« Legislation | Main |Marketing »
Would you trust a farmer?
Would you trust a farmer to fill in the right field on an Excel spreadsheet?
I know, I know. "Agriculture is a modern, technologically savvy industry filled with IT literate professionals." But, seriously, would you?
I'm not picking on farmers. Would you trust a haulier, or a manufacturer, or a shipping firm to fill in the right field, either?
Nope, thought not.
Personally, I wouldn't trust 90 per cent of office workers – myself included – to fill in the correct field in an Excel spreadsheet, and yet this appears to be the tool the vast majority of firms are using to keep track of their carbon emissions.
Speaking at last week's Corporate Climate Response conference, Peter Klein, vice president of carbon management software specialist Carbon View estimated that around 90 per cent of the company's the firm engages with are using Excel spreadsheets to try and calculate and track their carbon footprint.
In a previous life I spent four years covering the IT industry and always felt much of the knee jerk criticism of Microsoft was driven as much by envy as legitimate concerns. Yet it is hard to argue with Klein's view that the flexibility that makes Excel such an attractive tool for so many tasks also ensures that it is ill suited for handling carbon data, particularly when that carbon data necessarily originates from countless different sources.
CSR departments using Excel to try and work out the carbon emissions of a product or supply chain are likely to have to regularly consolidate countless different spreadsheets provided by countless different suppliers and partners, all the time knowing that one rogue digit or field filled in incorrectly could undermine the integrity of the entire exercise.
Of course, using the advanced functionality offered by modern versions of Excel can limit these risks and help ensure it is easy for suppliers to input the right data in the right fields, but if truth be told most CSR departments probably lack the expertise to make full use of such functionality.
As I outlined last week, there are a large number of measures that need to be adopted to give firms and their customers greater confidence in carbon footprinting calculations, not least the adoption of clear international standards, but the development and installation of dedicated carbon management software tools that simplify and streamline the processes by which suppliers provide firms with carbon data has to be one of them.
Can you remember what you were doing in 1996?
Personally, I was sitting my GCSEs, watching England come heart-breakingly close to winning Euro 96, and getting up to the kind of things 16 year old boys get up to, little of which I'm willing to commit to print. None of it seems like it was twelve years ago.
Now here's the scary thing. The distance in time between 1996 and now is the same as the distance between now and 2020, by which point, according to the EU, we will have cut carbon emissions by 20 per cent, be generating 20 per cent of our energy from renewables and generally be well along the way to operating a truly low carbon economy.
Feeling confident? I'm not.
Is it just me or is anyone truly aware how short a period of time twelve years is? Seriously, I've met people who can hold conversations that last longer.
To illustrate this just think back to 1996 again. The Spice Girls were touring, Kevin Keegan was manager of Newcastle United and every time you opened a paper there was a story about Princess Di. How things have changed.
All very glib I know, but even when you take a more serious look at the changes in the economic, political and social landscape over the past 12 years you also start to see staggering similarities. It has become fashionable to comment on the breakneck speed at which the world is evolving, but what is often forgotten is the glacial pace of change that define many spheres of activity.
Take politics for example, we've had three prime ministers since 1996, and but for a slight Middle Eastern miscalculation from Mr Blair we probably would have had only two. Similarly, the US transitioned neatly from the House of Clinton to the House of Bush and looks like it could transition back again next year.
Over twelve years most developed economies will have two, or at a push three administrations (with the ever amusing exception of Italy), which means that the politicians who will have to finally meet the EU's 2020 targets are already on the world stage. They may not make it through to 2020, but it is easy to imagine that Merkel and Sarkozy will not be that long into their retirements. In the UK, Brown surely won't go one better than Blair and last 12 years, but given their age and the fact two of the last three prime ministers have lasted a decade waking up in Downing Street come 2020 is not an unreasonable aspiration for David Cameron nor his likely long term rivals Ed Balls or David Miliband.
Similarly in the US, the targets - which the US may well adopt itself if a successor to Kyoto is agreed - are just three administrations away. If they lose the nomination this time what price a President Obama or Edwards making it to the White House in 2016. In fact, given the US political dynasties' Teflon-style resilience what price a President Jeb Bush?
The same level of stasis is evident in the world of business. Of course, the web has delivered a clutch of new firms - Google, Amazon, eBay et al - that have broken through to attain multinational status and global brand recognition. But on the most part the brands and companies that dominated the business world in 1996 have a decidedly familiar ring. IBM, Wal-Mart, Tesco, Boeing, GE, Microsoft, GM, BA, Lockheed Martin, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, they are all pretty much as influential now as they were in the mid 90s.
Again the chief execs who will run these firms come 2020 are already a long way up the career ladder, if not yet in the hot seat then either sitting on the board or knocking on the boardroom door.
