The Social Business

Cutting down on our car use

Along with attempts to cut down on energy use at home, we're also trying to use the car less. 

It's something we've looked at in the past - for a few years we were members of an informal car share club with a few friends, which worked well.  But when Francis was born we ended up buying a car, which, practically, we would have struggled without.  He's now 4 and the time has come to start weaning ourselves off the car again.

I looked at the log book and we've consistently done around 10,000 miles a year.  So we decided to set a target for this year of a 15% reduction in mileage - to 8500 miles.  That equates to (approximately) 700 miles a month - a reduction of about 150 miles a month.

That's certainly do-able.  We tend to go to see family in Burton or Liverpool once a month - and both journeys are over 100 miles as a round trip.  Both are easy on the train - and affordable if you book ahead.   Journeys to work and nursery - although 2 buses each way - are feasible too - and cut out around 10 miles a day.  

So how have we done?  Drum roll please - our total mileage for January was....  297 miles - beating the target by 403 miles.

A great start.  But let's not get too carried away.  The car was snowed in for the best part of two weeks.  But we have continued to get the bus most days - which says something about the importance of habit-forming - it takes time to change behaviour.  In this case the snow did us a favour.  

But I did go to Liverpool on the train this month - and we went to Cardiff on the train for Voice10 this weekend (although to be honest there's no way I'd have gone that far in the car anyway, so it doesn't really count).  

Thoughts so far?  Public transport is great when it works, but it's the unreliability that puts people off. Whilst at Voice I had a chat with Dai Powell from HCT Group - a social enterprise which runs buses in London (and community transport services in Leeds).  He said that people don't mind if the bus takes 20 minutes longer than the car - as long as they know that it will take 20 minutes longer - not 40 minutes longer because the first bus didn't come.  The trains have been faultless this month - but the buses have been hit and miss - which just isn't good enough (are you listening mega-profit-making-monopolists First Leeds?)

Clearly the cost puts people off too.  By booking ahead for Liverpool and Cardiff I imagine we paid around the same as we would have done for petrol - and had much more pleasant journeys.  But we needed to book ahead - realistically we would have bottled out and taken the car if we'd had to pay the walk-on fare. 

Similarly with the buses, there's no getting away from it, they're expensive, particularly if you travel as a family.  I think the only real way you can rationalise the cost of public transport longer-term is to get rid of your car.  So the £500 you spend on insurance, the £400 on the servicing etc - gets put into your "transport budget."  Suddenly £50 on the train, or a £10 taxi doesn't seem quite so bad.  

The other thing is that it's reminded me that if more people are going to embrace greener choices (and yes, I know the arguments about a small car being as fuel efficient as a bus with 9 people on it - the average in the UK ) there need to be benefits - and we also need to create benefits ourselves.  What I mean by this is that I think you need to adopt a slightly different lifestyle - but that can be a good thing.  

So, for example, if I go to Liverpool on the train I'm not as mobile whilst I'm there - and there are plenty of people to see.  But now I meet my nan or my grandad in town for lunch when we get there - which I think we all enjoy more than us going to see them at home.  It's a simple example of how some of the changes we'll need to make to our lives - away from real and perceived convenience - can turn out to be much better choices in lots of different and unexpected ways.  

OWL Energy Use Monitor - Review

I blogged a few months ago about buying an energy use monitor with the money I won for my post about plastic bags.  

That was a few months ago, and as planned, I'm passing the monitor on to some friends.  So here are my thoughts.  If you've tried to keep an eye on your energy usage, please let me know how you've got on - and share any tips below.

Grow it - and they might not come

It's always interesting to confront people with their worst nightmare early on a Saturday morning.  

I ran a marketing workshop on Saturday on behalf of the Soil Association, for a group of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) projects.  I'm a big fan of the CSA approach - the main idea being that local people share some of the risk with the grower by paying up front, in return for a regular share of the harvest over that year.  I was a member of a CSA at Swillington Farm - and they've also recently set up a CSA arrangement (to rear a pig) with Salvo's -  a local Italian restaurant which you may recently have seen on Gordon Ramsey's F Word.  There are plenty more businesses which have adopted the model - including a Community Supported Bakery which I wrote about here.

