Going green office tips
We are always hearing of different ways to improve our green credentials in the work place, but how many of those ideas actually apply to you and what can you, as an individual, do to help in your office? More »
Apps that reduce congestion
Imagine a city with no traffic at all. You wouldn’t have to get up at 6.30 and skip breakfast. More »
Adopting environmentally-conscious air travel
“Travel broadens the mind” or so the oft-cited saying goes. But, as an environmentally-conscious business person, how can you reconcile travel for work (or indeed pleasure) with the environmental degradation that goes with most mechanised forms of transportation? More »
Australian Carbon Farming Initiative
The Australian Carbon Farming Initiative (“CFI”) is a voluntary domestic offset mechanism geared towards the agriculture sector, which is not covered under the Australian emissions trading system (“ETS”) More »
Delayed infrastructure for green energy
At the European level, time scale of establishing a grid connection is recognized as a severe barrier for the spread of technological innovation and renewable technologies More »
Green ideas for work and employees
image: twobee / freedigitalphotos.net
Humans by nature are pretty selfish and have short-term views (me included)! So how could we align our green ideas for work and employees to our organisation’s goals on the environment? Well, one thing’s for sure, telling them to eat less meat will not cut it! And for that matter, neither will asking them to think about the impact of leaving PC’s and laptops on when they know it can take 15 minutes of valuable time when they’re faced with deadlines to get the thing up and running!
So what could work?
Human trafficking: an essential item on the CSR agenda
image: Worakit Sirijinda / freedigitalphotos.net
Human trafficking has been splashed all over the news this week with the Metropolitan Police cracking a forced prostitution ring in Kensington. But it isn’t just making the headlines on the news-stands: as both a legal and reputational risk for companies, it’s fast becoming an essential agenda item for CSR professionals.
When most people hear the phrase ‘human trafficking’ they think of the sex trade, and whilst that industry is the site of most trafficking crimes, the definition actually includes a wide range of labour rights malpractice relevant to a variety of sectors. According to the US State Department, this includes forced labour, bonded labour, forced child labour and debt bondage amongst migrant workers.
The Trucost report – the final nail in the coffin for sustainable capitalism?
Last month, the environmental consultancy firm Trucost published a report entitled “Natural Capital at Risk: The Top 100 Externalities of Business.” The report calls into question the validity of sustainable capitalism as a new paradigm.
Detailing the total “unpriced natural capital” consumed by the world’s largest industrial sectors, the report found that, in 2009, the top 1,000 “global primary production and primary processing region-sectors” (a certain industry located in a certain region) failed to pay for USD7.3 trillion of natural resources and services they used.
Standing at 13% of global economic output for that year, the majority of these costs were greenhouse gas emissions (38%), water use (25%), land use (24%), air pollution (7%), land and water pollution (5%) and waste (1%).
Perhaps the most startling finding was that, of the top twenty global region-sectors ranked by environmental impact, not one would have been profitable if environmental costs had been fully priced and integrated into cost calculations – not one region-sector made enough profit to cover the environmental damage that their operations wreaked. Clearly, the difference between the current global economic system and a sustainable one is not one of degree, but of type.
It’s time to go entomophagous – eat some insects
image: SweetCrisis / freedigitalphotos.net
It has been predicted that there will be more than nine billion humans by 2050 and arable land is being lost to towns and cities, oceans are ever more overfished, and climate change is interfering with farming. This raises the question: Would it be environmentally-beneficial to go entomophagous and dine upon insects?
e-fficient Energy expands into France
e-fficient Energy has appointed Protech Energy of Paris, as its Partner in France, and in conjunction with them have launched a French website
Protech Energy are one of France’s leading energy and electrical engineering consultancies with a proven expertise in helping French companies deliver cost effective reductions in their electricity usage.
This alliance will introduce the French market to e-fficient Energy’s market leading range of products proven in the UK to help measure, monitor and reduce commercial electricity usage – all are fully Guaranteed to deliver cost effective savings, and all are fully fundable from the savings made.
