He repeatedly describes himself as a shopkeeper, but as head of social responsibility for the £5bn turnover Kingfisher Group, Dr Alan Knight OBE, is a bit more than that. For example, he can claim to have played a pivotal role in the development of forest certification during his decade at B&Q plc and is now a recognised authority on the issue both within the industry and further afield.
A regular speaker at industry conferences, he appeared before a new, consumer audience in early June when BBC‘s Newsnight programme called him in as an ‘expert witness’ following the furore over the use of tropical timber in the newly refurbished Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace (ttjonline.com).
The fact that Dr Knight was not the one under fire was a cause of great satisfaction, providing as it did a very public vindication of everything that B&Q has achieved both in terms of trading in materials from sustainable sources and in promoting the cause of good forestry. “One of the reasons we helped to create the FSC 10 years ago was to stop what happened to Buckingham Palace happening to us,” he said. “We’re now seen as an example of best practice.”
Palace protest
While Greenpeace‘s recent action at the Palace and the Cabinet Office (TTJ April 13) has been a thorn in the side for many, Dr Knight sees it as “a very healthy back to basics”. His theory on the NGOs’ re-focusing on the timber industry is that “we were so embroiled with making certification work that we all forgot about basic old-fashioned illegal logging – and there is still a lot of that going on”.
In addition, he says, certification has preached to the converted to an extent: “It’s useful to remind us that there are still an awful lot of companies who aren’t doing anything or who are going through the motions of saying they want sustainable timber, but not really following it up.”
While B&Q’s shift in environmental policy wasn’t directly consumer driven, it wasn’t entirely motivated by a sense of social responsibility either, although that undoubtedly runs deep. It derived, said Dr Knight, from a recognition that while bad publicity would damage the business, having unsustainable supply chains was even more dangerous. “It was about management risk,” he said, “so there was a hard-nosed business objective behind it.”
Another “more moralistic” reason for Dr Knight’s pursuit of sustainable timber supply at B&Q was a sense of frustration with environmental groups who, with the exception of WWF, advocated a blanket ban on tropical timber. WWF’s advice was that boycotts were ineffective as they failed to engage with tropical countries to encourage them to resolve the problem – and sustainability issues were also beginning to arise in the supply of timber from temperate regions such as Russia and Canada.
WWF collaboration
Dr Knight began collaborating with the WWF and between them they came up with the idea of building on the certification that had already started in the US. This led to the buyers’ group and the rest is history.
While Dr Knight thinks there’s room for more than one certification scheme, he is a fervent believer in the ‘one label is best for business’ argument. “We’re a market-led organisation and the idea of having just one label on all our products is so appealing that B&Q has campaigned for it for a long time.”
One area where the one label policy falls down is in products, which have a recycled content and it’s an area where Dr Knight would like to see the certification bodies engage more with retailers. “We’re having to take the FSC label off some of our products because the recycled content is too high for them to qualify. So now we’re presenting our customers with two labels, one the recycled logo and one the FSC logo.”
Dr Knight is full of admiration for the achievements of FSC, claiming he’s “always been very critical of the FSC, but I hope in a friendly way. Sharing problems will solve them, staying silent helps no-one”.
