Enviro Action - If you can't keep it simple it won't work

• Government sets up National Emissions Registry
• If you can’t keep it simple it will not work - how to cope with increasing environmental demands and remain profitable
• Next teleconference – I think I am the guest this time!
• Links to articles

The Government has released a tender for National Emissions Registry.
This is the basis of the carbon accounting that will be coming in now. Countries signing up to the Kyoto Protocol are permitted a set amount of emissions as `assigned amount units' and must set up a registry to monitor them.

We must keep things simple! How to cope with increasing environmental demands and remain profitable
Emissions trading is still quite a long way off many of our radars but when it does start to affect you, if you already have a introduced a systematic way to identify your carbon and other environmental issues the formal introduction of the scheme will be much easier. In the interim, you will be saving money by reducing your energy and other wastes, including human effort. This is going to be increasingly important as fuel goes on going up in price with the flow on effects to the entire economy and electricity is tipped to double?? (one report I heard on the news this weekend) over the next year. If you can reduce the waste your businesses will be better off.

Enviro Action’s “Easy to be Green” training program takes you through a mind mapping process where you identify ALL your ACTIVITIES – not just what you think may be environmental then we mentor you as you build a broad based foundation for a very slimline management system. This results in a stable and effective management system. More like  iceberg with your employees only needing to work from the small top portion. http://www.environment.gov.au/minister/wong/2008/pubs/mr20080530.pdf.

If you can’t keep it simple it will not work.

This is a complete contrast to the mountain of paper and documentation that many businesses choose to have as an ISO or any other system. These are based on a much smaller foundation of some things that were identified as a basis of a management plan and are constantly in need of propping up.

There is absolutely nothing in any ISO standard that requires mountains of paper – just that processes and documentation need to be controlled. If your business has too much paper it is your own choice and you can reduce this overload. Enviro Action can help you do this and can certainly help you to build a low paper system.

One of my clients, Peter Dunne, a farmer from Queensland, recently told a conference in Newcastle that he was delighted to discover that implementing ISO 14001 as part of one of my groups did not just add another layer of paper like previous programs he had done. In fact it was like tidying his desk and sorting out what he needed to keep, what could be included in a new form and what was out of date and needed to be got rid of.

I remember about seven years ago working as a consultant in a large manufacturing company and discussing with the engineering manager why I had worked with them to identify about 50 environmental impacts when some of their colleagues in other companies had consultants who had only raised around 9 or 10 impacts. I asked him which of his 50 he felt he could safely leave out and still retain any credibility and of course the answer was none. His company was not “worse” because it had identified more impacts and his management system has a broad and stable base compared with the other businesses.

I encourage you to identify as much as possible up front then build a slim and effective system that manages your risks in a simple manner. This is the way to have an effective system that does not add overheads but instead increases your profits and reduces your risks. If you want more information about this go to www.enviroaction.com.au/online

Next teleconference I think I am actually the guest this time!

Steve Kostoff who is one of Al Gore’s Climate Change Ambassadors with a great environmental, training and marketing background is interviewing me about “greenwash”, the legal implications of green marketing and the value of the different types of certification available to you in a world where you need to prove you do what you say.

Friday 10.00 am Adelaide time. I leave this as Adelaide Time because if you go into www.timeanddate.com, the very TOP time zone anywhere in the world is Australian Central Time and it is winter in Adelaide at present.

Please phone in on 0011-1-218 -486 7200 (Australia); 1-218-486-7200 for the rest of the world
The conference number is 840006 and ask your questions live. If you want to send questions in first, feel free to do so by sending them to info@enviroaction.com.au
Australian and New Zealand can use a phone card and the call will only cost around A$2

I really look forward to having you participate in this teleconference. It will be recorded but that will not give you the opportunity to ask questions live.

We all have a problem with the price of fuel and the Government has the worst of the lot because they promised cheaper fuel prior to the election knowing that world oil priceing is going up and the world is runing short of oil and must rein in our carbon use anyway. What we needed 10 years ago was centralised transport infrastructure! Gotta Do It!

Here are the links to the latest articles on the Enviro Jean Blog

So we are in Oil Shock – It will get worse!

We all need to realise that oil is a scarce commodity. The way Australian cities have been set up with very limited transport infrastructure other than roads, large clocks of land for each house etc will make some of our outer suburbs close to uninhabitable. People in the outer suburbs use six times as much fuel as those close to the city centre. It is not as if we did not know about this!  Read more....

The world is watching a hot rocks plant with massive potential in South Australia. A small start but a real one.

Innamincka in northern South Australia, will close its diesel-fuelled generators by the end of 2008 when Australia’s first power plant fuelled by hot rocks, four kilometres below the Earth’s surface, supplies electricity to the sun-scorched Cooper Basin outpost 1100 kilometres north-west of Adelaide.  Read more

Have you ever heard of sick house syndrome?

Modern building materials are often formaldehyde-rich and so are the cushions, foam underlay’s etc and that creates health problems for residents.  The wood products that cause problems are medium-density fibreboard, or MDF and most of the glued ans composit boards. How many of us actually have real solid wood in our houses now? How many of our homes and offices are really well ventilated?  Read more..

How robust is Marine Life when if has to live in an acid environment?

Experts worry that plankton, coral and shellfish will struggle to survive as greenhouse gas emissions change their environment. Just think about it, marine life has evolved in a highly stable environment for millennia. Fresh water and estuarine species are able to withstand change but marine life has not evolved in a variable environment and there is a high likelihood that it will not be able to cope big changes. The really big change it is facing is much higher levels of dissolved CO2 producing Carbonic acid. Acid dissolves shells and hard skeletons of shellfish, plankton and coral  Read more..

One Victorian family have reduced their home energy use

SIX years ago, when Brod and Vivienne Street renovated their Hawthorn home, they decided they would go green wherever possible. By installing a solar electric system, the couple and their son, Alexander, reduced their emissions by more than 3000 kilograms to just 900 kilograms a year.  Read more 

Energy in our Housing

Even though there are now stricter building regulations Australian’s are building bigger houses and this coupled with a population surge means homes are using record levels of energy. Overall electricity use by Victorian homes is expected to rise by 45% by 2030, with average household and total residential energy use both increasing.   Household energy use has continued to soar.. Read more..

Kindest regards

Jean Cannon
Helping business build effective management systems to save money and grow It is easy to be green

Winner 2007 South Australian Seafood Industry Training Award in recognition of training excellence

For more information or suggestions about how I can serve you better,
please contact me on jean@enviroaction.com.au.

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