“An audacious vision of seeding transformative ideas”

Described as “an audacious vision of seeding transformative ideas”, Inspiring Transition was launched on 1 September and continued through the month in many places. Organisations around the world are simultaneously talking up the vision of a great Transition to a life-sustaining future. They are using blogs, articles, lectures, workshops, and guerrilla marketing tactics, along with personal conversations, presentations and live workshops. It can be both serious and playful! Read More

Thanks to Sarah-Jane Sherwood of Communicate Blue and Andrew Gaines of Be the Change, Australia for bringing this to our attention and driving the Inspiring Transition movement.

Inspiring Transition – a short introduction

Inspiring Transition is an audacious vision of seeding transformative ideas so deeply into mainstream culture that we succeed in changing our direction and becoming ecologically sustainable. This is the need of our time; no lesser aspiration will do.

Background

As you know, climate change, ocean acidification, fracking, and looming fresh water and food security issues will have devastating consequences. We are in a global emergency with a very short time frame to turn things around.

Much of mainstream society operates in ways that make these issues worse. The changes needed to turn things around are so profound that we need a whole system change to a life-sustaining society.

On the positive side, there is a huge wave of positive change already going on. It involves millions of groups. If we succeed in setting the agenda, historians in the future may look back at our time as the time of the Great Transition to a life-sustaining society.

A successful transition to a life-sustaining society requires informed passionate mainstream commitment to doing everything required

The purpose of the Great Transition initiative is to catalyse this commitment.

Our model is to invite individuals and organisations to

1 Champion the idea that we are in a Great Transition to a life-sustaining society

2 Inspire their members and networks to work as thought catalysts / Transition Leaders who communicate about whole system change and how we can achieve it.

Accelerating the Great Transition – Engaging mainstream commitment to a life-sustaining future spells out a three tiered strategy, provides twenty or so interesting communication tactics, and has links to purpose-built communication tools for communicating about the Great Transition.

Our idea is to make communicating as easy as possible, so that it need not take an overwhelming amount of any one individual or organisation’s time.

The Inspiring Transition Launch

The Inspiring Transition Launch will be throughout the month of September 2015. We envision thousands of individuals and organisations communicating within their networks about the Great Transition and whole system change to a life-sustaining society.

The purpose of the Launch is to

1 Make the idea of the Great Transition to a life-sustaining society prominent in the global sustainability conversation.

2 Cultivate an informal network of individuals and organisations championing the Great Transition.

3 Catalyse the thinking necessary for people to know what is involved in a whole system change to a life-sustaining society, and see how they can contribute to it through their own sphere of influence.

The reach of any one individual or organisation is limited. However, if thousands of us – even millions – focus on communicating through our networks about transformative change to a life-sustaining society, together we can be potent force for affecting mainstream consciousness. We have open source tools to facilitate this communication that need not take an overwhelming amount of any one individual or organisation’s time. They can be downloaded through www.inspiringtransition.net.

A request

We make this request of everybody:

Would you be willing to consider doing one or more activities championing the idea of the Great Transition to a life-sustaining society during the launch? Activities could be as simple as a blog or social media posting about accelerating the Great Transition, or it could be something more in-depth such as conducting personal conversations about transformative change or hosting a training.

Or, send an email to your networks, with helpful templates in our sample email kit.

A set of imaginative tactics are outlined in Accelerating the Great Transition.

You are not being asked to join another organisation, or to work under the umbrella of some kind of peak body. The Great Transition initiative is set up as an independent community of practice – a community of leaders who act autonomously.

Administrative support for Inspiring Transition is provided by Be The Change Australia. Be The Change does not direct what people do.

We have common cause.

Resources

•             Communicators kit

•             Accelerating the Great Transition – Engaging mainstream commitment to a life-sustaining future

•             Understanding Whole System Change

•             Tabletop Presentations

Sign up to be kept in the loop!

Administrative support for Inspiring Transition is provided by Be The Change Australia, led by Andrew Gaines:

“We have a simple communication strategy that many organisations can adapt without it taking an inordinate amount of their time. We also have more than 20 interesting communication tools and tactics, some of which are highly imaginative.”

