Litigation, Quitting, Loop, Ozone & Goods
Giles Gibbons
Founder and CEO, Good Business
148 articles Following
January 13, 2023
1.Laying down the law
Will 2023 be the year of climate litigation? For businesses at least, the answer seems to be yes. Barely two weeks into 2023 and already Client Earth, an NGO that aims to use the law to protect life on earth, has announced it is taking Danone to court for failure to act on plastic pollution. The announcement states that Danone, despite being one of the world’s top ten plastic producers, is relying too heavily on recycling in its waste reduction efforts. With only 9% of plastics having ever been recycled, the lawyers argue that Danone must do more to reduce its plastic usage – not just shift the problem elsewhere.
This is not the first climate litigation case taken against a business. In 2021, a landmark ruling by a Dutch court ordered Shell to cut its carbon emissions by 45% by 2030, and in 2022, airline KLM was sued by environmental groups for greenwashing. But a case of this scale against a global FMCG company is a milestone for environmental law.
It’s unlikely to be the last. Client Earth has already warned Nestlé and McDonald’s of similar action. When progress on sustainability targets wavers, NGOs are increasingly drawing on the power of the courts to spur faster action.
Of course, legal NGOs will never be able to take on every business – and in this case, Danone has strongly refuted the accusation. But whether Client Earth wins or loses is not the point. Litigation is time-consuming, expensive, and – for a company that likes to tout its B Corp status – an unwelcome reputational blow. Proactive environmental leadership, supported by meaningful NGO engagement and acknowledgement of litigation risk, brings a host of reputational and financial benefits. A surge ahead is always better than a head-to-head: for the climate, and for your business.
2. To quit or to sit?
If 2022 was the year of “quiet quitting,” what does 2023 have in store?, “Climate quitting” may be taking the workplace by storm.
Climate quitting means leaving your job for ‘greener’ organisations, or going as far as changing career to focus on tackling the climate crisis. More than 24 million green jobs could be created globally by 2030. Closing this labour gap will require both new skills and people leaving their existing jobs for rapidly evolving industries. And it’s already underway; this year more people were employed by clean energy companies than by fossil fuel companies, according to the International Energy Agency.
A report by Bloomberg profiled some climate quitters. From a woman who quit after her home in Nashville Tennessee was wiped out by extreme weather in March 2020. Another who changed their job after reading the IPCC 2018 report on what will happen if temperatures rise by more than 1.5C. Or those leaving the oil industry, such as quitting ExxonMobil , to work for a communications firm that champions cleantech.
What does this mean for businesses? It’s clear that being environmentally conscious is something that employees are demanding. Those who don’t meet these demands will lose talent. Worse, you may even face legal repercussions, as our Client Earth story this week demonstrate.
As the environmental crisis worsens, climate quitting is only likely to increase. It is the businesses that are proactive in tackling climate change who will flourish. It is no longer just a moral duty.
3. Put your surplus(s) into the loop!
What if your business’s latent or underused resources could help another business achieve its goals? And what if something another business has but ascribes no value to it could unlock your own business’s future?
Tech enabled platforms are brilliant at connecting different pieces of a puzzle together and helping match supply to demand in non-conventional and sustainable ways. Take something like the Library of Things which enables you to borrow useful things (think a drill, or a ladder) from others when you need them rather than buying them new for yourself. Then there’s Too Good to Go to redistribute food and alleviate waste, Just Park to tackle car parking inefficiencies – the list goes on.
But until now there have been fewer examples of this working in the business world. That’s where Surpluss comes into play. It aims to create change by connecting businesses with each other to share skills and resources. How it works: you tell them about your business, just a few words about who you are and what you do. They assess your potential synergies with their members; then connect you and help you get started with what you can offer or accept.
When a waste stream in a company becomes a resource for another business, both the environment and the economy benefit from it. So we think this has the potential to be a great way to tackle the world’s inefficiencies and solve problems simply by bringing the right people together at the right moment. As they say: local synergies create global impact. Who’s in?
4. Humanity healed the Ozone hole.
Older readers will remember deep concern over the hole in the ozone layer that was first identified in the mid-1970s. Efforts to address the issue led to the Montreal Protocol in 1987. Countries began to implement legislation phasing out chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) and other ozone depleting substances (ODSs). And according to a recent report, the ozone layer could be completely restored by 2040. This is not only great news, by any analysis, but also a great example of how global agreements can have positive, lasting impacts.
CFCs and ODSs are potent greenhouse gases meaning that the Montreal Protocol has played a role in limiting climate change, as well as protecting the ozone layer (although it should be said that CFC replacements such as HFCs are actually much more potent greenhouse gases than CFCs. Fortunately the Montreal Protocol continues to be updated and enforced to this day). While reducing CFCS and ODSs was relatively easy (a small number of causes, the opportunity to transition to alternatives at a reasonable cost), reducing CO2 emissions to the extent needed will be considerably more challenging. Greenhouse gases come from many different sources, and the systems that drive climate change are complex. Many different sectors are involved, as opposed to just a few. And of course, the more complicated a problem, the more difficult the solution is likely to be.
However, lessons can be learnt from the Montreal Protocol and perhaps serve to highlight a way forward to meeting the ambitions of the Paris Agreement on climate change. One is the ability to respond to new scientific knowledge, as it emerges, by updating targets and increasing the level of ambition. Another is about the importance of addressing climate change on a sector by sector basis. And yet another is about the need to constantly revisit and refresh our ambitions and to continue to push for scientific innovation and progress on all fronts.
If we want to achieve the goal of keeping global warming to well below 2°C while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C, we will have to match the Montreal Protocol’s success in drastically upping our ambition over time and accelerating the implementation of measures to achieve those goals. It’s a big ask, but the Montreal Protocol lights a way forward.
The Goods…It’s changing
Regular readers will know that our “Goods” slot has focused on great products to help you lead a more sustainable lifestyle. In 2023, we’re going to be expanding the remit to include things you can do, as well as buy. So do get in touch – if it’s a great documentary you have enjoyed, a brilliant online course you’ve taken or a set of practical ideas and tips for living more sustainably. Email us at Friday5@good.business and we’d love to include it.
I should introduce myself too. My name is Amara, and I am currently spending a week at Good Business gaining some work experience after visiting for a career day during summer last year.
Seeing as it is a brand-new year, I’ve written myself a long list of resolutions and I figured that this year I need to stick to them. One of the resolutions at the top of my list was how can I, as an individual, make an impactful difference to this world? I knew that this was something I was passionate about but I didn’t know where to start.
But then I remembered the career day that I attended last summer with Good Business, so I reached out to them, and this brings me to where I am today. Spending a week here and being involved in the many different projects that they work on to deliver change has made me more passionate and has been a wake-up call for what is really needed in the world.
I’m sure we’ve all had times where we want to make a change and don’t know where to start. For me, identifying the skills I have and figuring out how to use them to achieve that change, has been really helpful. And if you’re looking to make a change in your day job this year, I’d really recommend this blog post from the founder of Today Do This, who sets out four practical steps to doing this. I have found it really helpful, and am going to make sure I refer back to it regularly when I enter the world of full time work!
What will you do to make a change?
