 Hello everyone and welcome to the Circular Metabolism podcast, the bi-weekly meeting where we have in-depth discussions with thinkers, researchers, activists, policymakers and practitioners to better understand the metabolism of our cities and how to reduce their environmental impact in a socially just and context-specific way. On today's episode I will be discussing on a topic that I'm not too familiar, I have to admit. It is loosely connected with consumption, companies, the pursuit of eco-efficiency or the win-win paradigm which assures us that companies can maximize profits and at the same time protect the environment. As we will see, this win-wins and sustainable businesses is perhaps a pipe dream but there is and that sometimes we can even say that there is no such thing as a green company or product. However, there is still a lot that can be done both at a company and a household level to reduce their net environmental impacts. To discuss about this topic we have Roland Gayer from the Brent School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Roland is a professor and prior to joining the Brent School he held research positions at the Center for Environmental Strategy at Surrey and also at the Center for Management of Environmental Resources in Insead in France. He has worked with top industrial ecologists but also with companies and he has recently published this book The Business of Less, the Role of Companies and Households on a Planet in Peril which will actually be the basis of our discussion. So with all that being said Roland, welcome to the podcast and thanks for your time. Can you perhaps briefly present yourself and your research? Absolutely. Thanks so much Aristide for having me. It's really nice to connect back to my roots in Europe and yeah I think you've summarized it really well. I'm definitely an industrial ecologist by heart so I cut my academic teeth doing material flow analyses of steel and aluminum and then getting into life cycle assessment of all sorts of product systems and but I also have sort of I started out as at a business school in the mid 90s at Insead in Fontainebleau with Borbares and yeah and the mid 90s was just brimming with win-win enthusiasm and of course at a business school you know it's much more important talking about who does things than just describing systems as sort of engineered assemblages of processes and flows which we are so much more used to do in industrial ecology and it was actually a very brief publication by Tim Jackson and Roland Clift in 98 in the then very young journal of industrial ecology called where's the profit in industrial ecology that made me decide to do my PhD with them at the University of Surrey and it's basically what they were saying is that industrial ecology is amazing at modeling engineered systems in terms of processes and flows and stocks but doesn't really have what they call a theory of agency so you know who actually you know what what decides what determines the dynamics of these systems and especially the changes you know like where these changes would come from and and that really resonated because you know at the business school it's all it's this idea that you know its businesses are the agents or consumers are the agents so consumers make purchasing decisions and businesses make production decisions and that is where change comes from so I'm a little bit of a hybrid that you know is sort of because my physics background it's very natural for me to study to model systems as sort of big assemblages of processes and flows and stocks but because of my period at the business school I'm also really you know I was sort of introduced and then to some extent trained in thinking about agency in these engineered systems so that that book is of trying to bring all of that together and assess why we I feel made so little progress in the last you know since the earth summit in Rio in 91 so we had 30 years of a lot of efforts in terms of environmental sustainability but at the same time it seems like the natural environment is sort of going from bad to worse and so I tried to get to the root of that seeming contradiction and then also find you know a more a way forward about you know like if this doesn't work what could work so I and that's that's what I tried in the second half of the book so I'm wondering how did so I read here that you read the limits to growth in the 80s or 80s or something like that you're revealing my age now yeah I was a teenager in in the mid 80s and and yes I remember reading Smallest Beautiful from Schumacher and I was very impressed by that and and then I read Limits to Growth exactly and yeah that left a big impression on me as as a teenager even you know I was still in high school in Germany but I'm wondering how so you became a physicist and then entered the the business word and then only you came back to the environment I'm wondering you know how this how this because you said it yourself you're a hybrid person but how did you jump from one discipline to another it's yeah it it it sounds you make it sound a bit random but I promise no I'm sure there's a story but there is logic to I I would like to call it meandering maybe like a like like a like a creek bed through a through a valley but yes in when I finished a gymnasium German high school I was off to university but and and I already had a passion for environmental sustainability it wasn't even called you know sustainability didn't even exist right that sort of came about with the earth summit in 1991 so and but there you you couldn't really study that in Germany there there weren't really degrees in environmental management or environmental sustainability the the only degree was it was geoecology at the University of Bayreuth and that somehow didn't resonate with me so I you know I ended up studying physics because I thought it's just it's going to be a really a great foundation for like all kinds of you know for for for studying the environment or studying engineered systems even and also I was just really interested in physics and yeah so off I went to Berlin in in the late 80s just before the world came down and studied physics at the technical university and then towards the end I I I tried to maybe have my my thesis you know my master's thesis already environmentally themed but again I hit a road block because I think all the physics professors were worried that this thesis was not going to be difficult enough and so I just ended up doing a regular thesis in theoretical astrophysics which I really enjoyed and almost became a climate modeler because that was in the in the early mid 90s and climate modeling became you know like a like a really serious effort with the computational power of the supercomputers and and so on but then I again decided that maybe that's not what I wanted to do and then I ran out of money and the only job I