Over the course of three action-packed days, the inaugural Sustainable Brands
Oceans (14-16 Nov) in Porto,
Portugal convened a stellar lineup of practitioners, researchers, NGOs,
storytellers and innovators laser-focused on saving the ocean’s priceless
biodiversity and resources while there’s still time. Here’s what we learned from
a few of the innovators …
Alexandra Cousteau: How to restore abundance to the oceans in one human generation
Kicking off with star power, Oceans 2050 founder
Alexandra Cousteau — filmmaker, activist and granddaughter of famed French explorer,
conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and
researcher Jacques Cousteau — recalled her first experience of seeing the
abundance of the oceans as a child in the 1980s.
“Since then, was have lost that abundance,” she lamented. “We have a decade left
before we reach a tipping point of irreversible loss. If we shift course today,
my children and your children could experience the abundance of the oceans.”
Cousteau created Oceans 2050 to catalyse change to restore abundance to the
oceans, and campaigns for a new operation system to feed and power the world.
“We need a step-change to be able to create food from the oceans while also
restoring abundance to the oceans,” she said.
One possible solution lies in the different types of underwater forests that can
regenerate the oceans. Ocean forests re-oxygenate the water, absorb carbon and
give marine life a home. In fact, they provide five times the eco-system
services of rainforests, and the space available for ocean forests is larger
than the Amazon.
“Now is the time for bold, ambitious action. We have a moment where we are
talking about taking action for the oceans,” Cousteau said, admitting she
thought the time would never come. “Plastic has brought the oceans back to
people’s minds. Companies have taken unprecedented action. That’s the good news;
the bad news is that the oceans are still dying. How do we take what we have
learned about plastic and use it for other issues, such as overfishing?”
To meet the goal of restoring ocean abundance in a single human generation, the
time for taking action is now. The SB Oceans audience was properly poised for
three days of learning how.
The ocean – plastic = a regeneration economy
David Katz
Speaking of plastic, with an estimated 8-15 billion kilos flowing into the ocean
each year, the most effective solution is surely to stop it at source. But short
of that, the next best thing would be to turn plastic waste into a currency that
could be spent like cash in developing countries around the world, which often
lack effective recycling
infrastructure:
Suddenly, waste plastic has value and will be collected, rather than discarded.
That’s the idea behind The Plastic Bank, which
founder and CEO David Katz described on Thursday morning as the world’s
largest chain of stores for the ultra-poor. People in countries such as
Brazil, Haiti and Indonesia that are littered with thousands of tons
of plastic waste can now take it to a Plastic Bank Collection Center and
exchange it for digital currency on a blockchain banking
app,
created by IBM.
Katz shares the story of Lisa, a member at a Collection Center in Bali,
sponsored by new partner SC
Johnson.
Lisa is able to support her children with the income she earns from collecting
plastic during the day from houses, businesses and streets. Digital payments are
safe from robbery, and prevent the risk of money being used by her family to buy
alcohol or drugs.
Plastic Bank is expanding, with centers opening in Egypt, Colombia and
Vietnam this year. German chemical and consumer goods company Henkel
recently announced plans to extend its collaboration with Plastic Bank for
another five years, supporting ongoing projects in Haiti, the Philippines
and Indonesia, as well as contributing to the creation of over 400 Collection
Centers in Egypt.
And with the collected plastic, SC Johnson is soon to launch the first-ever 100 percent
recycled ocean plastic bottle in a major home cleaning brand, Windex, as
part of its collaboration with Plastic Bank.
Plastic Bank is also planning extensive programming with the Catholic Church.
Katz reasons that all places have a church or place of worship and wants people
to bring not just an offering, but also their recycling.
Bringing Plastic Bank to life for the audience, Katz asserted that for every
attendee at Sustainable Brands Oceans, Plastic Bank will take 84kg of plastic
out of the ocean. He invited people to have a conversation and take ownership of
their purchasing choices.