These targets are not some distant aspiration; they are the objectives that the current generation of political and business leaders will be judged by.
In terms of economics and technology progress has been a bit more rapid over the past 12 years, but then again the pace of change is often exaggerated.
Globalisation, for example, has gathered speed and China and India have grown in influence and power, but both these trends were already well under way by 1996. Equally, many of the most carbon intensive industries and technologies - automotive, shipping, aviation, construction, steel, and, of course, energy – may now be making noises about decarbonising their operations, but they remain fundamentally the same now from a technological and business model perspective as they were in 1996. If they are to hit their emission targets these industries will have to change more in the next 12 years than they have done in the last 50.
The one cause for optimism for those hoping we can build the low carbon economy within the next twelve years is the internet-led technology revolution that has done the most to change social and business mores since 1996. As mentioned completely new brands have become global household names and new technologies, such as the iPod, SatNav and the laptop, have gone from being a glint in a designers eye to ubiquitous sensations, sometimes within three or four years. It is worth noting that it was 1996 when mobile phones first became affordable and portable enough to attract the interest of the mass market – twelve years on many people carry two phones with them and would be lost without them.
There is plenty of reason to hope that a Solar Century, a Vestas or a Tesla could become the Google of the next twelve years and go from ambitious start up to global powerhouse in next to no time. Just as it is possible to imagine that solar panels or plug-in hybrid cars may be as ubiquitous in 2020 as the mobile phone is today.
And yet this will not happen without a degree of urgency from business and political that is still sadly lacking. What is required is an industrial revolution far greater in scale, impacting far more sectors and achieved far faster than the aforementioned IT revolution and yet too many of the key players continue to procrastinate.
The EU itself provides a case in point. The action plan was published this week and yet it is likely to be eighteen months or so before it is finally approved. In the meantime, vested interest groups will try and water it down and those companies planning green investments will still have to deal with a degree of uncertainty over how legislation will pan out. There is always a fear that rushed decisions simply mean you repent at leisure, but that doesn't stop that fact around ten per cent of the time left until 2020 will have passed before we even know for certain that the EU's measures will be adopted.
Similarly, the UK this week launched its feasibility study on the proposed Severn Barrage. It won't be finished until 2010, despite the fact the Sustainable Development Commission has already produced a 158-page study on tidal power in the UK claiming a barrage could produce five per cent of our electricity.
Once it's completed, and assuming the government decides to go ahead with the project, we'll have to go through a tortuous process of appeals as those infuriating twitchers at the RSPB insist the whole thing will upset some wading birds, forgetting of course that the birds will be a damned sight more upset if sea levels rise and their homes disappear altogether. Then we'll have to find someone to build the thing and put up with the inevitable construction delays.
The net result, according to the British Wind Energy Association, is that a source of clean energy that could deliver a huge chunk of the UK's 2020 renewable energy obligation will simply not be ready by then.
It's easy to understand this lack of urgency. Time might march inexorably on at a constant rate (would the physicists amongst you please not write in to correct me, I won't understand it), but our perceptions of it vary enormously. Being 16 might seem like yesterday, but being 40, as I will be in 2020, seems almost impossibly distant. Most people feel the same way regardless of their age and it is this psychological reality more than anything else that explains our leaders' apparent complacency.
But this is a highly dangerous trick of mind that only encourages inaction. And of course those firms and countries that act now to meet their emissions targets are those who will enjoy the smoothest and most inexpensive and risk-free transition to low carbon business models
So the next time you are looking at how to meet your company's emission reduction targets and calculating if you can put off those changes for a few more years, just remember what you were doing in 1996. That should be enough to shock you into action.
Why working from home is pretty miserable and not very green
I'm working from home today, though not out of choice.
I hate working from home. There are enough distractions to divert even the most single minded character, and sadly single mindedness is not one of my defining traits.
Just as way of example, as I type now I am but a click away from Bargain Hunt on BBC 1, a rather fetching looking Western of uncertain vintage on BBC 2, Loose Women on ITV, and, here's the clincher, Muppet's in Space on Channel 4. It's a miracle I'm getting any work done and between you and me as soon as CBBC comes on I'm not sure I'll be able to resist much longer.
Moreover, the argument that these domestic distractions are offset by the lack of office-based distractions doesn't really hold up when you consider that the miracle of email and IM means I can undertake the exact same meandering conversations with my colleagues that typically break up my office-bound day, only with fewer hand gestures.
No, I'm working from home because it is early January and as convention dictates I have the mother and father of all colds. I'm a spluttering, sneezing wreck and I'm not sure my colleagues would thank me if I dragged myself into work only to spend the whole day filling the air conditioning system with germs. As such I am sitting in my lounge trying to work out if it is possible to overdose on Lemsip - I've just read the box, it is apparently but I'm pretty sure I'm OK.
