Everyday Practices

The ability to ensure a questioning environment within an organisation is one thing. There is also a need for organisations to reinforce everyday practices that are congruent with its mission. To this end, the interviewees also offer some simple examples of practices they engage in. These examples are listed below in Table 5.1, and although not strictly quotes they do offer a further understanding to the reader of the general modus operandi of the organisations interviewed.

Table 5.1 : Simple Everyday Practices the Organisations Engage In

Area Example

Packaging  Using recycled plastic bottles and applying recycled plastic labels to these bottles. These bottles and labels are then used as the package in which the product is sold (see

www.terracycle.net, for an example)

 Using recycled packaging, ie suppliers’ packaging

o “we’ve never bought a piece of packaging in our life, you know, we don’t buy it, you know, we just use everybody else’s” (Green Stationery Company, Jay Risebridger, Founder)

 Using biodegradable plastic wrapping for catalogue mailings – Suma

Area Example

 Using non-plastic recyclable jiffy bags for packaging products for dispatch – biome Lifestyle

Employee Incentives

 Employee pensions and company banking is done with ethical funds/banks – BioRegional

 Company loans for upgrading employees’ cars and houses to reduce their carbon footprint – seventh Generation

 Mileage allowances for cycling to work – Green Building Store

Operations  Not making to stock

o “we no longer produce t-shirts people don’t want to buy” (howies, Dave Hieatt, co-founder)

 Product Take back - Exploring trade in policies for old clothes (howies)

 Dematerialisation

o (discussing their recent store opening) “we’re going to email you the receipt rather than give you one, a paper one” (howies, Dave Hieatt, co-founder)

Trust and Transparency

 Transparent pay structures – BioRegional, Company E

 Trust

o “if you say you’ve got 400 mls in, in the bottle, I don’t know exactly what the law says, but I think there’s a certain amount of latitude around the 400 mls. We don’t have latitude around the 400 mls, 400 mls. Is the minimum, right” (Company C, interviewee)

 Transparent bottles

o “clear bottles means you can see what’s in it,..warts and all” (Company C, interviewee)

Other  Heating the building with a wood powered boiler rather than burning oil – Pillars of Hercules

 Planting trees to offset their carbon emissions – Suma

 Sustainable/eco-efficient head office rather than a “shed on an industrial estate...important to us from the point of view of meeting our prime objectives” (Company D, Paul Ellis)

 Second hand Furniture

Area Example

from a sustainable source” (BioRegional, Sue Riddlestone, Co-founder)

5.7 Doing More (Challenges/Blockers)

The interviews invariably came to a close with a final question that explored what the interviewees perceive as being the major challenges or blockers that prevent their organisations becoming more environmentally sustainable. The responses to this question range from comments regarding the availability of people and managing people effectively, through to the number of suppliers within the ‘green space’, to the challenges the organisations set themselves and the difficulty this creates

because they are operating in a market space where there is a dearth of role models. Taking these areas in turn; the challenges regarding the availability of, and

managing people to ensure engagement are illustrated via the following quotes: “The biggest hurdle first of all is trying to find resource [referring to people] to do it, given the expansion’s going so much right now” (seventh GENERATION, Gregor Barnum, Director of Corporate Consciousness)

“The real barrier to doing any of those things is not the aspiration... it’s how you deal with the people issues and train and develop and get people to work as a team and delegate and all this kind of stuff. That’s always the most challenging part of any business and this business is no different, and if I had to point to one barrier, that’s it” (Company C, interviewee)

The lack of ‘green’ suppliers that provide products or services that are consistent with the

organisations’ missions and the demands of the market space that the organisations are operating in also provide a challenge. For example:

“an ethical company obviously has, has more hardships than obviously a normal small business, purely because our choices are limited, a lot more limited” (Beyond Skin, Natalie Dean, Founder)

Interesting Aside 3 – Supply Issues

Of the seven interviewees that had text coded to the theme of supply issues as being a challenger/blocker, all seven were from organisations that have less than 50 employees with 4 of the 7 having less than 10 employees. This may be illustrative of the difficulty of finding and securing supply deals when an organisation is smaller.

