The sustainability activities of leading companies are increasingly driven by financial considerations and other core business objectives, according to a recent survey of corporate sustainability leaders by Ernst & Young and GreenBiz Group. It shows that being green and being economic are not mutually exclusive. Now it seems as if businesses are now coming around to that view as well. Read More

Erica Gies, Independent environment reporter, founder of ThisWeekInEarth.com (27 April 2012):

The sustainability activities of leading companies are increasingly driven by financial considerations and other core business objectives, according to a recent survey of corporate sustainability leaders by Ernst & Young and GreenBiz Group. Environmentalists have long posited that being green and being economic are not mutually exclusive. Now it seems as if businesses are now coming around to that view as well.

The report, Six growing trends in corporate sustainability, discusses this and several other developments in sustainability.

In keeping with sustainability’s new focus on the bottom line, chief financial officers are playing increasing roles in their companies’ sustainability efforts.

65 percent of CFOs are now directly involved in company sustainability efforts

80 percent of respondents see revenue opportunities in sustainability

74 percent said cost reductions are the primary drivers of their sustainability programs

66 percent have seen an increase in inquiries about sustainability in the past 12 months from investors and shareholders

Business leaders are growing more aware of the potential scarcity of the natural resources their companies require.

Seventy-six percent of survey respondents said they anticipate that core business objectives will be affected by such shortages — including water — over the next three to five years.

Sustainability reporting is growing, but the tools are still developing.

About one in four survey respondents use packaged software to track sustainability efforts, but most still use spreadsheets, emails, and phone calls.

Employees are a key audience for sustainability programs and reporting.

Respondents said that, after their customers, employees are the primary driver of their sustainability efforts and audience for their sustainability report. That is because many top employees want to work for a company they can feel good about.

Despite regulatory uncertainty, especially in the United States, most companies report their greenhouse gas emissions, and more companies are recognizing the importance of measuring and their managing water usage.

76 percent publicly report their greenhouse gas emissions

An additional 16 percent plan to do so within five years

62 percent publicly report their water usage

More than 50 percent have a water-reduction goal

Rankings and ratings matter to company executives.

Fifty-five percent of respondents said surveys and rankings are their primary means of communicating sustainability performance and initiatives to investors. For this purpose, they value the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and the Carbon Disclosure Project most highly.

Conducted in late 2011, the survey collected responses from 272 sustainability executives in 24 industry sectors who employed by companies with annual revenue greater than $1 billion. Approximately 85 percent of them are based in the United States. The respondents are from companies that are just beginning to engage in sustainability as well as those that have been engaged for years.

The report concludes:

These trends suggest that sustainability efforts are now well integrated into the corporate fabric of a growing number of large and mid-sized companies. But the effectiveness of such efforts may be limited by internal systems that don’t allow companies to effectively measure, track, and optimize their sustainability impacts or to understand and manage the risks of insufficient action. To do so will require new levels of engagement by the C-suite and more sophisticated methods of sustainability reporting and assurance.

Source: www.forbes.com

The mega-cities of Asia will be the toughest test for climate-change policy as a rising middle class begins to consume goods at rates only previously seen in the west. A new report released by the United Nations Development Program in mega-city Jakarta has a tough message: Asian cities “can’t afford to grow first and clean up later”. Read More

Michael Bachelard in The Age (10 May 2012):

What are the challenges mega-cities in Asia, such as Jakarta, face implementing climate change policy?

The mega-cities of Asia will be the toughest test for climate-change policy as a rising middle class begins to consume goods at rates only previously seen in the west.

A new report released by the United Nations Development Program in mega-city Jakarta today has a tough message: Asian cities “can’t afford to grow first and clean up later”.

Regional director Ajay Chhibber told Fairfax that these countries have a moral obligation to grow fast economically because, without it, 900 million people living in absolute poverty in the region will not be able to afford decent lives.

“Asian growth is reducing global inequality … but we have to give people choices which allow them to live healthy, long life without necessarily aping the consumption patterns of the western world,” Mr Chhibber said.

The challenge was to make sure these countries could grow and reduce emissions at the same time.

While consumption is growing fast in the Asia-Pacific, the report, One Planet to Share, said that 10 per cent of people still suffer from “chronic underconsumption” with minimum dietary intake, and a quarter have no electricity.

Even so, they already use 80 per cent of the world’s coal for industrial production.

And people are moving to cities at a fast rate. By 2026, more than half of Asia-Pacific’s population will live in a city. Cities occupy just 2 per cent of the land in Asia but contribute more than two-thirds of greenhouse gases, particularly from transport and electricity.

