“I don’t look both ways, just forward”

Day 4 was epic. Too epic for one blog post so if you want to hear about factories being blown up for not complying with environmental standards, check out part 1, if you want to hear about how Mao taught youth to concur nature as a form of environmental ed, check out part 2, if you want the inside scoop on e-waste in China part 3 is for you. But if you want to hear Richard Brubaker wax on about corporate responsibility you are in luck. Read onward oh mighty blog reader!

So after lunch, Adam (see e-waste) offered to walk me to my meeting with Richard. As we crossed the street, he just walked into a road filled with buses and cars and bikes all moving in different directions at once. “Adam!” I gasped, as some biologically implanted maternal gene reached out to protect him. “Oh, I don’t look both ways, just forward,” he said, and smiled as he and his Taoist-self stepped back into the sea of motion. I would learn that line is the perfect metaphor for how people operate in China. Everyone focuses on getting to their dreams and vision for the future, but there seems to be no time to look back to see what happened.

I turn down the narrow ally to find myself at another coffee shop (apparently you don’t drink tea in China if you hang with the expats), to meet the utterly infamous Richard Brubaker. His blog says all roads lead to China. I say all roads on the track to sustainability lead to Richard. For a profile on his charitable works, check out the post I wrote for WhatGives about HandsOn China.

While I chugged my coffee and tried to pretend that jetlag is just a figment of my imagination, Richard rambled about a ridiculous amount of topics. I’ll highlight a few of the moments worth repeating.

Richard’s been in China for 8.5 years (64 dog years), a term everyone uses to clock their time in China. Apparently the pace of life in China ages you at a different rate.

Like many who came to China, Richard first arrived to seek out career opportunities as China’s economy gathered steam. In pursuing those goals he developed market entry and distribution strategies for firms who were also looking for China-based opportunities.

I knew I liked Richard when he told me the reason he liked working in China is because you have the ability to get shit done. Then he turned around and starting giving me a hard time for owning an iPhone. “The screens from those things only put 100 people in the hospital, maybe more.” Next thing you know we’re heading down the Foxconn path. (Foxconn’s been in the news since that morning the 11th attempted suicide of workers was announced. The company employs a small army of employees, over 300,000 in its Shenzhen factory alone.)

But then Richard told me something that challenged my entire American activisty way of thinking. “Their supply chain is rotten~ Apple outsources their entire production of iPhones, iPads, iTouch, and other gadgets to Foxconn, so they don’t own it. “It” being the production of the products… the labor hiring, processes, supplier selection .. the fundamentals of the supply chain.

So Apple ultimately doesn’t have control. Foxconn can source and manage all key suppliers~ part of the Taiwanese. HP, Dell, Motorrollo, Nintendo, Sony all use them to make their products. So if you want to solve the problem, all of Foxconn’s buyers need to organize together. So in other words…I can’t just put pressure on Apple to do the right thing, we need to put pressure on the supply chain manufacturer to do the right thing, and well, Houston, we have a problem. I suddenly feel powerless over the supply chain and the story about consumer power is quickly slipping into the land of mythology.”

Richard explained that at the commodity level, this has been happening for a while actually, but where it is new is that you now have ODMs who are in control of everything from product design to material selection to manufacturing for multiple brands. This has lead to large ODMs, like Foxconn, who have much more say in the products, and much more power over the customers (Nokia, Apple, etc).

While Richard talked about his work with HandsOn China and organizing volunteers in migrant schools I got confused. Again, I have to pinch myself a remind myself I’m not in Kansas anymore. Migrants in China are considered people from the far provinces who have moved into the cities. 15 years ago people started being able to move freely for the first time around the country (previous to that one had to obtain permission from the government to move to a new location.) The result has been a massive urban migration, causing one of the major modern crisis of our time in regards to addressing overpopulation in cities.

