Dec 10, 2011 - Mark Cliffe reckons it's a good time to be an economist. Cliffe is ... We try to do our best to keep on t
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TOMORROW’S ANSWERS TODAY
THE AKZONOBEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 10 December 2011
THE AKZONOBEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 10
Photography: David Lichtneker.
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change & transformation
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Expancel microspheres: Small things that make big things happen
Accelerating in Asia With more than 200 million vehicles expected to be driving on China’s roads by 2020, the surging market is creating increasing demand throughout the country’s automotive sector. China has now overtaken the US as the world’s top car market and AkzoNobel’s activities in the region were recently accelerated by the announcement of a €60 million investment to increase the production capacity of our Automotive and Aerospace Coatings business. As well as constructing a new production facility in Changzhou, we will build related warehousing, quality control laboratories, support facilities and offices on the new site, which is projected to be operational in early 2014. The project will increase capacity by around 25 million liters and will build on 2010’s acquisition of the Changzhou Prime Automotive Paint Co. business. As well as helping to meet rapidly increasing customer demand, we will be better positioned to further strengthen our leadership position and achieve our revenue ambition of $3 billion in China by 2015. The new site in Changzhou will be AkzoNobel’s 29th manufacturing location in China, where we employ around 6,700 people.
We don’t know the full potential of our microspheres. What we do know is that they work miracles for our customers. Let’s be curious together and find out what they can do for you. www.expancel.com
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WELCOME Terry Christian
It doesn’t take someone who’s a genius (average intelligence nowadays), to realize that we’re not as informed or objective in our thinking as we once were. Here in the UK, we now have an education system where we teach our youngsters to learn the answers to questions so they’ll have good test results – although the amount of facts we’re putting into their heads and their subsequent knowledge seems to be ever shrinking. This has been going on in the US for years. I once met a very articulate and well-known American musician who thought the US had won World War II by dropping an atomic bomb on Japanese in 1941. When discussing the causes of WWII with this musician, and then referring to WWI and the unfair punishing of the Germans for starting it all at the Treaty of Versailles, the American star looked totally shocked and said: “What , there was a World War I?” It reminds me of poet W.H. Auden, who 60 years ago almost prophesied this dumbing down in a work called For The Time Being, A Christmas Oratorio, where King Herod – who Auden has as a liberal – tries to justify his massacring of the innocents in order to kill the infant Jesus. In his justification at doing something so distasteful to him, Herod says: “If this child were to live and grow, reason will be replaced by revelation, knowledge will degenerate into a riot of subjective visions, idealism will be replaced by materialism, justice will be replaced by pity as the cardinal human virtue.” What Auden’s Herod predicted was the changing UK and US of the 1990s and noughties. Our political language corroded by fake pity and euphemisms. The most worrying aspect is that nowadays – in a world which continues to change in the many ways highlighted in this issue – people are constantly criticized for holding an opinion that they actually try to justify intellectually as a knee-jerk reaction. Say you think the gap between rich and poor is too wide, you get dismissed as a bleeding heart, wishy-washy liberal; if you succeed at something, it’s only deemed a success if you have made lots of money out of it, no matter how immoral the pathway to that success may have been. Perhaps we’ve now reached a point where we ought to be reassessing the way we teach and make “the facts” more important than “feelings”, make stringing together a coherent and reasoned argument more acceptable than a prejudicial knee-jerk response. Perhaps the euphemism and spin of years of political correctness often used to stifle debate needs to be reassessed before our cultural life in the arts, music, and politics becomes as soggy and meaningless as which bedroom karaoke king or queen wins The X Factor or American Idol.
Terry Christian is an award-winning British television and radio presenter. He has also written three books and has an HND in Applied Biology.
We have two covers this issue, which between them illustrate our theme of change and transformation. Cover 1: The Passion Flower butterfly lays its eggs at the tip of the coiling tendrils of the passion vine as a defense against ant predation. Photography: David Maitland. Cover 2: A Tiger Longwing butterfly Photography: Jean-Paul LaCount.
The A team Editor-in-Chief David Lichtneker Design & Art Direction Claire Jean Engelmann Production & Marketing Manager Jasmijn Visser Corporate Director of Communications John McLaren Publisher Akzo Nobel N.V., The Netherlands Editorial address A Magazine AkzoNobel Corporate Communications PO Box 75730 1070 AS Amsterdam The Netherlands Printing Tesink, Zutphen The Netherlands ©
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Additional imagery AP, Tony Burns, Corbis, Getty Images, David Lichtneker, Shutterstock, Specialist Stock
Awards 2010
2009
Nominations 2011 Grand Prix Customer Media Award
Opinions in this magazine do not necessarily represent those of AkzoNobel, and AkzoNobel accepts no responsibility for these opinions. While the information in this publication is intended to be accurate, no representation of accuracy or completeness is made.
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Contents 6 Crisis of confidence A leading economist talks about doing business in today’s volatile economic and social climate. 12 Drowning in plastic It might not have teeth as big as Jaws, but something equally nasty is lurking in our oceans. 18 The changing face of China Author Jeffrey Wasserstrom analyzes China’s remarkable transformation over recent decades. 26 Why color is not so black and white AkzoNobel’s Per Nimer explains why color is brilliant. Worth reading for the what-if the-IncredibleHulk-was-pink reference alone. 28 Is global warming just a load of hot air? Three experts discuss climate change and at least agree that we do have a climate and it is changing. 34 Spheres of influence They might be small, but our expandable microspheres have got big ideas. 37 The revolution will not be televised, it will be re-tweeted How social media is changing the way people and companies communicate. 42 Pimp my ride Think powder is just something to put on your face or a baby’s bottom? Think again. 46 Population bomb There are now more than seven billion of us on Earth. Are we a disaster waiting to happen? 50 Flights of fancy The Airbus A380 and Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner are redefining passenger air travel, but the two airline giants are already looking to the future. 54 When the rains came How human spirit triumphed over adversity in flood-ravaged Pakistan. 60 Seminal moments in history We asked people to list the three biggest changes to impact the world since 1994.
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Crisis of confidence With so much turmoil, upheaval and confusion gripping everything from the economy to Charlie Sheen’s TV career, you have to wonder if there will ever be a return to business as usual.
WORDS Jim Wake
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ark Cliffe reckons it’s a good time to be an economist. Cliffe is chief economist for the ING Group, the 17th ranked company in terms of revenue on the Fortune 500. It’s his job to provide advice to clients on what actions they should take – or avoid – in a time of change, uncertainty and turbulence. “I’m in the fortunate position of being an economist when there is massive excess demand and very limited supply,” he confides. “We find ourselves having to say ‘no’ to too many people because everybody is desperate to try and figure out what is happening. We try to do our best to keep on top of all this; the business of economic and financial forecasting has really been transformed in recent years. A lot of things we thought we’d figured out we patently haven’t and we’re having to go back to the drawing board. In common with many other people – companies, households, governments and policymakers – economists themselves are having to revisit a lot of the presumptions they had a few years ago.” A career economist (he worked previously for ANZ Merchant Bank, Nomura and HSBC in similar roles), Cliffe says he’s seen his share of economic crises, but what we have been living through the last four years – since the collapse of the US housing market and the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy – is the “Daddy of them all”. And he freely admits that there’s no clear path through the current mess, because no one has ever experienced anything like it.
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Previous spread: A woman wearing a Guy Fawkes mask during the recent Occupy London Stock Exchange protest. Left: An Egyptian demonstrator stands bound and gagged as a reference to the deprivation of the liberty of civilians. Below: A small group of Occupy Oakland protesters smash windows at a branch of Wells Fargo bank in California.
“I think we all need to be duly humble about our ability to predict the future. That, of course, does carry an economic cost because every investment depends on a view of the future. So you need to be careful not to ‘bet the ranch’ on a single view of the future, because you could suddenly find that you are getting caught out by unexpected developments.” If we’ve learned anything in the last few years, says Cliffe, it’s how quickly everything can change. “Discontinuous events” like the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy cause dramatic disruptions. So one of Cliffe’s most important pieces of strategic advice is to be prepared for the events that run completely contrary to your assumptions. Like, for example, the end of European monetary union (pressed, he says he thinks the euro will survive, but not without a lot of pain). “In a sense, that question is part of the point. Whether or not it survives is not the issue. You just have to prepare for the possibility – maybe a low risk or low probability – but the kind of change that could kill an organization.” What corporations need to do – and don’t do enough of – is to understand the total political and economic environment much better. “You can’t assume that what has happened in the recent past can be safely extrapolated into the future. For example, one of the common assumptions that a lot of people are operating on is that China will continue to grow at 8 or 9 percent for the next ten or 20 years. It’s possible, but I think you also have to think about a world where that comes to a sudden halt. That could be triggered by economic events or by political
events. But the point is that you need to have the flexibility built into the organization. What engineers call the quality of redundancy.” That lean, mean machine, operating with just-intime inventories, may seem “optimal” as long as everything goes according to plan. But the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in Japan last March played havoc with the supply chains of those companies working on the just-in-time principle. Meanwhile, the disruptions in normal business that followed the Arab Spring – especially the reduction in oil supplies when Libyan oil stopped flowing – had a significant impact on business and financial markets. Keeping an eye on political developments is also increasingly important because, in response to the financial situation, Cliffe notes that governments have become more interventionist – often in response to political pressure. Companies need to build in the “infrastructure” to be alert to political change and political developments. “There’s a tendency for companies to be rather reactive to political change, and I think you can easily get caught out on this, and by the fact that free market ideologies have been challenged by the financial crisis.” Hedge your bets, advises Cliffe. Rather than putting the entire stake on China, corporations would be well-advised to look at India, or even markets that will prosper if Asia runs into trouble. And “keep it simple”, if you can. “In a complex world, if you’re trying to run a complex organization, you’re compounding your problems. Given this kind of volatility in the external
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environment, there’s pressure to simplify your business as best you can. I think the idea that the route to success is always getting bigger is also being challenged, because with size often comes complexity. If you like, there’s a strategic tension between the need to have some diversification on the one hand, against excessive complexity on the other. You need to strike a balance.” Of course, many a fortune has been made in the midst of crisis and turbulence. “If you correctly anticipate or prepare for change, it can be a source of competitive advantage. That’s one point. The other point is that volatility does present opportunities. For stronger corporations that have healthy balance sheets, if you’ve preserved some firepower, you can exploit opportunities that arise from downturns and particularly downturns in asset prices. For example, if you have decided that a particular market is attractive – in an emerging market, let’s say – if there is a downturn and companies in the sector get into distress, you may be able to acquire those assets relatively cheaply. And the interesting thing is that despite all the talk about the so-called decoupling of emerging markets, what we’ve tended to see recently is that when there’s a sell-off in the financial markets, the emerging markets actually underperform. So if you want to rebalance your company towards emerging markets, you will see some opportunities.” Of course that does assume that the bottom doesn’t fall out altogether. Cliffe sees the Arab Spring as a potential turning point, but he is cautious about how it will play out. “The previously
autocratic societies in the Arab world now have the potential to transform their economic models and to grow more rapidly. But that depends as much as anything on the politics of the situation. It’s far from clear that they will move in that direction. So it’s not clear what the long-term outcome will be, but there’s certainly a scenario there that says there could be profound economic reform that leads to a brighter future which would present business opportunities.” Libya and Egypt are two quite different cases, he points out. Libya has enormous resource wealth and a relatively small population, whereas, because Egypt has a large but very poor population, there’s considerable potential to sell to a growing consumer market as more and more people gain purchasing power. Can he offer any solid predictions on what we should expect? In that same spirit of humility, he is reluctant to predict anything with any confidence, but he does not expect the current mess through which we are muddling to disappear tomorrow, which means more volatility, more pain and a pretty tough environment for a few more years at least. On a more positive note, despite being buffeted by the economic crisis, economic growth and the greater influence of the emerging world should continue. And technology should continue to drive growth. “I’m not an expert on technology, but talking to people who are, they are excited about things coming through the pipeline.” And is there really nothing he can predict with any degree of certainty? Just one thing: stand ready to be surprised.
