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.