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Archive
Journal entries prior to May 2008 can be found in the old archived site here

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:55:20 volansjohn: Blinded by the (big ) city lights? New Guardian Sustainable Business blog on low carbon strategies for smaller cities, http://t.co/OrNkUbt2. Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:22:52 volansjohn: RT @novonordisktbl: Novo Nordisk tops global list of 100 most sustainable companies http://t.co/qoDpuvsu Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:51:05 volansjohn: RT @aroncramer: Always great 2b w/ @recyclebank! Thx @ianyolles for #Sustainability Adv. Council mtg w/ @AndrewLShapiro @volansjohn @Kev ... Wed, 01 Feb 2012 03:41:56 volansjohn: Just been to culinary heaven, Blue Hill restaurant, NYC, http://t.co/gPnGt2iT, thanks to Recyclebank; sat next to co-founder David Barber. Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:50:15 volansjohn: RT @volansamanda: Amazing 2nd day of @BCJapanSE #socinnov learning journey with @pwc_uk @brigade_se1 @beyond_food @nicktemple1 @SchSocEnt Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:44:00 volansjohn: Just into JFK, where cab whisked in my bags, then zoomed off to NYC without me, passenger door wide open. Took 30 mins for him to see no me. Sat, 28 Jan 2012 16:51:35 volansjohn: Got a climate skeptic in the family or at work? Show them this, http://t.co/50PWGghE. Thanks to NASA - and to Marc Gunther for the link. Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:12:05 volansjohn: Trending: 'sustainers' (sustainability-minded consumers). Thanks Will Rosenzweig, Physic Ventures, & BSR's Aron Cramer, http://t.co/6yE52f7X Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:23:20 volansjohn: What a privilege and joy to be part of the Friends of the Earth 40th anniversary celebrations at Heaven, London, this evening. Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:04:06 volansjohn: RT @volansamanda: Excited about hosting our 'Social Innovation in Business' learning journey for Japanese delegates next week: speaker l ...

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Empire of the Summer Moon
The Comanche, and Cynthia Ann and Quanah Parker

Having been interested in the Native American Indians for decades, and having seen Hollywood films like The Searchers in my teens, at the local RAF cinema with an early girlfriend, I wasn't expecting this book, Empire of the Summer Moon, to be quite so overwhelming.... more >

Knitting on the Arctic Convoys
Lunch with Sir John Boyd

Sir John points out a ceiling feature

Asia House stairwell (detail)

Ahead of the Japanese study tour to London that Volans is organising for next week with the British Council, I went across to Asia House, a co-host, for lunch today - with their Chairman, Sir John Boyd. Wonderful, unseasonally balmy day. We dined a deux in the library - and I confess I fell in love with both Asia House and him.... more >

Friends of the Earth is 40
The wearing of the green

Painting in Heaven 1

Painting in Heaven 2

Paint still drying on the bees

General view of Heaven 1

Flying back to front

General view 2

Painting's nearly done

Had been slightly dreading the Friends of the Earth 40th birthday celebration in the nightclub Heaven, under the arches at Charing Cross, but it was a delight from the moment we met. One thing they did was get us all to write our names on Post-It notes of different colours. Green was for those involved in the 1970s, in our case from around 1971-2. Elaine volunteered then, while between jobs in publishing, and I passed through in a number of guises, including as a member of a group called 'Planners Against Growth'. ... more >

Virgin Media's Time Machine
The Beach Boys, sustainability and me

Virgin Media have launched their video interviews with various sustainability pioneers. I was filmed on the front steps of 2 Bloomsbury Place - and in the back garden. My profile features the cover of Surfin' USA by The Beach Boys, the first album I ever bought. That was 1963, that was.... more >

