Green Mondays - payback, population and facial hair

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Having been invited along to the Green Mondays event via this blog I duly trotted north of the river to the Brewery last night. And a worthwhile trip it turned out to be. A mix of key note speakers, round table discussion, speed dating and old-fashioned networking the do managed to fit a lot in without hurting your brain overly after a hard day at work. It's aimed at sustainability bosses and bods at big corporates and consultancies across the spectrum of business but has sub-groups which focus on particular sectors, such as property. I saw a few familiar faces but it was a good opportunity to talks to those out of the buildings business. Here's a few highlights:

• Celebrity spot of the night: Not much to chose from but there was the government's chief scientific advisor John Beddington speaking and a bloke called Peter Hopton from a company called Very PC. He appeared early on in the current series of BBC2 show Dragon's Den and was apparently telling other guests at the event last night about his 15 minutes of fame. Not sure that he added that he got a right-old mauling from the dragons, especially Peter Jones. They traded virtual blows over techie issues I'm in no position to comment on - there's a discussion of this on a site called Smart Planet. Personally I would have taken him to task for his rather dubious facial hair.
• Stat of the night - Want a scarier and more immediate statistic on population? The aforementioned John Beddington is your man. The global population is rising by 6m a month - so that's more than the entire population of the UK a year.
• Quote of the night - "The consumer will not pay now and not in the future." So says M&S head of CSR Mike Barry on the keenness of Joe Public to spend anything on going green.
• Rumour of the night - Apparently electricity group Scottish & Southern has been trying to buy green outfit Ecotricity but the latter is not budging.
• One to watch - An investment outfit called Riverstone. According to a guy who seemed pretty sure of himself this firm will become a major force in renewable energy. Ex-BP boss Lord Browne is on the board.
• Issue of the night - What's a good payback? Something I will address in a future post.

Comments

[Alex Lankester]

Pleased you could attend our second Green Monday Phil.
Are there any particular topics or issues that you think we should make sure we cover in future Green Mondays?
Alex

[Phil Clark]

Hi Alex,
I've been banging on about this for a while but I suppose addressing the whole issues of costs, especially in the current economic climate, is vital. It would also be interesting to have the perspective of an economist on the relationship between the drive to go green and economic forces.
Hope that helps,
Phil