Putting Food Waste in the Picture Here, There and Everywhere

Food waste is in the spotlight. A Sri Lanka student Kandage Kiyara Chenuli Perera (aged was the Asia Pacific winner of the UNEP annual International Children’s Painting Competition, which attracted 63,700 entrants, based on the theme, “Food Waste – Save the Planet – Save Food, Wasting Food is Wasting the Planet”. This weekend just past (3-4 May), in Washington DC there’s a Future of Food Hackathon, which followed Friday’s Forum on Food, part of the National Geographic Society’s eight-month series on food in collaboration with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).  “Food: A Forum” considered “Sustainable Sustenance,” covering the concept of sustainability and its implications for food. SASA is determined to make a study of food waste in Singapore and South East Asia as part of a global search for solutions. Read More

Sri Lanka Student Wins Asia Pacific Prize for UNEP International Children’s Painting Competition

Bangkok, 22 April 2014 – A Sri Lanka student’s painting caught the eyes of judges, making it the Asia Pacific winner of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) annual International Children’s Painting Competition. Eight-year old Kandage Kiyara Chenuli Perera’s painting, based on the competition theme, “Food Waste – Save the Planet – Save Food, Wasting Food is Wasting the Planet” beat more than 63,700 entries from Asia Pacific to make her the winner of this year’s competition.

The UNEP Tunza International Painting Competition is an annual event that is jointly organized by UNEP, the Japan-based Foundation of Global Peace and Environment (FGPE) and Nikon Corporation.

“As a little girl I have a habit of saving money (coins) in a little till. So that idea inspired me to draw that painting. Through my painting I would like to say to all children of the world that we should obey and save food for future just like little ants,” said Kandage Kiyara Chenuli Perera.

Her painting, along with other winning entries, will be exhibited at various venues in Japan and other countries and the websites of UNEP and Foundation of Global Peace and Environment (FGPE).

“Kiyara, a girl from Sri Lanka and a regional winner of Asia and the Pacific, depicted children happily working together to keep and save the precious foods in an “Earth bank”. Mother Earth has kept producing all foods for all lives on the planet for billions of years. We ought to appreciate its abundant blessings, however, at the same time, we should be aware we must suffer from a serious food shortage if we keep wasting food and causing environmental destructions. The expression of the winning picture is bright and active to make people easily understand the importance of saving food. I hope it will inspire a lot of people to take actions in their daily life,” said Ms. Tomoko Yano, Secretary General of the FGPE.

Kandage Kiyara’s entry will move on to the global level, to compete with entries from other regions – West Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe and North America. The winners of the global competition will be announced at the Global Winners Ceremony.

“Through this year’s competition children have shown us ways to tackle food waste in our homes, communities and schools. Their paintings make it clear that food waste, like most

environmental issues, is directly impacting on their lives and those of their families and friends. And through their art they have shown that there are actions we can take now,” said Kaveh Zahedi, Regional Director, UNEP Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific.

Kandage Kiyara wins a US$1,000 cash prize and all-expenses-paid trip for her and an accompanying adult to Nairobi, Kenya for a prize-awarding ceremony during the UN Environment Assembly that will take place 23-27 June 2014.

“It is my great pleasure to be a part of Asia Pacific’s Children Painting competition. Food Waste is the theme for this year which raises children awareness on the value of food and the effect of food waste on the environment. Currently, many countries are wealthy while starving is one of the main problems in some countries. This project tremendously benefits both in strengthening environment awareness and encouraging children’s painting competencies. I do hope that this great activity will continue,” said Nobuyuki Muraishi Managing Director & President, Nikon (Thailand) Co., Ltd.

The selection of the regional winner was carried out by a Jury Committee made up of UNEP staff, representatives from Nikon and art students.

UNEP Tunza International Children’s Painting Competition

The regional winners of the 23rd are announced on Earth Day, 22 April 2014. This year’s theme of the International Children’s Painting Competition on the Environment is “Food Waste – Save the Planet – Save Food, Wasting Food is Wasting the Planet”. Children aged 6 – 14 were invited to use their artistic skills to show the impact of food waste on the planet.

The painting competition has been held since 1990 with over a million entries from children in over 100 countries received.

The global winners will be chosen by a jury comprised of representatives of competition organizers. All regional and global winners will receive a cash prize (US$ 1000 for the regional winners, US$ 2000 for the first prize winner) as well as an all-expenses-paid trip to Nairobi, Kenya.

United Nations Environment Assembly

From 24 to 28 June 2014, the first session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) of the United Nations Environment Programme will convene at the UNEP headquarters in Nairobi with more than 1,200 participants, including Environment Ministers, Government delegates and representatives of major groups and stakeholders. The overarching theme of the first session is “Sustainable Development Goals and the Post-2015 Development Agenda,including sustainable consumption and production”, which is designed to inform ongoing discussions on the formulation of a set of targets and indicators that would succeed the Millennium Development Goals. Ministers will also discuss the issue of illegal trade in wildlife, an issue that is generating increasing global attention due to its adverse impact on biodiversity. Other issues on the UNEA agenda range from environmental rule of law to UNEP programme of work and budget.

Source: www.unep.org/unea/

FAO and National Geographic Announce Collaboration Exploring Future of Food

30 April 2014, Rome – The National Geographic Society and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) are teaming up to raise awareness on food and agriculture issues as National Geographic, a U.S.-based nonprofit institution, begins an eight-month, in-depth report on food issues starting with a May cover story in National Geographic magazine and online at NatGeoFood.com.

The official launch of the collaboration will be marked by a three-day event taking place 2-4 May 2014 at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C., beginning May 2 with an afternoon panel discussion, “Food: A Forum,” which will highlight issues of food security and sustainability. The event will be live-streamed at NatGeoFood.com.

The panel discussion will be followed by a two-day Future of Food Hackathon May 3 and 4, during which scientists, data journalists and programmers will develop apps and tools to address solutions for feeding the planet by exploring broad FAO data sets that shed light on food distribution, transportation, costs and environmental legacy over the last 50 years. From May through December, FAO experts will provide perspective and data for National Geographic’s food coverage, which includes in-depth articles in the magazine each month and additional features on the NatGeoFood.com website. Both organizations will share content and participate in related events to help educate and promote awareness about hunger and nutrition.

Among the themes that will be addressed are food and agricultural statistics and trends, feeding megacities in a world of changing demographics, reducing food loss and waste, the role of animal and insect protein in diets, and global forestry issues.

“Combining FAO’s specialized expertise with National Geographic’s 126 years of award-winning photography and reporting is very exciting, and this agreement will help bring up-to-date information about hunger and nutrition challenges and solutions to a very wide public audience,” said Mehdi Drissi, FAO Chief of Media Relations.

National Geographic magazine, the Society’s official journal, is read by more than 60 million people each month in 40 languages, while the Society’s digital media receives more than 27 million visitors a month.

“Reporting on food is a natural extension of our coverage of water, population and environmental issues,” said Chris Johns, editor in chief of National Geographic magazine. “We believe offering clear-eyed information about issues surrounding this essential topic is an important service to our audiences, and we are thrilled to partner with FAO, an organization that is on the front lines working in this area.”

The two organizations plan to collaborate on a number of initiatives throughout the year, including the Committee on World Food Security (13-18 October 2014), World Food Day (16 October 2014), the Second International Conference on Nutrition (19-21 November 2014) and the International Year of Family Farming that runs throughout 2014.

