KILLING WAVES - The surfers fighting sewage on the shores of Cornwall

Great article and film (and competition) about Surfers Against Sewage on Dazed Digital

• Text Daisy Williams
 
• Film Carlos Carneiro

Back in July, we (Dazed Digital) launched a competition along with TOMS One For One, to commission a film by one UK director with a vision for change. The idea was simple: create a short documentary about an inspiring group who make a difference in your community.  Filmmaker Carlos Carneiro fit the brief, winning £5,000 to direct and produce his short film Killing Waves, following the story ofSurfers Against Sewage (SAS), an environmental organisation seeking to preserve our beaches and campaign against water pollution. 

“If it wasn’t for them (SAS) fighting that battle,” Carlos says, “god knows what the state of the beaches would be – so you should check them out. I think we all just need to pay a bit more attention.”

Carlos, who’s 31 and founded London Sessions Productions at Abbey Road Studios, spent a week filming, along with cameraman Bruno Ramos. Set against the coasts of Cornwall, Killing Waves adopts a fresh cinematic approach to the work of SAS. The charity who purport to live for the surf have dedicated their time to protecting the seas – not just to make the voice of the water user heard, but to protect the planet on a wider level.  Carlos tells us about the process and filming with SAS executive director Hugo Tagholm and campaign director Andy Cummins:

“There were a few challenges. I’m drawn to people’s stories, so I got curious of a more personal story of Andy and Hugo, I didn’t know whether to focus to the voice of SAS or them, but I was able to find that balance. Trying to tell the story in the best possible way and document it in the most natural way without a script, meant the story didn’t really come together until post-production.”

SAS is the brainchild of a group of local surfers and beach lovers, founded in 1990. Established at grass roots level, the organisation became a national movement, with representatives across the UK addressing issues including climate change, sewage pollution and toxic chemicals. Now, they work to educate, conserve and campaign on the matter of water pollution. Hugo says:

“The film really encapsulated SAS’s campaigns and why we’re motivated to protect Britain’s beaches. Filming was good fun - it was great to have Carlos and Bruno with us getting involved in the surf and showing Cornwall’s best beaches, as well as the unfortunate impact that’s been made on our coastlines.”

Join SAS here

We are doomed & damned: Half of all food 'thrown away'

Up to 30% of vegetables in the UK were not harvested because of their physical appearance.

As much as half of the world's food, amounting to two billion tonnes worth, ends up being thrown away, a UK-based report has claimed.

Read those two sentences again.

If this is even half true the human race is doomed and damned and we don't deserve to survive.  I haven't been as shaken by a news report in years.  According to the BBC, a report released by the The Institution of Mechanical Engineers (a body not known for hyperbole) claims that 30% and 50% of the four billion tonnes of food produced around the world each year went to waste. 

It suggested that half the food bought in Europe and the US was thrown away.

Half.

This is directly taken from the BBC report:

Dr Fox, head of energy and environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, said: "The amount of food wasted and lost around the world is staggering. This is food that could be used to feed the world's growing population - as well as those in hunger today.

"It is also an unnecessary waste of the land, water and energy resources that were used in the production, processing and distribution of this food.

"The reasons for this situation range from poor engineering and agricultural practices, inadequate transport and storage infrastructure through to supermarkets demanding cosmetically perfect foodstuffs and encouraging consumers to overbuy through buy-one-get-one-free offers."

And he told the BBC's Today programme: "If you're in the developing world, then the losses are in the early part of the food supply chain, so between the field and the marketplace.

"In the mature, developed economies the waste is really down to poor marketing practices and consumer behaviour."

Population growth

The report - Global Food; Waste Not, Want Not - also found that huge amounts of water, totalling 550 billion cubic metres, were being used to grow crops that were never eaten.

The institution said the demand for water for food production could reach 10 to 13 trillion cubic metres a year by 2050.

The United Nations predicts there will be an extra three billion mouths to feed by 2075 as the global population swells to 9.5 billion.

Dr Fox added: "As water, land and energy resources come under increasing pressure from competing human demands, engineers have a crucial role to play in preventing food loss and waste by developing more efficient ways of growing, transporting and storing foods.