The marketing workshop was themed around the title - Grow it - and they might not come.  This in turn was inspired by the Kevin Costner film Field of Dreams - in which rookie farmer Ray Kinsella hears a voice which tells him to build a baseball pitch in his field.  The voice tells him "If you build it, he will come" - and sure enough the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson and seven other Chicago White Sox players turn up to play on his field.

As you can imagine people thought Ray was nuts.  People who want to set up CSAs sometimes meet with a similar response.  Getting people to pay up front to buy veg from you - when all that currently exists is a sketch of your planting plan and a seed catalogue - can be a challenge.  That's where an effective marketing plan can help.

A do-able marketing plan for your CSA

View more presentations from robg.

I talk about marketing as building relationships with customers.  This concept sits well with CSAs.  You need to build relationships if people are to trust that you will grow food for them.  I take people through my step-by-step plan - which requires you to think carefully about your business - and in particular your customers - but doesn't require you to have any formal marketing background.  

During the workshop we split into groups and each group creates a plan - using an innovation which, even if I say so myself, I'm very proud of - upcycled wallpaper - used in place of flipchart paper.  £2 spent in Oxfam has to be better than £10 spent in Staples, surely?

 

Aside from the eco-benefits (which won me early greenie points with my organic audience), I'm a big believer in thinking sideways along a page, rather than down a page.  There is something about a portrait flipchart which makes you anxious - you get to the bottom of a page and you start losing the will to live - because the stuff at the bottom feels weighed down by what's gone before (and you're now kneeling on the floor, writing like a four year old).  You're also wondering whether to squeeze a few more words on - or start a new page.   Whereas, with a roll of Upcycled Wallpaper  Flipchart ^TM you can keep on writing - and keep referring back, drawing lines where there are connections, etc etc.

The risk I take with this workshop is that I spend very little time talking about the things that some people expect me to talk about.  Some people want clear guidance - a top ten of the best ways to market your business - that kind of thing.  I don't believe in that stuff.  As my Iced Tea slide suggests, what works in one place doesn't necessarily work in another.  That's why I talk people through what they need to think about - so that they can then make their best judgement about what it's best to do.  That way, you also start thinking about ways to market your business which don't cost a great deal of money.

My four year old son was a bit confused on Saturday morning, given that I was going to work.  He asked me what I was doing.  I told him I was running a workshop.  

"Is it like Santa's workshop?"  he asked.   

"Son", I said, "Today I will give people a gift greater than any that Santa could give.  A do-able marketing plan."  He looked at me a bit confused, and carried on eating his breakfast.    

Free bulbs - not such a bright idea after all

I took in a parcel for a neighbour over Christmas.  It was a free pack of energy-efficient bulbs, courtesy of npower.

That was good of them, I thought, an energy supplier doing their bit to help us save a bit of energy.  Helping people to not spend their money with you doesn't come naturally to most businesses.  

In 1997 I worked as an interpreter on an Overseas Development Agency project to build hydro-electric power stations north of Lima.  One day we went to an event where the local energy company was handing out T-Shirts with the slogan "Apagando un foco, ahorras un poco"  - roughly translated as "You'll save some money if you turn off your lights".

The UK engineer for whom I was interpreting thought this was a daft strategy - particularly for a recently-privatised energy company.  As you might expect, I disagreed.  It led to some interesting three-way discussions.  Whether they ultimately took more notice of me or him probably had more to do with economics than ecology.  Yet it's a good illustration of the tension that exists in any business which is involved in the consumption of natural resources on our behalf.  

So I was interested to read a piece in the Times today suggesting that npower's handout of 12 million energy-saving bulbs may not be such a great idea after all.  They were sent out to help the company to meet their legal obligation to cut carbon emissions - just before a new law comes into force which bans companies from mailing out unsolicited bulbs.

