I was at different events this week with sustainability managers from two of our major retailers. One common theme linked the events – what is the role of supermarkets in engaging with their customers on environmental issues?

Fridge doors and bolting customers

Both retailers have fairly advanced environmental policies and are probably ahead of most of their customers in understanding and reacting to the threat of climate change. This can pose problems.

One of the supermarkets placed doors on fridges at some of its stores in order to reduce energy wastage by around 8%. 

This simple move immediately resulted in a loss of sales as customers disliked having to prop the door open with their shoulder as they searched for the right-sized piece of cheese or the perfect joint of lamb. The retail sector is so competitive and responsive to customer needs that the experiment was abandoned and won’t be rolled out across all stores.

The question facing the supermarkets is should they accept that this is the situation and wait for customers to catch up with the environmental debate or should they take a more pro-active approach? 

For instance, what would have happened if they had passed the 8% saving onto the customer by making the products in the fridges with doors cheaper? 

What would have happened if they had placed a simple message on the door explaining why it was there? 

What would have happened if they had engaged in a wider community-based initiative to educate children and their families about the environmental and cost benefits of using fridges differently? 

The answer is unknown, but you can understand the dilemma the supermarkets face in deciding how far they should go in the environmental awareness and engagement agenda in such a competitive market.

Humpty Dumpty marketing

Thursday epitomised in one day how wrong Government has got its climate change messaging. The Advertising Standards Association (ASA) banned two adverts commissioned by DECC stating that they made exaggerated claims about the threat posed by climate change.  What they could also have said is how appalling the adverts were. 

Whoever thought-up the line ‘Jack and Jill could not fetch a pail of water because extreme weather due to climate change had caused a drought’ should be banned from ever inflicting their writing on the public again. Not even all the kings’ soldiers and all the kings’ men could put that advert back together again!

On the same day as the ASA ruling, it was announced that Nissan is going to build its new electric car – the Leaf – at its Sunderland plant. The announcement will safeguard hundreds of jobs and has been made possible thanks to significant grants from the government and European investment bank. 

The announcement highlights all that could be possible in a new low-carbon society, demonstrating the opportunity to create real, manufacturing jobs, building a product that will meet our needs with less environmental impact.

Maybe one day, the Government’s marketing ‘experts’ will latch onto these positive messages and opportunities rather than using low quality copy to make claims about the science which simply don’t stack up.

Base – the final frontier?

On Tuesday and Wednesday I went on the tediously long journey out to the ExCel Centre in London Docklands to give two different presentations at the Base sustainability event. 

This was a massively ambitious attempt to create the ultimate event on business sustainability.  The organisers had spent several years creating a wide range of partnerships and a bed-rock of support from an impressively diverse range of individuals and organisations. Did the event itself deliver on this huge amount of work and level of ambition? Almost.

Everybody I spoke to at the event said there were real gems within the content, but that it was not always easy to find them amongst some blatant sales pitches. 

The venue itself certainly didn’t walk the sustainability talk, and the bland, air-conditioned atmosphere managed to suck quite a lot of life out of what could have been a highly vibrant and celebratory set of content. 

Finally, the organisers must have been disappointed by the turn-out which didn’t reflect the quality and range of presenters. 

I really hope that Base continues as it could be a great catalyst for learning and action, but to succeed the lessons from this event need to be learnt.

Sustainability awards

On Friday, I was one of the judges for the internal sustainability awards for a leading international utility company. I was on the panel looking at social and ethical projects. 

Although it was a long-day sitting through a series of presentations given in different languages on a bewildering range of topics, it was fascinating for a couple of reasons.   

Firstly, it demonstrated just how successful the company has been in embedding sustainable thinking across all parts of its operations. 

Many of the most creative ideas were employee led and were the result of people identifying a problem and then volunteering huge amounts of time and energy to implement a practical solution.

Secondly, it showed how varied the response to the sustainability agenda is in different countries. 

For Eastern Europe, renewable energy is seen as a real opportunity to provide disadvantaged communities with reliable and affordable energy. 

In France, the agenda was much more focussed on employee diversity and looking at ways that more women and people with disabilities could be given the skills required to bring them into the workforce.

I find judging awards such as this really heartening. The activities are often below the radar and are definitely not part of corporate green-wash, instead they consist of groups of employees getting together and trying to do the right thing for both their company and wider society.

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