Inspiring Transition was launched 1 September 2015. “We aim to get as many individuals and organisations on board as we can by Christmas; we look forward to a great flowering throughout 2016!”

Source: http://www.inspiringtransition.net/

Update on Zero Waste, Food waste, E-waste & Recycling

Singapore’s National Environment Agency (NEA) called for tenders to undertake a study on the collection, recycling and management of electrical and electronic waste (e-waste), after previously mounting an initiative to focus on the food waste problem. A study reported in August showed nine out of 10 people in the island state are concerned about food waste. Food waste is rearing its ugly head in Europe and America too.
While Singapore sets out in its Sustainable Singapore Roadmap to be a zero waste society, the very active social enterpriser Eugene Tay has set up Zero Waste SG as a new not-for-profit and non-governmental organisation. It is dedicated to help Singapore eliminate the concept of waste, and accelerate the shift towards zero waste and the circular economy. It started as a website in 2008 providing tips and resources on waste minimisation and recycling, and is officially registered as a non-governmental organisation on 13 Jul 2015. See more at: www.zerowastesg.com
NEA calls for tender to conduct study on electrical, electronic waste
Today Newspaper 19 September 2015
SINGAPORE — The National Environment Agency (NEA) yesterday called for a tender to conduct a study on the collection, recycling and management of electrical and electronic waste (e-waste), amid the increasing use of electronic devices.
The NEA will use the study findings to consider a system for collecting and recycling e-waste. The study should include a survey of the e-waste collection and recycling value chain, including the final treatment and disposal.
Using the results of the survey, the successful bidder should propose cost-effective and efficient systems for the collection, recycling and management of e-waste, the NEA added.
The tender, which opened yesterday, closes at 4pm on Nov 5. The study is expected to start in December and end in the fourth-quarter of next year.
Currently, Singapore generates about 60,000 tonnes of e-waste from households and industrial and commercial sources. The amount of e-waste is growing as technology advances, resulting in faster product replacement, said the NEA.
“E-waste may contain valuable and scarce materials, but also small amounts of hazardous substances that may pose pollution and health concerns if not properly disposed of,” the NEA said. CHANNEL NEWSASIA
Source: http://www.todayonline.com/singapore/nea-calls-tender-conduct-study-electrical-electronic-waste
WRI Says Reducing Food Waste Will Help Food Security, Natural Resources, and the Economy
WRI statement (16 September 2015):
Today, the United States Department of Agriculture and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced the country’s first-ever goal for reducing food waste. The goal calls for a target of reducing food waste by 50% by 2030.
Food waste causes negative social, economic, and environmental impacts. WRI serves the secretariat for the Food Loss & Waste Protocol, a multi-stakeholder effort to develop the global accounting and reporting standard for quantifying food loss and waste.
Following is a statement from Craig Hanson, Global Director of Food, Forests and Water, World Resource Institute:
“The first ever U.S. national goal on food waste reduction will bring multiple benefits for food security, natural resources, and the economy.
“The USDA and EPA are showing leadership by announcing a national goal that will ensure more food gets from the farm to the fork and will save consumers money. The new U.S. national goal is also consistent with Sustainable Development Goal 12.3 that focuses on food loss and waste reduction.”
Source: http://www.wri.org/blog/2014/10/reducing-food-loss-and-waste-overlooked-strategy-creating-sustainable-food-system

