Down to Zero

Today The Prince of Wales’s UK Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change (UK CLG) launched a new initiative in partnership with BIS. Called Down to Zero, the project champions Joint Public Private Low Carbon Procurement Compacts as a way of forcing the pace of transition to a low carbon economy.

Initially, the project has been restricted to three specific areas: transport, biomethane for heat and power, and catering. But the aim of the initiative is to convince potential suppliers that there is demand for low carbon goods and services and to provide a blueprint for a new model of collaborative procurement that can be applied to progressively reduce carbon emissions.

According to Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the project addresses a paradox that is holding back the commercialisation of low-carbon technologies: because low-carbon products and services are not available – or not available at realistic cost, - customers don’t specify them. And because there is no apparent demand, suppliers don’t invest in low-carbon innovation.

This may well be the case, and UK CLG is right to address it, but it’s by no means the whole problem. Sophisticated technologies often carry a higher price tag but pay back quickly by consuming less, requiring less maintenance or increasing productivity. Until public sector procurement professionals are measured and rewarded on cost and carbon savings across the product lifecycle, instead of cost savings at the point of purchase, they will continue to buy the products with the lowest capital cost. And this puts at a disadvantage the innovative suppliers that invest in the development of low-carbon solutions and need to recover that investment. The e-auctions used for the final stage of the tender process perpetuate this problem and it's hard to see how lifecycle costs could be integrated. 

The Down to Zero project will fail if it doesn’t also embed the concept of whole life costing, factoring both direct and indirect lifecycle costs into the procurement process right up to the point the contract is awarded.

A good week to go green?

Looks like the 2nd week in May could be the best week of the year to begin the process of greening your business. Three great initiatives coincide today, here's how you can find out more about them:

Green Office Week - now in its 4th year, Green Office Week is the brainchild of Avery labels and offers fun and simple ideas to make your office greener, based on a different theme for each working day. You can find out more at www.greenofficeweek.eu

Walk to Work Week - does what it says on the tin! Living Streets, Walk to Work Week encourages people to get to work on foot, and is part of the month-long Great British Walking Challenge. http://www.livingstreets.org.uk/walk-with-us/events/walk-to-work-week

7 Days to Sustainability - a free programme from Planet Positive, 7 Days to Sustainability is designed to help SMEs green their business and doesn't just apply to this particular week although it was launched today. http://www.7days2sustainability.com/

Campaigns like these can provide a great kick-start to organisations that are just starting out on their sustainability journey, and they also provide a boost for those for those who have programmes in place by offering free tools and resources that can help with employee engagement. Kudos to all three organisations involved.

A new direction for the Prince's Mayday Network

Business in the Community set up The Prince's Mayday Network in 2007, calling upon UK companies to embark on the journey to a more sustainable future. The network now has over 3,800 members. What started as a journey encouraging and supporting companies to measure and reduce environmental impacts, has begun to look at the transformational change required of companies to secure a truly sustainable future. For the next stage of the journey they will work with other Business in the Community campaigns to compel UK business to transform itself to meet the UK contribution to the '9 billion challenge'.

You can find more details here: http://www.maydaynetwork.com/

Does forgoing bonuses really serve taxpayers' interests?

I can't help thinking that the furore over the bonus awarded to Stephen Hester, Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive, rather misses the point. Bowing to mounting pressure from many sectors of society, he finally agreed on Sunday night that he would not pick up the almost £1m of shares to which his contract entitled him. His chairman, Sir Philip Hampton, had previously waived his own bonus, no doubt adding to the pressure on Mr Hester.

It's clear that the bonus culture in the banking sector has spiralled out of control, leading to remuneration schemes that are ludicrously high. But that is the state of the industry, and one token gesture won't change it. Singling out RBS as an institution largely under state ownership only risks damaging its ability to compete for the brightest and best business brains to steer it back to prosperity and repay the investment UK taxpayers made to bail it out.

Mr Hester's bonus - like Sir Philip's - is payable in shares, whose value will be directly affected by the way  they manage the business. With the bonus in place, top executives would benefit directly and personally from rebuilding the share price so that the return to taxpayers is maximised. How then are the taxpayers served by declining the bonus? And if he's tempted away by the riches offered by non-government backed institutions, how will RBS attract a talented replacement?

Such ad hoc measures won't achieve the fundamental change required to rebalance the way we reward our bankers and they could seriously endanger the recovery of RBS.

Why Wasteful Design still Dominates, Despite Alternatives

Of all the innovations of the computer age, the laser printer is probably the most inherently wasteful. This ubiquitous device is the product of a business model that seeks to maximise long-term revenue from the sale of premium priced consumables – often referred to as a “razor and blade” model.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There’s no technological reason for all that is mechanically clever about the device to be contained in a disposable cartridge; it’s a commercially-driven decision. But the need to justify the price premium charged for the cartridges has resulted in a complex product design that builds in redundancy.