Jakarta has 130 shopping malls, more than any other city on the planet. Its lack of a reliable public transport system means car and motorbike ownership is rising by 20 to 30 per cent a year, all using heavily subsidised petrol, which produces congestion and air pollution and costs the Indonesian government more than it spends on health and education combined.

More than half of the country’s economic growth is fuelled by consumer spending, which also drives greenhouse gas emissions.

Growing richer increases people’s appetite for meat and dairy, the desire for power to run air-conditioners, and their preference for private vehicles. It also produces more rubbish from packaging, which in Asian countries is often still burned or thrown in waterways.

The world’s rich emit more than 12 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, compared to 0.28 tonnes for the poorest people, the report found.

Despite the growth of wealth in Indonesia, the potential for more growth is enormous. Still only 11 per cent of people live in cities, and in rural areas only 3.4 per cent own a car.

“We’re not saying consume less, that Asia shouldn’t have a middle class,” Mr Chhibber said.

“But it’s how you plan your cities in terms of transport development, greener buildings, the shift to gas [for electricity] against other forms of fuel [such as coal], and much greater options on transportation.”

The report says half the world’s mega-cities are in Asia, and all of them are in low-lying coastal zones. This means they are not only the engines of future climate change, but also its most likely victims.

“Within Asia we are already seeing if not the full impact of climate change, but of climate variability,” Mr Chibber said.

Poor people in cities have limited ability to adapt to a changing climate, and city administrators “have little understanding of climate change”, and few “appreciate its full implications”.

At the national level, however, Mr Chhibber says, there is room for optimism.

“Until five years ago, many Asian countries were of the view that climate change was a problem for the developed world. There’s a growing realisation at least among many of the Asian leaders that this is not good enough.”

Reports from meetings in Europe this week suggest that realisation has hit home among negotiators too. China, India and Indonesia have all made commitments to reduce how much carbon dioxide they produce per unit of economic development, and are likely to make more at future negotiations.

“Ten years ago, all anyone said was all we want in Asia is growth, growth, growth,” Mr Chhibber said.

“Now … the mental road blocks that people have are beginning to drop. With every flood, every shock, people are beginning to see that Asia is vulnerable … and so we have to make these changes themselves.

“That big mindset change that gives us great hope.”

Source: www.theage.com.au

Greenpeace wants companies like Apple, Amazon and Microsoft to make smarter, cleaner energy choices now that “cloud computing” services have ratcheted up power consumption considerably. Leading tech companies are now offering unprecedented amounts of data storage and access to “apps” on huge Internet-connected servers, saving consumers and businesses the hassle of installing and running programs and storing information on their own local computers. But at what cost? Read More

By E – The Environmental Magazine (28 April 2012):

Greenpeace wants companies like Apple, Amazon and Microsoft to make smarter, cleaner energy choices now that “cloud computing” services have ratcheted up power consumption considerably.

Leading tech companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft are now offering unprecedented amounts of data storage and access to “apps” on huge Internet-connected servers, saving consumers and businesses the hassle of installing and running programs and storing information on their own local computers.

This emerging trend, dubbed “cloud computing,” means that these providers have had to scale up their power consumption considerably, as they are increasingly responsible for providing more and more of the computing horsepower required by the world’s two billion Internet users. No doubt, sharing such resources on centralized servers is more efficient than every individual and business running their own versions separately. In fact, the research firm Verdantix estimates that companies off-loading data and services to cloud servers could save $12 billion off their energy bills and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 85 million metric tons within the next decade. But for the greenhouse gas savings to be realized, the companies offering cloud computing services need to make the right energy choices.

Greenpeace has been tracking sustainability among tech companies for over a decade, and recently released a report, “How Green is Your Cloud?” assessing the green footprint of the move to cloud computing. According to the analysis, some of the major players (Google, Facebook and Yahoo) have gone to great lengths to ensure that significant amounts of the power they need come from clean, green sources like wind and solar. But Greenpeace chastises others (Apple, Amazon and Microsoft) for relying on so-called “dirtier” sources of power, such as coal and nuclear, to run their huge data centers.

“When people around the world share their music or photos on the cloud, they want to know that the cloud is powered by clean, safe energy,” says Gary Cook, a Senior Policy Analyst with Greenpeace. “Yet highly innovative and profitable companies like Apple, Amazon and Microsoft are building data centers powered by coal and acting like their customers won’t know or won’t care. They’re wrong.”

Greenpeace’s report evaluates 14 major tech firms and the electricity supply chains in use across more than 80 different data centers that power cloud-based services. Some of the largest data centers are in buildings so big they are visible from space and use as much power as 250,000 European homes. If the cloud were its own country, says Greenpeace, it would rank 5th in the world in electricity consumption.