Britain wastes more food than any other European country
The UK wastes more food than any other country in Europe, a new study has revealed
By Gregory Walton in the Daily Telegraph (12 August 2015):
Britain wastes more food than any other country in Europe, with UK households throwing away 13lbs of food weekly, it can be revealed.
For every one of the UK’s 64 million citizens, the equivalent of a tin of baked beans is thrown away every day.
Each year, 22 million tonnes of food is wasted in the European Union, according to a new study, of which 80 per cent is avoidable.
British households have been found to squander £12 billion on avoidable waste every year – the equivalent of £480 per household.
More than 2 million tonnes of food is wasted by consumers preparing too much, while 3 million tonnes is thrown away when it passes its sell by date.
A large proportion of the food was found to be vegetables, fruit, and cereals, partly due to their short shelf-life.
However wasted meat was found to have a far greater environmental impact the fruit and vegetable waste.
“Meat production uses much more resources in the first place, so even a little bit of waste can have a big effect in terms of lost resources,” said lead scientist Dr Davy Vanham, from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC).
The study, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, looked at data from six European countries – the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Germany and Romania – to estimate levels of food waste in the EU.
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11797206/Britain-wastes-more-food-than-any-other-European-country.html
Most people here concerned about food waste: Poll
They say F&B firms should give near-expiry or unsold food to needy or sell it at discount
Feng Zengkun in Straits Times 11 August 2015
Nine out of 10 people here are concerned about Singapore’s food waste, a new survey has found.
The majority also want food and beverage (F&B) companies here to donate their unsold and near-expiry food that is safe to eat to the needy or sell it at a discount.
Students from the National University of Singapore’s Chua Thian Poh Community Leadership Programme, working with new non-profit group Zero Waste SG, conducted the online survey from February to April this year.
It was completed by about 430 people aged between 16 and 72 with monthly household incomes ranging from less than $3,000 to more than $12,000.
More than nine in 10 said F&B companies here need to do more to reduce food waste. Last year, Singapore threw away 788,600 tonnes of food, of which only about 13 per cent was recycled.
BE PROACTIVE
One of the things (companies) can do immediately is to donate unsold food to charities such as Food Bank and Food from the Heart.”
The discarded food was a slight improvement over 2013′s 796,000 tonnes, but still a sharp increase from the 703,200 tonnes in 2012.
The survey respondents also wanted to know more about how brands such as NTUC FairPrice, BreadTalk, McDonald’s and Cold Storage reduce their food waste.
Many said they would support a company that did its part to cut down on waste. About eight in 10 would help publicise such efforts, while seven in 10 would buy more of the company’s food or visit its outlets more often if it did this.
Zero Waste SG executive director Eugene Tay said: “Food and beverage companies should be proactive in addressing consumers’ interest and reduce food wastage.
“One of the things they can do immediately is to donate unsold food to charities such as Food Bank and Food from the Heart.”
NTUC FairPrice said that at its FairPrice Xtra outlets, when fruits and vegetables are left unsold due to blemishes, the supermarket chain cuts them into smaller pieces or trims them, then repackages and sells them at lower prices.
It also marks down the prices of seafood and chilled meats at all stores after they have been displayed for a day. It donates unsold but edible canned food to the community through Food from the Heart, and is exploring turning food waste into compost.
Supermarket chain Sheng Siong also sells fresh food with blemishes at a discount and uses food near expiry as ingredients in cooked meals for its staff, among other measures. A spokesman said that Sheng Siong has introduced more pre-packed fruits and food to prevent damage due to people touching and handling them: “For example, instead of bagging grapes, we now try to pack them in ventilated, transparent boxes.”
McDonald’s collects its used cooking oil and sells it to a recycling company to be made into soap and biodiesel. A spokesman said: “To minimise wastage, we adopt a ‘cook in smaller quantities but cook more often’ approach.”
Source: http://www.savefoodcutwaste.com/2015/08/12/most-people-here-concerned-about-food-waste-poll-news/

Clean Energy Success Stories: 1. Riding the Waves   2. Waiting for the Tide to Turn

One innovative Australian company in the renewable energy space – Carnegie Wave Energy – seems to have survived changing Governments and changing funding processes to reach the state where it is the world’s first commercial-scale grid connected wave energy array. It is supplying electricity and desalinated water to the nation’s largest naval base  and being called on to get similar projects underway in Europe, South America and along the Indian Ocean coastlines. Meanwhile, Atlantis Resources Corporation, the tidal energy company which started in Australia, is moving its global corporate HQ from Singapore to Scotland, where it has a major project underway. Read More

Update on Carnegie Wave Energy

Carnegie Wave Energy Limited is the ASX-listed inventor, owner and developer of the patented CETO wave energy technology that converts ocean swell into zero-emission renewable power and desalinated freshwater. Over $100m has been invested to fund the development of the CETO technology. Carnegie employs a combination of rapid prototyping, computational simulation, wave tank testing and, in-ocean testing in developing CETO. Carnegie operates two ocean test sites – a “nursery site” at its Private Wave Energy Research Facility in Fremantle, Western Australia and an open ocean site at its Perth Wave Energy Project site off HMAS Stirling, Australia’s largest naval base, at Garden Island, Western Australia.

