Giles Gibbons

Good Business - Sustainability | Strategy | Impact

June 16, 2023

1. The final plastic straw

We have a plastic problem. Despite the backlash against single use plastic, we currently produce around 400 million tonnes of the stuff a year, almost all of which is destined to end up as plastic waste, and much of that in our oceans, in our soil and on top of the highest mountains.  

It’s clear that consumers have woken up to the problems caused by plastic pollution, helped in no small part by emotive images of seabirds regurgitating household plastic waste and sea mammals tangled in plastic waste from Blue Planet II. However, it seems the financial sector may be slower in responding to the challenge. 

A report from financial think-tank Planet Tracker seeks to put a cost on our plastic addiction by assessing the financial risk to 150 multinational companies that produce or use large quantities of plastic. It concludes that litigation and social liabilities linked to irresponsible plastic production and consumption could exceed $100bn globally by 2030. Add to that the cost of reputational damage, associated loss of business and the cost of business transformation needed to meet new regulation. 

For investors, this could pose a significant threat to returns, as it is unlikely that this is being considered in their assessments of a firm’s value. Planet Tracker’s report suggests that investor perception of risks in the plastics sector is lower than that for other industries such as metals and mining. This is despite increasingly tight regulation around plastic use and disposal, and a global treaty on plastic pollution expected later this year.  

As transparency improves, so will investor awareness, and with it more realistic pricing of risk around plastics. CDP now invites companies to report on plastic use in their carbon submissions and nature-related disclosures will be required in forthcoming Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD). And in the meantime, as material risks go, plastics should be right at the top of a business’s list. 

2. Nan with a van

Good campaigns require a deep understanding of your audience. Gaining this insight requires creating the right space for people to be open and honest. And making sure that the right person is asking the questions.

Some people have a unique ability to prompt open and honest insights, and in the battle against climate change, fostering genuine conversations about the challenges and solutions is hugely important. A dash of humour and relatability, a sprinkle of warmth and charm – key ingredients to empowering people to share their thoughts and concerns. And who fits this better profile better than your nan? 

In efforts to engage people around climate change and nature, activist groups Rights: Community: Action and The Glimpse Collective sent their nan (well, someone’s grandmother) on a mission: to tour the UK in a caravan and invite people to share their ideas, hopes and fears around climate change. The aim of this campaign was to gain genuine insights into people’s views to share with MPs to inform future policy planning. By recording conversations over a cup of tea, rather than having people fill out a form or a survey, Climate Nan hoped to spark a genuine dialogue around climate change, bridging the gap between the policy makers and the people. 

When people perceive messengers as relatable and trustworthy, they feel comfortable engaging in meaningful discussions. This creates an environment where ideas flow and innovative solutions emerge. People get a chance to speak and be heard, and they educate and inform others in the process. It’s a great way to spark collective action. Go Climate Nan! 

3. Handy labels

No one likes being labelled. It means your complex personality is being reduced to a single trait, or that your unique identity is being generalised. But when it comes to objects and things, we love labels. They certify the truth, they reassure, they give credibility. So, what about “harvested by hand”, which you may see on supermarket products such as Spanish courgettes or Chinese sugar snap peas. Does it reassure you, or make you wonder how those hands were actually treated?  

A recent article in the Financial Times was critical of the practice. The article looks at a variety of attributes that could make the sustainability-supporting consumer uneasy. There are questions of additionality - first, harvesting this type of product might not be doable by any machine, in which case it has always been, and will always be, harvested by humans. Perhaps machinery is unaffordable, meaning the economics don’t stack up to do it any way other than manually. And then there is the human dimension. Manual agricultural labour can be repetitive, dangerous, badly paid and precarious; if we don’t know how the people harvesting the products are being treated, then we can’t assume that “harvested by hand” is the blissful, agrarian dream we are being encouraged to view it as. Acknowledging the role of workers in getting food to our table is one thing, but using it as reassurance to consumers that may or may not be misplaced is quite another.  

