SustainabilityBlog.org » Posts from SustainabilityForum members

Introducing SustainabilityForum.com Blogs

Fabian — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:28:13 +0000

I wanted to let you know that there will not be regular posts from this blog in the next few months. I will from now on focus on my major website SustainabilityForum.com.

If you are interested in interesting blogs about Sustainability then you will find everything you need on the SustainabilityForum.com blog section here:

http://www.SustainabilityForum.com/Blog

Or visit my personal and professional blog where I blog about Sustainability, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Social Media here:

http://www.FabianPattberg.com/

See you there.

Regards,

Fabian Pattberg, Editor of SustainabilityBlog.org

India – The eWaste problem

Fabian — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 07:58:42 +0000

The global information and communications technology (ICT) industry accounts for approximately 2 percent of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, a figure equivalent to aviation, (Gartner, Inc). In addition the use and throw nature of most gadgets, pcs and other technology products is leading to the generation of mountains of e-waste in the developing world.

Technological change, led in many ways by Moore’s law(1) has led to a use and throw culture where the latest is always better and the older product necessarily discarded. The electronics industry thrives on obsolescence. Computers, cell phones, and other gadgets go out of date quickly, sometimes within months of release. E-Waste is big and getting bigger everyday. While many companies have signed up to the Basle convention and many are now partnering with the UN Step Initiative, most Recycling initiatives are more Greenwash than actual reality.

The challenges faced by developing countries such as India are enormous. India is the software factory of the world and is the growth engine for hardware providers such as Apple, HP and Dell. Total PC shipments to India during 2007-08 (April-March) were beyond the 8.25 million mark, recording a year on year growth of 22.3 per cent (Source: Mait India). The booming PC market is also leading to a boom in the the total e-waste generation of 330,000 tonnes per year as per
the study conducted by IMRB, Mait & GTZ. In addition India is also receiving large amounts of e-waste through trade and illegal imports.

The Hazardous Waste Rules of 1989 prohibit the import of e-waste without prior permission from the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF), import of such wastes is allowed for processing and reuse of raw materials upon merit from the state pollution control boards. The import of second hand computers less than 10 years old and donations of computers to non- profit organisations are also permitted.
Of the total e-waste, a study found, only about 43.2% finds its way into recycling. An additional 50,000 tonnes is estimated to be illegally imported. Most of this is refurbished and resold, leaving about 19,000 tonnes, representing 5.7% of the total waste, which is processed in the country. (Source: IMRB, Mait & GTZ.)

Does the solution lie in Recycling, Consumer awareness or Redesign?

While all the above need to necessarily be done for a long term solution, India needs an immediate way of coping with e-waste as well as a long term strategy to ensure that we are no longer playing catch
up with a massive inflow of waste. The strategy also needs to take into account that India does not manufacture most IT products, instead we import most of our hardware requirements. The strategy for India
also needs to look at a multi-dimensional view of the socio – economic environment, regulatory challenges and the need for balanced growth.

India could focus on a 3 step strategic framework to solve this problem :

Step 1 Develop a business model that focuses on social good and economic value to resolve the e-waste problem

a – Develop a central repository of all IT technology products available for reuse and recycling.
b – Train people to collect, refurbish and recycle products.
c – Provide products to the needy. These products can be used to put more power and responsibility in the hands of the local communities
through
d-services for government interactions Computer-enabled education for children Programs to upgrade skill sets Help in village planning and monitoring Microcredit facilities
e – Telemedicine

Step 2 Making it mandatory for IT hardware and Software firms to
Recycle e-waste would ensure that we strike at the root of the
problem.

Step 3 Undertaking a mass awareness campaign to ensure behavior change of home users.

While many industry bodies are aware of the problem and several forums have been launched, slow implementation is a serious cause for concern.

This is a guest post by Namrata Rana. She can be found on Twitter at http://twitter.com/futurechat or on the SustainabilityForum.com

Technology transforms lives

Fabian — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:48:03 +0000

By Amy Fetzer

Today is Get Online Day 2008, yesterday was the 10th anniversary of StartHere. Both of these organisations work to help those in need by getting them digitally included. But why is this important? Technology doesn’t sound like something that helps a business be socially responsible, but if used correctly, it can be a tremendous force for good.

‘Technology transforms people’s lives,’ explains Helen Milner from UK Online Centres (www.ukonlinecentres.com). ‘People think that digital inclusion is nice because it helps people to learn how to use Facebook, but while that’s a benefit, it’s not the reason why it’s important. Digital inclusion is a tool – it’s a solution to solving people’s problems.’

One in three adults in the UK don’t use computers. That means a total of 17 million people in the UK don’t use the internet. This is crucial because in an increasingly digital age, access to many services is geared around getting online.

