Following the eruption and a wind direction directing the ash cloud directly over the UK from Iceland, UK airspace was progressively closed last Thursday (15^th April)starting with Northern Scottish airports and quickly rolling South to shut the five London airports. By Friday most of Northern Europe was similarly affected.

The aviation authorities, it appeared, had prepared a plan for the eventuality and were putting it into action with remarkable efficiency.

Over the weekend the reality of life without high speed travel began to dawn on the people of Europe, many of whom were stranded on Easter holidays and scheduled to return to work and school. By Monday the atmosphere (media rather than planetary) was beginning to turn toxic. Why wasn’t the government doing something? How could we be so inconvenienced by a mere act of nature? And how could our airline companies be expected to survive?

The authorities were in fact applying what is, in CR circles, known as the precautionary principle. In other words if you can’t prove it’s safe then don’t do it. This was a strong part of the argument against allowing GM crops for example. The science of knowing where the ash cloud is and what it contains is inexact. There’s a chronic shortage of data to map a three dimensional moving phenomenon covering a million square miles. The ash cloud varies with time, location and height. One of the very few planes equipped with sampling technology overflew the UK and found ‘all kinds of muck up there’.

To add to the uncertainty, the aircraft and engine manufacturers have very little data on how resilient their technology is to volcanic ash. What is known, according to the International Airways Volcanic Watch Operations Group, is that between 1980 and 2000, there have been more than eighty jet incidents connected with ash and that there is ‘no definition of a safe concentration of ash’. The most notorious of these in 1982 very nearly brought down a British Airways 747 flight from Heathrow to Auckland, over Jakarta. The plane having unwittingly flown into the ash cloud emitted by the Mount Galunggung volcano suffered failure of all four engines and ‘glided’ (according to passengers in the vertical sense of the word) from 36,000 ft to 13,500 ft where one of the engines restarted. Before this the crew was seriously considering heading out to sea to ditch. Eventually the plane landed under three engines with minimal visibility from the sandblasted windscreen. Nineteen days later a second Singapore Airlines 747 also suffered three engine failures in the same area, forcing the Indonesian authorities, belatedly to close the airspace.

Donald Rumsfeld’s ridiculed description, ‘known unknowns’ accurately sums up the current state of understanding of the risk of flying through the ash cloud.

At first the airlines and airport operators towed the regulators’ line. Safety was the priority – any doubt and we stay on the ground. But they soon began to count the cost which increasingly weighed on their assessment of the situation. British Airways’ embattled Chief Executive Willie Walsh led the campaign to reopen the skies. On Sunday he flew a demonstration flight with some of his pilots – the message – the water’s fine come on in. It reminded me of former UK Environment Minister, John Gummer, feeding his daughter a beef burger to prove to the public that British Beef was safe to eat and free from CJD infection. I trust Cordelia remains in good health but 1,487 British citizens have died to date and the rate remains at about 80 deaths per year http://www.cjd.ed.ac.uk/figures.htm.

By yesterday, day five, the airlines coordinated their campaign. They openly challenged the science. Willie Walsh claimed the airlines were the best judge of when it is safe to fly. German airlines this morning complained of a ‘lack of an agreed methodology’ for assessing the risk. Out of central casting that one. How on earth do you agree a methodology when you don’t understand the science?

BA kept up the pressure with the traditional flurry of alarming statistics about how much it is losing each day. Reports varied from £5m to £20m. All businesses do this when they don’t like regulations and journalists almost never check their figures. This evening Willie fired his final salvo. In an Al Qaedaesque move he launched twenty eight planes fully laden with stranded citizens towards Heathrow airport – still closed by the regulators. All the while briefing the media that the rest of Europe was open and why would the UK government not allow its people home?

As the planes closed on their target, Willie got his showdown meeting with Transport Minister, Lord Adonis. Bear in mind the government is two weeks from the general election and trailing third in the polls. Ministers, not noted for their backbone at the best of times in dealing with business, are at their most febrile.

The outcome was a foregone conclusion. The government and its regulator, The Civil Aviation Authority abandoned the precautionary principle. The UK airports opened at 10pm this evening and Willie’s status as saviour of the stranded citizen is secure. The CAA muttered something outside the meeting about airlines having to conduct risk assessments and inspect their engines. But no one was listening, we’re back in business.

And that is the story of how corporate responsibility, BA style, took over regulation of the skies. Is it safe to fly? Don’t ask me, ask Willie – he’s in charge of risk assessment.