could find I did actually apply for sort of environmental management jobs and sometimes I got an interview but then they sort of looked at my at my CV and said but you're a physicist and I said yes I am but trust me I can do this I know but you're a physicist and so in Germany you know people are very big on formal qualifications and it didn't say environment or sustainability anywhere on my CV so anyway so that's why I did a little detour in financial risk management because they they love hiring physicists in in financial risk management so that was super interesting but but just reinforced my idea that I wanted to you know do my passion as as my career which is environmental sustainability and so I just started going to conferences talking to lots of people made connections with the Wuppertal Institute in in Germany and then they Stefan Blingitzu actually he recommended I reach out to Bob Ayers and I did and and and long story short I think Bob just took pity and offered me a offered me a research research position in a big sort of big seven university European you know framework five I think it was research project and it was about reverse logistics and and that's that's how I got into this that that you know was my final career change so I really owe this to Bob thanks Bob I will never forget that maybe he took pity because he's a fellow physicist he's he also studied physics and yeah and and that's that's how I ended up at a business school so I wasn't exactly planning to to go to a business school just Bob Ayers happened to be there but it was really educational to sort of be in the business school environment and sort of understand how how how that group of people sort of thinks about sustainability also yeah you were right in the middle of you know the belly of the beast somehow because you infiltrated a business school thanks to the cover of industrial ecologies the same thing when you when you did your PhD so you you kind of went or these were incognito let's say industrial ecologies within business so I'm wondering that must have been a very interesting duality or schizophrenia to to deal with the two because I can imagine the gospels are are very different perhaps none of them makes sense independently as well so that must have been quite enriching duality somehow it was a fascinating experience to sort of on the one hand work with Bob you know sort of one of the founding fathers of industrial metabolism and industrial ecology and then on the other hand work with business school professors and yeah and as you say sort of you know just working from very different paradigms right and the the one just being purely focused on these flows of materials and substances and their impacts on the environment and and just the the pure desire to to reduce environmental impact from industrial activities that cause these flows and then the other one just starting from oh you know like here how can we make businesses more profitable or how can you grow revenue or how do we come up with a whole new business idea business proposal and and then you know them discovering the the idea of win win and and basically trying to harness businesses business what is it instinct so impulse is to reduce environmental impact which is sort of what that win win paradigm says right is we can we can harness businesses desire or need to increase revenue or to increase profits to reduce environmental impact so this this kind of what some people call do what is it do do well by doing good or the other way around so that was sort of this this this idea right and sort of in in in in in English there's this expression that I love which you know you can't have your cake and eat it too right so this idea that either it's there or you eat it and it's gone and and I think sort of win win was this idea this no we can have our cake and eat it too quick we you know we we can we can increase profits we can increase revenues and at the same time we can decrease environmental impact before we get there so it wasn't always like that from what I read you know and especially in the 70s and so there was a clear dichotomy between you know the environment or environmentalists and businesses and companies they it it was a bit like a zero sum game you either had profits or were good for the environment at no at no instance you could have both and then you had so I discovered what 3M meant so what's the the meaning of 3M which is Minnesota mining manufacturing company that's right they kind of found a middle ground and are perhaps one of the examples that kind of brings win win or eco efficiency to the front is that right yeah absolutely so so for me it was fascinating because you know like I I got my formative training in in environmental sustainability so in in the 90s and and and that was when you know the paradigm was eco efficiency and win win and you did not question that paradigm it's just you you just operated within it and and in a way you know I became sort of a little environmental historian almost when I wrote this book chess chapter right called a brief history of business and the environment when I realized that just as you say that was not always the case and actually it was very recent right so this this idea that that environmentalists and industry are not sort of locked in an internal eternal struggle right where either the environmentalists win and the industry loses all the other way around that that is must not be like that but actually that we can sort of be all work we can all work together and and and you know there is no contradiction in in sort of those two objectives that's I sort of traced it back to what is what is known as the porter hypothesis so Michael Porter was famous or still is famous business school professor at Harvard Business School and in 91 he published a very brief article in Scientific American basically saying that there is he famously somewhere says the the conflict between environmental production and business schools is a wrong dichotomy he says so it's you know like it doesn't have to be that way and and that was hugely influential and that was you know in the running up to to the earth summit which obviously was a big you know really changed the global awareness about environmental sustainability and and about the environmental degradation had a huge impact but it also popularized this idea that the conflict this conflict is is a false dichotomy you know at some point Michael Porter even goes as far as saying that that pollution is already is is resource so basically you know you can kind of insinuating that we should just design pollution out of the system right why and and and we could actually save money that way and and another which I found to be an instrumental player is oh no I can't think of his name the founder of the business council of sustainability now I need to think of which by the way you