“When you purchase, you vote. We all need to speak up for the new regeneration
economy.” — David Katz
AI: A secret weapon in protecting our oceans
Scott Mauvais
With the health of our planet under threat, understanding just how bad things
are is crucial if we are to turn the tide on environmental devastation and
global inequalities.
From tree loss and overfishing, to poverty and outbreaks of
virus,
many of the world’s biggest problems continue largely unnoticed and
unchallenged. We have a lack of oversight as to the true state of our
environment or the plight of the people and animals that rely on our natural
resources to survive.
It is a situation that Microsoft, one of the world’s biggest corporate
entities, hopes to change with its move into artificial
intelligence
(AI).
During his Friday morning keynote, Director of AI and Global Partnerships
Scott Mauvais set out Microsoft’s vision for harnessing the power of
technology to help everyone, everywhere build a more sustainable future. With
$110 billion in revenues and 115,000 employees across 120 countries, Microsoft
certainly has a big footprint. But it has lots of resources, too; and as Mauvais
told the audience, the company wants to focus on where it can make the most
difference.
Microsoft is working hard to reduce its carbon footprint. Seven years ago, it
was the first major technology business to introduce an internal carbon
fee,
which has helped accelerate investment in clean energy and data-center cooling
systems, for example. It has also led the charge for making products use less
energy, while sourcing better materials and reducing packaging.
But it’s the Microsoft AI For
Good program that gets
employees like Mauvais most excited. The $150 million, 5-year initiative aims
to give those working to solve environmental, humanitarian, cultural heritage
and accessibility challenges the tools to create more positive impact.
The pillar supporting environmental protection is AI For
Earth.
“This is about combining the power of environmental science and computer science
— taking huge datasets, storing them in the cloud and allowing researchers to
collaborate so that they can have much more impact than just doing what they can
on their own,” Mauvais explained.
In the last three years, more than 230 grantees in 65 countries have received
support from Microsoft. Among them is
OceanMind,
which is trying to boost the sustainability of global fishing by tracking
fishing boats in real time and using algorithms to identify any suspicious
patterns of behavior.
Ocean vessel movements are captured via GPS, sonar and satellite imagery. The
data sources are layered on top of AI algorithms to identify behavioral markers
of illicit fishing.
“Tracking illegal fishing is hard, mainly because it looks just like legal
fishing,” Mauvais told the audience. “OceanMind uses satellite imagery, radar
photos and AI to recognise different fishing activity so that it can identify
vessels that might not have a license.
“Now, the API is available for anyone that wants to use it in the fight against
illegal fishing.”
AI can also be used to track krill populations — the tiny crustaceans that are
incredibly important to the world’s marine food chain. By tracking and analysing
growth patterns of whales that feed on krill, Microsoft can help
conservationists identify where overfishing might be taking place.
“When human ingenuity and technology meet, they have the power to solve some of
the biggest environmental challenges. AI really can solve the world’s most pressing challenges.” — Scott Mauvais
Transaction declined: The credit card that will stop you buying stuff that is bad for the planet
Anne-Maria Salonius
Imagine a credit card that denies you making a transaction based on the impact
you’re having on the planet, rather than how much money you have in your
account.
Well, that’s what the much-publicised DO Black credit
card
does. It’s the world’s first card that gives users a carbon limit to stop you
from overspending based on the levels of CO2 emissions caused by your
consumption.
In Sweden, the average consumer is responsible for around 10 tons of carbon
emissions each year, 60 percent of which is linked to consumption. In
Finland, up to 80 percent of it is linked to consumption.
It is a challenge you wouldn’t expect to be solved by the financial industry — a
sector built on encouraging people to spend money. But that’s exactly what the
Finland-based Bank of Åland has focused on during
the last few years. It was the bank, rather than an NGO or environmental
campaign group, that initiated the creation of DO Black.
Yes, Åland is a small bank with just 700 employees and 100,000 customers. But it
is a bank that cares, says Anne-Maria Salonius, head of the company’s
Finland operations, during her Friday morning keynote. “Consumption is eating
away at our planet. Yes, people want to do good. But we’re lazy,” she said.
