I was just reading the latest of my friend Chen Tay’s truly sensible articles and I loved his line “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

That is not so very different from my regular statement that “If it is not simple it won’t work”

Chen went on to discuss his opinions on the emerging business/financial trend and I think this is worth sharing

He said that “there is a shift going on. Just look around, the world is changing. While the fundamentals will always remain relevant, it’s important to take the best parts of the old economy and learn the best strategies for the new emerging economy.

People are desperately seeking “authentic” people because there are so many sharks out there.

The global financial crisis wasn’t just a financial challenge, but it also revealed the lack of leadership around the world. What the world need is leaders with integrity… leaders who inspire vision, a dream or start a movement.”

One of my main reasons for writing my articles is so that you can get to know me, hopefully understand that I do have more experience and depth than most other consultants in the same space and that I do have the integrity that you are looking for.

I am originally a marine biologist with a deep environmental understanding, I have been involved in my own businesses for the last 20 years, I am a qualified Lead Auditor in both safety (AS/NZS 4801) and environmental management (ISO 14001) and been running quality systems (ISO 9001) since 1990.

I have been helping organisations from single family businesses to companies of over 1,000 people build simple and effective management systems since 1998 and have developed simple tools to make this easier for you.

I believe in helping my clients to build sustainable business systems and to manage them on their own so that they are not lumbered with lots of paper, gobbledygoop nor a consultant that won’t go away.  Of course I am happy to help if you want changes down the track but I work hard to do myself out of a job and make you independent.

If it is not simple it won’t work so I really cut red tape make things as easy as possible for you both to implement and to maintain.

For more information go to http://www.enviroaction.com.au

I was just reading the latest of my friend Chen Tay’s truly sensible articles and I loved his line “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

That is not so very different from my regular statement that “If it is not simple it won’t work”

Chen went on to discuss his opinions on the emerging business/financial trend and I think this is worth sharing

He said that “there is a shift going on. Just look around, the world is changing. While the fundamentals will always remain relevant, it’s important to take the best parts of the old economy and learn the best strategies for the new emerging economy.

People are desperately seeking “authentic” people because there are so many sharks out there.

The global financial crisis wasn’t just a financial challenge, but it also revealed the lack of leadership around the world. What the world need is leaders with integrity… leaders who inspire vision, a dream or start a movement.”

One of my main reasons for writing my articles is so that you can get to know me, hopefully understand that I do have more experience and depth than most other consultants in the same space and that I do have the integrity that you are looking for.

I am originally a marine biologist with a deep environmental understanding, I have been involved in my own businesses for the last 20 years, I am a qualified Lead Auditor in both safety (AS/NZS 4801) and environmental management (ISO 14001) and been running quality systems (ISO 9001) since 1990.

I have been helping organisations from single family businesses to companies of over 1,000 people build simple and effective management systems since 1998 and have developed simple tools to make this easier for you.

I believe in helping my clients to build sustainable business systems and to manage them on their own so that they are not lumbered with lots of paper, gobbledygoop nor a consultant that won’t go away.  Of course I am happy to help if you want changes down the track but I work hard to do myself out of a job and make you independent.

If it is not simple it won’t work so I really cut red tape make things as easy as possible for you both to implement and to maintain.

For more information go to http://www.enviroaction.com.au

Jean Cannon

Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress!

If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.

The good news is that this is now available as online training so you only need to commit to one hour per week and no travel. You can even Do-It-Yourself! .

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Waste produced in Adelaide will be banned from landfill from September 2012 unless it is first subjected to resource recovery “in accordance with the waste management hierarchy and to the extent reasonably achievable”.

It must be processed “at an appropriate licensed material recovery facility or composting depot” or some other EPA-approved facility.

Councils with three-bin collection services will, however, still be able to dump their residual waste material.

Industry has a two-year reprieve

Some specific materials will be exempt from the requirement, including hazardous waste, medical waste, quarantine waste and wastewater.

Banned from landfill disposal altogether is hazardous and medical waste, lead acid batteries and whole tyres.

Also banned are materials that have been “aggregated for resource recovery,” including glass, cardboard and paper, organics, a range of metals and PET or HDPE plastic packaging.

Other materials to be progressively banned over the next 2-3 years, include mercury-containing fluorescent light tubes, computers and TVs, white goods and other electronic wastes.

It will be interesting to know what people are suposed to do with fluoro light globes because I bet most households will be much too confused to dispose of them properly unless there is a publicity campaign and easy disposal.

Jean Cannon

Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress!

If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.

The good news is that this is now available as online training so you only need to commit to one hour per week and no travel. You can even Do-It-Yourself! .

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Singapore is hosting the World Green Building Congress in September and its own commitment is to have 80% of its buildings environmentally sustainable  by 2030.

They have a study that shows a fuel switch from electric storage heaters to gas continuous flow heaters may result in carbon emission reductions of up to 86% at the national level.