said that he was in jail and then went out because of etternage right so that yeah I mean this is no one ever talks about this right but he so Stefan Schmidt heini right who turned who is the heir to the etternate empire right which is the asbestos company asbestos cement right so they they they made billions with selling asbestos cement right with the idea being that the asbestos fiber couldn't escape in the cement matrix which of course we now know is very much not the case yeah so it fascinating story but he he was he was charged with engaging the business community for the earth summit and so he he started the business council for sustainable development as sort of a you know body to advise the earth summit from the business community and then they turned the name into the world business council of sustainable development and they were instrumental in popularizing the win-win paradigm and then also the eco efficiency approach because the big question was you know like okay if if you know how do we how do we have you know if win-win is like the the engine of you know increasing continuing with economic growth and then at the same time reducing environmental impact what's the mechanism by which we can achieve this and and that was going to be eco efficiency so we're just going to reduce the environmental impact per unit output you know per ton of steel the ton of other material per car per dollar GDP and that decoupling as it's called would allow us to continue with economic growth but at the same time bring down uh overall environmental impact to sort of a sustainable level where whatever that might be right and wherever that might be and whoever defines it as well but and whoever determines that this is it so yeah so they were really really instrumental and yeah you mentioned 3M you know the 3M was really a way ahead of its time when they started and again there was one individual I think he's called um I don't want to um I don't want to mix up his name but one individual started a program about waste reduction in the company and it was hugely successful and so they essentially started this idea of pollution prevention so they started this program 3P 3M starting 3P pollution prevention pace and this idea is that you know better that rather than having pollution and then having to control it with costly pollution control technology scrubbers um catalytic converters and and and treatment plants and whatnot that it would be much smarter and also cheaper to just reduce pollution at the source and that was again was hugely influential and they actually I think they started it in the mid 70s even so they were way ahead of their time um but then by the 90s you know it was sort of known enough um that it again kind of reinforced this idea that um that pollution is just resource inefficiency that we could just really we could just design pollution out of the system entirely so yeah uh so prior to that sort of big paradigm shift right around the earth summit you know like if you look at the 70s and 80s it was much more about us versus them right so there was this sort of conflict mentality that um industry are sort of relentless and ruthless polluters and the only way um to change that was by um you know engaging um you know holding them to account um with either um uh environmental activism and eventually you know sort of powerful environmental public policy right so the 70s is sort of when all the environmental NGOs were started in the early 70s the modern environmental movement was started and then soon we saw sort of real public environmental policy and and but they was all focused on on pollution control and and but then you know there was this sort of really fascinating change in the narrative and in the paradigms uh right around the earth summit where where suddenly you know it became from an us versus them sort of conflict to this idea of you know we're all in this together and and there is no real conflict between profit and environmental protection or economic growth and environmental sustainability so really fascinating and it uh yeah I had to sort of become you know I had to do a lot of research to really sort of dig out that story um and uh and and I think it's it's important to to remind ourselves right that it wasn't always win-win and equal efficiency yeah and even in very worse than that there was this care-ho paradigm I think you mentioned that it was even the opposite they they said if you can't prove that what we're doing is wrong then there is no proof somehow so it was up to the regulators to to bring up all of the uh the facts and all of the regulations and all of the the while making sure that what they claim is right and at the same time companies were were doing nothing to to reduce until there was the proof so there was this bell or this conflict this real conflict actually between companies and institutions and and activists yeah absolutely so so care-ho um yeah he was um uh the so a public health professor I think at the University of Cincinnati I went in or for Ohio in Cincinnati I want to say and and he was so the main public health advisor to um to DuPont and the company they founded to make tetraethyl lead TL right which was the the lead based additive that was added to gasoline to to reduce knocking engine knocking and improve the the engine performance and um that another is just an absolutely fascinating story and and you know I luckily I could just there are some actually amazing books written about the the story of lead um and it's fascinating and and so um General Motors um uh you know Thomas Midgley um is the the chemical engineer that he didn't discover tetraethyl lead but he discovered that it wasn't a powerful anti knock um together with Charles catering and um at the General Motors some some research corporation or some some something like that in the early 20s and then they decided that um that was a great anti knock um and and almost immediately um there there were public health officials um you know of several states in the US that that were worried about um uh chronic lead pollution so not just acute poisoning but chronic pollution and so uh General Motors teamed up with DuPont and and and hired Kehoe Robert Kehoe to sort of manage this PR crisis somehow yeah there's somehow this sort of looming crisis of yeah lead being banned before it's even rolled out as as anti knock and yeah and and so uh this is now called uh known as the Kehoe uh paradigm or some people could show me the data and it basically what he said is that um you know you're absolutely right if it you know turns out that uh leaded gasoline leads to unacceptable um chronic lead pollution then we will stop producing um uh tetraethyl lead immediately but you know it's very you know it makes engines more efficient it's uh it's uh it reduces anti knock you know we need to weigh the pros and the cons so we