Daily Archives: February 7, 2007

Andrew Dickson : Climate Messenger

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When Al Gore released his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” in Australia I, along with other green guys, arranged for a exclusive screening for our company employees. One goal was to increase people’s understanding of climate change. The response was amazing, some 200 people attended and the theatre was full!

Al Gore decided to take this forward with this Climate Project where he aimed to train 1000 people to spread the message on climate change. In Australia some 85 people were trained and 9 from South Australia. Andrew Dickson, Development Manager at Wind Prospect Australia.

Along with my boss we attended a presentation by him at Regency Park today. Using the same slides used by Al Gore in the movie he explained the causes of climate change to a 20 something lunch-time audience.

The main differences between this one and Gore’s was that one, it concentrated a little more on Australia and two, it talked a little on solutions. Gore’s original felt like a abrupt end to the problem and you come out with a feeling of ‘doom and gloom’. Despair makes people inactive. This presentation was different highlighting the need for some solutions.

I think the climate change debate has changed a lot in the past year. In the future these same people can evolve into talking about solutions rather than the problem and then we can see a more positive effect of these messengers.

At the end, people like Andrew need to thanked for taking the time to spread this important message. It would have been good if I had taken a photo of him; may be next time.

Interestingly, Al Gore wrote the Foreword to WorldChanging book for which I had the chance to contribute to writing on Micro-finance.

DUMP Awards

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Waste is a serious issue and excessive packaging of products is a major one. Packaging increases the space required to transport goods, is a waste by itself and is dumped theDUMP Logo minute the product is opened. Companies responsible for excessive packaging are not only creating waste but are losing an opportunity to increase efficiencies across the supply chain and increase their resource efficiency.

Apart from this it increases a great pressure on the public and government to cater to recycling.

To deal with this issue Environment Victoria started the DUMP Awards for the worst offenders in packaging.

Dump report author and Environment Victoria’s Zero Waste campaign director Jenny Henty said the companies were ignoring environmental guidelines.

“Manufacturers would be hard-pressed to come up with worse products for reuse, easy recycling or waste minimisation if they tried,” she said. “Australian consumers are trying to do the right thing at the supermarket, such as reusing green bags and embracing recycling, but are not being helped by excessive packaging, poor design and misleading recycling instructions.”

The award winners were:

  • Safeway and Coles supermarkets for “unnecessarily” packing fruit and vegetables (People’s Choice Award);
  • Smith’s Stax for packaging which displays three different and confusing disposal messages, including a graphic of rubbish bin with the instruction `feed me’ and elsewhere a `please recycle’ instruction (Misleading Labelling);
  • Seakist Lunch Kit for the pack that features seven different small packaging parts (Likely to be Littered);
  • Nescafe for its Short Black coffee jar, featuring smoky-coloured glass, which will be rejected for recycling, and a lid containing two different plastics (Going Backwards); and
  • Six beverage companies for covering plastic and glass bottles in printed plastic sleeves, which contaminate recycling. They are Tetley Australia, P & N Beverages Australia, Berri, L-Z Enterprises, National Foods, Parmalat Australia Ltd (Design for Recycling Award).

This is a great step forward to make people and companies aware of the need to creative effective packaging and designing for better recycling.

Western Australia’s Green Steps

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Western Australia has been the major benefactor of the resources boom of the past many years with the major mining and resource companies based in that state. This boom has resulted in better prospects for job seekers, increasing profits for corporations, increase in house prices and increase in emissions.

An energy taskforce has recommended a carbon price of $25 per tonne to the WA Government.

Wind PowerThe taskforce has argued that a carbon price will become a reality in Western Australia in the future.

The report says that if a market-based carbon price of $25 a tonne, carbon dioxide equivalent was in place, complemented by other policy measures, we could meet an energy efficiency target of 50 per cent, 1990 levels by 2050.

WA believes the pricing of emissions is inevitable.

WA has also set a target of 20% renewable energy by 2010. In the end the best way forward for Australia is a single national emissions trading scheme than multiple targets, schemes and taxes.

It is a big step for WA to go ahead with a carbon tax due to its resource heavy industry.