I finally asked the question everyone wanted me to report back on, Whats the deal with China building 5 new coal plants every week? Richard explained, “They are building new plants every few weeks: super critical plants that are efficient and utilizes the resource at a higher level (so you need less coal for the same amount of energy). What you don’t hear is that for every plant they build, they are dismantling five of their older less efficient plants.”

“Remove the people, great stuff is happening in the creation of systems. So the idea is, how do you create systems? Our current model is: Extract, package, and trash resources.” We are working on changing that: a great success story is that the high speed rail is actually competing with the airlines.”

And then Richard dropped right back into the topic that we were discussing earlier with the Greennovate team. The kicker is that China is both part of the problem and the solution, they are the Petri dish for experimentation. China is just trying to catch up with America’s consumer model. Its not realistic to expect things to stay the same, and you can’t tell people to stop consuming, or to purchase single family homes. The drive toward economic development is causing a herd mentality, everyone is out to get theirs.

So when we talk about trying to persuade people to make sustainable choices with their new earned money, Its not about polar bears: its about clean air, clean water, clean food. The western perspective doesn’t translate: its not carbon dioxide. If they wanted to cut carbon footprint: they would stop exporting given that 40-60% of the carbon pollution is created from factories.

Okkkk….haven’t gotten your fill on information about the supply chain? Well you are in luck…because check out Day 4 Part 5: an interview with GIGA who is greening materials.

“Mao had the schools teach to ‘concur nature.’ Now we are rebuilding.”

You have stumbled upon a series of posts called “Sustainable Shanghai.” This is part 2 of Day. Enjoy~

Next up Greennovate. I hop in the cab, and am happy to discover I can pull up the address on my iphone, show it to my taxi driver, and he is able to take me straight there. At one point he yells something at me and I smile and nod, unsure if he is frustrated by the directions, or is speaking louder since I don’t speak Chinese. Either way, right about now you might be thinking “sustainable shanghai my ass~ little missy just hopped in a cab.” And you would have every right to criticize. I would think more often than not that sustainability and rushing just don’t mix. And the reality of the moment is that I am late and taking taxis in Shanghai is dirt cheap.

Anyhoo~ I took the taxi (sigh) to Greennovate, where I entered the land of all things green. (And for extra inspiration and to regain a few karma points I’ll add this photo of a bad ass bike that was parked in their office.)

I wrote a profile about Greenovate for WhatGives (the sponsor for this trip) so you can check out more info there. Also, in this video you can take a tour of the office and meet the people that make it all happen:

The Greenovate team took some time out to discuss their initiatives (MIhela, founder, her sister, Ina Kukovic, Chris Pothaar, Fora Lan, and a few additional interns).

The idea behind Greennovate came from a simple want: to combine business and social potential to do something meaningful in China. This simple want evolved into a social business that is constantly pushing the barriers, integrating sustainable concepts into traditional business and community practices.

Their challenge: act like a business with the intentions of a non-profit (there is no non profit status in China). So they have developed a way to fund their educational initiatives with the sustainability consulting (since you can get the full scoop on what gives I’m not going to repeat myself), in essence, they break down complex ideas about sustainability and how people can make an impact and teach that in a 3 hour curriculum in the schools.

They explained that at this point, sustainability is still a concept. There are regulations, some factories are in compliance~ but the way they work with companies is helping them see what their company could look like in the future. In order to help a company, they look at one thing in the product line that the company can have an immediate impact on: then look at supply chain, and how communicate to consumers in the end.

They also gave me this fun fact 60% of young people are willing to pay more for greener products.

“It’s inspiring to us because we see it as necessary~ greening the supply chain. With the old model, where GM (for example) owns factories, than GM is responsible. But its harder when brands doesn’t own factories or have as much influence over the supplier. And its inspiring when you can inform the end consumer.