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Making the most of change
It may be a truism that uncertainty is bad for business, but AkzoNobel’s Director of Strategy Jennifer Midura reckons that change is often very good. “It’s reasonably easy to cope with a good economic environment or a bad economic environment, but the difficult thing from a business perspective is uncertainty,” she says. “Transition periods are difficult, but even they are quite forecastable if you know that this is going to improve by this amount, then you can do certain things – or if you know it’s going to get worse, you can also do certain things. The difficulty is not knowing. So for example, with the European debt situation, we really don’t have a sense of what will happen.” When Midura reflects on the changes that have taken place in recent times, her conclusion is that in general, it has been good. “If we look at South Africa and other places where there’s been political change, much of it has been managed surprisingly peacefully. The Velvet Revolution, the fall of the Soviet Union, democracy in all of Eastern
Europe, the loosening up of restrictions in China and the focus of the Chinese government on building a world class economy, power-sharing in Northern Ireland – if somebody told you that was going to happen 20 or 30 years ago, I think you wouldn’t have believed it. And mostly it has been great for business.” Midura spent three years in Cairo in her youth and says that she is hopeful, but nervous, about a positive outcome for the Arab Spring, and Egypt in particular. “The fact that this is such a broad-based, democratically inspired revolution is much different than a lot of revolutions we’ve seen previously. But we’ve certainly had situations in the past where a power vacuum has led to something even scarier than when it started. So I hope for the sake of the Arab world that that’s not what happens here.” For AkzoNobel, political change in the Middle East may be coming at a very good time, adds Midura. The company was fairly late to recognize investment opportunities there, but a new corporate strategy to establish
regional organizations to better coordinate various business activities coincides conveniently – if completely by coincidence – with the opportunities that may arise out of the Arab Spring. A few months ago, a regional director for the Middle East took up his post in Dubai, along with a team including representatives from the company’s Decorative Paints, Performance Coatings and Specialty Chemicals businesses operating in the Middle East. So what changes does Midura see on the horizon? In terms of opportunities, she is especially hopeful about sub-Saharan Africa. “We have missed the boat to some extent in the Middle East,” she acknowledges, “but let’s not do the same in Africa. Changes are coming over the next ten years. I don’t know how steep a line there is, but things are changing rapidly. We benefited enormously from investments in China that our predecessors made that may have seemed at the time to be a little crazy, and I think we need to do the same in Africa.”
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Drowning in plastic Words David Lichtneker
There’s a crisis in our oceans. One which is being caused by our increasingly disposable lifestyle. If we don’t do something about it, the impact on human health and the natural world could be disastrous.
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iven that 70 percent of the planet’s surface is made up of ocean, you would think we’d have the good sense to look after them. Apparently not. Overfishing, pollution and human-induced climate change are wreaking havoc, threatening to wipe out countless species and cause untold ecological damage. In fact, the world’s oceans – which could be described as the Earth’s lungs, given that they produce half the oxygen we breathe – have fallen into such a sorry state that leading scientist Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg recently claimed it was as if the Earth was smoking two packets of cigarettes a day. What’s worse is that the decline is happening faster than experts predicted, and in ways they didn’t expect to see for hundreds of years. The professor, who is Director of the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute, also warns that there’s further degradation to come, with sudden, unexpected changes likely to have serious ramifications for the overall well-being of humans, including the capacity of the planet to support people. So things are quite bad then. What a lot of people don’t realize is that we’re all partly to blame. Which brings us to the question of awareness. Sadly, the majority of the general population is completely oblivious to the fact that our seas are in such a shocking state. Did you know, for example, that a sixth of the world’s tropical coral reef was killed off in a single “bleaching event” in 1998? Or that plastic pollution is rapidly becoming one of the biggest threats to the marine environment? We’ve become so addicted to plastic, in fact, that we’re drowning in it. Millions of tons of plastic waste are adrift in our oceans, poisoning the food chain, including animals in our own diet.
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The real and present danger being posed by plastic is perhaps Dedicated to tackling the crisis of marine pollution, they have best illustrated by the discovery of the infamous “Great Pacific some impressive heavyweight support from the likes of Sir Garbage Patch”. This isn’t – as some believe – an island made David Attenborough and Jean-Michel Cousteau, but raising of floating debris, but a vast expanse of drifting plastic flotsam awareness (as well as funds) is key to their overall mission. way out in the northern Pacific which some claim is twice the “We need people to understand that we have to start dealing size of the continental United States. Estimating its size, however, with plastic properly, because you can’t make something is nigh on impossible, given that there’s no reliable way of disposable out of something that is indestructible,” explains determining where it begins and ends (even apparently clear Jo Ruxton, a marine scientist and film-maker who set up the water can contain the tiniest fragments of plastic). A damning foundation. “This issue is without doubt one of the biggest indictment of our increasingly disposable lifestyle, the Pacific challenges facing our oceans this century and we have to rubbish dump isn’t the only one. All of our oceans are blighted make people aware of just how serious the problem really is. by swathes of this plastic “soup”, the result of complex, wind- They need to understand the consequences of throwing driven surface currents (known as gyres) capturing and trapping plastic away, because there is no away.” marine litter, which steadily builds up. This accumulation is A highly experienced diver, Ruxton worked at the BBC’s inevitably having a serious impact on marine life. More than 250 Natural History Unit for 12 years, mainly on underwater species are known to have ingested or become entangled in productions including The Blue Planet series, before setting up plastic, gruesomely illustrated by one dead whale washed up her own production company, Future Planet Films. Along with along the coast of California, which was found to have 400lbs of a team of fellow scientists, she’s currently busy shooting a plastic in its stomach. It was “clogged” to death. powerful documentary – slated for cinema release in early 2013 Given that 50 percent of plastic is used just once before – which will investigate the true impact of plastic pollution on the being thrown away, the situation is hardly likely to improve natural world and human health and should go some way to anytime soon. Which is why UK-based charity the Plastic drawing attention to what’s clearly an urgent issue. “We’re not Oceans Foundation is determined to do something about it. making a doom and gloom film,” stresses Ruxton, who will be
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Left: A fisherman tries his luck in a waste covered lake in the Apuseni Mountains in Romania. Photography: Huguet Pierre. Above: Plastic pollution off the coast of Sri Lanka. Photography: The Plastic Oceans Foundation.
Look beyond: plasticoceans.net.
visiting some of most remote areas in the world. “It’s not like An Inconvenient Truth, which was essentially preaching to the converted. It was a great film, but audiences that go and watch a film like that are already concerned about the issue. Our movie is going to have a lot of positive stories and a lot of hope for the future. I think it will appeal to a much broader audience and we hope to entertain and educate them at the same time. “We need people to realize that the one-off use of plastic is not sustainable. We have to show them what the problem is and they need to understand the consequences of their actions. So they will see birds nesting on islands thousands of miles from the shore, whose babies can’t take off because their stomachs are full of plastic, which has been mistakenly fed to them. They will see fish eating plankton-size pieces of plastic, which has been broken up by the wind and the currents. But we won’t just show people the consequences. We’ll look at what could be done instead. For example, if we start to deal with plastic properly, we’ll take the pressure off landfill sites. We want people to realize that it doesn’t need to be like it is now.” There are those who will no doubt be apathetic about the whole thing. But consider this. Our seas contain persistent organic pollutants (POPs), which like to stick to stuff rather than float around in the water, and often the most convenient thing in the water is plastic, which acts like a magnet. Fish eat the polluted plastic, take on board the toxins, which are stored in their tissue – then we eat the fish. Medical conditions associated with these toxins include cancers and cognitive problems. Now think about the fact that around 60 percent of the world’s population gets the majority of its protein from the sea. “It’s a very real threat to human health,” Ruxton continues. “And it’s something I take personally, because I’ve had cancer.” She says one of the worst things she has experienced is simply being out in the ocean, so far from land that you don’t even see any other ships, and trawling huge loads of plastic every time you put the net into the water. “You almost become immune to it because you’re expecting it,” she admits ruefully. “To know this plastic is out there, to realize what we are doing to the oceans, it’s just so shocking.” So where’s it all coming from? Well, some of it blows off landfills, particularly plastic carrier bags (around a million of them are used around the world every minute). General littering is also contributing to the problem – you have to wonder how many of the 35 billion plastic water bottles used in the US each year are disposed of properly. Plus you only have to look at the typical street to see that they’re built to drain water away, so garbage almost inevitably gets picked up, ends up in water courses and is taken out to sea. No surprise then, that environmental luminaries such as naturalist and TV presenter Sir David Attenborough are right behind Ruxton and her team. “We have to act and we have to act now to repair some of the appalling damage that we have done to our oceans,” he says. “The notion that it would be a barrier to removing plastic from the ocean because it would cost something is truly absurd. The cost of doing nothing is enormously greater than doing nothing. We should be grateful for all the useful things that plastic can do, but the people who provide the plastic should also have some degree of responsibility about how it’s disposed. Our children will have to pay a much higher price unless we change our behavior now.”
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Another keen supporter is explorer and TV presenter Ben Fogle, patron of the Plastic Oceans Foundation. He was filmed for the new documentary swimming through a slick of plastic soup in the Indian Ocean, in the very location where blue whales feed on huge quantities of krill. But it wasn’t his first experience of ocean garbage. During a charity row across the Atlantic a few years ago, he saw huge amounts of discarded waste. “Ever since then I’ve discovered that what you see on the surface is just the tip of the iceberg,” he cautions. “On my journey to Sri Lanka with the Plastic Oceans team I found it quite shocking to swim through a horrible slick of plastic floating on the ocean. You name it, we found it – bottles, coat hangers, plastic bags, food packaging. But it’s what’s underneath that’s truly horrifying because as the plastic breaks down into much smaller particles, it’s easier for marine life to swallow. My ex-perience has reinforced my passion to do something about it and to help raise awareness that this is a problem that’s going to affect us all.” So how can the rest of us help? According to Ruxton, we have to think more about plastic and the way we use it. We should rethink our disposable lifestyle, while manufacturers need to start designing products with the end of their useful life in mind. “Every one liter water bottle has taken a quarter of a liter of oil to make it in components and energy,” she points out. “So perhaps people should stop and think that every time they throw away a liter bottle of water, they’re throwing away quarter of a liter of oil. People could also buy things in clear plastic bottles rather than colored ones, because clear plastic can be recycled back into food grade plastic. Colored bottles can’t. We also need to ask why we are continuing to make products from plastic that we end up burying in the ground or throwing out and they end up in the sea.” It’s clearly going to
take time before people start to act, but some progress is being made. In the UK, for example, Britain’s biggest retailer, Tesco, has banned free plastic bags from one of its stores in Cambridgeshire – a move prompted by local residents. China, meanwhile, is already on the case. A ban on free plastic shopping bags is being introduced at a variety of outlets, building on legislation implemented in 2008 which saw supermarkets start to charge for handing out shopping bags. China is also one of a handful of countries to have introduced a ban on the production, sale and use of ultra-thin plastic bags. To put this into perspective, around three billion plastic bags were being used daily in China before the new measures were introduced. Small steps maybe, but in the right direction, and Ruxton is determined to do all she can to open people’s eyes and get the issue out in the open. “We know it’s going to get worse before it gets better because plastic is on the increase. In the last ten years, we’ve made more plastic than in the entire previous century. Where’s it all going to go if we don’t stop now?” She goes on to reference world-renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle. “She’d say that this is our watch on the planet and look at what we’re letting happen to it. We need to bring it back under control. I know we won’t reach everyone with our film, and I’m not going to pretend that I think we can. But if there’s a way to do something about it, then I want to try.” Earle herself is also convinced that the Plastic Oceans team has a vital role to play. “In a very short period of time we have transformed the nature of the ocean through the synthetic materials that we have put into the system that keeps us alive. With knowing comes caring. You might not care, even if you know. But you can’t care if you don’t know. Everyone can make a difference. This film will make a difference.”
