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News & Views From the Front Line
Monday, 9 November 2009
Free waste consultancy for North East SMEs
If you're a small to medium sized business (<250 employees, not more than 25% owned by a bigger company) based in the North East of England and you'd like a couple of days free waste consultancy, then drop me a line in the next couple of weeks. There's a couple of forms to fill in, but that's all.Labels: environmental consultancy, terra infirma, waste
# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:27
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Wednesday, 25 March 2009
EEF Report Shows Manufacturing Still Not Proactive on the Environment
Interesting report on the manufacturing sector published by EEF and Envirowise last summer, but being publicised now. Some notable conclusions:- 90% of respondents were doing something to improve their environmental performance;
- waste and energy are the key issues;
- key drivers are legislation and EMS requirements, rather than competitive advantage;
- preferred method of waste reduction is recycling (80% of respondents) rather than minimisation (18% of respondents);
- 70% of respondents felt Government should provide them more funds to tackle these problems.
Despite the fact that 90% of respondents were acting, the rest of this is rather disappointing. The respondents saw the green agenda as one to react to rather than get proactive on. The lack of interest in minimising waste reflects a lack of awareness of cost saving opportunities, and the expectation that this is the taxpayer's problem to sort out shows a lack of ownership.
The proactive business should acknowledge their environmental impacts and tackle them head-on to improve competitive advantage through reduced costs, better PR and happier staff (see 10 Reasons... for more on this). Looks like we still have a long way to go before a proactive attitude is prevalent.
Labels: eef, energy, envirowise, recycling, waste
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:00
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Wednesday, 7 January 2009
Waste or food?
Over the holidays I've been reading David Archer's excellent book Tyne and Tide: A Celebration of the River Tyne
about the legendary river which flows about a mile south of where I'm sitting.However the following statement on river pollution made me stop and think:
"The generation of waste products is an attribute of all living creatures, and human beings are no exception. Most of the products decompose naturally in the environment and do not cause detriment to other organisms sharing their living space."
This encapsulates our short-sighted attitude to 'waste'. Contrary to popular opinion, organic wastes do not decompose in the environment, rather they are eaten. Horse manure is manna from heaven if you are a dung fly or one of many species of fungi or bacteria. That is their food source just as a shiny apple on a tree is food for humans. We're not immune from eating 'waste' products either, there are over 700 species of bacteria in our gut which metabolise various food elements, including some essential vitamins. Metabolise = eat and excrete! So rather than natural 'waste' materials not causing "detriment to other organisms", they are actually nourishing many of those organisms and form part of a continual cycle of nutrients.
So why am I being this pedantic so early in the New Year? Well we've got to start thinking about the materials in our economy in the same way. McDonogh and Braungart call these 'technical nutrients' to draw a comparison with 'biological nutrients'. If we start to think of a continual cycle of materials in the economy, and design materials and processes so the by-products of one process are always nourishing other processes in the system, then we are a long way towards sustainability.
Sound fanciful? Then check out the industrial symbiosis at Kalundborg.
Labels: biomimicry, industrial symbiosis, waste
# posted by Gareth Kane : 13:13
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Wednesday, 10 December 2008
Five stupid questions I get asked about environmental consultancy
1. Why would a hard pressed business be bothered with the environment?I reviewed 26 environmental health checks I carried out over the last two years for companies whose activities range from catering to pharmaceuticals. The average financial saving identified from waste minimisation, water conservation and energy efficiency measures was £175 000 per annum. Next question.
2. Would your clients reduce waste if it didn't save them money?
Frankly, I don't care. My job is to improve my clients' business performance by addressing their waste, energy, raw material and water issues either for direct economic/legislative benefit or to improve their environmental reputation. I don't expect them to start hugging trees or wearing sandals.
3. Are you not rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?
My priority as a consultant is to meet my clients' needs rather than save the planet, but from an environmental point of view, in my career I have diverted at least a half million tonnes of waste from landfill into further economic use. Energy/carbon-saving benefits have been delivered on a similar scale. And there are thousands of other environmental consultants out there…
4. Is this not just a fad?
No. Environmental legislation has been tightening since the Clean Air Acts of the 1950s. They said it was a fad in the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s and this decade too. It ain't going away.