need more research so it you know it was always about oh we need more research there's too much uncertainty we don't know enough we need more research and as a result um you know we uh we used lead leaded gasoline for over 60 years until it started being banned even though in the early 20s there was already in almost enough cause for concern to say you know what this is a bad idea um you know like using the what we like to call the precautionary principle to say you know like this let's let's just not go there so we had over 60 years and of course now lead is everywhere right we find lead um everywhere on the planet still um and um yeah absolutely fascinating story and you know you can see again the same the the Kehoe paradigm you can see it at work uh with climate change right it's the same was the same strategy basically of the uh fossil fuel industry um just saying you know what we're really worried but you know there's not enough science we don't have enough data we need so just always emphasizing the uncertainty and overplaying its role so yeah fascinating uncertainty on one side not both you know of course but as you I think you said it's somewhere they prefer to be 100 wrong than uh what was uh Roland Klister saying oh yeah that that you know some people preferred to be uh precisely wrong rather than uh approximately right yeah yeah he's uh I that really stuck with me uh when when when we're you know I I think sometimes the the industrial ecology community kind of falls into that trap where we sort of you know do LCA's and we we come to a result but rather than saying oh I think we're fairly certain that you know the life cycle green gas emissions of battery electric vehicles are lower than internal combustion vehicles we you know we just say oh yeah but the battery model wasn't you know accurate enough so let's just build an even more complex LCA and then you know and and and then we just so we just you know I occasionally I would I would like to say no let's just you know like I'm sure we can further reduce uncertainty and build even more complex and and and and uh involved models but sometimes I think it's worth just saying okay I think we have a real we have a robust finding here you know like and and and let's just take that finding and show it to the policymakers and show it to the public at large and say so this is what we found and let's let's you know what does it mean let's make some you know make some decisions rather than endlessly trying to refine the LCA um let's go back now to the to the 90s where you said okay there is this excitement about win-win there is this excitement about uh sustainable development everybody's pledging about their corporate sustainability activities and since then as you said that we can have like encyclopedia is full of pledges and uh you know corporate sustainability activities yet the evidence shows that the planet or at least the pollution is is growing not exponentially but at a very rapid rate it's growing yeah um and so we see that there is of course a very large disconnect between the promises on the one hand and the effect on the planet and on pollution and all that what went wrong there yeah so um I I think you know one one what what happened is that um you know the the win-win paradigm that we can we can you know like we we can rely on the uh motivation you know economic motivation to to increase profits or revenues um in order to get the environmental outcomes that we we need in order to get the world onto a sustainable path I think this this paradigm is just so was so persuasive that um and this idea that the way to get there that eco-efficiency will truly allow us to sort of achieve that um I think it was so persuasive and so compelling that um you know it became sort of I I don't you know like no one no one questioned it I think everyone sort of signed up to it and it just seemed um like we can you know like wouldn't you know I think policymakers um is my guess were really relieved that finally you know this you could take the heat out of this conflict between environmental protection and economic goals which typically you know seems to be formulated in in growth goals um and that that it was reconcilable and I think it was just hugely appealing and um I think companies also um you know I always wonder to what extent companies and you know companies are just the people right that work in the companies whether whether managers and executives um in in companies in industry whether they they truly believed it or whether you know it was just very convenient that now everyone thought it was you know this this is this is reconcilable um probably a mix of both right is my is my guess a good faith actors bad faith actors um but it it became this sort of powerful narrative and and so I think you you saw that that um going forward than in the 90s early 2000s there was a lot you know of talk about well industry you know like we don't always need harsh environment public environmental policy we can work with self commitments from industry you know with voluntary agreements and um uh just economic incentives maybe and um so it just became this this overarching powerful narrative that you know this this this uh uh we we can achieve environmental sustainability that way and I think one thing that it did in particular the eco efficiency um idea is that um and and I certainly in in my own you know experience I I I've certainly um was a big was um was subject to that this idea that we we didn't you know like the focus was on how we produce and what technologies we use what materials we use but no one ever you know said about how much so that you know there was this focus was very much sort of from how much to just how and um so you know and that's the idea of life cycle assessment which I love and obviously was was a real is a real game changer so um but it's you know it's essentially it's an eco efficiency tool right because we're always assessing product systems and so the outcome of an LCA is an eco efficiency indicator right environmental impact per product system and then we all get very excited if we find an alternative product system that reduces environmental impact say by 30 percent right and then what we what we sort of don't pay attention to is that while the impact say per ton of material goes down by x percent year over year the world increases its annual output of that material right and there was a really wonderful paper published I think in 2014 by Jeffrey Damos and it actually in the Journal of Industrial Ecology and it won the deservedly the the Gradle Prize for best paper and so he showed you know he just collected data about energy or environmental efficiency of 10 industrial activities and then just multiplied them with you know with total output either in the you know like US total output or global total output and it was he could show very clearly