There are so many issues these days that throw up clouds of dusty confusion if not downright conflict.
Take a webinar The Fifth Estate was invited to be part of on Wednesday afternoon, for Singapore Built Environment Declares after a kind invitation by WOHA’s Richard Hassell who even more kindly produced a brilliant presentation for our Urban Greening event, the full version of which will be available soon as part of our ebook and recording of the event.
Richard is clearly a changemaker and he’s clearly weaving his influence magic towards transformation in his adopted patch, our near neighbours in Singapore.
The webinar was a short session but sharp. TFE was invited to tell the story of why we are here and what we do. Our fellow guest Martha Lewis had much more specific advice. (And the kind of advice we could say perfectly demonstrated our mission – to spread news, fast.)
Martha is head of materials at Henning Larsen Architects in Copenhagen. Educated in the US she’s a specialist in the toxic materials that have infiltrated the very fabric of our built environment and much of our personal environment as well.
Toxic pollution and chemicals are the reason that stimulated many of us to care about the environment (and by the way, here’s a tip: if you come across a climate denier ask them how they feel about the pollution spewing into the land, air and sea).
The danger with our chemical issues is that in the rush to stop the planet’s fierce warming and the focus on energy and carbon as a core solution to that urgent issue, we are taking our eyes off the ball on the chemicals that are destroying our natural world and causing us harm.
Martha’s presentation will soon be available by video from SG Built Environment Declares alongside previous presentations.
You can see the whole webinar there next week but the single big message she had was a warning on the use of PFAS chemicals and paints.
PFAS or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, according to the Australian government Health Department, are “human-made chemicals that are used to make products resistant to heat, stains, grease, and water”.
So, guess what? They’re everywhere.
How useful this technology seemed when it came out. How utterly convenient. All that troublesome scrubbing and drying when materials were spoilt by dirt or water, gone!
As with so much technology the original intention was good. The trouble comes later: witness the Optus hack interfering in the lives of millions of people right now, or we find that Mother Nature does not approve. These “easy labour-saving solutions” turn out to also threaten our health and our natural systems.
There are many more chemicals besides PFAS that are dangerous or of concern and what Martha advocates is tough – a total removal of these chemicals from all our building products and our personal or home products.
This article from The Guardian around 75 per cent of water repellent products contain these nasty chemicals.
PFAS are part of about 9000 compounds called “forever chemicals” because they don’t naturally break down. “They’re so effective that they’re used in thousands of applications across dozens of industries, but they’re also linked to cancer, decreased immunity, liver disease, kidney problems, birth defects and more.”
They’ve been found in “jackets, hiking pants, shirts, mattress pads, comforters, tablecloths and napkins – from large retailers including Amazon, Bed Bath & Beyond, Costco, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Kohl’s, Macy’s, REI, Target, TJX and Walmart.”
A big challenge with buildings Martha says is that the certification bodies struggle with dealing with the incidence of PFAS and other nasty chemicals in the green ticks of approval they give to our best building designers and developers. Only Sweden, so far, is tackling this problem.
What can we do to take action?
As always when confronted with apparently insurmountable problems, we humans would like to know one single thing we can do to help, or a small manageable number of things.
After all, we are many and these bite size actions may well add up to big impacts.
Martha says if there is one thing we can do, it is to stop using paints made with plastic binders, much of which end up in our beautiful oceans.
Low VOC paints may also contain nasty components.
Instead go for paints made from natural materials such as linseed oil, clay, lime and silicate paint.
She later helpfully provided a lovely colour palette from Danish linseed oil paint Linolie company and mentions that she understands that Graphenstone is distributed internationally.
For clay paints, she points to German, US and UK brands – such as LEHM and Claytec.
“But do check the safety data sheets for any product, because even these paints can have a battery of hazardous substances – look at the listed H-phrases.”
This notion of picking just one thing we can do when confronted by a huge or seemingly insurmountable problem is interesting.
It makes sense if you think we are many, and a large number of small actions can add up to powerful change. Sooner or later.
Martha’s advice echoes a conversation we had earlier in the week with the Australian Museum’s Jenny Newell.
A survey the museum conducted of people asking about their concerns about climate change, Jenny told us, included a section on what question they would like to ask a climate expert.
A big number wanted to know what they personally could do to help.
Now this very human scale approach to our climate and environmental challenges needs a bit of dwell time.