Keep safe, Sage

Back to the drawing board on all fronts then. Internationally it really was to be hoped that world leaders could make common cause to set limits for carbon emissions and share the burden equitably. Advertising agency Ogilvy Earth summed it up nicely with their “Hopenhagen” slogan for the event. It probably was a triumph of hope over experience and one doubts that Denmark was a good choice to organise an event of this complexity. Their administration seems to have struggled to get organised and the little direct experience I had of them was a request to get a chief executive involved with just a month’s notice – what happened, December crept up on them? They seem out of their depth.

The BBC reports, ” the leaders – including presidents Barack Obama of the US and Hu Jintao of China – now viewed the Copenhagen summit as a “staging post”, and not an end point, in the search for a global deal to cut emissions of greenhouse gases”.

The real problem is deeper rooted though. The Chinese and Indians rightly believe that the rich west caused the problem and should pay them to sort it out. In other  words subsidise alternative energy sources and low carbon technology implementation in their countries. Only then will they sign-up to binding reduction targets.

Spot the contradiction?

“The rich west” – trips off the tongue easily enough but is a living lie. The west is rich no longer and since the banking crisis fully indebted to the “poor east”. It’s a topsy turvey world. The rich countries are the poor countries and vice versa.

There will be no meaningful climate targets until China and India realise that they are in fact rich and nobody in the west has the money to help them save the planet. We messed it up but they’re going to have to fix it for us all. Sorry but that’s the ugly truth.

And here’s another one. Despite extensive public education and a government that has consistently acknowledged climate science, the UK population is in denial. According to The Times opinion poll, only two in five people accept it is an established fact that climate change is largely man-made. People don’t like bad news and in the face of restrictions on their freedom, increased taxes and worry about the future of their children, we prefer to doubt the facts.  We really can’t go down in history as the country that invented the industrial revolution but was too stupid to understand its consequences. Serious action is needed. I just don’t see government infomercials doing the trick with ‘redneck Britain’. We need to appeal to basic instincts through a popular medium. And really there is now only one of those – celebrity. The X Factor – climate change needs the X Factor.

Sage

There are two things on my mind this evening. One exciting, the other depressing.

Let’s start with the excitement. Heard of Google ‘Sidewiki‘? You soon will. This a download to the Google toolbar which allows you to post a comment to the side of the screen on any page of any website. Everyone who has downloaded Sidewiki can see your comment and you theirs. What fun all the little Greenpeacers will have with your golden prose.

This could be extremely good news. First it’s going to make sustainability reports interesting. Everybody likes a row and the stage is set. Second it’s going to deliver greater rigor in the reports, something millions of dollars worth of formal ‘assurance’ have failed to do. If people can readily expose a company’s half-truths and spindicators on their own website (I believe I invented a new word there – definition below) then these lapses in transparency will soon be eradicated.

Obviously there is potential for moronic, abusive, profane and defamatory comment. But beyond that it means anyone can attach comments to your website – yes even mighty corporate ones. It’s a PR guy’s worst nightmare but how about a CR director? For the first time your ‘stakeholders’ will be able to annotate your report. That should focus a few minds and do wonders for the corporate waffle quota. Cut it or have the world ridicule your text.

Perhaps we’ll read less terms like ‘workforce restructuring’, ‘rationalisation’, ‘transitioning’ and ‘letting go’ when of course the meaning is made redundant. This is a fact of life in modern business and passes without apology or embarrassment in the human resources section of most company reports. Six of our clients in CR roles have suffered this experience during this recession but the most recent has upset and frustrated me.

The person in question is highly capable, skilled in many ways and hugely loyal to the company that until this week was their employer. Over more than half a decade of working together, I never recall anything other than total support for the company and great effort to explain its position towards a myriad of sustainability issues.

Companies don’t always appreciate what they’ve got until its gone. The experience and expertise they are wilfully losing leaves them exposed and sooner or later they will have to recruit to fill the gap. Meantime, I sincerely wish, my friend and now ex-client a hugely successful new career. So if any major corporations reading this need a sustainability director of unquestionable talent, I will be delighted to pass on your contact details. Now as advised fifteen years ago, it’s time I shut up.

