Giles GibbonsFounder and CEO, Good Business

1. Save (the world) at Walmart

Last weekend’s FT piece, ‘How Walmart convinced critics it can sell more stuff and save the world’, showed not only how far Walmart has come, but also how far the FT has come in being able to present a more nuanced narrative to the role of business in driving societal and environmental change.  

As the article recounts, Walmart was for many years a business focused solely on price, claiming the reason it was screwing its suppliers and not paying its employees enough was because its only stakeholder was its customers. And over time, its business practices made it a poster villain for American capitalism.  

Fast forward to today we see a very different story. Then CEO Lee Scott had a Damascus moment in 2005 following Hurricane Katrina, which opened his eyes to the role of business to deliver societal and environmental change. He brought a new vision to the company, which has been turbocharged by the current CEO, Doug McMillon. From its Project Gigaton to remove 1bn tonnes of GHGs from its supply chain by 2030 to its 200 training academies to teach new retail skills to its 2.3m employees. The numbers and impact are big – not least because by revenue last year, it was the largest company in the world generating $572bn, with a workforce of 2.3m people.  

This shift has also led to a different type of person being attracted to work at Walmart – scholars and leaders who envisaged working in development, aid or government have instead ended up at Walmart – convinced it offers them the best chance to create change at scale. This is a sentiment with which we’d very much concur – we’ve always seen business as one of the greatest engines of positive action there is. And as businesses are the product of the people within them, this new cohort at Walmart gives us hope for the future.  

This is important – as there is still work to do. As the FT article points out (and something we talk about a lot), progress needs to happen across the board, particularly on core issues like pay. Without paying your employees enough so they don’t have to rely upon state handouts (progress has been made, but no other US company employs more people who are on some sort of federal assistance), Walmart’s progress in other areas may never have the cut through it deserves.  

2. Fail to plan... 

There’s a virtuous green glow that comes from announcing ambitious climate targets. In a world where businesses are expected to be supporting – if not leading – the transition to a low carbon economy, the bigger and bolder your net zero claim, the better you look.  

This race to outdo competitors in the climate ambition arena is no bad thing – bold targets have a real role to play in spurring action towards decarbonisation. Or they would do, if those setting targets were actually making plans to achieve them. 

According to the latest report by Climate Action 100+ – a group of investors monitoring the 166 companies responsible for 80% of global corporate greenhouse gas emissions – the vast majority of companies with net zero targets have no strategy in place to achieve them. In fact, only 19% of companies have quantified key elements of their decarbonisation strategies, and only 10% have committed to align their capex plans with their GHG targets. 

It's hard to imagine how net zero will be achieved without a plan to get us there. And businesses aren’t the only ones guilty of acting first and thinking later. In the financial sector, there have been recent grumblings from members of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero – a coalition of more than 400 financial institutions committed to net-zero portfolios by 2050 – as signatories grapple with the stringent policies that have been set out for the alliance. JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America are among those threatening to leave the alliance due to concerns about litigation should they fail to achieve the requirements. Two pension funds have already left.  

This should be stating the obvious – but targets count for next to nothing unless businesses have a credible strategy for how they will achieve them. Consumers, media, and government all have a role to play in holding businesses to account for this, ensuring that those that fail to make progress are duly disciplined. And those thinking about net zero targets should take note – the world won’t stand for inaction on something as crucial as this.  

3. Changing the game

It’s a tough time to be a small business. The culmination of rising energy prices, inflation and labour shortages make for a lethal cocktail of operating conditions.  

As we all scrabbled to work out how to put an end to COVID, some that could stomach it turned to the boardgame, Pandemic. This was partly as some light (-ish) relief from actual events but also as an engaging way to understand more about deadly viruses and how we can stop them. 

Now, the creator of Pandemic is replicating the same idea by creating a collaborative board game where players work to protect the world from a different deadly threat: climate crisis.  

Although Daybreak isn’t out yet, the concept itself is very interesting. The challenge of reducing such a complex set of dynamics into a game that reflects reality but is approachable is no easy task. This task effectively involves modelling these dynamics – things like climate tipping points, climate financing, energy transitions and international cooperation – and turning them into a game that works.  

Inevitably, this is fascinating process and the creators’ blog makes for a great read. The creators had to deal with some of the weighty questions of our time such as what ‘winning’ and ‘losing’ mean in the context of a climate crisis, how you can foster cooperation when people are dealt different hands, and how to overcome humans’ psychological biases in decision making to get them to work together. 

Aside from it being an interesting undertaking, we think the game itself will be powerful too. Although people largely understand the need for climate action, conversations tend to be oriented around personal actions to reduce carbon footprints, or the scary reports about our collective fate. There’s an important place for these but having meaningful conversations about how we can collectively manage climate change can be really trick. But using the medium of a board game and putting people in positions of power – at least for a couple of hours – can bring the conversation into people’s living rooms in an engaging way.. 

Training for managing climate change through a game? Game on, we say. 

4. A change of heart

A lot of things are uncertain at the moment – including, at the time of writing, the UK’s next Prime Minister. But with energy prices sky high, blackout warnings across Europe and a climate emergency on our hands, one thing is pretty sure: we’re going to need to reduce our energy consumption. And there are plenty of simple ways to do that. 

Yet despite this seemingly obvious truth, the idea of a public behaviour change campaign on energy reduction has proved surprisingly controversial in recent weeks. A government-led energy saving campaign was reportedly vetoed by Liz Truss on the premise that the UK was not “a nanny state” – before being re-instated days later.  

With so much hanging in the balance, we hope this is one commitment the government does not renegue on. Behaviour change campaigns can be an impactful and cost-effective way of shifting public and corporate consumption without the need for regulation or financial incentives. From organ donation to healthy eating, it is a proven approach for creating positive outcomes. As Claire Foges notes, the potential for simple changes to drive a reduction in energy consumption could save enormous amounts of taxpayers’ money that would otherwise be spent subsidising the excess. And that’s not even mentioning the urgent need we have to drive reduction from a climate change perspective. What’s the point of keeping office foyers lit up overnight and shop entrances sweltering whilst the threat of blackouts grows?  

If those who can take simple steps to reduce their energy consumption, everybody wins: the taxpayer, the individual, and the climate. And as the pandemic showed us, taking action together for a common goal can also help to bring communities closer together. 

Making behaviour change a political football is short-sighted. This is a tough time for everyone. We can’t afford to ignore tools that work in the name of ideology. 

5. Use water twice

Let’s stop flushing the loos with drinking water. This is the message of Arthur Valkieser, the inventor of Waterloop, a new system of greywater recycling at a household level. 

What is greywater? It can be all shades of grey really: it is the lightly contaminated water that comes from shower, bath and washing machines. Hydraloop cleans and stores this water, so that it can be used again. 

For those wondering if we can do more to save water than turning off the tap while brushing our teetheth, this gives us an answer – yes, we can! The UN World Intellectual Property Organisation has even recognised the Waterloop as a tool to help reduce water consumption – up to 45 per cent of mains water consumption. This kind of solution is very exciting because it pushes society in the right direction, away from single-use products and from a consumerist mindset, towards a sustainable way of living.  

35 litres of drinking water per person per day are being piped into cisterns to flush loos. Today this hushed scandal has found a potential happy outcome and we are grateful to Arthur Valkieser for making this non-renewable energy a little bit more renewable. Now let’s flush the loos with clean greywater.