The silver lining to this miserable day should be that just a day after the TUC called on workers to do more to help make their workplace greener I am doing my bit, following the trade unions' advice and working from home. And yet, I'm pretty sure that far from cutting my carbon footprint my cold and subsequent domestic incarceration has only served to increase my carbon impact.
A report last year from the Consumer Electronics Association argued that home working in the US had led to an overall reduction in carbon emissions as eradicating emissions associated with commuting and office work more than offset increased domestic emissions. But while this may well be true for the economy as a whole (and it is still somewhat unclear if the same rule can be applied to the UK with its shorter commuting distances and greater use of public transport) it does not apply to each and every individual.
I'm not about to work out the exact carbon footprint - not least because my head feels like it is trapped in a very soft, but very real vice - but right now I'm guessing I'm not having the greenest of days.
Like a good environmentalist virtually everything in my flat is turned off while I'm at work, but right now the heating is on and I might have to turn it up if the weather forecast is right and it starts to snow later, a couple of lights are blazing away, the stereo has been playing all day (LCD Soundsystem, Feist, the Cribs, and Dylan's Nashville Skyline, since you ask), the coffee machine is keeping me caffeined up and the kettle has been boiled at regular intervals for the Lemsips. Moreover, the TV is going on as soon as Pingu comes on.
Admittedly I haven't travelled to work, but I usually get the Tube and even in my more egotistical moments I'm pretty sure the underground does not run solely for my benefit. Meanwhile, the light above my desk at BusinessGreen's central London bunker will still be blazing away and no one will have tweaked the heating to take account for my absence. The only difference is that my computer is not on, but then again this clunky old laptop has been on all day instead.
Of course, for many people the carbon calculations would prove quite different and working from home would deliver a net reduction in their carbon emissions. But as with so many green initiatives a blanket approach is unlikely to prove universally successful.
Businesses or employees embracing home working or considering doing so for environmental reasons need to look closely at individual worker's circumstances and assess whether or not working from home really will deliver net carbon savings. If it does they also need to look at ways to maximise those savings by ensuring that freed up office space is cut back or perhaps even by helping staff make their new home offices more energy efficient.
Home working has major role to play in any green business, but both employers and employees also have to realise that it will not work for everybody. It certainly doesn't work for me.
Right, I'm off to make myself another Lemsip.
If in doubt, count the carbon
So it's all too good to be true after all.
Of course we all knew the UK's carbon emission figures had just a passing acquaintance with reality, but now researchers at Oxford University have revealed how estranged the two are.
According to a new study, titled Too Good To Be True? The UK's Climate Change Record, the UK's official claims that emissions have fallen 15 per cent on 1990 levels are dangerously incomplete and misleading.
The headline figures look impressive but the vagaries of the official figures collation mean that emissions from shipping, aviation and perhaps most significantly imports are not included.
Take these emissions into account - and given the atmosphere does not care if the emissions appear on a balance sheet somewhere there is a strong case for including them - and far from seeing UK emissions fall they have climbed by almost a fifth since 1990.
It is slightly unfair to suggest the government has been deliberately deceiving us. All countries exclude aviation, shipping and import related emissions from their official calculations and are very open about how their figures are calculated. Moreover, the fact that the supposed fall in UK emissions is down to the shift in the energy mix from coal to gas rather than any successful green energy policy has been widely reported.
However, the study does raise an interesting question about what both governments and businesses should or should not include in their emissions reporting.
It is easy to understand the temptation to exclude as many emissions as possible from calculations, but from a risk perspective it is best to resist this temptation and include pretty much everything you can.
While it is fair to argue that the embedded carbon in imported products should be recorded by the company that manufactures the product rather than the company that buys it, other emissions external to a company's facilities, such as those from corporate travel and supply chains, should certainly be included in carbon accounts.
It is only a matter of time before a bunch of academics kick up a PR storm by undertaking a study on a major firm's emission reports that finds that, as with the UK, their figures are on the optimisitic side.
Moreover, with emission reporting standards evolving fast (witness the launch today of the Prince of Wales' Accounting for Sustainability guidelines) firms already reporting their emissions would be advised to take as conservative approach as possible.
It would be hugely embarrassing for any firm if the reporting standard that will inevitably emerge over the next five years demands that they include emissions that they had previously ignored, leading to a huge spike in their reported emissions.
It is hardly the most sophisticated piece of advice, but when it comes to corporate carbon reporting if there is any doubt about whether emissions should be included or not you are best off erring on the side of caution and sticking them in.
EDF's energy efficiency push faces uphill struggle
It is not often you find yourself feeling a bit sorry for one of Europe's largest energy giants, but as the rain poured down on EDF's Site de Renardieres research and development (R&D) centre south of Paris it was hard not to feel a twinge of sympathy for the executives responsible for promoting the company's new energy efficiency consultancy services.
