by frog
There might be lots wrong with huge supermarket chains, but here’s one good thing: Tesco is planning to build the ‘World’s Greenest Supermarket’. They have announced a 100 million pound fund to increase their energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions, and will install wind turbines and solar panels at some new stores. Sure, their motivations may not be wholly pure, but if more businesses followed suit, for whatever reason, it would be a very good thing indeed.
Published in Environment & Resource Management | Society & Culture by frog on Wed, April 26th, 2006
Tags: environment
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Good to see them catering for a niche market; being truthful, it’s only going to be profitable because there’s a large enough Green community who are willing to waste massive amounts of their income on greenie things.
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Good on you Frog for posting this, however….
“Sure, their motivations may not be wholly pure, but if more businesses followed suit, for whatever reason, it would be a very good thing indeed.”
Personally I don’t care if a business has ‘pure’ motivations. After all just what is a ‘pure’ motivation for a business? Surely you know it is illegal in some countries, e.g. USA, for a business to have what I think you might regard as ‘pure’ motivations. It would be nice if that were not the case, and businesses could and did do good things because they were good and not just to help their brand or bottom line, but right now we don’t have time to get them all singing kum by ya so let’s not pretend that we care if someone is doing something for ‘pure’ reasons or not. It is the impact of their action which should be judged (and the means used to achieve it).
Really for us the challenge is not about getting good intentions but rather it is about changing the time frame that business in NZ uses and getting them to employ longer range thinking. That is the issue, they can’t imagine a world more than 1-2 years out if you are lucky. Getting them to think more strategically (are you going to be in business in 50 years?) is the key, is NZ Inc going to be in business in 50 years, what will it look like?
To that end there is a good article in April’s NZ Management magazine about Climate Change and how far behind NZ business is, in a large part because they / we tend to be reactionary and late adopters (despite myths that claim the opposite) of key technology.
So let’s make sure we give unreserved appreciation and support for companies who are making a meaningful change – that is not to say reward green-washing – but if a company does a good thing let’s find out and talk about it, whether it is a ‘green business’ or not (in reference to the strategic plan ‘building linkages to ‘green business’ when we should be building linkages to ALL businesses prepared to do things that make environmental and economic sense…).
So again – great to see this posted – let’s find some more local examples of companies trying to do the right thing even if it is in just one aspect of their business…
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The best way to make a supermarket eco-friendly is not to build it.
Perhaps next the Greens will celebrate the world’s greenest open cast coal mine? Or the world’s greenest drift net?
I recall engineers at the Ministry of Works laughing about the Wellington Urban Motorway being given an environmental award (I suppose the plaque is still there, by the Molesworth Street overbridge). They weren’t the most enlightened people in the world, but they knew absurdity when they saw it.
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Still Sam, recognising that people are not going to stop building supermarkets, no matter what we think, isn’t it better that we have developments like what Tesco is doing? We might believe it would be better to have no supermarkets, but that’s not realistic in the forseeable future. Climate change, however, is realistic, and unless people like Tesco take it into account, we won’t be able to do anything to stop it.
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“The best way to make a supermarket eco-friendly is not to build it.”
Right – and sustainable business is an oxymoron, nothing good can ever come from anything that isn’t a community led cooperative, we should just give up now and wait for the whole sorry mess to collapse under its own weight, while chanting from the side lines “I told you so, I told you so”.
And exactly how far is that going to get us?
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Sustainable business cannot be an oxymoron, by definition.
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Another green victory for capitalism.
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Well, I can’t understand what Fastbike is saying, and Benw is just creating a straw man, and a pretty pathetic one at that.
So, Frog. Firstly, as an activist I’ve spent my life having people tell me I was being unrealistic, so I’m used to it. I’m glad I never listened to them, because some of the things I was told we just had to be realistic about and accept don’t exist anymore. The whole point of political activism is to make the unrealistic possible. I’m even glad we didn’t give up fighting the Wellington motorway extension on the basis that people are going to build motorways, so we should be realistic and congratulate Transit for not making it as bad as it could have been.
A green supermarket is completely oxymoronic. To exist, because of their size supermarkets require a supply chain that reaches out huge distances, in the UK this can mean goods being trucked thousand s of kilometres, or being flown in from other continents. In order to displace their competitors, they need to force down the prices they pay to suppliers, which often means buying from developing countries, rather than using local goods (they can’t compete with the convenience of a local shop, so low prices are a necessity).
Their existence also presupposes a network of roads for allowing customers to drive to them. Wastage is also huge, as is packaging (for example meat has to sit in chillers, so is wrapped in film on a polystyrene tray, rather than wrapped in paper as required by a butcher).
Frankly, if you want to deal with climate change, you are going to have to accept that this requires real changes in our economic systems. If you are going to say “that’s not realistic in the forseeable future” you might as well give up now.
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Sorry Sam, I was being a bit obtuse.
A truly sustainable business by definition will not damage the environment and society that sustains it. They do exist, although they’re thin on the ground.