The problem is that research suggests that the average household has half-a-dozen unused bulbs in the cupboard under the sink.  So four more bulbs are unlikely to have the intended impact.  But they have helped npower meet their obligations, and thus avoid a fine of up to £40 million.

And, of course, free doesn't really mean free.  Companies are allowed to pass on the cost of these schemes to customers, through higher tariffs.  So we end up paying for bulbs we don't want, and which don't have the environmental impact that we so dearly need.  Cheers npower.

This story demonstrates how first steps very quickly need to become next steps when it comes to preventing runaway climate change.  Low energy bulbs are a good quick-win, and as my energy use monitor demonstrates, they do make a noticeable difference to your energy consumption.  But consumers, energy companies and governments now need to raise their game.  Sending out light bulbs is the easy, cheap bit, and it ticks the energy-saving boxes for the energy companies.  Yet it clearly isn't having the impact that the government intended when it set up the scheme.  

An npower representative, quoted in the Times, said:

"There is nothing under [the carbon emissions target reduction scheme] that means that we have to get evidence that the bulbs are being used.  It's up to the customer."

Which you may read as we've done our bit, not our problem Guv (or more accurately, Gov).  

If we're going to stop runaway climate change, businesses need to take more responsibility for the social and environmental impacts of their actions. Hopefully this will encourage/embarrass companies like npower, and Governments, to do more.  

Book review - The New Economics - A Bigger Picture

Here's a book review that I did for this month's New Start magazine:

There’s nothing particularly new about new economics.  Lots of the ideas which are explored in The New Economics:  A Bigger Picture – such as how traditional economics ignores environmental impact, or how our economic system encourages consumption for its own sake, have been discussed on the economic fringes for years.

 

Yet what is new is that the person sat next to you on the bus is likely to have opinions about economics.  Pre credit crunch, starting a conversation with your thoughts on the damaging impact of currency speculation was a sure fire way to get the whole of the top deck to yourself.  Now people understand that economics isn’t something that just happens elsewhere.  It affects our lives.  It is about our lives.

 

The value of this book is that it explores key economic theories through storytelling.  We are told why modern Britons work harder than mediaeval peasants.  Why we export the same number of chocolate waffles as we import. And why fewer people vote when they live near a Wal-Mart. 

 

The stories highlight the basic problems – such as the lack of social capital in a town dominated by a big retailer – compared to one with a host of locally-owned shops.  But it doesn’t just point to slightly depressing realities. Instead each chapter then explores some New Economics-inspired solutions – such as radical action to challenge local retailing semi-monopolies, or to encourage more local enterprise. 

 

The problems may not be new, and some of the solutions have been around for years.  But there is a new coherence and energy behind much of this thinking – which is well explored in this book. 

 

Every farmer needs good neighbours

It was great to see Gip from Salvo's winning on the F Word last night in their neighbourhood restaurants competition.  

I went to Salvo's a few weeks ago for their zero food miles menu.  They had a special menu for three days in their salumeria, with all the produce grown and reared in Leeds.  We really enjoyed it - and at £19.50 for a six course menu it was great value too.

I'd gone along because I know the people who run Swillington Organic Farm - and they'd provided much of the produce for the menu.  I went back again last Friday to interview Gip about how it went.  I took my flip camcorder but unfortunately I didn't get him in shot - he moved when we started talking and, still being a bit new to this stuff, I didn't realise - so you can only see half his head.  So I'll just have to tell you what he said instead.

Basically he was really pleased with how it went - and customers loved it - they were sold out each night.  He's keen to do more - with the next step being to buy a pig on a Community Supported Agriculture basis - where you pay up front to share a bit of the risk with the farmer.  You can imagine that there'll be plenty of scope for publicising this arrangement with Salvo's customers, which is great for the farm.

I'm really keen on this kind of thing - where local businesses get together and work with each other.  I wrote a while back about how I was feeling a bit unenthusiastic about a lot of the funded local food projects that I'd heard about at a conference.  They were great - but so many of them relied on funding - which won't be around for ever.  If you can get businesses trading locally with each other because it makes sense - and because it fits with who they are - in this case a neighbourhood restaurant - then that's got a much better chance of being sustainable and making a big difference long term.  

