Postcard from the Edge

How do we promote sustainability when:

• The Commonwealth Government announces it will not commit to its own reduction target for greenhouse emissions if the sums don't add up.
• Australia's independent agency for providing advice on climate change issues is abolished to save $1.8 million dollars.
• Australia's agency for providing clean energy loans is told by its Minister to stop doing so, in apparent contravention of its own legislation.
• Powers concerning protection of World Heritage, National Heritage, Wetlands of International Importance, listed threatened species and ecological communities, listed migratory species, nuclear actions, the marine environment will no longer be controlled by the Commonwealth but will be given to the States.
• The Industry Minister describes opponents of coal seam gas mining as "noisy protesters, minority groups, with no interest in the economic progress of agriculture and mining together.''

Let's face it, the current Australian political climate is not encouraging anyone to undertake sustainability activities. Can sustainability operate in a policy vacuum? Where do we find the incentive to act?

The forthcoming International Panel on Climate Change report may provide that incentive. But will we see more misinformation from sectors of the media and more silence from the Government who could take the trouble to correct it?

Thank goodness for the Australian public who have crowdfunded the former Climate Commission to reinvent itself as the Climate Council, and provide an independent voice on climate science.

Sustainability managers can take inspiration from this development, but don't expect the next few years to be easy.

 

10 things that would make sustainability reporting easier

It's that time of year again....

I am reporting on my  organisation's sustainability performance. Actually I am probably a bit late but never mind, at least I am doing it!

The exercise has caused me to reflect on why it is so hard to report on sustainability. Here are my 10 wishes to make sustainability reporting simpler:

1. If suppliers reported their quantities in a uniform measure. Why does our paper supplier give us a report which switches from boxes to reams and back again?

2. If someone would publish a standard for the amount of CO2 generated by using  different grades of paper.

3. If suppliers would just all either stick to reporting on the financial year or the calendar year.

4. If suppliers who claim that the waste they collect did not go to landfill actually identified where it did go  (I'm a suspicious sustainability reporter).

5. If my organisation arranged things so that the same person was responsible for electricity, paper, water, waste, travel and procurement. Then I would not have to hassle so many people.

6. If I was actually any good at using Excel. I suck.

7. If suppliers would actually take the initiative and send us the reports every quarter, instead of waiting for us to chase them.

8. If the manual for the web tool actually bore any resemblance to the web tool itself. I think they hve given me the manual for a totally different program.

9. If the organisation actually appreciated how much work goes into doing the report and expressed some gratitude.

10. If someone would respond to this blog and share the pain.


 

How to have a rubbish holiday

One million years. That's how long it takes one glass bottle to decompose naturally in the environment. A fishing line takes 600 years. A plastic drinking bottle, 450 years.     A plastic shopping bag, 20 years.

Even orange peel can take up to 2 years to break down!



A sample of rubbish found on a remote beach 10 hours drive from Darwin



All these things are clogging up our oceans and will be doing so for centuries to come. They pose an immense danger to marine life and sea bird who mistake them for food. Fishing nets also are abandoned by fishing boats at sea and are a huge hazard as they float with the currents, trapping sharks, turtles and fish of all sizes indiscriminately. The organisation GhostNets is an alliance of over 22 indigenous communities from coastal northern Australia which trains indigenous rangers in these areas to find and remove these nets and release trapped marine life, or at least prevent them from endangering more wildlife.

In July I headed to the Northern Territory and with 8 other conservation volunteers, set out for the Garig Gurnak Barlu National Park in West Arnhem Land on a holiday with a difference. We were there to help collect marine debris from the Park's beaches. From a distance the beaches look pure and pristine, but sadly close up it is a different story. On a typical trek along the beach we would find plastic bottles, bottle tops, aluminium cans, baskets, floatation devices, eskies, glass bottles, toothbrushes, oil drums, and thongs.

Our guide told us that the thongs found in this area were almost always left foot thongs, never right feet - and so it proved. There is a theory that the right feet thongs travel in a different direction because of their shape ???!!



A pristine beach - or is it?





Digging a fishing net out of the sand.



The worst were the fishing nets. You see a 2 centimetre piece of string sticking out of the sand. You think, "Is that really worth picking up? I"ll give it a tug" and half an hour later you find you are wrestling with a 30 metre fishing net. These nets are diabolical. They weigh a ton and get sandlogged so it is hot sweaty work digging them out of the beach.

So yes, I had a rubbish holiday, but it was a great experience. We went to remote beaches and billabongs that are not usually accessed by the public, areas where generations of indigenous Australians have lived and died (and are buried), saw rock art, camped under the stars and encountered beautiful birdlife, along with crocodiles, humpback dolphins, wallabies and buffalo.

Naturewise Holidays is a branch of Australian Conservation Volunteers and they organise holidays with conservation activities all around Australia.