that the efficiency gains every single time the efficiency gains were outgrown by the growth in total output and and I think I feel like this you know this idea of eco efficiency sort of led us to slightly take take the eye off the ball you know like the real goal which is total environmental impact reduction not just reducing impact per output and then you know just you know assuming that that that'll be good enough so so that for me was sort of the a big kind of rediscovery where I kind of you know could could take my my LCA work which is all about impact per product and so my my earlier MFA work which is about following total flows and put those two together and suddenly see you know and and the picture that emerges is very clear right this that yes there are some efficiency gains pretty much everywhere even though sometimes it looks like they might flatten out right when you sort of reach some kind of thermodynamic limits or something but it's it's just it it was nowhere near enough to reduce total environmental impact because we just we just make more and more of everything and isn't isn't it the the right time for you to to perhaps put forward the Givens paradox yeah I mean it's yeah Givens paradox is is is fascinating and shall we just briefly go for it explain it yeah absolutely I'm I'm I'm sure you know this is a sophisticated audience and probably most of them know know it have any anyway but yeah so he he was sort of a I think a cleric and scholar in in the 19th century Britain and 100 you know I think it was about 100 years before he wrote this famous book James Watt improved dramatically improved the efficiency of the steam engine right lots of people think that Watt invented the steam engine but he didn't right it was new common if anyone that invented the steam engine bus was terribly inefficient and James Watt you know if anything he was like an efficiency pioneer he he found incredible ways to make the steam engine more efficient and and Givens said you know famously in his book that one should not assume that coal consumption right which is the input into the steam engine will go down because of the efficiency improvement actually it will go up and he was right because you know he could show how suddenly the the demand for steam engines skyrocketed because they were suddenly so much more economic and affordable and so coal consumption in the UK actually increased rather than decreased so that's what now is known as jevin paradox and then during the oil crisis I think energy efficiency wasn't much of an issue until the oil crisis in the 60s happened and suddenly you know Europe and the United States and other countries suddenly discovered the the benefits of of energy conservation and energy efficiency and and the United States you know introduced an efficiency standard right called cafe corporate average fuel economy in in 1970 as a you know as a direct response to the oil crisis and and the assumption was that that an increase in energy efficiency would just translate one to one into a decrease in energy consumption because it couldn't possibly you know impact total consumption of that energy service and then there were a couple of influential thinkers that basically rediscovered jevin's research and then said no we should you know this is naive we shouldn't assume that we should we should you know we we should be aware that an increase in efficiency might actually at least partially increase the use of this energy service or even other other energy services so that modern version is now called the you know famously the energy efficiency rebound effect and yeah and I think rebound again this is something that hopefully the industrial ecology community is sort of rediscovering I feel like there is there is renewed interest in sort of really thinking about rebound I know that you know you can it's estimated rebound is extremely difficult especially you know the what they call direct rebound so there's lots of controversy whether yes rebound exists but it's tiny so we don't need to worry about it or yes rebound exists and it's really big so yes we do need to worry about it so I'm just glad it's you know it's back in the public debate and then of course you know like my sort of or our little contribution to the rebound discussion was that I you know we because I mostly I did my PhD on reuse and recycling you know now famously known as the circular economy back then it was just called reuse and recycling and and I suddenly at some point started to worry whether there could be something like a rebound effect based you know from reuse and recycling if if reuse and recycling is actually cheaper or more efficient than you know virgin production then there could be something like a rebound that we you know we call this circular economy rebound and again it's really difficult to quantify but the the sort of research we did so far suggests that yes there's you know like we're pretty certain that there's a rebound effect how big it is you know it's not clear but so yeah rebound is is an important piece in this in this puzzle of connecting you know eco efficient you know like eco efficiency with total environmental impact reduction and I'm glad there's sort of a renewed interest in in studying and understanding rebound effects so you have these three pieces of information you have this eco efficiency it's good it's kind of working we have this rebound effect that tells us well even if you are doing good with eco efficiency perhaps we're not seeing the the gains at the end of the day and at the end we have also lca which is kind of the life cycle assessment that kind of proposes alternatives from one product or one service to another but oftentimes you know the gain that you have on over one environmental impact is perhaps lost in another environmental impact or you know along the chain and all of that so we're kind of trapped in in this you know we we don't have any more solutions and you and your colleague wrote a publication saying there is no such thing as a green product and so we're stuck right what's what can we do and what is a green product business or even service yes i mean we we chose we chose that title to to kind of be provocative for sure so you know obviously there there are sort of alternatives to existing products that clearly have a lower environmental profile than you know the incumbent so you know and and that's of course particularly true if the incumbent is sort of polluting or inefficient right so i i do truly believe that electro mobility has a lower environmental impact than you know fossil fuel based mobility i i do really i mean i think it's you know we have enough lca's to show that renewable electricity has a much lower environmental profile than fossil fuel based electricity and you know it's it's pretty simple to show that plant-based protein has much much lower impacts