Green buildings has a triple benefit
Lower greenhouse emissions,
Lower fuel bills for occupants
And considerably more comfort for occupants

This really is the path to sustainability

Jean Cannon

Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress!

If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.

The good news is that this is now available as online training so you only need to commit to one hour per week and no travel. You can even Do-It-Yourself! .

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It is hard to believe but Professor Clive Hamilton says that an organised cyber-bullying campaign, including abusive emails, is targeting Australian climate scientists who speak out on climate change.
He feels that this is aimed at driving climate scientists from the public debate.

Professor Hamilton says aggressive, abusive and sometimes threatening emails are being sent to distinguished scientists each time they speak out on the subject.

Apparently it is mostly anonymous and it and looks very orchestrated.   Some have compared scientist’s actions to those of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot and others are more personal and even directed against the children of female scientists.

Personally I accept that the vast majority of the science says that climate change is real and a threat to many species on earth and also to our children and grandchildren.   I respect other people’s right to disagree because my overriding philosophy  is that I do not care what colour or religion people are or what they believe but bullying is never OK and the new cyber bullying is so totally intrusive

Jean Cannon

Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress!

If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.

The good news is that this is now available as online training so you only need to commit to one hour per week and no travel. You can even Do-It-Yourself! .

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There is a lot of talk about this especially from Government and many of the suggestions are marginal.  Not very many are actually reducing greenhouse gas emissions or other pollution.

I think that every employee in a business that is managing its environmental risks and is becoming environmentally sustainable as they continually improve their performance with ISO 14001 management system has a true “green job”.

Not many of the so called “green jobs” are in sustainable businesses

Jean Cannon

Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress!

If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.

The good news is that this is now available as online training so you only need to commit to one hour per week and no travel. You can even Do-It-Yourself! .

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Israel is really leading the way in environmental sustainability other than the enormous energy and resources that it spends on warfare,   Now STOP and don’t protest about my war comment – that is not a political comment – It is a fact that war uses/wastes a huge amount of energy and resources.

That is not what I am talking about.

They grow food in sand, power homes using the sun and this year launches the world’s finest city-wide electric car system.

Electric cars built by Renault-Nissan need a network of re-charging points and battery changing stations and these are being set up in Israel, Denmark, Hawaii, California, Canada and the report I read said Australia )although I have seen no evidence of this yet).

“Israel will be the fi rst country in the world actually implementing this and Jerusalem will be the fi rst city.”

The car looks like a regular Renault Megane but has no exhaust pipe and an electric socket where the petrol cap should be.   It can run for about 140 miles without re-charging, compared with 300 miles for the average family car on a full tank of petrol.

Drivers will plug in their cars to recharge for several hours at home, work or at designated free car parks throughout the country. Or they will swap empty batteries for fully-charged ones at a network of up to 200 “swap stations” throughout Israel. The electricity for the cars will come from solar technology being developed in the desert in southern Israel.

There are more than 1,000 clean technology start-up companies in Israel, a country that has attracted more foreign investment in high-tech businesses in the past decade than all of Europe.

This has been brought about by major challenges.  Its main water sources are controlled by its enemies Syria and the Hezbollah in Lebanon.  The land is sandy and infertile. So Israel had to become sustainable to deal with scarcity.  The practice of watering of agricultural crops through the drip irrigation system was developed in Israel more than 40 years ago.

And the country is also a pioneer in geothermal and solar energy. Solar heating panels and water tanks on the top of almost every building provide solar-heated water to just about every home and business.

Jean Cannon

Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress!

If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.

The good news is that this is now available as online training so you only need to commit to one hour per week and no travel. You can even Do-It-Yourself! .

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A visiting German expert says that South Australia could be powered by 100 per cent renewable energy  and this is no fantasy.

Dr Harry Lehmann, from Germany’s Federal Environment Agency, has more than 25 years of experience in sustainable energy policy.

He helped convince his own government that a future powered by 100 per cent renewable energy was not only possible, but desirable, considering the rising cost of fossil fuels.
His theme is that energy will be more expensive in the future, whatever scenario you take and if you stick to fossil fuels there will be even higher energy costs.”

He suggests a combined power plant linking and controlling wind, solar, biomass and hydropower installations to balance out short-term fluctuations in supply and demand.

The mix of technologies serves to silence critics who claim renewable energy is unreliable.

He said it reminds him of the days when the people didn’t believe that an aeroplane could fly, “As long as you don’t see that it flies, you don’t believe the science behind it. And that’s the same with renewables.”

Premier Mike Rann said SA was on track to achieve a goal of 33 per cent renewable energy by 2020, with close to half the nation’s wind power capacity and 20 per cent of residential grid-connected solar panels.

Dr Lehmann said it would be possible to achieve 100 per cent renewables by 2050 if planning started now.

I love the concept.