That is not to suggest there is anything wrong with EDF's push to get business customers to embrace energy efficiency measures. Far from it. In fact, the technologies and best practices EDF is working on at its energy efficiency R &D facilities near Fontainebleau are almost universally impressive.
It is more that despite investing a fair chunk of its €375m annual R&D budget in improving energy efficiency, recently launching a new energy efficiency-focused research programme and offering energy efficiency consultancy services to businesses since 2002, the company is still facing an uphill struggle to get customers to embrace even the simplest efficiency measures.
"Only a few customers have strong energy efficiency programmes in place," complained Pascal Terrien, director of the new European Centres and Laboratories for Energy Efficiency Research (ECLEER) initiative the company has launched in conjunction with several French universities. "Even though energy efficiency measures lead to increased productivity and lower costs, they are just not focused on it."
EDF estimates that businesses can typically reduce their energy use by 15 to 20 per cent by implementing existing technologies and improved energy management processes, but despite these potential savings energy efficiency remains a low priority for most firms.
Terrien laid the blame for the situation on a number of "cultural, technical and economic barriers" that hamper any attempts to promote energy efficiency. The most persistent problem, according to Terrien, remains firms' unwillingness to assess the lifetime running cost of new technologies when making purchasing decisions.
"With a few exceptions, energy performance criteria are not being included in specifications for new equipment," he observed. "It's a pity, because it is often cost effective to find out that data and for the most energy efficient option."
This failure to demand more energy efficient products is justified by many organisations on the grounds that despite increasing energy prices, energy bills remain a small proportion of costs.
"Energy costs are usually no more than five per cent of operational costs," explained Magali Saint-Donat, head of the utilities group for EDF's R&D division. "Even if a company's total energy bill is huge, it is a small proportion of operational costs so it is easy to ignore."
She added that where energy costs accounted for a higher proportion of costs – such as in the chemicals and steel industry – interest in energy efficiency had been more pronounced, but such sectors remained relatively rare.
Cultural barriers are also stopping some firms from exploiting EDF's energy efficiency services, according to Terrien.
"We are often talking to managers who should focus on energy efficiency but don't," he explained. "It means they can oppose the idea of changing things as they believe it could show that they were not doing their job as well as they could have been."
Furthermore, even where firms do show an interest in enhancing the energy efficiency of their operations they are unwilling to assign the management resources required to ensure best practices are followed.
"Improving energy efficiency requires constant management," continues Terrien. "We can give advice on how to optimise a furnace and when we go back two years later we need to give the same advice because over time the set up has changed."
The net result of these various barriers is that EDF has just over 100 business customers signed up to its energy efficiency consultancy service, which helps firms optimise the energy efficiency of a wide range of different facilities and industrial equipment – a surprisingly low number given the service has been running since 2002 in France and since 2005 in the UK, Germany and Italy.
This slow progress would be bad enough for EDF given its internal goals to cut customer's energy consumption and CO2 emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, but the situation is made worse still when you consider it faces fines of up to €600m from the French government if it fails to meet similarly demanding targets to reduce customers' energy use.
However, despite the looming threat of many of EDF's execs remain convinced that the tide is turning and interest in energy efficiency among corporate customers is finally beginning grow.
"We had a period of energy prices falling throughout the 1990s and we saw all the corporate energy managers laid off and a decrease in energy efficiency," explained Colin Warne, director of marketing for major business at EDF. "But in the past few years in the UK the Climate Change Levy woke a few companies up and then two years ago energy prices began to rise, fuelling more interest. This year we've seen a real surge in interest in climate change and that has sparked more interest. We are definitely seeing interest in energy efficiency services increase."
This interest is being further fuelled by EDF's growing number of successful customer case studies – such as a car manufacturer that cut €1.8m off its energy bills simply by optimising its compressed air and boiler systems and a chocolate manufacturer that cut its bill by 20 per cent by optimising its systems – and the company's policy of virtually guaranteeing cost savings through its consultancy services.
"We either include the cost of the service in the supply price or offer it through a shared savings contract," explained Saint-Donat. "That means the customer pays us based on the size of the energy cost savings they achieve."
From the outside it seems rather perverse for a company to offer a service designed to encourage customers to buy less of its product. But Warne insisted the service has a commercial value beyond simply helping EDF hit its legally imposed energy efficiency targets.
"We really do see it as a customer retention initiative," he explained. " Providing this type of service is a great way of building a long relationship with customers."
