Dan Cullum

Since 5 October 2015, large retailers in England have been required by law to charge 5p for all single-use plastic carrier bags.

The latest statistics from Defra were made available earlier this week for the 2018-19 period and the results were good.

Looking at the UK’s 7 largest retailers, 70% fewer plastic bags have been issued between the 2016-17 and 2018-19 periods, which is a reduction of 778 million plastic bags.

What struck me most about the above was just how bad Tesco was. In 2016-17, Tesco was issuing more than 3.4x the number of plastic bags than any other retailer (640 million plastic bags per year vs. Morrison’s 191 million). Even when normalised for its overwhelming market share, Tesco was a horrible performer.

Since then, Tesco has managed to reduce plastic bags issued by 515 million, or 80%. This is good progress.

The below chart shows the improvements that each of the 7 large retailers have made over the past 2 years.

I wouldn’t be too quick to compliment Tesco and throw shade at Sainsbury’s though. Tesco was severely obese on the plastic bag front and had a lot of “quick win” kilograms to lose, whereas Sainsbury’s was performing much better than Tesco in 2016-17.

What’s more helpful is to look at the 7 large retailers’ market share vs. their share of plastic bags issued.

What we can see here is that Tesco and Sainsbury’s are leading the way, with both of them issuing fewer plastic bags than you’d expect based on their market share of the 7 largest retailers.

We then see that Marks and Spencer and The Co-operative Group are issuing double the number of plastic bags relative to their market share.

This final reflection is purely anecdotal, but I feel the above conclusions in my weekly grocery shopping routine. Tesco and Sainsbury’s both charge 10p for a sturdy plastic bag that can be reused. Marks and Spencer charge 5p for a plastic bag that is flimsy and easily broken. It’s easy to see why Marks and Spencer issue more plastic bags relative to their market share when they make decisions like that.

Overall, I think this piece of regulation is excellent, predominantly due to its high leverage: a small change in regulation (charging 5p for a bag), that requires minimal measurement and enforcement from government, has resulted in a reduction of more than 750 million plastic bags each year.

Note on my analysis for full transparency

Note: There are many ways to analyse and interpret data like this, and journalists will often manipulate data to get better/worse figures for a story. So I’m linking my analysis here. Feel free to make a copy and play around with it.

I took the Defra dataset and removed all retailers except the largest 7 (Asda, The Co-Operative Group, Marks and Spencer, Morrisons, Tesco, and Sainsbury’s, and Waitrose).

The only information I added was the market share data. I could get the 2018 market share data for all retailers from Wikipedia, except for Marks and Spencer, as it isn’t strictly a supermarket.

Therefore, the method I used to determine Marks and Spencer’s market share isn’t perfect, and I want to acknowledge that. I took their food revenue from Statista, and then derived their market share (3%) by normalising it against Tesco’s 2018 revenue (£57bn) and market share (27%).

I then performed simple sums and percentage change calculations to reach the above conclusions.

I get my haircut at Jimmy’s. He’s a one-man band operating out of the same North London locale for more than 30 years. He’s cheery, nearing 7ft in height, super-greek, and a joy to chat with each month.

I went to see Jimmy early this morning and was shocked with what I saw.

“Jimmy, you look fantastic!”, I said.

“Thank you for noticing, my friend. I’ve lost 21 kilograms in the last three months!” replied Jimmy.

But he didn’t need to say a thing. The grinning smile behind his huge handlebar moustache said it all.

For the next 20 minutes, Jimmy told me all about how his low-carb diet and disciplined cheat days (where he could eat whatever he wanted) enabled him to go from 138kgs to 117kgs.

Jimmy gave me a great gift today. He exemplified the lesson that no matter our age (he’s in his late 60s), we’re all capable of change. We don’t need to be the victims of habit and circumstance. We can change.

I work with some remarkable, humble people at Bulb. Many of whom go above and beyond in all they do.

However, some of them work with such quiet determination and diligence that I often only learn about their herculean feats through others.

I sometimes wish they’d preach what they practise.