I agree that Tesco et al, do not come anywhere near the definition.
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Sam –
My issue with your initial response is that I subscribe (and I guess you do not) to the view that there is plenty that can be done within the current business environment. Sure some businesses will just have to do (Solid Energy for one) but for something like a supermarket, just saying ‘get rid of it’ I think isn’t the fastest way to get some change.
However you are right in that the current model of a supermarket, in fact the current model of how shopping is done, is oriented around long supply chains, roading, etc. that are unsustainable. And what Tesco have done is really just a start, and they deserve to be given a hard time on their business practices. However, I personally think, that the feedback should be; okay, great. now what about X, Y, Z.
Myself, I think there is huge scope for rethinking supermarkets; integration with public transport, sourcing of more local produce, moving transport to be rail rather than road where possible, locating within higher density housing, a real commitement to organics etc. that can be done within the existing model of a single store that people go into shop at.
So changing those things that are wrong with how food is produced and sold today I think should be seen as seperate to the idea of scraping the idea of a single store that provides multiple types of products in favor of smaller individual shops. In fact some of these things, e.g. getting suppliers to shift transport of goods from the 80% on the road as it is today to 80% on rail and getting a shift to bio fuels and hybrid-diesel engines for the final delivery from rail to store, those are things that might be done more quickly by a larger chain / corporate than individual shops.
But only someone sits down with these businesses and steps them through the reasons for doing it (both economic and broader social / environmental) as well as agitating against them from the outside (as happens with Tesco).
By the way, I also remember going into plenty of butchers shops as a kid and there was plenty of plastic wrap, I don’t think they have a monopoly on better ways of wrapping food.
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Benw – I never so much as hinted that things couldn’t be done within the current business environment – you seem to have made that assumption out of thin air.
However, your suggestions for improving supermarkets seem to assume that they have arisen in their present form out of some sort of choice. Actually their form has been determined by the economic system they exist within.
Something that markets food in a sustainable way would be so far removed from the present ‘supermarket’ as to be quite a different species of beast. You can insist on calling it a supermarket if you like, but it isn’t one.
Capitalism isn’t a result of people being stupid. You can sit down with them and explain alternatives until you are blue in the face, but it won’t do any good because they are already aware of these alternatives and rejected them in favour of methods that increase their profits. I’m sure Tesco’s etc. are fully aware of the existence of railways, and the environmental advantages of rail over trucks, but they are not going to choose rail because that would eat into their bottom line.
I frequently find the real gap in Green politics is the idea that logic and reasonableness will win out. The system you are trying to fix is irrational and just being right isn’t enough.
By the way, the point about butchers is that you have some sort of control over how things are packaged, and the polystyrene (?) trays are the real killers.
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ok. I apologize for assuming too much.
“I’m sure Tesco’s etc. are fully aware of the existence of railways, and the environmental advantages of rail over trucks, but they are not going to choose rail because that would eat into their bottom line.”
Actually it is the other way around, increasingly not using rail is eating into the bottom lines of plenty of businesses right now. The better economics of rail are becoming more apparent as oil continues to rise or stays above $70 a barrel. You might have missed it but the head of Mainfreight last week claimed that they could double their spend on freight from $25M to $50M a year (from memory) if Toll would pull its finger out and provide more capacity and he did it in the context of talking about rising road transport costs.
“I frequently find the real gap in Green politics is the idea that logic and reasonableness will win out.”
Certainly just coming up with the ideas and expecting people to adopt them is naive. That is why I think (and I guess you disagree since you appear to view the system as simply being broken) that engaging with mainstream business in terms they understand and finding ‘no regrets’ starting points (in particular around the costs of oil in the near term and of carbon footprint in the medium term) that link ‘green’ outcomes with business goals they can understand (brand equity, cost and risk reduction, business continuity etc.).
That hasn’t been done very well in the past, and traditional “Greens” seem to struggle with those types of conversations and the mainstream business types don’t know they need to have the conversation in the first place. However I personally see some evidence (outside of New Zealand) of large companies coming to the realization that the assumptions they had made, and built their business on, are no longer true and they are looking for ideas on how to change (UPS and FedEx are two examples, where they have been hit with rising oil costs pretty hard).
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There’s more on the Tesco greenwash here
Bugger !
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I’m sure we’re all aware that no matter what Sir Terry says about listening to customers, Tesco’s aim in this venture is literally to save on increasing energy costs (which are rising rapidly in the UK) as well as attracting more ‘semi-green’ consumers.
Those that can’t afford, don’t have access to, or aren’t interested in ‘real green’ grocery shopping (such as local farm produce, box schemes etc) will appreciate this move.
I think we have to face the fact that not everyone is going to change their consumer lifestyle enough so that supermarkets will go out of business. In the face of this, a ‘greener’ energy supermarket is not a bad move.
Meanwhile, instead of complaining, those of us who know better will continue to make our own consumer habits greener.
Buy less, buy local, buy fair trade….
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