And despite the relatively small number of customers that are currently working to improve the energy efficiency of their facilities, EDF's execs remain confident efficiency rates at commercial customers will improve rapidly once many of the next generation technologies that it is currently working on through ECLEER and its R&D division hit the market. The company predicts that imminent improvements in the energy efficiency of induction heaters, furnaces, cooling technologies and heat pumps could all deliver rapid cuts in corporate energy use.
"Many customers are not focused on energy efficiency at the moment," explained Terrien. "But when you consider five to six per cent of industrial equipment is replaced each year, energy efficiency has the potential to improve really rapidly as the new technologies emerge."
Act green or lose your job
They might have plenty of other things on their plate, but as Mark Samuels argues IT chiefs who ignore the environmental impact of their departments are toying with their job security
Being green is all well and good, but where do you find the time? Chief information officers (CIOs) are busy - there's complex service-oriented architectures to set up and intricate people management issues to unravel.
Against the backdrop of such strategic developments, it might seem slightly trivial for a CIO to start concentrating on the wasteful people in accounts who print too much paper and users who fail to turn off computing equipment at night.
So, you're a time-pressured CIO, exasperated by the need to over-manage the small details.
Maybe you even think that green computing is a cynical strategy that is being used to sway public relations?
It is time to drop the suspicion and make time for environmentalism. A couple of years of media and consumer pressure have left the CIO with a stark choice: be seen to care about the environment or risk losing business, or even your job.
Partners and clients will increasingly make purchasing choices on a firm's green credentials. And with the IT department being one of the business’s most wasteful departments, the CIO is likely to be a crucial strategy setter.
The finance-obsessed chief executive, driven by a desire for increased value and a limited knowledge of IT, is likely to be appalled by waste in the technology sector.
Analyst Gartner estimates the IT industry has a carbon footprint as big as the airline industry, and accounts for two per cent of all global carbon emissions.
With the boss watching you, the best advice is to think quickly and to think big. Cutting printing and energy costs is just the start. Trade association Intellect suggests technology leaders should find out exactly what they are spending, not only in a financial sense but also in carbon and energy terms.
Such figures will help CIOs establish return on investment figures from IT that are essential for helping to create a green computing strategy for the organisation. Their strategy should then call on a range of technologies and policies, including virtualisation and component reuse, to cut energy use.
Demonstrating business benefits can help convert even the most cynical of IT leaders and help impress the chief executive.
And that kind of strategy has to be worth as much of your time as possible in your monthly schedule.
Mark Samuels is editor of Computing Business magazine.
A version of this article first appeared at Mark's The Knowledge Blog.
IBM plotting Green Sigma service
IBM is poised to launch a new Green Sigma service based on the popular Six Sigma process improvement methodology and designed to help firms cut the carbon intensity of their business processes.
Speaking to BusinessGreen, Peter Williams CTO of IBM's Big Green Innovations division, said the company had trade marked the term Green Sigma and will soon adopt the new best practice guidelines as part of an internal pilot sceme.
He added that the service builds on the Six Sigma lean manufacturing and process management methodologies and "will focus on ways to develop processes to bring down the carbon intensity of products and processes and create a lean green business".
"We plan to pilot it inside IBM and with some external customers, and then refine it and take it to market," he added.
The company will be hoping that the high profile of the Six Sigma methodologies will give the new Green Sigma service a high level of recognition in a consultancy market increasingly overrun by new green services.
John Madden of analyst firm Ovum agreed the service would enjoy a high level of name recognition and predicted that it should provoke considerable customer interest. "There are a lot of customers out there looking for help on how to improve their green credentials and they will welcome a standardised approach that allows them to meaure their performance," he said. "However, IBM is not alone in trying to provide these types of services and firms such as HP are also offering a growing number of green services."
The planned Green Sigma service is the latest in a line of initiatives from the company designed to position it as a provider of green technologies and services. Williams said IBM was also now offering a range of carbon management services designed to help firms undertake the complex assessments required to help them reduce their carbon footprint.
"Most carbon footprinting calculations are pretty rubbish and miss out large amounts of information," he said. "We've developed complex management diagnostic models that assess the relationship between carbon emissions and other business factors."
He cited plans to reduce packaging around products as an example of a process where failure to consider all the complex variables impacting carbon emissions can lead to unexpected results. "Firms may decide to reduce the amount of cardboard packaging around a product and that will seemingly reduce its carbon footprint," he explained. "But what if that leads to more breakages? The product has to be remade and that can actually lead to an increase in its carbon footprint."
The new consultancy services represent one component of IBM's Big Green Innovations initiative, which was launched last year with the goal of uniting the company's various environmentally-focused R&D projects.
Williams said the division was also making good progress in developing intelligent water management and smart energy grid systems and was also working on exploiting its expertise in nano-technology and semi conductor manufacturing to improve the efficiency and cost effectiveness of desalination technologies and photovoltaic solar panels.