How would it change the way we approach our work if we understood the care with which they approach theirs? How would it change the way we see our challenges if we understood the way they see theirs?

But perhaps the most important reason for them to share their work, is for us to have the opportunity to give them the praise they deserve.

“The word is priority, not priorities, and it originated in the 14th century from the Latin prior, meaning first” shares Gary Keller in his book The One Thing.

When deciding how we spend the few hours we’re given each day, it’s easy to hide behind plurals (and gross corporate jargon).

Top priorities. Key deliverables. Important outputs.

Writing down a list of priorities is easy because we don’t have to commit to anything. We can create an endless list of nice-to-dos and, despite not making any progress towards our goal, feel like we’ve been productive.

The hard part is asking ourselves the question “what is the one thing, that if I put all my effort and focus into right now, will take me the furthest toward my goal?”

And once we complete that one thing, we repeat the process. Over and over again.

Before the 1980s, Japan hadn’t imported a single piece of fish.

At the same time, and on the other side of the world, the Norwegian Government was bleeding money through salmon fishing subsidies.

Norway needed to find a market for its salmon. And what better market than an almost-pescatarian country paying 5x as much for fish used for sushi vs. fish used for grilling?

There was one problem, however.

Japanese didn’t eat raw salmon. Everything about it was wrong. The colour, smell, the shape of the head. But perhaps the biggest issue was the widespread fear that salmon contained parasites that could make you sick.

Enter Bjorn Olsen.

Throughout the 1980s, Olsen led arguably one of the greatest campaigns to change consumer perceptions.

What started as a complete failure, where no government representative or major fish company would touch raw salmon, turned into a massive success following a shrewd partnership with Nishi Rei (think: the Kraft Foods of Japan).

Olsen orchestrated the sale of 5,000 tonnes of Norwegian salmon at rock-bottom prices to Nishi Rei, in return for their commitment to sell the salmon in their stores as fresh sushi. It worked a treat. Nishi Rei’s endorsement meant salmon sushi became widely adopted across Japan.

Soon after, the rest of the world followed suit. In the United States alone there are now over 4,000 sushi restaurants grossing over $2 billion annually, compared to a non-existent market 50 years ago. Now when I see a colleague lunching on salmon sushi, I smile and think of Norway.

And to top it all off, Bjorn Olsen also moonlights as a 7th Dan Aikido Black Belt and is the Chief Instructor of the Norwegian Aikido Federation. Could he be any more badass?

H/T Planet Money Podcast for their delightful story telling. You should check out their episode on this topic here.

Your customers don’t care about your excuses.

They don’t care about a supplier’s late delivery, a rogue employee’s poor service, or a government’s stiff change in policy. They’ve got their own lives to lead, businesses to run, and problems to solve.

What they care about is you delivering on a promise despite the head winds.

In a buck-passing world, companies that take failure on the chin have an advantage over those that deny wrongdoing: they’re often given a second chance.

When faced with the option of denial and losing a customer for life vs. taking it on the chin and getting a second chance, there really is only one choice.

In 2016, five friends and I built a boat made from recycled plastic bottles and travelled the length of the Mississippi River. I’ll write more about it in a later post, but if you’re interested, you can watch the short documentary we produced here.

One thing I learnt was everyone will have an opinion about what you should or shouldn’t do.

Part of our preparation was to seek advice from others. Surprisingly, those who’d travelled the river before said “you’re going to be fine”, whereas those who hadn’t said “you’re unlikely to make it safely”. Some even went as far to say “you’ll likely die!”

We can’t control others’ opinions, but we can control who we listen to.

What we allow through our ears, we allow into our minds, and ultimately into our actions. Had we listened to the people with no experience on the river, we’d have never set sail in the first place.

When embarking on a challenging endeavour (job, relationship, travel, or project), it’s worth considering the believability of each person offering you an opinion. Ray Dalio says that we should give a higher weighting to the opinions of people who are experienced and wise in the area we are seeking advice in. When preparing for the Mississippi River, I spoke to more than 5 people who’d done it before. They helped me see the challenges I’d be facing in a clear light, rather than projecting their fears of the unknown on to me.

