www.everythingsgonegreen.co.uk

10 months ago the Confederation of British Industry set up a Climate Change Task Force to identify and assess climate change and its affect on British Business.

Last Monday the task force published its findings and it says that it’s not just the realm of government and consumers to be doing their bit to go green but business should be actively involved too.

The team, headed up by the chief exec of BT, comprised a number of bigwigs of British Industry and their findings were not driven by simple treehugger philosophies but by the unavoidable fact that climate change will impact upon business unless something is done urgently.

In addition, the task force sees opportunities to generate more business with the onset of global warming with those companies that invest in alternative energy and more efficient heating & cooling technologies as being the ones who help to abate the effects of climate change [We also reckon there’s a few quid in it for them too, especially seeing the recent Google go green move - Ed]

If big business and the voice of business, the CBI, can come to these conclusions then it’s good news. Let’s hope the CBI can lobby the government for more assistance and direction in going green. They could kickstart funding the the new green revolution by taxing those stupid big 4×4s off the road.

Be sure to see the CBI’s Climate Change Report and video.

Yes, you read that right, we said Carbon Footyprint. There’s an online text ad doing the rounds at the moment that caught our attention…

“Make the beautiful game a greener game”

…and it clicks through to CarbonFootyprint.com

Now Carbon Footyprint is an interesting website as it’s all about getting football fans to go green and reduce the carbon footprint of the FA Cup. How do you reduce the carbon footprint of the FA Cup? Well, you get a coach to the match, you catch a lift with friends or you watch the FA Cup on the TV at home or in your local pub. So no change there then.

So why all the fuss about reducing your carbon footprint for mainly the FA Cup when there are so many more league matches? Well, the FA Cup is sponsored by the energy company E.ON and E.ON, “the power behind Powergen”, are right on the green bandwagon at the moment with their other campaign Business Energy Green. (Make sure you check out where Powergen come in the Green Energy League Tables)

To give them their dues, E.ON ARE promoting car sharing and watching football on the TV for all matches, but the promotion is heavily focused on the FA Cup (sponsored by E.ON… oh sorry, we already told you that)

It’s all a nice gesture to encourage football fans to go green and but shouldn’t it be E.ON that’s going green? Well, they’re “one of the leading green generators in the UK” and intend to invest £1bn (yes, that’s a whole £1 billion) in renewable energy over the next five years, or as much as £200m every year, with £53 million spent on energy efficiency in 2006 alone.

It’s a cute attempt to urge everyone else to go green but we sense this all to be a big public relations drive to drum up more business. After all, E.ON has shareholders to answer to and has targets to meet, already with success in their nine month sales up by 7% this year with targets of between 5% and 10% for the 12 months.

What’s more, E.ON’s net profit for the year so far is nearly £3b so their £1b pledge to invest in renewables over 5 years is a pretty paltry sum.

Carbon Footyprint? Greenwash anybody?

One of the big problems with litter is that the global big brands pump millions of pounds into promoting and advertising their products, they shift massive numbers of units, lots of profit is made, they all enjoy the spoils of their business and ultimately don’t care about the fact that their global brands are also creating massive amounts of rubbish!

The detritus from big brand produce litters every corner of this green & pleasant land and, quite frankly, we’re all tired of seeing it. And now to name and shame just one of these big brand polluters, one of these global litterers… one of Britain’s most popular alcoholic drinks…

FOSTERS LAGER

This scattering of Fosters Lager cans were littering a leafy area beside a path on a cycle home one night and every single one of those cans is a Fosters lager can. Now we’re not big fans of the mass-produced brands anyway, but for their mass-market by-products to litter our home town is not only rude & unsightly but it costs local taxpayers money too… somebody has to clean it up and that’s the council’s job.

Therefore your hard-earned pay, in the form of council tax, pays for street-cleaners and litter pickers to remove the trash.

So the point is this:

Shouldn’t mass-market global brands be contributing a good percentage of their profits toward cleaning up the by-products of their products? Should there be a litter tax whereby for every item of a certain brand/item that is swept up from public places there is a charge to the producer/manufacturer?

There are pros & cons to each solution but this approach would encourage corporate responsibility, stimulate social responsibility and make the world a cleaner place.

What do you think?

I received an email from a client today with the following phrase at the foot of their note…

“Think Green - Please do not print this email unless you really need to“

That’s not only perfectly good advice but also very appropriate - I know someone who I have tried time and time again to deter from printing virtually EVERYTHING on their PC onto paper. And yes, they do print their emails. These emails are then stored away and forgotten.

Why oh why do they bother? It is so frustratingly pointless.

What a complete waste of paper, toner, electricity, money, time and space.

A reminder to you all to watch “How Green is your Street” tonight at 9pm on BBC2. The quick synopsis says:

“The biggest names on Britain’s high streets are spending hundreds of millions of pounds trying to go green. Are they really trying to save the planet? The Money Programme investigates.”

The Money Programme are always pretty objective, so it should be a good’un.

UK owner managers are calling for stronger government incentives to encourage green behaviour.

New research by entrepreneur think tank, the Tenon Forum, reveals that almost half (48 per cent) of UK owner managers think the government isn’t doing enough to support their efforts to implement environmentally friendly policies in the workplace, with entrepreneurs citing tax credits as one of the most effective ways for the Chancellor to motivate green behaviour.

Most of the nation’s small businesses, however, are embracing environmental practices in the workplace. The Tenon Forum findings show that three quarters of SMEs recycle paper, eight in ten (81 per cent) entrepreneurs encourage staff to turn off equipment when not in use, and a quarter (24 per cent) promote car sharing and public transport to their employees. Nearly one in ten (9 per cent) small businesses have also measured their carbon footprint.