Why businesses should worry about noise pollution
Growing up in a village not too far from the middle of nowhere I always used to think of noise pollution as pretty much the most pathetic form of pollution going.
In fact, I wasn't even sure if it was deserving of the pollution tag. After all, noise is temporary, it's immaterial. Sure it can be annoying, but no ice cap ever melted because of too much noise, no trees wilted from acid noise, there are no greenhouse gas noises, in short, no body died from too much noise.
Or did they?
According to a recent World Health Organisation (WHO) report high noise levels (and they regard as dangerous many of the noises you'd hear in an average day) can lead to increased stress and risk of heart attacks. It even suggests that over 3,000 deaths in the UK each year are the result of exposure to chronic noise.
I no longer need convincing as to the accuracy of this report (if anything I'm astounded it took them so long) because for the past three years I have lived in a flat overlooking one of London's main arterial roads - four lanes and two bus lanes of twenty four hour, seven days a week noise.
It's not too bad in the winter when the double glazing keeps everything down to a dull hum, but in the summer we are left with the choice of roasting alive or opening up a window and letting in the noise (and traffic fumes). Suffice to say, lying awake a few nights ago listening to the faulty burglar alarm that the manager of the Clinton Cards across the road refuses to fix I was left wondering if the longer commute that would come with living in the suburbs would so bad after all.
Like millions of people living in similar circumstances I am painfully aware of how much of a problem noise pollution poses and yet despite the stress and the quite literal heart ache it causes I'd hazard that many people still refuse to see what all the fuss is about.
How many businesses I wonder include a strategy for tackling noise pollution in their environmental plans? If they do, where does it rate? My guess is pretty near the bottom. If noise pollution is ever considered at a corporate level it is likely to be seen as an issue for HR, a box to tick to keep the dreaded 'elf and safety officer happy.
But there are compelling business reasons for addressing the problem; for legislators, for firms with offices on busy roads or under flight paths, and for the car manufacturers and airlines who are responsible for so much of the noise we have to endure.
The primary reason for at least investigating reducing noise levels at work is that excessive noise is a sizeable drain on productivity and contributor to workplace stress. Whether it is a noisy air conditioner or traffic noise from outside it is bound to be annoying your staff, even if they don't fully realise it.
In an age when good workplace conditions are so highly valued steps to cut noise levels are bound to be welcomed by employees, will certainly lead to increased productivity, and could lead to improved staff retention rates. I doubt you'll ever be ranked near the top of one of those best places to work league tables if your company has an issue with noise.
The second reason for declaring a full blown war on noise is that the bulk of noise pollution is inextricably linked to more conventional forms of pollution. Most notably cars and aircraft are huge sources of both carbon and noise emissions so policies to limit transport-related carbon emissions, such as increased investment in public transport, limits on airport expansion, and incentives for electric cars, would have the additional benefit of cutting noise pollution.
For businesses the problem of carbon emissions and noise pollution are also tightly linked on the grounds that if the noise can get into your building the heat (or in the summer the cold air) can also get out. Passivhaus buildings constructed to the highest environmental standards typically make use of large but tripled-glazed windows that allow the sun to heat the building and then keep the heat in, but as a convenient by-product triple-glazing also keeps the noise out. Such windows are naturally more expensive than conventional alternatives, but they should bring down heating and air-con costs, cut noise levels and more than pay for themselves over their lifetime.
If keeping staff happy and limiting carbon emissions are not big enough drivers for incorporating attempts to limit noise pollution into your business' environmental strategy there is also one other reason that could well emerge in the coming years for those businesses that have the most serious noise problems.
It is a safe bet that that right now somewhere in the world there is a lawyer poring over the new WHO report on the health risks of excessive noise and seeing nothing but dollar signs. If there is medical evidence that noise can contribute directly to death or ill-health then it is highly plausible that you could bring a case against a company that failed to adequately protect an employee or citizen from such noise.
There are of course already laws and employment contracts that deal with exposure to excessive noise but they are extremely poorly-policed making civil litigation the more likely means by which a business could be punished for a failure to have a clear and adequate policy on noise pollution.
For example, it is hard to imagine that a group of stressed-out local Heathrow residents armed with the UN report's findings couldn't construct a pretty strong case against the airport's planned expansion because of its detrimental effect on their health. They might not win, in fact they almost certainly wouldn't, but they could cause untold brand damage.
In truth litigation against firms that generate or fail to protect employees from excessive noise is likely to remain extremely rare, but as more evidence of its damaging medical effects emerge the risk of legal action against businesses that don't at least have a demonstrable strategy for tackling noise pollution only increases - just something that might be worth thinking about next time you find yourself lying awake at night.
