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Green Numbers round-up 09/11/2009

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Falling more in love with Wal-Mart: On textiles and bamboo

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Weird, huh? I just followed a tweet from sustainable marketing uber-maven Don Carli to find out more about the Wal-Mart sustainable textiles network. I can’t think of any other single organisation driving so fast to more sustainable business outcomes, and quite honestly, I would never have suspected Wal-Mart would be making the moves it is.

Wal-Mart pretty much is the global supply chain, and it has amazing power to improve sustainability. Could it be that Wal-Mart, for all its hard-charging business behaviour, is still basically a family-owned business? Watch the video – which clearly shows the entire cotton supply chain. Great teaching! Wal-Mart uses organic cotton – did you know that? “If you converted all our cotton to organic it would have massive benefits”. The company’s purchase of cotton was apparently the biggest purchase ever…

Why stop at cotton? Bet you didn’t know Wal-Mart is using bamboo in its socks now. Seriously- watch the video (shame its not embeddable). Its also recycling polyester.

So that t-shirt above. That is from Wal-Mart’s own brand clothes. When you read a Wal-Mart blog about purchasing and supply chain, the business is genuinely taking a direction. Unlike, say, Shell’s Climate Change policy blog, which appears to be a fig-leaf with little real links to corporate strategy, Wal-Mart is walking in the same direction it is talking. You can respect author David Hone, but Shell’s performance, not so much.

Wal-Mart, on the other hand, seems to realise that to be a successful company in the 21st century, it needs to want to be a successful business in the 22nd.

update: I was talking to someone in the back channel who sent this DM: “did you read Ruskoff’s Life Inc about how they devastate local economies and make everyone dependent on massive transport systems?”

I should say I am more than familiar with the case against Wal-Mart. But without efficiency and economies of scale we’re not going to be able to solve this century’s challenges. Carrot and stick, and all that. Retail is definitely part of the problem, but its also part of solution.

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Guest Post: The Low Down on Carbon Offsets

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The idea behind “offsetting” carbon emissions is that, while you are emitting some carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as a result of your activities, you can counterbalance these emissions by contributing to a project somewhere else that will reduce emissions. While this idea is most prevalent in relation to air travel, people are “offsetting” their car travel, home fuel use, and other things as well.
There are all kinds of projects that have been used for “carbon offsetting”, such as developing renewable energy and planting trees. Not all projects are created equal – here’s some of the key issues:
  • Additionality – Sometimes people sell “offset credits” for things that would have happened anyway (for example, a project that already has funding, or a modification to industrial practice that is or will be required by law). For offsetting to be “real”, a project should be something additional to what is already underway.
  • Multiple benefit – Ideally, an offset project should have benefits that go beyond just carbon neutrality, particularly with respect to projects taking place in the so-called “less developed countries”. For example, projects that create significant employment, reduce local air pollution, protect biodiversity, or allow increased quality of life in low-income communities are better than those that don’t.
  • Effectiveness – Some things have more hope of producing actual and lasting emissions reductions than others. For example, the part of a new solar panel that you have paid for will result in “carbon savings” equivalent to your “carbon expenditure” over its lifetime (if the offset was calculated correctly and as long as it doesn’t break or have a tree grow to shade it). All projects include an element of uncertainty, but with some projects it’s more of a crapshoot in terms of whether the carbon saved will be equivalent to the carbon spent. For example, tree planting is generally considered a pretty poor offset mechanism, because the carbon that is taken up by the tree will eventually be released when the tree dies or is cut down (and in some places this may happen sooner rather than later, especially where there is a lot of pressure on forest resources). This isn’t to say that reforestation isn’t a hugely important thing – it is – but it’s not really addressing the emissions issue, or the underlying issues driving deforestation in the first place. In some cases, there might be a sweet project that involves planting trees while meeting other objectives as well – such as a reforestation or forest project that works with local communities to develop sustainable livelihoods based on forest resources like “wild” foods and medicinal plants – so it really depends on the project. In general, though, buying into things like renewable energy has a greater potential for actually reducing carbon emissions in line with what you have generated.
Unfortunately, it’s sometimes hard to be sure what is actually being done with the money you provide. Some of the carbon-offset operators are pretty shady – it’s buyer beware. If you want a bit more certainty, pick offsets that are certified under the Gold Standard or the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Alliance (CCBA) standards. The David Suzuki Foundation lists Gold Standard certified offset providers and other useful resources on its website: http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Climate_Change/What_You_Can_Do/carbon_neutral.asp. Some of the offsetters provide descriptions of specific projects and let you pick and choose.

