It's not just about plastic bags...
On 16 October 2009, WWF’s chief executive David Nussbaum gave a speech to the Sustainable Consumption Institute – the retail research body set up with backing from Tesco – on the subject of how shops can shape, as well as follow, public concerns about sustainable consumption.
“The plastic carrier bag: an iconic symbol of today’s supermarkets. We’ve all been there, wandering home from the station, seen someone with their hands full of Tesco carrier bags (or bags from any of the other big five of course) and thought ‘I needed to pop to the shops’ ...
Remembering what it was is another thing – I’ve often arrived home with flour and washing up liquid rather than the jam and orange juice we’d needed...
The carrier bag is effective branding. Or it was. It’s now become the 4x4 of the grocery world. A danger to wildlife and a blight on the landscape. Some towns have banned them, and you’ll be chased out of town for carrying one – it’s become akin to not wearing a seatbelt.
Astute marketers that they are, retailers have been quick to identify plastic bags as a key issue for consumers. Tesco was the first to offer loyalty points on its Clubcard for re-using old bags and has now gone a step further by putting bags under the counter at its largest stores. Sainsbury’s followed suit.
As far as environmental initiatives go, these are clever ones. And useful – plastic bag use has been cut in half. But more importantly, they have also led to a number of other initiatives from the major retailers who, it seems, are now engaging in both price wars and green wars. They are setting themselves big reduction targets and building zero carbon stores.
There’s no doubt that further developments like this will contribute a large slice of the greenhouse gas reductions needed. But they’re unlikely to get us all the way there – and to think they will is unrealistic. The low hanging fruits are disappearing – what’s needed now is a more holistic approach to reach higher up where the bigger fruits might be.
Measuring product footprints
As the SCI report suggests: more businesses need a reliable and consistent way to measure the GHG footprint of the products and services they provide – from sourcing the product, manufacturing and packaging it, right through to transportation, use and disposal.
Some forward-thinking companies have already started on this journey. It’s great to see Tesco analysing where the carbon ‘hotspots’ in its food chain lie – from dirt to dustbin as it were.
We have a similar approach with all the businesses we work with. It’s an enlightening process and with it will often come the realisation that operations often account for a fraction of the overall environmental footprint.
Let’s look at this in more detail, in the context of this conference, and the new report published by the SCI today.
I agree with – and applaud – the thrust of the message, which is that a consumption-based approach to sustainability is essential. Within the SCI’s report there is also mention of most of the key elements that will take us to more sustainable consumption: choice editing, price, availability, performance, use and disposal.
But there is more to it than that:
- It is about consumers, but it’s also about companies
- It is about carbon, but it’s also about consumption
- It’s about challenges, like livestock consumption, and it’s about meeting them.
Shaping consumer demand
Much of the SCI report lays the blame at the door of the public, stating that “UK consumers control or influence 75% of national emissions.” It only briefly acknowledges that ‘those who serve consumers’ can be part of the solution.
Some manufacturers and retailers see themselves as responding to consumer demand without recognising their role in shaping that demand. I recall when I was the financial director at a European packaging group – we tended to focus on the resources we were using, but didn’t look up or down the chain. There’s a similar danger in retailers and manufacturers doing the same.
If we look at where the average manufacturer might concentrate their resources, you can see that all the effort is on the bit they control directly – the manufacturing. The two ends of the product’s ‘life’ receive little attention.
However, when you look at the environmental impact of the product, it tends to be most concentrated at either end of the chain. At the start there’s the natural resources: water from rivers, trees from forests and so on. At the end there’s how the consumer uses the product: an example being a car – 80 %of its carbon emissions occurring once it’s left the forecourt.
This is why we’re encouraging a more holistic view, identifying the hotspots in the chain and addressing them. Some of you are already doing this:
- Unilever, jointly with WWF, helped create the Marine Stewardship Council
- Birds Eye pushed its Pollack fish fingers, given the plight of the world’s cod stocks
- There was also P&G’s very effective ‘Turn to 30’ campaign for its Arial brand to help save energy – and emissions – at that far end of the chain, the consumers
Driving green consumerism
Maybe next year we’ll be able to add more names to that list, perhaps in relation to the procurement of sustainable palm oil. Many of you will be involved in the scorecard we’re producing later this month to give us a benchmark on how you’re doing.
At the British Retailers Consortium annual conference last month, Peter Mandelson also challenged retailers to do more leading. He said:
“Retailers should not just be adopters, but also advocators in driving green consumerism.”
But what exactly is green consumerism? Let’s look at this and why it is about carbon AND consumption – my second point.
Peter Mandelson, like Terry Leahy, might have a slightly different definition of green consumerism to me. Green consumerism. Think about it for a moment.
- Could it be selling more green products?
- Could it be selling more products, but cutting emissions in doing so?
- Or, could it be transforming consumerism to stay within the means of one planet?
What if ... what if it’s all three? The first two seem achievable but the latter – transforming consumerism – whose job is that and what would it mean? It could mean reducing the marginal resource consumption to zero, as is happening with music. As a teenager my record collection consisted of piles of vinyl packed in plastic. Yet if my children want to add to their collection they download it (legally of course!): music is becoming de-materialised.
