Giles Gibbons

Good Business - Sustainability | Strategy | Impact

February 3, 2023

1.Not just hot air

Air pollution affects everyone and has dangerous (sometimes deadly) health impacts, most obviously respiratory disease but also less obvious diseases such as #diabetes and #dementia. It’s a big problem in towns and cities, and carbon, which gets a lot more attention, is something that almost every business contributes towards. But also, it’s a problem that every business can take action on. In his Annual Report on Air Pollution, the Chief Medical Officer unequivocally called on businesses to make solving air pollution their responsibility, a position supported by the CBI (Confederation of British Industry) and the UN Human Rights Council. So how can you build action on air quality into your business plans?

Our friends at Global Action Plan have provided their five top takeaways for businesses who want to be at the forefront of air pollution solutions, including making sure there are fewer and cleaner vehicles on the roads, choosing suppliers and partners who are acting on air pollution and focusing on indoor air quality as a workplace health issue.

Even if you aren’t running large fleets of vehicles yourself, there is an opportunity to think creatively about air pollution – can you support your employees to cycle to work, or build air quality into the specification for your next office refurbishment? At Good Business, we are taking action by shopping locally rather than relying on deliveries to our office where possible, and when we go out, we use the Mayor’s Office air pollution route mapper to identify ways to give our lungs a bit of a breather (so to speak).

If you want more information about air pollution, check out Global Action Plan's Clean Air Hub, or get in touch with Global Action Plan’s Campaign Lead (and former Good Business employee!) Tessa Bartholomew-Good.

2. 6 Deadly Sins

Chances are you’ve already fallen victim to at least one form of greenwashing today; perhaps you drank coffee misleadingly labelled as ethically sourced and degradable (green labelling), or you’re wearing an ASOS.com jumper that tells you, the wearer, to ‘Think of the Environment’ and wash it at 30 degrees while it continues to fail in its own environmental responsibilities (green shifting), as this week’s writer discovered.

Greenwashing is an evolving and increasingly sophisticated phenomenon. Planet Tracker’s recent report details six different forms of greenwashing, each more creative and misleading than the previous one.

The most common is green labelling, using labels such as ‘degradable’ or ‘eco-friendly’ to market products. With more than 200 of these terms in widespread use, what they mean remains a mystery to many. Then there is green rinsing, where companies update their sustainability targets before they’ve achieved them. PepsiCo has changed recycling targets five times in the past five years, and unsurprisingly, hasn’t reached many of them.

#Greenwashing in all its guises carries clear reputational risks – see HSBC’s problems last year when it was accused of greenlighting (spotlighting a green action) to distract from elsewhere. Its promise to plant two million trees was interpreted as an attempt to distract from the fact that they weren’t taking any action on the financing of businesses with enormous carbon and GHG emission contributions.

Planet Tracker’s report comes amidst increasing regulatory efforts to clamp down on greenwashing practices, such as the CMA’s Green Claims Code. If you want to distinguish your green shifting (putting the blame onto your suppliers or customers) from your green crowding (joining sustainability coalitions in the hope no one will realise you aren’t doing much) then you can read the report here. Or get in touch and we’d be happy to guide you through the maze. 

3. Workplace blues

With large numbers of the workforce on strike, it’s clear that relationships between employees and employers have reached rock bottom in many sectors, both public and in some cases private too.

So perhaps it is unsurprising that Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2022 report shows that almost half of the employees in the world are not happy at work. Globally, 44% of employees reported experiencing a lot of stress each day. And in the UK, only 9% of employees feel engaged at work.

To state what should be obvious, it pays to take employee happiness and wellbeing seriously. Studies show that businesses with engaged workers have 23% higher profits compared with businesses with miserable workers. And to our minds, this is an area of sustainability that needs to be addressed with more thoughtfulness, as well as more urgency.

Employee wellbeing is often – though not always – codified in a company’s #ESG strategy. But the metrics tend to be reductive, focusing on things like pay gaps and reporting on demographics, training and benefits. These are essential and need to be managed well, but what about other indicators, such as employees’ level of stress, engagement, social connections? And – why not – their happiness? Most standardised employee satisfaction surveys do not track these areas of life, but there is no reason why they couldn’t evolve too, and the very process of doing so would make them more meaningful.

As the Gallup's report says, “Improving life at work isn’t rocket science, but the world is closer to colonizing Mars than it is to fixing the world’s broken places.” If you need support on this earthly journey, we are one email away.

 4. Good Business Book Club: The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

“Cli-fi” is a burgeoning genre: apparently, a sub-genre of science fiction that deals with the impacts of climate change and global warming. Not surprising that most of the books published under this banner are apocalyptic and deeply depressing. But hope is at hand. The Ministry for the Future by noted sci-fi author Kim Stanley Robinson considers a future that is not as bleak as you may expect, if you make it to the end of its 500-plus pages.

It’s the story of a group of bureaucrats at the Ministry for the Future, established by the UN under the auspices of the Paris Agreement to act as an advocate for future generations whose needs are deemed to be as valid as the present generation, and to explore new ways of living that can deliver this. It also brings in other voices – some named, some not – ranging from climate activists and aid workers, climate refugees and a host of scientists and other players who navigate a world approaching catastrophic tipping levels. In this world, environmental disasters kill at scale – the story opens with a searing heatwave in India and floods wipe out most of LA and the surrounding area later on – and lead to mass unrest, eco-terrorism, migration and structural change.

There’s a lot to learn as you go, all of it rooted in strong science. Many chapters are short accessible essays that take on subjects such as cryptocurrency, stranded assets, progressive taxation, labour relations, the co-operative system, geoengineering, wildlife corridors, quantitative easing and how to regenerate a glacier. You’ll feel smarter – and more optimistic – as you read, and it makes a convincing case for the role of smart but boring people taking small but necessary steps to save the world, provided that there is enough anger and activism alongside it to power the change. Five stars from the Good Business team!

The Goods: Charity Super.Mkt

If you love planet friendly shopping, or if you just love a good bargain, we’ve got some great news for you. The recent surge in popularity of second-hand clothes shopping has led to the opening of a mega charity shop, known as Charity Super.Mkt, the first of its kind in the UK.

Located in Brent Cross in north London and featuring a curated collection of clothing from 10 of the UK’s best charity retailers, this second-hand shopping mall is poignantly located inside the old Topshop store which has been sitting empty since closing two years ago. The negative impact of fast fashion is no secret, with retailers, like Topshop, regularly coming under fire for the harm they cause, from facilitating poor worker conditions to encouraging overconsumption with everchanging trends.

Change is on the horizon in the fashion industry, with more and more retailers making concerted efforts to improve their ways, including incorporating sales of second-hand fashion. But while these changes among fashion retailers are welcome, charity shopping has even more benefits. On top of being good for the planet, it’s also good for people and your pocket, something that’s becoming increasingly important as the cost-of-living crisis looms. And at Good Business we love a good deal that works for everyone.

The bad news is that this second-hand hub is only a pop-up, running until the end of February. So, get in quick while you can, and we hope to see charity superstores like this pop up more often in the future.