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.”

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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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This is currently in the news with the Prime Minister advocating growth and a new report out.
Almost inevitably two things will happen to our population.

• It will increase and the estimates are from 22.2 million now to 25.7 million in 2020 and to 35.9 million in 2050, according to a recent report.
• And secondly, it will age. From 13 per cent of us now aged 65 or older to nearly 23 per cent being so in 2050.  This will have interesting impacts on tax and retirement age won’t it?

And how does provision of infrastructure, water and energy come into this?

Should the large eastern cities continue to grow like topsy, controlled mainly by property developers without adding the infrastructure of should there be some regional centres where there is access to water and renewable energy, targeted to grow in a well planned way

There is an even bigger question, and that is world population which is still growing out of control.  It’s not just birth control but also social issues like high infant mortality and no social security meaning people want some surviving children to help them if they reach old age.  Definitely we live in a lucky country.

If you are interested in water you may like to meet me at EcoForum and join in an interactive Sustaining Water Workshop and also read more about one way to stop wasting so much power in my post about the smart grid.

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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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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.”

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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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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.

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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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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?”

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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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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

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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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Thinking outside the box in Victoria’s National Parks

I love this idea!  In Victoria, Australia, Some poultry farmers have been using Italian Maremmano-Abruzzese sheep dogs to care for free range poultry with no fencing..  The dogs have been used for centuries as livestock guardians to protect mainly sheep from wolves.

But now they are also looking after penguin and shearwater colonies on coastal islands and keeping them safe from foxes.  I watched this on the ABC’s Landline  Program.  There were some interesting approval issues with no dogs in national parks except these “nanny” dogs caring for the birds.

This reminds me of when my 3 children were young.  We lived on a small farm in far north Queensland.  When my youngest was born I got a Labrador puppy whose job was to be always with the children.  Even when the children were 10-12 year olds, no one outside of the family was ever able to touch my kids if the dog was there.  With absolutely no aggression she would wag her way between the kids and other people.  She barked, and called for help when they saw snakes, she herded them gently away from the creek and waterfall on our property, barking loudly if she needed me to backup her up.  She certainly appointed herself “nanny” to my kids and did a really good job. 

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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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This week I am attending the Environmental Management System Association conference in Bunbury WA. And in Friday I am running a workshop getting people in Module 1 of an ISO 14001 environmental management system. There is still room if you live near Bunbury or know anyone who does and there is an over $600 discount for workshop attendees. The full workshop cost is only $220! And it includes 3 follow up teleconferences. And I am really looking forward to working live instead of online.

Here is a workshop link for those who want to attend. You can attend the entire conference or simply come to my workshop. I would love to see you. One of the topics I am speaking about at the conference is whether carbon is really a subset of an environmental management system. It is interesting because the environment seems to have been largely hijacked by carbon and carbon trading.

Carbon trading is a really useful tool to act as an incentive for businesses to change, introduce good energy management and reduce their carbon footprint but buying carbon offsets needs to be a last resort after reducing as much as you can which we do as part of ISO 14001.

The other talk I am giving is about the rewards your business can get for doing an environmental management system and researching this topic and reviewing my clients showed very clearly the very real benefits you will get with a ISO 14001 environment al management system.

You benefit in three ways:

1. You save money on the low hanging fruit of good energy management, reduction of waste and even on insurance costs

2. You save more money by increasing your efficiency when I help you implement straightforward procedures and training

3. And you make money when you access more markets and attract more clients by having the green certification ISO 14001.

You can do this by joining the next group  ISO 14001 course, by becoming one of my premium consultancy clients or by choosing the ISO 14001 Do-It-Yourself home study course.

Green business is good business

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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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Ben Elton and his Perth wife Sophie Gare are moving permanently from London to Freemantle.
He bought a beautiful old house and had had it renovated including adding solar panels which caused a problem because the building was listed on its municipal heritage register.

He was ordered to remove them within 28 days or face a $50,000 fine But fortunately sense ahs prevailed and the panels can stay but need to be reviewed in 25 years “in order to encompass future technological advances” when  the property owner will have to apply to council for an extension of the permission or take them down.

The same Council allowed a roof-top solar farm on the Fremantle Leisure Centre which will produce 29.4kW of electricity that will power the entire building, with excess going into the grid.

The difference being that the leisure centre was not heritage listed

It all sounds bizarre to me.

I currently live in a building where solar panels and also rainwater collection is not permitted and there are huge restriction on use of blinds and awnings.  I am making plans to move in the foreseeable future because I find this ridiculous and out of integrity with how I want to live..  There will need to be a time when this type of very restrictive “planning approval” has to be reversed because we can’t afford to run airconditioners 24/7 because people won’t allow sensible shading.

Planning needs to take account of sensible energy manageemnt and solar panels need to become more acceptable even for heritage listed buildings.

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.

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Africa contributes very little to the pollution blamed for global warming but it is seriously affected droughts, floods and rising sea levels and the African Union is asking the international climate change talks in Copenhagen for compensation of $67 billion.  They also want a 40 per cent cut in emissions by rich nations by 2020

They are correct that climate change has not been caused by the continent of Africa, but rather by the big polluters in the developed world.  One of the big problems with climate change is maintaining enough food and water and around 300 million people in sub -Saharan Africa are chronically hungry.  And that is likely to increase.

One of the other tragedies is that Africa is selling its agricultural land to Asian countries to establish food production systems for their own countries.  It is so sad that countries that can’t even produce enough food for themselves are selling up their best land to countries like China, India, South Korea and some of the Gulf States so that African food is exported while its own people starve.

I simply do not understand people in the polluting countries, Australian USA and Canada who say our “little bit’ does not matter and we should not do anything until the rest of the world does.

The crazy thing is that every small business can make a difference.  We are now in a carbon constrained world and you can choose whether you want to see an opportunity and make money by having a green business or whether you want to pay more to live and to run your business.

You can choose to have a green business with the only international environmental certification ISO 14001 to attract more clients, be more efficient and build in good energy management and environmental sustainability.

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.

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