Photography: Hartmut Schwarzbach
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Manufacturing the future
Like it or not, there’s no way mankind can continue to treat the planet the way it does now. The point has been made countless times, but it’s one that can’t be stressed enough. We haven’t exactly got a spare Earth standing by have we? It’s not as if we can just change the batteries and carry on. So any and all efforts to find alternative sources of energy, produce fewer emissions, create less waste – to basically lead a more sustainable existence – have to be given serious consideration. One idea which is gaining momentum (and recognition) is the Factory of the Future. Developed by a consortium of companies in the value chain which includes AkzoNobel, Witteveen + Bos, DSM, BECO, DPI Value Centre and Royal Cosun, the Factory of the Future (FoF) is a design tool for a sustainable production environment which could radically change manufacturing and breath life back into our ailing planet. Now in its second phase, the concept – which embraces Cradle to Cradle principles – essentially applies sustainable thinking to all aspects of manufacturing, process and production. The idea is that anyone looking to build a new factory or introduce new production methods can use the FoF computer model in order to devise the
Photography: Simon Butterworth.
best approach to realize closed chains either in the ecosystem and/or in technological systems. It takes a whole range of design and process considerations into account (including emissions, energy use, output and logistics), with the aim of developing a sustainable production chain which promotes eco-effectiveness and produces economic, ecological and social value. “It’s really about three things: business development, sustainability and innovation,” explains Harry Webers, Managing Director of Dutch engineering consultants Witteveen + Bos. “The most important benefit of the Factory of the Future is that it helps companies to become more aware about the possibilities of sustainability. It’s a way of saving the planet which will have a positive impact on quality of life, which in turn encourages business development.” Adds Theo Salet, head of the building department at Witteveen + Bos: “Nowadays, people are setting goals for 2020 or 2030 in terms of sustainability. However, if they’re designing a new factory, they tend to adopt and copy old technology, they just make it a bit better. That’s OK for the first few years, but it won’t meet the more long-term goals that have been set. We need to be aware
of that and not just improve, but set more far-reaching goals, which means thinking out of the box. If you do that, you will create a new world in terms of sustainability and you will also start to redesign your business processes. That’s what Factory of the Future is all about.” He goes on to say that facilities designed with the tool will have completely new concepts. “For example, why does it need to be a factory? Maybe there’s no need to build a factory at a certain location, because the process can be integrated into a smaller facility which can be located close to the customer using the product being made.” The first projects devised using the Factory of the Future concept are expected to become a reality within three years. “There’s an old saying here in the Netherlands that there needs to be stress to change the world, especially when it comes to environmental change,” continues Webers. “As long as there is a lot of luxury and no stress, people become lazy. Once stress increases, things start to change rapidly. AkzoNobel and all the partners in the consortium certainly understand what needs to happen and that’s why things are starting to move very quickly.”
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The Changing face of China If one country has reinvented itself in recent decades it’s China. But exactly how has it changed and what does its continuing transformation mean for the rest of the world? Words Jeffrey Wasserstrom Photography Tom Carter
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Above: Locals shopping in the furrier neighborhood of Harbin in Heilongjiang Province. Right: An elderly man taking a stroll through the new Jiefangbei department store district in Chongqing City, Chongqing Province.
ack in the late 1970s I took my first course on China, signing up for it on a whim during my first year in college. I was sampling history courses on different parts of the world so thought, why not China? I knew little about the country. I had eaten at Chinese restaurants, but never seen a film by a Chinese director or read a Chinese novel. I was aware that China was run by a Communist Party, but had no idea what the currency used in the country was called – and, frankly, would have found it laughable if anyone had suggested that during my lifetime I would hear American politicians trying to score points off one another in debates by talking about how the Chinese Yuan was pegged against the dollar. My ignorance hardly made me special, as many people living outside of China knew just as little about it. Nor was my ignorance surprising, since stories about China rarely made it into American newspapers then – and when they did, they nearly always appeared in the front section, as opposed to the parts of the paper set aside for sports, entertainment and business. Events in China had curiosity value, but seemed to have no direct relevance for my own life. Hence knowing about them seemed purely optional. This is no longer the case. How could it be when these events have implications for every big issue of the day, including climate change, and the Chinese and American economies have become so tightly intertwined? It’s easy to forget that China back then was still a country that, despite its size, was not fully on the Western radar. Its economic boom had not started, so any talk of East Asian development successes in the late 1970s was still likely to focus on what was happening in other countries in the region, such as Japan – whose rapid rise was starting to cause jitters in the US, like those that China’s has been causing lately. Other transitions, besides this economic one, also still lay in the future. For example, bicycles and buses rather than cars and subways were still the dominant mode of transport in Chinese cities, and this was still true when I spent a year living in Shanghai in the
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mid-1980s. And while roughly 50 percent of people in China 40 years ago and woke up today would experience a form of now live in urban centers, my first Chinese history professor culture shock. He would be surprised, for example, to discover could still say accurately that it was, as it had been for millennia, that Confucius is back in favor (in 1971, the sage was reviled as a place where roughly four out of five people lived in villages. a “feudal” figure whose ideas had held China back), and that What a difference a few decades can make, in both the many mainland cities now have department stores stocked with nature of a country and international awareness and concern luxury goods (these were still being denounced as symbols of about it. There is still plenty of ignorance and much mis- “decadent” bourgeois lifestyles in the early 70s). And he would understanding of China in other countries – including my own, be disoriented by the news that China now has more millionaires of course – but there has been a dramatic expansion in the than any other country. Because 40 years ago, China was not reporting of events that take place there. Stories about the only much poorer, but also had leaders who claimed that the country now show up routinely in newspapers. And they appear socialist paradise they were striving to create was one that in every section, even the sports pages, thanks first to NBA would have no divide between rich and poor. phenomenon Yao Ming, then the 2008 Olympics and now The list of then and now contrasts is a very long one. When tennis champion Li Na. it comes to Chinese cities, for example, it is not just modes of Many of these only focus on the present, but some highlight transport and the percentage of the country that lives in them contrasts with the past – and not just between the pre-1949 and that have changed dramatically. Consider the admittedly post-1949 eras. Because there are also dramatic differences unusual case of Shanghai. When I spent time there in the midbetween the first post-1949 decades and the most recent ones. 1980s, it had only a few buildings more than ten stories high, Indeed, a Chinese counterpart to Rip Van Winkle who fell asleep only a handful of privately run restaurants and streets that were
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Left: A statue of Chairman Mao patriotically guards the Cultural Palace of Nationalities in Guiyang, capital of Guizhou Province. Above: When they’re not hanging out in parks, young hipsters make their way to China’s nightclubs.
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Right: An elderly man collecting plastic bottles and cardboard for paid recycling programs sits in front of an advertisement for China Mobile featuring pop princesses S.H.E.
About the author: Jeffrey Wasserstrom is a Professor of Modern Chinese History at the University of California, Irvine, and the author, most recently, of China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know. Chinese Characters: Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land, an anthology which he has co-edited with Angilee Shah, will be published by the University of California Press in 2012.
free of advertisements objectifying female bodies. The Shanghai I have seen on recent return visits is one that has more skyscrapers than New York, tens of thousands of private restaurants and countless billboards that use sex appeal to tout things such as stylish clothes, sports cars and Rolexes. A final then and now contrast has to do with US views of China. In the late 1970s, many Americans fell into one of two basic camps. One group viewed China as a dangerous foe simply because it was run by “Reds,” meaning that despite its break with Moscow, it remained part of an anti-capitalist ideological camp that threatened the American way. A second group viewed China much more sympathetically, as a country with good people and finally a leader who was moving it in the right direction. With the pragmatic Deng in charge, they hoped, China would be able to recover from the disasters, traumatic campaigns and extremist policies of the preceding years. Americans in this group were rooting for Deng to achieve the “Four Modernizations,” as they were worried about a China that was too weak to feed its massive population. Flash forward to the present and we see a very different set of American attitudes towards China. The concern now is not that China is part of some grand global anti-capitalist bloc centered in Moscow, but that it may have carved out a way of combining politically restrictive one-party rule with elements of anything goes capitalism à la Singapore that other countries intent on developing fast will find appealing. And there is more fear of China becoming too strong than it being too weak. Worry about whether China can feed its population has been replaced by concern about the environmental cost of its surge forward, something which is also generating anxiety within the country. As I said before, what a difference a few decades can make.
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1st emotional rip-off painting, 2003, acrylic on canvas, 105cm x 90cm, by George Korsmit. As in all his work, the colors, grids and dimensions of Korsmit’s painting were determined by chance. The artwork is part of AkzoNobel’s Art Foundation collection.
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Why color is not so black and white If the Incredible Hulk was pink, would he be quite so scary? That’s the transformative power of color. It can alter our perceptions in the blink of an eye.
WORDS Per Nimer
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ou don’t have to look too hard to notice that our world is full of things that can change the way they look by using color. The chameleon is a great example, flowers and plants are another. Interestingly, they don’t do it by choice, but because they have to. The chameleon changes color for protection, while in nature it occurs due to loss of chlorophyll. The chameleon’s behavior is, of course, an extreme version of impression versus expression of color. When we are changing color – not on ourselves but in our environment – we do it because we want to. We may want to transform our living space or any other object that we have around us. We also blush once in a while, which is not out of choice and has nothing to do with fitting into the background like a chameleon. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Even when Dr David Banner transformed into the Hulk it wasn’t out of choice, nor protection for that matter. It was simply because he got really angry. Actually, that brings up an interesting point. Why did he turn green? Is green an angry color? What if the Hulk had been transformed into something pink, would that have changed the story? So as you can see, color can express a feeling that has a different impression for everyone. It also has an amazing power, an ability to change and transform how things look and feel – and what we feel for them. For example, if you pick a particular shade of red from approximately one million reds that we can perceive, you can make that red mean totally different things, depending on where you put it. So if put on a bicycle, that shade of red would traditionally have made it a girl’s bike. In the bedroom, it would make things romantic, intimate, or some might even argue, sexy. Applied onto the exterior of a house, in some countries it would make it look traditional, while if you applied the color to a Fiat, it might not turn it into a Ferrari, but it would give you a hot little motor. When working with color, like I do, you soon realize that it is never the color’s fault when something goes wrong. There is no such thing as a bad color – only a bad place to put it. If you think about it, the most visible and easily recognizable feature on a
house, car, outfit – or anything really – is the color. It’s what we see first because it’s essential to our existence. It’s how we pick the best tomato, the ripest banana, or why we stop at a red light. It is much easier for us to determine a color than a shape. We have a very immediate reaction to color, it comes naturally to us and, rightly or wrongly, we often feel free to comment on other people’s good or bad color choices. Even the most fantastic structure can be transformed into an undeterminable mess with the wrong color. We’ve all seen this far too many times. On the flip side, an incredibly mundane room can be transformed into a fascinating one by choosing the right color, or better still, colors. This is something we don’t see enough of. Because with color, you can fundamentally change the shape of a room. A rectangular room will be perceived as more square by adding a dark red to the end wall. Or you can make a room smaller by using a saturated color on the walls. If you want the sofa to appear bigger, use that same color. One color, two opposite reactions, same reason; a saturated color will make an object come closer to you because it is absorbing light. When most people walk through their neighborhood, they are inclined to look at and comment on any newly painted houses. So if color has this devilishly strong power to transform, can we make our humble cottage into a castle? Perhaps not, but one thing is certain – when we are applying that fresh coat of paint, we are sending a message that even if there is no castle, we are treating it as one. The thing about using paint and color is that most of us are afraid to use more than one, two maximum. Admittedly, three colors do not make a castle, but everyone reacts the same way if you add that third color. So if you do add one extra color, either to the window frame or the trim around the front door, the signal you’ll be sending will simply be: “I care about my castle.” Now, just imagine what you could do with the other nine million colors the human eye can distinguish.