National Geographic editorial staff met with senior FAO experts in Rome in February to gather information for the series and develop a framework of collaboration that will be formalised with the signing of a memorandum of understanding later this year.

The Future of Food series is the latest in a number of large-scale National Geographic investigations that have included energy, climate, water and population.

Source: www.press.nationalgeographic.com/2014/04/30/fao-collaboration-exploring-future-of-food/

Sustainability and Art Come Together in Events like i Light Marina Bay

The energy-saving ‘Switch Off, Turn Up’ campaign which ran in tandem with the festival in March achieved energy savings of 268,890kWh, a marked 25% increase on 2012, with a record 52 buildings participating. Sufficient to power the festival more than 45 times over. In the associated sustainability workshop German sociologist Sacha Kagan drew attention to the importance of sustainability and art: “One promising way for cities to develop these qualities of resilience is through art.” SASA was involved as the sustainability consultant for i Light Marina Bay in 2012 and 20154 and is exploring further ways bring together “artists for sustainability”. Read More

The third edition of i Light Marina Bay generated the largest energy savings and participation from the community to date while drawing record crowds

i Light Marina Bay 2014 , Asia’s only sustainable light art festival, closed on 30 March with record energy savings from its ‘Switch Off, Turn Up’ campaign and drew its largest turnout since its first edition in 2010.

The energy-saving ‘Switch Off, Turn Up’ campaign ran in tandem with the festival from 7 to 30 March. It rallied Marina Bay stakeholders and building owners to switch off non-essential lighting and turn up air-conditioning temperatures during office hours throughout the festival period. The campaign this year achieved energy savings of 268,890 kWh, a marked 25 per cent increase from the last edition in 2012, and had a record 52 buildings participating. The energy saved is sufficient to power the festival more than 45 times over.

The biennial festival, organised by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) for the third time this year, attracted some 685,000 visitors, a 20 per cent increase from the last edition and the highest number the festival has seen.

Mr Jason Chen, Director for Place Management, URA, said, “The successes this year are very encouraging as they affirm how much we can achieve with our festival partners and Marina Bay stakeholders. We hope that visitors and participants not only enjoyed the installations, but also took away the important message of sustainability and will take steps to help make a positive change for our environment. We hope that the festival will continue to grow and spread the meaningful message to a larger audience.”

Over the three-week long festival, visitors were enthralled by 28 interactive and thought-provoking installations curated with the theme “Light+HeART” and placed around the Bay. The installations were designed and created by local and international artists who pushed the boundaries of creativity to incorporate energy saving measures in the design, construction and operation of their works.

Besides the light art installations, visitors also enjoyed an array of complementary events and activities such as free guided tours, boat rides, sporting activities, bazaars and culinary treats. i Light Symposium 2014 and other talks held in conjunction with the festival also kept an active conversation on the topic of sustainability, increasing awareness and inspiring the adoption of sustainable practices. The festival also partnered this year’s Earth Hour where all installations were switched off from 8:30pm to 9:30pm on 29 March.

i Light Marina Bay 2014 was supported by:

Friend of i Light:  Marina Bay Sands

Sustainability Workshop Partner: Philips Lighting

Art Installation Co-creators

Arup (Singapore), Kurihara Kogyo Co., Ltd, Martin Professional Pte. Ltd., Meinhardt Light Studio Pte. Ltd., OTTO Solutions Pte. Ltd., Panasonic Systems Asia Pacific, and Traxon Technologies / OSRAM

Innovation Partner

A*Star (ETPL and SIMTech)

About Marina Bay

Marina Bay is the heart of Singapore’s city centre and a new destination for the local community. It provides Singapore with an opportunity for further urban transformation and to attract new investments, visitors and talents. Marina Bay has been planned with sustainability in mind, adopting environmentally-sustainable strategies and technologies in its development. Extending seamlessly from the existing Central Business District, Marina Bay is the new focal point that reinforces Singapore’s position as a leading global city. It offers extraordinary potential for growth and development in the heart of the city, an advantage that few other cities can offer, and creates an exciting array of limitless opportunities for locals and foreigners alike, to explore (live), exchange (work) and entertain (play).

About Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA)

The Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) is Singapore’s national land use planning and conservation agency. URA’s mission is “to make Singapore a great city to live, work and play”. We strive to create a vibrant and sustainable city of distinction by planning and facilitating Singapore’s physical development in partnership with the community. As the main land sales agent for the State, our multifaceted engagement strategy includes the sale of State land to attract and channel private capital investment to develop sites for meeting our land use needs. As the place manager for Marina Bay, we promote exciting activities within Marina Bay in collaboration with other government agencies and private stakeholders. To create an exciting cityscape, URA also actively promotes architecture and urban design excellence. For more information, please visit us at www.ura.gov.sg.

Let artists shape a resilient city

by Sacha Kagan for the Straits Times (10 April 2014):

LAST month, I was invited to give a keynote address on art and sustainability at the i Light Symposium held at the URA Centre in Maxwell Road. The aim of the conference was to bring together leading thinkers in the area of light and art, interrogating art’s power to improve society. I had diverse conversations with artists, architects, social scientists and others, on unsustainable development. I visited neighbourhoods ranging from Marina Bay to Bukit Brown.

These first impressions raised my awareness of the specific challenges of urban resilience for Singapore. In particular, impending climate change raises the question of Singapore’s “resilience” to serious future crises.

Will it survive when the trusted approaches that granted wealth and stability to the island in the past are severely tested?

The concept of “resilience” comes from the scientific study of how natural and social systems, in the past, have managed (or not) to survive by evolving in response to changing circumstances.

Species, ecosystems and societies that have proved able to survive extreme crises share three characteristics:

“Redundancy” or having multiple pathways to doing similar things. Redundancy, however, is severely reduced by efficiency. Efficiently organised societies generally have less redundancy, thereby threatening their resilience.

Diversity – for example, having multiple ways to see the world and express ourselves, as well as multiple ways to learn from experience and transmit knowledge. Cultural diversity, as well as biological diversity, should be preserved and even increased.

Self-organisation, or the ability of communities, neighbourhoods and groups of people to organise themselves to help determine their responses to crises. This goes against the expectation that direction should come from the top. It also goes against the naive expectation that some natural market laws will spontaneously solve problems.

Urban resilience requires the realisation of these three characteristics through a city’s fabric. Singapore has a rich cultural diversity, but there is much room for progress concerning the other two characteristics.

One promising way for cities to develop these qualities of resilience is through art.

I do not mean the promotion of commercial art or art for art’s sake. Rather, the involvement of artists and other unconventional creative people in the process of urban development, to help un-plan our cities. Artists should be allowed to shape spaces where the creative and experimental spirit of the city’s inhabitants is stimulated.

Contemporary city dwellers should be allowed to freely re-imagine possible futures and experiment with more sustainable ways of life. Creative, non-commercial “spaces of possibility” are needed, countering the cancerous growth of malls in the city.

The locations of these spaces should not be government-controlled or pre-designated, as these approaches kill creativity.

Instead, they should be spaces that grow organically from efforts by the different creative, social and cultural communities.

One hopeful example of how artists have made an impact on city spaces comes from the city of Hamburg in Germany. In that city, artists are generally being pushed to market themselves as business entrepreneurs for a short-sighted “creative city”. But many artists and creative folk opposed that strategy. In 2009, a group of them formed a “Right to the City” network, gathering 100 local groups around one common principle: Urban development should be determined by its inhabitants, not by real estate.

