Blog: November 2008

Contemplating how consumption of local beer
helped put Europe on the ‘road to recovery’

November 21

Recently, I went on another fact-finding tour of countries with the highest recycling rates -- Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom -- to learn more about how they went about achieving those results. In Germany I was just amazed to see how conscientious customers were about returning almost all packaging to retailers and the diligent way that wine bottles were segregated on almost every street corner, the green bottles deposited in green bins and the clear bottles in colorless ones, rather than carelessly commingled (although most neighborhoods also had a bin for miscellaneous glass). Every household is provided with four bins, one each for compost, plastic, glass, and trash, and neighborhood residents seem to take pride in making sure it’s all properly sorted out. So it’s not all that surprising that the country should be ranked best in the European Union for its recycling practices, with an approximate recovery rate exceeding 60 percent.

In Norway, the recycling rate is more like 90 percent. It’s also home to the largest manufacturer in the world of recycling equipment, whose CEO I had the good fortune to meet with and learn a few salient facts from. He recounted to me how he had started the company over 30 years ago as a favor to a friend who had a pub and needed a way to handle beer bottles that where being returned by "take-away" customers. Such was the unlikely origin of the reverse vending-machine concept that has been largely responsible for today’s Norwegian recycling success story and, in more general terms, the reclamation phenomenon now being experienced in the European Union.

Listening to the story of how all this came about, I was struck by the relationship between beer- drinking habits and recycling rates. Could it be that the regional breweries were the ones really responsible for the success of recycling in European countries? Thirty years ago, bottle redemption was set up to keep local beers from having their territory invaded by outside competitors though systems designed only to recover the bottles of the dominant brew in a particular locale (keeping in mind that plastic bottles were not an option for beer). By contrast, Anheuser-Busch used the railroads to ship beer all over the United States with no way of recovering the bottles, but in effect designing them to become part of the waste stream. Today, of course, such disposable methodologies, once a hallmark of progress, seem oddly obsolete at a time when so many of us are calling for sustainable approaches to production and for our collective sense of community to be restored, together with things like locally grown food and neighborhood businesses that give each place its distinctive flavor, culture, identity and sense of self-sufficiency.

Perhaps, just as those old-time regional breweries started their countrymen down the ‘road to recovery’ (pun intended), so today in America it’s our local and regional commercial and cultural ventures that are best equipped to do likewise for us.

That, at least, was the thought that I came away with (with the help of a local brew in a London pub) -- and one that will no doubt influence me in trying to determine what it will take to put the United States on a similarly successful sustainability track.

Nothing sustains one’s interest level more than learning sustainability from the pros

November 4

Recently I had the good fortune to attend a sustainability conference with key heavy hitters in the field from Fortune 100 and 500 companies of all types, ranging from energy to building design to food. At the start of the conference, the attendees agreed to the Chatham House Rules, which stipulate that "… participants are free to use the information received” at such a conference, “but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed." While I had heard that rule referred to before, I honestly really never knew what it meant. But it’s proven to be quite important in that it has provided me with official authorization to talk about what went on at this extraordinary seminar (only without naming any names).

Attending this particular conference was much like finding myself in the classroom of a very old Ivy League school. From the opening dinner, I had this gut feeling that I was here to learn, not to mess around, party or socialize. It was the exact feeling I had at 18 on my first day of college. Once again, I was the perfect student, diligently taking notes listening intently. The speakers were all top-notch experts in sustainability as it related to their particular fields --solid waste management, resource management, material management, carbon footprint, H20 (the next carbon footprint) legislation, construction and demolition, old containers and cardboard, and what Europe, China and India are doing to keep things sustainable in their own societies.

It was all quite overwhelming, with never a boring moment -- or one of those moments where you say to yourself, “I already know this, so I guess this is a good time to start texting.” Instead, I found myself totally intent on absorbing as much information as I could. And here are some of the key things that I learned by paying such close attention to these “professors” of industry:

All told, it was a truly fantastic learning experience, overwhelming in its complexity and revelations of both the huge challenges and huge opportunities that the quest for sustainable solutions represents for our society right now. But I think the most important thing I took away from this forum was the realization of how many very bright people and very big companies are currently engaged in the effort to find new approaches to achieving sustainability. And they’re doing it not simply because it’s the “buzz” or they feel obligated to, but because they know how important this is to the salvation of the planet itself. That’s why so many of the nation’s most influential companies are empowering strong leaders in their organizations to figure out what they can do to make a difference. I found that to be both inspiring and intimidating at the same time.

So three decades after supposedly completing my education, I walked out of this “classroom” much the same way I walked out of my last college class--- feeling a bit overwhelmed by what I had learned and by the prospect of taking that information into the big bad world of business, yet exhilarated by the opportunity to do so.

Sustainability is what it’s all about --- a subject that’s worthy of any one of you joining this group of industry influentials and intellectuals to help tackle. In fact, I’ve already written my own plan for doing so while on the flight home. I’ll be providing more detail in future blogs, so stay tuned.

 

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