Promoting sustainable behaviour means more than clever slogans

The Guardian's Sustainable Business micro-site is fast becoming a great place to find strong thinking.  Once again this post is copied directly and shameless from there.  I'll be writing more on this soon, but in the meantime, it's a sentiment I agree with:  Even the best campaigns to promote sustainable behaviour will be limited in scope if they fail to link everyday actions to the bigger picture.

If done right, promoting sustainable behaviour can mean so much more than a clever slogan or an appeal for people to do their bit – it can be a political act in itself, says Adam Corner.

If it were possible to solve climate change overnight through new technologies, the strict regulation of high-polluting industries or a binding political agreement that all the world's countries signed up to, wouldn't that make more sense than focusing on everyday attitudes and behaviour?

The problem, of course, is that there is no magic low-carbon wand, but if there was it would be waved by a person as susceptible to the quirks, biases, and pitfalls of human judgement as the rest of us. So although it is comforting to draw sharp distinctions between politics, technologies and individuals, the reality is that human behaviour underpins it all. And this means that promoting sustainable behaviour in the most effective way is an absolutely critical part of society's response to climate change.

At first, it was assumed that once people knew how environmentally damaging their actions were, they'd soon start making changes. Unfortunately, sustainable behaviour campaigns require more than just a clever campaign slogan and clear facts to succeed. Many sustainability initiatives over the past 20 years have targeted low-hanging fruit – so-called "simple and painless" behaviour changes like unplugging phone chargers, switching to energy-saving light-bulbs, or re-using plastic bags.

But there is only limited evidence that starting with simple and painless changes is the best way of catalysing further changes – and there is a risk that people will feel they have already done their bit.

So what should we be doing instead? First and foremost, individuals – and individual behaviours – cannot be separated from their social context. We act according to our personal values and priorities and in line with the social norms of our peer group. The key to promoting meaningful changes in sustainable behaviour – that do more than just pay lip service to tackling climate change – is to nurture and develop a sense of environmental identity or citizenship.

When a person acts for self-interested reasons, that person will perceive themselves as someone who does things for their own benefit. They will only engage in further sustainable behaviours if there is something in it for them – so as soon as the 'sweeteners' dry up, so will their interest in sustainability. But if people begin to think of themselves as someone who does things for the environment, the chance that they will engage in other sustainable behaviours is much higher.

It may not always be the quickest way of promoting a specific sustainable behaviour, but ultimately people can figure out for themselves whether something is in their own interest or not. The job of a sustainable behaviour practitioner is to help them see the bigger picture, and make the arguments about sustainability that an appeal to their wallet cannot do.

A huge amount of everyday energy use is embedded in habitual behaviours. The problem is that something seemingly straightforward like getting the bus to work is actually made up of lots of smaller (habitual) decisions, for example leaving home earlier or showering the night before to save time, all of which can derail even the best intentions. Research on how habits form (and how they change), shows that breaking habitual behaviours down into detailed "if/then" style plans is one way to break bad habits and create more sustainable ones.

But even the best-designed campaign to promote sustainable behaviour is limited in its scope if it fails to link everyday behaviours to the wider challenges of sustainability. Most people do not have a social network with sustainability at its core, but working to develop a group – rather than individual – sense of environmental responsibility and identity should be at the heart of any sustainability campaign.

Similarly, for those who are trying to promote sustainable behaviour in the workplace, then there is an obvious place that most employees would look to for leadership: their employer. Changes in personal behaviours among workers can catalyse further changes from an employer because the argument that "we've done our bit – now you do yours" is a powerful one.

Cultivating reciprocal links like these – between staff and employer, or between members of a social network – is one of the ways to ensure that promoting sustainable behaviour isn't detached from the politics of sustainability. How people act says something about their underlying values, the priorities they hold, and the type of world they want to live in.

It may have become a tired old cliché, but being the change you want to see still sends out an important message. If done right, promoting sustainable behaviour can mean so much more than a clever slogan or an appeal for people to do their bit – it can be a political act in itself.

Adam Corner is a researcher and writer whose work focuses on the psychology of communicating climate change. He leads the Talking Climate programme for the Climate Outreach and Information Networkand is a research associate in the School of Psychology at Cardiff University.

This article draws on content from his new book, Promoting Sustainable Behaviour: A Practical Guide to What Works published by Dō Sustainability. GSB readers can order the book for a 15% discount by using code GSB15 at www.dosustainability.com.

Think BIG - Sustainability is no longer about making business small.

A big story straight from the Guardian's Sustainable Business Leadership Hub.