Virgin Unite and Long Finance
The economics quest continues

A Jim Benson Award

A wall

Top of a table

Great meeting on our TEDx event in May with Ellie Springett of Virgin Unite, which involved walking through Hammersmith and Brook Green - past St Paul's Girls School, where both the girls went a lifetime or two ago. Odd overlapping of time zones in one's mind. Then back to the office and across, with Sam, to the City to see Michael Mainelli of Z/Yen, Long Finance and the London Accord. They are now in the old Gresham College building, which is lovely. Michael describes Gresham College as a Tudor version  of the Open University. Truly fascinating conversation, after which Sam and I headed back to Volans for a meeting with Susan Spector McPherson of Fenton Communications. A meeting of minds.... more >

2 Degrees Summit
And the Shard in light and dark

My table

View from my end of the afternoon panel

The Shard by day, as I head back to the office

The Shard by night, as I head home after the dinner

Across to the Royal Mint early for a 2 Degrees summit. Struck by the sheer number of faces I didn't know, a symptom of the process of sustainability mainstreaming that is under way. Was part of a panel of speakers includinding people from companies like BMW, BP, Sainsbury's and Tesco, chaired by 2 Degrees founder Martin Chilcott.... more >

Andrew Witty of GSK at Cranfield
Pear's Business Schools Partnership lecture

Sir Andrew Witty takes questions

Up to Cranfield University yesterday, after a busy day, for the annual Pears Business Schools Partnership lecture - this time by GSK CEO Sir Andrew Witty. Brilliant lecture, excellent Q&A, during which I asked a question about extent to which GSK's competitors were picking up on the access to medicines agenda, and then a dinner with faculty before being driven back to London with Ramil Burden, who heads Sir Andrew's office. Great conversation, at least as far as I was concerned.... more >

Friday the Thirteenth
Europe's plight dramatically symbolised

I seem to have gone slightly mute on the blog front here, partly because of pace of work - among other things, I have been finishing off the galley proofs of my new book, The Zeronauts for the editor, who is working on the book in Nova Scotia, where she and her family live alongside coyotes and barred owls. Have also been pouring thought into the TEDx event we're planning for May and into future plans for Volans.... more >

Apologies for Unintended Blog Postings

For some reason, the new website updating process developed by my webmaster in New Zealand - which I used for the first time over the holiday break - seems to have resulted in all the changes I did to other sections of the website being posted as blogs. My apologies for those using RSS feeds - and I have asked him to take a look and sort out as quickly as possible.... more >

Sir Robert Horton
Chairman's Gold Award memories

Interested to see an obituary in today's London Times for Sir Robert Horton, who has died aged 72. I came across him when he was Chairman of BP, a job he had once famously said he wanted - if he couldn't become Prime Minister. Sometime at the very beginning of the 1990s, he invited me to be a judge for his Chairman's Gold Awards for environmental excellence, which were open for submissions from right across the company.... more >

The 2022 Horizon
A Decade for Sustainable Capitalism?

My last blog of 2011 for the Guardian Sustainable Business website raises the question whether we should declare a Decade for Sustainable Capitalism? Links to the TEDx event we are working on for next year, and for the Manifesto that David Blood and Al Gore of Generation Investment Management have trailed in The Wall Street Journal.... more >

DESSO, RAI and RAU
Day 2

Some awards at DESSO

Ralph prowls around the reception space

Michael Porter on the big screen

Rubik's Cubes at the Value Chain event

Sculpture at RAU

Turn Too brochure at RAU

Very interesting visit today to DESSO, where we met CEO Stef Kranendijk and some of his colleagues. Then back to Amsterdam's RAI Centre for a major event on sustainable supply chains, though the session we saw yesterday - with Michael Porter beamed in from NYC - was very much more interesting than the one we went to this afternoon, which was billed as how to get companies from 5-10% sustainability solutions to 90-95% solutions. But, sadly, the stories we heard - though well intentioned - were operating at lower levels of ambition. Then a fascinating visit to the architectural firm RAU, another champion of the Cradle-to-Cradle approach. They explained their turn too approach. Liked them - and their thinking.... more >