We’ve long been encouraged to “look behind the label” when it comes to the clothes we buy. We should pay the same attention to these kinds of labels on food, and other products. The focus on greenwashing has (rightly) brought closer levels of scrutiny on green claims tied to products and services; it’s time to do the same to social claims. Some are simply marketing tricks that value your money, not your values.

4. This can nappy

The used nappy (diaper for our US friends) is an environmental headache. The average child in the UK will get through around 7,000 in their early years, which is around a tonne of waste. Made from wood pulp, cotton, viscose rayon, polyester, polyethene and polypropylene, they are most commonly disposed of in landfills or by incineration. Their complex ingredient makeup means that to be recycled, their plastic elements must be separated from their organic fibres, a complicated process which isn’t widely available in most countries.

But the used nappy has gained an unlikely new lease of life as a possible sand substitute in concrete mixtures used for construction.  

In the The University of Kitakyushu, Japan, a team has discovered that disposable diaper waste can be used as an alternative ingredient in mortar and concrete mixtures. Combining different volumes of dried and shredded diapers with cement, sand, gravel and water, the team found that diaper waste could replace up to 10% of the sand required to build a three-story house, 27% in a one-story house, and up to 40% for the construction of partition walls in buildings. 

This discovery therefore holds promise as a way of reducing landfill waste, while also responding to the growing demand for low-cost and sustainable housing, particularly in Indonesia, where the first ‘diaper-infused’ concrete house has been built. As with many of these innovations (see also seaweed for bricks and mushroom insulation) it remains to be seen whether it is a scalable and effective solution. But with concrete currently accounting for 7% global greenhouse gas emissions a year and requiring 50 billion tons of sand annually, we need all the blue sky, down-and-dirty thinking we can lay our hands on. And we can lay our hands on a *lot* of used nappies.   

Sustainable, repurposed and low cost- it’s a triple whammy for the nappy. 

The Goods: Getting screen time 

Conversations centred on the newest season of a hit series or the latest blockbusters are a staple of offices, homes and pubs alike. Clearly, film and TV is not only a significant pastime but has a powerful grip on the attention of the nation. 

It’s therefore no surprise how it influences the public conversation and how powerful stories can inspire and create change. But one element where we’re lacking the inspiration we need is climate change. This has been quantified by an annual survey and report from BAFTA’s sustainability arm, albert, which analysed subtitling data from UK broadcasters and sure enough ‘climate change’ is referred to less frequently than ‘Shakespeare’, ‘rat’ and ten times less frequently than ‘cake’. In the year we were all at home watching Tiger King, cats were cited four times more than this – literally – burning issue.  

And while this report does highlight some good case studies of documentary-style productions covering sustainability issues, there’s a real lack of positive narratives around sustainability in the entertainment industry, as we wrote about in a recent issue of Friday 5. 

So we were excited to come across a new Netflix series, Unstable, which does what we’ve been looking for, exploring some exciting biotech innovations (that do largely exist in reality) including sugarcane-based plastics and carbon-sequestering concrete. It’s primarily a comedy, and a decent one at that, but with a sustainability theme running through it. And it stars Rob Lowe, so what is not to love? 

Powerful blockbusters like Don’t Look Up have their place in getting people talking about climate issues, but we’re looking forward to sitting down and enjoy high quality dramas exploring climate issues in more subtle, normalised and ultimately relatable ways. 

In this week's Friday 5... 🌍 Planet Tracker's report on the cost of our plastic addiction 👵 Rights: Community: Action & The Glimpse Collective's 'Climate Nan' campaign 🍲 Financial Times's recent article highlighting the problem with food labelling 👶 The University of Kitakyushu building houses from disposable diaper waste 📽 BAFTA's report into how UK broadcasters are exposing audiences to climate change #newsletter #community #food #climatechange #building #sustainability