Climate Change: Take action now!

World Environment Day Awards 2008 Wiiners announced

2008-06-06T23:24:00.003+10:00

Tonights dinner was an amazing experience- I feel honoured being able to attend the World Environment Day Awards 2008 dinner and being amongst some of Australia's outstanding achievers.

The following organisations should be commended for their work, and a big congratulations to the Winners for the United Nations Association of Australia World Environment Awards 2008.

Building Commission Award for Best Sustainable Residential Development
WINNER: Landmatters Currumbin Valey - "The Ecovillage at Currumbin"

Sustainability Victoria Meeting the Greenhouse Challenge Award
WINNER: Global Renewables - "The UR-3R Process"

ITW Industrial Packaging Education/School Award
WINNER: Mount Manypeaks Primary School - "Natural Resource Management Program"

Lincolne Scott Triple Bottom Line Award
WINNER: Sustainable Living Fabrics - "Kiss and Leap: A Business Model with Moral Sustainability"

Szencorp Green Building Award
WINNER: FMSA Architects/Cundall - "St Leonard's College Sustainability Centre - Cornish Campus"

DSE Excellence in Marine and Coastal Management Award
WINNER: Moreton Bay Seafood Industry Association - "Development and implementatio fo an Environmental Management System for Professional Fishers of Moreton Bay, South East Queensland"

Excellence in Water Management Award
WINNER: Randwick City Council - "Randwick City Council's Retrofitting Randwick for Water Conservation"

Business Sustainability Awards

Best Specific Environmental Initiative
WINNER: Greening Australia/Alcoa Point Henry - "Moolapio"

Environmental Best Practice
WINNER: InStyle Contract Textiles - "An Integrated Company Approach to Sustainability"

Local Government Awards

Excellence Overall Environmental Management
WINNER: City of Ipswich - "City of Solutions: Thinking Globally, Acting Locally"

Best Specific Environmental Initiative
WINNER: Fairfield City Council - "Nalawala Sustainability Hub"

Community Award
WINNER: The Community of Castlemaine

Individual Award
WINNER: Dr. John Geoffrey Mosley

Media Award for Environmental Reporting
WINNER: Mark Corcoran, Vivien Altman, David Martin, Simon Brynjolffsen and David Verrechia; ABC TV Foreign Correspondent - "Bolivian Meltdown"

Google Search Trends for Earth Hour in 2008

2008-04-15T12:32:00.003+10:00

Regular readers of my blog may remember a post I did around this time last year showing the search trends on Google for the keyword "Earth Hour" in 2007.

Just a reminder, I'm getting these results from Google Trends, a great tool used to show search trends for a specific keyword, or for even comparing search trends.

Well, this year has produced some amazing results! I thought last year was impressive, but this year the number of searches smashed 2007, with almost 8 times more searches in 2008.

Now lets look at these results a bit closer, breaking them down by region showing the proportion of searches that were made from each region globally.

The concept for Earth Hour originated in Australia, so it's expected for most of the searches to have been made by Australian users. The interesting spike in my opinion is seeing how Canada has moved in to second place, from fourth last year, leaps and bounds ahead of New Zealand, the US and UK.

Another interesting way to look at the number of searches is by city. Here's where the biggest surprise was:

My first thoughts were "Wow - surprising that Earth Hour in Toronto was a bigger event than in Sydney". When you put it in to population terms, Toronto has almost 4 times more residents compared to Sydney, so Earth Hour in Sydney proportionally had more searches per person than Toronto.

These massive results I believe are no doubt due to the big marketing and media push in 2008 following on from the success of the event last year. The amount of news articles showing up in the Google News archive clearly shows this:

All in all it's definately safe to state that Earth Hour 2008 was a huge success with some good energy reductions shown in results for cities around the world in Wikipedia. Kudos to WWF for putting together such a credible event.

I have some big expectations for Earth Hour in 2009, and see this movement as being more than an hour of support, instead becoming more than an annual event in years to come.

Environmental Events Calendar 2008

2008-04-14T21:39:00.001+10:00

It is important for every organisation and business to show the community their support Environmental events. Supporting Environmental events is also a great way to improve your company/brand's image and public perception.

Some of our Promotional Products we recommend to show support for Environmental Events:

All of these products are ideal for Councils, Government departments and organisations who aim to promote a message about improving our environment.