CR Sage

Spindicator = peformance measure or chart designed to mislead or confuse about actual performance

I can’t count the times recently that I’ve heard statements like, ‘CR reporting isn’t working’, ‘there’s no return on our investment’, ‘nobody reads them’, ‘they’re no use to me I get my information from the FT’. A comms lady in a large company even called us to ask if we would review their report, but ‘not from the perspective of CR experts who we don’t care about’. Clearly there’s some frustration in the air.

ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) has been a loyal standard bearer for CS reporting and was first into the awards field (around 1993) with the once prestigious ACCA award. Originally the vision of Roger Adams, an accountant with a broader than average outlook, the award  blossomed over more than a decade, which began with less than fifty companies publishing reports and grew to today when according to our friends at Corporate Register there are 5,632 . This year, however, the UK award is cancelled, in ACCA’s words because:

“After a disappointingly low level of entries for 2009, ACCA felt that it was not viable to run a credible awards scheme with such a small sample size so decided to cancel for 2009. ACCA can bring more benefit to the reporting and sustainability community by focussing on other planned reporting and sustainability work as well as the recently launched ACCA Carbon Accountancy Futures Theme. Preparation for COP15 is also a key area that ACCA would like to concentrate on, which would have coincided with the Awards.”

More evidence of the death of reporting. Err no.

Miss World was once one of the most watched global awards programmes – quite an influence on my youth. Although invented in Britain, today you must travel to Venezuela or South Africa to see it on a mainstream TV channel and it’s not available in the UK at all. Evidence of the demise in interest in female beauty? Yeah right.

ACCA like Miss World failed to move with the times. Their award was stuck in a narrow view of what a CS report should be – as Miss World perpetuated a narrow view of what a woman should be. ACCA’s ‘perfect ten’ report was so complex and inaccessible that only the same few companies could win. And they did over and over. BT has a whole shelf full, Novo Nordisk must be worrying about the carbon footprint of theirs. Not a good strategy for encouraging participation, innovation and excellence.

A prediction: GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) will suffer the same fate.

But do not confuse the departure of the administrators with the death of the organism. It’s part of the natural cycle of development and improvement that we need to keep CS reporting current and relevant.

Upheaval is a good thing. The day sustainability reports are easy and uncontroversial is the day when they have been reduced to the status of annual reports and company press releases. Two of the least effective forms of communication ever invented.

Fortunately we are a long way from that. If you’re working in CR/CS you’re used to frustration even controversy – or you soon will be. It’s not going to be an easy journey from today’s unsustainable society and use of the environment to one that is self sustaining. So the idea that individual companies can articulate how to make this transition elegantly, with recent performance data appended and some compelling local case studies illustrating the ‘can do’ culture, is frankly laughable. Get real – the expectations of a CS report are unachievable.

Our company, Context, helped 27 companies plan, research and write their CS reports last year. Some are excellent and others are flawed. But all are useful documents without which the company and those outside who are interested in it would be much poorer.

For the company, the benefit begins long before publication. The process of identifying the important issues, working out how to measure them and agreeing a strategy for better performance involves many people in different jobs. Of course they could all do this without the spur of the report deadline – but would they – would you? The process of compiling a CS report is a major factor in pushing sustainability within companies. That’s why it’s so fascinating and rewarding.

For the external person interested in the company (stakeholder in CS vernacular) there is a huge amount to be learned from the report. And that applies equally to the best reports and the worst ones. If you’re reading about a company that hasn’t acknowledged key issues, that can’t sensibly demonstrate that it is in control of performance and has a hazy vision of how sustainability will impact its business – what have you learned? Loads.

That’s why CS reporting is valuable. Why standards and awards are irrelevant and why frustration is good. Where there’s smoke there’s fire.

Sage

It’s a characteristic of corporate responsibility (CR) that the simplest questions are actually the most difficult. That’s why very few companies like to talk about tax in their CR reports. If they told you the truth they’d blush, so best not mention it and hope none of their ‘stakeholders’ notices.

The reality is, all large quoted companies must take action to minimise their taxes. If they didn’t, the CEO and CFO would be hauled in front of investors and required to explain why they were wasting so much shareholders’ money. To do this they have a tax ‘strategy’ that involves a number of tax ‘avoidance’ schemes. Avoidance is the term used by finance guys and tax advisors to mean a novel and legal way of paying less tax. This is not to be confused with tax ‘evasion’ which may also be novel but is illegal.

