This article is written by Hannah Cox, all views my own.
Working in sustainability can often feel like trying to put a round peg in a square hole. No sooner do you think you have the right information on how to tackle a challenge, new information comes to light to show you otherwise.
You are proved not only wrong, but that the peg was never a peg and in fact you should be avoiding holes all together.
Instead you should get rid of the pegs and start using rope. And instead of trying to fill holes, you should be using that rope to a climb a mountain.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that you have to make the rope yourself, but I’m not sure what you need to make it from.
Plus, I can’t remember the name of the mountain you need to climb. Confused? I am too.
This is what makes working in this Industry so interesting, important but also so difficult. Constantly learning about new ways, ideas, businesses and people trying to make a difference.
One of the biggest challenges is figuring out whose business is value driven and who only cares about money and power.
The average person can see the difference between good and bad businesses. We have P&O sacking hundreds of people over video call and then Patagonia devoting hundreds of millions of profits to non profits to help save the planet.
It’s easy to tell which of these businesses is good.
But it’s not so clear when HSBC is being called out by the ASA for greenwashing about carbon emissions. Or when Shein has a sustainability policy, while being one of the highest polluting fashion brands, based on a model of overconsumption.
Sometimes we have to do the research ourselves.
As a Manchester based Business Owner, I already knew who Steven Bartlett was.
A Sunday Times bestselling self dubbed ‘Happy, Sexy, Millionaire’. Steven Bartlett is an Entrepreneur, who took his Manchester based company Social Chain public two years ago with a value of over £600 million.
More recently he became a Dragon on the infamous UK TV Show Dragons Den. He has over 2 million Instagram Followers and a chart topping podcast.
A financially successful, influential celebrity and business person, no doubt about it.
Something I often discuss with other Business Leaders is who we admire and also who we don’t connect with. Steven Bartlett would often come up as a ‘Marmite’ character.
The current intentions of his actions as a personal branding exercise, as opposed to being truly purpose driven, is up for debate.
Articles like the New Statesmen suggests he is more concerned with Celebrity then anything else.
Other Business Owners love how he uses his platform to share his story and inspire others to start their own business.
In the past, I have been an advocate of Business Owners like Bartlett. However, in the last two years I have realised that purpose is the driver I admire more than anything.
I’m no longer easily impressed solely by the financial success of a business or brand.
I want to know they care about being a force for good, that they care about people and care about the planet. It’s why I now have a B Corp certified business and support others in measuring and communicating their sustainability through data, metrics, goals and certifications.
Then a few weeks ago I saw Steven Bartlett speak at the Good Business Festival.
Unlike every single other panel and talk I had been to at the event, there was no mention of purpose driven business, business as a force for good or his own sustainable actions.
It was if the room was drunk on the excitement of having a Celebrity around. I sat there with a roomful of people listening to how he had made his millions supporting, building and growing businesses with a unsustainable reputation such as Pretty Little Thing, Amazon and Coca Cola.
The focus of the interview was on profit and power, not people and planet.
I couldn’t work out afterwards if this was gaslighting or my recollection of the event was incorrect. Following the interview I spoke with several other Business Leaders who were also there. None of us could understand why he’d spoken at the event if he wasn’t using it as a platform to speak about creating better business.
To learn more, I decided to listen to his recent internet breaking podcast interview with Molly Mae, the Creative Director of the Pretty Little Thing. In it she had said we all have the same ‘24 Hours in a day’ which had spark huge debate online about that lack of acknowledged privilege she had.
He did not use the interview to challenge the negative impacts of Fast Fashion and it’s contribution to the Climate Crisis with her.
Instead he used the opportunity to turn up post interview to her Fashion Show with a controversy stoking T-Shirt reading ’24 Hours’, while walking past a group of protesters advocating for fair wages, less waste and safer working conditions.
The combination of the above two incidents made me question Bartletts personal motives in becoming involved with a Climate Action business.
So when Ecologi, a business created to fund the world’s best carbon offsetting solutions emailed me asking me to promote their Earth Day partnership with Steven Bartlett, I couldn’t believe it.