Here's a list of some of the environmental events taking place this year in Australia :

2008

December

(source: Department of Environment and Heritage)

Contact us for help co-ordinating your promotional products and merchandise for your event

If you have any questions relating to environmentally friendly promotional products, please don't hesitate in contacting us. JEM Promotional Products
Phone: (02) 8205 1334
E-mail: enquiries@jempp.com.au
Website: www.jempp.com.au

News Update

2007-09-18T12:11:00.000+10:00

Here's the latest green news:

NSW plans 'greener' waste practices

2007-09-18 Source: Abc News online

:00 The New South Wales Government says waste management is about to become more eco-friendly. Waste-management practices will be simplified and the amount of waste going into landfill will be...

Aussie solar plan $47m funding win

2007-09-18 Source: Australian IT

AUSTRALIAN-US startup Ausra will use more than $US40 million ($47.3 million) in venture capital funds to invest in further research and development on its utility-scale solar thermal power...

China sets renewables target

2007-09-18 Source: EnergyReview.net

CHINA intends to invest US$265 billion (A$315 billion) in renewable energy by 2020, said Chen Deming, vice-chairman of the Chinese Development and Reform...

Source: Green Pages Australia (http://www.greenpagesaustralia.com.au/)

5 actions you can take to reduce greenhouse gases

2007-07-29T13:55:00.000+10:00

In my previous post, I mentioned SITA Environmental Solutions and their newsletter we received.

Here's another interesting inclusion -

5 actions you can take to reduce greenhouse gases:

turn lights and other high energy devices off when not in use
sign up for accredited green power. speak to your current energy supplier or visit greenpower.gov.au for a list of green energy providers
get a business energy audit to identify potential energy savings
recycle everything you can! SITA can help you recycled a whole host of differentmaterials including paper, cardboard, glass, timber, steel, toner, cartridges, batteries, and fluorescent light globes
wherever possible - catch public transport, carpool, cycle or walk to your destination

Source: "News and Views - March 2007", SITA Environmental Solutions

Paper Recycling - Quick facts

2007-07-29T13:39:00.000+10:00

We recycle all our paper at JEM Promotional Products, and recently received a newsletter from SITA Environmental Solutions. Check out some of the facts on paper recycling featured in their newsletter.

One tree makes approximately 3077 pieces of A4 paper
Making paper from recycled materials resultsin 74% air pollution and 35% less water pollution
One tonne of paper is equal to 40,000 sheets of paper
87% of recycled paper is used in packaging materials
Recycling half of the world's paper would save 20 million acres of forested land.

Source: "News and Views - March 2007", SITA Environmental Solutions

The UK's first carbon neutral home

2007-06-12T20:58:00.000+10:00

Source: BBC News, "The UK has unveiled its first zero emission home that will set the environmental standard for all new homes in the future."

The home is said to "lose 60% less heat than a normal home" which is quite substantial, as heating costs take a considerable chunk out of electricity bills.

Progressions in architectural sustainability are important, and will have a considerable impact on future emission trends. With the world having to move up a belt size every year, with the growing populated cities worldwide, rebuilding populous areas with "green" efficiency in mind will be a high priority.

Click here to view the full story

BBC News is a great site for up to the minute news across all sectors. This story came under the Business category. Perhaps it could of been considered for Front Page News, as these sort of stories need continued and consistent exposure in the media to make them a top of mind concern for all people globally.

Excellent results from Earth Hour

2007-04-10T08:23:00.000+10:00

Here's some excellent feedback I received from SMH regarding Earth Hour

"More than 2 million Sydney residents participated in Earth Hour on Saturday night by flicking the switch, turning appliances off stand-by and enjoying an hour of quiet darkness, according to poll results from AMR Interactive.

The result: an impressive 10.2% drop in energy usage across the usually glittering CBD, according to EnergyAustralia.

This is double the anticipated energy saving and represents a reduction of 24.86 tonnes of carbon dioxide - the equivalent of taking 48,613 cars off the road for an hour!"

Top stuff!!

SMH "Down to Earth" Environmental Blog

2007-04-08T14:32:00.000+10:00

SMH is taking a very important step as one of the countries sources for news. They are helping to put environmental issues at the forefront of news, with their environmental blog, Down to Earth.

There's been some great posts over the months, and to be honest, I've neglected this blog! I strongly consider having a read through their archive if you get a chance.

Here's a decent post to kick you off:

Curiourser and Curiouser

How to go green guides - TreeHugger

2007-04-01T22:58:00.000+10:00

TreeHugger is a fantastic website. If you've been wondering where to start in your quest to take action against climate change, here's a quick list taken from TreeHuggers go green page.

Earth Hour - link to earthhour.org from your website!

2007-03-23T14:01:00.000+11:00

The JEM Promotional Products homepage currently has a link to the home page for Earth Hour. This is a great way for you to reach 1000's of people, and help them be aware of the cause, and the details in participating in the event.

