Doing Good at the "GoodGoods"

Yesterday I spent my day visiting the "GoodGoods", Germany's first sustainable consumer goods show in Hamburg, which has recently been awarded the title "European Green Capital 2011". My intentions for visisting this trade fair was to better understand the whole concept of sustainability as well as to see how far both producers and consumers have advanced by now in their approach to improve our economical behavior.

My first impression was that the whole show was actually really small - all 90 exhibitors could actually be placed within one single exhibition hall (B7). And most of the stands were really tiny, but yet with a lot of alternative charme.





Right when I arrived at the show, Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker was giving a talk about his new book "Factor 5", in which he tries to prove that sustainability can be achieved by increasing resource productivity. However in the following discussion, he also rejected the impression, that we can somehow miraculously just live on the same way we have done before and cited the implemented 3R-insight of a lot of Japanese companies:

* Reduce
* Re-use
* Re-cycle

Also, he made an interesting point that "we" western democratic countries will in some way deal with even more difficulties in our effort to implement sustainability than often-criticized countries like China. Because in these countries sustainability is regarded a simple necessity given their size and their impact on the problem. So, China for example has already implemented 3R-based principles in their legislation for certain environmentally-critical industries such as mining or chemical. So while China can simply prohibit the further expansion of these industries, our countries still heavily rely on liberal mechnisms hoping that somehow the market will regulate itself. However, the discussion after his talk also showed, that Weizsäcker's understanding of sustainability is still very much driven by thoughts about leaving much like it is but just increasing efficiency to the maximum and maybe reducing a bit our consumption. This reminded me very much of the discussion with Peter Sloterdijk I attended about "Growth", which was also lacking a viable and clearly identified alternative to our current economic behavior.


After the discussion I strolled around the show in search for some really new and innovative products, but was generally mostly dissappointed. Although there were some nice design-prototypes like a carbon-fibre bike or furniture made from alternative re-cycled materials like chairs from cork, felt and paper, most products were not revolutionary in style, in material-use or in the needs they approached.


Especially disappointing was the stand of a bamboo-processing manufacturer of home-furniture, who actually destroyed the beautiful and highly stable form of bamboo, cut it to peaces and made "just" normal chairs and tables from it. Of course there is still the fact that bamboo is one of the fastest growing plants on earth and can be harvested a lot faster than normal trees thus helping to safeguard our forrests.





One polarizing exhibit of the fair was of course the Tesla Roadster which attracted a lot of the men's attention. This fine 130.000 € piece of automobile actually raised my suscpicion with regard to how much of their beloved goods German people will really be able to relinquish - especially when it comes to mobility and cars. My guess would be that only a small minority is now willing to refrain from things that are traditionally seen as part of or itself enabling our perceived "freedom of choice".



My asssumptions were then in great part supported by the talk of Dr. Jochen Menzel, who spoke in the following "Green Capital Dialog" as represantative of Hamburg's "future council" about a study tracking the changes in attitude of Hamburg's citizens about sustainability from 2000 to 2010. Although there was a decline in the willingness to relinquish the car as means of mobility, the number of bicycles in the city rose as well as the interest of people in sustainable consumption in their everyday lifes, especially when it came to buying regional (+20%) or organic (+5%) food.


After Jochen Menzel, Dr. Michael Bilharz, from the German Federal Agency for Environmental Protection, presented his definition of sustainability as well as an approach how to achieve a sustainable way of living practically. For him, sustainability can be defined as generalizability: We are living sustainably when all others now and in the future can also live this way and if we are at the same time in an ecological balance with nature. His suggestion how to practically reach this way of living is based on a two step logic: First, he intends to focus on the "big points", the issues of our behavior that form the biggest part of our ecological footprint, like use of energy for heating, fuel use, consumption of non-organic food, use of electricity and total amount of consumption. Second, he advocated to pick out of these big issues the "key points" which can be implemented most easily in our everyday life. Here he referred to a better thermal insulation of the our homes, the use of a more economical car or even better car-sharing or the use of a bicycle, the consumption of only organic food as well as investments in renewable energy, compensation payments for one's own CO²-production and the support of environmental associations. All in all, Bilharz very much focused on a climate-neutral lifestyle in his practical concept for sustainability. Also, he delegated a lot of responsibility to the consumer, although he did not exclude producers and politicians from their responsibility. My general impression after his talk was, that

a) it will be very important to define sustainability more clearly and practically relevant (for which we will need a general societal agreement on the scope and type of the underlying values we want to safeguard with a sustainable way of living) and

b) it will be necessary to define responsibilities of different stakeholders more clearly (what can/should the consumer do, how should producers be held responsible, what is exactly the role and responsibility of politicians on this topic).


In the concluding panel discussion, Jochen Menzel and Michael Bilharz discussed with Ulrike Okbay-Reichert from the German Ecorepublic Shop of the mail-order business "Otto" and Dr. Günter
Hörmann from Hamburg's consumer advice center and council of state Holger Lange about the bigger picture and learning from sustainability for Hamburg. The concluded that often consumers need to get guidelines from legislation to be able to realize their general intention to live more sustainable. Günter Hörmann referred here to a regulation that introduced labes for eggs so consumers knew which ones were produced organically, which ones from free-range chickens and which from battery farms - and ensuing the latter almost totally disappeard from the market as a result of consumers stopping to buy them. In consequence he suggested the introduction of a new label for regional and local food. However, Bilharz disagreed and said that Hamburg would not at all be in need of another label as the "blue angel" already existed and still had to be implemented before it was time for any new labels. Besides, most of the really relevant regulation was anyways coming from the federal level of legislation (German Bundestag) and could not be enacted on the state/city level of Hamburg. Upon my question after the discussion, what kind of shared understanding there was in terms of other goals and values as classic profitability, growth and gross domestic product when it comes to better defining sustainability, Jochen Menzel answered with the reference to current work of a special "enquete commission on growth" which has been founded from the German Bundestag to answer this question in detail. After some research at the site of this enquete commission I actually found something very interesting: If you lay the two world maps of (1) the Sustainable Society Index of the Sustainable Society Foundation and (2) the world happiness index virtually on top of each other, you will find that both seem to correlate very well - there might actually be a lot more to sustainability than just organic food and eco-crazy killjoys. However, the joy of living should be a basic right of every human being on this planet, now and in the future. But if we look at another worldmap, this time the "Happy Planet Index", it seems that right now we still derive too much happiness for our lives on the expense of the world's and our descendants' resources.