Journal

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.

Reflection Barnes Common Local Nature Reserve Path Cricket starts As the rain begins

Elaine and I walked Hania across to Barnes station just before 5 this afternoon, breathing in the smells of the Hawthorn blossom and what may have been Queen Anne’s Lace or Hedge Parsley. As we walked back, the cricketers came out to play, so we wandered in among the trees to watch, partly because the rain was starting fall.

We gradually made our way home, at one stage standing under a Horse Chestnut across from Chris Patten’s home as the rain thumped down. I watched it blur a distant Poplar – and found myself thinking of how the men in the WWI trenches would have experienced such downpours. Wonderful feeling, to be sheltered by a great tree.

Have spent much of the day wading through the newspapers from the past week – and, at one stage, booking a Eurostar ticket for tomorrow, in case my flight to Frankfurt is grounded by the incoming ash. Some geologists say that we are possibly heading into a period where some much larger Icelandic volcanoes begin to erupt. Time to explore videoconferencing more seriously?

Rain 1 Rain 2  

Barnes 1 Barnes 2

Our garden is more or less at it peak at the moment, spilling over with bluebells and sweet cicely, and with all sorts of plants and vines filling the air with perfume – particularly something that has scrambled up the eucalyptus from a neighbour’s garden. A fair number of bees around, particularly various types of bumblebee, but the fate of bees internationally is a growing concern. Their contribution to agriculture is part of the evolving ecosystem services space, something we cover in our latest report, The Biosphere Economy. Many years ago, I wanted to keep bees, even had a pair of hives and a honey extractor inherited from an uncle of Kerry Effingham’s, but life intervened. Apparently there’s a new type of hive, much simpler, which has had me musing again.

School of Management 1 School of Management 2 Professor Arthur Francis kicks us off Kyoko Fukukawa and her husband And their daughter

Travelled by train, via Leeds, to Bradford – to do a lecture at Bradford University’s School of Management. Amazing to see the landscape taken over by the acid yellow colour of rape fields. Read a stack of magazines, including Newsweek, which foresees the end of the euro and a second great depression. Theme of my talk was the Phoenix Economy, the title of our report last year, which plays into the same space, with discussion of the implication of the work of long-dead economists like Nikolai Kondratiev and Joseph Schumpeter on long-wave economic cycles.

Very much liked the School’s new extension, shown in the first two photos, on the back of the old building, shown in the fourth. Was hosted by, among other Kyoko Fukukawa, whose book on CSR in Asia I did a foreword for some time back. Lively discussion with School of Management alumni, and others, after which I took a bus back to Leeds and then headed south, getting home around 21.30.