Please visit the Earth Hour downloads page for information on linking this through on your website.

Earth Hour Google search trends

2007-03-17T01:31:00.000+11:00

Google Trends is one of the coolest new tools Google has released. Its used to show search trends for a specific keyword, or for even comparing search trends.

Obviously with the media hype surrounding Earth Hour, the number of searches for the keyword "Earth Hour" on Google has sky rocketed. I thought I'd do a bit of a quick analysis to see what kind of results Google Trends came up with. Here's a graph reflecting this surge:

The next table is actually quite interesting. This table shows a ranking of the top 10 cities worldwide in terms of search volume for the keyword "Earth Hour":

Sydney is the clear leader, with more than 5 times as many searches than the 2nd ranked city - London, UK. One interesting fact I can gather from this information, is that there were more searches by cities worldwide, then there was by other cities besides Sydney.

The next graph has a top 10 ranking of countries searching for "Earth Hour" (disregarding cities):

It's interesting to see there's a lot of Germans who seem to be interested in finding out about Earth Hour - I would of thought New Zealand would have at least made the top 10!

It's always interesting to monitor these sorts of things (well definately from a marketing perspective!) and I think it would be good to compare these results in 2-3 months to see how each graph varies. Will there be another huge surge in searches for Earth Hour closer to the event? That's more than guaranteed - so lets watch these graphs wiggle about and do their thing over the next few months!

20015 people committed to Earth Hour - and counting!

2007-03-15T09:09:00.000+11:00

With just over 2 weeks to go until Earth Hour, the numbers of participants are starting to look very positive! Over 20015 people have commited to turning their lights off for 1 hour on the 31st March. With over 5 million people living in Sydney, we haven't yet even reached 1% of the population.

To show your support for Earth Hour I strongly recommend you register now!

GreenWatch 2006 report evaluating GreenPower products

2007-03-12T15:41:00.000+11:00

This link : GreenWatch 2006 Report will take you to a GreenWatch 2006 report, evaluating 44 GreenPower products available on the market.

Alot of products claim to be better than what they are, so hopefully this report can help point you in the right direction when choosing your GreenPower provider.

GreenPower: who's using it?

2007-03-12T15:11:00.000+11:00

Here's a handy tool available at the GreenPower website. It uses satellite images and maps to show you who is using GreenPower in your local area, or infact, whereever you were wanting to search. Here's a screenshot:
Here's a direct link to use the tool - have fun!

P.S. I hope your business/home has a little green dot on that map!!

Earth Hour - 20 days to go!

2007-03-11T23:26:00.000+11:00

Earthhour is only 20 days away, with the big even kicking off at 7:30pm, Australian Eastern Standard time (EST). Haven't heard of Earth Hour? Here's a bit of a sum up for you:

What is Earth Hour?
On the 31st of March, 2007, residents in Sydney have been invited to participate in an event to show their commitment against global warming, turning off their lights for 1 hour between 7:30pm and 8:30pm.

What is the purpose of Earth Hour?
Earth Hour is one of a series of events that are part of a campaign which aims to reduce Sydney's greenhouse emissions in 2007 by 5%.

Where is Earth Hour being held?
At this stage, EarthHour is being held only in Sydney, as being able to manage a nation wide event at this stage is not feasible. Plus, the impact of having the entire city participating in this event, will have positive ripple effects, with the hope of all Australian cities & states participating in the future.

How can I participate in Earth Hour?
1. Sign up to Earth Hour - its entirely free! Show your pledge to participate, by filling out a quick and easy online form.
2. Begin by unplugging all appliances that are on standby - vcrs, tv's etc. Their power usage combines to a total of 10% of your total annual power usage.
3. Spread the word!

Blog on Earth Hour (as I have)
e-mail your friends, family and workmates (Send an eCard)
add Earth Hour as your friend on MySpace ,
post videos to YouTube, and photos to Flickr and tag them with 'earthhour2007',
add a banner to your website
Make sure your business, or the company you work for gets involved

4. Start your own Earth Hour event. Here are some suggestions directly from the Earth Hour website:

Get the neighbours together for a BBQ or head out to your local park for the hour
A candle-lit dinner for your friends or family
Dine in the dark - guess the food you're eating!
Have a kids "camp-over" - pitch a tent in the yard and tell ghost stories!

Free Printer Cartridge Recycling & Collection

2007-03-09T16:50:00.000+11:00

Whilst I was at work today, I though I'd take another step towards being completed carbon neutral. One thing I realised, is we have a cupboard full of empty toner cartridges. So, I got on to SITA's website, and I've found out they provide a free cartridge recycling program. Click here for details

See the PlanetArk website for details on other printer cartridge recycling products

Update:

Here's some facts which might stop you from delaying your decision to join a program like this until another day..
"It has been estimated that over 80% of our used cartridges are going directly to landfill.