Studies have shown that being digitally excluded is strongly linked to being socially excluded. This means that the neediest people – the elderly, the poor, the disabled, the homeless – are struggling to access the services that could help them.

Vanessa is good example of this. Homeless and desperate, she was living in a car with man who was not her partner and three dogs. Desperate to improve her situation, she’d contacted social services for assistance, but was told that because she had been living abroad, she wasn’t entitled to any money. At her wits end, she walked into a homeless centre in Chester. As luck would have it, the centre was running a pilot scheme that put new residents onto a computer the first night that they came in. Vanessa was shown how to access services and information online and it wasn’t long before she found a home and a job. The pilot showed that putting people on computers had a 100% success rate of getting them off the street.

Digital inclusion can also help elderly people feel less isolated as they learn to communicate with their families online, while being able to use the internet can help poor students keep up by giving them access to the wealth of online information available to their peers. Better access to services is also key because as Vanessa showed, being able to quickly rectify an immediate problem like finding accommodation for an elderly relative or accessing healthcare can leave you free to become an active member of society and to find a job or otherwise develop your social capital.

Companies such as BT have recognised that working to reduce digital exclusion fits in not only with their CSR policy but also with their business development. This is because the more you improve social capital and help people become active members of society, the more people there are who are digitally included and the more people there are to buy BT’s digital products.

This is why BT have been a long time supporter of StartHere (www.starthere.org) and why they see investing in a company that builds on social capital as matching their CSR aims as well as the bottom line. Billed as ‘the place to turn to when you don’t know where to turn’, StartHere provides a vital bridge to link these people to the organisations that can help them. It acts as a single starting point which allows users to access information on a wide range of social issues from bereavement and childcare to healthcare and housing.

It does this by providing a simple signposting service, typically a website or information kiosk in a community setting such as a healthcare centre, job centre or library, which brings together up-to-date service information in one place but in a format that doesn’t frighten people who have never used a computer before.

It’s a sort of village agony aunt for the digital age which can tell you who can help you, no matter what your problem. The service is unusual as it brings together government and voluntary organisations in one place while providing reassurance that the organisations listed are bonafide, a reassurance you can’t get from a search engine such as Google.

It also trumps the search engines because in stressful situations, people have seriously reduced processing power. They can’t work out what kinds of organisations they should be searching for, or how to sift through the results from a web search when they get them. StartHere takes the user’s hand to guide them through the process so that whether their problem is bullying or bereavement, they find the local or national service that can help them.

Getting people access to the StartHere service is still a problem. Despite widespread recognition from Government on the benefit of the service, the fact it covers so many areas from housing to health means it fall between the many stools of Government departments. This means each department is reluctant to spend money on a product that serves other areas, or to make an investment in a service when another department will reap the financial benefit.

This is why corporate partners such as BT have been so important in the development of digital inclusion services such as StartHere. Hopefully the success of Get Online Day and the StartHere initiative will help Governments to look at more unified ways to support these vital services. With any luck, these awareness raising events will also help more corporates recognise the business benefits of supporting social enterprises which focus on digital exclusion.

Amy Fetzer is a freelance journalist and environmental writer specialising in CSR and sustainability issues. She can be contacted on amy.fetzer@amyfetzer.com. She is also is a member of “The Sustainability Writers Network” (TSWN). For more information please visit the TSWN discussion thread on SustainabilityForum.com.

New jobs posted on the Sustainability Forum last week – 17.03.2008

Fabian — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 07:36:16 +0000

Welcome to our weekly Job & Internship update of the jobs posted on SustainabilityForum.com.

Here are some of our newly added jobs and internships from this week:

1) UK: CSR Manager at Wilkinsons
2) UK: Senior Sustainability Consultant
3) UK: CSR Project Coordinator
4) US: Social Compliance Auditor (Los Angeles, CA )
5) Canada: Chief Executive Officer for Ten Thousand Villages

Please visit the Sustainability Forum for the complete list of current job and internships offers.
If you looking for a job why don’t you post your CV or what you are looking for in our Job Help and CV forum.

All the best.

Fabian

Weekly updates on new jobs in the sustainability field

Fabian — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 10:37:12 +0000

Dear SustainabilityBlog.org readers,

From now on SustainabilityBlog. org will also have a section with updates on selected latest jobs in the Sustainability field. This will be done in cooperation with SustainabilityForum.com.

Here are five top jobs of our newly added jobs and internships added on the SustainabilityForum this week:

1) Sustainable Development Officer, Nottingham City Council, UK

2) Corporate Responsibility Manager – Assurance, London, UK

3) CSR Manager (Mexico City, Mexico)

4) Environmental Manager, The guardian newspaper, London, UK

5) Sustainability Marketing Research Consultant, Philadelphia, United States

Please visit http://www.sustainabilityforum.com/forum/job-offers-internships/ for the complete list of current job and internships offers.

