Dreamcatcher II?

The latest in business fashion - green, the new black? It’s only the authentic voice of sustainability that rings true for Peter Malaise from Ecover.

Sustainable development and finance? Not much common ground there, surely? Indeed, it’s a commonplace, when bewailing the lack of sustainable solutions, to blame the fact that some guys somewhere want to make a lot of money. A hell of a lot of money. And, in place of “some guys”, insert the name of one of the big multinationals, for a ready-made link to genetic manipulation, or oil, nuclear power, weapons or whatever.

No money in sustainable business? Well, you can forget that. Business is business, a company is a company. Just as in conventional business, you get the good, the bad and the ugly. And yes, a lot of bad companies have been doing bad business for the last couple of years, but there’s more than one good sustainable business out there making pretty good money.

To conventional business - ‘business as usual’ - this is a real threat: when business isn’t ‘business as usual’ any more, when it’s getting rather unusual, and still makes money.

Hence the sudden spate of conventional business executives turning up as star speakers at sustainability seminars. Apparently, they’ve morphed into missionaries for sustainability - overnight. Just like that.

As usual, the reality is a bit more complex. If sustainability were that easy, how come they didn’t get into it earlier, rather than keeping right on killing the planet? Why wasn’t a whole lot more money from old-style business invested in developing a new type of economy? Why is it only when staring down the barrel of a gun that ‘business as usual’ starts getting all evangelical about changing its behaviour?

But just listen to the discourse of these new apostles. It’s clear that they are working with different manuals on this sustainability thing - and, as a matter of fact, with different agendas too. Oh yes, bring a new type of sustainable plastic on the market, based on corn. Big cheers all round. At last! Oh yes, at last - an interesting outlet for GM corn.

Mankind is very inventive. We underestimate at our peril the inventiveness of our non-sustainable brethren - in finding ways to pick their grain out of our barn. Should we despise them for that? No, but I do think we should be a trifle more straight in our doctrine. It was we who worked for years to realise the core ideas of sustainability, we who had to accept mediocre market opportunities for all that time. It was we who suffered from the lack of access to adequate finance. No, I don’t object to them taking our dreams, but, oh my brothers and sisters, should we accept them turning our dreams into nightmares? I think that if there is something these people really do have to learn from us, it’s the dreaming. There is no sustainability in exploiting sustainability. A business built on that will go bananas in a far shorter time than any of the industrial revolutions we’ve had so far.

For most of us pioneers, sustainability started at a certain point with “Imagine…”. John Lennon was probably one of only a very few people to make really big money from that word - but it has been the solid start for a lot of businesses throughout the world. And it’s time we made ourselves heard. Shall we start by sharing with these well-paid seminar speakers the sentence I saw written on the wall, in the office of a businessman I was visiting?

“Oh Lord, grant that I may keep my big mouth shut until I know what I’m talking about.”

Peter Malaise is concept manager with Ecover

30 October 2002

Peter Malaise