“Companies like Google, Yahoo and Facebook are beginning to lead the sector down a clean energy pathway through innovations in energy efficiency, prioritizing renewable energy access when siting their data centers, and demanding better energy options from utilities and government decision-makers,” reports Greenpeace. But unfortunately the majority of the industry is not marching in step. As such, Greenpeace is calling on all tech companies with cloud services to develop siting policies based on access to clean energy sources, invest in or directly purchase renewable energy, be transparent about their energy usage, share innovative solutions so the sector as a whole can improve, and demand that governments and utilities increase the percentage of clean, green power available on the grid.

Source: www.blastmagazine.com

Come clean. Word is out at last.  Ken Hickson, through his communications agency H2PC Asia, is officially involved in promoting the Singapore National Environment Agency’s (NEA) inaugural CleanEnviro Summit which takes place in the first week of July in conjunction with Singapore International Water Week and the World Cities Summit. The price of going public is getting coverage in the media. This time the first issue (May) of Green Prospects Asia (it used to be called Green Purchasing Asia) delved into a little more than the event. Some penetrating insights in your “illustrious” editor, as well as his thoughts on communications, social media and traditional media.  Read More

Green Prospects Asia (1 May 2012):

Harnessing the media to fight climate change

Over the course of his long career, veteran sustainability communicator Ken Hickson has witnessed many significant developments in environmental issues as well as in the media. He talks to Siaw Mei Li about how harnessing modern communications can help save the planet.

“I started out as a journalist 50 years ago this year,” Ken Hickson reveals cheerfully, noting with a quick look around that he must be the oldest in the room. “Now I’ve made the transition from being a print or newspaper journalist to an online journalist, I’ve become reasonably modern!”

And so he has. In addition to providing sustainability communications services to corporations and government agencies, the founder and chief executive officer of Singapore-based consultancy Sustain Ability Showcase Asia (SASA) tweets periodically and helms SASA’s twice-monthly email news digest on climate change issues. Lately he is also involved in promoting the Singapore National Environment Agency’s (NEA) inaugural CleanEnviro Summit and the WasteMET Asia exhibition and conference, the latter of which is co-organised by the Waste Management and Recycling Association of Singapore (WMRAS). Both events will take place in the first week of July in conjunction with Singapore International Water Week and the World Cities Summit.

Wanted: Integrated solutions

Hickson sees a much-needed synergy in this upcoming events cluster. “We’ve got to accept that there’s a nexus between climate change and energy, water and the environment. We can no longer say, ‘I’m just dealing with water here’ or ‘I’m just dealing with food here’. Climate change has an impact on all of that, and waste is a component we have to deal with much better in terms of using it for energy and also reducing the amount of waste we create. It’s not something we should be dumping or filling up holes in the ground or our water resources with; we should be converting it to energy – using it as a resource.”

While some of the information that Hickson receives in his work may sound worrying, the business and social potential in turning such problematic situations around are also tremendous. As an example, he relates how experts at the recent Reuters Food and Agriculture Summit in Chicago reported that an estimated 30 to 50% of the food produced in the world goes uneaten and ends up in landfills.

“We’ve got to better manage our production, distribution, buying and consumption habits, and also how we manage waste,” says Hickson, citing waste minimisation and reutilisation projects such as converting used cooking oil into biofuel, running community and commercial composting initiatives and salvaging discarded supermarket food items not yet past their due date to be channeled to the needy via charitable organisations.

In other words, resolving the food waste problem creatively means not only feeding more people, but also diverting waste from landfills and supplementing society’s need for fuel and agricultural resources.

Nothing wasted

These principles of maximising resources, avoiding waste, recycling and prolonging the useful life of a product apply equally well to the realm of climate change communications, particularly in the era of multi-platform communications.

“Some journalists may be writing for newspapers but their material is also being used online, and they’re also blogging and working with social media,” Hickson points out, giving as an example, veteran journalist Michael Richardson, whose work on climate change and alternative fuels enriches regional think tanks while also reaching wider audiences in the form of the Singapore Straits Times’ print and online readership. Meanwhile, Reuters climate change correspondent David Fogarty’s journalism is disseminated not only by the agency’s newswire, but also reaches the public via the @reutersclimate Twitter profile. With each additional re-post, news and research gains longevity along with new audiences.

“You need to be working in all media that’s available,” says Hickson. “You might use social media to refer to an article that appears online or on a web portal that, in turn, comes from a newspaper. So nothing goes to waste – not even the work of journalists.”

Source: www.greenprospectsasia.com