Future-proof housing

You may remember that our house is currently up for sale.  We had our first offer today, a good way below the asking price, but it's a start.  Whilst the market is still unrecognisable from when we bought this house, it certainly seems to be picking up a bit.  Three viewings a week so far isn't bad at all.

The bigger problem will be finding somewhere else to live. It doesn't feel like a smart move to take on a load of debt at a time when the economy still feels very wobbly.  Add to that the fact that I'm a freelancer, and you start to think that you should have just stayed were you were - in a nice house with a big dent taken out of the mortgage.  But like many people, our first house was never meant to be our last, and we feel like we want to move. 

But where to?  And to what kind of house?  I hope I'm not boring you with my damascene conversion to the deep green cause, post Age of Stupid.  But we have no choice now than to consider  our biggest financial decision to date in the context of a planet that is heating up, and an economic system that needs to cool down.  

As I mentioned in yesterday's post I've been wandering round the house with the energy use monitor, seeing where there's scope to save some electricity.  There's some room for manoeuvre - the tumble drier and the dishwasher are the two obvious ones - but to be honest other than that we've probably done most of the simple-ish things, that will probably get us to our initial 10% cut target - or perhaps beyond.

To get beyond that, it feels like we'd need a lifestyle that is very much different to the one we have now.  What are the implications of that in terms of housing?  At the moment we're looking at 3 bedroom semi or terraced houses.  A couple of years ago we pictured ourselves moving up the ladder to a bigger house.  But now we ask ourselves, why?  For the odd occasion that family come up, or to make Francis's future sleepovers a bit more comfortable?  Or because that's just what you do as you get older and move up the ladder?  

We'll see what happens.  The house we're going to see tonight is marketed at the "downsizing couple" - but it's in a much nicer area than where we are in now - nicer parks, shops, pubs etc.  It's really not that small - but it's smaller than most houses in that particular leafy area, where most houses are pretty big and more expensive.  Perhaps it won't just be couples with an empty nest who'll need to think of downsizing in the future.  

But of course, for us, this won't be downsizing, it'll be staying the same - traditional 3 bedroom brick built house.  Which, if we need an 80% cut in emissions, isn't likely to do the planet many favours.  

I accept that our "problem" is caused by relative affluence - and is a problem that many people will never have the opportunity to face. I also want to be realistic and not too hairshirty about this - we all want somewhere nice to live and it's clearly not realistic to knock down most of the current housing stock and start again with smaller straw-bale constructions.   Yet when I read about co-housing in the paper this weekend - then read about this new scheme which is being launched in Leeds, it felt pretty clear that the way many of us will need to live in the future will be a lot different to what most of us aspire to now.  

Turning things on and off again

I've invested part of my £100 bloggers circle prize in a few things that can help me to reduce my energy use at home (and at work - given that I work from home).

I bought an OWL Wireless Electricity Monitor, for about £30.  It arrived today (on a Sunday - it seems there's no time to lose when the planet needs saving) and I've been playing about with it this afternoon.

On one level, it doesn't tell you much that you wouldn't have guessed already.  You won't need telling that the old fashioned bulb that seems to have gone on for years in your attic costs a load more than a nice new low- energy light.  Or that the tumble drier costs a small fortune to dry your smalls in time for work tomorrow.

But there is something quite powerful about seeing the impact of turning something on or off.  An impact measured in pounds and pence, or CO2 emissions if you prefer.

Things I've discovered on my walk round the house (and I accept none of this is big news):

• Old fashioned bulbs use a surprising amount of electricity - changing them is a no-brainer
• The oven's electricity consumption varies - loads of electricity to get it to the required temperature - and surges to keep it hot - which makes me think about not using it for that 8 minute warm-up of a part-baked baguette (and sorting out that faulty seal).
• The flat screen TV is as bad as expected (my excuse is that it's a hand-me-down telly)
• The heater I use for heating the office when I don't want to heat the whole house uses more energy than the oven or tumble drier.