Sustainable business should be bigger, more impactful and more influential.

Sustainability has historically been about reducing and minimising but progressive businesses are now aiming for big and bold and they aren't afraid to shout about it.

Reduce, minimise, small, less, neutral... Grow, big, achieve, more, positive.

The language of sustainability and the language of business couldn't be more different. It's the symptom of a deeper divide that many businesses struggle to overcome.

It's a problem of scale. The traditional argument for business sustainability is that companies need to minimise their impact or reduce their footprint; in short, to do less bad. Cut the carbon, reduce the waste, minimise the water use. It's all vitally important but couched in a terminology almost guaranteed to get it sidelined as "housekeeping". Sustainability and CSR have been about making business small. That's like asking a large powerful person to crouch down, talk quietly, and do less. They may try for a while, but eventually they'll just have to stretch.

Which is exactly what some progressive companies are now doing. Last night Kingfisher (the parent of DIY companies B&Q and Castorama) announced it will become Net Positive by 2050. They don't just want FSC wood, they want global net reforestation. Not only energy efficiency, but for all their consumers' homes to be zero carbon or net generators of energy. These aren't small commitments. In fact they are almost unimaginably ambitious, from standing where we are today.

I was in the Kingfisher boardroom the day they decided to go Net Positive. I've been in a few other boardrooms recently in which similar conversations are taking place. Something interesting is going on. Businesses are learning to talk about sustainability in their own terms, and those terms are big.

The lexicon of the boardroom isn't about doing less. The business mindset is about doing more. The language is big, hairy and audacious. In their 1994 book, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, James Collins and Jerry Porras invented the concept of big, hairy and audacious goals or BHAGs. A truly audacious goal will take 10 to 30 years to meet. You believe it utterly inside the business, but realise that the outside world might take some convincing. You know a BHAG is going to take serious amounts of work and probably crush some old mindsets along the way. The best BHAGs are truly visionary, even if you're not quite sure how you'll get there.

That's why the CEO and board need to get involved. Transformative sustainability is risky. Kingfisher has spent almost a year selling the idea into the business, war-gaming the targets and working out how the hell to re-engineer processes and performance targets to face towards the new goal. I have no doubt a lower ambition would have been easier to embed. There would have been fewer hard questions, smoother sign-off, and a much gentler journey. But that would be medium, bald and coy.

The Unilever Sustainable Living Plan, GE's Ecomagination and Marks and Spencer's Plan A are all big hairy audacious goals, and now Kingfisher's Net Positive has joined them. These are ballsy, growth-focussed and competitive approaches to sustainability. The new cadre of campaigning CEO's have worked out that scary, difficult and transformative goals are hugely more motivating than easy, simple and small ones. The issues are familiar, but the framing sounds more Harvard Business Review than sustainability report.

It's a pity that so few businesses have cracked this way of thinking, talking or goal setting. Business in the Community's new 9 Billion Challenge could help. They are challenging their members to design, inspire, prod and engineer nine billion sustainable lifestyles. They acknowledge that needs more than incremental footprint improvements, and so are calling for fundamental business model transformations instead. Right now they are asking businesses what they think. Hopefully more will answer "hell yes, let's do it" than have so far.

And about time too. The challenges we face require some boldness. With a population of 9 billion people, climate change, rampant poverty and resource scarcity, a hugely ambitious mindset is appropriate. That doesn't mean near-term targets are irreverent; businesses need to have achievable measures to work towards. But those measures are simply milestones on the way to greatness. It's also not good enough to randomly pick a direction and develop a catchy slogan. The leaders carefully identify the material sustainability issues for their business, match their business skills to them, and set an ambitious goal to fix them for their business and for everyone else by default. Then they find the catchy slogan.

This is meta-sustainability. It's business strategy and environmental/social goals merging into new business models.

Don't ask business to be smaller. Ask them to be bigger, more impactful and more influential. Ask business to take sustainability to scale.

Welcome to the era of big sustainability.

Solitaire Townsend is co-founder, Futerra Sustainability Communications

Surfers Against Sewage - a real time campaign map

Just a great idea.  This is just a static picture - head here for the real thing

http://www.sas.org.uk/map/

Rock Rocket Stove Is Held Together By Coat Hangers

Love this - story copied verbatim from treehugger

Rocket stoves burn hot and clean, using very little wood or other combustibles.Vancouver industrial designer Liz To has designed a new version for Tibet, where they use dung as fuel. Liz notes that 1.6 million people die from indoor pollution from traditional "Three Stones" type fires every year. Meanwhile, in the west, 3.5 billion wire hangers end up in U.S. landfill every year.