Since tax law is necessarily complex and many loopholes and interpretations of the laws are under continual legal challenge, the boundary between ‘avoidance’ and ‘evasion’ is not as crisp as the tax experts would have you believe. Clearly lying on your tax return is evasion. But dreaming up a complex series of transactions to minimise tax that you believe to be legal, which is eventually found by a court not to be so – that’s a failed avoidance scheme.

Trouble is, to the vast majority of people, there’s no distinction. It’s all cheating and feeds the persecution theory that Leona Helmsley was right when she said “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes”.UK newspaper The Guardian has been running a series under the banner, “tax gap” to expose the avoidance practices of a number of well known companies, all of which would claim to be responsible businesses. The Guardian made a hash of this last year trying to nail Tesco on tax and ended up having to pay compensation to the supermarket because they simply didn’t understand tax well enough. This time, presumably they have hired an expert.

It’s gruesome reading. Big trusted companies on which we all rely, twisting and turning to avoid tax. But let’s get past the rush to judgement. Let’s assume a deal has to be struck between company and state that is equitable. Just how aggressive can a company’s tax strategy be to be socially responsible? And what is the measure of ‘aggression’?

The CR world has shed no light in here at all. They’ve been so busy defining eight categories of cultural diversity (not counting Vietnam veterans) that they somehow missed the biggie. Social responsibility involves contributing to society.Tax is one area where CR and business interest do not coincide. There’s no ‘win win’ here. So what should the company serious about CR – and there are some – do about tax?

I’m no expert, but I’m going to stick my neck out and suggest that there will never be a satisfactory quantitative measure of tax aggression or responsibility. What we could have is judgement and transparency. If company tax planning was undertaken in public, and decisions referred to a committee including non-executives and independent expert stakeholders, then the board would, to some degree, be relieved of the pressure of minimising tax.

No doubt the tax experts are falling around laughing. Ok here’s my question to those guys making a living by inventing tax avoidance schemes to sell to corporate clients. They work in large accountancy and management consultancy firms and also some banks and law firms. How do you square what you do with your own firm’s CR policy? Are you sure you are not breaching your own rules every day? And just how well are you getting along with your own CR team selling responsibility services under the same brand?

Sage

Much is expected of Obama – too much – but he has quickly signalled that climate change is one area in which there will be no backtracking on election promises:

“We will establish strong annual targets that set us on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them by an additional 80 percent by 2050″.

He is also backing this long range target with annual step goals, thereby removing the inevitable temptation to leave doing anything until later. This momentous news was pretty much drowned out by the endless self flagellation over the recession, credit crunch and impending mass unemployment.

America’s engagement in tackling climate change, err, changes everything and means there is now a real chance of capping carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and limiting the global temperature increase to an average of two degrees celsius, which is what the best advice says we must do. At last governments have a realistic opportunity to agree something meaningful in place of the token gestures which are all that have been possible without America.

Of course many in the US have been working constructively for years. Research institutions, some leading companies, many states, thousands of activists and a handful of actors had already decided their government called this one wrong and needed to be turned round.

But, the foot dragging, science perverting political filibustering of the Bush regime has had a huge impact in slowing progress to a crawl. Here’s just one minor story from my own experience:

As a consultant, I have been banging on about climate change for sixteen years. At the beginning it was just one of a list of environmental issues we were trying to make companies more aware of. In fact the hole in the ozone layer (caused by CFCs in aerosols and refrigerants) was originally a more pressing problem. Many at the time, including a UK environment minister, confused the ozone layer with global warming. Gradually, environmental management became better accepted and one by one companies linked energy consumption to carbon dioxide emissions and began thinking about targets.

About ten years ago we were working with a major quarrying group with operations in Europe and the US. To their credit they were one of the first in their sector to make an inventory of their energy consumption and calculate the consequent carbon footprint. Had they continued down this path of carbon accounting they would today be a world leader. But they did not.

On seeing the first draft of their corporate responsibility report, the CEO of the US operation instructed that all references to ‘climate change’ be deleted from the draft. We could mention energy use but not climate change. The hand of Bush hovered even over our keyboard in London. Soon the US CEO was made group CEO and we resigned the account. We will not green-wash.

I’m sure stories like this have played out in a multitude of companies, government organisations and even universities over the Bush period. No longer. The CEO who says he won’t discuss climate change will be about as fashionable as Pam Ewing’s shoulder pads.

