Chris Harrop directing the route to sustainability

Chris Harrop was interviewed by Carol Miers.

There's a dash of something in the marketing mix, as if someone added in a drop of an essence, and it's changed the whole meal. What is it that makes the difference?

Not only is Chris Harrop, group marketing director for Marshalls, an accomplished businessman, but he clearly practices the new viewpoint. It is the recipe and the ingredients that are changing. Marshalls' products change at the same time as developments in environmental, sustainable and ethical processes.

Marshalls signed up to the UN Global Compact (Compact) of 1999 and Chris Harrop attended the ten year summit this June in New York. Gaining widespread coverage, Marshalls had followed the Compact's 10 principles in India by changing local practices in labour, education, human rights and the supply chain.

With Indian Sandstone they showed the world their transparent production process; a key point from the summit.

Chris Harrop said: “The thing is to be absolutely transparent in the way we manufacture resource and install and look after products, in fact the whole issue of transparency and the growing consumer demand to know that companies are behaving responsibly.”

But what made them different - to have made so many changes?

“You have to be involved, you can't just say somebody fix it, or that it isn't a problem, I still get people telling me that I'm making it all up so I can sell more products. Well I'm sorry but that's not what the Guardian or the BBC or ITN found,” said Chris Harrop.

In fact the Indian Sandstone project in Rajasthan exposes other companies' practices as much as it shows Marshalls' achievement. For example, some UK companies pulled out when child labour in quarries came to the national screens. Chris Harrop said: “The right thing to do is to find out the issues and start to solve them” - because if companies pull out “there's no money being put into that economy for that product”.

It's no less than changing the culture bringing it into line with ethical practice. To do this, they began work with the NGO Hadoti (Non-governmental organisation Hadoti) and Stone Shippers India.
Download The Stoneshippers story.

Shortly to be opening a creche, they now have 300 children going to school who had never been to school before. Chris Harrop: "If the money that you are putting in is done responsibly then the impact on that community is massive."

When facing the challenges, they applied a modest approach.

"You go in with a mindset that says, I can't impose my Western British views on how things should be solved, because I don't know how that community works, so that's why we've got the NGO who is part of the local community," he said.

He offered an example of this line of attack in the schools: "Originally my view was that we would help a school and send them text books and equip them with all the things that were needed.

"The view with our NGO was that, actually, the most important thing that we could do was provide breakfast and lunch, so that there was an incentive for children to go there in the morning,” he added.

“Without Hadoti it would have taken a long time to find out”.

But couldn't it have been easier and reduce the carbon footprint to simply use UK stone?

Yes, he agreed, if it's looked at from a solely carbon footprint idea.

"It's complex, for sustainability we are balancing social against environmental against economic issues, a landscape business could be the greenest the most environmentally friendly but we wouldn't do anything we wouldn't produce anything," he said.

Ground breaking work, and soon another project will begin, Chris Harrop goes to China in October.

"In China, it's the same framework as India but the detail will change. The issues in China are very different, in China you've got issues on working hours, and there's a lot more on H&S and division of labour," he said.

The Compact China-Japan-Korea conference is currently underway at the Expo in Shanghai. They are sure to be discussing water, as this was the second point that Chris Harrop learned from the June summit. As he said: “big things I took from that were transparency and this whole issue about water and the growing scarcity and the cost of clean water”.

Marshalls' developments apply across the field, from the product source to the manufacturing plant, from delivery or training to local internal policies. There is involvement, communication, and 'walking the walk' and they are all qualities that nobody can afford to disregard.

Marshalls have answered postings on the Landscape Juice Network about water and their permeable paving.

Chris Harrop wants advice to be at hand: "We've got various experts, paving, training, and a skills person for 'How do I?' questions. We are trying to make sure that the experts are there, we want to learn as much as we contribute. The right expert can be brought in.”

They also send teams into neighbourhoods to do a Living Steet Audit
(Download Living Streets), including permeability and an assessment of the sewerage capacity. Chris Harrop thinks that if people added improved drainage to their driveways it would make a huge difference.

“That would have a big impact, if you look at the floods that have just happened in Merseyside, my analysis is that 90% would have been prevented by permeable paving,” he said.

With SUDS or Sustainable Drainage Systems, the answers are already here, but not applied. "If we have another bad winter and wide-scale flooding there will be another government review, well actually all they need to do is to implement the legislation they've got,” Chris Harrop said.

Now that a £2m fund is being promised by the government to prevent flooding, hopefully this will soon change.

But in the first instance, think small, and a simple water butt at home will move things forwards he said.

Less simple are the water saving methods devised to meet Marshall's targets of a 26% reduction in their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. This is water that goes round in circles, that is, isolated systems. "We have two plants that are totally self sufficient in water, we don't take any water whatsoever. It's a long programme we've got a lot of sites,” he said.

It sounds interesting, and optimistic – finding solutions and thinking round the problems. Perhaps just as people are doing everywhere, when turning back to 'growing your own'. Or as Marshalls are doing, working in schools encouraging kids to make the “link between the food on their plate and where it's come from,“ Chris Harrop said.

But there's another link to be made, between landscapers and people creating new gardens. It appears that customers want a different menu choice. As though it's not the ingredients and the method for manufacture but the product, that has to change.

There may be many more surprises from Marshalls. Wherever these appear, they are certain to make a difference.

“We need to challenge ourselves occasionally, and we have done a very large piece of research with consumers, about ...creating new gardens," Chris Harrop said.

"Their priorities are typically very different to the priorities that landscapers think they are. There is definitely a mismatch between consumers' most important elements and what landscapers think they are.

"I am going to put some news up on the forum in terms of where we've got to, what consumers most important elements are when they are creating a new garden versus what landscapers think they are."

Chris Harrop is group marketing director for Marshalls and a member of landscapejuice

Comments

[GERALD MONK]

Blimey! The next thing is that he'll be sitting on a chair at Blackpool Beach trying to turn back the waves!!

[carol miers]

I don't know about that one, but would it be a spot for a desalination plant? Fresh water's in short supply isn't it?

[GERALD MONK]

If the water at Blackpool is anything like it used to be when I was a lad, it'll need a lot more than just desalination!! Maybe 'King Canute' has some ideas for us!