The WEEE man and a global campaign

The WEEE man is a brilliant communication tool that is standing in the Eden Project. It is made from electrical and electronic waste, such as washing machines, TVs, microwaves, vacuum cleaners and mobile phones. It represents the amount of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) the average British person throws away in their lifetime – over 3 tonnes per person.

69% of Household WEEE arising by weight in the UK comes from Large Household Appliances – cookers, washing machines etc. Therefore the predominant weight of WEEE in the WEEE Man is large household appliances. Consumer Equipment (i.e. Hi Fi ) accounts for 13%, 8% Small Household appliances such as vacuum cleaners, 7% IT & telecommunications (mobile phones) and so on.

The statistics is interesting in a time where IT get a lot of criticism for the e-waste. It is obviously a serious issue, especially as a lot of chemicals and rare metals are used, still collaborations between those producing large household appliances and consumer electronics would be a very good way forward looking at the numbers..

Why not have one WEEE man in every major city then it would be easy to see what countries that are the most wasteful? Each year the WEEE man could be “updated” depending on the waste trends in the different countries. Maybe even flags could be attached to the WEEE man to indicate where the waste ends up in order for people in OECD to see where their waste often ends up.

Important would be to indicate how much that are being recycled and how much that is sent to poor countries and/or to landfills. IT could help clean up the dirty side of IT...

The Eden Project – book, place and idea

A visit to the Eden Project and reading the book Eden by Tim Smit is very inspiring. I really recommend this book to everyone who wants to become campaigner for a better planet. As with all interesting projects that become reality this is not a black and white story.

The book is both a good overview of many of the challenges that you must face when you want to move from idea to reality, but it is also about the need to keep the dream alive and not compromise the basic vision that made the

I like Tim’s approach to getting things done:
"you can only achieve the impossible by asking the young, because they don't know it can't be done"

and having a chapter named:
"If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space"

But even more his approach to the project:
“This [The Eden Project] was never a product, and one sentence can never do it justice. You see, Eden may be a destination, but you can only reach it with your heart”.

If you are close to Cornwall, pay a visit to the Eden project, if not read the book.

Climate Change – What’s your business strategy by A. Hoffman and J. Woody

Mainstream thinking is moving forward. The short book “Climate Change – What’s your business strategy” is something that I hope all CEOs will read this summer.

The three steps they propose are straight forward even if number two will make most realise how far they are from serious climate work and the the last probably will provoke a discussion in more conservative business circles.

1. Know your Carbon Exposure
This is the obvious first step and not that hard, even if few companies actually understand much beyond their direct emissions and have little understanding of the situation in their supply chain.

2. Take action to reduce your carbon footprint and assess business opportunities.
This is a significant step forward compared with most initiatives. Even if the book is pretty weak regarding low-carbon products and services (the book is VERY short so I should not really complain). For more information about these areas please see the following project/report/draft:
Project: Winners in a low carbon economy
Report: First global low carbon IT strategy
Draft: Becoming carbon positive – the case of a retailer (will soon the posted)

I also hope to post result from our joint work with CII (Confederation of Indian Industries) with the working name “Sustainability as a driver for profit and innovation”.

3. Influence the policy development
This is probably one of the most controversial and where companies still are doing a very bad job, probably linked to the fact that few have any ideas and strategies for increased sales of low-carbon products and services. Almost all lobbying is to protect the old ways of doing business. Pushing for a low carbon future is still mainly done as a PR exercise and done through business associations without and serious follow-up. Together with Simon Mingay at Gartner I’m working on a report about the leading IT companies in the world that will discuss this.

All in all this book is a step in the right direction and if this could turn into mainstream the work I do would be easier as it would not be so far ahead. If nothing else because it makes it very clear that CEOs needs to be engaged and that the people that deal with environmental issues in companies are not the right people for this issue...

Climate Change – What’s your business strategy by A. Hoffman and J. Woody

Mainstream thinking is moving forward. The short book “Climate Change – What’s your business strategy” is something that I hope all CEOs will read this summer.

The three steps they propose are straight forward even if number two will make most realise how far they are from serious climate work and the the last probably will provoke a discussion in more conservative business circles.

1. Know your Carbon Exposure
This is the obvious first step and not that hard, even if few companies actually understand much beyond their direct emissions and have little understanding of the situation in their supply chain.

2. Take action to reduce your carbon footprint and assess business opportunities.
This is a significant step forward compared with most initiatives. Even if the book is pretty weak regarding low-carbon products and services (the book is VERY short so I should not really complain). For more information about these areas please see the following project/report/draft:
Project: Winners in a low carbon economy
Report: First global low carbon IT strategy
Draft: Becoming carbon positive – the case of a retailer (will soon the posted)

I also hope to post result from our joint work with CII (Confederation of Indian Industries) with the working name “Sustainability as a driver for profit and innovation”.

3. Influence the policy development
This is probably one of the most controversial and where companies still are doing a very bad job, probably linked to the fact that few have any ideas and strategies for increased sales of low-carbon products and services. Almost all lobbying is to protect the old ways of doing business. Pushing for a low carbon future is still mainly done as a PR exercise and done through business associations without and serious follow-up. Together with Simon Mingay at Gartner I’m working on a report about the leading IT companies in the world that will discuss this.

All in all this book is a step in the right direction and if this could turn into mainstream the work I do would be easier as it would not be so far ahead. If nothing else because it makes it very clear that CEOs needs to be engaged and that the people that deal with environmental issues in companies are not the right people for this issue...

The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid

A very well written book by Mohsin Hamid that put the readers in many different places (physical and mental) by following one person’s journey. A journey from the global entrepreneur without history or values to a reflecting person that do not want to live in a capitalist world where everything that is solid melts into air...

"it is not always possible to restore one's boundaries after they have been blurred and made permeable by relationship: try as we might, we cannot reconstitute ourselves as the autonomous beings we previously imagined ourselves to be. Something of the outside is now within us"

By using the current cracks in the global village Mohsin Hamid captures something urgent (the way the west have dealt with the "Arab world" after 9-11), but also a much bigger issue regarding identity and the western systems inability to provide significant gratifications beyond the material.