Now the real power of America will be unleashed. Drill baby drill will be replaced by re-skill baby re-skill. Detroit will be saved by hybrids and diesels and electric power. Silicon valley will deliver huge carbon savings with IT controlling all kinds of engineering better making it more efficient. Very few nations still have leading brains and leading manufacturing capacity. The US is uniquely equipped to deliver the carbon revolution so many of us have been hoping for. It has some low hanging fruit to harvest working on its own domestic energy efficiency, which is laughable. There’s going to be so much money made using less oil and selling the machines to use less oil, it’s going to be the new boom. The drill less boom.

I for one am looking forward to this. I wonder if that aggregates CEO is ready to start talking carbon with me – I still have his number and my JR Ewing 80′s suit.

Sage

I’m lucky, I found my vocation. But CR is becoming much more mainstream and now appeals to a wider group as a potential career. I receive emailed CVs every day and aim to reply to all of them – I did say ‘aim’ – one of CR reporting’s most useful qualifications. Feel free to chase me.

Opportunities are expanding in major companies, business organisations, NGOs and think tanks, socially responsible investors, academia, regulators and political parties and consultancies (us).

But does CR offer the many interested graduates and mid-life changers prospects of a fulfilling and rewarding career? Here’s a test of your aptitude for the majority of CR positions available today…

1) Do you seek to make a rapid impact on society and the environment?

2) Do you want to be rewarded on a par with other professionals such as lawyers, accountants or marketing executives?

3) Would you expect to interact face to face with CEOs and senior politicians?

4) Do you relish managing a large budget for consultancy and agency support?

5) Would you like a glamorous work environment?

6) Would you like to be able to talk about your work at dinner parties?

OK enough – you got it already. Most CR jobs are still a ‘No’ to the above. And yet there is something hugely rewarding about chipping away, year in year out, making the arguments and constructing the business cases for better environmental and social performance. Once in a while quite significant breakthroughs are achieved, and if we look back over five years or so with any of our clients, we can all be proud of how far we have come. At least we don’t have to come home and say ‘hey honey (male or female honey) guess what, we put two points on the market share of [insert brand of room deodoriser] in Lichtenstein in May’.

Here are my tips for spotting the better corporate positions (I won’t attempt all the categories here):

1) Look for a short reporting line to the CEO.

2) Check the CEO’s speeches – any on sustainability?

3) Where does the potential position fit in? Be wary of positions in regions other than where the HQ is located because they often have insufficient influence.

4) Is there a contradiction between the core business and sustainability? Check the annual review as well as the CR report.

5) Are there significant sustainability issues? This is the opposite of the previous point. Problems too big or too small can be equally disempowering.

6) Who does the CR team report to and what is the senior decision making body? Look for clarity, seniority and engagement of the powerful operating functions of the company.

Even if this list is imperfect, just asking these questions at interview will single you out as the smartest candidate on the block. It may also precipitate deep career depression in your potential new boss if he or she is labouring eight rungs from the CEO in a different time zone and reporting to the head of janitorial supplies.

It’s easy to lose sight of the big picture when progress is glacial or even backsliding. At Context we have a secret blackboard on the private side of the kitchen wall. Here, in addition to caricatures of Peter Knight and I, is a list of our clients’ achievements and milestones. Steps, not all memorable in themselves, that collectively amount to a body of evidence that a career in CR is worthwhile and rewarding.

So if you are considering a getting into CR ,or corporate sustainability as we now call it, I encourage you to persevere. It’s a broad and challenging field that will motivate and interest for many many years. One word of caution – if you are seeking a husband, it’s not the right place. 70% of CR professionals are women. On second thoughts, I may have just righted that imbalance.

Sage

I’m not here to knock the ASA though – I’m still fond of them for employing me and have significant empathy for anyone dealing with complainants. It’s like going home to the wife / husband every morning you enter the office. But compared to another UK regulator Ofcom (responsible for most UK broadcasting and telecommunications), the ASA is a model incisive action like their almost namesakes, the SAS.
On leaving the ASA, I resolved never to complain about anything, ever (except to the wife). And for close on 25 years I held to this maxim.

Then on the 8th March 2007 (note the date) I sat down to watch Channel 4 Television’s documentary on climate change, The Great Global Warming Swindle. This extraordinarily mendacious programme used falsified evidence and misrepresented interviewees to assert that manmade CO2 emissions are not the cause of climate change. One more time – manmade CO2 emissions are not the cause of climate change.