“I would say that materials is, is kind of foremost in that. It’s difficult to… just sourcing new ones” (Terra Plana, Rosie Budhani)

“I do think some of it is partly because we’re an environmental company, cos as I say I think otherwise we’d be able to go and get things mass produced … in foreign countries and I think … the costs would be a lot lower and therefore you’d probably be able to reach a lot wider market with the products” (biome Lifestyle, Alexandra Bramham, Founder)

The following quotes highlight what some of the interviewees see as their organisations biggest challenges, the challenges they set themselves:

“How do we do the best organic line of cleaners how do we achieve that? You know the other part, we’re doing a whole repackaging thing. So how do you look at packaging and how do you look at the end of cycle and how do we begin to think about designing, so that really there’s no weight in the packaging? ...How do we design, how can we design every moment for one hundred percent of the wellbeing of all humanity? ... some people have talked about can we actually make the packet out of the detergent, so at the end you the packaging goes straight into the washing machine or whatever. ... another one is why are we still thinking in spray cans, I mean why aren’t we thinking in a whole another level of what does it really mean to create the healthiest house possible”(seventh GENERATION, Gregor Barnum, Director of Corporate Consciousness)

“how do you, you make a tee shirt and cut down the amount of water used? How do you make something so it can be unmade?”(howies, Dave Hieatt, Co-founder) Whereas for other interviewees the challenge is the

lack of role models or a prescribed path, for example: “I mean it would be nice if I knew where to go. I mean with, with everything we do it’s yet another step forward and then you have to find out

something else, but it’d be good to know what are all the options, you know” (BioRegional, Sue Riddlestone, Co-founder)

Interesting Aside 4 – Role Models

The issue of role models is mentioned by four interviewees all from organisations with less than 50 staff with one having 10 or less staff. This is perhaps not to be unexpected for relatively small and relatively new ventures.

“there’s no, there’s no role models out there, there’s no, you know, so we’re sort of, we’re always having to make the way, you know what I mean” (biome lifestyle, Alexandra Bramham, Founder)

“So you’re building a boat and, and you’re sailing it at the same time ... meaning that you, well whilst sailing you’ll discover a lot of things which you then can apply in your business, and by doing that you’ll discover other things and, well it’s constantly, a constant to and fro .. between discoveries and, and applications” (Ecover, Peter Malaise, Concept Manager)

The challenges and blockers that emerge are ones that point both to the pioneering role the organisations are taking, the relative newness of their markets and the lack of supporting business ecosystem.118

Summary

As highlighted at the start, this chapter has attempted to minimise discussion from the author surrounding interviewees’ quotes and in so doing, as per O’Dwyer (2004), make “liberal use of quotes...in order to allow the reader to hear the interviewees’ voices” (ibid:403). Consequently there is minimal discussion or summary to be offered within this chapter. The chapter covered a multitude of areas ranging from; what interviewees’ see as the purpose of their organisations (pioneers of change in industry and or society), their views of the relationship between the economy, society and the environment, that money is a means and their organisations are tools to realise the mission, to their examples of sufficiency, generally negative views on quoted status and their desire for the growth of their organisations. Outside of this, some surprising areas also arise; in particular; how the interviewees brought forward notions of love and reluctant leadership as well as some perhaps more mundane but every day practices that organisations can implement such as using recycled material for packaging.

118_{In this sense eco-system refers to a mature set of suppliers, retailers and other component supply}

chain operators all aligned to offering the environmental choice. For a full understanding of business eco- systems and the concept it incorporates see, for example, Iansiti and Levein (2004).

Alongside the interviewee quotes, some ‘interesting asides’ were also brought forward in this chapter, asides that are potentially points for future research. These highlighted how interviewees from larger organisations are more likely to discuss their organisations purpose as realising social change and have examples of

sufficiency. While interviewees from smaller organisations are more likely to cite a lack of available suppliers and a lack of role models as challenges for their

organisations’ progression.

Although minimal discussion occurred in this chapter regarding the interviewees’ quotes a close reading highlights that the interviewees’ quotes carry within them assumptions; for example, the ability of their products to influence and change customer perceptions of the environment. This and a more detailed discussion of the interviewees’ quotes will be explored in the following chapter, where the narratives are reflected against academic literature.

Chapter 6

Discussion of and Implications from Data