On Aug22, 2009, 150 artists, architects and marketing experts illegally occupied a group of buildings called the “Gangeviertel”, historic workers’ quarters in the city’s centre. It was not an ordinary “squatting” but an art exhibition and series of events.

The occupiers did not merely protest against the plans of the city government and the investor: They put up an elaborate alternative plan to re-imagine the place as a centre of culture, complete with work places and social housing, to inject vibrancy into an area dominated by commercial and expensive residential buildings.

For the first time in decades, the city government, which normally evacuates occupied buildings by force within 24 hours, listened to the proposal. Seduced by the artists’ vision, they even bought back the buildings from the investor and gave the occupiers a year to finalise their concept. Rehabilitation work started late last year. Historical buildings were saved and social housing preserved.

Realising urban resilience through the arts will be a great challenge in Singapore, too, but it is not an impossible one. I saw many creative seeds which would need to be encouraged to grow. I saw young people with interesting ideas, designing and making objects, growing their own food.

There are many values of cultural heritage and biodiversity being rediscovered in the historical site of Bukit Brown.

Such sites can become exactly the kinds of undesignated spaces of experimentation and imagination that a city needs.

The writer is a research associate, Institute of Sociology and Cultural Organisation, Leuphana University, Lueneburg in Germany.

Source: www.leuphana.de/sacha-kagan.html  and www.straitstimes.com

Coming Clean: Energising Solar For the Good of Mankind

Perhaps in spite of, and not because of, the current Government’s mixed feelings on anything that looks like clean energy to upset the “fossil-fuel-eyed” status quo, Australia’s inventiveness and entrepreneurial spirit reigns supreme as we see with the Pollinate Energy artistic approach to energising solar for the good of mankind to RayGen Resources winning a big China contract for its solar technology. Thanks Australia CleanTech’s John O’Brien for alerting us to these and other advances down under. Read More

By Sophie Vorrath in Reneweconomy  on 1 May 2014

Pollinate Energy is all about shining a light. The Australian founded not-for-profit clean energy company last year won an award from the UN’s Momentum for Change program for helping slum-dwellers in India replace expensive and highly polluting kerosene lamps with cheaper solar energy.

The company focuses on training members of the local community to distribute and install solar lighting systems as micro-entrepreneurs, or “Pollinators.” So far, it has provided solar systems to 10,000 housholds in 250 of Bangalore’s slum communities, in turn saving 40,000 litres of kerosene and 100,000 kilograms of carbon emissions.

But Pollinate’s latest solar lighting project has a less functional purpose… It also has a name: Ray. Ray, as the company notes on its website, “is a light sculpture powered by the sun, hanging out at Sydney Harbour” as part of the four-week Vivid Light 2014 event.

Created by Pollinate in conjunction with Southern Cross University, the seven metre tall installation is made up of strips of multi-coloured light connecting to a base. The idea is that passers-by can pull on Ray’s vines (located in charging pods), resulting in coloured light shooting towards the top of the sculpture. This action will gradually fully charge Ray, at which point he will “overflow in a surge of sound, light and colour.”

For Pollinate, this project embodies the company’s vision of positive change through sustainable and renewable energy.

“He was born out of our willingness to showcase our progress so far, and a metaphorical touch to the impact one light can have on an entire family living in energy poverty,” it says.

For the team at Southern Cross University, led by Barry Hill, creator of SCU’s Sunflower solar generator, it is a chance to test the technology – which is still in development, but has been used successfully to power stages at music festivals such as Bluesfest and Womex Brisbane, and at the Byron Bay Writers Festival – in a new and very different way.

“Ray has meant that we can showcase how we are making the Sunflower generator highly interactive,” said Dr Hill on the Pollinate website.

 “It is a project that has allowed us to test a new data communication system that we have designed to allow solar generator data to be used in the creation of audio visual works. In a sense we are making the Sunflower generator into a musical instrument by using the data gathered from the power generation and discharge cycle to send data to the Hi Ray website and control aspects of the graphic design and audio soundscape.”

Most importantly, he added, “the Ray project is one that shows that renewable energy is a great solution for marginalised communities all over the world that have no access to any safe power source and this impacts on their ability to live, communicate and survive in the 21st Century.”

Source: www.reneweconomy.com.au

11 April 2014

AUSTRALIAN SOLAR TECHNOLOGY LEADER WINS LUCRATIVE CHINA CONTRACT

New CSPV technology to forge billion‐dollar global market

Australian technology company, RayGen Resources, has signed a $A60 million investment and distribution deal to supply its leading‐edge solar power generation technology into China, with a target to secure global exports beyond $1 billion by 2020.

The deal signing with ZhuoZhou Intense Solar Ltd (Intense Solar) was witnessed today by Andrew Robb, MP Minister for Trade and Investment, in Shanghai as part of the Australia Week in China trade mission. Mr Robb described the agreement as a “tremendous example of Australian innovation finding a market in China which results in jobs, investment and trade for Australia.”

In addition to a $2 million equity investment in RayGen, the deal will see Intense Solar buying RayGen’s Australian‐manufactured advanced semiconductor and computerised control components for further assembly in China with locally made parts. In turn, Intense Solar will sell the complete product within China on an exclusive basis. RayGen will sell the high tech components in increasing scale over the next few years, with minimum total sales of $58 million.

At the heart of the distribution deal is RayGen’s revolutionary Concentrated Solar Photovoltaic (CSPV) technology. CSPV is a major advancement on conventional solar technologies because it delivers lower cost and higher efficiency. It uses computer‐controlled mirrors to direct a concentrated beam of sunlight onto ultra‐efficient solar semiconductor devices originally designed to power spacecraft. Twice as efficient as traditional solar panels, RayGen’s technology enables industrial‐capacity solar energy delivered off the grid at on‐the‐grid prices.

RayGen’s solution will produce clean power more cheaply than fossil fuel generation especially in remote, sunny areas.

RayGen CEO, Bob Cart, said the company’s world‐leading technology solution made it a compelling proposition for rapidly developing markets like China with burgeoning demand for low‐cost clean energy options needed to address acute air quality problems.

“Intense Solar saw our solution last year as result of a trade mission hosted by AusTrade. They decided that we offered the best, most innovative solution to meet China’s ever‐increasing demand for power generation”, said Mr Cart.

“We’re delighted they’ve chosen to partner with us and we’re excited by what we see as a huge opportunity to marry Australian innovation and know‐how with Intense Solar’s market access and manufacturing capabilities in China.”

“The deal wouldn’t have happened without the support of AusTrade, along with the Chinese government which also provided its approval and support”, he said. Mr Cart said he hoped the RayGen deal would pave the way for other Australian technology companies to commercialise their ideas by value‐adding to the mass‐production capabilities of economic powers like China and other offshore markets. “Our partnership with Intense Solar shows there’s a significant export market to be gained from this approach and, based on the current trajectory, we believe sales of CSPV products will pass the billion‐dollar mark by the end of the decade”, said Mr Cart.

RayGen was a finalist in the 2013 Australian Technologies Competition supported by the Department of Industry. This led to an invitation by AusTrade for RayGen to join the trade mission to China. RayGen has received $2.75million in Federal and State Government grants since its inception in 2010.