I had not once heard him over the years have a strong opinion on actions we can take on the climate crisis, sustainability or business for good.
What was I missing here?
I emailed Ecologi to explain why they had chosen Bartlett. I finally had a call with someone from their Marketing Department last Thursday. My complaint was acknowledged, however after an hour it was concluded they would take it no further.
As a Founder this didn’t sit right, I wasn’t an outlier and this reaction to my concerns felt really ‘off brand’. Within a few days I ended up reaching Ecologi Founder, Elliot Coad. You can see his responses at the end of this article.
He has suggested there will be future actions as a result of my feedback and that of the Better Business Network on this partnership. They however stand by their choice and will not be stopping the media campaign.
I’ve deliberately split the facts of this bizarre situation and my personal opinions up so that you can form your own position on this.
I received no response from Steven Bartlett on social media after reaching out to him on LinkedIn and Twitter.
My original complaint to Ecologi was that Steven Bartlett was greenwashing. Which means “conveying a false impression or providing misleading information about how a brand or company’s products are more environmentally sound”
Using celebrity clout to fuel the idea that all we need to do to tackle the Climate Crisis is support one business is problematic.
Feel free to read on and let me know what you think.
This Earth Day, we’re celebrating the power of possible ?We’ve teamed up with @SteveBartlettSC to paint a picture of hope for our planet and remind us what’s possible through collective action. ?https://t.co/C26TgwTSny#ThePowerOfPossible #EarthDay #EarthWeek #EarthDay2022 pic.twitter.com/NgYr4iu8Oh
— Ecologi ? (@Ecologi_hq) April 22, 2022
The Facts
On the date the campaign launched and even now, two weeks later, none of Steven Bartlett’s businesses use Ecologi. Bartlett himself has an online personal profile (which is what Ecologi users share to show their commitment) which is just two months old.
When I asked Ecologi what Bartlett was doing to tackle the climate crisis the answer was ‘he has an electric bike and takes the train sometimes’. Baffled, I asked if there was anything else he did that could be classed as ‘sustainable or ethical’ which made them think he was a good advocate for Climate Action. I imagine a millionaire has more disposable income than me to make positive and sustainable changes in their life. The answer from Ecologi was no.
On the day of the campaign launch hundreds of new businesses signed up to Ecologi.
Ecologi could not verify whether it was Earth day, promotion by the existing hundreds of Ecologi Business Clients or the partnership with Bartlett as the reason new people had signed up.
Ecologi approached Steven Bartlett for the partnership. His input so far has been to record the advert, put two social posts out on the day (one on twitter, one on LinkedIn) and a day of radio interviews.
Ecologi are using a paid advertising media campaign to promote the partnership. At the day of posting this, two weeks after the campaign launched, Bartlett has not mentioned Ecologi again on his social channels.
It is hard to determine if his decisions are being made to make money or make positive impact when the only connections he has with ‘Sustainable’ companies are the following:
- Being paid by a different sustainable business to sponsor his Podcast
- Being paid by Ecologi so they can use him on a TV Advert without using their product
- Investing in sustainable businesses on Dragons Den with a view to get a return on this investment money to make a profit. A programme he is also being paid to be on.
Btw a new great greenwashing scam is Steven Bartlett. He’s having his cake and eating it working with brands like Boohoo group and Ecologi simultaneously. He doesn’t care about climate change or sustainability. He cares about money & relevance. And uses brands to get both.
— Brett Staniland (@TwinBrett_) April 22, 2022
Steven Bartletts current contrasting business activities
In December 2021, Steven Bartlett announced he is working with co-founder of fashion brand PrettyLittleThing on a NFT project. PrettyLittleThing is brand which has been muted for multiple cases of horrific labour rights violations and sweatshop conditions and environmental damage through its fast fashion roots. NFT’s have their own climate controversy surrounding them due to their huge environmental impact.