CETO is designed to be the simplest and most robust wave technology globally and, after 10 years of continuous development, and tens of thousands of in-ocean operational hours of testing is now nearing the end of its commercialisation phase with the development and delivery of its CETO 6 product generation.

The CETO technology has been independently verified by EDF – Energies Nouvelles (EDF EN), who is the first licensee of the CETO technology, as well as independent engineering and assurance firms such as Frazer Nash and DNV GL.

Carnegie is focused on the global commercialisation of its CETO technology and as such, has 100% owned subsidiaries in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Chile.

See the latest presentation to Scottish Renewables Marine Conference Presentation on 16 September 2015, delivered by Carnegie’s Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Dr Michael Ottaviano.http://carnegiewave.com/investors_category/company-presentations/

Also see a full report on Carnegie in the Australian magazine EcoGeneration in August http://carnegiewave.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/150717_EcoGeneration_Catch-the-Wave.pdf

Source:  www.carnegiewave.com and www.arena.gov.au/project/perth-wave-energy-project/

What lies beneath: Is tidal power the next big wave?

Just under the ocean’s surface, could be one of the most reliable forms of renewable energy – tidal and wave power.

By Nathan Lim, International Shares Fund Portfolio Manager at Australian Ethical (27 August 2015):

The world just got a little bit closer to tapping into the ocean’s tides as an energy source. Construction is nearly completed on MeyGen – the world’s largest tidal stream energy project. This array of turbines on the seafloor is expected to begin delivering to the grid in 2016. Its development could be the catalyst that the fledgling tidal energy industry needs.

Is blue the new green?

The seabed of the Pentland Firth’s Inner Sound of the coast of Scotland contains some of the most energetic water in the world. These environmental conditions make it the perfect location for MeyGen.

When it’s up and running, the 398-megawatt array has the potential to power 175,000 Scottish homes. While that’s nothing to sneeze at, the bigger picture is even more impressive: wave and tidal power could provide more than 20% of the UK’s electricity needs – imagine that on a bigger scale!

The MeyGen project off the coast of Scotland is well on track to start producing clean energy by early-2016. Image courtesy of Atlantis Resources.

The MeyGen project off the coast of Scotland is well on track to start producing clean energy by early-2016. Image courtesy of Atlantis Resources.

The unique characteristics of the site (where tidal streams reach up to 5m/second) coupled with the UK’s supportive political environment for marine technology are key to the story of MeyGen. And, the tidal project also has a unique Aussie connection.

The project’s developer Atlantis Resources was founded in Australia. While they’ve been based in Singapore since 2006, the early years of the company were spent developing tidal current turbine prototype designs and concepts off the coast of Victoria.

But the antipodean link doesn’t end there – Australian Ethical Investment is a key investor in the project, committing 9% of the capital raised by Atlantis Resources at its last capital raising.

A new direction for Australian Ethical

While Australian Ethical has an extensive history of investing micro-cap stocks via its Australian Shares Fund, it is the first time that the International Equities Trust has done so.

The decision to support the initiative is due to the project’s potential says Portfolio Manager Nathan Lim. “We believe this particular project has real commercial value. It will generate positive cash flow because a robust energy price has been guaranteed by the UK government.”

The MeyGen project also delivers on what Nathan sees as one of the mandates of Australian Ethical’s International Shares Fund – to support innovation in clean-tech delivery. “Investors want us to go out and look for cutting edge technology. Not technologies that are never going to work – we are not a charity – but things that have real commercial value,” he says.

Tidal stream – what’s it all about?

Tidal stream technology utilises underwater wind turbines that sit inside the current caused by the tides found near coastlines and harbours. Water is 800 times denser than air so tidal stream turbines are a fraction of the size of a comparable wind turbine.