Mr Cart said his company’s agreement with Intense Solar showed that technology innovation was capable of producing returns on taxpayer funding for the benefit of the broader Australian economy.

About RayGen

Established in Melbourne, Australia in 2010, RayGen has developed technology that aims to deliver the world’s lowest‐cost energy generation technology solution. It is revolutionising remote energy production for various applications such as mining. The company was a finalist in the 2013 Australian Technologies Competition and has been awarded Victorian and Commonwealth government grants to help fund the development of its innovative technology solutions for both domestic and offshore markets.

Source: www.raygen.com/live/company.html

Managing Forest Production To Avoid Deforestation & Pollution

The Forests Asia Summit, which gets underway in Jakarta Monday 5 May, will see ministers from across Southeast Asia join CEOs, civil society leaders, development experts and the world’s top scientists to share knowledge on how to accelerate the shift toward a green economy by better managing its forests and landscapes. The production and export of pulp and paper, palm oil and a host of timber related products have contributed to the devastating deforestation, out of control burning and serious air pollution, particularly in Indonesia. We also see why some companies are so supportive of the Sustainable Green Printing Partnership (SGP). Read More

Forests Asia Summit

The Forests Asia Summit, Jakarta, which gets underway in Jakarta Monday 5 May, will see ministers from across Southeast Asia join CEOs, civil society leaders, development experts and the world’s top scientists to share knowledge on how the region can accelerate the shift toward a green economy by better managing its forests and landscapes.

Southeast Asia is one of the world’s most dynamic regions. Its economy is growing rapidly led by a rising middle class but it faces major policy challenges: inequality, uncertain land tenure, unsustainable land use, a loss of biodiversity, food insecurity and climate change. Against this backdrop, some Southeast Asian economies are adopting a green-growth approach, voluntarily establishing targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to sustainably manage their forests and landscapes. Similarly, leading businesses are committing themselves to sustainable land use and investment practices.

Still, more needs to be done. Agricultural expansion in Southeast Asia threatens the world’s third-largest tropical forest and the many ecosystem services they provide. And unsustainable land-use change has made the region one of the world’s largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

Informed by the latest research and best practices, the Forests Asia Summit will allow participants to share knowledge with policy makers and each other in the pursuit of new green-growth pathways for development.

The Summit – organized by the Center for International Forestry Research and co-hosted by the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry – will be the largest in Asia in recent years and is expected to attract more than 1,000 leading stakeholders from Southeast Asia and across the world. Tens of thousands more are expected to participate online or through nationwide broadcasts. There will be special learning events with leading global experts on the Green Economy, the Southeast Asian haze crisis, climate change negotiations and the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Summit

Forests Asia will inform and be informed by national initiatives and key processes in Southeast Asia:

• promote bilateral and multilateral exchanges to improve the implementation of green growth policy
• strengthen law enforcement and governance relating to land tenure, land use and trade
• develop a low-carbon economy and enhance adaptation capacity to achieve win-win synergies between climate change and economic development
• re-affirm the potential for REDD+ in ASEAN and lessons learned thus far for climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation and livelihoods
• find the balance between economic growth and social development to reduce and prevent negative impacts to food security.

Outcomes

Forests Asia will produce several key outcomes:

• commitments to an integrated regional research program, beginning with a pilot program to alleviate the haze crisis
• commitments to investments in sustainable landscapes
• commitments to continued multi-stakeholder dialogues to refine evidence-based policy options for key regional challenges.

Southeast Asia is one of the world’s most dynamic regions. Its economy is growing rapidly led by a rising middle class but it faces major policy challenges: inequality, uncertain land tenure, unsustainable land use, a loss of biodiversity, food insecurity and climate change. Against this backdrop, some Southeast Asian economies are adopting a green-growth approach, voluntarily establishing targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to sustainably manage their forests and landscapes. Similarly, leading businesses are committing themselves to sustainable land use and investment practices.

Still, more needs to be done. Agricultural expansion in Southeast Asia threatens the world’s third-largest tropical forest and the many ecosystem services they provide. And unsustainable land-use change has made the region one of the world’s largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

Informed by the latest research and best practices, the Forests Asia Summit will allow participants to share knowledge with policy makers and each other in the pursuit of new green-growth pathways for development.

The Summit – organized by the Center for International Forestry Research and co-hosted by the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry – will be the largest in Asia in recent years and is expected to attract more than 1,000 leading stakeholders from across Southeast Asia and globally. Tens of thousands more are expected to participate online or through nationwide broadcasts. There will be special learning events with leading global experts on the Green Economy, the Southeast Asian haze crisis, climate change negotiations and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Source: www.cifor.org/forestsasia/about/summit/

Partnering for Printing Sustainability

By John G. Braceland, in WhatTheyThink, the printing and publishing industry’s leading media organization(21 March 2014):

The Sustainable Green Printing Partnership (SGP) is a non-profit organization providing sustainability certification in the printing industry and as such, sponsoring organizations play a large role in ensuring the organization will continue. In this article John Braceland focuses on some of the sponsors and why they continue their support.

I interviewed five sponsors: Fujifilm, HP, Prisco, 3M and Unisource. All five organizations participate at different sponsorship levels. However, there were a few common themes between the organizations:

1)    A strong interest in protecting the environment

2)    SGP’s focus on continuous improvement

3)    A desire to see the printing industry get greener

I was surprised that these same thoughts came from very different organizations. SGP was founded by a number of stakeholders, associations, printers and vendors. It is evident, after seven years of existence, that this organization has clear objectives and continues a strong partnership between these stakeholders. Here is some insight into why these companies stay involved.

Fujifilm:

I spoke with Girish Menon from Fuji. Fujifilm has had a long history of environmental stewardship.  They were the first private company in Japan to establish a public trust fund, 1 billion yen, in 1983 that continues to disburse ongoing support for environmental efforts.

Fuji wants to reduce the environmental impact of their products. Because of their strong environmental focus they wanted to partner with an organization that could give them feedback on not only how their products performed but other opportunities for reducing environmental impact.

A big attraction is SGP’s focus on not just becoming certified and standing still, but each year reducing a company’s environmental impact. Fuji has a strong continuous improvement culture and wants to help the printing industry become better by that focus.

HP:

Jonathan Graham, from HP, has been on the board of SGP for a year. HP became involved when they developed their latex ink technology. Their goal is to have environmental sustainability in all products. HP’s feeling is that sustainability in the printing industry is a have-to-have not a nice-to-have. They were looking for an organization that would be an agent of change in the printing industry.

The paper industry took responsibility when they created the chain of custody certification. The industry was receiving a bad rap about paper usage. HP was looking for an organization that could do the same thing in the printing industry.

Similar to Fuji, HP is looking for an opportunity to interact with printers about the environmental impact of their products. Another big attraction for HP is the idea that being environmentally responsible makes you more efficient. SGP certification focuses on the total operating environment – again the continuous improvement idea. With more and tougher environmental regulations, being environmentally responsible will save the printer money.

Prisco:

Bill Malloy, from Prisco, has been involved in SGP since early in its formation. Prisco saw environmental regulations growing tighter in California. Plus, end users were increasingly looking for marketing solutions with low environmental impact. Prisco wanted to be involved with helping to shape the organization. They didn’t want to see SGP become a green washing or marketing group. They wanted to see an organization that could help the printing industry set a standard on what it meant to be environmentally responsible.