Around TNT's HQ
Europe's greenest office building, apparently

Gandhi quote

Sculpture and sunset

Carpet - by InterfaceFlor, Desso told me

Part of atrium

Another view

Later in the day, we visited TNT's new HQ, billed as the most sustainable office building in Europe. More details here.  Loved the quotations engraved on internal windows. The first quotation I saw engraved on a window inside the building was Mahatma Gandhi’s “You must be the change you want to see the world. Then I came across Nelson Mandela’s “It always seems impossible until it is done.”  And Thomas Edison’s “There is no substitute for hard work.” Then, turning a corner, I encountered Richard Branson: "Our generation has inherited an incredibly beautiful world from their parents and they from their parents. It is in our hands whether our children and their children inherit the same world." I also liked the thinking behind the suite of four rooms called John, Paul, George and Ringo - which can be merged together, to form a larger space known as The Beatles.... more >

Mission Zero
Finally, a visit to InterfaceFlor

Ray Anderson and Paul Hawken's book 'The Ecology of Commerce' in case

Confessions of a Radical Industrialist

Spools, or are they bobbins?

Ralph

People Making History

80% there by 2012, it says

That's why

Biomimicry 1: Ralph peers at Pangolin case - alongside shell of a real pangolin

Biomimicry 2: Boxfish and box-shaped car

Fishing net used as source of recycled polymers

Great trip today with Ralph Thurm of Deloitte Innovation to InterfaceFlor. Had been meaning to visit them for many years, either in Holland or the US, but - despite a couple of invitations from company founder Ray Anderson - events have always conspired to deny me the opportunity. Wonderful people and fascinating stories of their efforts to evolve Ray's Mission Zero. He's sadly missed.... more >

Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman
A day out and about in London

The Lion of Knidos at the British Museum

Lion 2

Superhumility: Grayson Perry's motorbike

Ceramic 1

Crashed F-86 Sabre features on this one

A gathering of heavens and afterworlds

One of my favourite icons of modern architecture

Sutton Hoo helmet and shield

Cyrus Cylinder

The fishes again

Fellow fish fetishist

Christmas fair on Barnes Pond as we return

While the Eurozone timbers shivered, and David Cameron seemed keen to take the UK off into inglorious isolation, protecting the interests of the bankers and othersd who did so much to trigger this crisis in the first place, went to see the Grayson Perry exhibition at the British Museum, The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman. Helped put a very different complexion on things. Can't recommend it highly enough.... more >

Impetus, Forum for the Future, FIRST, IIRC, IIED ...
Around the London Cluster

Frieze as we stop in to an arts materials shop on way back from Guardian

SustainAbility and IIRC webinar

Jessica Fries and I

IIED, where even the floor is green

Etched glass in an IIED door

Plastic ducks used to denote whether people are in or out

Crystal ball: an award, I think

Ducks, again

Stephen Lloyd, our lawyer, waves as he passes

Thinkers

Bushed

Writing on the walls

Screens in IIED reception

A week of shuttling back and forth between London-based organisations, for all sorts of reasons - including the Impetus Trust (which is in Flaxman Terrace, a building or two along from the UCL Bartlett School, where I did my MPhil in the early 1970s, when it was the School of Environmental Studies), Forum for the Future's Christmas party, the First Magazine Awards for Responsible Capitalism (where their website seems well behind the times), SustainAbility (for an Engaging Stakeholders webinar on integrated reporting, where I duo'd with Jessica Fries of the International Integrated Reporting Committee) and IIED's new building in Gray's Inn Road, for their Christmas party.  IIED's building is very impressive--spent some time talking to the architect, Phyllida Mills, of Peynore & Prasad.... more >

Roast Jellyfish Instead of Turkey at Christmas?
Monday's Atkins panel discussion

My Christmas dinner blog is the lead story on the Guardian Sustainable Business website today. Draws on a panel discussion on the Christmas dinner of 2050 as a way of looking at different futures. My panel started off as the underdog, but came out on top, through fair means and foul.... more >