In addition, they launched a series of trainings with fair labor associations, educating about the environment and fair labor (companies such as Adidas have attended these trainings).
“To get factories interested, there needs to be incentive: pressure from companies about labor laws. Patagonia set standards re: transparency re: supply chain in China with the Footprint Chronicles”

The excitement was palpable when they started talking about Gecko, their environmental educational training program. By building trust between local educational protection bureaus they are teaching environmental education in schools across China. (And then having patience when the government creatws random new laws: such as no visitors allowed into schools during the World Expo.)

How is it received? I asked…

Flora, a 21 year old intern replied, “When I am done [teaching a workshop], people chase me and ask for signature. I feel like a pop star. Kids like it, and have an open mind to new ideas. Plus it is very experiential. Very different than traditional Chinese teachings. We make it personal, and talk about how they can make a difference, use stories, and get them to think.”

Greennovate found that one of the main challenges is that teachers don’t have the information and confidence to get involved with a field of information that they are unfamiliar with~ so then they created a teachers manual support the teachers so they would have additional content to share afterwards. They in the process of introducing an entirenly new way of viewing the government, given that Mao ordered the schools to teach the concepts “concur nature.” “Now we are rebuilding.” Mihela explains. “But the generation that is still in power, still has that value system in place.”

And it would seem that over time their message of a greener future is spreading: We started celebrating earth day: in our 1st year: 90% foreigners and10% Chinese were attendance: now in our 3rd year it is the opposite.

The main challenges they are facing is a quickly rising middle class: this upcoming generation will want to have things that identify them as wealthy, and so it is important for education system to understand how to start the communication and value systems now. The conundrum is that this rising middle class is now fully influenced by the Western consumerism~ how do you tell them that they can’t do what we have done? There aren’t enough hard core indicators that will speak to this rising generation about the ailment of over consumption…oh wait, there are, and China has already payed the price for our over consumption with their polluted air and water quality.

The challenges are complex and thick, but the opportunity to learn from another group’s past mistake is available. And cruel. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a rising 20 something and watch an old episode of Friends or Sex and the City and then be told I can’t do that (live that lifestyle) even though for the first time in history, I have enough income to consume luxury goods.

Meanwhile, enough of my thoughts, why not listen to a few youth speak for themselves? Below you will find a short interview with a few of Greennovate’s interns on the roof top discussing the one child policy and more.
Youth video

Well if you’ve made this far~ congrats and I won’t drag on any longer, if you would like to see part 1 of this day: Factories blowing up and public officials executed: Fact or Fiction?

I wake up contemplating the concept of near and far. I am on one side of the planet, and I feel close to this place even with all of it’s foreign ways. Yet the my people on the other side of the planet also feel close. I am realizing the more we see and experience, the closer we are to understanding what separates us.

Thanks to my host, Mihela, the sustainability community is welcoming me with open arms. Already I am consumed with excitement and invigorated by this place. Mihela asks me what I think of her city, and I say with genuine excitement, “I LOVE IT!” She laughs and tells me to answer that question again next week.

There is a pulse to this city that I find irresistible. I am reminded of the Chinese characters I have tattooed on my hip, “Change is for the better.”

Little did my 19 year old self realize what that meant in China. As a friend would say at dinner, “I have lived in many cities around the world, and no city has kept me running like Shanghai.” But it’s not just busy…they are busy changing things, even if they aren’t always for the better.

The trees tell the story: They brought in trees to create a park like feeling at the World Expo. Large, fully mature trees were uprooted, transported, and replanted in the city. The result is the experience of living with fully grown mature trees, but they are covered in bandage-like material reminding you of the effort and energy put into making things look good on the surface. One one hand you say, “Genius!” On the hand, you question the quality of the foundation. I digress.

Today’s itinerary is packed with back to back interviews. My eyes blur just looking at my schedule, and I am curious to figure out how the heck I am going to get around with my whopping vocabulary of “Ni hao” (hello) and “Xièxiè (thank you).