Australians throw away more than 18 million printer cartridges every year.

This amounts to over 5,000 tonnes of material, including laser toner cartridges, inkjet cartridges, photocopier toner bottles and drums, that will eventually end up in landfill."
Source: PlanetArk

Biodegradeable Eco-Friendly Pens

2007-03-09T12:27:00.000+11:00

Check out this post on Create Your Image with Promotional Products. It features a completely biodegradable pen - an environmentally friendly alternative to normal promotional plastic pens!

Earth Hour promotional video

2007-03-08T17:35:00.000+11:00

Here's a promotional video for Earthhour, a cause which has potential to be the largest national initiative against climate change and global warming. I certainly hope everyone reading this blog will be participating!

Calculate your vehicles greenhouse emissions

2007-03-08T14:09:00.000+11:00

Check out this cool calculator provided by the Department of Environment and Water Resources:

Vehicle Greenhouse Gas emissions calculator

Once you've done this, it wouldn't hurt to offset your vehicles greenhouse emissions, and make your vehicle travel carbon neutral

Reduce your home network energy consumption

2007-03-08T13:09:00.000+11:00

There is a fantastic guide to reducing the amount of electricity used by the hardware in your home network.

Heres an excerpt:

"Turn off monitors when not in use

Monitors, especially old CRT monitors, can consume a lot of energy. Make sure that they are turned off when not in use.
Replace old CRT monitors with LCD monitors

LCD monitors are much more energy efficient that CRT monitors. You can run three LCD monitors for the price of one CRT.

Shut down unused equipment

If it is not being used, turn it off."

Click here to view the entire article

Build an eco-friendly computer

2007-03-04T02:13:00.000+11:00

I stumbled across this article on the the ExtremeTech website which had some interesting suggestions on how to build an eco-friendly personal computer - great article I thought!

Two of the key components which required the most attention were the power supply and the computers monitor, both of which should have energy efficient ratings.

Click to read the article

Kyoto2 - whats it all about?

2007-02-27T23:41:00.000+11:00

I came across an article on the BBC News website, "Climate Change - Its time to get serious", which is kindly available to me through Firefox "Latest Headlines" . Anyway, the news article presented some shocking facts.

One of these facts, was "the Earth's average temperature will almost certainly rise by 1.8-4C" this century. This certainly is not sustainable, and near impossible for the planet's delicate eco systems to cope with.

Anyway, lets get to the point here. One of the suggestions they put forward, was the concept of Kyoto 2, to take over when the existing Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

Here's some of the ideas that were raised:

Key points mentioned:

impose a series of global caps on annual greenhouse gas production

set aside the country-based approach, replacing it with a unified global approach

control greenhouse gases at point of production, not of emission; in the case of fossil fuel emissions, control the production of the fuel itself as close as feasible to the mine or well-head, based on the global warming potential of the fuel in question when burnt

Definately some great ideas if you ask me! I look forward to hearing more on this topic

Click here to view the complete article

Top 50 Things To Do To Stop Global Warming

2007-02-27T23:34:00.000+11:00

I stumbled upon a great post to kick off this blog over at Digg. Check it out! It basically consists of 50 tasks or things you can change within your everyday habits to help prevent global warming, and reduce the greenhouse emissions you produce doing these tasks.

Here's two I've made available to you as a sneak peak:

Replace a regular incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb (cfl)
CFLs use 60% less energy than a regular bulb. This simple switch will save about 300 pounds of carbon dioxide a year.
Install a programmable thermostat
Programmable thermostats will automatically lower the heat or air conditioning at night and raise them again in the morning. They can save you $100 a year on your energy bill.

Click here to view the complete article

The vision.

2007-02-24T20:51:00.001+11:00

This blog has been a long time coming. Ever since I was a young lad, I've had a keen interest in environmental issues, and have always tried to do my bit - whether it be starting my home compost bin, or designing the world's next bio dome. (yes, i did my little research in to this, and made up some "plans" ie. pencil drawings from a 10 yr old!)

So I guess my goal with this blog is to keep Australian residents and businesses with their finger on the pulse - Climate Change isn't happening soon, it's happening now, and we need to do what we can as a nation, to slow it down, and if at all possible, prevent its damaging effects on the environment.

So keep tuned to this channel, there's plenty of interesting posts to come, that will hopefully get your attention!

Jeremy.