Why Sustainablogability?

When we first started this blog site it was to look at two aspects:

• Would we be able, as complete novices, to put together and run a blog that would gather enough readership? and, more importantly,
• To highlight the growing impact of the issue of sustainability in everyday life.

Since about the mid-1990s I've been increasingly aware in the business world of the growing interest in the topic of sustainability in the sense of ensuring that what we do has a minimised impact on the earth and is efficient in the use of energy and raw materials to achieve it.

In the early days it was the likes of Friends of the Earth and others that brought the issues of the planet to the fore however this area has grown to become more and more main stream as it jumped over the chasm and into the main stream with the likes of the Fortune sustainability rankings. Nowadays it would seem unforgivable for a company to put out their Annual Report without the use of the word sustainable in their CSR section if nowhere else.

I would argue it has now become unacceptable for companies not to at least point their investors at some of their sustainability projects/ developments. But in the cynical world in which we live one can certainly feel that some of the major corporations that publish their green credentials set themselves up when the reality does not match their marketing. If you are going to advertise yourself as green then one bad news story that runs contra to that message can ruin the thousands of dollars spent on image. A most recent example was BP; having gone through a significant greening campaign over the past years the oil spill in Alaska and the subsequent inquiries have undoubtedly gone along way to undo all the past CSR work.

So what does the corporate world do? Do we almost need a root and branch check of our processes and systems along the lines of a "Sarbanes-Oxley" for sustainability - help no! Companies that are in business for the long term have a reason to act in a sustainable way. We need to help the others to come to this conclusion through legislation and our own buying habits.

Forget the sustainability of the Internet, can we sustain the planet for our own future?

The Sunday Times Magazine front cover shows the UK submerged by water entitled "Tomorrow's world".

It may not be the Paper vs Electronic debate that we concern ourselves with over the coming years but how to protect ourselves against droughts, floods and landslides.

Read for yourself here the full impact global warming could have.

China looks to Sustainability Agenda?

It was glad tidings of joy I felt as Radio Four broadcasted sections of the Annual Report given by Mr Wen to the National People's Congress in China... it felt that at last the leadership of China was beginning to acknowledge on a senior level that China also faced serious sustainability issues. Not to be too naive then I'll wait to see what arises from this recent address to the nation but it certainly felt like the waking of a giant?

China is expected to bcome the biggest emitter of greenhouse gase in 2009 however the knock on effects of massive investments into heavy industry have already shown detrimental effects on the water and air conditions in the region - particularly along the coastal development areas. Can China learn from the lessons that we learned too late? How do we balance a "need" for development but at the same time take care of the planet?

Grow your own house? Or happy hippy building blocks?

As promised I checked out Ecobuild last week - definate improvement on last year where sheep's wool was being promoted as the next best thing for insulation - although I did get to thinking about this one - if all the 13 million homes that were currently under-insulated moved to sheep's wool then firstly would we have the volume of sheep's wool to cope with this demand? Would it be a good promotion of sustainability to then use up even more land for grazing more sheep on? Would we even have sufficient room for all that many sheep - or would we have to import it from abroad...?

I was reminded of these thoughts as my eyes met the latest development on the sustainable building products being launched at Ecobuild - "Hemcrete" - yes, you've guessed it using hemp mixed with lime and binders to produced a combination of hemp and concrete for spraying onto walls. Now this might sound like a wind up but this is a serious product behind which a number of large organisations stand behind... As I researched into this I came across information this idea is not exactly new...whatever next...

On my travels last week one of the discussions I got caught up in was on the issue of carbon off-setting... (what an exciting life I lead, I know... ) what caught my attention was that the traditional offer of off-setting the carbon emissions brought about producing a certain product against tree planting was now perceived as environmentally unfriendly! Another pointed out that if we continued down this route then Britain would once again turn back into a highly tree dense land...

Will Mechanical Turks Save the World?