Overall, there is a lot of debate over whether offsetting is a good thing at all. Some people feel that it allows you to assuage your pollution guilt without really doing anything, comparing it to buying “indulgences” for your sins from the church in the middle ages. They also say that it overemphasizes individual responsibility for climate change at the expense of lobbying governments to take action. On the other hand, offsets could provide money for good projects to happen. Here’s my suggestions (drawn from lots of other sources) on what to do if you are concerned about your (or your organization’s) carbon footprint, specifically in relation to travel:
  1. Think about what you can do to eliminate your emmissions. Can you teleconference instead of meeting in person? (the technology for this has improved significantly in the last few years, with the rise of podcasting, “webinars” and the like). Can get just as much enjoyment out of a holiday at a resort in your region or a “staycation”?
  2. Choose the least polluting mode of transport available. Right now, this may be limited to choosing the the bus or train over driving and flying where possible, but eventually dirigibles (airships; non-exploding ones of course!) and efficient ocean-going vessels may make their return (NB – a contemporary cruise ship is a surprisingly polluting form of transport). Also, be sure that other elements of your travels are as sustainable as possible. For example, choose environmentally responsible hotels/campgrounds and tour operators.
  3. DIY. Most people and organizations use energy in a variety of ways, and so money that would be spent on purchasing offsets could be used to directly reduce energy use by the individual or organization. For example, “offset money” could be saved up (or used to pay off a loan) to buy a more efficient vehicle, a solar panel, a high-efficiency furnace, geothermal heating system, energy efficient lightbulbs, or whatever. This would require some calculation on the part of the individual/organization to determine what emissions are being generated by the travel and what would be required to compensate for those emissions (there are emissions calculators on the web that might make this easier). It also might be more costly to take this approach (depends a bit on what project is proposed). On the other hand, any benefits (for example, reduced fuel costs) would go directly to the individual/organization.
  4. Lobby instead. Rather than paying for offsets, you could commit to writing a letter (or a bunch of letters) to your political representatives to encourage them to act on climate change every time you travel. Of course, you won’t be able to see the same direct impact from this, but in the long run government intervention is essential to any meaningful reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and the more governments are told that this is what their constituents want, the better! If this isn’t feasible, money could be donated directly to an organization doing this lobbying work. I personally don’t think this is quite as effective as the hands-on approach, but it could be used as a last resort or in addition to a letter-writing activity.
  5. Directly support local projects. If there are projects you know about in your local community (or that you know of in the wider world through your contacts) that are working effectively to reduce emissions, why not support them directly instead of buying an offset through a middleman?
  6. Offset responsibly. When all else fails, use a reputable offsetting company (e.g., one that is Gold Standard).

Sarah Wakefield
Department of Geography
University of Toronto

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June 15th GreenMonk Energy & Sustainability show – Face Off!

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Last week I wrote a post in response to Dennis Howlett’s ZDNet article questioning the causes of climate change and therefore our reactions to it.

I also mentioned Dennis’ post in last week’s Energy and Sustainability show so Dennis contacted me and asked for an opportunity to come on the show to put forward his point of view. Dennis is an old friend, so of course I said yes.

So yesterday’s Energy and Sustainability show was a Tom vs Dennis face-off on climate change (actually it was a good natured chat with Dennis basically saying he was asking questions because not enough people were being skeptical!).

What do you think?

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I see Google have published an article o…

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I see Google have published an article on their ambitions to achieve carbon neutrailty . It is not a bad piece (if you ignore the strong emphasis on offsets).

However, what is supremely disappointing is Google’s complete lack of any attempt at Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting. Most significant IT companies have a CSR site with downloadable CSR reports. Most conform to the Global Reporting Initiative standards.

The only significant IT player I found who doesn’t do any sustainability reporting whatsoever is Amazon! Obviously Amazon doesn’t believe in sustainability.

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HP Claims Greenpeace Critique Unfair

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The other day after reading this I noted that according to the latest Greenpeace Guide Into Greener Electronics two my clients, HP and Dell were “backsliding” on environmental commitments.

Of course there are always many sides to any story, and I wondered whether Greenpeace might be reading statements of direction by these vendors as formal commitments, and then unfairly penalising them for the initial positive statement: in this case the aim of eliminating toxic vinyl plastic (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) by the end of 2009.

HP does appear to have made a strong commitment in 2005. To be fair to Greenpeace, both Dell and HP are strongly marketing their environmentally friendly bona fides, and as such deserve a higher level of scrutiny.

But to fair to the vendors it can hard be hard to replace toxic materials at reasonable cost – and in that spirit I thought it only fair to include a statement I received from HP to help you make up your own minds.

Greenpeace say we are backsliding on commitment. The statement is untrue.