5. Should you really be profiting from the environment?
Why not? I'd rather make profit from preventing damage to the environment than causing it.
Labels: energy, environmental consultancy, rant, waste
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:30
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Wednesday, 19 November 2008
The Green Business Bible
It is here!At long last I have managed to distil 11 years of experience into 212 virtual pages of the Green Business Bible eBook. The eBook gives a strategic approach to greening a business and is packed with over 200 hints and tips to help you on your way.
It is available for download for £17.99 + VAT from the Green Business Bible website, but please note that if you subscribe to the Low Carbon Agenda, you'll get 25% off.
Labels: energy, environmental management, green business bible, waste
# posted by Gareth Kane : 12:37
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Wednesday, 24 September 2008
10 Questions For Any Business
1. How much does your waste cost?2. No, how much does it really cost?
3. How much have your waste costs risen in the last year?
4. How much have your energy bills risen in the last year?
5. How much have your water costs risen in the last year?
6. How much does compliance with legislation cost you?
7. How much product do you have to sell just to cover your waste, energy, water and compliance costs?
8. Would you prefer to turn those costs into profit?
9. Do you have a plan to make this transformation?
10. Are your staff on board?
And a bonus one,
11. Have you heard of Lean, Mean & Green?
Labels: energy, environmental consultants, lean mean and green, waste, water
# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:26
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Wednesday, 10 September 2008
10 Reasons Why You MUST Improve the Environmental Performance of Your Business
(As promised, the second of our white papers is on line for free download. 10 Reasons Why You MUST Improve the Environmental Performance of Your Business does what it says on the tin - it explains why there is no better time to take action on waste, energy and water in your company.
Labels: energy, environmental management, terra infirma, waste, water
# posted by Gareth Kane : 08:00
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Monday, 2 June 2008
Weekly Tip #16: My favourite slogan
This is the sixteenth in a series of tips extracted from the forthcoming Green Business Bible e-book:Treat the word ‘waste’ as a verb, never a noun!
Material, water and energy is wasted, not 'waste'.
But be careful as, to the Environment Agency and the judiciary, waste is waste is waste.
Another tip next Monday!
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:00
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Thursday, 15 May 2008
Why environmental performance matters more, not less, in an economic downturn
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
# posted by Gareth Kane : 05:18
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Wednesday, 16 April 2008
Don't be blinded by recycling!
Once again recently I was proudly told by a factory manager "We don't have a waste problem - we recycle 95% of it - isn't that fantastic?". Recycling is great, but your fantastic achievement may be hiding waste reduction opportunities.Taking a manufacturing business as an example, there are three types of waste:
1. Unavoidable process waste - waste that is intrinsic to your business. If you produce, say, chocolate flavouring from cocoa beans, then you will have cocoa residues left over no matter what. This should be recycled where possible and, if you are really clever, you can adjust your process to maximise its value for recycling/reuse.
2. Avoidable process waste - for example, offcuts, packaging of materials/components, solvents etc. Here you have a choice - eradication, recycling or normal disposal. Soaring landfill taxes are starting to rule out the latter for all but 'difficult materials', so you effectively have a choice of whether to reduce or recycle - that largely comes down to practicalities and economics.
3. Off-spec product (or components) - this is the worst kind of waste as you have added value to it only to throw it away. This waste should be terminated with extreme prejudice - particularly towards the end of your process where the value lost is the highest - I've seen far too many horror shows of good product being sprayed across factory floors by packing machines or careless forklift drivers.
I once heard waste described as "stuff you buy that you can't sell" - a brilliant summation of the economic driver to reduce waste.