Prisco did not want printers to just pay a fee and become certified, or, just use the logo as a sales tool. They wanted comprehensive criteria as well as continuous improvement each year. Bill felt the severity of the recession slowed down certifications and some of the focus on environmental sustainability by end users. Now that the economy has stabilized he sees more reasons why printers should participate.

3M:

Mike Kesti, from 3M, has been their point person for SGP. 3M has a strong sustainability component in their company, which is good for their business model. Their primary interest is large format graphics media. They wanted to be part of the discussion defining what it meant for a printer to be sustainable. They also wanted to learn in the process so they could bring this back to their own product development.

3M felt it was important that SGP incorporate continuous improvement in their metrics and not be tied to specific technology. They are sensitive to the printer’s customers’ needs for an environmentally friendly sustainable product. 3M wants to have end users specify their brand because of performance and sustainability.

Unisource:

Andrew Gustyn, from Unisource, spoke to me about their involvement with SGP. They have been involved with SGP for over three years. He feels they have just scratched the surface of their relationship.

Unisource continues to promote environmental responsibility. They wanted to be involved with an industry focused environmental organization. The printing industry had no standards on what it meant to be green.  Also, they were looking for standards that covered the operation from start to finish, not just in the prepress or pressroom.  Unisource wanted to share best practices and foster a sense of responsibility towards the environment.

There are three different sponsorship levels: Silver, Gold and Platinum. Some sponsors are involved on the Board. If your organization would like to learn more about being a Sponsor for SGP, contact Martine Padilla, Executive Director of SGP at 310-809-6124 or martine@sgppartnership.org

It is clear from talking to the sponsors that they have a real synergy with SGP and are looking for more than just name recognition. These organizations are investing in pushing the printing industry to new levels of environmental responsibility.

John G. Braceland is Managing Director for Graphic Arts Alliance a member run purchasing cooperative. He is also President of JB Solutions, a company that creates and manages purchasing cooperatives in various industries. Previously, he was President and owner of Braceland Brothers, a multi-plant printing company headquartered in Philadelphia, PA.

Source: www.whattheythink.com

Responsible Retail & Consumption Highlighted by Climate Confidential

Climate Confidential’s theme of “Unconventional Wisdom” is the fourth and final story from this group of writers who fund their work by Crowdsourcing through Beacon Reader in The United States. This article explores the ways that retailers and resellers of apparel are extending the life and value of their products, as everyone from conscious consumers to fast-fashion fiends get hip to recycled clothes. It’s good for business, but what about for the Earth? Read More

Climate Confidential’s  theme of “Unconventional Wisdom” is the fourth and final story in this issue explores the ways that retailers and resellers of apparel are extending the life and value of their products, as everyone from conscious consumers to fast-fashion fiends get hip to recycled clothes. It’s good for business, but what about for the Earth?

Climate Confidential is a collective of writers who fund their work by crowdsourcing through Beacon Reader in The United States. You too can support writers by going to Beacon Reader.

Come Again? The Rise of Resale Retail

By Mary Catherine O’Connor in Climate Confidential & Beacon Reader (27 April 2014):

Reporters who cover the environment (myself included) are just now recovering from the Earth Day Blitz. As early as January and right up until April 22nd we are hit with a barrage of emails from marketers eager to hawk their eco-friendly, water-saving, organically grown, fair-trade products, as if they are gifts to Mother Earth rather than stuff derived from her belly.

Meanwhile, the greenest choice you can make as a shopper is to buy nothing at all—at least, nothing that requires materials, manufacturing, or shipping. Clothing seems innocuous enough, but according to the World Bank, textile manufacturing generates up to 20 percent of industrial wastewater in China. The other end of the lifecycle isn’t pretty either, especially in the United States. According to the EPA’s 2012 figures, we trashed 14.3 million tons of textiles – or around 90 pounds per person, that year.

That is clearly a conundrum for retailers seeking to cultivate an environmentally responsible image while still boosting revenue. Typically, apparel makers’ bottom line is tied to a basic belief among customers: that they need new things and ought to buy them, season after season. However, a handful of retailers in recent years have pioneered new models that seek to address their products’ environmental impacts and use of natural resources while still generating revenue. Patagonia and Eileen Fisher are buying back apparel from customers, and then reselling it. H&M is plying consumers to recycle their used textiles by offering store credit to buy more. Programs like these force consumers to look at their wardrobes in a new way. Whether they can also lighten apparel’s environmental toll, however, is up for debate.

Grow, Grow, Grow Your Brand, Gently Down the Stream

On Black Friday (November 25) 2011, the outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia broke new trail in the world of confrontational marketing, launching its Don’t Buy This Jacket campaign with a full-page ad in The New York Times. “Black Friday,” it read, “and the culture of consumerism it reflects, puts the economy of natural systems that supports all life firmly in the red.”

The ad campaign also launched a partnership with eBay, through which consumers who take the retailer’s Common Threads pledge to only buy what they need, repair what they can, and recycle the rest, would have their used Patagonia clothing postings appear both on eBay and on Patagonia’s Common Threads page. That boosts their chances of a sale.

To date, nearly 70,000 people have taken the Common Threads Pledge. They’ve sold 57,000 Patagonia items through the eBay and Patagonia online storefronts in the U.S. and U.K. That mountain of fleece and Gore-Tex represents 57,000 potential retail sales that Patagonia did not make—not that anyone at the Ventura, Calif., based company noticed a lull at the tills. As a business, Patagonia had been thriving before the Don’t Buy This Jacket campaign – part of a wider growth in the outdoor gear industry – and since its launch, sales continued to grow—by 30 percent, in fact.

“Sales have continued to rise since the ad, absolutely,” said Nellie Cohen, a Patagonia corporate environmental associate. But she contends that the growth is not just the result of the ad campaign. Its customers also respond to the company’s effort to be transparent and responsive to environmental impact, so if they’re going to invest in outdoor gear, they invest in Patagonia.

The apparel maker, which began selling fleece made from recycled plastic beverage bottles before some of its younger customers were even born, is also advancing sustainable textile technology. Last year it established a venture fund called $20 Million & Change and just this week announced its first investment in a Denver-based startup called CO2Nexus, which uses liquid CO2 to process fabrics, displacing the need for water or energy-intensive dryers.

Yet, the tension between rolling back its environmental impact while still growing was clearly agitating Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard during a business conference last year hosted by GreenBiz.com “The elephant in the room that no one talks about is growth,” he said, adding that Patagonia failed in its intentions, dating back to the 90s, to stay small and shrink its product line. “We didn’t pull it off. We were being pulled to grow, grow, grow. But we’re readdressing it now.”

One means to this end, he said, is to add functionality into each product while winnowing out superfluous items—essentially making them more valuable, durable, and harder to part with. Patagonia is also tinkering with its sales model. In October 2012, the retailer began experimenting with mini resale shops inside four of its stores across the U.S. Customers could bring used durable gear (things like waterproof shells and down jackets) into the store and “sell” it back to Patagonia in exchange for store credit—generally for around half the value the store managers expected to be able to resell the apparel.

In September 2013, three more of these “Worn Wear” shops opened in Chicago, Palo Alto, Calif., and Seattle. But in January, Patagonia discontinued the program in all but the Portland store. Being able to dedicate adequate space inside the stores for the Worn Wear shops was a major issue, said Cohen. “It’s a very intense business process, in terms of running a resale business inside a regular store, so we need to figure out a better system.”