In February 2022, Bartlett was a headline spoken at LEAP, an event part funded by the Ministry of Communications and I.T. in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia is an oil state widely known as one of the worst in the world for Human Rights. They even abstained from the United Nations vote adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He chose not to use his social media platforms to speak out against them, but presumably is happy take the money to speak at ministry funded events.
There are also positives from his recent activity. Steven Bartlett raised money for Charity recently from his Live Action Stage Show ‘Diary Of a C.E.O’ which he stars in, celebrating his successes and failures through life.
He has been transparent that he will donate all of the profits, at a minimum £50K of this show. This transparency does not extend to sharing the total sales turnover, his personal appearance fees and the operating costs breakdown of the 17,000 tickets sold.
Tickets started at around £30 and increase dramatically for a VIP meet and greet option. The total donation works out £2.94 of each ticket sold. Less than 10% of the lowest price ticket. It’s also common practice for ticketing companies to provide cashback to Promoter from the booking fee charged to the Customer.
Bartlett used to have a personal branding company looking after his online and social image, it is not clear whether this relationship is still in place.
Bartlett has a highly successful podcast, youtube and an instagram page with over 2 million followers. Despite the relative ease of the possibility of supporting Ecologi on these different platforms, I wasn’t able to find any indication that they are currently promoted in any way on them.
My relationship with Ecologi
Why do I care about this? Well, on a personal level, I invested £100 when they were crowdfunding. This is 10% of my current personal monthly income.
We have invested 10% of the income from The Better Business Network membership fees and 1.4% of our total business sales income into Ecologi in the last year.
As a start up business still to make a profit, it’s a huge decision where we spend every penny.
betternotstop, The Better Business Network and I (Hannah) have promoted Ecologi consistently for the last year on our websites, blog, newsletters, youtube videos and descriptions, twitter, workshops, events and Client calls reaching thousands of Individuals and Business Owners. I have even appeared on video adverts used on Social Media by Ecologi to promote the brand.
I have never received any money from Ecologi for the support I have given them.
This is one of the reasons why it was so important for me to understand if this was greenwashing.
I need to be sure the businesses I champion are ethical, sustainable and creating positive impact. As consumers we need to trust businesses to help us make the right sustainable choices.
Greenwashing by brands and celebrities only makes this harder for normal people, like you and me, to help tackle the Climate Crisis through our own actions.
My Thoughts
I explained to Ecologi I thought that a celebrity multi millionaire could be doing more to encourage Climate Action then getting the train sometimes and riding an electric bike.
I believe you have to at least try and be part of the solution, even when you are not paid to post about it.
In our correspondence over email and phone, Ecologi have consistently referred to me as an Eco Warrior.
I simply asking not to be lied to. I believe we need to do what we can, when we can.
I have an expectation that brands and celebrities need to be honest and transparent when selling products and services to the public.
No business owner or person is perfect and we all need to work together to create change.
My opinion is Steven Bartlett is a multi millionaire, who previously profited millions from supporting the growth of unethical and unsustainable businesses.
Now Bartlett is profiting from supporting the growth of ethical, sustainable business as a personal branding exercise.
The suggestion is given here that all we need to do as Individuals is give Ecologi money to tackle the Climate Crisis. It is dangerous.
We need a combination of education, innovation and legislation.
This is Greenwashing. If a business like Ecologi, that hangs its values on creating an easy way for people to engage with tackling climate change don’t get why this is greenwashing, then we’ve got bigger problems than I thought.
We can’t solve issues all being perfect, we need millions of imperfect climate activists. We are in a broken system and its hard to find solutions to the big challenges we face.
But we have to be honest, authentic and fact driven together to do so.
I have complained to the ASA about the advert and Steven Bartletts involvement saying it was a breach of the Green Claims Code. If you feel the same you can also send a complaint here.
I think Steven Bartlett had a real opportunity for a ‘road to damascus’ moment (in which a person has a sudden insight that radically changes their beliefs).
His lack of personal action before taking Ecologi’s money speaks volumes to me in how completely uninterested he was in making that happen.
And as for Ecologi, throwing their money at a multi millionaire, as the flavour of the month, without due diligence is somewhere between confusing and laughable.