The biggest advantage ocean-powered renewable energy has over wind and solar is it’s consistency; the moon’s cycles are regular and calculable, and so tidal power is very predictable. For a grid operator, this makes it highly attractive. Wind and solar are affected by weather conditions – they need high winds or clear sunny skies to operate. Because they are so dependent on variable weather conditions, the amount of energy they are likely to produce day-to-day is difficult to

Wave and tidal power on the other hand is powered by the moon’s gravitational pull and the rotation of the Earth. Tidal flows can be predicted well in advance and wave power increases during winter, the period in the UK when electricity demand is at its highest.

Around 23% of the world’s population lives near the coast, so from an international perspective, wave and tidal power projects could be developed in proximity to end-users.

Positive policy

Atlantis has spent the past 11 years developing and testing prototypes for the project. The company is looking to anchor as many as 269 squat, three-bladed turbines in the seabed.

“The impact of policy in the UK designed to support tidal and wave energy projects can’t be underestimated” says Nathan – it’s what has made the MeyGen project viable.

Tidal energy technology has been around since the 1960s, but the high costs and technological challenges have prevented its rollout. The future for the industry has begun to turn around though with policymakers worldwide learning from the wind and solar power industry’s history of subsidised production and development.

The UK has positioned wave and tidal stream energy as key to the transition to deriving energy from renewable sources. It’s estimated that the 50% of Europe’s tidal energy resources are located in UK waters.

Tapped successfully, the UK’s Department of Energy & Climate Change believes that wave and tidal energy combined could deliver around 20% of the UK’s current electricity needs. It would also establish the country as the world leaders in a global market worth £50 billion by 2050.

The challenges

The biggest challenge facing the marine power industry, is building effective devices that can withstand the harsh and hazardous environment of the oceans. Long-term reliability is a major focus of those in the industry.

The UK government has set themselves the goal of having 120 megawatts (MW) of domestic power generated by tidal and wave projects by 2020. There is still a lot of work to be done to achieve this goal, and after lots of false starts by other marine power companies, Atlantis now seems to be leading the way.

The first turbines to be installed in the Pentland Firth are from Atlantis in collaboration with Lockheed Martin and Andritz of Austria. They will be set on tripods with each leg weighed down by a 200-ton block of cement.

“Atlantis is one of the few companies actually in a position to start delivering,” says Nathan. “They are the only ones who are scaling up and looking to be able to meet the UK’s megawatt demand. This is why I think there is going to be a tremendous amount of value in this company being the world leader in tidal stream technology,” says Nathan.

Source: https://www.australianethical.com.au/news/what-lies-beneath-tidal-power-next-big-wave-clean-energy-tech/

Last Word

Writers of the world unite for art’s sake and climate change action

Don’t dismiss creative/green/lefties like Mungo McCallum. He makes sense. There’s always room for writers and artists who take a stand and through their works promote environmental causes, along with freedom of the press and creative innovation. So we have no hesitation is sharing his thoughts, in this article he wrote for Byron Bay’s Echo newspaper (and online), immediately after the Byron Bay Writers Festival, where he appeared along with former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Of course this was written while Tony Abbott was still in the PM’s hot seat. No longer. But Mungo’s words still ring true, even though the new PM is a different “kettle of fish” – to coin a phrase – and maybe there are some in the new team who will identify with what’s being said. Hope so! Read More

By Mungo MacCallum in Byron Bay Echo (11 August 2015):

Byron Shire is something of a Green-Left enclave surrounded by a conservative heartland dominated by the National Party.

As a result it can adopt a defensive, even embattled posture, and when it does have a chance to celebrate, as in the annual Writers Festival, it tends to flaunt its wares.

And thus last weekend, when the secular saints and their disciples were assembled, there was not doubt about who was the potential messiah. Julia Gillard could hardly have received more rapturous applause if she had been reincarnated as Joan of Arc, walking free from the flames to proclaim the dawn of a new and better world.

But for every heroine there has to be villain, and the organisers cast this role for one of the demon princes of the evil empire commanded by the arch fiend, Rupert Murdoch. The Australian’s foreign editor, Greg Sheridan, turned out to be a disarmingly personable hate figure, considered and even moderate in his views and surprisingly reasonable (if not entirely convincing) in his rejection of the proposed referendum on Aboriginal recognition in the constitution.

