Green politics, Flights, Suncream, Hygiene & Ice cream

Giles Gibbons
Founder and CEO, Good Business

Published Jul 27, 2022

1.  Green Expectations

In the hottest week ever recorded in the UK, why are Tory leadership candidates still lukewarm on climate change?

As we write, the two final candidates for the Conservative Party leadership battle for the role of UK Prime Minister. Yet climate change has been surprisingly low on their agendas. Rishi Sunak has warned against going “too hard and too fast” on emissions reduction, and critics point out that as Chancellor he withdrew Treasury funding for home insulations. Meanwhile, Liz Truss has called for a “temporary moratorium” on the green energy levy, which funds environmental projects.

This is bad news for the UK. But it’s also bad policy. A 2021 poll by the Office for National Statistics found that three-quarters of adults in Great Britain are worried about the impacts of climate change. As The Times pointed out this week, renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy – and the most resilient to global geopolitics. And far from costing money, the Chairman of the Government’s own Climate Change Committee has asserted that people’s bills would be £125 lower if decarbonisation plans for 2030 were implemented now.

Tortoise Media has noted that Margaret Thatcher was one of the UK’s first political leaders to highlight the dangers of climate change, whilst it was Theresa May who set the UK’s legally binding net zero target. Will the next Prime Minister continue their green legacy, or be left lagging behind?

2. Everything under the Sun

We live in a world of choice, endless options on what to watch, eat and wear. We’re taught that the greater the choice, the better and have come to expect that when we shop. However, does there come a point when providing choice does more harm than good?

Boots seems to think so. They recently announced that they will stop producing Soltan, their own brand suncream, with a protection level lower than SPF50 for children and SPF15 for adults. In conjunction with Macmillan Cancer Support, Boots want to support their customers to protect themselves from the sun and lower the risk of developing skin cancer. Rather than trying to encourage their customers to make the right choice, the choice is removed all together.   

Education and persuasion can only go so far, and choice editing can be a powerful tool for retailers to support consumers in responsible purchasing. It’s also a way for these businesses to act on their commitments and create real change in the communities they serve. Yet this isn’t a mechanism to use lightly, (as we’ve written before) Boots is a trusted source of healthcare information, so this decision naturally aligns with their overall purpose and values. Consumer choice has become engrained in our shopping habits but retailers should build a different kind of relationship with their customers, one that leaves them safe in the knowledge that fewer options mean better options.

3. Flight of Fancy?

Plane travel accounts for a large chunk of corporate carbon emissions. Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) releases 50-80% less carbon than standard jet fuel, but huge investment is required to scale up production. Currently, the market is gridlocked: airlines aren’t buying SAF because it’s more expensive, and manufacturers aren’t scaling up production due to lack of demand.

The newly-formed Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance (SABA) hopes to break this deadlock by committing to purchase SAF certificates, which allow businesses to book carbon-neutral flights. Companies purchase the certificates directly from airlines to offset carbon emissions generated by employee business travel. Airlines then use profits from certificate sales to buy a set amount of SAF instead of traditional jet fuel. SAF certificates allow businesses to subsidize the extra cost of buying lower-carbon fuels, reducing carbon emissions in a clear, measurable way. This should increase airline demand for SAF, which should incentivize manufacturers to produce more SAF. Over time, scaling up will help SAF to compete on cost with petroleum-based jet fuel.

We’re excited about the potential of SAF certificates, and we’re not the only ones – they have been endorsed by SBTi and The World Economic Forum (WEF) is currently designing an accounting framework for SAF certificates.

SAF alone won’t get the airline industry to Net Zero – even if all jet fuel was replaced with SAF, emissions would only reduce by 50-80%. Further emissions reduction will require zero-emission planes, which will take decades to develop. However, we think SAF is an important bridge between the current generation of planes (which contribute more than 2% of all global greenhouse emissions) and future generations of planes that can run on electric batteries or hydrogen fuel cells, and we hope to see more companies signing up to SABA.

4. Cleanwashing

While living with Covid is getting (somewhat) easier, reminders of those worrying times early in the pandemic still linger - and one manifestation of this is unnecessary sanitising.

An article published by The Atlantic criticises “hygiene theatre” - the “practice of extreme washing to give off the feeling of improved safety” - that is still visible in many companies and public places today. You may wonder what’s wrong with keeping things clean? While cleanliness is great, hygiene theatre is a problem when it falsely reassures people that an environment is safe without actually lowering the risks.

We have learnt a lot about Covid-19, and now know that the risk of contracting COVID-19 from a surface is less than one in 10,000. We now know it is usually transmitted through infected droplets in the air, and so the best way to reduce infections is through better ventilation and mask-wearing.

So why do restaurants and shops still boast about their level of cleanliness and how recently a surface was disinfected? Hygiene theatre replaces more effective measure such as ventilation and filtration because those measures are invisible, not to mention often more expensive. Restaurants and businesses wanting to demonstrate their concern for the safety of their staff and customers, use hygiene theatre to create a false sense of safety without spending money on measure that would be effective in preventing the spread.

And this is true in other areas too. We are more likely to focus on saying no to plastic straws than moving our pensions to funds with a higher ESG rating - one is easy, visible and immediate, and the other is expensive, time consuming and not present in our day to day lives. Big problems need big solutions, not easy fixes, and as we learn more about a problem we need to learn to adapt our responses and take on the big systemic challenges. The longest journey starts with a single step, but pretty quickly, the steps need to get bigger.

5.   Ice Cream, You Scream

With temperatures soaring to record breaking heights in the UK this week, we’re giving you a roundup of some ‘Good’ frozen treats.

We couldn’t do this piece without mentioning Ben & Jerry’s. For all the criticism and controversies – it’s the best known (the only?) ice cream with a conscience, with a long and distinguished history of environmental and social activism. From its support for Rock the Vote to action against drilling in the Arctic and campaigning for an end to immigration detention, they can’t be accused of ignoring the causes that matter to them. It can feel a little scattergun at times but the ice cream is undeniably delicious and their heart is in the right place. They have a new café in Soho so let us know if you’re in the area and we’ll buy you a cone!

Then, family-owned Scottish ice cream brand Mackie’s is taking innovative steps to reduce the carbon footprint of their products, such as generating their own renewable energy to power the business, locally producing their own packaging to reduce carbon from transport miles, and installing an innovative refrigeration plant to reduce energy use and emissions. We like the fact that Mackie’s is widely available in most supermarkets and is competitively priced. Proof that values don’t have to cost the earth.

And for those of you who avoid dairy, choose Booja Booja, a small Norfolk-based brand making delicious vegan ice cream with simple, natural, ethically sourced ingredients, while also using their business to support declining artistic industries in Kashmir by working with artists to produce their packaging.