HP had a goal. Subtle but important difference. This was a deliberate language on our part as we knew when making the goal that the effort would requires significant R&D effort, and when we made the goal there was no clear solution to the problem. HP is conservative enough not to make commitments when we have no clear idea how we are going to achieve them. (You can criticise our conservatism in this regard and that would be fair – but you cannot criticise us for backsliding on a commitment we didn’t make)

The goal in full reads:

“Eliminate the remaining uses of BFRs and PVC from new computing products launched in 2009 as technologically feasible alternatives become readily available that will not compromise product performance or quality and will not adversely impact health or the environment. ”

Our progress against the goal is:

HP will introduce several new computing products this year that use less BFR/PVC than previous generations.

As the availability of BFR and PVC components continues to increase, we will incrementally reduce the use of these substances in our products as quickly as possible until they are eliminated entirely, but due to the lack of acceptable alternatives in necessary volumes, HP will not be able to deliver all new computing products launched in 2009 that are 100 percent BFR/PVC free.

As a background: our overall commitment is:

To take a proactive approach to evaluating materials and eliminating those that pose an environmental, health or safety risk. We may replace or eliminate substances because of customer or legal requirements or because we believe it is appropriate based on a precautionary approach. We strive to replace even legally permitted materials when scientific data has established a potential health or environmental risk and when less risky, commercially viable alternatives are available.

Other achievements in this sphere include:

Eliminated more than 95 percent of the BFRs used in the external case plastics of products more than 10 years ago, including two, PBDE and PBB, which were subsequently among the substances restricted by the EU RoHS Directive. During the same timeframe, HP also eliminated polyvinyl chloride from the external case plastics of its products.

In 2006 we met our goal to remove remaining brominated flame retardants from external case plastic parts in all new HP product models introduced after December 31, 2006 as well as removing PVC from new packaging designs for HP product models in 2006.

In short, we actually think we are a leader in this space, but because we won’t make a commitment to phase something out, where we see no safe, economic alternative right now Greenpeace criticise us for that. Fair enough that is their chosen role.

It might be interesting to more closely scrutinise Apple’s performance in looking at the same toxic chemicals. While Greenpeace normally slams Apple environmental performance, this year it applauded the firm as it “leaps” four places in the rankings.

According to Greenpeace: “All Apple products are now free of PVC and BFRs with the exception of PVC-free power cords which are in the process of being certified.”

However, and this is an awfully big however: “Apple fails to score top marks on this criterion because it uses unreasonably high threshold limits for BFRs and PVC in products that are allegedly PVC-/BFR-free.”

It seems to me that Greenpeace could perhaps open up the scoring and ranking system to other organisations as peer review bodies. At the moment the Green Guide scoring system is possibly a little opaque, which does us all a disservice. It is still an extremely useful initiative though, and one that exerts pressure on companies to improve. Given governments are performing so abjectly on sustainability the new alignment of stakeholder values driven by organisations like Greenpeace is more important than ever.

Finally remember that it is us that buys these products. If you “just have to have” the very latest phone or laptop , then you’re as much part of the problem as any technology company. The quickest route to a sustainable planet is buy less stuff.

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Logica on Sustainability

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I attended an excellent Logica briefing in the UK recently and had the opportunity to have a quick chat with Tony Rooke, Head of Sustainability & Environment for Logica UK.

In our chat we discussed Logica’s internal Sustainability projects as well as ways in which Logica are addressing the greater Sustainability agenda.

According to Tony, in this piece, their Windfarm control system is controlling 2,000 turbines in 80 windfarms across the Iberian peninsula!

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Tour of Adobe’s triple Platinum LEED certified HQ

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LEED (short for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a building rating system, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), that provides a suite of standards for environmentally sustainable construction.

In 2006 Adobe’s HQ in San Jose became the world’s first commercial enterprise to achieve a total of three Platinum certifications under the LEED program – a hugely impressive achievement.

I was lucky enough to be given a tour of the facility when I was there recently – some notable stats – in working towards LEED certification Adobe:
– reduced electricity use by 35%
– natural gas by 41%
– domestic water use by 22%
– irrigation water use by 76%

Also, Adobe is now recycling or composting up to 95% of solid waste.

One of the great things about the LEED certification is that it has an ongoing re-certification element (Adobe has chosen to be audited every 3 years) and there is a constant process of improvement.

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Corporate Social Responsibility – tech companies reviewed!

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Corporate Social Responsibility

According to its Wikipedia definition, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

is a concept whereby organizations consider the interests of society by taking responsibility for the impact of their activities on customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, communities and other stakeholders, as well as the environment. This obligation is seen to extend beyond the statutory obligation to comply with legislation and sees organizations voluntarily taking further steps to improve the quality of life for employees and their families as well as for the local community and society at large.

