PAS2050 standard published

Businesses can from today assess the carbon footprint of their goods and services and play a greater part in fighting climate change, thanks to a new standard launched by BSI British Standards, the Carbon Trust and Defra.
The standard – called PAS2050 – is a consistent way of counting the greenhouse gas emissions embedded in goods and services throughout their entire life cycle – from sourcing raw materials, through to manufacture, distribution, use and disposal.
The aim of the new standard is to help businesses move beyond managing the emissions in their own processes and to look at the opportunities for reducing emissions in the design, manufacture and supply of products. This will then help businesses make goods or services which are less carbon intensive and ultimately develop new products with lower carbon footprints.
The Carbon Trust has already piloted PAS 2050 with 75 product ranges across a wide range of companies including PepsiCo, Boots, Innocent, Tesco, Cadbury, Halifax, Coca Cola, Kimberly Clark, The Co-operative Group, Scottish & Newcastle, Coors Brewers, Müller, British Sugar, Sainsbury’s, Danone and Morphy Richards.
Some of the results include:
For its Botanics shampoo, Boots has redesigned its logistics network so that products could be delivered direct to stores, reducing road miles and packaging. This alone has reduced the carbon footprint of making the shampoo by 10 per cent.
By working with one of its suppliers, Innocent helped identify an opportunity for the supplier to set up a group of employees to look at how they could increase the amount of waste materials being recycled throughout the factory. In the first month, waste to landfill was reduced by 15 per cent, and within six months the reduction reached 54 per cent.
Defra has also carried out research testing of the PAS on up to 100 food products through their production, manufacture and distribution and is studying the greenhouse gas impacts of food preparation and consumption in the home.
Critics say that the PAS2050 standard is unneccessarily complex and that this will make it uneconomic to apply across the entire range of a company's product output. If you want to assess the benefit of PAS2050 to your own organisation, you can dowload it free of charge here together with a guide to its use.

Staff skeptical about green

According to a recent survey of 1,200 staff by recruitment firm Office Angels, most office workers don't believe that the small green steps they take themselves will make any difference to global warming. The research also found that only a third of UK offices have green policies in place, and 25% have appointed green crusaders among their staff. Marketing workers are the most likely to become involved in environmental initiatives at work, and HR staff the least likely.

Is the enthusiasm of marketing staff driven by their awareness of the commercial benefits that can be gained by publicising the green initiatives once they have been carried out, or their closer connection to the media and the hot topics of the day? Either way, it's good to see that marketers are leading the way.

Zac Goldsmith at the launch of EcoConnect

A good showing at tonight's launch of cleantech network EcoConnect, encouraged no doubt by the presence of Zac Goldsmith. His address was brief, witty and to the point - and, by his own admission, less depressing than the editorial content of The Ecologist. Departing from the political convention of grouping ideas in threes, he began by highlighting two key points about sustainable technology. The first was, rather surprisingly, that it's not really about climate change, but rather the depletion of resources, from fossil fuel to food, which should be compelling even to those who remain unconvinced by the science. The second was that this represents an unparalled opportunity, a point which has clearly not escaped those present.

Moving on, he offered four solutions. Our economic systems must learn to value the environment. Our leaders must match rhetoric with action. Taxation must be relevant and transparent - and here he cited the futility of vehicle duty changes that penalise people for historic purchases rather than taxing gas guzzlers at the point of purchase. And finally we must recognise that sustainability is about more than carbon, we need to reconnect with the natural environment in order to understand our relationship with it and address our impacts on it.

His closing point was that far from being overwhelmed by the scale of the problem, we should be encouraged by the fact that if we take best practice in each sector now and make it the norm tomorrow, we're half way to success. Judging by the buzz at EcoConnect, that seems a realistic aim.

Turn it off, Honda!

It's a little thing but it's really bugging me. Honda has a new showroom that has just been built between my office and my home. It's all finished but still empty and has been for weeks. Yet every evening when I drive past all the lights are on. What a waste of energy!

Now, it's probably not Honda's fault - I'm guessing the contractors or property agents have left the lights on by accident. But their brand is not visible and the building has Honda emblazoned on it - so it's their brand that is being damaged by association with this act of environmental negligence.

Either nobody has told them yet, or they don't care. Anyway, I'm off to find a contact from their website and see if I can get the lights turned off.

In praise of libraries

I rejoined our local library today. I'm ashamed to say it was my son's idea - his drama teacher had sent him there to find a script. I used to use the library all the time but somehow got out of the habit. It was great to rediscover the joy of browsing the shelves looking for titles that might appeal - and the fact that you can borrow makes you far more likely to take a chance and discover a new author or genre that you would never have considered if you had to buy. Ebooks are all very well, but I find there's something very satisfying about handling books, which ebooks just don't deliver.

If, like me, you tend to read a book just once, borrowing from the library makes much more sense than buying, both financially and environmentally. Go on, check out your local library - I'm definitely a convert.

Do we still need a Green party?

Amid all the chaos and uncertainty caused by current global economic troubles,
energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband yesterday committed the UK to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050, overturning the previous target of 60%. Miliband also stressed that the government would not be distracted by current economic conditions: "In tough economic times, some people will ask whether we should retreat from our climate change objectives. In our view, it would be quite wrong to row back, and those who say we should misunderstand the relationship between the economic and environmental tasks we face".

Miliband also announced an amendment to the energy bill to allowing small-scale energy producers such as homes with wind turbines or solar panels to sell electricity to the grid at a guaranteed price. A similar strategy has helped Germany to create a huge solar industry. A full report of Miliband's speech is here.

So, as the establishment finally embraces the need for urgent action to combat climate crisis, is there still a place for a Green party in British politics?

Commentators at recent green events I've attended have emphasised the importance of mainstreaming green issues if we are to achieve the critical mass required to achieve the required reductions in greenhouse gases. Having a separate political party dedicated to green issues can only perpetuate the misconception that somebody other than the population at large is responsible for addressing the problem.

Melting ice caps threaten arctic foxes

A recent study by researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks has found that arctic foxes may be just as threatened as polar bears by reduced access to sea ice. They tracked fourteen foxes as they endured their first arctic winter, and only three survived - by spending five months travelling for 3,000 miles across frozen sea ice and scavenging seal carcasses left by polar bears. None of the 11 foxes that remained on the mainland survived.

The researchers were surprised that the foxes spent so long on sea ice but concluded that their odessy is essential to find food to sustain them through the winter. Sea ice is expected to reach record low levels this winter, making it harder for the foxes to travel and potentially leading to lower survival rates. There is also the risk of increased conflict with humans, as the foxes search for food near settlements.