And as one of the members of our group said, "Once a marine debris collector - always a marine debris collector". You get into the habit of looking for rubbish everywhere. When summer comes, I'll be heading for the beach - with a garbage bag.

The "real cost" of justice - productivity, planet or public interest?

There hasn't been much noise about the latest reference to the Productivity Commission which may affect the future conduct of litigation in Australia. On 20 June the Commonwealth Government asked the Productivity Commission to examine the factors contributing to the current costs of securing legal representation and accessing justice services, the social and economic impacts of these costs, and whether they are proportionate to the issues in dispute.

Photo by Comstock Images via Getty Images

The Commission will report on options for achieving lower-cost dispute resolution, including through alternative dispute resolution, the use of technology and expedited procedures.

It will also provide advice on data collection across the justice system to enable better monitoring of costs and evaluation of measures aimed at keeping costs down.

This raises the question, what is the real cost of access to justice and legal representation? Is it just the cost of providing the courts and tribunals, the community legal aid and the public prosecutors and defenders? Or does it go further to encompass the incidental costs which are driven by the way litigation is conducted? The loss of productivity? The endless appeals by those parties who can afford it? What does it cost the nation to have so many law schools churning out so many law graduates?

Surely the "real cost" of anything must also encompass the cost of the natural resources used and the environmental harm caused, as well as the social cost.

The outcome could provide support for those advocating the use of more technology in litigation, electronic case management, and ADR. However all these solutions will require increases in budgets which can only be justified if we see what the "real cost" is.

The response of the NSW Government to the rising cost of litigation is to abolish legal aid for public interest environmental litigation and query whether the Environmental Defender's Office should receive any government funding. The EDO has had several successes lately against polluters and mining companies which hasn't made it popular in some quarters.  Fortunately the Commonwealth came to its aid with $300,000 to keep it going.

 More information is available at www.pc.gov.au

Getting People to do (Green) Stuff - Part 2

This video from Terra Infirma says it all. The life of a workplace sustainability campaigner is a lonely one.... until you involve other people.

Getting People to do [Green] Stuff

Championing workplace sustainability can be exhausting. You can’t do anything without motivating staff to change behaviour. But sometimes after all the meetings, emails, Powerpoint talks and staff events, you wonder if you are getting anywhere. You get frustrated. You start thinking your colleagues are beyond help.

Lately I’ve been reading Susan M Weinschenk’s book, How to Get People to Do Stuff. Weinschenk is a behavioural psychologist. She identifies 7 drives which motivate people. I’ll just discuss two which appealed to me. They are:

·        The Need to Belong

·        The Power of Habit

The Need to Belong is based on the theory that we all have a strong need to feel part of a group. We pay attention to and copy what others do, because the drive to belong (‘social validation’) is unconscious.

Ways to use this in a sustainability program:

·        Tell people how many other firms are implementing sustainability at work. Eg ‘ All our competitors have been doing this for years.’

·        A study showed that when energy companies provided customers with their energy use figures compared to that of their neighbours, people consistently saved more energy. But don’t overdo it. Another study showed that when people believe they are competing against a large number they are less likely to try hard. And women don’t seem to be as competitive as men. (I’m not sure this is true of all women lawyers. Perhaps we are competitive in different ways.)

·        Make sure the right person does the asking. If you are appealing to lawyers, someone they can relate to (eg another lawyer that they like) will have a better effect than a stranger, unless that stranger is very appealing and charismatic.

·        Recruit people to model the behaviour you want others to follow.

The Power of Habit

Many habits are unconscious. Habits are based on a cue which triggers the habit, the automatic routine and the reward from carrying out the habit.

·        To get people to change a habit, disrupt it and replace it with a conscious habit which will eventually become unconscious.

·        For example, if a junior lawyer has a habit of printing out large quantities of documents for court which she may or may not use, which end up in the bin, the  trigger may be ‘I’m in court tomorrow, what if I need something? I’d better print it out’, the routine is printing all the documents, and the reward is feeling less anxious that she won’t be prepared. This could be replaced by a different trigger such as calling the lawyer in for a talk about what is likely to be needed for court 3 days earlier. Together you can create a routine of making a list of what is needed. The reward will be that the lawyer will feel reassured about her preparation.

My last post reported on Sam Mostyn’s talk for Green Capital, where she said that you can’t motivate people by fear. You need to convince them that they are capable of great things.

This approach is supported in an interview with Bryan Welch, the publisher of Mother Earth News,  from the Guardian’s Sustainable Business Blog. "I've discovered time and again that if you want to engage people's imaginations and if you want to engage them in activities that improve the odds of sustainability, then the best way to speak to them is with an optimistic, hopeful, excited, passionate, joyful tone," he notes. He suggests triggering their imaginations with "cool stuff" they can do to make a difference.