In the weeks and months ahead, you’ll no doubt have to make a few important decisions. The question is: who are you listening to?

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers” – Voltaire

It’s easy to speak, hard to listen, and even harder to ask thoughtful questions that cut to the heart of an issue.

It feels like there is a natural evolution there:

• By speaking, we seek to be heard
  
• By listening, we seek to hear
  
• By asking thoughtful questions, we seek to deeply understand the other person and their point of view.

How convenient that I’m writing this post in the early morning. So today with my teams, I’m going to practice holding back knee-jerk opinions, and try and ask thoughtful, helpful, and generous questions instead.

Ever since I was a boy, the name Nobel sparked a sense of awe within me. The Nobel Prizes are widely considered to represent the pinnacle of human achievement across chemistry, physics, medicine, literature, peace, and economics. But only recently did I learn about the man behind the prizes, and the sad story of how they came to be.

Born and raised in Sweden, Alfred Nobel was a success by all traditional measures. He was a leading chemist and inventor, most known for inventing dynamite, and was a wealthy businessman due to his work in the arms industry.

In 1888, an obituary was accidentally written for Nobel following the death of his brother, Ludvig. What Nobel read brought him deep sadness, “the merchant of death is dead”, and “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.”

7 years later, just one year before Nobel’s death, he signed away 94% of his assets to create the Nobel Prizes, in the hope of leaving a better legacy in death than he did in life.

When I read this, I felt sadness that this was the genesis of such a revered prize.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a fan. The Nobel Prizes celebrate the feats of remarkable individuals and who inspire millions of people each year.

However, this story reminded me of the saying “all that glitters is not gold”, and how it’s important for us to be aware of and acknowledge that there is often a messy grey area within many of our favourite stories.

This weekend I played my first game of football in over a year. To make matters worse, it was an 11-a-side 90-minute grueller. I was surviving, but barely.

Deep into the second half and up 4-3, we launched a cracking on-target shot, only to be blocked by a defender’s arm in the penalty box. This mistake meant we were awarded a penalty, which is where the ball is placed 10 metres from the goal, and we had a free shot to score against the goalkeeper.

The tentative looks on the faces of my team mates told me they were staying well away from the task.

Heart pounding, legs trembling, I approached the ball and imagined myself as Lionel Messi extending the lead for Barcelona in the Champion’s League final.

Whether by skilful strike or simple luck (let’s be honest, it was luck), the ball sailed into the net.

The rush of emotion that I felt in this amateur Saturday kick-around gave me a tiny insight into what it must feel like to be the player taking the deciding shot in a high-stakes sporting match. What pressure they must feel. And more importantly, what confidence they must possess.

I likely won’t be taking another penalty shot for at least another year, but I loved the experience from this weekend and what I learnt from it. Despite it being a low stakes game, I still had to muster the confidence to overcome my insecurities, say “I’ll take the shot”, and then follow through with action.

What would happen if we applied this type of attitude to our work and relationships? Would we see different results? Could we make things a little better?

It definitely feels like it is worth a try.

When Stan Lee pitched Spider-man, his publisher said it was “the worst idea he’d ever heard”.

He said the character wouldn’t work because “people hate spiders”, “teenagers are sidekicks, not heroes”, and “a superhero shouldn’t be unattractive, poor, love-troubled, and an orphan”.

But Stan couldn’t shake his gut feeling, so he put Spider-man in the final edition of a magazine that was being cut due to low sales.

The magazine flew off the shelves.

Fast-forward to today and you can’t go anywhere without seeing a child in a Spider-man t-shirt or with a Spider-man backpack.

Stan’s advice was “if you have an idea that you think is genuinely good, don’t let anyone talk you out of it”.

I didn’t hear this story until today, but I can still remember how I felt, sitting in the movie theatre, watching Spider-man for the first time.

Stan’s decision that day, to put an idea out into the world despite the opinions of other, has had a huge impact on me and many others.

I highly recommend taking two minutes to hear Stan tell this story.