The Hive

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Sarah Daly

Did you know that the average American creates 29 tonnes of carbon per annum – the average Brit creates about 19 tonnes and the average Malawian just 0.7 tonnes?

We have a very long way to go to reach the 2050 targets of 80% carbon reduction – which equates to about 1 tonne per person on the planet. But don’t worry – it’s highly unlikely we’ll be living like Malawians to achieve the goal …. because guess what? The corporations are now tripping over each other to be the greenest guys on the block. Here’s some highlights:

• “We will do good in the world by doubling our business and halving our  impacts.”  Unilever
• “We will innovate solutions to the environmental crisis and we’ll make billions of dollars doing it.” GE
• “We will be the most ethical offer to our customer by miles.” Co-operative Group
• “We will make our company restorative – a net positive contributor to the planet.” Interface
• “There’s no alternative to sustainability and our customers expect nothing less. We’re going to make it central to what we do, bring it all together and show it makes money.” Marks & Spencer

To be honest, I really don’t mind if ‘green capitalism’ is the mechanism of the future.  I actually think that in many cases it’s unhelpful for people to keep banging on about ‘behaviour change’ when much of what we have to recycle has been provided by the corporates selling us everyday products in vast amounts of impossibly impractical packaging … or cars that consume gallons of petrol, or things that are made out of unsustainable materials. We move into houses that haven’t got intelligent controls, where unless you’re incredibly good at going around every single radiator several times every day, you will inevitably have heaters on when you don’t need to use that energy in that room at that time. In future, let me buy appliances which switch themselves off completely (I have never asked for standby!) In short – let’s have sustainable attributes as the norm and we can all behave relatively normally but consume considerably less of our precious resources in the process.

So I, for one, am rather glad that some of the responsibility is passed back down the line; and with that let there be financial reward (and more jobs) and better products and services in a more ethical and responsible world.

There. That wasn’t too painful was it?