I was appalled. Just when Al Gore was finally getting some traction with An Inconvenient Truth here was a reputable broadcaster casting doubt about the science. What made me furious, and caused the breaking of my ‘never complain’ rule, was that it’s a message we would all dearly like to hear. The wonderful relief we might enjoy if climate change was a scare story cooked up by green activists and leftist politicians to prevent the wealthy from enjoying themselves to the full. Best of all Jeremy Clarkson would be right, fire up the V8, I’m going on a road trip. Friends called me as soon as the programme ended. ‘You’ve got it wrong’ they said. ‘Your career’s a fraud’. And most hurtful of all, ‘I always knew you were a pessimist’.

So after due consultation of the Ofcom broadcasting Code, I drafted my complaint. As I mentioned, I have experience with Codes. One of the Context team sent it to a friend who sent it to someone at an NGO who published my complaint on the web as a template for others. Not at all my intention, but no harm done.

“Ofcom’s ruling explicitly recognises Channel 4′s right to show the programme and the paramount importance of broadcasters being able to challenge orthodoxies and explore controversial subject matter,”

“This is particularly relevant to Channel 4 with its public remit and commitment to giving airtime to alternative perspectives.”

You are few (I know I check the stats) but I like to think of you as discerning. A minority of people share our deep interest in environmental and social issues and fewer still in the relationship between companies and those subjects. If we are indeed a minority it seems we are a growing one. The question of what happens when sustainability meets consumerism is interesting and beginning to be put to the test. There is an explosion of marketing effort directed at consumers to convince them of the environmental benefits of everything from laptops to smoothies. This is because market research is once again saying that the consumer is motivated by green issues (yes it happened at least twice before). The so called ethical or green shopper is back and this time she or he means business.According to an American Express survey of its most affluent customers, The Centurion Luxury Living Index, high earners are seeking to recreate the classic 70′s TV sitcom The Good Life. (Younger and non-British readers need only know that a husband and wife living in the suburbs had ridicule heaped upon them weekly for growing their own vegetables, fuelling the car with cooking oil and riding bicycles.)

Apparently the wealthy are displaying their conscience in their purchasing habits and life-styles. So can we really spend our way out of the environmental crisis? As I mentioned in my last blog, there are some significant champions of green consumer power. Terry Leahy of Tesco to name one.

I’m less sure. For one thing, the wealthier you are the more environmental impact you tend to have. I reckon that a person’s carbon footprint is roughly proportional to their income (assuming they spend it). The same goes for their waste volume. OK, there comes a point when even the super rich can’t consume any more and are forced to leave it in the bank, but up to that very high point, Sage’s Law, applies. Income and impact are in proportion.

So wealthy customers are buying organic vegetables and talking about allotments. But are we really to believe people too busy to raise their own kids or do their own laundry are about to dematerialise in droves?
Token greenness is easy when you are wealthy. It’s no sacrifice to buy organic, install solar panels or take an eco-break in the Amazon. But it’s the absolute footprint that counts, and the wealthy make a bigger one than the poor. That’s why Al Gore was embarrassed shortly after The Inconvenient Truth was released. His sixteen room mansion consumes a lot of power.

The challenge is to square man’s desire for possessions and experiences, with the physical limits of the planet to supply those. If we make each activity a little less impactful, but continue to demand more, faster, bigger, then the net impact will continue upwards and be unsustainable. Add to this population growth and rapid economic development in heavily populated regions and we have cause to be worried. There is precious little evidence that limits to consumption have been reached, even in the luxury West, only limits to supporting that consumption. Marketing and some instinctive consumption gene, just drives us to get more stuff. Try standing in the middle of Top Shop or Primark on a Saturday morning and thinking about sustainable consumption as hordes of girls grab cheap fashion from the rails and clutch it to them on route to the fitting rooms. I’ve done it – then flashed my credit card for my daughter.

Next week I will be entering one of the high temples of consumerism, the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival, where I have kindly been invited by WPP branding agency G2 to participate in a panel discussion. The main event at the festival is the screening of advertisements (presumably now in all media) to select the award winners in various product categories. Those most effective at shifting products, winning market share and raising brand awareness will be honoured. If I can find evidence of sustainability there, things may truly be changing.

G2 has bravely dedicated its session at the conference to Sustainability and the Shopper. One of the topics we will discuss is: Is sustainability an enduring issue?

You have to think about that one! 

Sage