Does that mean we might soon see entire brick-and-mortar stores dedicated to reselling Patagonia clothes? “Anything is on the table,” she said. “We do love the concept, so it’s just figuring out what makes the most sense.”

High-End Rethreads

Four years ago, the eponymous women’s apparel company Eileen Fisher began collecting used apparel from its nearly 1000 employees. “We have so much clothing, it’s like a sickness,” admitted the company’s director of social consciousness, Amy Hall. The plan was to launder, repair (if needed) and resell the garments. They were available only in the Eileen Fisher Lab store, a special boutique near the company’s Irvington, New York, headquarters. The Lab store also sells factory seconds and samples to raise funds for the Eileen Fisher Foundation, which supports programs for women and girls.

In addition to used items from employees, the company began asking for items from consumers. Unlike Patagonia’s Worn Wear, Eileen Fisher offers a $5 store credit for each piece of apparel brought into the store, whether it is a scarf or a cashmere sweater. “That opened the flood gates,” said Cheryl Campbell, managing director of the Eileen Fisher Community Foundation.

When Eileen Fisher, the founder, learned that the inventory of used garments had quickly grown to 35,000 units, she realized it was time to start a separate venture, dedicated to selling used clothing. In March 2012, the first Green Eileen retail store opened, in Yonkers, New York. Last year, a second opened in Seattle.

“I had no idea what the supply chain would be,” said Campbell. “That was my primary worry, but it’s no longer a worry.” That’s thanks largely to a successful ad campaign that launched in time with Earth Day last year. The ad’s tagline simply reads: “We want our clothes back now.”

While it didn’t match the shock factor of “Don’t Buy This Jacket,” it did pique the interest of Eileen Fisher loyalists, who brought in 70,000 Eileen Fisher garments to stores across the country in the few months following the campaign. A total 150,000 garments were collected throughout the year, and that helped the Green Eileen stores reach $1.5 million in sales last year.

Factor in the costs of running these retail stores, staffing them, collecting, shipping, cleaning and (if needed) repairing all those pieces of apparel, and the $3 million in sales that Green Eileen has generated since it launched in 2009 is not enough for the project to turn a profit. But the company expects a 25 percent jump in sales in 2014 that should cover organizational costs and allow the venture to break even.

Shoppers browse the resale retail racks. Photo: Green Eileen

Initially, Green Eileen was operated through the nonprofit Eileen Fisher Foundation. That meant it could not advertise or benefit from economies of scale from within the corporation and had to outsource everything from facilities management to graphic design. Now that it is transitioning to the company, Green Eileen has a better chance of making a profit in the coming years. Most items sold in Green Eileen stores sell for a third of the original price—though new items, still bearing their original tags, fetch half of the original price.

Emotional Attachments, Survival Tactics

Like Patagonia apparel, Eileen Fisher clothing — much of it flowing tunics and sweaters in rich fabrics and conservative pallets — is a premium product that devotees hold in high regard. Campbell said consumers often approach Eileen Fisher in public. Someone might come up and say, “Eileen, do you remember that blue dress from 2002?” and then will tell her a personal story that relates to that dress. “And they are reluctant to get rid of these items. Women of a certain age, we change sizes and hair colors. But we’ve invested in these clothes and we don’t want them to go to waste.”

Likewise, climbers, mountaineers or other outdoor adventurists might associate the emotions they felt during their most intense or rewarding outings with the Patagonia jacket that kept them dry.

These are the exceptions, however. In the U.S., most of our clothing is utilitarian and, increasingly, fleeting.

In 1999, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that U.S. consumers tossed all but about 13 percent of their clothes into landfills, once they were done with them. Since then, the percentage has only inched up to 15.7 percent, while the quantity of clothes being trashed has grown. Mattias Wallander, CEO of textile recycler USAgain, said that uptick is due largely to “fast fashion,” the type of trend-focused, low-quality, low-cost clothes from stores like Forever 21 and Hennes & Mauritz AB (H&M).

Teens (and many adults) love this stuff, but fast fashion has suffered from public image problems, and not only because the clothes have short life cycles. In 2012, a fire in a Bangladeshi garment factory that killed more than 100 people exposed the dangerous working conditions inside garment factories linked to many fast fashion purveyors.

H&M is one retailer that has been working to clean up its image and bolster its environmental credibility. Its textile factories have reduced water consumption by 65 percent, and the company recently launched a line of denim made from 20 percent recycled fiber.

It has also gotten into the resale market, but takes a very different approach. Bringing in used textiles—of any brand, not just H&M, earns shoppers a credit toward future purchases. The retailer then sells the collected clothes to textile collection services provider I:CO. Levi Strauss & Co. is also working with I:CO to establish take-back points in San Francisco (to meet the city’s goal of having zero landfill waste by 2020), the U.K. and France. The jeans giant has also significantly reduced the amount of water its factories use and is sourcing raw materials from recycled plastic bottles—it has used 9.4 million of them in 1.2 million pieces of apparel so far. It is also starting to make products with repurposed textiles, such as a limited edition Parachute Trucker jacket made from U.S. military parachutes.

For a company like H&M that relies on huge volumes and low prices, the motivation to buy back textiles from customers is not just about giving consumers a way to assuage guilt about their packed closets. If it wants to keep offering products with recycled textile content, it needs to help make sure the market for recycled fibers is robust.

Technology could play a role in closing the loop on textiles and boosting the quantity of garments that are turned back into new products,  said Jennifer Gilbert, I:CO’s chief marketing officer. As tons of used garments move through sorting facilities, the vast majority of sorting is done manually. I:CO is preparing to run pilot tests this fall to ascertain where radio frequency identification (RFID) or other types of sensor technology, applied to garments early in the supply chain, could make sorting mixed streams of used garments more efficient and cost-effective.

Plus, as clean water becomes scarce and climate trends continue, the environmental and financial costs associated with producing water-intensive crops like cotton are also likely to rise. That will help to make recycled textile more attractive from an economic standpoint.

The Textile Trade

All of this means that now is a good time to be in the textile reuse industry. For-profit companies like I:CO and USAgain exist in order to extend the life of textiles. They service a $1 billion global market of resellers (organizations that sell clothes as clothes) and recyclers (companies that turn unable clothes into wiping rags, upholstery stuff or insulation).

USAgain maintains 14,000 collection boxes across 19 States. Trucks pick up those goods and bring them to 12 different warehouses around the country. The clothes are then moved through a network of sorters and graders that determine which items should remain in the U.S. and what should be sent abroad. Then it’s passed to wholesalers, who sell the goods to thrift stores such as Goodwill. About 50 percent stays in U.S., said Wallander. Of that, 15 to 20 percent is in insufficient shape for resale and is instead sold to textile recyclers.

“We are diverting more and more, we’re not able to keep up with increasing consumption,” Wallander explained, adding that USAgain is growing 10 to 15 percent each year. Collectors are not the only part of the textile reuse supply chain that are thriving. Goodwill Industries’ revenues grew from $67.9 million in 2008 to $105.2 million in 2011.

If the battle is merely between reducing demand for apparel, starting at the beginning of the supply chain, versus increasing the amount of it we reuse or recycle, then reuse is clearly in the lead.

