Two things happened to me yesterday that made me think about this:

1. someone asked me if they thought the environmental sector would be hit by the so-called 'credit crunch' and associated economic downturn.

2. I filled up my diesel car's tank with fuel for the first time in two months and nearly passed on on the forecourt when I saw the cost.

It is fairly obvious that a good response to an economic downturn is to cut costs. If you have a 25% profit margin, then every £1 you save in your operations is worth £4 of sales.

The biggest cost in most businesses is staff. But if you cut staff you have to pay redundancies, you lose the investment you have made in training and development, and you hit the morale of those you retain. Plus, when things improve, you will have to rush around recruiting and training new staff which is both an additional cost and a delay which could cost you market share.

On the other hand, there are only ever benefits from reducing waste, energy costs, water costs, transport costs, raw material costs etc, etc. So if things are getting tight, why not divert some of that 'redundant' staff time into identifying and eradicating environmental costs? If you do it right, they should more than pay for themselves - and you will continue to see the benefits when sales pick up with the increased margin.

Labels: energy, raw materials, staff engagement, transport, waste

ENDS is reporting that the Department for Transport has set up a watchdog, the Renewable Fuels Agency, to help ensure that biofuels used in the UK come from sustainable sources. This is timely with the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO) coming into force in April 2009, which will require 5% of all vehicle fuels sold in the UK to be biofuels.

Biodiesel seemed to go from eco-saviour to eco-demon in record time. Originally held up as a carbon neutral solution to transport emissions, the pressure that growing the crops will have on food prices or pristine habitats. Uber green George Monbiot is particularly critical of the industry and his comments are worth reading.

Paul Mobbs, in his rigorous analysis of the global energy situation, calculates there simply isn't enough land area in the UK to convert to 100% biodiesel. However, Peter Kendall, president of the UK's National Farmers' Union (NFU), says that there is enough agricultural land to deliver the 5% biofuel target without reducing food production. So maybe the new agency could ensure that the 5% target can be met in an environmentally sustainable way.

Of course, as everyone agrees, making biodiesel out of old cooking oil is AOK. I've never seen an analysis of how much fuel could be produced from this source, but if you can get it, take it!

Labels: biodiesel, biofuel, george monbiot, mobbs, rtfo, transport

Internet shopping looks like another area where the "is it or isn't it good for the environment" debate will rage ad infinitum (cf carbon offsetting, biofuels).

In his book Heat, uber-green George Monbiot holds up internet shopping as a potential climate saviour, calculating from DTI data that every delivery van will take three private cars off the roads. But the Times reckons this might not be happening in practice, with the increase in emissions from vans exceeding the reduction in emissions from cars.

The answer to this difference in opinion may come from internet marketing expert Graham Jones who was told unofficially that a whopping 80% of home deliveries fail. This leads to a constant flow of delivery vans trying to catch customers in, failing and taking the parcel back to the depot, taking it out again etc. I'm sure you have plenty anecdotal evidence of your own for this, so I won't bore you with my own tales of frustration.

Fundamentally, the problem is that the design of the service fails to meet the needs of the customer. Ideally we would all have large secure boxes to receive goods (actually I have, it's the house of the lady across the road), or, even better, we could stipulate exactly when we wanted the delivery to arrive. Is that really too difficult to organise when any backstreet garage can get same day delivery on car parts? If the so-called 'home delivery specialists' could crack this, then internet shopping could slash emissions from shopping trips.

Of course, this debate focusses only on the purchase of tangible goods. The big environmental benefit of internet shopping is the opportunity to buy products that never take a physical form - eBooks, MP3s, ringtones, movies on demand etc. While these require energy, it is almost guaranteed to be a fraction of that needed to manufacture and distribute the physical equivalent.

Labels: george monbiot, internet shopping, service design, transport

It was announced yesterday that IKEA are giving away 9600 energy efficient lightbulbs to their UK staff to encourage them to reduce their ecological footprints. This isn't the first big staff giveaway from the Swedish interiors giant - they gave everyone a folding bike at Christmas to encourage them to cycle to work. 90 promptly appeared on ebay, leading to some snorts of derision, but a 1% unappreciative workforce isn't bad by anyone's standards.

IKEA first started down the environmental track in the 1980s. Their emergence as a lead retailer in Europe led to tall poppy syndrome as they started to get criticised for formaldehyde in their chipboard products, excessive packaging and use of PVC. Having initially flirted with an "eco-range", they decided it would be better to reduce the environmental impact of all their products. Adopting the "Natural Step"*, they started phasing out toxic materials, reducing formaldehyde and sourcing wood from certified sustainable sources. Their latest environment report is worth a glance as it is very honest about what they still have to achieve. This is obviously an effective approach as while researching this post I could only find positive comments, apart from anti-consumer/anti-globalisation groups complaining about the amount of product they sell.


* Terra Infirma doesn't recommend The Natural Step in general. The theory is sound, but in our opinion the methodology is over-complicated and difficult to communicate.

Labels: commuting, eco-design, ikea, lightbulbs, the natural step, transport