About the author: Per Nimer is AkzoNobel’s color expert.
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Is global warming just a load of hot air? Climate change is clearly a burning issue, but who to believe? We spoke to three experts with differing views on the subject in an effort to determine what’s really going on.
WORDS Jim Wake
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Photography: James Balog.
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Previous spread: The calving face of the Columbia Glacier, Columbia Bay, Alaska. The glacier has retreated 11.3 miles since 1984. Right: Many think that the damage to the planet being caused by humans is comparable with the effects of devastating natural phenomena such as the Fimmvörðuháls eruption in Iceland.
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ccording to Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist on the faculty at Texas Tech University, taking action to prevent a catastrophe as the Earth warms up is long overdue. If you talk to Benny Peiser, director of the London-based Global Policy Warming Institute, he’ll tell you we don’t know nearly enough about what is going on to embark on costly measures to cut CO2 emissions. Ask Bjorn Lomborg – who established his reputation a decade ago as The Skeptical Environmentalist with a book of the same name that made him a hero to the climate change doubters and a pariah among mainstream environmentalists – and he’ll say we’ve got a problem, but it’s not the most pressing, and the ways we’ve been going about solving it are all wrong. So what are we supposed to believe? If you’re hoping that we’re about to provide the definitive answer, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. Because the only thing we can say with some degree of certainty is that the climate is changing. How much? Well, the numbers vary from 1° to 5° Celsius. How fast? Either so fast that you’d better buy yourself a boat, or so slowly that you can relax and examine your options over the next 50 years. What’s the cause? Most people now agree that industrialization has had a major effect. Anthropogenic climate change – the result of human activities – is real, but plenty of skeptics remain. So what to do about it? Let’s just say that for some of us, the jury is still out, and the chances that there will be anything approaching consensus anytime soon look extremely slim. And we’re not even talking about the crackpots who think global warming is a scare tactic dreamed up by communists and wild-eyed vegan tree huggers, or about the back-to-nature alarmists who think we should all unplug from the grid, live in log cabins and revert to animal traction to raise our crops. Hayhoe – who served on a “committee of experts” that wrote a report on “climate stabilization targets” commissioned by the US Government’s National Academies – reckons that the problem is not so much that a warmer planet is bad for our health, but rather that it “interacts with a vulnerability that we have already established.” In other words, we’ve developed our society and our way of living around certain assumptions – about sea level, the availability of water, the livability of river valleys and so forth – but global warming could render those assumptions moot. “If we were hunter gatherers, we would just pick up and move somewhere else,” she says. “The reason we care about rising sea levels is that 20 to 30 of the biggest cities in the world are within a couple of meters of sea level. We have settled and built infrastructure in places that could be flooded.” She also has other examples. “Everywhere you look, whether it’s issues of flooding or drought, with heatwaves or sea level
rising, it’s important to realize that climate change is interacting with the vulnerabilities that we’re already aware of and just exacerbating risks we already have.” But Peiser would politely – if not altogether respectfully – disagree. While he claims to be completely “open-minded” about the human contribution to climate change, his Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is stacked with rightwingers and global warming skeptics, including some – such as physicist Freeman Dyson and MIT professor Richard Lyndzen – who are respected scientists. GWPF purports to be nonpartisan and unbiased, but most of what it publishes on its website appears to be primarily concerned with discrediting politicians, scientists and advocates who insist that now is a better time to worry about the potential threat than when the effects may (or may not) become evident. Peiser does not dispute that global warming is occurring (though he is convinced that the ten-year “flatlining” of average temperatures registered after 1998 may mean we’ve already reached a peak), and he doesn’t disagree that CO2 is contributing. But he is “agnostic” on how significant the human contribution is, and rather skeptical that global warming is going to cause much harm. “There is a warming effect, but the question is, to what extent, because the key question is, how do you perceive the threat or risk? And the question I always answer back with is: What are the empirical signals that should indicate that something extraordinary is happening that tells us that there is a risk and that it is serious?” Peiser then points to temperature rise, ice caps, sea level and extreme weather events and concludes that the data does not warrant undue alarm. For example, he says the average increase in sea level has been two millimeters a year for the last 100 years, with little change (others point to other data to dispute that assessment). So yes, he says, there have been changes, but we don’t know enough about climate to understand the long-term effects, or how much has to do with natural variation and cycles. What we need, he says, is more money for better data. At least some of that better data was made available in October by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project (BEST), which combined data from numerous studies and 39,000 reporting sites, and used sophisticated statistical methodologies to address anomalies such as urban hot spots and the unreliability of some of the reporting stations. Interestingly, BEST was funded in part by the conservative oil industry billionaires David and Charles Koch, who have generally been associated with the global warming skeptics. Many on the left were openly skeptical of BEST when it was launched, but the initial conclusion was that global warming is
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Photography: James Balog.
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real, the urban hot spots are pretty much irrelevant to the overall when the sun goes down. Telling people to do without is always trend as they occupy such a small portion of the Earth’s land going to be a non-starter. You can do a bit on the margins, but mass, and even the reported “flatlining” of global temperatures you’re not actually going to dramatically reduce emissions.” So does that mean we might as well give up and move our is within the norms of natural variation and so probably not cities inland and build giant dikes around low-lying Pacific relevant to the overall trend of the last 50 or 60 years. When Lomborg published The Skeptical Environmentalist islands? Lomborg doesn’t address that question in particular, in 2001, he was accused of playing loose with the climate but his proposal does get to the heart of the problem. What we change facts and originally condemned for scientific dishonesty need, he says, are affordable alternatives to fossil fuels. “We’ll by a Danish government investigation (he was subsequently only get people to stop using fossil fuels if green energy is so exonerated). He was something of the bête sauvage of the cheap that it’s actually competitive – or preferably cheaper – environmental movement, but when I spoke to him in mid- than fossil fuel. And then of course, you’ve solved the problem.” October – he was in Lima, Peru, for a conference on fishmeal To get to that point, Lomborg says we should spend $100 billion and fish oil, of all things – he was perfectly civil. Had he shifted a year on research and development into green energy. Part of towards the prevailing views on climate change, as reported? that could be funded by a carbon tax, he says, part from other “I think what has happened is that the world has become more public funds and part from private investment. What doesn’t get factored in is the politics. For example, a open to listening to skeptics and then they realize I’ve had a more pragmatic and smarter solution all along. I’ve been saying carbon tax in the US is almost certainly destined to fail in from the beginning that global warming is a real problem. I’ve Congress. Indeed, Hayhoe points out that right-wingers have also said it’s often been dramatically exaggerated in importance engaged in a long battle to discredit climate science (even and I think both things are still true. But I’ve also said we need to Peiser agrees that an ideological campaign has been waged find smarter ways to tackle this because the current ways – the against legitimate climate scientists, making rational discussion so-called Kyoto approach – namely cutting carbon emissions, almost impossible). The result is that as the science has become more compelling, concern in the US about global warming has is a very expensive way to do virtually no good.” Lomborg does believe in the anthropocentric model, at fallen from 72 percent in 2000 to 51 percent now. That there is least in part and he also agrees that by the end of the 21st an ideological divide is abundantly evident when those numbers century, the economic costs could be very substantial (from 2 are parsed: the percentage of Republicans in the US who think percent to 5 percent of GDP). But he argues we have even more the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated has jumped important challenges to tackle over the shorter term, such as from 34 percent in 1998 to 67 percent earlier this year (it fell providing access to clean water and sanitation to the billions slightly among Democrats). Interestingly, Hayhoe, an evangelical Christian, says that who don’t have it. But Lomborg’s biggest argument with the global warming alarmists is essentially a practical one: he when she talks about global warming at church gatherings in doesn’t think all the massively expensive efforts to cut carbon Texas, she finds that while many people are skeptical, they emissions will do any good. “What we’ve done wrong is we’ve respond sympathetically to a simple argument she presents. thought it would be easy to get people to cut carbon emissions. “God gave humans the responsibility for the Earth and we are The argument that CO2 increases the temperature so we need told to love our neighbor as ourselves. It is not a very loving thing to cut fossil fuels sounds simple. But the problem is, we don’t to do to contribute to a problem that is actually causing damage burn fossil fuels to annoy Al Gore. We burn them because they and disease and death.” And while she would disagree with power everything we like about civilization. They keep you warm, Lomborg about the futility of cutting carbon emissions, Hayhoe keep you cool, feed you, transport you and keep the lights on doesn’t disagree that alternative energy sources must be
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developed. “We all want a healthy economy and a good life for ourselves and our children. We want clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. So what if we invest in renewable energy and decrease our dependence on foreign oil? What happens if we are wrong about climate change? We’d have a healthier local economy, a source of energy that’s not going to run out on us and healthier, cleaner air and water.” Eminently reasonable, you might think. But then there’s Peiser, calmly offering an alternative view: “Can we afford to give up the usage of cheap fossil fuel and go for more expensive forms of energy? I question whether we’re at the point where it’s absolutely certain, and that if we continue business as usual, we face disaster.” As I listened to him, I thought about a different crisis – the European sovereign debt crisis. When Greece first said it might not be able to repay its debts, weren’t the economists saying the same thing about the need to act to head off a disaster three or four years ago, like climate scientists are telling us now? And wasn’t the response then more or less the same – we’ll take care of the problem if it doesn’t solve itself?
Left and below: Human-induced climate change is impacting all species on Earth, in some cases through lack of food and water, in others because there’s too much water instead of ice.
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Spheres of influence Words Rebecca Parsley
Hidden away inside a host of everyday objects is an unsung hero of the chemical world which has the power to change, modify and transform. Say hello to the expandable microsphere.
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or my last birthday, I received some expandable microspheres. Honest. OK, so I didn’t exactly know I’d been given expandable microspheres, because they were rather cunningly disguised – as a luxuriouslytextured box for a bottle of designer fragrance. Apparently, the fact that the packaging looked and felt so sumptuous was all down to those clever little devils, which most of us have probably never heard of. Until now. To focus on the science for a moment, expandable microspheres are small, spherical particles that are often used as fillers or volumizers. When heated, they expand like crazy (hence the name) and can actually change the properties of the product they’re used in – making it lighter, softer or more durable, for example. “It’s an amazing product and useful in so many different applications,” explains Sirpa Engman, who is Global Marketing and Sales Manager for AkzoNobel’s Expancel business. “If you take a product such as fake suede or leather, introducing it into the manufacturing process can give you a number of different texture effects depending on the grade that is used. It’s a way of modifying or changing surfaces. For example, it can give a 3D effect on wallpaper, printing ink or packaging.” The idea that something so small and – let’s be honest – unsexy, can be used to make items I covet on a regular basis is fascinating. But their purpose isn’t just to persuade people like me to spend their hard-earned cash on some must-have consumer goods. “Expandable microspheres have many practical uses and are widely used in various industries, such as car manufacture,” adds Expancel Global Product Specialist Ann-Louise Bodin. “They can be used in underbody coatings or plastic components to decrease their weight, which in turn can help reduce energy use or transport costs. So there’s an environmental benefit too. Another popular use is in shoe soles – our products can make them lighter, while still giving volume. As well as making them comfortable to wear, you again have the chance to lower costs.” They are so adaptable, though, that the spheres can also make things stronger. Take a marble bath, for example. They look fantastic don’t they? In fact, I must admit I’d quite like one (even if it would possibly be a bit too elegant for my family bathroom). They’re also very heavy and, as a material, cultured marble can be pretty brittle and crack quite easily. Who wants their statement bathroom centerpiece covered in lines? Eyecatching for all the wrong reasons. But add in the expandable microspheres and, as well as making it lighter, the marble is transformed into a material with greater shock absorbency – it becomes more robust because it has effectively been “padded”.