Despite the strong appetite for used textiles, it’s hard not to see H&M’s approach as merely enticing consumers to buy more fast fashion by occasionally dropping off a few dated togs for store credit. It’s a criticism I:CO’s Gilbert has heard before. “I understand the reduce approach – buy less and buy quality. But you have to look at the reality of society. Not everyone will change, so you have to provide other avenues to do the right thing. There are a lot of different ways to go at this problem.”

Besides, it’s not a completely different approach from the one Patagonia and Green Eileen are taking. While clothes brought into H&M will go into the wider reuse and recycling supply chain rather than being resold within the same stores, in all three cases consumers are lured in by store credit…with which they have no choice but to buy more stuff.

Source: www.beaconreader.com/climate-confidential/come-again-the-rise-of-resale-retail

Transformational Change Needed. Palm Oil Industry Hits Tipping Point

The Business Times in Singapore had a front page story last week that made many – palm oil companies as well – sit up and take notice. The palm oil industry has reached a tipping point. Two palm oil giants who together trade about half the global supply – Wilmar International and Golden Agri Resources – have declared that their sustainability policies would apply not just to their own plantations, but also to those of their suppliers. And one of the biggest palm oil users in the world  - Unilever – who have instituted some of the strictest policies and practices, is continuing with its overarching Sustainable Living plan, but boss Paul Polman really wants to see transformational change in the way all businesses operate. Read More

Sustainability: new ball game for palm oil firms

But higher bar set by Wilmar, Golden Agri won’t have big immediate impact: analysts

By Andrea Soh in Business Times (28 April 2014)

The palm oil industry has reached a tipping point.

In the last five months, two palm oil giants who together trade about half the global supply – Wilmar International and Golden Agri Resources – have declared that their sustainability policies would apply not just to their own plantations, but also to those of their suppliers.

About half of all fresh fruit bunches bought by Wilmar come from third parties, while the amount for upstream palm oil player Golden Agri is much lower, at 7 per cent.

The two palm oil groups’ resolve to set a new sustainability standard in the industry has prompted others like First Resources to look into doing the same.

“Although our third-party purchases are small, we will be reviewing our procurement policies with the aim of incorporating our sustainability values into our supply chain,” said a First Resources spokesman.

The pressure from non- governmental organisations (NGOs) such as Greenpeace has been mounting for a decade, but the catalyst for these recent developments was the changing tide of sentiment among consumer goods firms.

A month before Wilmar’s announcement last December, Unilever – the world’s largest user of palm oil at 1.5 million tonnes a year, or 3 per cent of global production – committed to buying only palm oil that can be traced to known sources by the end of this year.

The Anglo-Dutch group uses palm oil in products such as its Dove shampoo and Flora margarine.

Unilever’s decision follows similar commitments by Ferrero, Nestle, Kellogg and L’Oreal to buy certified palm oil, or oil that comes from plantations managed and certified according to certain sustainability criteria.

Since then, the tide has swept along more palm oil buyers. M&M maker Mars and Colgate-Palmolive late last month announced their plans to use only certified palm oil by the end of next year; Procter & Gamble, which was recently the target of a global Greenpeace campaign, committed on April 8 to ensuring no deforestation in its palm oil supply chain.

Europe, the third-largest import market for palm oil after India and China, has led the demand for sustainability in the palm oil sector. In France, food companies have started using “palm oil-free” labels as a badge of honour.

Concern is growing that the palm oil industry will suffer if it remains deaf to these demands from its customers.

Said Wilmar CEO Kuok Khoon Hong at its results briefing in February: “If this clash continues, maybe the EU governments will stop using palm oil for biofuels under pressure from all their consumers. You can see some very big companies already saying that they don’t use palm oil. It’s a selling point (for them).”

“If they stop using palm oil for biofuel, if all the big consumers there stop using palm oil, crude palm oil (price) may drop by US$200-300 a tonne. What’s the point of planting another 15,000 hectares (then)?” he asked.

Wilmar has therefore decided to take the lead in the industry. “We’re hoping for other companies, other plantations to join us, to try to make the whole industry sustainable.”

But these changes will not come without cost, say analysts.

While the impact on the profitability of palm oil firms would not be significant in the short term, “(it) could slow down their ability to grow due to the more stringent policies that they have adopted”, said CIMB analyst Ivy Ng.

A Wilmar spokeswoman conceded that its business will be affected in the short term. “We recognise that this is something we have to do, both for the business and the environment. We believe the long-term benefits will outweigh the challenges facing us in the short term,” she said.

Committing to sustainability, however, is only a first step, said Greenpeace head of forest campaign Bustar Maitar. “The next step – and a big one – after that is to actually implement the policy itself.”

This will be important in gaining the trust of the market, said Scott Poynton, executive director of Forest Trust, a Swiss non-profit organisation. “There’s still a lot of cynicism and mistrust about these companies. If they can prove that they are not just greenwashing, they will start winning confidence back from the broad market and the NGO community.”

Challenges abound for palm oil firms. For one thing, the definitions of peat land and high carbon forest are hazy. Standards are also always moving higher.

In view of this, Carey Wong, an analyst at OCBC, says a continual raising of the bar may bode well for the industry ultimately.

“We believe it is a good thing – it raises the standard for the whole industry and makes them appear on a par with practices in the Western world,” he said.

Customers who are more discerning are also willing to pay more, he added. “So that could still be a ‘win-win’ for the companies that are RSPO-certified, for example.” RSPO, or the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, is an industry body that promotes the use of sustainable palm oil products.

And there may be no two ways about it – those who refuse to adapt will be left behind. Said Mr Poynton: “In time, the buyers will desert them. The change is coming. Their resistance will ultimately be undermined.”

Source: www.valuebuddies.com/thread-5058-post-81043.html

Unilever struggles to sell customers on Sustainable Living

By Jessica Shankleman  (29 April 2014):

Unilever has seen the total environmental impact of its products rise 5 percent during the past four years, as it acquired a new shampoo business and struggled to convince consumers to use less energy for hot showers.

The consumer products giant yesterday released an update on its ambitious Sustainability Living Plan, through which it aims to halve the greenhouse gas impact of its deodorants, food, detergents and other products between 2010 and 2020, confirming it is on track to meet the overarching goal for its full value chain despite challenges in some areas of the business.

The report revealed the company has made good progress on a number of fronts, including slashing the carbon emissions impact of its manufacturing processes by 32 percent compared to 2008, primarily through the installation of advanced clean technologies and encouraging more efficient behavior by employees.

The company confirmed it has also made strides in reducing emissions from its transport fleet and refrigeration technologies, and has slashed energy use from its offices.

However, Unilever revealed its overall emissions per consumer rose by 5 percent since 2010, mainly because it acquired Alberto Culver, which produces a number of major brands including TRESemme, Alberto VO5 and St. Ives.

As such, the company admitted it was likely to miss a target to get 200 million consumers to buy products and tools that will help them to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions while washing and showering by 2015.

“Two thirds of our value chain GHG impacts are in consumer use, primarily heated water for showering and bathing, which is more difficult for us to influence,” the report stated. “External factors such as decarbonizing energy grids and effective carbon pricing will play a critical role in reducing GHG emissions, as well as product innovation and consumer behavior change.”

Paul Polman, chief executive of Unilever, said it had been easier to achieve environmental targets directly within the company’s control, but it was now looking to develop more innovative solutions to reduce consumer energy use.