© Liz To

Designboom describes it:

Canadian designer Liz to has repurposed unwanted wire hangers from north america as an opportunity for remote communities to build their own stove. The 'thab stove' is a template based on the portable dung stove used by tibetan nomads, created through a weaving of wire hangers to produce a vessel-like framework. this design can then be filled with stones and boulders to fabricate - from inexpensive rudimentary materials - a workable cooking stove that reduces the amount of smoke produced from burning fuel, reduces cooking time, reuses waste, and provides local jobs.

© Liz To

It is a really clever idea; wire hangers don't take up a lot of space, (200,000 to a shipping container) but woven into the stove shape and filled with rocks, they become a stable and effective stove. When it is time to move, you toss away the rocks and you have a light and portable framework of wire, that's it.

© Liz To

The stove won a few Canadian industrial design awards when Liz presented it at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and deserves more. See more atDesigned by Liz and watch her make one in the video below, using a simple plywood jig, a vice and a hammer.

(the video doesn't appear to have any sound)

Marketing is not maths. It's stories and hyperbole which are beautifully immeasurable.

The social media marketing bandwagon is based on the not unreasonable premise that you are more likely to buy stuff recommended by a friend - or even just stuff that a friend likes... or mentions in passing.  This is old wisdom and Don Draper’s predecessors knew it well.  But what if you could actually measure that friendly influence and, better yet, capture it digitally and then put it to work marketing more and different stuff?  That’s what PeerIndex and Klout are trying to do.  
 
I’ve dabbled with both these sites, but I am always left nonplussed and feeling like I've missed something.  So I asked Twitter, "Does anyone take any notice of Peerindex and Klout? What do they use them for?"  I got a swift reply from Azeem Azhar, the CEO of PeerIndex offering to help with my marketing.  He drew my attention to an article he'd written for Wired entitled, "It's not the size of a person's network that matters; it's what they do with it.”  And this is the first paragraph.
 
“Marketing is maths and always has been. Ever since the first shopkeeper realised that a sign on the side of his building would drive more sales than it cost to erect then the mathematics of promotion and consumption have been in place. The sums have become more complicated, with search marketing now more akin to a science than an art, but the core cost/benefit calculation remains the same.”
 
I think that is arse. An accountant’s view of the truth maybe, but still arse. Marketing is not maths. It's stories and urges and persuasion and hyperbole; all of which are beautifully immeasurable.     Yes, you can and absolutely must count the number of stories you get and plot the peaks of site visits when the story hits fever pitch, but that’s measuring the thing, not the actual essence of the thing.   

I like the fact that despite the best work of some of the brightest minds, it is still impossible to quantify the most powerful aspects of how people relate to brands and why they choose them over others.   I can measure what you bought, but really why you bought it and what you were feeling is the most important and yet most ephemeral bit of data. Which is great because that’s the difference between science and art.   Proven facts versus smoke and mirrors.  

Azeem is a super-bright guy and far more successful than me but re-reading the arc of his argument it feels like he’s missing the beating heart of marketing.   And it’s not that I disagree with what he says  - a précis is that we have a more varied influence over our friends and colleagues than we previously thought and his company will turn that influence into digital data that you can ‘leverage’ to sell your shizzle.  

Except I think that, at the highest and most important level, the ‘what were you feeling’, bit can’t be measured and won't fit neatly into a spread-sheet.   You have to have an instinct for it. This is an art of the gut feeling.  A good brand strategist judges another person’s clout and peer influence instinctively, by reading their work and noting (mentally) who retweets their tweets and likes their posts.  If I had to make a list of my top ten most influential twitter accounts, I could do it off the top of my head in great detail.

Judgement and art appreciation can be taught and learned (I spend a lot of time teaching sales teams how to really understand their customers so they can send the right material, at the right time to the right people.), but in the end it is not a binary task - Marketing is a very human measure of what feels right, emotive and, yes, influential.

Every Finance Director wants to catch the smoke and measure the mirror, but any good salesman will tell you that empathy with the customer is the best way to unlock their wallet.  And that’s an artist’s gift, not a scientist’s.  I do understand the necessity of counting the cost and efficacy but you don’t need to digitise something to harness its power. Wind turbine anyone?

Footnote:
Azeem of PeerIndex was the only respondent to my twitter question. No one else I could find used either service beyond a curiosity.  And my Klout score is 50. Is that good? No one can tell me.