The Future of the Christmas Dinner
Atkins hosts a debate at the BMA

The panel prepares

Dax Lovegrove of WWF and Nick Roberts (second along, of Atkins) are my sidekicks

Charmian (Love) with Nick and Elspeth (Finch) of Atkins

I sum up for 'Less is More'

Took part in a panel discussion at the BMA hosted by Atkins this evening, with rival teams proposing 'Less is More' (our side) and 'Laissez-faire' (the other side).  A summary of the event, which we won, can be found in the form of a blog on the Guardian Sustainable Business website. Afterwards on to a lively dinner with speakers and others.... more >

6 Heads in Somerset House
Discussion with Tom Burke et al

There is no such things as a sustainable business

Tom and I

Audience begins to assemble

The panel - and the 6 Heads, on screen: Mike, Carmen, me, Tom, Sonia, Isabella

Mike Tennant in full flow

Like butterflies, ideas pinned to wall

The problem is scaling up ...

A period of experimentation

Go to the edge

Across to Somerset House for a session organised by 6 Heads, a new venture set up by four of the Imperial College students who interned with us this year (Hannah Griffiths, Isabella Gaupmann, Nicola Millson, Sonia Naran) and two others (Ilana Taub, Nicola Robinson). They had done a brilliant job, not only in attracting a standing-room-only audience, and I really enjoyed the discussion with Tom Burke of E3G. A shot in the arm.... more >

CloudApps, Shark and Belly-Dancer
The Famished Five have an evening out

Shark

Lionfish, I think

And what are these?

Walked across to the House of St Barnabas in Greek Street early this evening, for an event organised by CloudApps. En route, the Geoffs (Lye and Kendall), Patrin (Watanatada), Sam (Lakha) and I walked past some wonderful articulated shark and assorted fish in the shop window in Shaftsbury Avenue.... more >

God's Garden on the River Main
PUMA stakeholder event in Banz Abbey

Early morning from my bedroom window

More dawn

Holly Dublin

Breakout

Tunnel 1

Tunnel 2

Morning view from my sitting room on second day

Monastery (detail)

Staircase

The elephant in my sitting room

Polar bears in my sitting room

A painter's feet in the main building

Jochen Zeitz in action

Chapel interior (detail)

Subject to the Chatham House Rule, so there's a limit to what I can say about the ninth PUMA stakeholder conference in Bavaria, in Banz Abbey.  This, apparently, is sometimes called God's Garden, on the upper Main.... more >

Memorial Service for Geoffrey Chandler
St Martin in the Fields

Christmas decorations in the old Central Market Building

Board meeting with SustainAbility at 8 Northumberland Avenue, punctuated by Geoff (Lye), Mark (Lee), Elaine and I making our way up to St Martins in the Fields for the memorial service for (Sir) Geoffrey Chandler. Very moving, but also fun - with many familar faces, including his wife Lucy and their four daughters. In his elegy, Chris Marsden concluded with a quote from a blog I did on Geoffrey earlier in the year.  Then back to the Board meeting, thence to a dinner at Terroirs in King William IV Street, after which John Schaetzl and I walked back through Covent Garden - and I snapped the image above of the decorations in the old Central Market Building. Rather lovely, I thought.... more >

A Study in Green
Offsite at the National Portrait Gallery

Camilla Batmangelidjh in the round

Greens

Started day with an offsite meeting at the National Portrait Gallery with Sam, to further develop our thinking on our TEDx event for next year. Saw - and stalked - a man in a green coat that perfectly matched one of the featured paintings. Productive meeting, too.... more >

Richard F Scott
Unexpected encounter in Lagrasse in 1991

Sad to see new in today's Observer of the death of Richard Scott, grandson of CP Scott, founder of The Guardian.  Met him in 1991, when we stayed in an apartment in his home in Lagrasse. When he greeted us at the door, his accent was so particular that I asked him whether he had known David Layton, with whom I had co-founded Environmental Data Services (ENDS) way back in 1978? Turned out that he had. More, it turned out that they had shared a study at Eton. It's amazing how many of these unexpected cross-linkages there have been in my life.... more >

