SustainabilityBlog.org

Global warming o Climate Change is our single biggest threat these days and still noone really seems to care about it that much. This article here is a great post on the need to stop debating and to start convincing people to solve it. This is the beginning of the Huffington Post article:

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Several years ago I invited John “Plasma Boy” Wayland onto my Sirius Satellite Radio show “The Lazy Environmentalist” to talk about eco-friendly cars. I had heard that he was having tremendous success drag racing an electric car called the White Zombie. John is quite animated and soon he was talking enthusiastically about blowing the doors off of gasoline-powered corvettes and mustangs in nothing but a modified 1972 Datsun running on battery-operated electric power. He described the thrill of creating eight hundred pounds of torque and roaring down the quarter-mile track in record time. He mentioned how much fun he had teasing his competitors about the fact that he’d just trounced them in a car running on American-made energy instead of imported oil. He described exactly the kinds of things millions of American men care about – fast speeds, raw power, and American self-reliance.

Read the complete article here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-dorfman/stop-arguing-about-global_b_489968.html

A german fishing boat flies giant kite to save fuel. How great is that? And this is a sign of how the marine future may look like? A really interesting article.

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The 15,000 tonne ‘Maartje Theadora’ is the first fishing vessel to use the system, in which a 160 square meter blue and white kite similar to a paraglider pulls the ship on a 300 meter rope, assisting its main engine.

“The challenge for us is to see how it works during trawling, because then the ship is not moving from A to B but it’s turning and moving around,” said Diederik Parlevliet, head of fishing firm Parlevliet & Van der Plas, operator of the ship.

It harks back to an earlier maritime age, when merchant ships — especially from the Netherlands — sailed the seas to Asia and the Americas. Modern steam power replaced sails, cutting travel times and making it more predictable.

Read the complete article here:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6281I720100309

This is an interesting opinion piece from Marketing Week about the recent announcement by Marks and Spencer (A UK retail business) about their decision to expand their Sustainability initiative called ‘Plan A’. I also agree with the authors conclusions that a lot of organizations are under-selling their sustainability work.

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Marks & Spencer’s impressive announcement regarding the expansion of the original Plan A – the 100 internal commitments the business is making by 2012 have been joined by an additional 80 targets to be hit before 2015 – was a fantastic PR coup for the business.

Indeed, by being able to shout out loud that M&S will be the world’s most sustainable retailer within five years, chairman Sir Stuart Rose will justifiably feel he successfully hijacked the negative headlines concerning his remuneration that were starting to re-emerge.

Following hot on the heels of public outrage over the salary package that will greet new M&S chief executive Marc Bolland when he starts his new job in May, investors had started to question whether they could afford Rose’s own £1.15m a year salary if they were paying the new man so handsomely.

Read the complete article here:

http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/opinion/sustainability-is-pr-power-behind-ms/3010664.article

Amongst the most ambitious commitments set out today by the high street retailer is to ensure that at least 50 per cent of M&S’ 2.7 billion products across 36,000 product lines carry at least one sustainable or ethical quality – such as Fairtrade or Marine Stewardship Council certification – by 2015, and that all M&S products meet this criteria by 2020.

Also unveiled today by the retailer, which sells clothing, food and homeware, is a goal to get all 2,000 of its suppliers to adopt Plan A best practice. This will include backing 200 sustainable factories and encouraging 10,000 farmers to join M&S’ sustainable agriculture programme.

Resd the complete article here:

http://www.greenwisebusiness.co.uk/news/mands-extends-plan-a-with-80-new-eco-commitments-1183.aspx

Now this is a frighting report for everyone living in the UK. Published today a report entitled Land Use Futures: Making the Most of Land in the 21st Century. This is the beginning of the article:

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Mass migration northwards to new towns in Scotland, Wales and northeast England may be needed to cope with climate change and water shortages in the South East, according to an apocalyptic vision set out by the Government Office for Science.