Companies are now starting to report on their Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives in greater numbers. Drivers for this include the rise in ethical consumerism, socially responsible investing, employee recruitment and loyalty, changing laws and regulations, increased scrutiny and transparency and risk mitigation.

According to the Sustainable Investment Research Analyst’s (SIRAN) 2008 report (pdf warning):

  • 86 of the S&P 100 companies now have corporate sustainability websites, compared to 58 in mid-2005, an increase of 48 percent;
  • 49 of the leading U.S. companies produced a sustainability report in 2007, an increase of 26 percent from 39 in 2005

In an attempt to define standards and make these reports cross-comparable, the Global Reporting Initiative has come up with a sustainability reporting framework. According to Wikipedia:

The GRI Guidelines are the most common framework used in the world for reporting. More than 1000 organizations from 60 countries use the Guidelines to produce their sustainability reports.

A quick search of tech sites reveals:
IBM’s stellar Corporate Responsibility site – IBM’s site has a ton of good information and a downloadable CSR report (pdf) and includes the Global Reporting initiative (GRI) index. If there is a tech company with a better CSR site than this, please tell me, I haven’t found it yet!

From the Dell site you can see dell has been producing Sustainability reports back to 1998 (called Environment reports back then). The 2008 CSR report (pdf) is linked to from the company Values page and is a really good example of how to do these reports well.

SAP’s Sustainability site is pretty bare bones (and though found by Google, I couldn’t find a link to it on the corporate website! Having said that, their Sustainability report (pdf), linked to from their Sustainability site, is very good for a first effort. It includes a GRI index and while SAP admit that the report is prepared to GRI Application Level C, they give a commitment to producing a “report to GRI B+ standard externally assured and audited in second quarter 2009”.

Cisco’s CSR site includes a great 5 minute video on CSR from Cisco CEO John Chambers and some of his CSR related staff. Unfortunately the video is not embeddable and is all rights reserved or I would embed it here 🙁 Cisco’s CSR 2008 report is available in a Flash interactive version or the more traditional (and easier to consume) pdf version! Again this report has a GRI index included.

Sun’s excellent CSR site includes a podcast, lots of great links to relevant information and its superb 2008 CSR report (pdf) – again with the GRI index data.

Oracle also has a good CSR site. Oracle’s site links to its 2008 Corporate Citizenship report (pdf) but it doesn’t include a GRI index link.

HP’s Global Citizenship site looks good until you check out their CSR report – it dates to financial year 2007 (which ended October 31, 2007). In its defense, it does include a GRI index but guys, come on, 2007?

Neither Intel nor AMD have reports for 2008. But while Intel have a very comprehensive downloadable pdf report on their CSR initiatives for 2007, the AMD offering consists of a disappointing four tables of performance indicators across the last few years.

If you are looking for Microsoft’s CSR report, you will find it buried under Resource Center -> Awards and Reports -> now click on the Reports tab on their Corporate Citizenship site. The most recent report is dated 2007-08. It is a 5 page document of mostly images, there is no mention whatsoever of GRI, there is no executive involvement, and in comparison to previous years reports, it looks like Microsoft’s limited focus on CSR has waned completely.

Having said that, at least Microsoft has produced a report! Apple didn’t even do that. When As You Sow, recently tabled a shareholder resolution that would require Apple to publish a corporate social responsibility (CSR) report, The company issued a proxy filing asking shareholders to vote against this resolution, saying that the publication would be an unnecessary expense that would “produce little added value.”

Having said that, at least Apple have a section on their site dedicated to their environmental efforts, Amazon don’t even appear to do that. Their filed reports page makes no effort to include any reports about environmental stewardship or corporate citizenship although given the story which came out before Christmas about Amazon’s shocking employment practices, that can hardly be any surprise.

Ironically Google’s CSR efforts are supremely difficult to find! They do have a corporate website dedicated to their Green Initiatives but like Apple, they too don’t have any CSR report (that I could find!).

Who’d I miss? Who is better? Who is worse?

Original photo by ATIS547

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George Lee keynotes the it@cork Green IT conference

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RTE economics correspondent George Lee gave the opening keynote presentation at the 2008 it@cork conference – Green IT: Reduce CO2, Raise profits.

He gave an excellent presentation, showing off first his Segway (a personal electric transport device) and explaining his reasons for bringing it to the event. He then went on to give a superb talk diving deep into the numbers around the coming energy crisis, climate change and how they dwarf the current financial crisis their importance for the planet!

If you want to skip the Segway rant and get into the energy and carbon emissions data, skip forward to 16:50.

Great to hear from an economist who puts the long-term good of the planet before a short-term financial view!

[Disclaimer: GreenMonk were a media sponsor of the it@cork Green IT conference]