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Why do the spheres work so well? Because each one is a closed cell, so they don’t absorb moisture and contain their gases as they expand through heat, which is what makes them grow in size and provides the volumizing effect. These properties also make them great for insulation. Think about the coffee cups you get in vending machines. Thermal insulation is important – which in turn means a thicker cup. Using a product like Expancel to bulk out the raw material means less of it is used, again saving costs. Coated on a paper or board surface, the product can also add anti-slip properties. Or, depending on the grade used, it can deliver that lovely soft texture I mentioned earlier – although that’s probably not a key requirement for most grab-and-go coffee machines. But that’s one of the beauties of the product. Depending on the variant, it can transform different materials in a variety of ways, according to need. The possibilities are mind-boggling. The next step, continues Engman, is for Expancel to move into the food market. “There’s a lot of controversy around using natural cork for wine,” she says. “We’ve now developed a grade of Expancel which can be used in products that come into direct contact with food – cap-seals or wrapping foils, for example – and it can be used to make a grained cork for use with good quality wine.” Bodin elaborates: “Small particles of cork are mixed with adhesives and Expancel to form the new, technologically-developed version. The result is an ultra-clean cork which doesn’t add taste to the wine and offers less risk of particles getting into the liquid. It’s quite an advance.” It seems, then, that there are few areas where these little microspheres can’t contribute in some way. From the soles of my feet to my bottle of Rioja, expandable microspheres are cushioning the blows of everyday life – literally, in many cases.
Look beyond: akzonobel.com/expancel.
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The revolution won’t be televised…it will be re- weeted Like it or not, social media is here to stay. It has revolutionized the way we communicate and has set its sights on world domination. WORDS David Lichtneker
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hances are you haven’t failed to notice Mark the world’s second largest search engine – or Flickr (more than Zuckerburg’s unrelenting quest to make everyone 3,000 photos uploaded every minute). Then there’s digg, on the planet part of Facebook’s connected collec- StumbleUpon, SmugMug, bebo and scores of others you’ve tive. He’s been assimilating people a bit like the Borg most likely never even heard of. Like it or not, we are experiencing in Star Trek. Actually, there’s probably an app for that now. what some claim to be the biggest shift since the Industrial It was bound to happen, I suppose, such has been the Revolution. unremitting pace of change, but it only seems like yesterday Inevitably, social media has radically changed the way that when dial-up internet had us all excitedly heralding the dawn we communicate – as individuals, as corporations, as human of a shiny new era in communications technology. Yes, that beings. For many of us, it’s simply become part of our psyche manic screeching which got steadily louder as the modem and has rewritten the rules on interaction. “It’s really hard to went berserk (a bit like a robot being hung, drawn and quar- grasp the sheer scope of the shift, especially since things are tered) was incredibly annoying, and everything was so basic still moving so quickly,” says Johanna Blakley, managing that broadband wasn’t even a word yet. But hey, we were cool, director and director of research at the Norman Lear Center in we were hitching a ride down the information superhighway, the US, a research and public policy institute which explores with the window down and the radio turned up. Little did we the conver-gence of entertainment, commerce and society. know that we were on a collision course with a juggernaut full of “I’m always trying to find people who seem to have some ludicrously high phone bills. perspective on it, but it’s very hard to have perspective when How things have changed. In what seems like the blink of we ourselves are orchestrating the change through our an eye, the internet has revolutionized almost everything and participation. Social media is basically ‘us’ and we don’t know social media (now the number one online activity) has penetrated what we’re doing yet.” the very fabric of our identity, culture and behavior. If you need Perhaps not, but the sheer speed at which all forms of convincing, consider the numbers. Recent figures revealed that social media have been so readily accepted and embraced Zuckerberg’s all-conquering Facebook now has more than a has been phenomenal. Something which doesn’t surprise billion users. Famously, if it was a country, it would be the Blakley. “We’re deeply social creatures, this is how we world’s third largest. Its ever-expanding community dwarfs the have survived and thrived. Sharing stories by the campfire, more than respectable 100 million users signed up to both scratching images onto cave walls – we are driven to commuTwitter and LinkedIn. nicate with one another and to join groups that give us Social media has been so readily embraced that words like pleasure and help us stay alive. Social media technologies just tweet and blogging have entered the international lexicon. offer us more tools to do what comes quite naturally to us.” No Clicking a “like” button has become as familiar as pressing a surprise then that companies and large corporations soon doorbell. And we haven’t even mentioned YouTube yet – now realized the potential of channels such as Facebook, YouTube
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and Twitter (some quicker than others), and the general consensus now is that no organization in its right mind should be operating without a social media policy. “Companies have to evaluate exactly how many resources they wish to devote to it, because ignoring it is no longer an option,” continues Blakeley, who is based at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. “The key, of course, is figuring out what you really want to get out of your effort: More customers? Happier customers? Better word of mouth? These are different goals accomplished through different social media platforms and strategies.” When asked to cite examples of companies that are using social media particularly well, she mentions JetBlue and Zappos, remarking that they have “done an incredible job connecting with their customers.” This is partly due to the fact that they’ve managed to convince people that their businesses are run by actual people. “Humans tend to like that,” she adds wryly. At AkzoNobel, social media quickly established itself as an integral part of the communications toolkit. “It has brought a new dimension to our global dialog and offers an almost inexhaustible range of channels,” notes Stephan Hoevenaar, the company’s Manager of Digital Communications. “The trick is to determine the best way to benefit from the vast array of tools and decide who it is you are trying to target and why. Companies have never before been able to learn so much about their customers and their interests. It enriches the power of our communication and creates an opportunity for us to find new business, monitor the behavior of target audiences, have a proper dialog and become part of their social network.” But how do you know if you’re having any impact? “It’s tough to measure, but we do use a dashboard which combines various metrics and allows us to gauge the success of our campaigns and communication efforts,” Hoevenaar goes on. “I also expect more tools to be developed, which will then enable companies to get a better overview of their performance and return on investment.” It all used to be so different, of course. There was a time – not all that long ago – when there was no internet. If you
Left: Concentric discs of sunlight refracted through dew drops suspended from a garden spider’s web. Photography: David Maitland.
wanted to interact with someone, you often had to (God forbid) write a letter. “Before we had social media we suffered. At least I suffered,” explains Blakley. “I always tell people how miserable I was growing up in small-town America in the 1970s and 80s. If I had been able to socialize with a global community of people who actually shared my interests, I would have been a much, much happier kid. As it was, I just spun my wheels in the crappy city library, waiting for the day I could finally move away and use a big college library.” It may have since gone on to virtually take over the world, but social media still meets with some pockets of resistance. “We’ve still got a pretty serious digital divide in the world and so there are still lots of poor souls who do not yet have the luxury of access. But among those who choose not to connect, I just think it’s a foolhardy choice (and that includes my boyfriend).” The benefits of social media are pretty much undisputed. You only have to look at how it’s being used in news reporting and crisis response to realize the power of its immediacy. But there’s a darker side to instant global access which is tarnishing its otherwise glowing reputation. Some claim that channels such as Facebook are alienating people rather than bringing them together, that they are having a damaging dehumanizing effect. The role these sites are playing in helping to perpetrate cyber-bullying and activism (so-called crimesourcing) has also been raising concern. “Any tool can be used as a weapon and social media is one of the more powerful and widely distributed tools I think we’ve ever seen,” admits Blakley. “I do get very frustrated, though, with commentators who bemoan how stupid new media makes us. I just find that claim preposterous.” All things considered, social media is still very much in its infancy. Yes it has already transformed the way we communicate and what we actually say, but this is only the beginning. Prepare yourselves for an explosion of connected experiences. “Social media tools will continue to develop and grow even bigger,” claims Hoevenaar. “There’s no doubt that digital and social media will become an even bigger part of day-to-day life for companies and individuals. The borders between social media and traditional media – such as the internet, television
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A graphic illustrating active social network behavior around the world. Source: globalwebindex.net.
Canada 11.72 m 54% 43% 28%
US 114.55 m 51% 43% 20%
Brazil 33.49 m 54% 51% 34%
and print – are rapidly disappearing and old school media are being challenged to reinvent themselves, otherwise they will vanish completely.” Adds Blakley: “I believe that we’ll see a much more profound (and dizzying) integration of the offline and online worlds. The kinds of GPS-driven social media mobile apps that we see burbling up today are the precursors to what I believe will be lifechanging technologies, applications that will marry all the strengths and advantages of digital networks with the urgent ‘here and now’ of our physical lives. It will be mind-blowing. I think social media will become so deeply embedded in every aspect of our lived experience that it will basically become constitutive of reality. Won’t that be wild?”