Labels: recycling, waste, waste minimisation
# posted by Gareth Kane : 08:34
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Monday, 15 October 2007
A Trillion Pages of Waste A Day
Despite having spent ten years working in the environment and sustainability field, the sheer volume of our consumption of natural resources still has the capacity to leave me speechless. And it happened again yesterday as I read the Sundays. The Observer had a piece on the world's consumption of printer paper - 2.5 and 2.8 trillion worldwide of which 45% is binned within the day - a cool trillion pages of unwanted e-mails, cover sheets, drafts, accidental prints etc. Of course the economic cost of this is not just disposal, but the whole cost of ordering, purchase cost, storage, distribution, loading the printer, maintaining the printer (more printing = more wear & tear), emptying the bins and then finally disposal.Some solutions to this are easy - use 2-sided (duplex) printing, don't print cover sheets (you should really know what paper is yours) and don't print e-mails unless there is a commercial/legal imperative etc. I also find, provided your eyesight is OK, drafts and some large documents can be printed 2 pages to each side of A4 - so you get 4 'pages' to one piece of paper. The main difficulty I have is I still like to scribble over draft reports with a red pen, so I now try to restrict myself to printing a draft every other time I get the urge to!
In the wider organisation, information, directories etc can be stored on an intranet, inessential handouts can be banned from meetings and individual departments can be given paper/printing cost reduction targets.
Unfortunately, despite this, we seem further from the 'paperless office' than where we were 32 years ago when the term was coined.
Labels: paper, printing, waste, waste minimisation
# posted by Gareth Kane : 10:23
1 Comments
Friday, 31 August 2007
So just what is waste?
The home page on the Terra Infirma website proclaims "waste is a verb, not a noun". This was a little catchphrase I dreamt up while facilitating Industrial Symbiosis brainstorming sessions. My intention was to get across the idea that most waste has an intrinsic value, but that we choose to waste it.Unfortunately, out in the real world where environmental legislation applies, this is not the case. Legally, 'waste' is anything a company 'discards or intends to discard'. Once it is designated 'waste', it will not stop being waste until it becomes part of a new product (but not an intermediate). This means that if you make plastic products and you want to buy some clean, pelletised recycled plastic to use as a raw material, you will need a waste management licence.
Even the builders of the 'Brighton Earthship' building, made out of scrap tyres rammed with earth, had to get special permission from the Environment Agency, otherwise the building would be an illegal landfill...
The huge barrier that this puts in the way of recycling has been recognised. The Waste Protocols Project (WPP), run jointly by the Environment Agency and the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), is developing standards for recovered product. If material meets the standard then it will no longer be waste and can be traded without further restriction.
In my opinion this process needs urgent accelerating if we are genuine about treating waste as a resource.
5pm Update: I've just heard via edie that Blast Furnace Slag (BFS) will no longer will classed as a waste but a by product. Three million tonnes of this material is produced annually in the UK and it can be used in all sorts of construction products. Very good news indeed.
Labels: industrial symbiosis, recycling, waste
# posted by Gareth Kane : 08:37
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Sunday, 10 June 2007
London 2012 - The Greenest Games Ever?
With all the furore over that logo, attention has been distracted from the business opportunities relating to the delivery of the 2012 Olympic Games. Well, if the Olympic Delivery Authority’s sustainable development commitments are anything to go by then it certainly will be a green games:- Aiming to minimise the carbon emissions associated with the venues through a 50% reduction in carbon dioxide by 2013.
- 90% of demolition material to be reused or recycled and at least 20% of materials used to be recycled.
- 40% reduction in the demand for potable water in permanent venues and a 20% reduction target for residential development.
- Aspiring to transport 50% of construction materials, to the Park by water and rail.
- Protecting and enhancing the biodiversity and ecology of the venue locations.
- Maximising timber from sustainable sources with all timber used from known, legal sources, with clear supply chain evidence.
This sets a challenge for everyone looking for a slice of the action. And with £4bn of contracts going, these games will be the biggest single public procurement exercise in the world, ever.
In the bidding documentation, "the Environment" is listed as one of the five key criteria against which bids will be assessed, with particular reference to waste minimisation and energy use - and the criteria above will be expected to be read across into contracts as appropriate. Anybody wanting to bid will certainly need to get their environmental credentials in order.
Labels: climate change, design, energy, green procurement, olympics, waste
# posted by Gareth Kane : 15:52
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A highly accessible, practical guide to those who want to introduce sustainability into their business or organization quickly and effectively.
