Why we need a new mindset to deliver a sustainable future

The sustainability movement (spanning campaigners, citizens, community groups, policy makers, investors and business) has achieved a lot in recent years. It’s helped to mainstream renewables, which less than a decade ago was derided as niche, expensive and irrelevant to a future global energy system. How that’s changed

Plastics have become the ‘poster child’ of an unsustainable, consumption led, throwaway society. Diet (and all the wellbeing, climatic, waste and biodiversity issues associated with it) is finally getting deserved attention. And the risks of modern day slavery (45 million) are much better understood today.

But, but, but we are still heading for a 3C+ world; 8 million tonnes of plastic is still entering the oceans every year; soil is being lost at the rate of 36 billon tonnes pa. Twenty six billionaires still control more wealth than 3.8 billion people. The mass of insects on the planet is declining precipitously by 2.5% pa.

Climate change induced migration is growing with potentially 200 million people on the move by 2050 inflicting untold misery for individuals and insecurity for nations; deforestation is on the rise again in key areas like the Amazon, where deforestation (7,900 km2) has just reached a 10 year high; whilst 2 billion people eat too much, 1 billion too little.

It was interesting to see the latest Davos gathering of the World Economic Forum looking a little nervously down the mountainside at the sustainability ‘swirl’ below. A slow dawning that the current economic paradigm is not just ‘rough at the edges’ but has systemic and potentially existential flaws baked into it.

It’s easy for the sustainability movement to shout louder at ‘everyone else’ – run your business differently, introduce a law, consume less – and no one is wrong for doing this, we really are running out of time on so many issues. But let’s also look inwards and ask ourselves why when the inadequacies and risks of today’s economy are so obvious to us do so many people and institutions plough on, lemming like towards the cliff edge?

Now in the past it could be said the sustainability movement was great at highlighting in broad headlines all that’s wrong with our way of life, less good at really unpicking the root causes and doing something realistic about them.

That’s a harder allegation to make today. Several reports issued recently have delved deeply into not just the science of impact but also offer a better understanding of how our way of life causes them and crucially proposes broad pathways to correct them. For example:

• The EAT Foundation/Lancet Report on a sustainable diet

https://eatforum.org/eat-lancet-commission/

•  the Energy Transitions Commission’s low carbon pathway for heavy industry

https://www.energy-transitions.org/sites/default/files/ETC_MissionPossible_FullReport.pdf

• Project Drawdown

https://www.drawdown.org/

• WRI How to Feed Sustainably a global population of 10 billion

https://www.wri.org/blog/2018/12/how-sustainably-feed-10-billion-people-2050-21-charts

Yet despite the scientific evidence of harm being compelling and a route forward to a sustainable future being mapped on paper, we don’t have enough pace and scale in making change happen. Many individual products, brands, companies, cities etc are getting better but they remain, in the grand scheme of things, individual, isolated examples. We need the whole economy, whole of society to change and do it fast.

And this is where we, the sustainable business community, need a new mind set, one that recognises it’s not enough to study, campaign and plan, we need to engage everyone in the imperative for and opportunity of sustainable change.

So what lies at the heart of this new mind set? Fundamentally it’s about relevance. Relevance to people’s lives. Relevance to them as citizens, consumers, parents and partners, neighbours and colleagues, voters and investors:

1. As Consumers, we must offer them the sustainable products and services they actually want – we know approximately 10% of people live very ‘green’ lives, including how (if at all!) they consume. They have for many years sought organic, MSC and FSC certified products. Business has often assumed that reaching the 35% of ‘light’ greens was merely a continuation of this certified product strategy albeit at a lower price point. In practice, most sustainability engagement of this section of ‘light green’ consumers is being fuelled by a different strategy. One that focuses first and foremost on offering a great product experience to the consumer supported by a great ethical/eco message. A beautiful, high performance car, that’s also electric (and easy to re-charge). Exciting, diverse, tasty, healthy vegan/vegetarian food that’s also good for animals and planets. Beautiful, stylish clothing that’s also made from sustainable fibres. We’ve seen this with the great customer response to our Plant Kitchen Vegan Range.
2. As Colleagues, we must offer them jobs that are purposeful – we hear much about a new Gen Z/millennial workforce wanting jobs with purpose and they do but companies can be lazy in thinking this just means sending out an occasional email saying be proud of your business in the round, someone else is making it sustainable. When what people want to see is demonstrable evidence that the specific job they are doing is good for the corporation, good for their career and good for others. From product developers to store managers our people want to make a social difference through their day job.
3. As citizens, we must support the places where they live – whilst we can excite people as consumers (see above) we must also respond to their civic needs too. Sometimes this will be about giving voice and space to national or even global movements but for most people it will be about making sustainable living (and the benefits it brings) locally relevant, to their home, their children, their community and interest groups. Safer streets now. Better housing and transport now. Better education and wellbeing now. From Andy Burnham as mayor of Greater Manchester to Claire Perry as Minster of State for Energy and Clean Growth more and more politicians get this. But we as a community we need to be much better at capturing the business and societal benefits of the action we take and the policies politicians can implement. A new Business in the Community (BiTC) leadership team, chaired by M&S, is bringing companies together to pool their community programmes to help specific Places.

And underpinning all of this engagement is digital. From functionally tracking and tracing trillions of products and their ingredients; to emotionally engaging people in how they consume more sustainably; from monitoring 1.5 billion hectares of farmland to linking tens of millions of people to share and re-sell surplus products, the 4th Industrial Revolution has to be seized to enable a sustainable future.

Yes we can blame others for not listening hard enough to the facts that are self-evident enough to us but to succeed truly and create a sustainable future at the scale and pace we know is needed we need to get off any lofty perch we might be tempted to stand aloof on, adopt a new mind-set and get down and show people that change is necessary, change is possible and change is better for people individually.