sustainability

With a host of challenges facing society and planet, as highlighted by WWF’s recent Living Planet report, a varied group of people from NGOs, public sector and commercial organisations met on Tuesday night to discuss how to encourage sustainable consumption in a sustainable economy. It was an engaging, energetic and constructive debate with much optimism that, with strong leadership and effective collaboration, progress towards meeting and overcoming some of these challenges can be made.

Placing sustainability alongside a 'national treasure' is a timely initiative.

If our society is going to achieve the full-blown paradigm-shift needed to address the challenges we all face then mainstreaming sustainability and grand-scale awareness raising as part of behaviour change programs are essential. Whilst we are all still so committed to what we do as a society today the momentum for change isn't there. Hats off to Marks and Spencer - it's a good start and let's hope Joanna can be as successful on sustainability as she has been on the Gurkhas.

Social Marketing Network event –
Tuesday, 20th March 2012 sponsored by Convey

As far back as 1930 John Maynard Keynes, in his book ‘Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren’ made an interesting comment very relevant to this discussion. He said, ‘…when the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles… by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value…’

That’s what we started to do last night.

Reasons to be cheerful? For me it’s the big one - the prospect of positive behaviour change at scale is on the horizon for 2012. Why now? Because the many pressures facing our society such as austerity and resource constraint will continue to intensify throughout this year and bring into ever sharper focus that behaviour change is sustainability in action.

I’m not sure that is it just ‘schizophrenia’ the Coalition is suffering from, perhaps it is a little ‘Wilful Blindness’* too!

Fifteen years ago, when working for Unilever on the ground-breaking Marine Stewardship Council initiative the buzzword was ‘sustainability’. The corporate world was a different place then – it was early days, corporates where getting their heads around corporate responsibility and its link to sustainability – some more than others. Sitting opposite Head Buyers for leading retailers I remember one individual saying to me - ‘…if you could just get me sustainability Amanda – that would be great.’