This week South Australia’s government is suggesting that public servants work shorter hours to reduce costs in this economic crisis.  Last year New York’s Mayor suggested having flexible hours with staggered start and stop times to reduce peak hour gridlock.  In June 2008 the state of Utah had state employees switch to a four day week in August with longer hours Monday to Thursday and offices closed on Fridays to save on utility expenses and employees would save on fuel. This of course, would also reduce emissions from energy and transport, apparently equivalent of removing 600 cars annually.

Other US states have been considering the idea, especially in the wake of the financial crisis, to cut costs. Meanwhile, individual companies are also adopting the trend, with Nissan US moving its factory operations to four day weeks and KPMG in the UK offering a shorter week option to its employees.

Last week in my blog I discussed having more flexible workplaces and sometimes working from home to save on costs and emissions.  From a worker’s viewpoint the added cost of electricity etc at home would be balanced by reduced cost of travel.  When a company is calculating this they should consider the costs and emissions of the outworker in their overall calculations.

Personally I do NOT like the idea of public offices being closed 3 days a week unless they have a really good online portal.  I would much rather see the 4 days in place but staggered.  I really enjoy the trend to increasing banking hours.  I frequently visit banks and post offices on Saturday morning because I am busy Monday to Friday.  I do banking, post, and shopping all in a single trip each week.  This saves time and fuel.

Technorati Tags: Economic crisis, Electricity, Energy, Emissions, Peak hour gridlock, Reduce emissions

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Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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Here is a snippet from a government media release this week.  For the first time, Australia will invest  $26.8 million in a major research effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from livestock – the nation’s third largest source of emissions, including methane. There are around 85 million sheep, 28 million cows and 3 million farmed goats.

This project will ensure that the Reducing Emissions from Livestock Research Program: meets the priorities of the Climate Change Research Program provides quantifiable short and long term methane emission reductions from livestock informs stakeholders of the potential contribution of agriculture to national emissions reduction goals. This project will investigate management factors affecting methane emissions from cattle grazing northern forages and detail their potential to reduce emissions.  The Minister for Agriculture Tony Burke said the research effort would help to achieve significant cuts to Australia’s emissions, “Methane alone accounts for 70 percent of agricultural emissions and 12% of national emissions.”

Optimising the management of cattle and other ruminants to reduce their methane emissions would be very useful.  They will be exploring dietary supplements and alternative feeds to reduce methane production, using chemical or biological controls of bacteria in the stomach of livestock to reduce emissions and genetics such as selected breeding.

My understanding is that grain fed cattle from feed lots may belch even more tons of methane than grass fed.

Technorati Tags: Climate change, Emissions from livestock. Grain fed beef, Greenhouse gas emissions, Methane

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Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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Big business like Coca-Cola Co. now disclose the amount of water they use in financial reports, in an attempt to show investors they can confront threats to their water supply, according to a study released Thursday by the nonprofit Pacific Institute.

But dozens of high-tech companies, farms and soda bottlers have lost millions because they didn’t foresee the risks posed by droughts and floods tied to global warming, researchers found in a survey of 121 companies in water-intensive industries.

In the present financial market investors can’t afford to ignore the importance of  water in their favorite blue chips, and how it could affects their retirement accounts.   People are beginning to consider water-related risks seriously.

Water shortage shut down both Pepsi Co. and Coca-Cola’s in Kerala, India, after authorities cancelled water licenses amid drought.

High-tech industry like producing silicon chips which relies on billions of gallons of pure water will feel the pinch.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned climate change will increase the risk of droughts, heat waves and floods if average global temperatures rise by just 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit and is exacerbating water scarcity problems around the world.
Few businesses are paying attention and investors need more information to make the water conscious decisions they need.

Levi Strauss & Co., the San Francisco-based maker of 501 jeans, has reduced the amount of water used to make some styles of jeans by 30 percent in the last year.  Michael Kobori, a vice president for supply chain social and environmental sustainability. said “the water we use is one of our most significant impacts on the environment, and we saw we had to reduce our footprint.”