Jean Cannon

Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress!

If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.

The good news is that this is now available as online training so you only need to commit to one hour per week and no travel. You can even Do-It-Yourself! .

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In the next week or so the government will reintroduce its emission trading or carbon pollution reduction bill back into parliament.

My personal feeling is that it is deeply flawed.  I believe we do need a price on carbon but we also need to take other direct measures to reduce emissions and improve the environment.

•    We need a scheme that takes into account small to medium business and all households.
•    It needs to offer real incentives to reduce our energy and resources waste and
•    it needs to be simple to administer and flexible enough to fit in with what ever carbon trading arrangements are finally agreed internationally.
•    It also needs to correct some of the major errors that are in the Kyoto Agreement – like protecting deforestation which is urgently needed around the world.

Australia’s top climate adviser Ross Garnaut has rubbished both the ETS and the opposition’s schemes.

He says the amount of compensation the government plans give to polluters is an “abomination”.

Professor Garnaut has rejected the idea of compensating business owners for greenhouse gas pollution but the federal government’s carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS or ETS), coming up for its third attempt to het through before parliament, includes billions of dollars in compensation to Australia’s major polluters

Energy generators have had too much of a say in the climate change policy debate, Prof Garnaut said. And “Having being promised very large amounts of money, the generators no doubt felt a sense of entitlement and have struggled very hard for it every since.”

He said “I thought debates over governments taking huge decisions about resource allocation ended with the fall of the Soviet Union.”

One hopes that they will all actually sit down and talk to come up with some sense instead of the inflexible standoff we have at present.

Jean Cannon

Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress!

If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.

The good news is that this is now available as online training so you only need to commit to one hour per week and no travel. You can even Do-It-Yourself! .

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A new study by University of California Irvine researchers compared the amount of greenhouse gases absorbed by ornamental turfgrass to the amount emitted in the irrigation, fertilizing and mowing of the same plots.

When the greenhouse gas emissions from those inputs were measured in four parks near Irvine, they found that the inputs equalled or were greater than the amount of carbon dioxide removed from the air through photosynthesis .

A bit sad really.

I would love to know the results of a similar study with other plants and groundcovers instead of ornamental turf grass.  I suspect that without all the inputs it would be a different story.

This does not devalue parks and gardens, however because we need them for our sanity.

The study included emissions from producing fertilizer, from mowing with gasoline-powered equipment and from pumping water to irrigate the plots. The pumped water was recycled — but if it were fresh water transported from distant rivers, as is much of Southern California water, emissions would be higher and they also factored in the nitrous oxide released from soil after fertilization. Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas 300 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

Stephanie Pincetl, author of “Transforming California: A Political History of Land Use and Development.” praised the  value of trees and recommended irrigating them because they  reduce the heat island effect, but said “lawns have no such benefits, and also contribute to water pollution because they are heavily fertilized.”

Using rakes rather than leaf-blowers, and hand mowers rather than gasoline-powered equipment, would improve lawns’ carbon footprint.

They also commented that “about 40% of the drinking water we import at great financial and environmental expense is used for outdoor irrigation.”

Jean Cannon

Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress!

If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.

The good news is that this is now available as online training so you only need to commit to one hour per week and no travel. You can even Do-It-Yourself! .

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Australian Government Ministers have repeatedly and incorrectly declared that burning liquid natural gas (mostly methane, CH4, and related hydrocarbons) is “clean energy”.

I am not sure I agree and it raises some interesting viewpoints which I will summarise as dot points:
•    Collecting methane from landfill and using it makes total sense – far better than releasing it to the atmosphere
•    If the gas in coal seams is going to escape it makes sense to use it and as burning 1 Kg of coal will produce 24MJ vs one Kg of natural gas which produces 53.6MJ so it is more efficient than coal and would be a sensible replacement to keep the employment going in those areas
•    The energy required to create bio fuel from food products, like corn, soy bean or algae, must be more that what it takes to extract natural gas when you take into account all the fertiliser, tractor fuel, transport and of course the water and water pumping.
•    Whether bio fuel can be called a clean energy source is dubious.  Especially as it depletes food stocks and is responsible for mass clearing of tropical rain forests to make way for more plantings.
•    Biofuel made from algae grown on sewage is the only one that makes sense to me

As we have plentiful natural gas in Australia it makes sense to use this as an interim and booster fuel source while we get real renewable energy developed.

Coal, oil and natural gas are true carbon sequestration and extracting this, then trying to find a new and safe way to sequester carbon does seem a tad insane.

Jean Cannon

Jean is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want greater efficiency and reduced stress!

If you sometimes need to deal with staff errors and what is even worse, covered up errors that come back to bite, you are riding a time bomb and Jean will help you defuse it. Plus get you real recognition from markets and regulators.

The good news is that this is now available as online training so you only need to commit to one hour per week and no travel. You can even Do-It-Yourself! .

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