View from the States: Shifting from 'Top Down' to Grassroots Creates Sustainable HR
Sustainability should be a top priority for the HR department, argues Judah Schiller, and promoted properly it can deliver great benefits for the business, the environment and the individual
"Congruence" is the Holy Grail for human resources professionals. With increasingly busy personal lives and demanding professional roles that impact an individual's health and on-the-job performance, HR is seeking new ways to create congruence between the individual who rushes to put breakfast on the family table in the morning and the employee solving business challenges until the early evening. At the very moment when employees are challenging management for more integrated work/life solutions, the popular understanding of global warming, which also requires an integrated solution, has created a unique opportunity for congruence.
So what does a 14-letter, six syllable word -- "sustainability" -- actually mean? The Brundtland Commission created the widely accepted definition for sustainability in 1987 as "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." In an HR context, however, I use the concept of "Personal Sustainability," which simply means finding a way to meet your needs today without sacrificing your dreams, or anyone else's, for the future. It's really about common sense. What actions can a person take that will serve her highest interest and also that of the community and planet?
Just as sustainability is being used more frequently from an operational perspective to improve internal processes, reduce costs and create efficiencies, Personal Sustainability can also be used as a powerful tool to improve upon a range of HR issues: commitment, attrition, education, health & wellness, motivation, and engagement. In order to effectively deliver the concept of Personal Sustainability to a workforce and maximise its results, the delivery itself must be sustainable.
Companies are discovering that a grassroots framework, instead of the traditional HR program, is a more powerful and flexible tool for educating, inspiring and empowering employees around sustainability. It allows for individuals, departments, facilities and entire markets to engage in a way that best suits their localised needs, culture, and preferences. With grassroots communication tools and strategies, it's the employees and their ideas, aspirations, challenges, and innovative solutions that are featured as the driving force, not corporate execs or consultants.
It's amazing to see what happens when employees enlist their peers in an endeavour rather than being told they must participate in a program. Equally so when they are giving a real opportunity to be creative and do something truly positive and meaningful that is both beyond, yet completely aligned, with their day-to-day business functions.
To get a better understanding of what a framework like this is capable of achieving, all we need to do is listen to a charismatic, middle aged woman from Columbia, South Carolina who I'll call "Sylvia."
I first met Sylvia in 2006 when I was delivering a training session on Personal Sustainability to a group of employees in Georgia. I remembered her southern drawl as she told me stories of coming from a long line of obese women, and of the staple fare in her family's diet being fried food, biscuits and butter. Nothing was farther from her mind than her own personal sustainability -- her health and well being -- let alone connecting that to something bigger. By the end of the day, she had committed to losing weight by eating healthier and walking regularly.
At the core of Personal Sustainability is the belief that by helping a person to choose a small, but meaningful Personal Sustainability practice that not only serves their highest interest -- be it physical, financial, or emotional -- but also that of the community and planet, she will become happier and, in turn, will stick with the practice until it becomes one of many in a sustainable lifestyle.
When I caught up with Sylvia a few weeks later, she explained to me with tears streaming down her cheek that she felt as if she had received a new lease on life. She now felt very passionate about being around to watch her son and his wife have a first child and to helping her kids, grandchildren, extended family, and co-workers learn about how to embrace Personal Sustainability in order to live better, feel happier, and make a difference for the planet on which we all live.
Judah Schiller is the executive vice president and head of outreach for Act Now, a sustainability services company serving the needs of companies and organisations worldwide. Judah and the Act Now team have recently trained 1.3 million Wal-Mart Associates across the U.S. on sustainability.
Should IT managers jump on the offset bandwagon?
To offset or not to offset, that is the question. In the space of twelve short months carbon offsetting has rapidly emerged as one of the most complex and contentious trends in the current drive for greener business practices. Advocates argue offsetting should play a vital part in any green business strategy while critics insist the practice is both scientifically flawed and dogged by unscrupulous racketeers.
Supporters of the fast-growing offset industry argue that the practice of investing in green initiatives - such as tree planting programmes or renewable energy projects - that either remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or stop it being emitted provides firms and individuals with a simple and accessible means of neutralising or offsetting their climate change impact.
But environmental campaigners have been highly critical of the industry arguing that the idea that you can simply pay to neutralise your emissions is based on unverifiable calculations - such as the assumption that the tree planted on your behalf lasts for its full projected life - and distracts people from the more urgent task of reducing their own emissions.
"Many offsetting schemes have dubious benefits," warns Friends of the Earth climate campaigner, Mary Taylor. "More worryingly they tend to give the impression that it's possible to 'do our bit' without taking any real measures to cut emissions."
Earlier this summer saw both sides of this argument crystallised as a Dispatches TV investigation highlighted the difficulty of ensuring offset projects deliver on their promises, while a report from the Environmental Audit Committee group of MPs insisted that offsetting could play a "useful role" in tackling climate change and argued that "encouragement and assistance must be given to individuals, organisations and companies to offset".