Technorati Tags: Carbon footprint, Climate change, global temperatures, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Water footprint, Water shortage

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Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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The Salisbury Council in South Australia has been very creatively managing its stormwater for the last 15 years or so.  It has built a series of very impressive wetlands and storing it in underground aquifers

They have been conducting a four year trial converting the water to drinking standard.  This has been funded by CSIRO and others.  They can supply 106 gigalitres of drinking water, one third of Adelaide’s supply.

The Water Security Minister in SA does not support the use of treated stormwater for drinking.  She said there is an unacceptable risk.

I am completely bemused.  What on earth does she think the River Murray is?  Or any other river for that matter but natural stormwater drainage!  I would describe the Murray has highly polluted stormwater that is increasingly saline; and that is Adelaide’s current water supply.  Let’s have more wetlands in our parklands to collect and treat water from all our creeks and rivers and treat it in the same way that we currently treat the Murray water.

Technorati Tags: Aquifer, Drinking water, Murray River, Salisbury Council, Stormwater, Wetlands

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The short answer is because I was asked to by my clients.

But it took longer than that to happen
I have been running this consultancy for 11 years now, helping businesses to identify environmental and other problems and build simple and effective systems to manage those risks.

I came from a background of teaching biology while my kids needed me to work school hours, marine biology research, management of a computer business with 17 staff and a A$5 million turnover (which is where I learned quality management and implemented my first system in our own business) and overlapping much of this I spent about 12 years on a variety of Government Advisory Committees – both environmental and mostly planning.  When ISO 14001 was released in 1996 this seemed the logical application for my rather unusual collection of experience.  Jean Cannon Consulting became a business and I started using the Enviro Action name in 2003.

Back to why I developed online consulting.

I was working one-on-one with larger companies, major car component factories, marinas and the tuna industry, helping them get ISO 14001 and other systems.

I was approached by smaller businesses asking me how they could do the same thing without such a high price – so groups were born!  I wrote training modules and ran a series of 3 two-day workshops to help groups of smaller businesses get ISO 14001 certification.

The next request was for the work to be more spread out, no travel please and “we can’t afford to be out of the office”.  “can you do it online please?”  I gulped and said “yes- soon” and started getting quotes to help me do it, gulped even more at the ridiculously high pricing so I leapt in and started doing some marketing courses online so that I knew how other people did online training.  Then I wrote my own online training modules.  I tested the first few on one well known client at a time until I was confident that it all worked.  The process cost me a huge amount and took two years but it really does work more effectively for most businesses than the traditional method of consultancy.

So that is the why and the how rolled into one.

Technorati Tags: Consultancy, Environmental problems, ISO 14001, Manage risks, Online consultancy, Online training, Online training modules, Simple and effective systems

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Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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While computer users need to watch their carbon emissions, the manufacturers have other emission issues.  Chip makers release sulfur hexafluoride and other fluorinated gases

The state of California has enacted mandatory rules controlling greenhouse gases and these will impact on semiconductor chip manufacturers.  While 85 companies are said to be affected, only 57 only need to comply with the reporting requirements because they release low amounts.  28 businesses account for a reported 94% of fluorinated gas emissions. A reported 12 already comply, however, and the rest need to spend an estimated $37 million in total to bring their plants into compliance.

Technorati Tags: Carbon emissions, Computer chips, Greenhouse gases, Semiconductor chip manufacturers, Sulfur hexafluoride

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Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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New York City must prepare for higher temperatures, more rain and an increased risk of coastal flooding in the coming decades as a result of global climate change, an advisory panel formed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Tuesday.

