Summer, ESG, Football, Sri Lanka, Life Lessons

Each week, Giles Gibbons shares his roundup of the week on LinkedIn and it’s always worth a read….

1. Summer Fun

School’s out for summer. If you have children, you’ll know it can be a challenge keeping them entertained. As the cost of living crisis begins to bite, a fifth of UK households now have negative disposable ‘income'. This means that for many families, paid summer activities for kids are no longer an option. In addition, the grandparents that many rely on for childcare may be out of the mix, as retired people are increasingly returning to the workplace due to economic need.  

The government, in recognition of this, has launched a new initiative: Help for Households. One of the most striking aspects of this is that it directly asks companies to step up and offer families new deals – a pretty extraordinary recognition of the way responsibility for tackling social issues has spread to the corporate, as well as the social and political spectrums. 

And the private sector is indeed stepping up. Many restaurant chains and shop cafes are offering free meals for children over the summer. Asda is offering £1 meals for children with no minimum adult spend. IKEA is also offering similar deals – for £1.50 children can get one hot meal, jelly, a soft drink and a piece of fruit. The hospitality sector is helping children get fed. 

Other businesses are getting involved too. London theatres will let children see a West End show for free in August with a fee-paying adult, Vodafone is promoting a mobile social tariff of £10 a month and Amazon’s new ‘help for households’ page will provide access to free entertainment, learning resources and value groceries. 

The non-profit and arts sectors are, unsurprisingly, offering low cost and free activities for families too - testament to their enduring creativity and reach. Several free festivals are happening over the summer, offering street performances, artwork and more, including Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, Stockton international Riverside Festival and of course the Edinburgh Fringe.  

It’s undeniable that many families will still struggle, but the pan-sectoral help is a welcome sign of the times we live in. 

2. ESG – When 3 become 1 

Three letters that were sold as the solution that would allow capitalism to thrive whilst saving the planet. ESG: environment, social and governance. In the investment sector, ESG is a lens used to encourage investors to think not just about financial returns, but also non-financial ones, the theory being that these considerations will create value for the world and – in the long run – for the investor.  

Critics of ESG draw attention to the inconsistency of ratings. Corporate scores from different agencies align less than half the time. Meanwhile, a company can have all the suggested procedures and processes in place to review and monitor climatic impact and still proceed to invest in or benefit from the emission of carbon - take the recent exclusion of Tesla from the S&P ESG 500 index, while Exxon Mobil is included. 

A recent article from The Economist proposes that we should strip back our efforts, and focus solely on emissions. Not social, not governance, not anything else environmental. Just carbon. And there’s some merit to this simplistic approach – after all, this is where the greatest threat to the planet exists.  

The article acknowledges the importance of a corporate focus on social and governance themes, and doesn’t suggest these areas are ignored completely, but argues a “one size fits all” solution for these isn’t appropriate, and that they should be addressed and assessed solely at a company level.  

While we agree with many of the issues raised, there’s a real danger with this narrow approach, even just from an E perspective, let alone the S and the G.  

If other environmental issues such as biodiversity, waste and water are taken out of the picture, there’s a risk they fall off the agenda completely. They may not grab the headlines but they are material and relevant, and also highly interconnected to carbon emissions, but not automatically tackled by addressing them.  

ESG investing has a long way to go, and perfection is a different goal. A change to the current system is needed to ensure that the most pertinent criteria are given the emphasis they warrant. But accountability is key and increased emphasis on emissions doesn’t mean we should remove the bar for other areas of performance completely.  

3. Into Extra Time

With England’s #lionesses Euro Final on Sunday and tremors of ‘it’s coming home’ not far away, the role of sport in bringing people together and sparking conversations is particularly pronounced. That’s why we were pleased to see Reading Football Club’s announcement this week focused on how they’re raising awareness of the climate crisis, an issue so far largely neglected by the sport.  

Reading’s new home kit features a stripe design to represent increasing average global temperatures. Each stripe on the shirts shows a year's average temperature over the club’s 151-year existence, with blue stripes representing cooler than average years and red hotter than average. Even better, the shirt is made from recycled plastic bottles and can itself be recycled again in the future. 

This move is alongside a recent partnership with Reading University to begin reducing the club’s carbon footprint, including investigating solar panel options at its stadium and supporting fans to recycle more on matchdays. Whilst there is still much more to be done, Reading is beginning the journey and looking to bring their fans with them.  

Through visually demonstrating climate change, the new match kit could help start more discussion about climate change and inspire action to fight it amongst a new audience. The support of fans is a powerful force and harnessing that support for environmental progress is a positive step towards the whole societal approach our planet needs.  

With a much bigger goal to save, let’s hope we can all start kicking it where it counts.  

4. Tunnel vision 

When you spend lots of your time and energy calling for reforms and policy changes to promote more sustainable activity, sudden changes can be a big relief. But not always. 

In Sri Lanka, NGOs and parts of civil society have been calling for the widespread adoption of organic farming practices for a while. So when President Gotabaya Rajapaksa banned chemical fertilisers in spring 2021, it looked like a positive step forward. But when you look beyond the headline – was there a plan for organic fertilisers? Was there good knowledge about organic principles? Or is it that the plan didn’t seem like the organic revolution it may have promised. 

Approaching the issue with a simple ban resulted in a drop in rice production of 20% and in tea by 18%, meaning that the country, already steeped in economic troubles, had to spend hundreds of millions on imports and subsidies for its major crops. And this has contributed, in large part, to the political turmoil that the country is currently experiencing.  

The policymaking context is different in Sri Lanka to most other places at the moment. But this doesn’t detract from that fact that transformational change requires transformation and deep long-term thinking and action, not just simple switches. This doesn’t mean that organic farming can’t work, but rather emphasises that the physical, economic and social systems we are trying to make more sustainable are complex. 

And of course this holds for many other challenges – creating real change in areas from renewable energy to gender equality requires systems change – through a process that manages conflicting priorities. As the saying goes, for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. 

5. Being true to myself 

This week, instead of the Goods, we are bringing you a guest post from Dana, who has joined us for work experience for a week.  

Being better than you were yesterday is my motto to tackling life, so this week I’ve come to Good Business to achieve exactly that! I'm here for a work placement this week, working on SKY Girls, Avon and Travis Perkins. I will be a guest contributor on Friday 5 this week to share with you a few life lessons that are important to me.  

Underestimating myself was a common theme in my life until one day, out of boredom during lockdown I decided to sit down and press record. Opening up about all the basic rights that I didn’t have growing up as a female in an Indian household such as having my career chosen for me and being told the purpose of life is to be a good wife all led me to break down boundaries to follow my passion, and I’m encouraging others to do the same. I wanted to be everything they said I couldn’t be. 

Now, I’m influencing thousands of girls young and old, and even parents, on both Instagram (@danaaaaa.xo) and YouTube (Dana Ashraf) I tell them that living your life according to opinions of stereotypical aunties and uncles will do you no good. It took me a long time to understand that we are capable of controlling our lives, and we are responsible for our happiness.  

Working on the SKY Girls project was a remarkable experience, I felt a resemblance with SKY and the content that I create, for example, SKY encourages being true to yourself on online platforms and live events.  

I want to end this Friday 5 with a message that I stand by and share amongst my followers. You are your biggest investment, you wake up every morning and the only person that’s constantly there for you is you, so work on yourself for yourself.