than animal-based protein so it's not that there aren't you know alternatives that really reduce environmental impact but we just wanted to warn against this idea that all we have to do is sort of switch out you know brown materials for green materials or brown technologies for green technologies and and that's all we have to do and then everything will be great because i think you know there's just at least the last 30 in the last 30 years whatever we've achieved in terms of you know greening our products and technologies the gains have all been sort of eradicated by just total growth in consumption and i think that's the discussion i really want us to have is that you know like yes you know solid state lighting is fantastic but you know there there are studies out there that suggest that there's a real still pent up demand there's plenty demand for artificial lighting and that it could actually be possible that solid state lighting rather than reducing electricity consumption will just further light up the entire planet which is what historically has happened right so there are wonderful studies that show that every time artificial lighting became cheaper we just increased our consumption of artificial lighting so i just want us to to have that discussion that you know it's not enough to just find that green product or find that green material if it even exists but we need you know so we need to not just talk about what we consume but also how much so it's about quantity it's not just about how and and i think that's that's a discussion that i you know i feel like at least in my personally experience most people shy away from you know it's it's so much easier to it's so much easier to sell a technological solution where we can just say oh yeah and now we have solid state lighting so lighting sustainable now right and now we have electromobility so mobility is sustainable now and and i think you know like that will be a bad bad fallacy if we if we fall for that well you also call it mobility not cars which already puts it into frame we're thinking about what is the best mobility rather than putting in front you know the car and i think that's of course part of it i'm absolutely and this is probably you you know you you know you've probably thought a lot hard about that in terms of you know like urban metabolism but yeah it's you know likes you know i'm here in california which is probably one of the most car centric places on the planet so yeah you know like and sustainable transportation in california means green cars basically and and that's why i always say mobility because i don't want to i want to remind myself to not fall into that trap right that's simply switching out diesel and gasoline cars with battery electric vehicles i think is we're going to find very soon because i think they're going to be successful but we then we're going to find out and someone is going to write a paper about it that it's nowhere near enough to make transportation sustainable yeah absolutely so you have mentioned a number of companies and you have i think worked with or advised the number of companies i'm wondering is there you know there is the of course this extremely famous ads from patagonia saying don't buy this jacket and i think we we still want to i mean we'll we still need to clothe ourselves feed ourselves move ourselves hit ourselves and all of that right so companies need to be here or else we we think everything is state owned and so we we move into a different you know a completely different system but let's say we maintain companies what is it uh what is a good company or what is you know uh or what are some good examples that you can share with us that and you can say this company makes you know a net positive impact on the planet oh you got me there um easier one yeah i think that is the million dollar question yeah and i'm i'm i think the most honest thing right now is to to say i don't have a clear answer i think you're right that you know like i feel as a response to kind of my thinking and what what what i've written is that um you know i guess sometimes i get the response that you know we we we should just stop talking to companies altogether right this so you know like when i when i wrote uh when i submitted my book to the publisher you know it was in in like uh early this year and i had this moment where i handed it over and thought okay this is the end of my career because i just i i'm i'm saying corporate sustainability doesn't work right and you know i i was still enough connected with the corporate sustainability sort of bubble work and bubble yeah that i thought like oh you know the backlash is going to be fierce um and within weeks i found articles published that said the exact same thing by corporate sustainability professionals um and also by business school professors you know some really instrumental in the whole win-win research uh and so i suddenly thought like oh this is you know like this i'm not clearly not the only one and and maybe this isn't going to end of my of my career and because there there seems to be sort of an awakening of this and and some now sort of go as far as saying just just stop talking to businesses and all we need is just fierce environmental public policy and and enforcement of those policies because it's the only way forward uh but then you know policy uh depends on at least in democracies on what the voters sort of want or or apparently want and so then we need the green consumer and you know there are studies uh that uh that surveys i read about Germany where you know everyone in Germany is really worried about climate change and then when you ask them are you going to change your lifestyle and they say no so so that's not going to work so so so right now the question is why who who is the agent going to be of you know like who is going to derive these these these changes and i think you know and and i'm not ready to just abandon you know to to to uh as you say to sort of just say businesses just need fierce policy i think you know there's a way i i can't you know businesses is not business is not going away right it's it's the way we make things it's the way we move things um it's most people are employed by businesses so own businesses so but i think businesses currently are also sort of trapped in this idea that you know either we grow or we perish or you know or we need to get more profitable because what's the alternative and so i would i i just love i want i want to explore this idea that businesses could be driven by other you know that the the the the driving or motivating principle of businesses could be something else other than relentless pursuit of economic of growth and and profits and i feel that there are businesses out there that are really thinking about that and that are starting to grasp the you know the the dichotomy between eco efficiency