John Elkington

This morning in our garden The oasthouse Daleks of Sissinghurst Private Wisteria, I think Shadow Tower 1 Egyptian moment Beehives My shadow, but where’s my echo? Habitations Meditation Floral fireworks Blues and yellows Blue Spectrum 1 Spectrum 2 Weathervane Tower 2 Orb speaks unto orb Reflections Will plots Elaine’s shoes Overhead Hippo, when we drop Will and Carla off in Chelsea

Utterly glorious day, blue skies throughout. Will and Carla (Rosenzweig) arrive early for breakfast – and then we drive out on the M25 and M26 to Kent, and to Sissinghurst. Abominable traffic jam headed clockwise as we head anti-clockwise, with people out of their cars for miles on end, but somehow we get through unscathed.

Have only once been to Sissinghurst before, when we took cousin Hollister Sprague there perhaps 30 years ago. In many ways, better than I remembered, though fairly busy. The smell of flowers and blooms was ravishing, though Carla was suffering from a form of hay fever – and has the Chelsea Flower Show to ensure tomorrow.

Two of the highlights for me were (1) having a bottle of National Trust Viceroy Pale Ale for lunch and (2)  pausing by the beehives and watching the bees buzz in and out. Later, I rescued a bee that looked as if it was on LSD, but failed to rescue another this evening in our kitchen. Couldn’t initially work out where the frantic buzzing was coming from, then saw that a fatal drama was playing out over my head, with a large spider stabbing a bee and wrapping it in silk. A mummification that was slightly different to that in my mind when I was pondering the Egyptian head on a Sissinghurst flower pot today.

Playing Google’s Pacman game 1 Playing 2

Google’s homepage sports a Pacman-style game today, which had Charmian and Sam in raucous raptures for a while this afternoon.  Having never played such games, I didn’t want t be shown up and continued with my writing tasks, although couldn’t resist a snapshot or two.

Amy holds sweet cicely (left) and hemlock (right) Queenie grapfruit Cork trees – and corks Handkerchief tree Sir Hans Sloane Gate – and Green Man, it seems Place tag My Sancerre Detail of Unilever House As I walked back to Bloomsbury

Early on Thursday evening, courtesy of Will Rosenzweig and his team at Physic Ventures, Amy (Birchall) and I made our way across to the Chelsea Physic Garden, by Tube and taxi. Arriving slightly early, we wandered around the paths, where we met the Curator Rosie Atkins, who very kindly took us under her wing and showed us a number of the Garden’s delights. These included the difference between sweet cicely (edible) and hemlock (potentially fatal), a test I passed because we have sweet cicely in our garden; a grapefruit tree called – I think – Queenie, with fruit, that grew from a pip; the glazed containers in which early plant-hunters shipped their finds; and a cork tree festooned with corks. 

Lovely dinner with Physic team and their guests, in glorious evening weather, with occasional views of Sir Hans Sloane, the ‘patron saint’ of Physic Ventures, and of a handkerchief tree. Then, early on Friday morning, across to Unilever House with Amy and Charmian (Love), for a morning conference with the Physic team and people from a number of their partner companies. Fascinating fare. A sense of the landscape of opportunity across which Physic invest can be found here. Among the sustainability-related portfolio companies I found particularly interesting were EnergyHub, Gazelle.com and Novomer. Then back to Bloomsbury for a session with Nick Rowcliffe, Editor-in-Chief of ENDS.

As I travelled around Germany this week, I was fielding calls from Peter Marsh of the Financial Times on the news that Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart were opening up their cradle-to-cradle product assessment and design methodology to others players in the market. Some of my comments made it into the final piece, here. Other recent media work can be accessed here.

Part of SAP sustainability-branded area Peter Graf, SAP’s Chief Sustainability Officer Tobias Dosch of SAP and Pieter Schoehuijs, Chief Information Officer at AkzoNobel We are plugged The shark is hungry Karina interviewed – my turn next Formula 1 exhibit Co-CEO Bill McDermott – the word is ‘Sustainable’ Co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe

Took the Eurostar from London to Brussels yesterday, then an ICE train to Frankfurt, arriving late – but just in time for dinner with a number of people from SAP. Managed somehow to mislay the ticket I had printed off for the ICE train while still in London, and scrambled around Brussels to find a way of accessing and printing the ticket – trying first an internet cafe and then an Ibis Hotel, helped remotely by Sam. Luckily, we made it work – but I never came across the ticket again, suggesting some sort of Bermuda Triangle in my luggage.

Then up very early this morning to get to the Messe conference complex in time for a 07.00 start, with a breakfast-time panel discussion. Early hour meant slightly thin audience to begin with, though it filled out later, and we apparently had the biggest audience of all the sessions at that time. Extraordinary weather outside, with rain drumming on the conference centre roof, very audibly.

We did various interviews – for one showing me looking quite tired, and “jowly”, noted our erstwhile intern Zheng Jieying from Auckland, see here. In the early afternoon, there was a bigger panel session, during which I also trailed the “we’re moving from push to pull” in corporate sustainability reporting message, which will be central to our new report – The Transparent Economy – which launched next week at the GRI conference in Amsterdam.

Then I headed for the airport with co-panellist Karina Litvack of F&C.  When I opened a conference centre door to exit and collect my bag, a great heap of snow and sleet fell across me. Found out later  that my plane had been hit by lightning, so the passengers for Munich had to be transferred to another aircraft. All handled surprisingly smoothly.