We recently went to Hong Kong on a research project, to find out if businesses there are taking corporate social responsibility into account in their marketing strategies.

Two things struck me very strongly. Firstly, the environment is of much less interest to Chinese business and public than the West: their great concern is working conditions particularly in manufacturing. So when West meets East in the business world we will have to know more about each others’ issues and concerns.

Secondly, this is a picture of Hong Kong taken in the afternoon - the ‘pollution’ in the air is there constantly - rolling in from the Chinese mainland; we never saw a clear blue sky. On a 2 hour flight to Shanghi, we flew above this pollution cloud the whole way.

Whether you believe that climate change is man made or not, I don’t believe that unilateral action to turn my standby off is going to make any real difference to saving the planet. However, being economical with scarce resources is a good discipline - which brings us back to Mutual Marketing ;-))