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John Elkington

John Elkington

A world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development.

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Out Of The Box

John Elkington · 17 October 2010 · Leave a Comment

M1 Polly Woodside 1 M2 Polly Woodside 2 M5 Elaine and historic catches M6 Ready to fly? M7 Girl with pearl earring M9 Graffiti 1 M10 Graffiti 2

Flew down to Melbourne today, spotting where we went to the coastal headland with Paul and Micelle. I bought three books at the airport and got a good way through one on the flight, a fascinating history of flight, The Airplane, by Jay Spenser, sub-titled How Ideas Gave Us Wings. The other two books are: Tim Flannery’s Here on Earth, which Elaine plunged into, and Climate Wars, by Gwynne Dyer.

Haunted as we flew, though, in a plane chock-full with Japanese tourists, by the story I read in a book I picked up in the airport bookstore, an account of what happened to a group of Australian nurses who fell into Japanese hands after the fall of Singapore.

On Radji Beach tells of the dreadful events that followed the attempted surrender of the survivors of a ship that was bombed as it fled Singapore. The Europeans were separated out and marched into the sea, where they – and 21 nurses – were machine-gunned to death. Miraculously, one nurse survived to tell the tale, after surrendering again, this time more successfully, and spending the rest of the war in a Japanese camp.

One wonders if these present-day Japanese travellers have any clue of what their country did before and during WWII? But then I wonder whether Australians recall how the Aborigines were hunted down like foxes, or young Britons remember things like the Opium Wars?

Always think that I prefer Melbourne, but temperature here is significantly lower, rain has been falling and our room at the Stamford Plaza is dark and rather noisy. Still, we found a wonderful restaurant on the other side of the river, Pure South, and had a tremendous meal – immeasurably enhanced, for me at least, by the smell of the recently trimmed box hedge smack alongside where we were sitting, one of my favourite aromas. The InVivo sauvignon blanc from New Zealand was rather nice, too.

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Introduction

I began this blog with an entry reporting on a visit to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, on 30 September 2003. The blog element of the website has gone through several iterations since, with much of the older material still available.

Like so many things in my life, blog entries blur the boundaries between the personal and the professional. As explained on this site’s Home Page, the website and the blog are part platform for ongoing projects, part autobiography, and part accountability mechanism.

In addition, my blogs have appeared on many sites such as: Chinadialogue, CSRWire, Fast Company, GreenBiz, Guardian Sustainable Business, and the Harvard Business Review.

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About

John Elkington is a world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development. He is currently Founding Partner and Executive Chairman of Volans, a future-focused business working at the intersection of the sustainability, entrepreneurship and innovation movements.

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john@johnelkington.com  |  +44 203 701 7550 | Twitter: @volansjohn

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