A cartridge refurbishment industry has grown up to take advantage of the residual value in used toner cartridges, but it admits to only being able to return to the market 20-30% of the cartridges sold each year. And cartridges can’t be refurbished indefinitely: their components are not designed for extended use so print quality and reliability can be compromised. In the UK alone, it’s estimated that 47 million laser cartridges go to landfill every year, taking many thousands of tonnes of plastics and metals out of the economy.

As far back as 1992, Kyocera developed a very different proposition: long-life components that would last for 300,000 pages, resulting in a printer that was effectively cartridge-free. Not surprisingly, this resource-efficient approach also resulted in significantly lower running costs, too. In a world increasingly sensitised to resource scarcity, you might have expected this to become the dominant technology. But more than 90% of laser printers are still cartridge-based.

Kyocera has to work hard to erode the market domination of the conventional printer vendors for a number of reasons. The disappointing fact is, that for all the rhetoric about best value and sustainable procurement, most buying decisions – especially in public sector – are still determined by the initial price. Green credentials and low cost of ownership will get you on the shortlist, but the final decision usually comes down to who is prepared to discount the upfront cost by the largest percentage – and, in the printer industry, that favours the conventional vendors who know they can make up any loss on the hardware through a lifetime of revenue from cartridges.

This approach makes it difficult to gain acceptance for a more resource-efficient solution that might cost a little more up front, but will more than compensate in terms of reduced operating costs. And the challenge is further compounded by the division of budget responsibility in most organisations; different people hold responsibility for hardware, consumables and energy, so the full use-phase costs are rarely fully understood, let alone emissions, waste or resource efficiency.

And finally, the product-centric procurement approach taken by most large organisations, especially in the public sector, makes it difficult to propose innovative service-based solutions. If a vendor receives a tender for 500 devices of a certain size and speed then they have to respond on that basis, even if they know that by supplying a managed print services instead of just shipping hardware they could deliver a solution that would not only be more resource efficient but also cost less over the life of the contract. And given the scale of the current economic challenge, that’s doubly frustrating.

What I’d like to see is whole life costing – including both direct and indirect operating costs – applied to procurement decisions in place of the ticket price, and tenders written on the basis of the desired outcome – in cost saving or waste reduction – rather than around a product specification. This would encourage more vendors to innovate for resource-efficiency throughout the entire product lifecycle and reward those whose products and services achieve the greatest improvements in resource efficiency.

This post first appeared on The Green Alliance's Green Living blog

Eco-Friendly Sushi

Tips for Staying Sustainable When Eating Out, from guest blogger Brittany Lyons

Making healthy choices when eating out can be challenging, but many diners find that sushi fits the bill nicely. But many diners worry about the environmental impact of this delicious snack, which is why it's important to choose your fish wisely.

There are many species of fish and seafood popular in sushi that are not being fished responsibly, but you don't need PhDs to tell which are worth buying—just the menu. Here are a few to avoid, with both their Japanese and English names:

1. Freshwater eel, or “unagi”

2. Red Snapper, or “tai”

3. Bluefin tuna, or “hon maguro”

4. Yellowtail, or “hamachi,” that has been farmed in Australia or Japan

5. Shrimp, or “ebi,” caught in the wild

It's important to know what kind of fish you're eating and where it comes from. This information may not be on the menu, but a reputable sushi restaurant should be happy to tell you if you ask.

Good fish to order include:

1. Sea urchin row, or “uni,” caught in Canada

2. Striped bass, or “suzuki,” which is fine both farmed and caught in the wild

3. Black cod, or “gindara,” from Alaska or British Columbia

4. Abalone, or “awabi,” from a U.S. farm

5. Spot prawn, or “amaebi,” wild caught in British Columbia

Choosing fish caught locally is another way to help the environment. Fish that doesn't need to be shipped has a smaller carbon footprint. And you don't have to go to a sushi bar to eat sustainably; the next time you go to the deli, see if they carry these:

1. Farmed channel catfish

2. Pacific cod from Alaska

3. Pacific halibut from Alaska

4. Mahi mahi from the U.S. Atlantic

5. Wild Pacific salmon from Alaska

To find out more about what fish to eat, and what to avoid, take a look at Seachoice.org's helpful Seafood Search. By making responsible choices, you can eat fish without hurting the environment.

Brittany Lyons aspires to be a psychology professor, but decided to take some time off from grad school to help people learn to navigate the academic lifestyle. She currently lives in Spokane, Washington, where she spends her time reading science fiction and walking her dog.

A brief summary of the FiT changes published 31st October 2011 by DECC

Feed in tariff reduced by up to 50% for all new solar PV installations with an eligibility date on or after 12 December 2011 (sliding scale applies, you can find it here).

From April 2012, energy efficiency measures will have to be taken before a property becomes eligible for FiT payments.

New multi-installation tariff of 80% will apply to aggregated solar PV schemes.

Those already receiving FiTs will not see a reduction in their payments.