The message here is don’t try to scare people into action with doom and gloom – something I’ve been guilty of! The situation may be urgent, but show them what they can do, what the rewards will be and remove the fear and uncertainty which can paralyse people from acting.

The Phoenix Effect

I attended a panel session at the Powerhouse Museum tonight organised by Green Capital, an initiative of the Total Environment Centre addressing "The Phoenix Effect". Green Capital used the occasion to launch its new brand, which focuses on Building Sustainable Economies.

There is a lot I could say about what Green Capital is doing but not all of it is relevant to sustainability in law firms. I have listed their blog on this site so you can check out what they say. I will focus on what I took away from the speakers, who were all prominent in promoting sustainability in business, charity or government.

The keynote speaker was Sam Mostyn. She is on the boards of Virgin Australia, Transurban Group, and Citibank Australia. In January 2012, Sam was appointed a Commissioner with the National Mental Health Commission, and in late 2012 she was appointed to the first National Sustainability Council of Australia.

She gave an interesting perspective on the history of the sustainability movement in Australian from the point of view of business. Initially those within corporations who were advocating social responsibility and sustainability were faced with arguments that it was contrary to the fiduciary duties of directors. The Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change, partnering with the Australian Conservation Foundation, was one of the early movers for a price on carbon.

From that high point, largely through the failure of political leadership and the GFC, the momentum has slowed and it is time, according to Mostyn, for a new approach which looks at the need for sustainability from an economic perspective. "We are building sustainable economies in ways we don't even know yet". Governments are struggling with transformation but the global community through the forces of technology, consumption, and collaboration, is surpassing their efforts. However we are still suffering from the effects of cheap prices for inputs such as fossil fuels, pollutants etc when the real price is anything but cheap.

So what ideas can law firms adopt in trying to implement sustainability?

1. People are not motivated to change their habits by fear. You need to make them feel good about doing something sustainable.
2. People need to be told "You are capable of delivering great change".
3. We need to be honest about what the inputs are when reporting on sustainability.
4. We need to apply proper pricing and new measures of progress to our businesses.


 

Where to find sustainability help - or not

What are lawyers’ professional associations doing to help lawyers be sustainable?

The answer depends on where you do business. Search for “sustainability” on the website of the NSW Law Society  or the Law Council of Australia and you come up with a few articles from journals but no resources that are current and regularly updated. The Law Institute of Victoria on the other hand has established the Green Practice Project, which aims to promote awareness and uptake of green initiatives in the legal profession by networking and training lawyers interested in sustainability to improve their professional development and enhance innovation.

Law firms can download the  Green Practice Guide “How to become a green practice” and there is a regular Green Practice column in the Law Institute Journal.

The Queensland Law Society grumbles “It’s not easy being green” but lists its own achievements on its website which it says  will hopefully inspire members to institute similar methods in their own organisations. Hope is not enough, QLS. What about some tools and training to help members get started?

Perhaps these bodies think sustainability is more relevant to legal practice management than the practice of law. However the Australian Legal Practice Management Association website does not have any information either.

Overseas, the American Bar Association has a page on resources for a sustainable law firm. It includes a model sustainability policy. The preamble states:

“ It is in the best interests of our law organization and society as a whole that our organization move along the path to sustainability, that is, the so-called Triple Bottom Line of social, economic and environmental responsibility. To that end, we will strive to achieve the following vision of performance, publicly communicate this commitment, and periodically report our progress and challenges in fulfilling it. To identify practices and programs to help implement this policy, we will give due consideration to the relevant policies, programs and other tools of the ABA and state and local law and governmental organizations, and will publicly cite in our policy below or elsewhere those major initiatives we embrace.”

It is not clear how many firms have adopted the policy. However, according to Law Professor John Dernbach, a US law office can enrol in the ABA-EPA Law Office Climate Challenge by adopting specified best practices for paper management or by joining EPA’s Waste- Wise program, Green Power Partnership, or Energy Star program.

The site also has links to law firms which have committed to sustainability, links to articles and a blog ( some of these links were broken) and books on legal technology ( one supposes technology is seen as an alternative to excessive paper use).

The Greenworks  site is managed by Linda Brughelli who served as the first chair of the California Department of Justice “Green Office-DOJ” effort from 2008 to 2011 and has given talks on sustainable practices in law firms. It has some useful information and gives a rare insight into sustainability in government law offices.

There are two honourable exceptions to the rule in NSW. The Environmental Defender’s Office, which has recently suffered attacks on its funding for daring to take on Government approved projects and winning, has some clear and useful resources, including a fact sheet on how small offices can reduce their carbon emissions.

The Office of Environment and Heritage operates the Sustainability Advantage Program. When you sign up to Sustainability Advantage you get assistance to help you evaluate your current environmental performance and rank possible initiatives. You work on selected projects tailored to your business such as staff engagement, resource efficiency and carbon management. Coleman Greig Lawyers have been able to promote their sustainability credentials, cut electricity use by 6 per cent and cut paper consumption by 25 per cent.