For those who have never heard this term, a recent article in the Independent Newspaper outlines how you can earn money from the internet by doing such bizarrely different tasks such as language translation to answering off-beam questions. Before you all rush to earn your fortune, the hourly rate on offer is usually way below minimum wage, but it is interesting how the wisdom of the crowd is now being used to complete tasks which were either expensive or impossible before. What is more interesting is that the Mturk-ers providing their services for next to peanuts are actually doing it - this can only be explained by the social computing phenomenon that has lead to MySpace, YouTube and the rest.

But is this relevant for sustainability? Well, this shrinking virtual world surely omeans that searching for services becomes easier and hence less of the world's resources will be consumed in the hunt for a provider. In the old old days, if you wanted to translate something, you probably invited suppliers for interview, set up a contract and posted the information backwards and forwards. In the future, no search or contracts will be necessary as the market will provide the lowest cost (and CO2) solution.

So will Mturks save the world? Well, not quite, but maybe this ultimate market solution will start to chip away at some of our assumptions of where work resides and thus gives an opportunity for consumption reduction.

Zero Carbon Homes

The hot sustainability topic on the UK government's sustainability website is housing... Our homes account for c. 27% of all the UK's carbon emissions. The government's aim is that all new homes will be zero carbon by the 2016.

Earlier this week (7th February) the gauntlet was thrown down to the construction industry by English Partnerships to speed up its response to climate change by building zero carbon developments. Trevor Beattie, the Director at English Partnerships responsible for the aptly named "Carbon Challenge" said “Climate change is with us now – so now is the time to act. English Partnerships is already working with developers to accelerate the move towards zero carbon development and this challenge will redouble our efforts.

“The built environment is one of the most significant contributors to global warming, which means our work can have a massive impact on leading the way in cutting domestic carbon emissions.”

The challenge particularly hopes to tackle the efficiency of new housing stock...

...however over 13 million homes in the UK are inadequately insulated according to the National Insulation Association - and at the current rate of c. 450,000 per annum cavity wall insulations we have a long way to go!

Sustainability - what does it mean?

So what does Sustainability actually mean then? It would seem from reading through the press and CSR literature different things to different people and organisations. In the olden days we would take the tried and trusted ( or should that mean tired and dusty) English Oxford Dictionary meaning almost as gospel however perhaps nowadays we would turn to the global world for comment by referring to a Wikipedia definition:

"an attempt to provide the best outcomes for the human and natural environments both now and into the indefinite future. It relates to the continuity of economic, social, institutional and environmental aspects of human society, as well as the non-human environment. It is intended to be a means of configuring civilization and human activity so that society, its members and its economies are able to meet their needs and express their greatest potential in the present, while preserving biodiversity and natural ecosystems, and planning and acting for the ability to maintain these ideals in a very long term. Sustainability affects every level of organization, from the local neighborhood to the entire planet.Sustainability is an attempt to provide the best outcomes for the human and natural environments both now and into the indefinite future..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability

A mystical journey

Scenario gazing is really relevant to help us draw conclusions about the sustainability of our planet. However, where we need to find frameworks to make sense of the future, earlier cultures were able to understand the future by making sense of uncertainties that they saw developing by the simple art of story telling. This mystical film tells a story about our current environmental problems from the imagined viewpoint of a native American:

Titular Musings

So what exactly is sustainablogablity? Is it the ability to sustain a blog, which could indeed be difficult. Or is it a blog about sustainability? If it is a blog about sustainability then surely a key question has to be;

Can a blog in itself attempt to provide the best outcomes for the human and natural environments both now and into the indefinite future ?

Does a blog actually contribute to the pressures on our natural ecosystems? Maybe sustainablogablity was simply a name made up during a crazy evening spent consuming cheap beer imported from Mexico with a carbon footprint the size of a Yeti. Or maybe it has a much deeper polito-anagramical meaning. A quick rearangement yields

It aligns you, basal bit

- if that isn't crystal clear, I don't know what is.