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Russia 28.08 m 55% 62% 46%
UK
China
19.27 m 44%
155.29 m
40%
47% 53%
28%
34%
The Netherlands 6.30 m 45% 42%
South Korea
15% 10.93 m 23% 33% 11%
Japan 13.55 m 16%
Germany
15%
18.81 m
08%
47%
Hong Kong
38%
2.56 m
32%
39% 55%
France
33%
15.92 m 57%
Indonesia
45%
18.93 m
28%
57%
India
66%
35.08 m
52%
50%
Australlia
64% 7.05 m
49%
50% 48% 27% Singapore 1.95 m 48% 57% 32%
Behavior types: Active social networkers (millions) Message and mailers Content sharers Joiners and creators of groups
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Pimp my ride There was a time when only liquid paint was applied to the topcoat of new cars. Now powder coatings are taking the industry in a new direction. Words Daniel Grafton
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llow me to start with a question. Name one major industry which has been forced to battle against adverse change over recent years? Now, there’s no shortage of options, but chances are that the vast majority of you first thought of the car industry. Buffeted by a clamor for cleaner emissions, hammered by rising fuel costs and crippled by reduced credit (an issue for both suppliers and the car-buying public), the global motor industry faced a difficult choice back in 2008 – to downsize or risk going out of business all together. Things then reached a nadir for the US car industry when two of the big three manufacturers – General Motors and Chrysler – had to be bailed out by the taxpayer following the economic crash. Other nations fared little better. From Japan to Germany, the big vehicle manufacturers suffered a monumental fall in
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exports, which required a swift and radical response. Workers change and the 2008 economic crash forced them to address were laid off, factories ran at reduced capacity and this. Now they’ve downsized, become much more nimble, governments had little choice but to introduce stimulus with a clearer focus on innovation and design.” He adds that packages. These took on various forms and included initia- Ford has also started to concentrate more on technology in a tives such as car-scrapping schemes and tax relief on more bid to capture a younger audience. “Their cars now feature eco-efficient models. It was drastic action to say the least, but more electronic accessories, such as iPod docks, satellite it proved to be partially successful and, fortunately, the car interface and Bluetooth as standard. In addition, consumers manufacturers (including the mighty US duo) emerged from all are looking for environmentally-friendly cars that are cheap. the turmoil in one piece. Albeit a much leaner piece. You only have to look at the recent introduction of a nano-car However, according to Kevin Hales from AkzoNobel’s in India – which costs just $3,000 – to realize where things are Powder Coatings business, they are still having to wrestle with going. Consumer demand is challenging manufacturers and demanding conditions. “Without doubt, the biggest challenge their suppliers and vice-versa.” facing the car industry is how to continue to advance while Hales, who is Global Segment Manager for Powder keeping in touch with customer demand. Companies like Coatings, goes on to explain that the changes that are taking General Motors were, in their previous form, far too large to place also extend to paint. “Traditionally, the car industry –
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from original equipment suppliers (OEMs) to consumers – use apply liquid products. “Although the same robots are used, liquid paints for vehicle topcoats. In some ways, this is the paint gun and the delivery system are completely different,” because paint suppliers have not always been as innovative notes Bell. “This means that the OEM has to install a specialized as they could have been in coming up with alternatives. powder coating booth. They can’t just use or adapt a preAlthough the likes of BMW, General Motors, Chrysler and existing liquid booth.” While this involves an initial investment, Volvo have tested non-liquid paints, there hasn’t been a sus- the associated cost savings mean that it’s a very enticing tained developmental push. But times change, and these proposition. But what about bodyshops that repair damaged other alternatives are starting to become more viable, including cars featuring a powder finish? Will they also require expensive powder coatings.” He’s quick to point out that AkzoNobel new equipment? “One of the advantages of the powder recently launched a new powder coating to specifically coating is that it can be repaired with standard liquid paints, as address this shift in the market. Part of the Interpon A5000 proven using a standard AkzoNobel car refinishing system,” range, it became the first ever full body monocoat powder says Bell. “So it shouldn’t cost the consumer any extra to coating to be used on a passenger vehicle in Europe when it repair than a car coated with a normal liquid clearcoat.” was showcased by PSA Peugeot Citroën on a DS4 at this With such glowing reviews, does this herald the end of the year’s Cannes SURCAR 2011 Congress. road for liquid paint on cars? “The performance differences Actually, many of the challenges faced by your average 21st between liquid and powder are varied and, of course, all century car maker can be addressed with powder coatings, paints have different characteristics,” Bell goes on. “But from lowering costs and increasing energy efficiency to ultimately, once the paint film is cured – be it powder or liquid reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “While traditional liquid – the customer’s expectation is always the same. How does it paints require four coats – an electrocoat, a primer, a basecoat look? What are the performance characteristics? At the end of and a clearcoat – powder coatings only need two layers, an the day, powder provides another option for OEMs and electrocoat and a monocoat,” explains Graeme Bell, who is consumers.” And choice, as we all know, is what consumers Market Coordination Manager Automotive for AkzoNobel’s love. Enthuses Hales: “This is a pioneering development and it Powder Coatings business. “This results in reduced complexity, really injects excitement into the business.” reduced processes and ultimately reduced energy consumption Many people are most likely unaware of the fact that in the paint shop.” All of which means that OEMs save money, powder coatings have evolved steadily – but very successfully which they should, in theory, pass on to the consumer. And – in the car industry, dating all the way back to the early 1980s, when you consider that paint shops account for half a when powder primer was first used as an anti-chip manufacturing plant’s energy consumption, we are talking big bodycoating. Originally designed as a functional coating, its money. Another advantage of using a powder coating is that it excellent coverage made it ideal for coating complex, hidden is solid. “No solvents are used during manufacture, so powder components, including engine blocks, springs and brakes. paint contains no VOCs,” continues Hales. “This means a 50 The technology then transferred to exteriors, such as door percent reduction in greenhouse gases in plant processing and trims and handles, wiper blades and roof racks, before the a 20 to 25 percent cost reduction for the OEM. Environmental paint’s durability against harsh road surfaces and washing concerns can often mean higher costs and lower performance, made it an obvious coating for wheels. (Today, AkzoNobel has but actually the opposite is true here.” a global lead supply position in the wheel component market There are, of course, some additional requirements for the segment). By the end of the 1980s, these performance OEM to consider if they choose the powder option. For a start, features led to the use of powder coatings as a clearcoat for a radically different paint gun is needed than the one used to aluminum wheels. “Because of the inherent economic and
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environmental features, powder coatings have for some time been looking to evolve,” adds Hales. “From being a primer layer for body coating into the mainstream topcoat market. As always, innovation spawns new technologies.” With the growth in the number of vehicles manufactured globally on the increase – 63 million vehicles were built in 2009, 73 million in 2010 and an estimated 100 million will be built by 2020 – Hales reckons that powder is well poised to pounce. “The market for powder topcoats is wide open, as less than 10 percent of the bodycoat market is currently powder. Demographically, this growth will primarily be driven by the BRIC nations, particularly in the Asia Pacific region and India. The middle class is due to double in these regions and they will demand smaller and more economic, ultra-low cost cars. However, the traditional western OEMs will also benefit, as companies such as General Motors spread their wings into these markets. AkzoNobel has the advantage of having worked in these Asian growth countries for more than 20 years, so we are well positioned to benefit. Our Powder Coatings business is innovating and leading the way for our customers.” But hold on a minute. Doesn’t AkzoNobel supply both liquid and powder paints? Doesn’t that mean the company is competing against itself? “Not at all, the exact opposite in fact,” states Bell. “Our automotive powder business focuses on coatings for new cars, while the liquid paint car refinishes business deals with repair work. Our specialty plastics business also provides coatings for plastic components, so it’s more a case of all the elements working together to satisfy our customers’ needs.” And what about the future for powder coatings on cars? “The next step in powder’s evolution is to create base color coats for wheels, trim and components and develop more metallic and reflective finishes,” concludes Hales. “I actually can’t think of a better solution to today’s environmental issues for the car industry than powder coatings. They don’t require water, produce about 1 percent of waste during production and application and preserve the world’s resources.” It’s a new direction which the car industry is finally beginning to embrace and which should help to put it back on the road to success.
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pparently, I was the 3,305,214,483rd person alive on definitely happen, so we’ve only got a very short time to make Earth when I was born. Since then – the dim and sure we choose the more humane alternative.” distant mid-1960s – the world’s population has more A former diplomat (who still bears the scars of an Atlanta than doubled. We’ve now topped seven billion, a fact policeman’s cattle prod sustained during a Civil Rights march you surely can’t have missed, given all the fuss that was made with Martin Luther King), Martin became chairman of Population about it when the landmark was reached back in October. To Matters in 2009. Its mission is to help avert ecological failure by put that figure into some sort of perspective, it’s worth pointing raising awareness of the urgent need to stabilize – and in many out that it took all of human history to reach a world population cases reduce – rising populations by voluntary means in almost of 1.6 billion at the beginning of the 20th century. Now, with all countries. “We need to get the problem discussed openly, births exceeding deaths at the rate of 10,000 an hour, without any of the blame or hysteria which often surrounds estimates suggest we’re on course to reach the nine billion the subject,” he continues. “In terms of practical action, the mark by 2050. overwhelming top priority is to get population growth recognized Some may well embrace this overcrowding of the planet, as a problem right up there with climate change, peak oil, soil because it means more business opportunities. There are more erosion and water shortage. It isn’t the cause of any of those people to buy stuff, which translates into more potential things, but it is the multiplier of all of them. None of them can be customers. Hence more profit. However, those same people solved effectively while population numbers keep rising.” also need feeding, they need energy to heat their homes. They Before the 20th century, no human had lived through a need to consume. Therein lies the problem. The Earth is doubling of the population, but there are people alive today who struggling to cope as it is, and with natural resources fast dis- have seen it triple. With a billion people already going hungry appearing, where is all the extra food and fuel going to come every day, it’s clear Martin’s fears are well founded, but one of from? While you’re pondering that particular dilemma, consider his main concerns is that the population issue has become the situation come 2050, by which time the pressure on soil, something of a taboo and too many people are burying their water, land and fossil fuels could have reached critical levels. heads in the sand. The problem hasn’t been without its According to Roger Martin, chairman of UK charity scandals either, notably the program headed by Sanjay Gandhi Population Matters, the UN’s 7 Billion Day – “celebrated” on in India in the early 1970s. A voluntary incentive scheme was October 31 – was a sobering reminder of our predicament. introduced whereby men received a free transistor radio if they With the world now in the midst of the most rapid population got a vasectomy. expansion ever, it was a much-needed wake-up call to the fact “There was an abuse of the system,” explains Martin. that indefinite population growth is physically impossible on a “Officials were given quotas, which meant they got a bonus. This finite planet. “I hope I’m wrong, but I think the very fabric of led to some of them coercing people into having the treatment.” civilization is under real threat,” warns Martin. Currently, China operates the only coercive model in the world “The life support system of the planet is degrading at – the One Child Policy – which Martin admits has been effective considerable speed because of the pressure being exerted on (over 400 million births are thought to have been prevented). But it by population and consumption. It’s an unsustainable he points out there are still an extra million Chinese mouths to process, so at some point in the future, on a finite planet, it is feed roughly every five weeks. Which is less acute than India, absolutely certain that population growth will end. When it where the population increases by a million every 19 days. does, it can only end in one of two ways. Either sooner by fewer “They are so desperate to do something in India that they have births – through contraception backed by government policy – just relaunched an incentive program,” adds Martin, “raising the or later by nature’s way, which is famine, disease and war. It will amount of money for women who get voluntary sterilizations.”
Population bomb We’re experiencing the most rapid population expansion since time began. The Earth is straining under the pressure as resources begin to dwindle. Is it all a fuss about nothing, or as human numbers continue to soar, has the countdown to the planet’s destruction already begun? Words David Lichtneker
Photography: Gemma Higgins-Sears iriscreationsphotography.com.
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Photography: Tom Carter.
Family planning could go a long way to easing the pressure on the planet, but only 67 countries have official policies in place designed to stabilize their population growth, the top two – somewhat surprisingly – being Thailand and Iran. Both have achieved equivalent reductions in fertility to China, only they have done it by voluntary means. The whole issue of family planning is one which Martin gets particularly passionate about. He vividly recalls a UN population conference in Cairo in 1994, which he had high hopes for, as it offered an ideal opportunity to add a powerful women’s rights/women’s health/sexual repro-ductive rights element to existing concern about the problem. However, he says the meeting effectively formalized a taboo on discussing population growth, by defining it as an issue solely of reproductive health and rights; and thus marginalized family planning as merely a sub-set of a sub-set of health policy, instead of recognizing that it was a solution to the population crisis. As a result, decision-makers have been systematically failing to fund programs to meet the rising unmet need (215 million women worldwide) for proper family planning services. States Martin: “It’s grotesque to think that the total amount of money it would take to meet these unmet needs – around $6.7 billion – is $200 million less than people in the US spend on Hallowe’en every year. Current total world aid for family planning is pathetic; it’s the same as ten percent of the Goldman Sachs bonus pot. It’s 0.4 percent of total EU aid. We clearly need to thump the table a lot harder in order to get more money into reproductive health aid.” The publicity surrounding 7 Billion Day was at least an opportunity to draw global attention to the problems being posed by the population predicament. Like the fact that just 5 percent of us consume 23 percent of the world’s energy. OK,
so perhaps most people already know that the population issue is most prevalent in the poorest areas of the poorest countries. But do they really understand the severity of the issue? Have they really grasped the simple fact that every extra person on the planet ratchets up the environmental impact? Because they all need and deserve food, water and energy and they’re all going to emit waste, pollution and carbon dioxide one way or another. Apparently not, as ignorance and confusion still appear to be rife, but there are signs that people are starting to get it. For example, two UK surveys commissioned by Population Matters recently found that 80 percent of people in Britain are already worried about the environmental damage being caused by population growth. Meanwhile, to mark the birth of the seven billionth living human, UK newspaper the Guardian invited readers to send in a letter welcoming the new arrival. They printed some of the best, and while many were humorous, the underlying message was all too clear, exemplified by the following two submissions: “Shift over would you, there’s a good chap,” and “Welcome to the world, and sorry about the mess.” Some might call it scaremongering, but Martin is in no doubt that humanity stands on the verge of a monumentally important phase of its existence. To drive home the point, he makes reference to the UK’s chief scientist, who last year spoke about a perfect storm approaching our century, comprising population growth, climate change and peak oil, leading to ever greater food, water and energy insecurity. “These are huge issues for our planet,” stresses Martin. To emphasize the grave nature of the problem even further, he quotes Maurice Strong, SecretaryGeneral of the first Earth Summit in 1992, whose chilling words needs no further explanation: “Either we reduce our numbers voluntarily, or nature will do it for us – brutally.”