Nestle
Working to Create Shared Value in Vevey

Trois Couronnes

Church

Fork

Flower

Ginkgo

Research Centre

Research Centre 2

Research Centre 3

HQ

Trapped

Map

Tapestry

Lunch

Swans

CSV line-up

CSV

Venkatesh and Ruth

Image 1

Image 2

Staircase 1

Staircase 2

Three intensive days in Vevey with Nestle, with the Creating Shared Value advisory board. One highliught: a blazing, autumnal ginkgo tree, just around the corner from the Hotel des Trois Couronnes. Another highlight was being trapped in a lift in the Nestle HQ with six other people, for over half an hour. It got hot, but we told--and heard--a lot of jokes, mainly from Kraisid (Tontisirin). A bonding experience. Still find it passing strange to be involved, but sense that it's progress. Bought Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs en route and began reading: stunningly interesting.... more >

WWF-UK Council of Ambassadors
Sir John Chapple steps down

Ed Smith (right) gives Sir John Chapple (left) a goodbye picture

Off to ICAEW Council Chambers, Moorgate Place, off Swan Alley, for meeting of WWF-UK Council of Ambassadors. Sessions on issues like palm oil and orang utans in the Heart of Borneo, China's investments in Africa, and the work of the WWF Finance Lab. Found myself sitting next to Miranda Richardson, another Council member, who I hadn't met before. This was the last meeting for Sir John Chapple as Chair of the Council of Ambassadors, and he told the story of how he first got involved, in Hong Kong, through the good offices of Peter Scott. Put me strongly in mind of that entire generation of conservationists that launched organisations like WWF, including Max Nicholson.... more >

Tangley
Autumn still

Interior 1

Exterior 1

Exterior 2

Exterior 3

Exterior 4

Drove down to Tangley today to see Eleo (Gordon) and Peter (Carson), and their daughter Charlotte. The autumnal colours were utterly exquisite, a deer loping across the road as we got closer. A delightful day, all told. Wonderful to watch the rooks coming in to roost as the afternoon wound down.... more >

Halloween
Pointy hat point in time

Young neighbour headed upstairs with her sweets

Nice moment today when the granddaughters from upstairs came to the door in their Halloween hats and costumes, and Sam held out the bowl of sweets. Not your normal office, thank heavens.... more >

The Road to Hong Kong and Singapore
Whistle-stop tour of Asia

Che goes commercial in Hong Kong storefront

On my way to meet Azita in Zuma

View from my bedroom window as day begins

Looking down on skyscrapers from Bayer's offices

More scraped skies

Singapore now: artwork at Singapore International Foundation event

Detail 1

Detail 2

Detail 3

Detail 4

Detail 5

SIF lunch

Part of my bathroom at the Ritz-Carlton

I'm written on the walls at NUS Business School

Dawn from my bedroom

Insect traces a trail in moisture on window

View across to the Marine Bay Sands Casino

Left for Hong Kong on Sunday, working with Bayer MaterialSciences on a project that will hopefully see the light of day next year. Met Azita Owlia for dinner at Zuma, a wonderful Japanese restaurant. Much progress made, then out to airport with Richard Northcote, for my flight on to Singapore.... more >

The Artist, Habibi and oak processionary moths
And a walk in the late autumn sun

Skeleton watching passers by from Fleet Street Clinic

Chinatown evening, Gerrard Street

Spook in Barnes

Oak tree, Barnes

Autumnal fruit

Pumpkins in storefront

Another oak tree

Glorious day yesterday, with E, G and H, among other things having lunch at Imperial China in Gerrard Street and then seeing the new film The Artist as part of the BFI London Film Festival. Cannot recommend the film highly enough.... more >