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John Elkington

John Elkington

A world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development.

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Barnes Back Then

John Elkington · 5 June 2020 · Leave a Comment

Amazing how one’s memory can drift over time. Our daughter Hania sent us this link to an amateur film made in Barnes, London, by John McCready in 1974 – the year before we arrived from central London.

At one level very little seems to have changed, and yet the film can’t show the construction of the river wall, that occluded the Thames to a degree; the village pond that drained overnight and had to be restored over quite some years; the fire that raged through the church, in the event providing the opportunity to rebuild in a wonderful way; and the intensification of flights overhead into nearby Heathrow, a nuisance that has been radically abated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

From John McCready’s Super 8 film of Barnes back in 1974

Interesting, too, to see the building in the High Street where Gaia (aged perhaps 3 or 4) and I stopped to watch a coral reef on a colour TV screen. She dropped to a crouch and was utterly rapt. Case made. I went in within days to buy a tiny but wonderful for those days) Sony Trinitron colour TV – and it provided a remarkable window into the natural world.

If only we had been able to see then the sort of TV screens that are increasingly standard today. They would have seemed more like a cinema. And that’s another thing that has changed. The music studios where people like The Beatles, The Byrds and Queen recorded, is now a cinema. Or at least it was until the virus hit – hope it will still be when the pandemic subsides.

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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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