A Scottish report has warned that traffic pollution is the worst offender in producing air pollution that is putting people at risk of health problems like cancer, heart problems, allergies and respiratory disease.

In 19 areas, traffic pollution was blamed for the low air quality – particularly from buses and heavy goods vehicles. Air quality is considered “poor” when the level of pollutants in it may harm health or the environment.

Audit Scotland said in the report that air quality in Scotland was “generally very good” but added: “There are 21 locations where air quality is poor and there is a risk of not meeting European targets.”

The report added: “To improve air quality further, the amount of pollution that comes from road transport needs to be reduced.”

envirojean

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.

Tweet This Post

If you ever read about psychology, you would have heard of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs but this also applies to business
1.    The basic needs in any business are tools for survival—information, efficiency, and accuracy. People need to do things correctly, employees have to be paid
2.    Compliance and security so that the business is safe and stays out of trouble,
3.    The belonging/social needs in a business are about people needing to understand what is expected
4.    Then both employers and employees want to feel understood and valued
5.    At the top of the needs, mature organizations look for higher-level tools to improve performance and achieve excellence –they want to understand and measure how they are doing, where they can improve and find their full potential for success.
If you are interested in satisfying all these needs in your business, you will find that one of the simplest and most effective ways to get there is to implement a management system like ISO 14001 where you:
•    Identify and implement the tools for survival
•    Make sure that you are aware of your compliance obligations and have made it easier for your employees and contractors to do it right than the wrong way
•    Have training and induction so that people needing to understand what is expected
•    A feedback mechanism helps everyone feel understood and valued
•    And this leads to you being able to measure your success and continual improvement
Read more information about ISO 14001 or reserve your spot in the next group training course and help you business improve and achieve excellence.

You will be surprised how easy it is.

BUT – HURRY

This training will be having a price rise next time so grab your spot at 2009 pricing

envirojean

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.

Tweet This Post

We pollute our air, our rivers, our seas and out soils.  Then we wonder why we have problems.

Even in the very remote possibility that the sceptics are right – which is totally unlikely as it is happening faster than expected according to the IPCC; we still need to take greenhouse gasses seriously:
We have two forces jeopardising sensible action on climate change:
1.    The global financial mess
2.    and the negative influence of the oil, gas and coal industries who ontinue to fight against any regulations.

Some of the other serious impacts of global pollution are:
Superphosphate which is made water soluble by treating it with sulphuric acid is rapidly converted back to insoluble to calcium phosphate and is not available to plants and in iron-rich soils it is just as rapidly converted to equally insoluble iron phosphate, and a related action occurs in volcanic soils.  CSIRO estimated many years back that ten BILLION dollars worth of P is now held in our soils.

And superphosphate releases it’s sulphuric acid which to accumulates in the subsoil of many soil types to prevent root growth and kill earthworms and it flows through free draining soils hence our Murray mouth acid sands.

Ocean acidification is also a major issue for this century and its impact on the food industry and world food supply.  This is due both to atmospheric CO2 and the breakdown products of chemical fertilization. Superphosphate, ammonium sulphate and urea are the main contributors.  Examples of this damage are
•    Destruction of reefs off Bali caused by fertilised rice paddy run off
•    Barrier Reef damage caused by hyper-nutrition and acidification
•    The acid sands in the lower Murray
Overloading the earth’s nitrogen cycle.  There are huge dead patches in oceans from over use of fertilizer.
The natural soil system is simple: more carbon in soil = more bacteria = more nitrogen = more plant growth = more carbon that is tied up and not in the air.  And this encourages earthworms which aerate soil.

Jelly fish are on pest species that benefits from ocean acidification and over fishing.  Interestingly there is are low numbers of jellyfish/stingers around the waters of Vanuatu and Vanuatu bans the use of chemical fertilization.  Is this a coincidence?

I used to swim competitively in masters swimming and participated annually in the swim around Delphin Island in West Lakes, Adelaide.  The jelly fish there (non stinging) were so thick in some patches that it was actually like clawing your way through jelly rather than swimming.  Totally gross!  The lake was surrounded by heavily fertilised manicure lawns as well as being at the end of one of Adelaide’s main stormwater drainage systems.

We pollute our air, our rivers, our seas and out soils.  Then we wonder why we have problems including climate change, ocean acidification and pest species.

envirojean

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.

Tweet This Post

I received an impassioned email from a bike ridder who misunderstood my comments last week so let’s clarify.

I am also a cyclist and in the past have spent several years with my bike as my main means of commuting.  I firmly believe that cycling is great for the environment and our health.