First stop: Skype.
I am still trying to get a lay of the land regarding how to go about writing about the eco city phenomenon, so I video call (have I mentioned I LOVE Skype?) a trusted and respected colleague who has been doing environmental work in China. I’m going to allow him to be nameless, because there is an important point to be made between what he shared with me based on his experience of visiting and working in China, and what others who have been working and living in China had to say about some of his comments.

He gave me the quick crib notes and intro to the greening of China:

Fundamentally, the government is green. The primary goal is economic stability, and they see pollution as a destabilizing source, and so makes it a threat to their goal. They have created aggressive green targets. The great challenge, is implementation.

But one of the issues is that it is such a massive country, and a large portion of the pollution comes from the East, far away from Beijing. There is a saying, “The mountains are high, and Beijing is very far away.” Meaning there is an inherent challenge in enforcing laws when the distance is so great between the capital city and the provinces.

“If ministers in far counties break laws, they are publicly executed. When they find
factories that are breaking rules, they blow them up. The government is sending a message.

Now if I were on the radio, I’d play that back so we could listen to that last line again. I asked everyone I met with about that last statement, and here are the crib notes on their comments:

+The main issue is that the local politicians don’t know any better. The education level going west is lower and environmental solutions suffer from this.

+There are known accounts of factories being temporarily shut down when they are not in compliance with environmental laws. And there are stories about a factory that produced fireworks that blew up, but no one would tell me accounts on or off the record that supported the above statement.

+ Political leaders have been prosecuted for major issues that have made it into the media, the public milk contamination being a prime example.

+Many officials have been removed/ fired for their roles in covering up environmental issues and not complying with national policies.

Meanwhile, my skype call provided a few good resources and people to follow.

Evan Osnos wrote a series of pieces for the New Yorker.

The Green Leap Forward

China Green Beats

Hmmm…this was a long day, and this is also a long post, so I’ll let this dog lie for now…and write Day 4 Part 2, 3, and 4!

First stop after 20 hours of travel: The Geeks on a Plane Rethink Shanghai dinner.

Many thanks to Kris Krug who used a flash (unlike me). You can see more of his amazing photos of the GOAP tour and more at: www.kriskrug.com and www.staticphotography.com

Turns out Christine Lu had arranged for Dr. Zhao Gang (the director of Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development and Ministry of Science and Technology) to speak with us, so within moments of arriving I was listening to his vision of a low carbon economy in China.

So I figured, what the heck, might as well bust out the flip cam and see what I can learn. Dr. Zhao was kind enough to take a few moments out and discuss the importance of planting trees to address desertification from drought, the initiative to put 1,000 electric cars into 10 cities, and more.

Stay tuned for a much longer (and coherent) article on Dr. Zhao Gang.

Many thanks to Jing Zhou for translating. If you are dying to see a bit of our conversation, see below. But I warn you, if you care about production quality, spare yourself the torture (it was very dark) and consider yourself warned (aka I don’t want to hear any complaints).

“It doesn’t matter what the rest of the world does regarding the environment if China doesn’t go green.”

That’s the line that sent me reeling during a recent call with a specialist in the green sector in China. Hence the creation of  The Sustainable China Virtual Tour; an online event and sustainability track of the Rethink Shanghai Conference. The virtual tour will take place via blogs, twitter, and video interviews with China’s leaders and innovators in China’s green sector, and will explore the opportunity for innovation within the largest nations on the planet.

We will meet innovators in green tech, student leaders, and urban planners. We’ll explore the race, failures, and successes of eco cities. We will visit the first and only eco retreat in China, and go inside the classroom and experience first hand new educational programs that are preparing future generations for a changing world environment. We’ll explore opportunities for collaboration and explore the opportunity to get involved with the green tech sector. We will hear first hand accounts about China’s philosophies and actions on the environment along with their influence on the global green movement. So stay tuned, and by all means, if you have questions about things you want to see highlighted or explored, or have insights about China and sustainability~ you know what to do (leave a comment)!

Many thanks to WhatGives.com for their generous support of this initiative!