ROLEX


ARCADIA


Rolex founder Hans Wilsdorf set up a foundation to ensure the company would continue to bloom


PLEASURE DIVIDEND


PERPETUAL NOTION Nick Foulkes


THE MORE TOPICAL and widely used the term ‘sustainability’ becomes, the less easy it becomes to define. Even if it is only on the do- mestic level of sorting garbage into classes of


recyclability, or the entry into common usage of terms such as ‘upcycling’ or ‘carbon neu- trality’, sustainability now informs our daily lives. And if the days of corporate virtue sig- nalling are not yet over, then they soon should be as sustainability becomes the norm, some- thing that a company does as a matter of course (think supplying employees with bath- room facilities and not employing children), rather than something which confers corpo- rate social responsibility bragging rights. But as the definition widens, so does inter-


pretation. For instance, there is the oft-used defence employed by vintage car nuts as to whether, say, an old Bentley is more sustaina- ble than a brand-new electric car. It may con- sume petrol comparatively inefficiently and have been manufactured at a time when nat- ural resources were more profligately used,


but the fact that it can be repaired, and that I see examples that have been on the road for 70 or more years (presumably relieving own- ers of the need to purchase a new car at regu- lar intervals), suggests that building things to last rather than to be replaced has its virtues. Alas, I can no longer afford to own a vin- tage car; these days I drive something small- er, more contemporary, and change it every couple of years. However, the sustainability of the mechan- ical timepiece struck me forcibly when I was writing a book called Time Tamed and con- sidered that many of the clocks and watches about which I wrote were still in operation. In the introduction I explained how from the age of 11 or so I started buying old watches, which were considered obsolete (this was the first age of the digital watch, and yes I am that


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