The Tour Down Under has been in Adelaide this week -the city is alive with a buzz and thousands of cyclists. Great!  I love big international events.  The interaction with others and especially with top performers in any field is so good for keeping us all out of a rut.

I loved it in Copenhagen when peak hour traffic meant streets were wall to wall bikes with no cars. This solves air pollution, greenhouse emissions and fitness issues.

We need more infrastructure for safe cycling and greater tolerance from both drivers and riders of each others needs.  Because there are so many more cars than bikes, there is more aggression towards cyclists that the reverse and this is very serious because cyclists are so vulnerable.  There are even crazy websites about getting cyclists off the road when in fact, getting cars, or at least large cars off inner city roads would make more sense.

Many people have proved that there is no real age barrier to cycling.  My grandfather rode a bike right up to his last moments when, in his late seventies, he felt tired, propped his bike and rested under a tree and died.

On the subject of infrastructure, it needs more than simply a narrow strip alongside parked cars where drivers open doors without looking.  Perhaps as an initial stage there could be some city streets for bikes and others for cars at peak hour and safe bike corridors from the city to parking stations two or three kilometres out.

This does need to be addressed properly instead of the current tokenism.

envirojean

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.

Tweet This Post

Do you know your legal rights as an employer?

I think that a 4 day weekend is a great idea when people take an annual leave day before the public holiday but the theft of a paid day by healthy people pretending to be ill is another matter.

Employing staff is very expensive with all the add-ons like leave, sick leave, long service leave, superannuation, WorkCover insurance and all.  Sick leave is there and cumulative so that if people are genuinely ill they can take time off and as people do not know when and if they may need it wasting it is foolish and well as completely inconsiderate.

The manager of any business has a duty to run the business profitably and ‘sickies’ and one of the things that make this more difficult.

One absentee management firm estimated in The Australian that up to half a million people could take today off, leaving their fellow employees to pick up the slack.

As an employer, what can you do?
Remember that it is important to set up a culture the does not accept ‘sickies’.  You can’t legally ask about the type of illness but do ask them when they will be back and how you can assist them to get back to work.  If you let them get  away with it, the problems grows and so do your costs.
•    Have a company policy stating your policy on sick leave clearly and also require them to ring – not text with explanations and when they will be in again.
•    Include a statement that it is irresponsible behaviour not to report accidents and injuries on the day they happen to avoid Friday injury claims that had nothing to do with Saturday footy or home improvements.
•    Require all staff to present medical certificates or statuary declarations.
•    When they return call them in and once again ask them how they are and if they are alright for work.
•    Staff who are frequently ‘ill’ on Monday or Friday are a different problem. Offer to send them to an occupational physician so that they become aware this is a serious issue.  You can ask them if they feel they are capable of managing a five day a week job

The day before a problem weekend send a note to all employees reminding them that Monday is a normal working day and that they either take a leave day or provide a medical certificate or stat. Dec. proving a genuine reason for their absence.

envirojean

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.

Tweet This Post

British politicians are being challenged to practise what they preach on climate change and cut their personal carbon footprints by 10 per cent this year.

The Australian of the Year nominee, Jon Dee is asking our MPs to do the same and catalogue any actions they take to cut back emissions in their personal lives this year.

The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has a substantial carbon footprint with his air travel. The footprints of senators Penny Wong and Barnaby Joyce, who lead the debate on climate change, would be closely watched.

Can our leaders be environmentally sustainable?

Politicians will be sent a questionnaire and 10-point plan of simple actions for reducing their personal carbon footprint by at least 10 per cent.

Will they publish the result? Preferably as a 3 monthly progress to “lead” us in the right direction?

envirojean

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.

Tweet This Post

Have you ever wondered how much …
•    Energy it took to make your computer?
•    Fertilizer it took to make you “quick and easy” lunch?
•    Fuel it took to get your box of cereal to your local grocery store?
•    Greenhouse gases it took to make that fuel-efficient, low-emissions hybrid car?
•    Paper, foam or plastic was used to package your kid’s new Nintendo or WII?
•    Water it took to make the latte at your local coffee shop?

Businesses from many industries are trying to answer these types of questions, related to the full lifecycle of products and services across their entire supply chain and they often have surprising findings.

Coca-Cola decided to look at the lifecycle of their soft drink products to determine which parts produced the most GHG emissions. Was it the water purification process? Was it the blending and bottling process? Was it the manufacture of the bottles and cans? Was it the distribution of the drinks to stores and restaurants?

The surprising answer was the vending machines and fountains where the products are sold.  This included the energy for refrigeration and they found that the refrigerants used were the largest contributors to their overall GHG emissions.

Interesting!