In corporate land we’re getting the rise of consciousness about the same issues. Willingly or not corporates are starting to twig that they face an existential crisis if they don’t get with the green program.
(Probably unwillingly if we look at the track record of our market driven economy and its “extractive nature” as academic and author Tyson Yunkaporta told us in our podcast with him.)
The threats come from nature itself as it goes about destroying or damaging the world upon which we conduct our lives – and economies.
Or they may come from the stakeholders who choose to fight for a better world than the one we hurtling towards.
Like we individual humans, corporates may want to start with something manageable. They see the writing on the wall, thanks to the highly sensitised antennae of their marketing peeps, and their existential threat, so they want to make a start and pick one or two things to get moving.
(While the rest of their lugubrious rumps are stuck in extractive land. Like most of us, sadly.)
But now with the rising concern from a majority of the world’s population grows the greenwash police.
Now it gets tricky
Several years ago, when TFE was young and had stars in its eyes about how much territory it could cover properly, we delved into New Zealand to see if we could follow how our cousins across the ditch were faring with green buildings.
We were told in no uncertain terms that it would be very hard to get companies to share insights into their new green buildings lest their competitors or observers at large tear them to shreds for not being green enough, or for their company falling short in the rest of its operations.
You gotta ask, who among us can cast the first green stone?
So it’s tough going green. And it’s really complex.
Last week for instance we were delighted to bring you news that Yvon Chouinard, the founder of outdoor clothing company Patagonia, announced he will be setting up a non-profit to give away his family ownership of the company to the climate cause, worth $US3 billion releasing $US100 million a year to “combat climate change and protect undeveloped land around the globe.”
The Patagonia boss had to pay a huge tax bill to give the company away. He didn’t want to trust it to a stockmarket entity because, “once you’re public, you’ve lost control over the company, and you have to maximise profits for the shareholder, and then you become one of these irresponsible companies.”
Compare the Patagonia action with that taken by by Republican donor by Barre Seid, who “recently gave 100 per cent of his electronics manufacturing company to a nonprofit organisation shortly before the company was sold, reaping an enormous personal tax windfall and making a $US1.6 billion gift to fund conservative fights over abortion rights, climate change and more.”
The AFR article that reported all this had a warning headline: Billionaires are on notice as Patagonia founder gives away the company.
We thought it was a warning that this supreme example of opting to help the greater good would prod others to do the same – either through pressure from social media or genuine shame.
But instead, the headline might have been an unintended prescient warning of the backlash that followed.
So, what happened?
It turns out social media piled on to this stunning piece of philanthropy to point out that as of 2020, only 39 per cent (12 out of 31) of the company’s apparel assembly factories were paying its workers a living wage, on average. And by the way, the company sells a lot of synthetic products, the socials added.
It turns out that 39 per cent is actually a very high number for the rag trade, which has a history of appalling exploitation.
So, you give away a $US3 billion empire – but let’s look for the imperfections in the rest of the empire before we embrace the single act of kindness or philanthropy, no matter how stunning.
Let’s hope the backlash doesn’t stymie the trend that we’re already seeing towards accountability
Such as Denmark taking a pledge to create funding for climate-related “loss and damage”, the first country we know of to do so.
“It is grossly unfair that the world’s poorest should suffer the most from the consequences of climate change, to which they have contributed the least,” Flemming Møller Mortensen, the Danish development minister, told the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on Tuesday this week.
The amount pledged is US$13 million (A$20m).
But if we point out that this is roughly the value of just six family homes in the wealthier parts of Australian cities – are we falling into the same trap as the “not good enough” police?
We’re not saying the critics and social media pile ons aren’t useful – they are critically important and extremely effective. But it is complex.
The cool heads will understand there will be fierce opposition to seeing a big oil company buying up a clean energy provider because of the hypocrisy, but buy up and transition the oil company must if it wants to survive the coming environmental and ethical storm.
Social sustainability is on the rise too but it’s in fits and starts – and imperfect
Mostly it seems that the new stronger focus on social sustainability is on the rise as we gain more tools to deal with climate issues.
Mostly it’s led by the marketing geniuses who are too clever by half.
While they are brilliant at reading even the faint writing on the wall, they can be totally useless at ensuring that the product matches what’s on the label.
Sooner or later though someone will have to produce the solid goods or face the consequences.
So complex, right?
But do we care about motivation or do we care about results? At this stage of constant climate clobberings, quite frankly we should opt for Churchill’s weapon of last resort: whatever it takes.