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Our Resource Centers at SustainCommWorld sites also have archived Green Media Newsletters.
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NEW PRODUCTS NOTED
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Have a look at one sustainable option from Pure Labels , and dig into the eco-friendly tab at
Label Impressions for more options for sustainable, tree-free label papers that perform.
Stone paper (rock paper) made from natural chalk (calcium carbonate), a renewable (yes renewable and abundant resource is one of the high performing options for green printing and packaging materials with a superior sustainability story.
FiberStone™ tree-free paper from Natural Source Printing, Inc. is the more popular, performing paper in this category and has been used on wide variety of printing and packaging projects from tree-free gift bags/shopping bags, to printed folding cartons, waterproof maps, books, brochures, annual reports and green labels/stickers.
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GREEN MEDIA CONNECT
SITE LAUNCHED
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The NETWORK for marketing, advertising, publishing and enterprise communication professionals seeking profitable and sustainable supply chains has now launched. Join us today. It's FREE.
Check out GreenMediaConnect.com and add your ideas, ask your questions, view videos, download resources and listen to podcasts.
Visit now, set up your account and invite your colleagues to join us oline.
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LIVESTOCK REALLY STINKS...and costs
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(This is getting to be a monthly themed column.)
Methane gas is a pernicious environmental hazard, more far reaching and long lasting than CO2.
Livestock waste is a major source of atmospheric methane, making dairy and beef products far more expensive than simple market prices, when their full life cycle is considered. Other countries are treating this GHG source seriously.
"Denmark's Tax Commission is considering putting a tax on farmers' greenhouse gas emissions, which they reckon to be approximately 4
tons per cow per year (that's more than an average passenger car, which they say emits approximately 2.7 tons)."
Treehugger
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| Greetings! |
Ya gotta love American business. Given any economic initiative, we build a business infrastructure to support it. Carbon calculation goes to your environmental bottom line . So look around and everybody and his brother is coming out with a carbon calculator.
Unfortunately, measuring your enterprise's carbon footprint can be challenging, complicated and time consuming. Calculators look to be easy to use tools guiding us through numerous questions about your facilities, your equipment, travel,
shipping and waste figures. And yet, they fall short of a comprehensive carbon footprint.
The reality is that there is no universally accepted way of calculating a carbon footprint. Many of the calculators offered create confusion, inaccurate information and allow many to believe they're applying due diligence when in fact they're measuring a "toe print."
Further complicating the problem are the frameworks used for tracking industry carbon emissions that are often incomplete, limited to what's referred to as Scope 1 and Scope 2.
Direct emissions from an industry reported in Tier 1 are, on average, only 14% of the total supply chain carbon emissions, and direct emissions plus industry energy inputs are, on average, only 26% of the total supply chain emissions (called Scope 3 emissions).
A recent article by Carnegie Mellon researchers found that only 6 percent of the publishing industry's greenhouse gas emissions result from
its Scope 1 and Scope 2 uses of petroleum products and electricity. Without a full knowledge of their footprints, firms will be unable to pursue the most cost-effective carbon mitigation strategies.
If you're just beginning to implement tracking carbon emissions, calculators can be useful - just remember they're the starting point.
Lisa Wellman
CEO, SustainCommWorld
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THE DANGERS OF CARBON NEUTRAL
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Engaging a carbon auditor (definitely a species that is not on the endangered list) to take a look at your books and have a stroll around your company is a very fashionable exercise these days. The result is a report that shows the shoe size of your carbon footprint.
Now that you are enlightened as to the contribution you are making to world pollution and global warming, you can walk around any given corner and run into a gaggle of carbon off-setters who will magically change your CO2 into a majestic stand of whispering casuarinas. All for the price of just a few pieces of gold.
You can even get
down and dirty by planting your own trees. Turning the first sod is always a great photo opportunity for the company's next newsletter. Then you and the rest of the corporate team can then rush out and celebrate the metamorphosis of your company into a lean, green, planet saving machine.
Now before you all start, I love a good old tree. They play an essential role in protecting water tables, reducing soil erosion, provided natural habitat for the diverse living entities that have the misfortune to share the planet with us, and oh yes, also help absorb some of the pollution you are spewing out.
However, to become a truly green company requires a little more thought than that. And your customers are wising up to this fact quickly. It is not enough to just measure and offset to claim 'carbon neutrality'. The carbon neutral sign swinging gently in the warming breeze does not actually reduce your CO2 contribution to the planet's
woes.
Measurement should be used to give you a benchmark to help plan reduction strategies. Would you be so quick to claim 'Pollution Neutral' on the company website? Embedding reduction policies into your business plan and every aspect of your daily production will make the real difference.
And guess what? Running a greener business will save you money. Read the Walker's Chips case study from The Carbon Trust in the UK. An environmental audit saved the company not only 9200 tonnes of CO2 but £1,200,000 in the first year. And not one mention of carbon neutrality or offsetting.
By understanding the high and low environmental impact areas within your business you can embed a meaningful policy deep into every link of your company's supply chain. Thus ensuring long-term sustainability and avoid being placed in the swelling bucket of green-washers. Pollution reduction targets must be realistic, measurable and incremental
year on year.
Then and only then are you ready to find a credible partner to identify the most appropriate carbon offset strategy with robust, traceable and government-approved carbon offsets. If this happens to mean planting some trees, so be it. If you then feel it is the correct marketing policy to claim carbon neutrality, again that is your choice.
At least the sign will be a lot more solid and be better prepared to withstand any cynical wind that may blow your way. Finally when you are labouring your way through the latest tender document with its increasing growing list of environmental requirements you can, with confidence, add a lot more substance to your answers.
Or bugger the planet and continue to just measure and offset. To bastardise a well-known metaphor for the charlatans guide to running a 'carbon neutral' company "just pay peanuts and keep polluting the monkeys."
Guest column by Christopher Sewell, CEO, The Gaia Partnership Click here to learn more.
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BIO-ECONOMICS - LEARNING FROM THE NATURAL WORLD
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I have so many great initiatives going on, it's really quite exciting! I think were on the cutting edge of a whole new approach to managing our planet, I writing today about a concept I've been developing for years now that I am calling Bio-Economics. It replicates the efficiencies of natural systems in economies, centered around the concepts of homeostasis and synchronicity in nature, as they eloquently manage ecosystems, we can employ them, integrating them into financial economics and create a sustainable business climate.
The natural world has the amazing ability to waste nothing, achieve balance in its' systems and work harmoniously together. New sciences are emerging as to the dynamics of this, such as the understanding of "networking". I have been able to apply these natural concepts to
sustainable business systems. The human heart cell is a great example, alone, they all beat at their own pace, put them together and they join up and all beat together, as we start to understand these scientific principles behind these natural systems we gain great insight into how human systems need to operate more effectively.
David Podmayersky
EarthColor
Check out Dave's blog
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UPDATE ON GHG'S: RISING FASTER THAN EXPECTED
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"Carbon emissions have been growing at 3.5 percent per year since 2000, up sharply from the 0.9 percent per year in the 1990s, Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution for Science told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The largest factor in this increase is the widespread adoption of coal as an energy source, Field said, "and without aggressive attention societies will continue to focus on the energy sources that are cheapest, and that means coal."
Past projections for declines in the emissions of greenhouse gases were too optimistic, he added. No part of the world had a decline in emissions from 2000 to 2008."
Randolph E. Schmid, AP Science Writer
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