“We’re making good progress in reshaping our business for sustainable, equitable growth,” he said. “But we need to do more.”

Unilever also today added three new targets to its Sustainable Living Plan, aiming to boost fairness in the workplace, improve gender equality and develop an “inclusive business.”

“We have always recognized the bigger role that businesses need to play, and now is the moment for Unilever to step up and expand efforts in key areas, driving transformational change where we know we can make the biggest impact,” added Polman. “In this way we will leverage our scale and work collaboratively in partnership with others to reach a tipping point in areas that will make a significant difference.”

Despite the difficulty of convincing consumers to cut their environmental impact, Unilever has been broadly applauded by green groups for taking leadership in the battle to reduce carbon emissions.

“It is really exciting to see a huge multi-national business take such a bold and progressive approach to how it recognizes and leverages its size, scale and influence,” said Ben Kellard, head of sustainable business at Forum for the Future, in response to the latest report. “Learning and adapting is important in any business strategy, but it’s even more impressive when companies, like Unilever, revise an already innovative plan with the intention of bringing about broader change on a global scale. We hope this new plan — which includes stepping up plans to tackle several major global sustainability challenges — helps Unilever to achieve the scaling up of the delivery of sustainability across its business and brands that we believe it is capable of.”

This article originally appeared at Business Green.

Source: www.greenbiz.com

Last word

Everything is connected!

Always remember a wonderful BBC TVseries – probably before your time, dear reader – when James Burke explored inventions and conventions of the scientific and technological kind (circa 1978, with sequels in 1994 and 1997), showing how everything’s connected.

Same feeling experienced when I went about my work over the last six weeks or so -  attending conferences, speaking engagements, writing articles, getting chapters written for the next book, networking, communicating, meeting creatures and people great and small – that everything’s connected.

I was thinking about all this when I met with various people in the past few weeks who are all doing good in related fields, wearing different hats, but remarkably connected. Working in unison for the sake of the planet and us all. In different ways. Sometimes not even known to each other. 

When speaking about climate change and energy at a couple of workshops in the last week, I reminded the audience/fellow participants of what the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies came up with in 2005 in their landmark study Americans and Climate Change( www.environment.yale.edu) described  “the perfect problem”. Climate change was just that because it couldn’t be pidgeon-holed or put in one discipline or even two. It implicated all the sciences and practices you could think off,  because again, everything was connected.

Weather, climate, energy, environment, food, water.

All the elements and all the outcomes – a perfect problem with no perfect answer.

This nexus came to light and was enunciated very clearly at the last Singapore International Water Week two years ago. It went beyond water issues  and opportunities to “connect the dots” with clean energy, waste management, recycling, clean air – nothing is left out and all’s included.

Which makes the problem all the harder to describe and prescribe solutions. We are so used to going to the doctor or specialist for a prescription, for something to heal us, cure us.  But if we are honest there are no specialists for the climate change, those best able to help us understand are generalists, good communicators, those who bridge disciplines and understand .

They are creative thinkers or they are engineers who think outside the box. Scientists like Ian Lowe and Peter Doherty, environmentalists like David Suzuki or advocates like Jonathon Porritt. Or even an economist like Nicholas Stern or a paleontologist like Tim Flannery or an engineer like David Hood.

I was thinking about all this when I met with various people in the past few weeks who are all doing good in related fields, wearing different hats, but remarkably connected. Working in unison for the sake of the planet and us all. In different ways. Sometimes not even known to each other. 

There’s Andrew Affleck who set up Armstrong Asset Management to raise enough money to fund clean energy projects in South East Asia. An enterprising private sector initiative which was successful in amassing US$164 million to do the job. In the process winning an award from Asian Investor magazine for the best infrastructure fund launch. www.armstrongam.com

And my old friend Martin Blake has been back in Singapore after a very successful time in Australia where he brought together – with a little help from our friends – an amazing collection of like-minded people to form Blue Australasia, which offers a unique business model that assists organisations to maximise efficiency and to unlock resources and opportunities that are presently being overlooked. Spread the word. www.blueaus.com

David Hunt, is one of those very capable Australians in the Blue team and he knows Asia well too. In Singapore we met to see how we can work together to both raise funds to support clean energy and clean tech projects in the region, and effectively promote the good work that is going on. He takes charge of BE Intermediary services. www.imperiuminvestment.com

John O’Brien, who runs Australian Clean Tech, was back in Singapore speaking at the Sentosa conference on clean tech. He has done an amazing job promoting clean tech businesses and establishing indexes for Australia and China. Maybe Singapore and South East Asia could be next. He connects the  dots and shows what the private sector can do. www.auscleantech.com.au

I had the pleasure of sharing the stage with Jeff Obbard the other week at National University of Singapore for a special Asian student’s workshop looking at climate change and sustainability. He describes himself as more than an engineer – he’s an ecologist. And his bias towards the environment and clean energy is obvious. He was telling me about what he’s come up with. AiRazor Technologies Ltd – a university spin-off company dedicated to the invention and supply of indoor air quality control devices. Best to get hold of Jeff through LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jeff-obbard-ph-d/23/18/635

So you don’t think I am totally favouring Westerners, let me draw attention to the wonderful work of Eugene Tay in Singapore. Besides being one of the city-state’s most active activists on all things green – he also went to Taiwan with me in March to participate in the Asia Productivity Organisation event – he has organised a series of workshops on Sustainable Singapore, to get maximum input from community organisations and the private sector to advise Government. www.greenfutures.org

Then there’s no forgetting Rob Cawthorne, Carbon Reduction Institute and Syntech International.  He is one of the survivors in the carbon space (in Australia) and when visiting Singapore he told me he’s keen to spread the net and get involved in developing his business in Asia. We’re here to help of course. He’s also a Blue Australasia supporter. www.noco2.com.au

And just while you’re thinking they’re an all-male lot, we introduce four of the other gender. The very creative sorts:

Laura Allen runs an outfit called Gone Adventurin’. We met at the Hall and Partners event. She’s doing wonderful work to not only highlight important issues – like water pollution – but effectively brings the private sector on board with “authentic stories and sustainable brands”. www.goneadventurin.com

Lekha Patmanathan and I met at Eugene’s Sustainable Singapore workshop and she’s keen to promote solar as the clean energy of the future. She’s a successful and savvy lady in the recruitment business, but keen to demonstrate her enthusiasm for all things sustainable.

Andrea Hessmo is an enthusiastic writer who is keen to turn her hand to promoting the good things in life and what’s good for the planet. While we are working together to get some attention for a Singapore start up, we’re also keen to promote opportunities for other writers.

And lastly, I promise, Andrea introduced me to Camilla Hall, who is not only an enthusiastic follower of Ashok Khosla and Gunter Pauli – which puts her very much in the blue and sustainable territory –  but she probably has even more hats than I have! And all of them for the good of us all. Swedish water included!

So I could go on about more wonderful people and events, and issues and opportunities, explored in the past few weeks. There’s more to tell about Crowdsourcing and our plans for “Writers of the World Unite”. But we’ll restrain ourselves or there won’t be anything to talk about next time.

Meantime, keep in touch through our LinkedIn Group – Sustain Ability Showcase Asia (SASA) – or other means of communication. And if you haven’t made it to our “honours list” this time, maybe I’m just saving you up for something better next time.

- Ken Hickson

Source: www.sustain-ability-showcase.com