“There are other carbon calculators available on the internet, but you have to
be really interested in the subject to seek them out.
“With our card, you can’t avoid seeing the footprint attached to your purchases
— we send it to you via a mobile app.”
The so-called Åland Index, which
is the brains behind the DO Black card, calculates the footprint of each
transaction and reports it to customers, giving them a track record of their
spending behaviour over time.
The carbon-tracking credit card is just the latest in a long line of initiatives
by Åland to encourage others to do the right thing.
“I love the ocean, and I sail a lot; it’s in my heart,” Salonius told us. It was
in the summer of 2014 while sailing around the Baltic Sea that the
seriousness of plastic waste hit home. “I knew we had to do something.”
And so, Åland’s Baltic Sea Project was born, not only to raise awareness of
the importance of protecting our oceans, but to support individuals and
companies that might have good ideas about how to protect and preserve the
Baltic Sea.
So far, the bank has invested €2.3 million in a number of different
Finland-based startups and projects to scale and grow — some of which used the
Porto event to showcase their ideas.
“We built a new online platform to make it easy for people to apply for support
for good ideas. We help to fund them, shout about them and put them in touch
with other partners that might also be able to support,” she explained.
For example, Clewat received €70,000 in 2018 to
support its high-tech cleaning solution to remove plastic from our seas. The
multiple-award-winning Sulapac got €50,000 at a
crucial stage in developing its biodegradable and microplastic-free
materials
designed to replace plastic. And Solar Foods received
€50,000 to support the creation of Solein — a protein produced from CO2, water
and electricity.
“It’s no longer about talking B2B or B2C. Now, it’s all about H2H,” Salonius
concluded. “At the end of the day, we are communicating with people. It needs to
be straightforward, honest and authentic.”
This is Searious Business (or, the woman on a mission to turn off the plastic tap)
Willemijn Peeters
Willemijn Peeters quit her job four years ago for one good reason. Speaking
to delegates on the final day’s session of case studies at SB Oceans in Porto,
she described the two huge, conference-sized rooms filled with plastic rubbish
that end up in our rivers and oceans every hour.
“I knew I had to do something about the situation and was triggered into
action,” she explained.
Moving from a linear model of production, which ends up with materials ending up
in landfill, Peeters has built a company – Searious
Business – focused on using circular models
to rethink design.
Described as a “project office,” Searious helps a number of big companies get
towards zero plastic waste, as she pointed out, “because a clean ocean starts
with preventing plastic leakage on land.”
Peeters highlighted the award-winning project Searious has initiated with Dutch
furniture manufacturer Gispen. The Sett
CE is a sofa made out of around
95 percent recycled plastics. Developed in just four months, the sofa uses the
company’s very own plastic packaging waste and take-back material in its
production. Searious Business worked with waste collectors, plastic recycling
companies, machine builders, designers and engineers to obtain and use recycled
plastics. The sofa is fully recyclable and ready for easy disassembly at end of
life.
“After getting the sofa production-ready, we helped Gispen to build their
business case and optimize production costs,” she added.
The business also helped the firm build its marketing story, picking up the
2019 Dutch Design
Award in the
process. And it worked, with Gispen securing its biggest-ever tender to supply
furniture for €10 million a year for the next decade.
“We helped Gispen rethink its business model and the way it uses materials,”
Peeters said. “Most companies use plastics, but they are rarely seen as a
valuable resource.”
Showcasing just one of her projects to this ocean-loving audience, she
demonstrated just how local recovery and recycling of plastic materials can help
to build commercial advantage while making sure plastics stay out of the
environment.
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Tom is founder of storytelling strategy firm Narrative Matters — which helps organizations develop content that truly engages audiences around issues of global social, environmental and economic importance. He also provides strategic editorial insight and support to help organisations – from large corporates, to NGOs – build content strategies that focus on editorial that is accessible, shareable, intelligent and conversation-driving.
Published Nov 19, 2019 1am EST / 10pm PST / 6am GMT / 7am CET