and total growth um but i i also feel that um there's they don't i don't know anyone that seems to have a a clearly answer about how how to move forward i mean one company that i am going to to name drop now is is Patagonia the apparel company which you know is basically my neighbor because they uh i'm i'm in Santa Barbara their headquarters are in Ventura which is 30 miles south and i do feel that Patagonia is really trying to to to do the right thing you know it i think it helps that they are uh um you know they're they they are owned basically by a family rather than large shareholders so it makes it easier for them to sort of change direction and make risky decisions um but but even Patagonia is struggling to sort of reconcile this idea of you know reducing the environmental impact per fleas and growing five to ten percent year over year so i know they're having these discussions right now i know they're exploring with recycling and reuse models and and repair models which i think really i think could could you know provide some of the answers right um to really um shift away from you know i think essentially what companies need need to do is shift you know they need to decouple their success however it's defined from selling stuff so they need to sort of shift they need to start selling non-stuff you know like whatever that is so i think one idea could be labor right that rather than selling things they they could increasingly sell time you know like skill and time of of employees like you know that's essentially i feel like what repair is doing right so you're not you're not selling a new product but you're basically selling the time and the skill of the employees to bring your product back to life and and so i'm that's that's kind of i'm thinking about that a lot you know like the the role of of let's call it labor right the the the role of labor in sustainability um but yeah i feel you know maybe there's hope in sort of with startups i feel like at least i feel that in in in the us there's sort of a i think one set of so the new business and startup community that are really value-driven so they basically do this because they you know they're not trying to take over the world with their product but they're just you know they love what they're doing and and they want to sort of make really good products without without ruining the the environment i think they're it's it's going to be interesting to see how they are able to operate in the current sort of right economic environment but maybe we do need to change like the you know the the economic environment yeah so short answers i'm not sure but you do have so let's to to wrap this up you do have some strategies for companies and some other for households i think because also there is this element of we don't know how to move forward we know we're screwed but you know it's nice also to have a roadmap ahead for companies you say you should already you should improve your net environmental performance and you should do so by doing the the strategies that you mentioned again or this could be perhaps a circular economy and different substitution and then less while reducing the total amount right so yeah that is if you have a company that comes to you and tells you how do i improve my net environmental performance these are let's say the three pillars that you present yeah absolutely and you know it's it's just based on i think you know agreed upon ways to look at pollution prevention right how how can we prevent pollution so you know like they're essentially those three ways we can do do this right we can reuse and recycle things so that would be now the circular economy i just call it again a sort of a shortcut or we can really do material and product or technology substitution so just use something less impactful you know like plant-based protein electrify technologies renewable um electric energy um or you know i would say and a the third i call that different for short and then the third strategy is truly is is less which i think is sort of the most straightforward one but also the most challenging because it you know it's difficult to fit that into our current sort of win you know still kind of prevailing sort of growth and and win win paradigm and um yeah and and this idea of net green is just that you know it's not enough to just increase the eco-efficiency of of your business but you know you basically need to take the eco-efficiency indicator and multiply it with your total sales or total output and then you can see you know whether you actually have overall reduced the environmental impact you know and obviously if you you know like one way could be if you just really take away market share from you know a more impactful company so it's not that no company is allowed to grow you know certain companies we want to grow right like electromobility providers right we want them to grow um generators of electric of renewable electricity what we want them to grow but we need them to grow um in cannibalize yeah exactly yeah that yeah that's exactly the right word we we need them to grow at the expense of the you know more impactful um uh businesses and and ways to produce things and and not not in addition to and I think that's it in a way it's almost trivial once you think about it but I think not always we don't always think about that yeah right we you know like um I here in the US there's this big discussion about well big discussion you know people talk about how much more the growth of um say photovoltaic um uh uh solar power and wind power um but of course what you need to do is you need to look at the growth and then see whether it actually you know reduced our reliance of fossil fuels because it's entirely possible to just have that on top of all the fossil fuels and I know you know I think Europe is sort of struggling with this the same Germany wants to have it both ways right they want wind power and solar power but they also want their coal powered uh electricity and that obviously that that's not net green right and so so that's this concept I'm in a in a way I I actually think it's it's basically sort of a simplified version of consequential life cycle assessment if you're familiar with that right it's sort of rather than doing the attributional kind of environmental accounting type LCA you could sort of just say well what are the consequences of changing a product design or introducing a whole new product right and and one consequence could be that it increase you know like increases total consumption and then the CLCA would actually warn you and say well you know be be careful you um so that's kind of why why I'm going back to this idea the most powerful thing would be less right so maybe companies just need to radically rethink their business models and say you know rather than saying I'm a steel producer I you know my I'm I'm just selling