Heathrow would be converted into a giant reservoir by 2035, there could be severe restrictions on flying and driving and farmers would be forced to sell their land to giant agricultural businesses. Greenhouse gas emissions would be controlled by carbon rationing for individuals, which would lead to “significant shifts in lifestyle as everyone tries to stay within budget”.

The Government would ease pressure on the South East by planning to “disperse citizens to three new towns in Dumfries and Galloway, Northumberland and Powys”.

Read the complete article here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7041857.ece

If you are getting asked the same question about climate change and again and again: What about climate change? We have had the coldest weather imaginable this year. What can you possibly say other then: ‘ This is the weather and not the climate’. Here is another interesting article that will help you get more arguments that climate change is happening despite the current clod weather spells:

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The bitter cold, with more intense winter weather forecast for March in parts of the United States, have led some to question if global warming has stalled.

Understanding the overall trend is crucial for estimating consumption of energy supplies, such as demand for winter heating oil in the U.S. northeast, and impacts on agricultural production.

“It’s not warming the same everywhere but it is really quite challenging to find places that haven’t warmed in the past 50 years,” veteran Australian climate scientist Neville Nicholls told an online climate science media briefing.

Read the complete article here:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61O16A20100225

Eating outside of your home generally requires three things: food, food containers, and food utensils. For the majority of Americans, oil is involved in all three of these components. Food, especially processed food, requires tremendous amounts of oil to grow, process, and transport it. The plastic food containers we use are made from oil. Likewise, the great majority of our disposable forks, spoons, and knives are made from petroleum-based plastics.

The plastic forks and spoons we eat with are not recyclable, so what happens to all of these discarded utensils? They end up in our landfills, beaches, and oceans. Americans toss out enough plastic spoons, knives, and forks each year to circle the equator 300 times. Wanton wastefulness doesn’t stop with our flatware of course. According to the EPA, the United States produces approximately 220 million tons of garbage each year, the equivalent of burying more than 82,000 football fields six feet deep in compacted garbage. The National Recycling Coalition reports that, on average, every American throws away more than seven pounds of garbage a day.

The Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games have added another color to its coveted gold, silver and bronze medal lineup – green!  For the first time in Olympic history, the 2010 athlete medals contain metals from end-of-life electronic waste, commonly referred to as e-waste.

Teck Resources, Ltd., a diversified mining company based in Vancouver, is the exclusive supplier of the metals used in the Olympic medals.  Components from circuit boards originally destined to landfills, have been added to all of the athletes’ medals.  In fact, 6.8 metric tonnes of circuit board from end-of-life electronics were diverted from landfills for the making of the 1,014 medals.   The company is also an Official Supporter of the Games.

Read the complete article here:

http://www.globe-net.com/articles/2010/february/12/green-is-the-new-gold-for-2010.aspx?ref=rss

How much of this census will be propaganda and spin? Or is this a real effort by China to measure its pollution? I am not so sure. Decide for yourself. This is the beginning of the article :

China has revealed its most ambitious measure of what explosive development has done to its environment, saying Tuesday its first national pollution census has mapped nearly 6 million sources of industrial, residential and agricultural waste.

The world’s largest polluter also said its pollution levels might peak sooner than expected as China tries to balance economic and green concerns.

The central government now has a year to use the census results to shape its next five-year environmental protection plan. Ministries are also studying the possibility of an environmental tax, China’s vice minister of environmental protection, Zhang Lijun, told a news conference.

Read the complete article here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100209/ap_on_re_as/as_china_pollution_census

The European chemical industry is embracing innovation to ensure sustainability. Moreover, through innovation the industry is providing measures to facilitate a sustainable society.

The chemical sector plays a significant role in the European economy, contributing 30% of the world’s total chemical production, employing 1.2 million people and generating €537 billion in sales in 2007.

The EU registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemical substances (REACH) Regulation is at the centre of a shift towards more sustainable solutions. Aiming to protect human health and the environment, REACH makes companies responsible for registering information on the properties of their chemicals with the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA).

Read more (etap)

Found through CSR Europe