The Dispatches documentary looked at a series of carbon offset projects, including some supported by major UK businesses such as Sky and HSBC, and uncovered a lack of scientific consensus over how best to calculate emissions from air travel and staggeringly lax project auditing processes. As a result several projects backed by offset provider the CarbonNeutral Company were found to be selling offset credits despite the project managers openly admitting that the offset investment was not essential – the projects would have delivered their emission reductions regardless of the offset provider's involvement making the offset credits themselves effectively invalid.
In contrast, the report from the Environmental Audit Committee gave the industry a ringing endorsement, arguing that while some projects were "less than robust" the concept of offsetting still had a significant role to play in helping businesses transition to low carbon business models. It also pointed to an imminent new government standard for offsetting projects, which should provide a gold standard for offset schemes that will flush out unscrupulous offset providers and establish greater confidence in the market.
It is a complex debate, and one that IT managers can no longer ignore. A raft of IT vendors, including Dell, Salesforce.com, Ricoh and VIA, have either offset their own emissions or launched offsetting services for their customers in the last year, while offset providers have targeted IT departments as potential customers.
So should vendors do their bit to tackle climate change by investing in such schemes or would doing so only distract from more important green initiatives and invite condemnation from environmentalists?
Lena Pripp Kovac, head of corporate responsibility for Europe at Dell, which recently launched its Plant a Tree For Me programme offering customers the chance to offset emissions associated with running their PC over three years, insists offsetting schemes are beneficial as long as IT managers also make efforts to reduce their overall energy consumption.
"As an IT manager the first green priority has to be direct reduction of energy use through procuring energy efficient technology, improving power management, and changing user behaviour," she says. "Once that is done then offsetting can be a useful means of reducing your impact and can play a role in educating staff about climate change."
Chas Moloney, director of marketing at Ricoh, which runs an initiative that sees it plant a tree for every 100,000 pages a customer prints, argues that far from encouraging complacency offsetting provides an extra incentive for firms to limit their carbon emissions. "We offset the emissions from our offices and the aim is to ensure we reduce energy use and have to buy fewer offsets year-on-year," he explains.
Supporters of carbon offsetting agree that firms that do buy carbon credits have to be willing to audit the offset projects they are investing in. "We had a relationship with one offset provider that we ended after they became evasive when we said we wanted to visit the projects," says Moloney. "Now we've moved to an African tree planting programme, called Seeds to Africa, which has been far more transparent and we are currently arranging to go and look at the tree planting programmes… If you are investing in these projects you need to check they are going ahead as planned."
Pripp-Kovac adds that firms that could not afford to audit offset providers themselves should select those that use third party auditors tasked with checking that projects are well managed and pass the "additionality" tests, which prove a project is reliant on offset investment. She also recommends that firms demand information on how much of their investment goes into the offset project and what proportion is used up by administration.
Such stringent auditing may be prove a chore that drives up the cost of offsetting but Trewin Restorick, director of environmental charity Global Action Plan, insists it is essential if firms are to avoid being ripped off or even causing more harm than good. "The offsets market is an unregulated jungle and companies should ensure that the offsets they are buying are scientifically valid, are not harmful to local economies or people, are clearly additional and are independently evaluated with a transparent audit trail," he warns.
However, many environmentalists claim that despite these safeguards firms should still remain wary of investing in carbon offset schemes, and in particular tree planting programmes where even the best managed projects are unable to fully guarantee that trees will survive for the full projected life span required to offset original carbon emissions. Friends of the Earth's Taylor is typical of many environmentalists in her view that the Environmental Audit Committee is guilty of seriously overstating the benefits of offsetting.
Dr Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, goes further still and argues that offsets could actually be leading to an increase in carbon emissions and as a result it is better to do nothing than to offset. He claims that not only does the belief that you can genuinely offset your emissions remove any incentive to reduce your emissions, but that offset schemes can also inadvertently lead to an increase in emissions.
"You have to consider the economic multiplier effect of your offset investment," he explains. "If for example your investment goes on low energy bulbs for a Jamaican hotel how do you know the hotelier doesn't use the money they've saved to invest in extending the hotel or going on a flight themselves. Economic multipliers are the whole point of development, but if you are serious about offsetting your emissions over a hundred year period, as the offset schemes claim, then you need to be sure emissions won't go up as a result of your investment."
However, David Wellington, director at leading offset provider Climate Care, rejected Anderson's analysis claiming that offsetting best practices did indeed account for multiplier effects. "We refer to it as leakage - the effect the project will have on other aspects of the economy – and it is well accounted for in the Kyoto Protocol and the Clean Development Mechanism's (CDM) checks and balances for assessing a project's additionality," he said.