Kind Regards,

Fabian

Unsustainable practices part 2

Patrick — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 06:08:10 +0000

From Patrick, member of SustainabilityForum.com:

Due to the large number of responses to my first article I have decided to write a follow-up.

First, many people seem to have missed the link to my blog, Sustainable City, which is intended to be an outline for a city which would provide the solution to many of the problems that have been discussed. Here is the link: http://sustainablecity.blogspot.com. This information is not intended to be political or contain any sort of political bias. It is purely the result of a scientific assessment of modern cities and how they might be made more efficient. Please keep that in mind as you read.

If you plot economic growth, consumption of consumer goods, and consumption of natural capital (resources), you would find a positive correlation between all three; they would tend to rise together and fall together. This is where thermodynamics comes into play. If we have limited natural capital, it follows that growth based upon that capital must also be limited. No amount of efficiency through better technology can overcome this. You can get more and more work done with the same amount of energy through the application of better technology, but you will never be able to get an infinite amount of work done with any amount of energy. Thus, those that believe in an economy based upon indefinite growth essentially believe that a perpetual motion machine is possible.

The charges of communism miss the point entirely. No one is forcing anybody to do anything. When the cost of gasoline rises to a certain point, you just won’t be able to afford your house or your car anymore, and still buy the groceries. At that point the apartment and mass transit start to look like pretty good ideas, and continued urban sprawl starts to look like a horrible idea (if it doesn’t already). Remember that as the cost of fuel rises, so too does the cost of virtually everything else we buy.

The house and the car (sprawl) is a paradigm that has existed for a mere 50-70 years tops. It was brought about by the availability of cheap energy in the form of oil. Before the invention of the automobile and the widespread availability of cheap oil, cities followed a very different pattern similar to what I have described in my blog. Since the primary means of transportation was walking, the public places and places of commerce were built within walking distance of people’s houses. The population was of a sufficient density to support all the services required by the community, therefore dwellings tended to be of a size that allowed for this density. There were still houses out in the country of course, but these were several miles (and a very time-consuming commute by horse) to even basic goods and services. Over the past 50 years, cities have been able to continue to expand horizontally as the range of travel for the individual was greatly increased by the automobile and cheap oil, making that long commute take much less time and therefore making it more tolerable.

As the cost of oil continues to rise, the exact opposite of what has occurred over the past 50 years will happen: Suburbs and distant communities will become abandoned as people relocate to city centers, and city centers will become denser and taller to accommodate more people. The land now occupied by suburbs will become farms again, providing the city’s food supply. The reason for this is that as the oil supplies are depleted the supply lines will necessarily become shorter, in addition to people being unable to pay the bills. The only way to achieve greater efficiency in this area is by greater centralization of the city itself, which requires that the city become denser and taller (vertical). It is unarguable that someone living in an apartment and using mass transit consumes less energy than someone living in a house and driving a car. Again, no one is suggesting forcing anyone to give these things up. However, some people may be forced to alter their lifestyle as the cost of oil continues to rise (and it will continue to rise).

To say that the cost of maintaining goods and services in a place like Manhattan is higher than in the suburbs is incorrect. Imagine the cost of providing and maintaining goods and services to the population of Manhattan if they were spread out at the average suburban density. The cost of doing this would be astronomical. As more and more people become unable to afford the suburban lifestyle, they will be attracted to the possibility of living in a community where all of their needs can be easily accessed by a 5-10 minute walk, and where reliable mass transit is available to take them to work or other locations. In addition, such a community could have spacious parks and recreation areas since less space would be required for houses and automobiles. Many people are already attracted to such a community without the incentive of high fuel prices due to the conveniences that can be provided. Houses in a New Urbanist community with the features I have described typically have a higher value per square foot than houses located in the same area in a typical suburban community. This shows that people are willing to pay extra for the option of being able to walk to some basic services, and to have the option of taking transit.

All of the schemes for running our cars on alternative oils produce an EROEI (Energy Returned on Energy Invested) far less than oil. In other words, you would pay much more to travel the same amount of miles you do now. One recent article in Popular Mechanics concluded that filling your car up with hydrogen would be the equivalent of $10/gallon gasoline, and that is with an investment of over $20 trillion dollars in solar panels and other infrastructure. Ethanol in some cases produces less energy than what it takes to make it, and will not scale due to the amount of land that is required.