"But in order for this to happen governments, development agencies and organisation like the UN must work together to help change people's mindsets on waste and discourage wasteful practices by farmers, food producers, supermarkets and consumers."

Midway - a wake-up call that's far too late

MIDWAY

This is one of the most awful things I've seen in a long time.  I've written about the Pacific Gyre garbage patch before, but this film eloquently and horrifically sums it up. It's compelling viewing and made me feel physically sick.

MIDWAY : trailer : a film by Chris Jordan from Midway on Vimeo.

The MIDWAY media project is a powerful visual journey into the heart of an astonishingly symbolic environmental tragedy. On one of the remotest islands on our planet, tens of thousands of baby albatrosses lie dead on the ground, their bodies filled with plastic from the Pacific Garbage Patch. Returning to the island over several years, our team is witnessing the cycles of life and death of these birds as a multi-layered metaphor for our times. With photographer Chris Jordan as our guide, we walk through the fire of horror and grief, facing the immensity of this tragedy—and our own complicity—head on. And in this process, we find an unexpected route to a transformational experience of beauty, acceptance, and understanding.

So bored of reading that our beaches are getting dritier

UK beaches are dirtiest in a decade according to a very depressing article in the Guardian

The surge in sewage, farm and city waste being flushed into the sea is the result of very wet weather, Environment Agency says

Bude Summerleaze was among the beaches failing basic cleanliness standards. Photograph: Tim Jones/Alamy

The UK's beaches were the dirtiest in a decade in 2012, with two in five failing national standards for pollution, figures released on Tuesday by the government show.

The surge in sewage, farm and city waste being flushed into the sea is the result of very wet weather, according to the Environment Agency.

"It is shocking: the results are the worst in a decade," said Hugo Tagholm, executive director of Surfers Against Sewage. "The UK's overburdened sewerage system is bursting at the seams, resulting in all too frequent raw sewage and storm water discharges nationwide." Tagholm called the existing standards, set in 1976, "out of date" and noted new tougher European rules on beach hygiene are due to come into force from 2015.

Environment minister, Richard Benyon, said: "While the majority of England's bathing waters continue to be of a good quality, I am disappointed that a number have fallen short of the tighter standard. Water companies are now planning their next round of investment and I am determined that improving bathing water quality should be a key focus of these plans."

Lord Chris Smith, chairman of the Environment Agency, said: "During intense rainfall, pollution from farmland, roads, and drains is washed into rivers and coastal areas. Water companies also operate 'combined sewage overflows' (CSOs) to prevent sewage from backing up and flooding people's homes. More needs to be done by water companies, businesses, farmers and local authorities to improve the water at Britain's beaches."

Figures from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) show the number of beaches failing basic cleanliness standards more than doubled in 2012 to 35 compared to 2011, and included World Heritage Kimmeridge Bay in the south, Bude Summerleaze and Budleigh Salterton in the south-west and Saltburn in the north-east. Overall, the number of beaches failing the basic 1976 standard fell from 98% to 94%. The south-west suffered most, with 16 dirty beaches compared to just two in 2011.

Tagholm said that even on beaches that pass the basic standard bathers can still be presented with a one in seven chance of contracting gastroenteritis.

The beaches failing the higher guideline standard almost doubled to 247 and overall, 40% of the nation's beaches failed. Standards plummeted in the north-east, with the pass rate falling from 91% to 46%, while in the north-west, just 10% of beaches passed.

There are 31,000 CSOs in the UK, and in October the European courts of justice ruled the UK had breached the EU urban waste water treatment directive with excessive discharges of raw sewage and storm water via CSOs. Tagholm said increased investment was needed to end the over-reliance of water companies on CSOs as a way to dispose of raw sewage. Surfers Against Sewage sent 100,000 text messages last year to warn subscribers of sewage overflows.

In May, the Marine Conservation Society's Good Beach Guide found that one-third of the 750 beaches it surveyed failed its standard.

Defra said water quality had improved over the last two decades, reflecting the investment of an estimated £2.5bn by water companies since privatisation. Defra is now discussing further investment with water companies to ensure that bathing water quality continues to improve. The Guardian revealed in May, when England was in drought, that more than half of water companies needed to make no improvements to their leaks before 2015, leading to criticism of the regulator Ofwat.

from the guardian of course

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/