Cleaning up our act

Last week's move towards peat free compost by B&Q (see here) reminded me of four tests of sustainability which a friend of mine, Craig Bennett*, once shared.  If I remember it correctly, for a business to be genuinely sustainable it must... 

...first, get its own house in order and reduce the environmental impact of its business

...second, be proud about the steps that it has taken to reduce its impact and be prepared to talk publicly about progress it has made

...third, encourage others to make environmental improvements and even call on decision-makers to make it easy for people to do the right thing and penalise those that do not

...fourth, be prepared to change the business model if the current model continues to depend on environmental destruction.

These principles apply as much to retailers of peat compost as they do to any organisation campaigning to tackle climate change.  

The RSPB has, over the past decade, been trying to gets own house in order and reduce its carbon footprint.  Since 2007, we even set a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 3% per person every year - consistent with the trajectory we were advocated to governments.   We focused originally on business travel and energy from our offices.  We have now extended this to other parts of our business such as water, waste and our publications.  In time, I expect us to extend this to land use and our nature reserves.  While it was initially a bit of a struggle to get the metrics in place (we had a five year pilot period) and to get cross-organisation buy-in, the good news is that we continue to meet our increasingly tough target without compromising our nature conservation objectives. 

I say this in part to celebrate our achievement, but also to admit that it has been hard work and, of course, some may argue that we could have gone further and faster.  We have learnt a great deal on the way and I expect that tough choices will still have to be made it we are to stay on the downward trajectory of emissions we have set ourselves.  These tough decisions, include, for example applying to build a wind turbine at our Headquarters (see here).

In most sectors, there are progressive businesses showing the way to others.  You'll all have your own favourites that have good environmental stories to tell.  We have, for example, through our Nature of Farming Awards, looked to celebrate the best in wildlife-friendly farming.  But we need more businesses, clubbing together to respect Craig's third principle and make the case for change to government and acknowledging that, however unpalatable, the fourth principle, must be an option.  This is an issue I shall return to in weeks to come.

For now, which is your favourite sustainable business and which company would you like to see clean up its act?

It would be great to hear your views.

*Craig is currently Policy & Campaigns Director of Friends of the Earth and is a senior associate of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (see here).   We've known each other for twenty years, a period that included sharing a tent in Mongolia for twelve weeks while doing research as part of our Masters.  I have always valued his take on conservation, even if one or two of his wise thoughts are now probably lost to me after too many glasses of Mongolian vodka...