I was recently walking back to the office from a new business meeting via Pitt Street Mall (Sydney CBD) and thought I would do a bit of errmm 'market research' in the new Westfield Shopping centre.
How to describe it? Shopping machine. Consumption Mecca. I have visited a few shopping malls in my time. You have to hand it to Mr. Lowy and his team who have delivered a quite extraordinary mix of heavy engineering, retail science, human psychology and recycled timbers.
Yes. That is what I thought. You can hardly take a step off the escalator before you are attacked by recycled, reused, organic, retro, found items, old timbers, bamboo floors, milk crates as seating, antiques and vertical wall gardens.
The 'Urban' floor on the lower ground is where they have gone a bit hipster with market stalls imported from Glebe and Paddington, watches imported from Japan and Boost Juice imported from most high streets.
So why all this 'eco' look and feel in a place like Westfield?
An experiment in bringing sustainability and shopping together?
A demonstration that the environment and the economy can live harmoniously within the Australian retail economy?
A unique collaboration between the retail association and Costa (not the coffee shop but the bearded gardner guy from SBS)?
Alas, no. On closer inspection the sustainability credentials of most shops on the 'Urban' floor did not get beyond a pile of 'seeded paper' DL flyers (the stuff that sprouts when you plant them?) and some Fairtrade coffee beans.
There are a couple of exceptions. For those searching for some more responsible consumption, Intrepid Travel and Tree of Life are in residence providing evidence that capitalism and responsibility can work hand in hand. Keep up the good work guys.
The home grown designers market, placed in the pulsing heart of this retail metropolis, suggests that the customer likes the local Saturday morning market experience so much they want it at lunchtime too.
So there seems to be a bubbling undercurrent of goodness emerging from within Australia's retail heartland. But what else is going on? A quick check on the 'Environment and Community' section of the Westfield website reveals this new centre is a Five Star building as rated by the Green Building Council of Australia. Good news indeed.
There is also reference to Earth Hour and working with their late night retailers on minimising their lights, but to be honest it lacks a really coherent story, and so feels a bit blah blah from a public communications perspective.
That said, there is some good news in here. The fact that a signature property development such as this can be built using sustainability principles in mind is a great start.
I am sure there are some seriously difficult technical and revenue per square inch related challenges getting in the way of moving from a Five Star Rated building to a best in class rated one.
However, a quick trawl of recent Banksia sustainability award winners, and a look at other successful property development brands such as GPT and Investa, shows that the category is gaining real traction and value from sustainability.
On a more aesthetic level sustainable design principles are increasingly being applied to the interior fit outs of shops and retail courts. Is this is the mainstream retail market picking up on a 'hot' trend? Or is it part of a broader shift that has been filtering through the design industry over the last decade?
Having had many conversations with retailers about this subject over the years it feels to me that we are seeing a shift in the consumer psyche. In turn the smart operators are responding to this shift by providing more natural, renewable and less artificially sweetened ways of shopping.
Whilst presently this is more a case of style over substance there is clearly a growing understanding of the need for some sustainability principles in the way we do our consuming.
The opportunity now is to quickly turn this growing trend, currently manifesting itself in the way things look, into a shift in the way we think about designing, making and selling things across the board.