The story is a little thin in terms of being “a first”  but I am excited to see it is happening. When you read a little deaper the claim is Fednav a Montreal based shipping company has created the first “Canadian shipping company with an accesisible environmental policy”. I have not even tried to verify that statement but you can read the story here.

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/December2008/03/c6807.html 

In the usual spirit of this website we will take a snapshot of the policy for future disection and to monitor their performance against this policy.  Here is a link to their policy and I will date stamp it and replicate this in our Wiki

http://www2.fednav.com/anglais/enviropolicystatement_en.html  

Nink

As I begin to explore the green Polices that companies are creating I continually see a focus on items that if implemented would have a positive return on investment. This is obviously and easy sell to the C Level executives. If we implement fluorescent light bulbs we can reduce our lighting cost by 40% , enforce double sided printing and our paper costs are reduced by 30%, replace paper cups with porcelain mugs and our coffee costs are reduced by 20%.

Now I do agree these are low hanging fruit and they do have a positive impact on the environment but when they are implemented the cost savings need to be measured at a holistic level as part of a green portfolio. Companies should be focusing on a cost neutral green portfolio of solutions as part of their green policy. The portfolio needs to include items that will save them money over a 5 to 10 year period. It should also include solutions that will have a positive impact on the environment but on their own may not have a positive impact on the bottom line. If the portfolio of solutions is managed and measured correctly the end result is a green portfolio that when all the costs and benefits are calculated will have a neutral cost impact but a positive environmental impact.

I read an interesting article in Forbes today with an ongoing court case of the Environmental Protection Agency versus Entergy on clean water protection that is now with the supreme court. The article left me hopeful that somehow in the future we can achieve that balance that will allow for both environmental sustainability and at least a neutral impact on the corporate bottom line.

http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/12/02/environment-supreme-court-oped-cx_rr_ml_1202reveszlivermore.html

Nink

I saw a great article that came across the ether listing 12 steps for companies to go green so I thought I would share the bullet points but I suggest you visit the website and read the details.

1. Ditch Styrofoam
2. Ditch the paper and plastic, too
3. Ditch more paper
4. Print smart, when you print
5. Ditch the laser, lose the color
6. Timer-controlled light switches.
7. Compact Fluorescent bulbs
8. Fix it. repair versus replace
9. Reuse, recycle, freecycle, donate
10. Check before you buy (epeat.net)
11. research your vendors
12. Create an environmental policy

For more information visit

http://www.webconsultingdc.com/2008/going-green-without-going-broke-12-steps/

Intel and HP announced at the Greenergy forum. This is great news but I guess the big question is are their respective strategies aggressive enough to make a difference as the demand for technology increases.

Intel’s environmental goals:

1. Reduce absolute global warming gas footprint by 2012 from 2007 levels;
2. Reduce energy consumption per chip 5% per year from 2007 through 2012;
3. Ensure that Intel products maintain energy efficiency for the next two product generations;
4. Reduce water use per chip by 2012 from 2007 levels;
5. Reduce generation of chemical waste per chip by 10% by 2012 from 2007 levels;
6. Recycle 80% of chemical and solid waste generated per year.

HP Green initiatives include

1. Reducing their combined product and operations energy use and associated greenhouse gases (GHGs) by 25% in 2010
2. Recover 2 billion pounds of computing and printing equipment by 2010.

Source http://pcworld.about.com/od/officehardware/Intel-HP-Describe-Green-Strat.htm

A report released today by Bell Micro said that energy savings of over 50 per cent are “completely absent” in larger organizations, raising a question over the current value of supposedly ‘green’ activities.

The distributor found a clear disconnect between ‘going green’ and demonstrable energy savings.

“Only 12 per cent of the 21 per cent of organisations with a green IT policy have quantified any energy savings as a result of their initiatives.”

I personally find this information very disturbing and only increases the need for continuous improvement and what strategies within a companies green policy result in any real tangible benefits. It is only through open collaboration and policy analysis will we be able to reach a point where we can move this 12 percent of 21% to 100% of 100%  of companies with affective policies in place.

Source  http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2221264/green-working
Nink

I spent a a couple of hours today collecting new content for the green policy website. I decided to create a green videos section in the wiki to place the green video’s created by individuals , organization, groups and companies. After wrestling with the mediawiki interface I managed to finally get embeded flash working. If anyone wants to add a video simply place youtubevideoname in the wiki and all should work well. I need some serious lessons in how to edit a wiki correctly and create a common framework for each wiki page. Today I also added Xerox’s green policy to the wiki. Well thats it for now stay tuned.

Nink

Today I uploaded the first two green policies to the Green Policy Wiki. The policies uploaded were from Fuji Film and Canada Post. The reason I chose these two was simple, they came up first two that appeared in google when I searched on green policy!
What happens next I am not sure. I assume more policies will be uploaded and reviews will occur. What will be reviewed and how the reviews will occur is yet to be decided. I assume a policy analysis is a great first step. What were they trying to achieve? Are there measurable targets ? What are the plans to achieve them ? Next I assume we can begin to focus on policy adhearance. Did we achieve the milestones and are we on track to achieve the next milestone.

Please do not misunderstand our intentions, I fully support the fact that companies, governments, organizations and even individuals are creating green polices. The basic premise of this website is to identify the benefits, what works and what does not. This will allow others to create their own green polices based on the knowledge that the recommendations have been both tested and proven with measurable results.

You can review the first two policies here. Green Policy Wiki

Nink

There has been a number of websites who have recently launched a “green policy”. The concept of creating a green policy is great idea and I fully support this. Unfortunately when reading these polices there does not appear to be any consistency between them. Several appear to have been created more from a marketing standpoint and the associated benefits of these policies is also not always apparent. There does not seem to be any accounting methodology to validate the polices or a way to quantify the actual commitment.

In order to begin to explore this concept today I am launching this website to collect, review, comment, monitor and learn from the policies that are being put in place. The logic to learn from the policies, what works, what doesn’t and hopefully come up with some standard templates and targets that individual, companies, organizations and governments can leverage. I believe this should be a community responsibility so I will also be looking for assistance in this task from the global community.

The concept is to collect the policies and place them on a Wiki. They will then be open for comment and review. As the policies change over time we will have a historical record of these changes.

This project is a volunteer initiative so if anyone would like to assist then I would appreciate the help.

Nink