, training and green action grants. Tel 01273 245654 or email help@ecosys.org.uk.
2. Envirowise: 0800 585794. One speaker Rob Holdway of Envirowise and Giraffe Innovation (www.giraffeinnovation.com) was particularly inspiring in his approach. I believe he is able, through Envirowise and DEFRA, to offer a Govt funded consultation for SME’s - but again need to get in quick here!
Other useful website that assists small businesses in complying with environmental legisaltion (and thereby avoiding prosecution!) : NETREGS http://www.netregs.co.uk
I will be working with Suzy from certainshops re a working template that we can share with others as well as learning to develop my own business.
Anyone who wants to contact me re the above can do so at sam@ecoevents.com.
Cheers all
Sam