His massed opponents found themselves somewhat bewildered; where was the uncompromising right wing zealot they saw in their daily record of sneering and disdain? But they were somewhat reassured when he moved to defend his best friend Tony Abbott; the chorus of relief and derision swiftly restored the status quo.

The prime minister, said Sheridan, was deeply misunderstood; he was really a thoroughly nice man, not at all the like the knuckle-dragging Neanderthal, the hyper aggressive potential murderer (yes, he did acknowledge the description) that he was portrayed. The real Tony Abbott was actually a romantic: kind not only to dogs and children but to the waifs and strays who crossed his path, by whom Sheridan presumably meant some of the less than impressive ministers he had selected to run his dysfunctional administration. Excessive loyalty was his problem, his single weakness; hence the Bronwyn Bishop fiasco.

Well, that is all very well, but it still does not make him a romantic, a descendant of William Wordsworth and John Keats: Abbott is far more at home to the stentorian, repetitious slogan than the well-crafted ode. But there is one area where he can wax positively lyrical: his continued paean to his love of fossilised carbon.

Coal, Abbott sings, is good for humanity; not only that, the decision of the Federal Court to block the Adani project would not only be disastrous for Australia – it would be tragic for the world. Tragic: apparently more so than the anniversary of the battle of Lone Pine, or even more importantly (from the media’s point of view, at least) the collapse of the Australian cricket team at Trent Bridge.

Abbott is not the first to get metaphysical about an aspect of the energy debate: it was Kevin Rudd who announced (temporarily) that climate change was the greatest moral challenge of the times. But Abbott’s ongoing love affair with the black and brown stuff, at the expense of the solar alternatives who wants to scale down, let alone the windmills at which he tilts, suggests that his passion is not simply perverse, but positively deviant.

The rest of the world is pushing on with renewables, and the Australian public is besotted with them; not only has the take up of roof top solar exceeded all expectations, but the latest survey from the Climate Institute shows that support for action on climate change is up to 63 per cent, and more than 70 per cent want the government to move to renewables.

And when it comes to the case of Adani, Abbott’s infatuation has blinded him from reality – the sign of a true romantic. Abbott apparently believes that the arrival of Australian coal will suddenly liberate the power-hungry masses of India from their needs. But as the former Indian Secretary for Power, Eas Sarma, somewhat acerbically pointed out, the problem is that many of the hundreds of millions of his citizens are not connected to the grid system, and because of their remoteness, are not likely to be.

Coal is never going to be an option, and even if it were, Indonesian coal would be much cheaper than the product of the Galilee Basin. Far more practical, and economic will be renewables, especially solar. Adani is not even considering their needs – it is interested not in public welfare but in profits, and given that demand, and therefore prices, are falling, the Carmichael project has already been getting very iffy indeed.

The Commonwealth Bank’s withdrawal of funding may have coincided with the Federal Court decision, but it was obviously moving through the bank’s balance sheets long before then. It is probably too soon to start talking about Adani pulling out altogether, but it must be a very real possibility. And if it does, Abbott will have a real tragedy of his hands – at least a political humiliation of the kind he can least afford right at the moment.

He will, of course, blame the Greens, the courts, the banks – anyone but the hard economic facts. And it is in this context that he and his government will have to confront the Paris conference having belatedly put its card on the table and told the world just how serious it is about climate change.

Abbott says that he is: the emissions reduction target of 26 per cent by 2030 strong and responsible, but not at the expense of jobs and prosperity – by which, of course, he means coal. This is, once more, a romantic fantasy: that action on climate change can be all but free, and that the real bottom line that business as usual must go on forever. It is a delusion that most of the world – although, apparently, not most of his party room – has long since grown out of.

But Abbott still clings on to the comforting myths of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and the Magic Pudding of endless coal. He may yet wake up, but obviously Greg Sheridan has given up hope: Abbott is, and will remain, an incurable romantic – an endearing, even loveable feature in a friend, but not, as Sheridan reluctantly admits, a sensible one in a Prime Minister. Not even in Byron.

Source: http://www.echo.net.au/2015/08/incurable-romantic-or-fossil-fool/