Metaphors for Change

Partnerships, Tools and Civic Action for Sustainability

Penny Allen, Christophe Bonazzi, David Gee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351282420
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Ethics
• Index: Business

How can we get from where we are to where we want to be? Metaphors for Change attempts to answer this question and provide a roadmap for sustainability by bringing together the thoughts of a unique collection of leading change agents from business, government and academia.

Environmental questions have previously been dealt with metaphorically, by catastrophism or manicheism (zero growth; Malthusianism, Deep Ecology; "man is the enemy"; less is more). These metaphors have had limited impact because they have failed to connect with the mainstream of cultural, political, and business ideas. This book examines a number of new metaphors – and related partnerships, tools and action – which appear to have greater possibilities for the world in which we now live.

The editors argue that Metaphors for Change can deliver to the public and to decision-makers new perceptions ("structured knowledge") that can help interpret the past and the present, and help us forge the future. The wider the gap between the "now" and the "necessary", the stronger the bridging perceptions have to be in order to break through barriers of fear and conservatism. Some of the concepts considered are: sustainable development; the polluter pays principle; the precautionary principle; eco-efficiency; eco-effectiveness; life-cycle assessment; design for the environment; eco-services; dematerialization; industrial symbiosis; industrial ecology; and zero emissions. There are of course other useful metaphors on the horizon, some of them included in this book.

Including key contributions from the ground-breaking conferences ECO 97 and ECO 99, along with other specially commissioned and reprinted pieces, Metaphors for Change provides a treasure chest of new ideas, innovations and action. Accessible and forward-thinking, it will prove indispensable both as a student learning tool and as a panoramic overview of the sustainability metaphors key thinkers believe we should be putting into practice.

Part 1
Metaphors for change

Metaphors for change can deliver to the public and to decision-makers new perceptions (‘structured knowledge’) that help interpret the past and the present, and help us forge the future. The wider the gap between the ‘now’ and the ‘necessary’, the stronger the bridging perceptions have to be in order to break through barriers of fear and conservatism.

Environmental questions have been dealt with metaphorically up to now often by catastrophism or manicheism (zero growth, Malthusianism, Deep Ecology, ‘man is the enemy’, less is more, etc.). These metaphors have had limited impact because they have failed to connect with the mainstream of cultural, political and business ideas.

Some possibly constructive concepts are:

• ■ ‘Sustainable development’ (from the Brundtland Report; WCED 1987), which has failed to widely resonate so far, although the expression, along with ‘sustainable growth’ and ‘sustainability’ are now being used by communities, enterprises, etc. to develop long-term plans
• ■ The ‘polluter pays principle’, which has launched new thinking and regulations
• ■ The ‘precautionary principle’, which is not well understood, or clearly defined, and which has generally not led to positive environmental action early enough
• ■ ‘Life-cycle thinking’, which is a paradigmatic change in thinking, inviting consideration of processes or products from cradle to grave
• ■ ‘Eco-efficiency’ and ‘eco-effectiveness’, which are practical and suggest improvement by reasonable increments, rather than, say, ‘Factor 10’, which urges an improvement in resource–output ratio to a degree than tends to frighten decision-makers
• ■ ‘Circular, not linear’, ‘products to services’ and ‘dematerialisation’ are related metaphors that look at production (or at meeting people’s needs) in ways with great potential for reducing the flow of stuff bought, consumed, stored or thrown away by consumer society

There are of course other useful metaphors on the horizon, some of them included in this book.

Sustainable Development

‘Sustainable development’ is a problematic expression, a developing metaphor at best. Few people agree on what it means. It is a conservative notion, yet it is transversal, cutting across economic, environmental and social concerns, so everyone thinks it through differently. Anyone can take the term and reinvent it to suit their needs.

One economist who looks at development in such a way as to restore the ethical dimension to the discussion of economic problems is Amartya Sen, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Science. In his book, Development as Freedom, he looks at development as ‘an integrated process of expansion of substantive freedoms that connect with one another’. He includes in this process of development the freedom from social loss involved in environmentally wasteful or polluting private industry, a radical notion coming from an economist. The fact that Sen was honoured with the Nobel Prize has thrust his expansive definitions of economics into the spotlight.

Many people aren’t waiting around for the definition of sustainable development to gel. The International Environmental Agency for Local Governments (ICLEI)² is an association of local governments seeking to build local capacity for sustainable development. Their Local Agenda 21 (LA 21) Initiative was launched at the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. As of early 2000, more than 1,800 local governments in 64 countries were working with their communities to prepare LA 21 action plans for sustainable development. They are defining the term by planning for it.

Corporations can take the term ‘sustainable development’and redefine it in management terms if they so choose. Is the sustainable growth of a corporation in any way integrated into the sustainability of life on Earth? Is the following presentation by the CEO of DuPont an example of sustainable development?

One of the problems in discussing sustainability is the use of new jargon, such as DuPont’s use of ‘environmental footprint’. In substituting this expression, it is using a more manageable metaphor than the very complex ‘sustainable development’. How can we interpret DuPont’s (or anyone’s) assertions about sustainability?

It is true that DuPont has an ambitious programme to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and waste, including energy waste, and the company has already reduced green-house gas emissions (nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons) by 37% from 1991 through 1997, from more than 275 billion lb, carbon dioxide equivalents, in 1991 to less than 180 billion lb in 1997. DuPont has also reduced its global atmospheric toxic emissions by 65% since 1987 (from 70 million lb to less than 30 million lb by 1997) and its global atmospheric carcinogenic emissions by 82% since 1987 (from 10 million lb to less than 2 million lb by 1997).