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Hope for a brave new world
Some scientists have predicted doom and gloom for our world now that we’re heading towards the next landmark of eight billion people on the planet – expected within the next 12 years. Admittedly, the questions being posed are potentially frightening. Will scarcity of fresh water, land and raw materials result in war, hunger, disease, social unrest and mass migration? Is demography becoming our destiny? Will the Earth be destroyed by the population bomb? If you look back at our planet’s history, evidence suggests there are reasons for optimism. In 1798, for example, English scholar Reverend Thomas Malthus predicted that the world – with less than a billion inhabitants at the time – would not be able to feed itself due to population growth. A few years later, the ancestors of the chemical industry developed a key innovation – fertilizer – which in turn led to the Agricultural Revolution. Fast forward 100 years and in the early 1900s, famous Russian economist Kondratieff noticed an important cyclical pattern. He realized that around every 60 years – the lifetime of a generation – a new Industrial Revolution evolves. To prove his point, the full deployment of the steam engine around 1860 was followed by electrification roughly six decades later, while the same length of time went by before the information technology age dawned. If we project Kondratieff’s notion forward, it suggests we’ll soon herald the start of another technological revolution. The good news is that mankind is sufficiently innovative to deliver on a new sustainable growth model within the ecological limits of the planet.
André Veneman Corporate Director of Sustainability AkzoNobel
Let’s consider Malthus’ concerns about running out of food. Today, there is no doubt that global food production can serve more than seven billion people. But with current agricultural technology, we would need two-and-a-half planets in 2050 in order to produce sufficient food. So business as usual is not an option – we need to double food production with only half the ecological footprint. Fortunately, research conducted at Wageningen University in the Netherlands has proved that this is achievable through more sustainable production facilities, more sustainable value chains, less waste and genetically improved (modified) crops. How do we get there? Billions of people in developing and emerging economies are still in need of much better living standards. With the currently available bio-capacity, that is indeed a serious problem. Today, the world’s population already uses 1.5 times the replenishment capacity of the planet’s natural resources. In order to sustain an adequate level of human development, the eco-effectiveness of resource use needs to be improved by a factor of eight to ten. Offices and houses should become energy and carbon neutral and completely recyclable. Transport and mobility should become 80 percent more energy efficient. Companies – such as AkzoNobel – will be part of a paradigm shift – a market transition with winners and losers. However, the good news is that all of the sustainable innovations mentioned above are possible. Why wait for an environmental crisis? Strong leaders – leading companies – can make change happen now.
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Flights of fancy First the Airbus A380 was heralded as a game-changer. Now it’s the turn of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner. But what’s the aviation industry really going to be like for airline passengers in years to come?
WORDS Brian Guest
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H
ailed as a landmark in aerospace technology, Boeing’s latest offering, the long-awaited and rapturously received 787 Dreamliner, finally took to the skies on its first commercial flight towards the end of 2011. Resplendent in the livery of All Nippon Airways, the Dreamliner is ironically revolutionary in everything other than appearance, as it is the first passenger aircraft to be built almost entirely from composite materials. The first thing many seasoned travelers will be asking themselves is whether or not hurtling across the stratosphere at 500mph in a composite tube together with 250 total strangers is going to be a completely different experience to flying in an aluminum tube? Well, probably not. But, according to first reports from the elite group of passengers on the Dreamliner’s inaugural flight from Japan to Hong Kong, the omens are pretty good. Just about everything that can be measured in terms of comfort and technology has taken a big step forward. For the passenger, more space, improved air quality, bigger windows and softer lighting mean a
healthier and better overall flying experience. For the airlines, the Dreamliner will be more economical and less polluting. Fuel consumption and CO2 emissions have been cut 20 percent, helped by the lighter, more maintenance-friendly, composite fuselage and a new generation of fuel efficient engines. Assembling the aircraft will be a completely different experience. Whereas the old-style 747 has a million assembly bolt holes in its fuselage, the Dreamliner has just 10,000 in its one-piece construction. “The 787 exemplifies the latest in technology,” explains Boeing’s Eszter Ungar. “It flies longer distances with less fuel burn than any other airplane flying. Customer airlines have been waiting for a twin aisle airplane that can fly between cities such as London to Hong Kong for a lot less operational cost. This saves passengers money because airlines can charge less for a ticket and it adds convenience by not having to take connecting flights. This is all achieved while making the passenger experience aboard the 787 much better – higher cabin humidity, lower cabin pressure, bigger windows and a more spacious environment.”
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So is the Dreamliner a game-changer? Are we on the cusp of friction, allowing it to swim swiftly and silently through the water. a new dawn in air travel, or is it just hype? Will the public of the By emulating this, we hope to be able to deliver coatings that future continue to be transported around the globe by estab- will improve the airflow on the top of the wing. At present, the lished airlines at greater speed and in more comfort? Or will airflow is being released halfway along the wing causing Richard Branson and other visionaries turn space into the turbulence. If we can solve this, it will mean greater speed, fuel new frontier with supersonic craft that leave and re-enter the efficiency and flying radius. We’re already testing a patch on a Earth’s atmosphere at fantastic hyperspeeds? Perhaps it will Lufthansa aircraft and the results are looking good.” all bejust a trifle more mundane. A flying-machine-cum-car in What does he see in his crystal ball for the years ahead? Joe Public’s garage, perhaps? Well, if Airbus’ recently Because of the nature of the industry, Joe Public shouldn’t published vision of the future is anything to go by, the sky’s the expect quantum leaps, but instead gradual, steady improvelimit in terms of passenger comfort and new technologies in ments on all fronts. Aircraft are 70 percent more fuel efficient the established industry’s neck of the woods. than they were 50 years ago. The A380 is already more fuel The planes of the future will be lighter, more fuel efficient efficient per passenger kilometer than a Toyota Prius. and have a lower carbon footprint far beyond anything that Composites, better engines, new alternative fuels and – from exists today. The passengers will sit in tailored comfort in AkzoNobel’s point of view – more advanced coatings systems personalized zones and enjoy panoramic views of the sky and are driving down weight and turnaround times both for earth below through massive smart-glass windows. The air in passengers and the airlines. Airbus has broken down the the cabin will be fresh and free of bacteria and the lighting will challenges into five key elements: innovation, design, material, be far more subtle, changing to enhance the mood of the sustainability and passenger experience. The company is traveler. Airbus also envisages cabins far removed from the working hard to develop cleaner solutions through the Clean traditional cabin classes found in today’s commercial aircraft. Sky collaborative research program. Fuel burn will continue to We could, for example, find ourselves basking in Vitalizing, be slashed. In fact, Airbus’ next generation of aircraft – the Interaction and Smart Tech zones. The cabin’s bionic structure A320neo family, with Sharklets (the winglets at the tip of a wing) and responsive membrane will combine panoramic views with and a new engine option, which is due to enter service in 2015 an integrated neural network based on the human nervous – will provide a 15 per cent reduction in fuel consumption and system. The aircraft’s systems will be able to identify and an associated 15 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide respond to the specific needs of each passenger. emissions per passenger kilometer. All pie in the sky you might think? Not at all, says Hans Boeing, too, hasn’t been idle when it comes to fuel Polak, Global Technical Director at AkzoNobel’s Automotive economy, having recently announced that the next version of and Aerospace Coatings business, because the technology is its workhorse 737 will have lower operating costs than any starting to make its presence felt. “AkzoNobel has the similar aircraft. With new rivals on the block in the shape of technology to produce coatings for aircraft cabins capable of Canadian company Bombardier’s new narrow-body CSeries killing bacteria,” he explains. “The gripe you often hear about jet and, further down the line, the proposed Chinese C919 and air travel is that it facilitates the spread of all sorts of microbes Russian MS-21 narrow-body jets, all powered by new, highly around the world. We’ve been working to combat this problem efficient engines, the battle for the skies is definitely hotting up. and have developed coatings capable of destroying bacteria Whether or not Airbus’ dream of a see-through, hypermodern or other germs. We can apply these available technologies in craft with its intelligent cabin and bird-like bionic structure ever our cabin coatings as an additional functionality. We’re also sees the light of day is anyone’s guess. At the very least, expect working on other functionality, such coatings that can change to see more and more aircraft take to the sky with giant LCD color and provide a comfortable tactile feel, conduct electricity luminous fuselages, hypermodern and efficient engines and and provide tints that influence people’s moods. We’ve already mature composite technologies. It’s all a lot closer than you introduced a coating that will ward off insects.” think. What’s certain is that the arrival of the Dreamliner spells Although essentially a highly conservative industry in which the beginning of the end of an era dominated by metal aircraft. new technologies usually have to run a ten-year gauntlet of It’s all a far cry from the Ford Trimotor, one of the first rigorous testing and retesting before being introduced, Polak aircraft to carry paying passengers commercially back in the points to a raft of technologies that will raise the bar even 1930s. The Tin Goose as it was known, had no air conditioning higher. One such game-changing technology is being inspired and little heating. The plane was hot in summer and cold in by a creature, the very name of which touches upon our worst winter, and with no circulation system, its environment was primal fears – that denizen of the deep, the shark. “We’re made even more unpleasant by the smell of hot oil and metal, developing coatings designed to reduce drag on the exterior of leather seats – and disinfectant used to clean up after airsick an aircraft,” he continues. “A shark’s ridged scales reduce passengers. Now that was flying.
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Top: Airbus’ vision of the future includes passenger airlines with panoramic views. Photography: Airbus S.A.S. Above: Noise improvement in Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner comes from a new generation of engines, such as the Rolls Royce Trent 1000. Photography: The Boeing Company.