Other first reflections: 

• Why are electricity bills so unbelievably complicated to decipher?
• Why aren't electricity companies compelled to do more to encourage us to look at this kind of thing?
• I still don't know about gas consumption - eg is it better to put the central heating on, instead of the electric heater?

And finally, it just makes it so abundantly clear that whilst we may feel paralysed in the face of climate change, there are things that we could all do to make a bit of a difference.  Could you monitor your electricity usage at home?  At work?  Might it be worth buying one of these things - and sharing it with friends?

State of Interdependence

Lots going around my head this morning but not much time to write.  Given that there's lots going round my head this may not be the most coherent post, but here goes.

I'd like to point you to a couple of interesting blog posts from the RSA.  In the first, from Matthew Taylor, he describes himself as "an enthusiastic collectivist but a reluctant statist."  It's a neat phrase, which I think also gives a good idea of my position too.  

One of the myths of affluence (or at least one that I've swallowed) is that greater wealth can lead to greater independence.  You basically don't have to worry too much about things as long as you've got a good bit of cash to buy your way through life. You can buy your independence - and, it's assumed - your happiness and wellbeing.  

In thinking more about climate change over the last few months, it's struck me that if we are going to build an economy and society which have any chance of survival, we need to better recognise our interdependence. That's true on a global scale - but also on a local scale.  We won't be able to change things on our own. Hence my interest in the collective - but my scepticism about the role of the state.  

Following on from this I found this post from the RSA Connected Communities blog interesting.  The post looks at community responses to climate change, and includes this quote from an RSA Fellow:

The future is certainly looking ominous. But I have experiences that when you join together with others to do something about it, something extraordinary starts to happen. You might start with something that seems small or insignificant in the face of the huge scale changes that are needed, with “ordinary” people, not experts, and no idea how to begin. But in the process, such groups can come up with really robust ideas and initatiatives that start things moving and create a momentum that gradually infects the wider community.” 

It made me think again about the Borrowed Planet group I'm part of, and also about Progress School, where I'm going this afternoon.  Should my aim in life be to become independent?  Or happily interdependent with others?  And does the State have a role in helping me and others to be happily interdependent?

Habit forming and 10:10

We had a Borrowed Planet meeting at our house last night.  We're a group of parents who have decided to get together to take action on climate change.  

Last night we agreed to join the 10:10 campaign as a group.  We went through their checklist of things to consider - to see what we each could do.

It was interesting to reflect on what we've tried to do differently as a family over the last few months, since we launched the group with a screening of The Age of Stupid.

A lot of it has been about getting out of habits that we've just fallen into over the years.  We haven't always had a car - for a while we we shared a car with a couple of other families - but in the four years since Francis was born we'd pretty much fallen into the habit of using the car for most journeys. 

Since July we've tried to change that.  Most weekday journeys are to take Francis to and from nursery - and I'd say over the last three months he's gone on my bike around half the time, the bus a quarter of the time, and the car a quarter of the time.  That's a big shift - and I'm now in the habit of thinking first of the bike, then of public transport, then the car.  

Another big area for us is food.  Like a lot of people we waste too much food.  That's been a harder nut to crack, but again, by being aware of it, sorting out the cupboards and fridge, and planning meals a bit more, we're making progress.  There's still a way to go on that one, but we've made a start.  I've also been challenged on the unsustainability of my meat eating habit - and have just bought a book that was recommended to me, Diet for A Small Planet.  I don't think we'll become vegetarians again, but we need to cut down on the amount of meat we eat, because if everyone ate the amount of meat we eat, we'd be in trouble.  

The next area we're looking at as a group is energy consumption.  We'll each monitor our gas and electric usage in November, to see how we compare.  I'm going to use my prize from the Bloggers Circle to buy an energy use monitor which we can all use too.  

They're all small steps, which won't stop runaway climate change on their own.  But I think one of the main barriers to changing things is a sense of paralysis - not knowing what to do in the face of such a massive problem.  That's why I think that starting to make changes, starting to form new habits, are important first steps.