For me, it is the thin end of the wedge to support token gestures from celebrities.
Celebrities like Bartlett, who align with purpose driven businesses they don’t personally use for money.I still think Ecologi at its heart is an amazing company doing great work, but I don’t want to use my money to support paying for Steven Bartlett’s personal brand greenwashing campaign.
I don’t feel the need to revise previous endorsements in videos and blogs and in the hundreds of resources in the Better Business Network, but I won’t be advocating for Ecologi when I can’t trust the people they choose to pay to represent their brand. I have paused our business and the Better Business network membership.
You can see Ecologi Founder Elliots responses to some of the Better Business Network Member questions below.
Steven Bartletts own words in the latest advert with Ecologi are, ‘Climate Action at your fingertips? Possible’
We should be worrying more about the possibility of us not acting fast enough and quick enough because we are consistently being lied to.
Too much talk and not enough action is what got us into this mess. And I for one am really sick of it.
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RESPONSE FROM ECOLOGI C.E.O ELLIOT COAD
I have not edited the below at all. You can see the questions asked by the myself and from BBN Members in italics and Elliots responses in bold. If you need help with accessibility reading the below please get in touch.
Here are the answers we’d love to go in your blog. If they need editing rather than taken verbatim we’d appreciate us checking them prior to publishing.
The actions you have proposed sound great and it would be helpful, if possible, to get additional details re who would sit on the stakeholder committee and to what extent they’d be consulted.
It’s in internal discussions at the moment, we want to get this right. One consideration is many individuals that we’d consider our stakeholders are some of our strongest advocates, but they might not be the best people to challenge us. We have an external Climate Committee, which we can borrow some structure from to speed this up, but I’ve set us an internal deadline of end of June this year.
HC: I still think Ecologi is an amazing company doing great work
Thank you, I really appreciate that.
but I can’t support Steven Bartlett’s personal brand greenwashing campaign. For me, it is the thin end of the wedge to support token gestures from celebrities being paid to look green by aligning themselves with purpose driven businesses they don’t personally use.
There’s two aspects here that we undercooked and lacked perspective on.
First, we have some great plans to work with Steven Bartlett’s companies in integrating Ecologi services, but it’s obvious now that the timelines for these extended beyond racing to publishing on Earth Day. Having said that, there is genuinely more we could have done here sooner rather than later.
The second part is that what we saw as the original opportunity gave us a blind spot too.Steven Bartlett is that rare person of influence who has both the ear of everyday people and business entrepreneurs outside of the confines of the climate echo chamber. However, we didn’t spend enough time thinking that by putting him in our ad we were also painting him as an eco-warrior. We’ve learned that while everyone we work with doesn’t need to fall in that category, they should be more visibility on that path.
Questions from BBN Members
The vast majority of people don’t have a clear understanding of just how small a window we have to make a difference to the climate crisis though, and how little difference young trees planted now will make. I feel most tree-planting schemes are taking advantage of this. What does Ecologi think?
Ecologi is focused on supporting the highest impact climate solutions. The science shows us that there’s significant amounts of available solutions available to fund that would add decades to our carbon budgets. While we shout about the numbers of trees our members have funded (an easy thing to communicate and is at the heart of many people), we are actually funding all sorts of climate solutions (over 70 non-reforestation projects). For further reading, check out our Impact Report 2021 and 2020.
I just want to know how they think they are committed to the cause when they are aligned with green washers? I appreciate that the reach is important – but don’t they find it offensive on a business level that someone will take their money and not use their (very well priced) products. As the founder of Ecologi I would be insulted that a spokesperson for my brand thought so little of my product that they don’t use it.
How can he, with clear conscience say it’s ok to have a figurehead of a sustainable and planet saving organisation whose other businesses is destroying the very thing they are trying to save? In what world can he ever connect those dots in his head?
Didn’t anyone on the Ecologi team think “Hang on, why on Earth are we getting Steven Bartlett to be the face of our campaign / company? Or did everyone just think “Oh yeah, he’s flavour of the month right now! Great idea!” Is that the level of due diligence Ecologi does when choosing an influencer?!