When it comes to decreasing their carbon footprint, business and finance and retail sectors are leading the way through recycling in the workplace, while the transportation and communication sectors are encouraging staff to turn off computers and printers when not in use.

Andy Raynor, Chief Executive Officer of Tenon, said:

“UK entrepreneurs are sending out a clear message to government. While most support implementing policies that reduce their environmental impact, they also cannot do so alone. SMEs need government to motivate and reward best environmental practices with tax credits so that green behaviour also makes a genuine difference to their bottom line.”

Here at EveryThingsGoneGreen we applaud any green moves by business and agree that government incentives may well help toward this goal. But to rely on government ‘handouts’ to enable green motivation is being lazy. We think that entrepreneurs should have enough get-up-and-go to be able to achieve green business ideals without the ‘green carrot’ being dangled in front of UK business.

Over at Startups.co.uk they report that Paul Allen, author of  Your Ethical Business: How to Plan, Start and Succeed in a Company with a Conscience, says:

“Do we really need government to give us an incentive when the incentives should already be there?” Allen told startups.co.uk. “One is the much wider picture of climate change and the other is the huge move towards ethical consumerism.

“People increasingly want to do business with companies that take their environmental impact and their carbon footprint very seriously.”

They also spoke with Dale Vince, the head of Ecotricity, who responded that he thought the claim was a “bit lame” adding:

“It makes you wonder, where’s the creative and dynamic flair that creates new opportunities and value? I think it’s probably that, for a lot of these guys, the environment is low down on their list of priorities, and blaming government is just a cover story for inadequacy.”

We tend to agree.

The home-based business, or just working from home, is the green and environmentally-friendly option that many businesses these days can take.

By working from home you can leverage the following advantages:

• Avoiding the daily commute not only removes the stresses of driving and being stuck in traffic, but means:
• less cars on the roads
• less fossil fuel being consumed
• less pollution - less noise pollution, less CO₂ output and cleaner air.
• Workers have complete control over their own environments:
• they can have the light on if needs be and if they do they can choose to use energy-efficient bulbs.
• Computers and lights can be switched off at the end of the day unlike many offices where lights and PCs stay on over night.
• Many businesses still do not have recycling policies - at home you can choose to recycle your own paper by using both sides before eventually putting it in the “blue bin” or shred your own paper for the composter.
• You can choose environmentally-friendly stationery such as re-cycled paper, re-filled printer cartridges.

Working from home is not for everyone: there are many considerations to be taken into account, but the green bonuses are clear.

Oops! Todays the day Britain starts eating the world!

We have just run out of our own natural resources and are about to become dependant on supplies from abroad, according to a study by the New Economics Foundation.

The UK Interdependance Report (PDF 2.45Mb) maps out our dependance on the Earth’s resources and shows that the average UK citizen is living beyond their means by going into “ecological debt” on April 16th 2006.

What this means is that if annual global consumption levels matched our own we would need 2.1 more planets with Earth’s resources to meet the demand. Back in 1961 the world was big enough for everyone to have a lifestyle similar to those enjoyed by UK citizens. Now that has increased threefold!

France, Germany and even Russia are behind us with environmental footprints of 3, 2,5 and 2.4 respectively, but the USA is way ahead, needing the resources of 5.3 planets to fuel it’s vast appetite.

The ecological footprint is calculated by measuring the amount of land and water humans need to a) produce the resources they consume and b) dispose of the resulting waste.

As with Friday’s stark warning on climate change the burgeoning nations like China and India are increasing their own “standards” of living, demanding more from their lifestyles and putting further pressure on the planet’s resources.
The reports authors hope the findings will highlight the need to curb our rising consumption levels, saying that current lifestyles are becoming incresingly unsustainable and placing greater pressures on the global environmental system.

At a time when our self-sufficiency on food has been in decline for a decade and our need for natural gas has led to imports from abroad it is time to start taking serious steps to avoid the threat to the earth’s ability to sustain future generations.

Gordon Brown’s budget speech today included the smallest tip of the hat towards environmental issues - hardly the “green budget” that many have called it.

The most-polluting cars, those that have the highest CO₂ emmissions, are to have their road tax, or Vehicle Excise Duty, increased to £210 annually - that’s an increase of just £45 and less than the cost of a tank of petrol. The UK has around 23 million cars in total and the tax increase will only affect some 250,000 or about 1% of the cars on UK roads and is seen as a mere gesture against the least economical cars, mainly the fashionable off-road 4×4s.

At the other end of the spectrum the most economical/ least-polluting vehicles will pay £40 a year, down from £75 which includes that most famous of green cars the hybrid-engined Toyota Prius. Cars with virtually no emissions will be exempted from road tax altogether.

Duty on petrol will be frozen until September 2006.

The climate change levy, a tax on energy use in industry, remains unchanged with Brown believing that 3,000 businesses have cut their energy use and thus emissions through the levy.

This is going in the right direction but is it going far enough?

We are what we eat.

And tonight, Matthew, I’m scrumpy cider, cheese & biscuits

But we are what we do too, and that’s the message behind the great new website wearewhatwedo.org a sort of online karmic barometer promoting & monitoring how we can all do our little bit to change the world.

Basically, in their own words they have…

“created 50 simple, everyday actions that can improve our environment, our health, and our communities, making our planet and the people on it much happier. We started by putting these actions in a book, but the whole movement is getting bigger. And bigger.”

Now that sounds good. At their website you can tick the actions you do everyday on their do something page, see how many others are on the same path and sign up to your own personal action tracker to see how you’re doing.

The 50 actions are so simple that anyone and everyone can do them from simply smiling a bit more, fitting at least one energy-saving bulb to watching less TV and even planting a tree (a native broadleaf is highly recommended).

So go on, give it a look in, do your bit and make the world a better place because we are what we do, right?