This isn’t always possible. As such – and this may make for uncomfortable listening – transforming consumerism may also involve consuming less. It’s an idea that’s conspicuous by its absence in the SCI report.
We are beginning to see the pre-eminence of economic growth challenged at the highest levels – the report recently produced for President Sarkozy, advocating a shift away from GDP and towards sustainability criteria as indices of national success, springs to mind.
Encouragingly, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development recently stated the following on behalf of some of its biggest members, including Nokia, Adidas and P&G:
"...it is becoming apparent that efficiency gains and technological advances alone will not be sufficient to bring global consumption to a sustainable level; changes will also be required to consumer lifestyles, including the ways in which consumers choose and use products and services."
To be clear, this is not an anti-capitalist or anti-business message. It’s pro-sustainability. It’s pro-efficiency. It’s pro-business. It’s also reality. And while consuming less may mean selling less stuff, it doesn’t have to mean creating less value. How about eating less, but better meat?
Cutting our carbon 'foodprint'
We’ve looked at why it’s about consumers and companies. I’ve also shown why it’s about carbon and consumption. Let’s look now at a specific challenge – and meeting it.
Perhaps underplayed in the SCI report, livestock consumption is one of the most contentious issues around at the moment: burgers, milk, lamb shanks, cheese – Great British fare, and I like all of them.
But the mere mention of livestock consumption in relation to climate change tends to send many producers and manufacturers running for the hills. Fair enough: their livelihood depends on producing meat, so why would they want to hear about reducing the amount consumed?
But it’s more complicated than that. Much more complicated.
Food consumption is responsible for around a fifth of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions – the majority of it coming from livestock. Our modelling suggests these emissions need to be cut by 70% by 2050 to help avoid serious rises in temperature. That’s some challenge.
Changes to farming practices, improving energy efficiency in the supply chain, developments in green technology and so on, have provided an encouraging start. Initiatives like the Dairy Road Map are also encouraging. Yet production-based cuts won’t get us all the way to 70% – there will be a gap.
We’ll soon be publishing a couple of reports to give us a better idea of the gap. And what we’re trying to encourage – as part of our One Planet Food programme – is dialogue and solutions for plugging it. We don’t have all the answers, but we’re not avoiding the question and we’re confident we can help find the solutions. Livestock consumption will probably have to be reduced, but there are many ways to achieve that.
One way is to ignore the issue for another decade or two, and for consumption and emissions to keep rising until drastic action is required. Ben Bradshaw, Defra Minister back in 2007, said that ..."If the impacts of climate change are as bad as predicted, we may need to go back to rationing.” He didn’t mention it again. It’s certainly not a vote-winner.
Or there’s fiscal measures – how would consumers react if the price of frying steak suddenly rose, say, 200%? They’d eat less steak, but they wouldn’t be happy about it.
The longer livestock remains the elephant in the room, the more draconian these changes are going to be – on everyone. Conversely, the sooner we start speaking about it and looking at the options, the less invasive they will be.
Finding innovative solutions
So, what are the options? Well, we asked the Food Ethics Council to find out for us. To do so, they spoke to the likes of the NFU, the National Beef Association, McDonald’s and Dairy UK – and they didn’t run for the hills. The talks were positive and last month we published the findings.
The report details 27 possible ‘interventions’, each of which could help reduce the impact of livestock consumption on climate change. The next step is to work out, with industry, which ones are most feasible and most effective without – and I must reiterate that, without – penalising producers, harming diets or otherwise causing more problems than are solved.
I’ve also been speaking to Hilary Benn about it, not least because we feel it’s his department that can use the framework the FEC has developed to open further, constructive debate on consumption – a debate that we at WWF-UK are actively encouraging.
The industry doesn’t have to wait for Government involvement though. As the Meat Trades Journal pointed out in its editorial last week:
“...the concept of eating less, but better meat – and paying a fair price for it – should not prove the undoing of the meat industry... with pressure growing on all of us to face up to the challenges posed by our changing environment, we need to grab the bull by the horns and lead the charge”.
Of course, there won’t just be one solution to the livestock consumption issue. We’ll probably need several, and there are profits to be made, open doors to be pushed at both for retailers and manufacturers. The dairy-free and meat alternative markets, for instance. There are also invisible innovations, which could save money.
Take the pasta bake I had for lunch yesterday. I checked the back – 35% cheese sauce. I like the flavour, but why not use a smaller amount – 20%, or even 15% – of stronger-flavoured cheese. In doing that ...
- you’d save a lot of cheese
- you’d save a lot of money making the meals
- you’d create value for you, the manufacturer and the producer
- you’d cut emissions within that product
- and you’d have a healthier meal.
This is just one example, but there could be many – which is why we don’t want to polarise groups with knee-jerk, over-simplified campaigns. We want to encourage co-operative work towards a common goal. That’s not to say there won’t be differences – and big ones.
This makes it challenging, but the retailers and manufacturers can play a huge part: they can’t just respond to consumer concerns – they have to help shape them.
The theme of this conference is: ‘Consumers – the key to a low carbon world.’ The key they may be, but it’s retailers that shape and influence what the door opens into.
The plastic bag reductions are an example of responding to consumer demand, and then shaping it; determining what’s in the bags will be the chance to shape demand and encourage consumers to respond.”
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