As reported to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory, there has been a reduction in DuPont’s total toxics waste and emissions of 40% since 1991, down to more than 500 million lb by 1997. In terms of global hazardous waste, there has been an 18% decrease since 1990, bringing the volume to about 2,260.1 million lb in 1997.The statistics, even though improving, remain daunting, much like the notion of ‘sustainable development’.

DuPont Chairman and CEO, Chad Holliday, presented the following—DuPont’s official take on the prickly sustainability question—at a Greening of Industry Conference held in late 1999 at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. DuPont will be 200 years old in 2002, and today it describes itself as a science company with thousands of products and services based on the fundamental building blocks of chemistry, physics, information science and molecular biology.

Note

2 See www.iclei.org/about.htm.

Sustainable Growth

DuPont’s goal for the 21st century

Chad Holliday

As we think about the next century, we believe our central focus must be on ‘sustainable growth’. By this I mean we must create both shareholder and societal value while we reduce our environmental footprint. Sustainable growth is our operational definition of sustainable development. We believe growth is a very necessary element of both successful corporations and successful societies, but that growth in the future must be much different than it has been in the past.

Environmental footprint

The greening of industry is related to our concept of environmental footprint. Our definition of environmental footprint is much broader than the traditional industrial measures of wastes and emissions. It includes: injuries and illnesses to our employees and contractors; incidents such as fires, explosions, accidental releases to the environment and transportation incidents; global waste and emissions; and the use of depletable raw materials and energy.

Using footprint as one metric for the greening of DuPont, over the past decade we have maintained our position as one of the safest industrial companies in the world by almost an order of magnitude and we have reduced major incidents from a level of over 100 in the early 1990s to almost zero in 1998 and 1999. We have reduced air toxics by over 60% and air carcinogens by over 80% on a global basis. And we are on track to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from our global operations (on a carbon-equivalent basis) by 45% by the year 2000, using 1990 as a base year.

The story on waste is also significant. From a classical environmental viewpoint, DuPont has reduced hazardous waste from our global operations by 20% during the 1990s, while production has increased by 35%. However, from a pure business viewpoint, the real story is the increase in first-pass yields (more of the product we want the first time through the system and less waste that needs to be reworked) and uptime of our processes (increases in the capacity of our equipment and much more efficient use of raw materials and energy). In many cases, these have moved from the mid-70% range in the late 1980s to above 90% today. In environmental terms, this is pollution prevention or source reduction. It is one of the reasons we believe that many projects and programmes can be both ‘good for business and good for the environment’.

Recently, we have begun to work on the component of environmental footprint that relates to the use of depletable forms of raw materials and energy. For us, this means the use of fossil fuels. In September, we set two major goals for the year 2010 in this area. The first is to source 10% of our global energy needs from renewable energy. The second is to derive 25% of our revenues from non-depletable resources. Both of these goals have significant stretch, but signal our intent to be a much different company in the future.

For most conferences on the greening of industry, this is where the discussion ends. From our standpoint, this is where the discussion should begin. Good environmental stewardship should be a given. But, to achieve sustainable growth, we need to do much more.

Societal value

An emerging area discussed at conferences and in lengthy reports is ‘corporate social responsibility’—a very important area with many dimensions that range from charitable giving, to community outreach, to concern for human rights. At DuPont, we view all of these as a part of our societal value but also believe that the primary reason civil society allows us to operate and grow is because of the value we bring through our products and services.

Over the years, our products have been important in the exploration of space, the improvement of agricultural productivity, the protection of lives, the saving of energy, the comfort and appearance of clothing, and the overall quality of life through thousands of different products. More recently, as we have built a broad platform of knowledge in molecular biology, we are seeing the potential to improve the nutrition and health benefits of food, to produce polymers from renewable feedstocks, and to significantly reduce the environmental impact of a broad range of technologies that are commercial today. From this standpoint, we feel good about creating substantial societal value and having increased our societal value over time.

We have also begun to focus on how we can expand the values delivered through our products and services to a broader percentage of the global population. Today, our products and services can reach about one billion of the six billion people on Earth. From a societal viewpoint, our value is limited because our offerings do not meet the real needs of five-sixths of the world population. From a commercial viewpoint, we are not reaching a huge base of potential future customers.

Recently [1999], we have run a series of advertisements on TV and in major newspapers around the world to launch our new corporate positioning, the ‘Miracles of Science’. We had found that ‘Better Things for Better Living’ was no longer adequate to represent DuPont and that we needed a new way to describe what we do.

As part of this campaign, we provide a ‘to do’ list for the planet which includes many needs—such as generating fresh water from salt water, and growing food in areas of the world where soil conditions are very poor. For some of these we check ‘done that’, but in others we do not have a way to meet the need but we are working on it. This signals our intent to play a broader role in meeting important needs for all of the world’s population. One challenge I will issue to the broad NGO [non-governmental organisation] community is to help us identify and deliver value to the developing economies in a way that provides both societal and shareholder value. We would welcome alliances and partnerships, particularly with organisations that recognise that both values are important to sustainable growth.

Let me give you an example of one such successful partnership. Several years ago we worked with the Carter Center to help fight Guinea Worm disease—a very painful and potential deadly disease that affected over three million people in Africa. Our contribution was the donation of nylon fibre to create simple water filters. Using these filters, and the Carter Center’s on-the-ground expertise, the Guinea Worm disease now affects fewer than 70,000 people, and complete eradication is in sight. This example provided substantial societal value. It evoked tremendous positive emotional value from our employees. And it was the right thing to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Introduction
• Part 1: Metaphors for change
• Part 2: Partnerships for change
• Part 3: Tools for change
• Part 4: Civic actions for change
• Bibliography
• List of abbreviations