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When the rains came They were the worst floods to hit Pakistan for 80 years. Lives were lost. Lives changed. But hope emerged from the tragedy. WORDS Seemi Saad
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ate at night I heard screams and been rebuilt from scratch, a house built realized something was wrong. by a nation, for a family. My father dragged us out of the Bakhtiar is a resident of the village house and I remember looking of Munda Headworks, which lies along back to see if I could pick something the banks of the gently gurgling and up, but we had to run because the water usually calm River Swat, which flows was coming. I don’t remember much through a valley all the way from the after that, just a lot of chaos and snow-capped peaks of the Hindukush confusion as we all climbed the nearby Range. Bakhtiar’s village, in the north mountain. I remember watching the of Pakistan, was one of the first to be water hit my village and taking everything hit as the River Swat swelled up and with it, even my school. tore along the banks, sweeping away So goes the story as narrated by dozens of villages alongside. This is ten-year-old Bakhtiar about the devas- normally a visually stunning area, with tating floods that hammered Pakistan in primitive landscapes, endless views and August 2010 – the worst for 80 years. a rich tapestry of colors spread across It’s a heartbreaking tale – of lost lives, a the ridges. The Headworks – a megabitter winter spent in makeshift tents, of irrigation system used to control the destitution, despe-ration and despair – water flow of the River Swat – was yet it’s one which has a silver lining. The constructed by British engineers in 1921. story was being told on a cold, dry They stand out like mythical towers November evening, from beneath a surrounded by gushing water, but they cozy blanket. Inside a house which had were severely damaged by the floods,
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with six out of eight gates being washed away, resulting in total havoc. When the floods hit in 2010, there was no time to mourn the departed. While 20 million may have survived – albeit barely – most of them, like Bakhtiar and his family, lost everything, save the will to live. Their nightmare was just beginning. No food, no shelter, a harsh winter ahead and the knowledge that the public cavalry was not coming. The government had neither the equipment, the funds nor the infrastructure to deal with a crisis of this scale. While the authorities scampered to put together press statements and seek foreign aid, out of the crisis the nation came together. A nation which was proud, united in intent and focused on commitment. As news broke of the floods, I called a friend. Tens of thousands like me called their friends. Silently, yet swiftly, hundreds of miles away, relief efforts began
to happen. People opened their homes to strangers (friends of friends of friends) and started to collect relief goods. Anything was welcome, from food and medical supplies to old clothing. These relief points coordinated with each other and took supplies to large public areas such as parks, playgrounds and schools, where thousands of volunteers gathered to pack everything together. Friends involved in transport started allocating trucks and booking train carriages to carry the goods to the affected areas. Food supplies, medical camps, temporary shelters and rescue equipment appeared as if on cue and organized teams of relief workers quickly reached the disaster sites and set about saving all they could. On the surface, the mechanism was exactly as it would be in most organized countries with a developed infrastructure and elaborate, state-run recovery pro-
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grams. However, what made this impressive and highly efficient program unique was that it was entirely run on an informal basis. In fact, it was a system which reminded me of President Lincoln’s “of the people, by the people, for the people,” quote. Eventually, the flood waters started to ebb and the Good Samaritan relief efforts helped avert a major humanitarian crisis. However, the realization then dawned that Bakhtiar and the other 20 million victims were still without hope for the future. Relief camps would end, so where would all those who had lost their homes and livelihoods go to? What would they do? How would their lives limp back to normality? Life on life support was really no life at all, was it? That’s when the country turned to its professional partners – non-profit organizations and corporations – to begin the painstaking, but much-needed, rehabilitation process. One such exam-ple was the program put together by the ICI Pakistan Foundation, a registered Trust run and managed by ICI Pakistan Limited, part of AkzoNobel. The Foun-dation set up two villages for those affected by the floods, one in the heart of Punjab – through funds provided by AkzoNobel’s Community Program – and one village at Munda Headworks, built with money donated by the staff of ICI Pakistan. The Foundation partnered with a non-profit organization, Karachi Relief Trust, who through its team of engineers and architects built many villages across the country. The development model
which was adopted for the rebuilding effort was based entirely on community participation. Villagers were given the material and training for building houses and, with the help of on-site supervision, entire villages were rebuilt by the survivors themselves. The participatory model develops tremendous ownership among communities and is a great step towards self-sufficiency, as people not only have the necessary skills and experience which will help them to manage similar crises, but they can also use the training as a means of livelihood. In addition, dependency on external assistance is reduced as communities are “enabled” to take action on their own. As the cold, dry November wind whistles through the rocky mountains of the north, Bakhtiar snuggles up under his blanket, enjoying the warmth from the sandhalaye (coal burner) which fills the room he shares with his family. The house is small, but for Bakhtiar and his family, it is life itself. He remembers the bitterly cold winter of last year, when they were shivering in the makeshift tents of the relief camps and life was just about surviving from one day to another. He smiles at the thought of waking up in the morning to the smell of parathas (fried bread) and chai his mother would be cooking and then rushing off to his newly rebuilt school, where his friends would be waiting for him. He thinks about how much life has changed and smiles because, for him and his family, life still has a lot to offer.
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Communities were encouraged to participate in the rebuilding program and entire villages were rebuilt by the survivors themselves.
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Jean-François Bouchard, photographer and President of Canadian creative agency Sid Lee 1 A few years ago, my kids were playing Frisbee with a vinyl record without a clue what it was used for two decades ago. It is a great metaphor for the dramatic changes that the music industry has experienced and a reminder that all sectors are exposed to technological disruptions that can play havoc with the most proven business models. 2 The marketing industry has witnessed far-reaching changes, the extent of which we are only beginning to grasp. Teenagers now spend more time online than watching TV. Can you imagine what this will mean when they reach adulthood? 3 Did you notice how it became unacceptable (even illegal) in most North American cities not to clean up your dog’s poop? Strange how a behavior goes on for centuries and then suddenly becomes antisocial in a matter of a decade. However, the Parisians still have some catching up to do on this point.
Seminal moments in history
Global events impact the world at such breakneck speed it’s sometimes hard to keep track of just how much our world is changing – and how quickly. In order to determine what has transformed our lives the most over the last few decades, we invited a variety of people to briefly list what they think have been the three biggest changes to affect our world since 1994. Why 1994? Because that was a landmark year of transformation in our own history – when Akzo from the Netherlands and Nobel Industries from Sweden came together to create AkzoNobel.
Liangqi Lin, President of AkzoNobel China 1 The emergence of China over the last decade as an economic superpower. 2 9/11. It changed the global political map and resulted in the US concentrating its political and economic focus on a decade-long anti-terrorism campaign. Its deficit position has also moved from bad to worse. 3 The emergence of a united Europe and the euro. The capital and economic movement with a united euro has helped European countries. However, in some of these countries, poorly managed sovereign spending and debt levels will result in long-standing issues regarding the handling of cross-country macro finance systems.
Dr Jonas Frisén, professor of stem cell research and winner of the 2011 AkzoNobel Science Award 1 Terrorism and the war on terror. The change in the pattern of terrorism and the response to it has greatly affected international relations. The cost of the United States’ war on terror has contributed to their economical problems, which affects most of the world today. 2 The development of China. China is rapidly becoming a new major player in most aspects of politics and business. Even in science, which is often thought to take very long to develop, China is rapidly becoming a superpower. The increasing wealth of China promises to improve the standard of living for the people of the most populous country. 3 The common realization of the role of climate change. Over the last few years, we have gained a common understanding that climate change may change our planet in drastic ways. This results in changes in energy policies and will continue to do so.
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Takayuki Koike, AkzoNobel Country Coordinator, Japan 1 The introduction of the euro. Under current globalized financial activities, if one country defaults it spreads to the rest of the world in an instant. Therefore, the event was a great experiment for the rest of the planet in terms of realizing a world with sustainable growth and moderate finance, while respecting the value of relevant customs in each member country. 2 Agreeing a framework convention on climate change. The 1994 agreement was a significant step in terms of the world working together to preserve vital natural resources for future generations. Everyone should unite for this purpose beyond the individual interests of the current generation. 3 Japan’s 2011 tsunami and nuclear power plant incident. The disaster opened people’s eyes to just how frail safety can be and how it can sometimes be neglected. I hope it proves to be an historical turning point which prompts people globally to look at the way they live and become more eco-friendly.
Hans Wijers, AkzoNobel CEO 1 The internet/new media. The impact of the digital revolution has seen the world move quickly away from the likes of the fax machine and voicemail to one where everyone can be permanently online and connected. 2 The rise of the emerging markets. Seismic changes in the geoeconomical and geo-political arena have brought about the end of the dominance of the Western nations. 3 Sustainability. It has rocketed from its low key position as an issue promoted by small NGOs to being a key differentiator in company strategies.
Richard Holland, Chief Conservation Officer, WWF Netherlands 1 Proof that we are changing the climate. The scientific evidence has become irrefutable over the last decade, thanks largely to the IPPC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). The climate is changing and human activities are mainly responsible. Unless substantial and far-reaching action is taken in the coming ten years, we are on course for three to four degrees of average temperature rise by the second half of this century, with devastating impacts on people and nature. This knowledge has already led to reassessment of our fossil-fuelled economy and spawned a low carbon, “cleantech” development paradigm. 2 China’s dominant role in trade and consumption of resources. China’s economic growth has led to it playing a dominant role in global supply chains for natural resources to meet the needs of its own population, as well as that of many Western countries. China is the number one in trade and consumption of soy, seafood (wild-caught and farmed) and fishmeal, timber and pulp, and cotton, as well as coal, oil and various metals. The extraction of these resources in South East Asia, Africa and Latin America is threatening some of the most important places for global biodiversity (Amazon, Cerrado, Borneo, Coral Triangle) and means that China has a vital role to play in determining the sustainability of ecosystems on which millions of people depend. 3 Getting “more from less” with the System of Rice Intensification (SRI). This innovation in rice growing based on fewer seedlings, wider spacing and wet-dry growing, has spread from Madagascar to all rice growing countries. This has increased the profitability and reliability of rice growing for paddy farmers, especially in areas affected by water shortages, and has contributed to basic food security for tens of millions of poor people. Similar innovations in other crops and livestock products that enable more to be produced on the same land area are needed urgently to bring humanity’s footprint back in line with what the Earth can deliver sustainably.
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Martin Kraemer, CEO Greater China, Lanxess Chemical (China) Co., Ltd 1 The Rise of China/Asia. Led by the four “Asian Tigers” (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan), the Asian economies – and particularly China – have significantly grown in size and importance. China itself really took off after the famous southern tour of Deng Xiao Ping in 1992. The financial crisis of 1997/98 hit some Asian countries hard, but most have recovered to make the 21st the Asian century. 2 9/11. The 2001 attacks had far-reaching effects in a number of areas. Most obviously they were the starting point for the war on terror. On a more subtle note, there were many detrimental effects on democratic rights and legitimization of certain acts. Discussions about this still go on today. Moreover, 9/11 had a strongly negative effect on the economy, starting with the biggest ever one-day drop at the New York Stock Exchange when it re-opened on September 17. 3 The collapse of Lehman. On September 15, 2008, the then fourth largest US investment bank filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. This became the symbol for what started as the subprime crisis and developed into a fully fledged financial and banking crisis. Its aftermath is still around today in the form of the public debt crisis which has the potential to further destabilize economic – and political – development in the coming years.
Pierre E. Cohade, President of Goodyear Asia Pacific 1 The internet. Back in 1994, the only Amazon we knew was located in Brazil and “tweeting” wasn’t cool. Today, you can’t get through the day without a Google search or an e-mail. 2 The end of low cost energy and commodities. Oil was trading at $16 a barrel in 1994. Today, energy efficiency, recycling and no waste, renewable sources of energy and materials have solidly moved from “doing good CSR” initiatives to table stake business practices needed to maintain competitiveness. 3 Multi-polar world. Globalization, free trade and a few geopolitical and economic events have created a multi-polar world in which the BRIC region generates more than half of global economic growth. China is on its way to becoming the world’s largest economy and the US, no longer an economic and military hyperpower, needs to collaborate with its allies.
Robert Swan OBE, environmentalist and polar explorer 1 The fact that since 1994, science has confirmed it’s highly likely that man-made greenhouse gases are causing climate change through global warming. 2 Due to the crash of 2007/08, the world has realized that we can no longer continue to be totally consumed by consuming. 3 In 2011, China drew up its 12th five-year plan and it included the word sustainability. It might just be one word, but it could be the defining moment which helps to save our species on Earth.
Expancel microspheres: Small things that make big things happen
Accelerating in Asia With more than 200 million vehicles expected to be driving on China’s roads by 2020, the surging market is creating increasing demand throughout the country’s automotive sector. China has now overtaken the US as the world’s top car market and AkzoNobel’s activities in the region were recently accelerated by the announcement of a €60 million investment to increase the production capacity of our Automotive and Aerospace Coatings business. As well as constructing a new production facility in Changzhou, we will build related warehousing, quality control laboratories, support facilities and offices on the new site, which is projected to be operational in early 2014. The project will increase capacity by around 25 million liters and will build on 2010’s acquisition of the Changzhou Prime Automotive Paint Co. business. As well as helping to meet rapidly increasing customer demand, we will be better positioned to further strengthen our leadership position and achieve our revenue ambition of $3 billion in China by 2015. The new site in Changzhou will be AkzoNobel’s 29th manufacturing location in China, where we employ around 6,700 people.
We don’t know the full potential of our microspheres. What we do know is that they work miracles for our customers. Let’s be curious together and find out what they can do for you. www.expancel.com
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TOMORROW’S ANSWERS TODAY
THE AKZONOBEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 10 December 2011
THE AKZONOBEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 10
Photography: David Lichtneker.
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change & transformation
AkzoNobel is the largest global paints and coatings company and a major producer of specialty chemicals. We supply industries and consumers worldwide with innovative products and are passionate about developing sustainable answers for our customers. Our portfolio includes well known brands such as Dulux, Sikkens, International and Eka. Headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, we are a Global Fortune 500 company and are consistently ranked as one of the leaders in the area of sustainability. With operations in more than 80 countries, our 55,000 people around the world are committed to excellence and delivering Tomorrow’s Answers Today™.