The panel said that mean annual temperatures in New York could increase by up to 3 degrees and the average sea levels rise by 2 to 5 inches by the 2020s. By the 2080s, temperatures could increase by up to 7 ½ degrees, and sea levels could rise 12 to 23 inches by the end of the century,

Cynthia Rosenzweig, a senior research scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University, who is the chairwoman of the panel, said that the main value of the panel’s research, which used climate models and local climate data, was to identify risks in order to make the city less vulnerable to them. “We’re providing the science by which the City of New York can get ready and prepare,” she said.
City officials believe they should plan to keep cooling centres for people without air-conditioning open longer during heat waves, move critical equipment in city buildings above sea level and incorporate climate changes into the design of buildings, among other measures.

“Planning for climate change today is less expensive than rebuilding an entire network after the catastrophe,” the mayor said in response to the report. “We cannot wait until after our infrastructure has been compromised to begin to plan.”

The city’s economic crisis should not interfere with preparations for climate change. Much of the financial burden will be shouldered by private companies as they take steps to prepare, and other expenses can be built into the city’s budget for capital projects.  This planning should just be built it into the way you do business.”

Technorati Tags: New York City, higher temperatures, more rain, increased risk of coastal flooding global climate change, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Climate models, Climate data, design of buildings

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Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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One of the major reasons for the concern by people along the lower reaches of the Murray and the Lower Lakes is the build up of acid sulphate soil.

All of the wetlands around the Lower Lakes have been adversely impacted by falling water levels and increasing salinity in the lake water bodies.  Acid sulphate soils are a serious threat in many areas of the Lower Lakes and urgent action is required. The areas in question are either already dry, or will become completely dry and cut-off from the main body of Lake Alexandrina as the water level continues to fall over the coming months.

Recent CSIRO field surveys have confirmed that large areas of the shallow wetlands along the Goolwa Channel and in the lower reaches of Currency Creek and Finniss River have already acidified. It is  very important to protect the wetlands of the Goolwa Channel, Finniss River, and Currency Creek from acid sulphate soils.  These are important and highly valued fresh water biodiversity areas of the Lower Lakes.

Technorati Tags: Acid sulphate soils, Currency Creek, Goolwa Channel, Finniss River,   Wetlands

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Research by the Murray-Darling Freshwater Research Centre has confirmed that acid sulphate soils can be a potential problem in inland environments as well as coastal areas.

The research centre collected soil samples from 81 locations during 2003from seven inland catchments and found that twenty percent of those samples contained, or were likely to contain, sulphide sediments that can harm aquatic systems. Many of the sites are along the Murray River where past management has kept some wetlands permanently full. Other sites can be found along the Lachlan, Murrumbidgee and Macquarie Rivers.

Sulphide sediments form as a result of long term inundation combined with high salinity levels. When wetlands with sulphide sediments dry out and then re-flood a chemical process occurs that releases acid into the system. At Bottle Bend lagoon near Mildura a managed drying and wetting cycle in 2002 killed hundreds of fish and resulted in the eventual death of thousands of trees and other wetland vegetation. It was this incident that alerted the Murray Wetlands Working Group and the Murray-Darling Research Centre to the potential problem.

This is happening now in the lower lakes and the lower reaches of the Murray.
For further information on sulphidic sediments in inland wetlands visit the website of the Murray-Darling Research Centre.

Technorati Tags: Aquatic systems, Murray-Darling, Sulphide sediments, Lachlan River, Lower Lakes, Murrumbidgee River, Macquarie River, Wetlands

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Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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A New South Wales landowner who bulldozed 450 hectares of wetlands that are important breeding grounds for migratory birds on the Gwydir River in north-west NSW. resulted in a $408,000 fine in one of Australia’s biggest cases of illegal land clearing.

John Ross Hudson  was convicted on two counts of breaching the Native Vegetation Act.in the Land and Environment Court

The wetlands by the Gwydir River are a crucial breeding area for migratory birds.  It was in one of the most critically endangered wetlands of the state, the Gwydir Wetlands, which are adjacent to internationally significant Ramsar sites.  They’re listed on an international list for protection and is in one of the Murray-Darling Basin’s key catchment areas.

Technorati Tags: environment, land-clearing, wetlands, law-crime-and-justice, courts-and-trials, australia, nsw, moree-2400

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Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

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