Will Ecologi keep using the same marketing agency which thought using Steven Bartlett was a good idea? (Assuming they did use an agency – it might have been their own idea.)
How long was this campaign planned for and was anyone else approached?
You told us you approached Steven as a company, who’s idea was this and why did no one challenge it?
So why Steven Bartlett? Because he’s got the ear of the UK right now and he’s someone outside of the unfortunate green echo chamber that needs breaking out of to make serious progress on climate. We are running a TV advert and it’s important climate matters are communicated to non-climate savvy audiences. This is genuinely what we are seeking to achieve now and in the future
It was never our intention to say that he’s an eco warrior, which was our lack of perspective. What Hannah and this community have highlighted to us is that in putting him in our ad we’re perceived by some as advocating him as that. It’s an important learning for us, thank you.
Have they thought about the fact that they could have used one or more truly sustainable / ethical influencers who are actual Ecologi users, and that those people probably would have done it for free?!
Why didn’t they ask someone like Simon Blackler, CEO of their biggest client, Krystal, who has planted over a million trees already? What a no brainer!
Love that suggestion! Simon and Krystal are heroes of ours, too. For a future TV advert possibly not right though. I hope the above answer gave a bit of clarity on why there’s a balance here with our objectives for increasing reach.
What steps are you taking, if any, in regards to your ongoing media campaign with Steven Bartlett?
Why did you think two standalone posts amongst his sea of self promotion would be a good campaign idea?
Did the campaign achieve the expected results?
The campaign stretches beyond social. It’s a TV campaign on Sky channels. We have another few weeks of the campaign running until June. We have some campaign research running too to help us with our internal evaluation to inform where we go next but the initial results are good. Last year we ran a TV campaign and as with all TV campaigns the impact wasn’t instant, but we had our biggest growth jump following the three months after.
How much did they pay him?
Steven’s fees were less than 20% of the overall campaign, and he genuinely believes in what we are doing and trying to achieve. We are happy with the value delivered on this one.
Was it a conscious decision to style Steven in an unfamiliar style then his usual monochrome look?
He brought some clothing options, and we picked what suited the advert concept.
I love Ecologi – I love the product. But now I am conflicted as it feels cheap. Sell outs. Morals be damned if it comes to a big household name. Do we now know the price for Ecologi to sell their soul? I thought we were a team of organisations committed to the B-Corp system and beliefs. Connected by a common cause. I put my trust in the B Corp logo as I trust these organisations to act with integrity at all costs. Now, even the B Corp status has been cheapened for me. It’s not creating positive change by using old business (that doesn’t want to change) to try and force the new. Wolves in sheep’s clothing.
What are they going to do to gain the trust back from their incredibly loyal ambassadors as a business, who have helped get them dozens and dozens of new subscribers and have significantly increased their brand awareness? What is Ecologi doing to prove they care about us / value us – their loyal users! – more than a multi millionaire greenwasher who only cares about his own profile and making money?
Right now I’m typing up the answers to all these questions on a Saturday hoping to have the responses over before the blog is published. My young daughter is behind me creating a storybook out of post-it notes for me to read shortly. I mention this because I, like my wife who is our cofounder, and the rest of the team are pouring everything into building something that can help prevent a disastrous future. We’re doing this for us, our children, and our incredible planet as a whole.
Every fibre of the team here is likely to be very aligned with your values too. Please bear with us, and I hope that the achievements we’ve enabled over the last three years now gives us a little leeway as we navigate bumps in the road.
The key thing is that we need to be especially good at listening and learning even faster.
The upshot of this is that we’re going to be forming an advisory committee, the members of which will be there to challenge us in our decisions and help broaden our perspective.
I wanted to thank this community for taking the time to bring your concerns to our attention.
Cheers,
Elliot Coad
CEO of Ecologi
Bartlett recently did an cringey ego stroking interview with Jordan Peterson, the right's new climate change denialist in chief, I wonder where former actually stands on global warming?