Happy World Environment Day

Today, 5 June is World Environment Day. The theme for WED in 2013 is "Think Eat Save - Reduce your foodprint". Here are some ideas for law firms who want to reduce food wastage and increase sustainability:

• Provide refrigeration and microwave facilities to encourage staff to bring in left overs for lunch
• If your firm has in house catering, consider giving unused food to a charity like Oz Harvest.
• Buy fair trade tea and coffee
• Provide filtered water and carafes / glasses so staff are not encouraged to buy water in plastic bottles
• Use a caterer who uses free range produce so that you know you are eating food produced in a humane way.

What if you could recycle your entire office?

The paperless office may be a dream that will never be fully realised, but what about the cardboard office?

European company Karton have just opened a showroom in Fitzroy, Melbourne which showcases their furniture and storage items made entirely from paper. Their range comprises desks, lecterns, bookshelves, filing cabinets, room dividers and tables.

And it doesn't stop there - check out their cardboard bed!

The product is high strength corrugated board made from a mix of virgin and recycled paper, so it is not fully carbon neutral but it can be recycled at the end of its life, which is more than you can say for your average metal filing cabinet.

 This furniture would be great for a start up office or a home office which might have to be moved or packed up later.

For law firms, it could be used to house staff hired for special projects which have a limited life, for libraries or stands at marketing or recruitment events.

If you don't like the look of the bare cardboard, the surface can be painted, varnished or papered to give a decorative effect. It is delivered flat and you assemble it  by folding it. No tools are required.

Australian Legal Sector Alliance - the value of networking

In November 2012 the Australian Legal Sector Alliance published its annual report. The ALSA was established about 2 years ago and has 41 members including firms of all sizes from across the country.

Of the 41 members, 27 submitted an environmental report to ALSA for 2011-12, and 24 of the 27 chose to publish their report. The ALSA says their membership represents nearly 20% of all Australian lawyers in private practice and the Reporting Members represent nearly 15% of the sector.  ALSA has chosen to focus initially on environmental sustainability, but plans to expand long term to include social and community issues.   .

ALSA is modelled on the Legal Sector Alliance of England & Wales which commenced in 2007.

The Executive Members  are Clayton Utz, DLA Piper, Henry Davis York, Jackson McDonald, Maddocks, McCullough Robertson, Norton Rose Australia and Swaab Attorneys.

ALSA reporting members measure their usage of electricity, paper and  business travel, and their disposal of waste. The 2011-12 report shows that paper usage is decreasing, however emissions from electricity and travel are increasing. I wonder whether the number of global law firm mergers which have occurred in Australia in the past few years have impacted on travel.

There are a number of advantages to belonging to a network like ALSA which should encourage law firms to join. Members share ideas and knowledge and benefit from each other’s experience. They can also benchmark their performance against that of other members and identify areas for improvement.  Also(although it is not clear that ALSA is doing this) they can use their buying power to obtain expert advice, and encourage their suppliers to improve their sustainability.

However, the measurement of the environmental impact of ALSA member firms’ activities is limited to their own direct impact. For example business travel is limited to travel by firm employees. It does not take into account travel that might be necessitated by the firm’s conduct – for example, witnesses having to travel to court, clients travelling to meet the law firm or their opponents being forced to travel as a result of litigation.

Law firms need to recognise that the way they conduct business also has an impact on the environmental impact of other sectors of society.  This is why the extension of sustainability to other areas such as ethics and social measures, and particularly alternative dispute resolution, is crucial to its success.

Why Transition Law?

Are you a legal professional who cares about climate change? Do you:

• agonise over the tonnes of paper your firm uses in preparing for litigation?
• want to  find out what your firm's environmental impact is?
• think that there must be more to sustainability at work than having a recycling bin?
• wonder if a sustainability approach can help make the law more - well, sustainable?

When I started a sustainability program where I work, I found there wasn't much information on how to operate a legal business sustainably. Most of the information is aimed at manufacturing and industry. But the law  and lawyers have their own environmental impact and legal firms are beginning to realise this. How much is actually achieved, and how much is just a feel good exercise, depends on whether the profession is willing to do the work to measure, monitor, and change its practices.

Why Transition? Transition is a  movement which aims to make communities more resilient as we deal with climate change and diminishing resources. I've adopted the term for this blog because I hope that law will make the transition to working sustainably. Here I'll be posting on innovations in sustainable legal business, tips on managing a sustainability program in a law firm, where to find useful information, and where to locate sustainable products. But as well as the practical side I will be looking at the philosophy behind sustainability, which embraces ethical business practices, social responsibility and fair labour standards as well as environmental initiatives. Let's see where it takes us.