Have you ever thought about the full lifecycle environmental impact and cost related to your supply chain?

One of the things I am concerned about with the Australian Government’s emission trading scheme is that it ignore the embodied emission in imported goods.

People complain about China’s emissions but if the emissions of Chinese manufactured goods we use, were included in our carbon footprint the balance would be fairer.

It would be a whole new interesting question if we made the importing country count the carbon of the imports and their travel.

Including this in our carbon calculations seems unlikely to happen….

BUT we should look at how sustainably our purchased good are produced and transported.

envirojean

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.

Tweet This Post

We’ve all heard about the growing levels of CO2 and other greenhouse emissions in our atmosphere, and the rising temperatures to go along with it.  This acts like a greenhouse or blanket around the planet: allowing sunlight through to earth then retaining it when it is reflected off surfaces such as glaciers and oceans.  Keeping this heat in the atmosphere leads to the concept of global warming because there is no way

Some of the major ways that greenhouse gases increase in the atmosphere are by using carbon based fuels for energy, sending organic waste to landfill, clearing trees which otherwise absorb carbon dioxide and by farming ruminant animals like sheep and cattle which release methane.

There are very many easy ways for individuals to reduce this problem and many of them also lower our power bills and petroleum based fuel bills.  We don’t really suffer a lower quality of living if we turn off things we are not using and plan our driving to reduce the number of car trips and be more careful with our shopping so that we toss less food waste.  Little things like keeping your tires inflated properly increases your fuel efficiency and insulating your .hot water system can lower your energy bill by almost 30 percent!

I personally object to those who want to send the whole world vegetarian.  I believe we evolved as meat eaters but that many of us probably eat too much red meat.  Chicken and fish are not ruminants and can easily be included in a balanced diet.

In business you can make systematic changes to save both money and emissions with an environmental management system – ISO 14001 and the next group training and coaching course for ISO 14001 is enrolling this week.

You will discover how easy it is to have a simple and effective system in your business and start saving money and helping the environment when you join one of my group coaching courses

And don’t forget the proven marketing benefits to the “green” community when your business is environmentally certified.

You can save even more this month because I am in the middle of my annual biz strategy review and one thing that is emerging is pricing.  ……..

So register now for 2009 pricing which changes upwards after this week.

envirojean

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.

Tweet This Post

Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics claims to  “cut through the greenwash” and tell consumers which manufacturers are doing the most to mitigate the environmental problems.

Here are some of their findings:

• Apple, Sony Ericsson and Nokia have now got rid of the most dangerous substances, according to the report, with HP close behind.
• Samsung, Dell, Lenovo and LG Electronics were named by Greenpeace as failing to keep promises to phase-out of toxic ingredients.

The toxic materials in electronics can be dangerous for workers during production and they can pollute the environment when they are thrown away.  Many of these gadgets contain valuable metals, such as gold, silver and palladium there is an economic motivation to recycle them.

Unfortunately most recycling is done in Asian and African countries where Greenpeace say there is little infrastructure to recycle responsibly and it happens in primitive conditions; cables are burnt to recover the copper wiring and circuit boards cooked in acid baths to recover gold, polluting the environment and causing toxic

The questions to ask when buying electronics – “Are they energy efficient, do they contain toxic substances, does the company whose product you’re buying have a takeback program?”

envirojean

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.

Tweet This Post

Bike commuting is great and I was most impressed when I was in Copenhagen and we almost only saw bikes.  Peak hour commuting saw the roads almost wall to wall with bikes and few cars.

I have ridden a bike since I was a child and I still do for small local shopping, visits and fun.  While I was a secondary school and university I commuted by bike and again for around 6 years in my forties.

This week in Adelaide we have a different phenomenon called the Tour Down Under with all the major international riders for a serious week of competition riding.

However there is a phenomenon that I don’t like. .Increasingly some bike ridders are becoming very aggressive on the roads which seems nuts to me since they are so vulnerable and abusively taking on cars and trucks, often producing road rage does not make sense.

Putting on lycra suits appears have the same effect on an unfortunate few as when preschool children put on superhero suits.  It is most unpleasant to be on the road with them.  One rider even shouted through my open car window “have a good look lady” while I was waiting at traffic lights.  In his dreams!  What very unpleasant harassment.

I would love to see more bike commuting, safer bikeways and adequate storage for bikes at their destinations but it is also up to riders to behave responsibly and not antagonise other road users.  Riding is seriously greenhouse friendly and also good for personal fitness.  Environmentally sustainable travel so long as a dubious few “uperheroes” do not increase road rage in some exasperated drivers

envirojean

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.

Tweet This Post