ANTHROPY25: Gbemi Oluleye - The One Environmental Metric We Aren't Talking About...
“That’s genius!” - Charlie Luxton in response to Gbemi’s revolutionary new idea… In this episode of our Anthropy special series recorded at the Eden Project, we speak with Dr. Gbemi Oluleye from Imperial College London. Gbemi brings a refreshing academic perspective to how businesses can make sustainable transitions affordable. As a lecturer at the Grantham Institute, she leads research on making sustainability economically viable for the manufacturing sector while also running executive education programs for sustainability officers. Gbemi discusses the need for convergent thinking, offers a sobering assessment of how late the sustainability movement started, and proposes a revolutionary new metric to track how planetary degradation impacts human productivity.🎯 Key Takeaways1. It's not just the cost, but how we see costsWe tend to view sustainability as a burden rather than risk mitigationPoor accounting practices fail to consider whole system valueWhat appears as a cost to one business may be value to another in the supply chainExample: Housing retrofit costs are viewed as a burden rather than as societal savings2. Convergent thinking is the most valuable business skill for the futureWe've moved from multidisciplinary to interdisciplinary and now need convergent thinkingCurrent education creates divergent thinkers who operate in silosUniversities are restructuring around global problems rather than traditional disciplinesHolistic perspectives are essential to extract economic value from sustainability3. The sustainability movement started too lateMaterials like rubber, iron, steel, and cement were invented centuries before sustainability was consideredWe've "had years to do rubbish" and now face urgent pressure to fix itThe delay makes the challenge harder, though opportunities still exist to catch up4. We need a metric for planetary impact on human productivityCurrent metrics focus on human impact on planet, not how planetary degradation affects peopleA "Gbemi scale" would measure how environmental changes affect individualsPeople connect more with health impacts than abstract concepts like sea level riseLinking sustainability to personal productivity could be a game-changer for business adoption5. Businesses need safe spaces to discuss implementation challengesSustainability rhetoric vs. business reality creates a significant disconnectCompanies put on a show of knowing what they're doing when many don'tCSO teams often operate separately from core business functionsExecutives lack time to integrate sustainability into existing responsibilities⚡ Quick Wins & Actionable Steps1. Adopt whole-system accounting practices in your organisation2. Create cross-functional sustainability teams3. Connect environmental metrics to human impacts❓ Got a question?Ask us and we'll try our best to answer it in the show!podcast@sustainabilitysolved.org🔄 Share Your ImpactLet us know how you implemented these actionsSubmit your case studyJoin our Sustainability Solved Hub🎙️ About Our GuestDr. Gbemi Oluleye is a lecturer at the Grantham Institute at...