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What is in this Newsletter
- More about Greenwash
- Clarification about certifying product vs management practices
- Audio recording of an interview with Jean and Andy Wibbels
- Taking other greenhouse emissions into account with carbon equivalents
- Links to articles
- Enviro Action’s 2 main niches – groups of small to medium businesses and corporate
- Stock take “Fire sale”
What is Greenwash? How can we prove we are doing the “right” thing if we are a business and also how do we know what we are doing as a buyer?
Very simply greenwash is making exaggerated claims about environmental performance that cannot be substantiated. It is actually fraud and can lead to fines of up to $1.2 Million. If we make calims we must be able to prove it.
Clarification about certifying product vs management practices
The International Organisation that sets standards is ISO. They have set up the ISO 14,000 series of standards to cover environmental certification and this includes two major areas;
- ISO 14,001 certifies environmental practices and behaviour in a business
- ISO 14,020 series covers environmental products.
The ISO 14001 certifications are audited by trained auditors working for a variety of certification bodies with built in and transparent checks and balances.
The Product certification is administered by a series of not for profit organisations that help businesses get their products certified “following the guidelines” of ISO 14020. In Australia this is mainly administered by Good Environmental Choice.
While there are sometimes concerns about any auditing, the auditing process for the product certification is much less transparent and much more confusing for the public. I also have concerns about what is meant by “following the guidelines” vs auditing against a standard. Read more…..
More about carbon dioxide emissions per head
I attended a fascinating lunchtime talk by Dr Michael Molitor from Price Waterhouse Coopers on Thursday 22nd May. His figures were of CO2e or including the other gases such as methane, nitrous oxides and others with CO2 as a “carbon dioxide equivalent”.
When we look at CO2e the figures are very interesting. Globally the average per person is 8 tons of CO2e. The Average Australian emits 28 tons CO2e per person and Queenslanders emit 41 tons CO2e per person (the extra is coal related).
The average person in China emits 4 tons CO2e. Because so much of our total emission is coal related we do have opportunities to reduce this. One major issue is that China is replicating our entire power grid every 8 months with coal fired power stations. I have just returned from Newcastle with is a major coal exporting port and the amount of coal being exported is mind blowing. That wonderful “fount of all wisdom and information” the taxi driver, was saying that at times the queue of waiting coal carrying ships is as many as 60, hanging outside the port. The scale of the export that I saw was HUGE.
Globally we need to stabilise at 1ton of CO2e per person. Read more…..
An interview with Jean and Andy Wibbels
Andy Wibbels is an award winning trainer, author, blogger and blog consultant from the USA who interviewed Jean recently about her work. The interview is in 2 parts after one of those technical problems that besiege us all at times Listen here. Part 1 and Part 2
Enviro Action works in two main niches.
- Helping small to medium business to implement effective management systems. These are available with online training and we will shortly be expanding our offline training and consultancy as well.
- We also provide a range of options to help the corporate business to reduce their carbon footprint and /or to move their business to ISO 14001 certification.
Sale of Old Stock Earlier Version ISO 14001 and Occupational Safety Training Packages Savagely Reduced in Price by $hundreds…ONLY FEW SETS AVAILABLE!!! I have a storage problem in my shed! Since I wrote the extra books I have a pile of boxes and can’t reach my filing cabinets. Hence I am being ruthless. I need the space! If you want to do ISO 14001 or to add OH&S in your business and don't think you can afford it, this is the way to go! More information.....
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People get confused about Halogen Downlights. These are LOW VOLTAGE they are not low energy. They have transformers that are on and using energy 24/7 regardless of whether the light is on or not. You can replace them with LED and or lookalike low energy fluorescent lights now.
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Here are the links to the latest articles on the Enviro Jean Blog
The number of top 100 share-market listed companies in Australia reporting on sustainability issues has increased from 23 to 35. This is much less than in countries where disclosure is regulated and compares with 76 of the top 100 in the UK. Read more...
The Productivity Commission is attacking the new Australian Government’s policies in the carbon area. The theory is that a true carbon price will drive change while a subsidy to meet a 20% renewable energy target is subsidising the wind energy sector is detracting from this and pushing wind at the expense of other technologies including natural gas which is less polluting.
This whole area is a “bag of worms” and I am deeply grateful that I am not in one of the hot seats making the decisions. Some of the more obvious pressures come from: Read more ...
Another note from Michael Molitor was about a New Zealand winery that was told by Tesco’s in London they would be canceling their orders because of the food miles involved. The winery became Carbon Neutral and has actually grown its export sales to Tesco’s as a result. Read more....
Kindest regards
Jean Cannon
Helping business build effective management systems to save money and grow
It is easy to be green
Winner 2007 South Australian Seafood Industry Training Award in recognition of training excellence
For more information or suggestions about how I can serve you better,
please contact me on jean@enviroaction.com.au.
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