As continued horizontal expansion (sprawl) is the product of cheap gas, it follows that the opposite (vertical expansion) would be the product of expensive gas. Even if we switch our cars to alternate fuels (which I am in favor of), the cities will expand vertically to accommodate those who can no longer afford the suburbs, and there will be some abandonment of the suburbs by those who will no longer be able to afford the higher fuel prices (which would also translate into higher prices for everything else). Indeed, many Americans already find themselves in the situation of only being able to afford the house and the car by acquiring ever greater amounts of personal debt, which is itself an unsustainable situation. Throw in high gas prices and the likelihood of a carbon tax, and it becomes obvious that the paradigm of the house and car is no longer sustainable. A completely new paradigm is required.

http://sustainablecity.blogspot.com

Some Unsustainable Practices

Patrick — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 15:53:22 +0000

This is an article from Patrick. He is running a blog called Sustainable City. He is a member of our forum SustainabilityForum.com. All members of this forum are able to post blog entries in this blog in order to promote sustainability.

This is the first article Patrick has submitted to SustainabilityBlog.org

Enjoy the article.

——————————–

There has been a lot of talk recently about sustainability. How might sustainability be applied to our daily lives, and how could it be relevant to urban design?

First of all, sustainability is not optional. It’s not something we choose to do or not do. A behavior or practice is either sustainable or it isn’t. If it isn’t sustainable, than that behavior or practice ceases at some point whether or not we make a conscious choice to do so. So when it comes to sustainability, one shouldn’t think about it terms of individual choice or freedom. One is free to do whatever one wants within the limits set by reality. For example, I can jump as high as I want to, which happens to be just a little over two feet. The natural limits of reality prevent me from jumping any higher than that, unassisted. Sustainability should be viewed in the same way.

Unsustainable practices:
1. A daily commute of several miles by private automobile is not sustainable. All of the fuel required to keep those cars moving is not going to be replaced with sustainable fuels for the simple reason that we cannot produce enough fuel from sustainable sources to maintain indefinitely the present scale of our automobile use/dependency. You can forget about ethanol, hydrogen, solar, wind, etc. right now. They will only supply a tiny fraction of the energy that we currently consume. I am not saying we shouldn’t use them; I believe they should be exploited to their full potential. However, it is quite obvious that we will not be able to maintain business as usual even with the wide scale implementation of these technologies.

2. A situation where everyone (or the vast majority) lives in their own house is not sustainable. To provide and maintain the supply lines, infrastructure such as roads and sewers, and basic services becomes increasingly expensive the more dispersed the population is. When the population is concentrated into a smaller space, the same facility can serve many more people. With a dispersed population mass transit becomes impossible to implement and residents are forced to drive, which is itself an unsustainable situation. With the population concentrated into a smaller area, many more people can be located within walking distance of goods and services as opposed to a dispersed population, and goods and services can be provided at a lower per capita cost.

3. Food that travels more than ~200 miles from its point of origin is not sustainable. See #1. It should be noted that solar power is not capable of providing the necessary horsepower to power an 18-wheeler, or farm equipment for that matter. Food is not going to be shipped many thousands of miles in large cargo ships or by truck in a world where oil is much more expensive than it is now.

4. Non-renewable fuels are not sustainable. This should be obvious enough. If you use something that there is not an infinite amount of, eventually you will run out and no longer be able to use it.

5. Ultimately, growth is not sustainable. The laws of thermodynamics explain this one. This requires that we change our economy from one in which growth is the goal, to one in which stability (sustainability) is the goal.

Practical solutions exist to the problems of global warming and peak oil that do not rely on new technology. Our cities can be redesigned to be more efficient and provide a better quality of life for all.

Please follow this link to read more:

Sustainable City

Is the world ready for sustainability?

mark @ TalkClimateChange — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 06:37:02 +0000

From Mark @ TalkClimateChange

How ready is the world for sustainability? Is sustainability something that the average person really cares about?

We think it is. In recent years the topic of climate change has come sharply into public focus, and it is hard to escape the intensive coverage that the subject is receiving in the popular media.

New research published today shows that not only is sustainable living very much on the mind of the public, but the majority of people are also prepared to do something about it.

As we reported on TalkClimateChange today: http://www.talkclimatechange.com/index.html#NewsRef260

The BBC announced results of a poll today which claims that of 22,000 people surveyed in 21 countries, the majority of people are ready to make sacrifices to address global warming and climate change.
Four out of five people indicated they were prepared to change their lifestyle, particularly if additional fuel taxes were used for research into clean energy sources. The poll reveals that the Chinese, whose dramatic industrial growth is often used an excuse for inaction in the Western world are the most willing to accept additional energy taxes, with 85% of those surveyed in favour.
The report’s conclusion will be of interest to world governments as it notes that in many countries individuals are more willing than governments themselves to accept serious lifestyle changes in the fight against climate change.

What’s now missing is a feasible and achievable action plan to make sustainable living a reality. Clearly the general public are up for the challenge, but governments must go some way towards helping people to make smart choices.

Until now many government “green schemes” have either been simple political stunts, or disguised forms of additional taxation. Concrete schemes which incentivise sustainable options whilst channelling more money into much needed research are badly needed.

We hope that governments around the world take note of these results such that we can all look forwards to a greener and more sustainable future.