José Lopez: In his own words
Below is the text of a book I produced, with the help of a few colleagues, on the retirement of José Lopez from Nestlé in 2015. I had joined Nestlé in 2010 and found myself in meetings with José where I would be writing down some of his 'one liners'. After a while I discovered colleagues were doing the same; ...
Keep on Keeping On? (Part I)
The header photo is the steelworks at IJmuiden in the Netherlands, on its way to producing carbon-neutral steel. In 26 years from now. Yet today the image is one of voluminous gases turning the sky dark, with wind turbines dotted around it... Past and future in one shot. There is more if you look carefully. Kite surfers are enjoying the ...
Keeping On Keeping On! (Part II)
Keeping on Keeping On! The title of Part I purposefully had a question mark in the title. Today’s sustainability efforts are delivering progressive incremental improvement across a range of issues and impacts. Companies can tout their progress, customers feel reassured, and governments can point to the market working. Yet doggedly keeping on the current path is not the way forward ...
Green lines. Companies, Governance, and the Biosphere
A recent paper on Transnational Corporations, Biosphere Stewardship, and Sustainable Futures, highlights both the critical role of, and rationale for Transnational Corporations (TNCs) to engage in corporate biosphere stewardship (covering climate, nature and other sustainability topics). Though whilst the authors observe that “TNCs provide benefits”, they also state that they “have earned a poor reputation, often for legitimate reasons.” In ...
(Number One) The Larch
It was late 1969 when the BBC aired the Monty Python’s Flying Circus episode "How to Recognise Different Types of Trees from Quite a Long Way Away”. This is perhaps best remembered for “No1 the Larch” and “No 3 The Larch”. This was a full six or seven years before I decided that I wanted to make a career in ...