steel to my customers right if in success means I'm selling more steel um so maybe the idea is how can I help my customers get the most out of you know the smallest amount of steel the function that I can sell them yeah and you know again it's not I don't you know this these ideas of you know selling the service rather than the actual product has been around for for long long time um so it's it's not that this is a brand new idea but I think the urgency is brand new I think we really need to get serious about you know rethinking radically rethinking business models and and I think companies like Patagonias are actually in the process of doing that and and I see some exciting new startups that are doing that um you know car sharing for example right there there's this beautiful survey coming out of the University of Berkeley that showed that car sharing is green because it makes people drive less that's that's like the main reason why car sharing um you know sort of reduces environmental impact not so much that a shared car is less impactful than an owned car but you know households overall just drive less because of so so for me car sharing is is a business that enables people to get all their mobility and access needs met with less driving and what about sir what about households then is it the same as companies do you also say again different less or I think so yeah it's it's the same idea yeah so the I think that the pollution prevention principles are universal I I do think you know it's always about yeah again or different or less and um and so it applies to households right and this that the net green idea you know so not so much so also applies so in a way for households just uh like companies you know the question is not so much what is the green thing that I just bought but what is the brown thing that I no longer have you know like so it's not about buying an electric vehicle if that's the approach but you know does that mean that you know you got rid of your old car and you know and and are you really you know or you know what is what is your the impact overall of of your of your you know transportation behavior and this is really coming down right so if you put a beautiful solar panel array on your rooftop you know that alone it is not green because you know it could be that you know now it means like I don't have to worry about electricity consumption right I don't need to ever switch lights off again in my household because I have I have I have solar on my roof right the idea is that it's only green if you if you use less grid electricity so it's it's it's the same idea um and again so I think the the um a more holistic approach helps households to make really effective decisions so it's less about you know buying product a versus product b but you know like what is the total footprint of my spending right of household spending and I think that would help households you know including my own um to sort of make sure that you you don't suffer from rebound effects right where you sort of suddenly get really efficient and then just spend the money you save on you know to to fly to an exotic destination right it seems so often that we're stuck in this uh you know paralysis by analysis but uh yeah um well there is two things I generally ask at the end of of the podcast what is next now that you have your manifesto out what are you planning to do uh in well 2021 is already over but 2022 do you have uh some plans uh a project or something that you're writing uh um for 2022 I'm oh thanks for asking that I'm I'm really um yeah I'm so I got the book out and and that feels great and yes I am a little bit in this phase of now what you know what's next I do know that I I would really love to explore this idea of the role of labor uh to advance environmental sustainability I think it's sort of something that we as industrial ecologists have maybe a little neglected a little bit and I think it's it's kind of ironic because I think as the standard assumption is right that all the impact which I think is correct that all the impact comes from the material and the energy inputs into our product systems and and the you know the processes in there and we basically don't account for the labor component basically assuming that it has no impact which I think is is true but I think by kind of just ignoring labor we're sort of I think we've um ignored what I see as potentially a key piece in in getting out of this paralysis as you're saying I think labor could could hold a key piece to advancing environmental sustainability so I'd love to uh design some some research around this and and really understand that better so if anyone in your audience wants to wants to embark on that journey with me I'd love to hear from them and the last thing you so I'm generally asking what type of books or articles or movies or videos you would like to to recommend to to go a bit deeper on this topic or or any other topic in that you feel interesting to to explore you mentioned some of the the articles of Roland and Tim also some other ones any anything that stands out oh I have a long long list of things I need to read and I mean Tim Jackson has written a new book which is on my reading list so you know he's you know like he's he's he's become very outspoken right in his sentiment that that economic growth is absolutely not reconcilable with environmental sustainability so you might be even more outspoken now in his new book so I look I look forward to reading that that's on my list what else is on my list oh gosh I can't I can't think and that's that's the one I can think of right now but I'm sure I'm sure there are many many more um it it does seem like you know the there is this increasing um uh sentiment that something's not right about corporate sustainability the way we currently do it and I know there are there are other books um that have been written recently or that are probably are being written right now so I'm I really want to get into that literature and sort of see what what other scholars or other practitioners or anyone is thinking about this so I'll I'll definitely look for that quite frankly I was I have not been reading enough this year so it's not it's never enough never never enough time well thanks so much Roland for all of the interesting discussions I learned a lot thanks to you and your book um oh thanks so much for the discussion and thanks everyone to listening until the end please share it around if you have some colleagues working in companies that you know are asking themselves these questions and they don't know how to to move in these uh in this sphere and also if you're an industrial ecologist and you want to come a bit closer to the to the word of companies and to the this question of agency I think you'll enjoy this very much so thanks everyone and we'll see you in two weeks with a new episode cheers