The Green Road Less Taken By…

I was just studying for a final for one of my courses…

Specifically, I was studying the topic of “CSR” or other wise known as corporate social responsibility.

For me, CSR has always had a positive connotation. Companies would go out and make large donations, or start up foundations for disabled youths, and have special fund raisers to help clean oil spills, etc. I also knew that most if not all companies pursuing CSR ultimately do so to increase their bottom line. Somewhere down the road, they’re hoping that their good deeds will stick in the mind of the consumers and give them brownie points in forms of “good will”.
I noticed when I was studying this topic that many economists said that CSR is at times illegal, unethical, immoral, etc.  They also say that CSR is addressing an issue that isn’t even there to begin with. In other words, activities engaging in Corporate Social Responsibility is economically inefficient.

I just thought that was interesting =D … It is economically inefficient to do good for the earth… I’ll keep that one in mind 😉

This blog is in response to Eiad’s last post about McDonald’s Drive-Through.

First off, I think this is a wonderful initiative. Small improvements made by such a large scale company would definitely make a positive impact on our environment. 252 liters of gas savings a day PER McDonald’s would indeed add-up throughout the year.

But why stop there? As talking about inside-out change transformations, McDonald’s could act as an industry trend setter for all fast-food chains to take on this initiative. If all fast food chains including Burger King, Wendy’s, Arby’s, Jack-in-the-box, etc. would participate in this… think about the global impact it could make on the earth. Consumers would be saving, companies would be benefiting from the positivity of the initiative, and would overall result in an economic and ecological improvement.

This idea just shows to prove, a little goes a long way! – Great Idea Eiad! Now go pitch it to McDonald’s!

We all know that global warming and the depletion of non-renewable resources are only becoming more detrimental issues of our earth.

Today, I’d like to hear what you guys think in regards to carbon reduction. There are two popular economic policies that are receiving much debate on the political stage. They are:

1. Carbon Tax

Carbon tax is a policy designed to reduce carbon emissions by putting a tax to internalize negative externalities (paying for the damage that you’re doing to the ozone layer when pumping gas).  This method will not immediately dictate the amount of carbon allowance, but will instead provide a steady price for both consumers and producers. With a steady price, markets will naturally be driven to an efficient quantity hence reducing carbon emissions. Carbon tax has a far reach and can collect a significant amount of revenue to be put back into our economy in the form of R&D for sustainability or income redistribution.

2. Cap and Trade

Cap and trade system works by putting a cap on carbon emissions and creating a new market to auction off permits and quotas to the most efficient producers. Companies that use less then their quotas can sell off their unused portions. Cap and trade can theoretically create a more relatively quicker change in our carbon emissions, but seems to have many loop holes. There are many European countries that have already implemented the cap and trade policy.

In both cases, there will be pressures to change to renewable energies and sustainable innovation. I’d like to hear your opinions… so please post below!

While I was surfing the internet, I stumbled across something interesting that I thought I could blog about! 🙂 It is in regards to the city of vancouver and UBC collaborating to achieve the goal of becoming the world’s greenest city by 2020. I’ll post the link to the article at the bottom, but for now I will do a short summary for those who don’t want to read the entire thing!

On May 11 of this year, the city of Vancouver and UBC signed a memorandum of understanding hence partnering the two parties on their aggressive sustainability and climate action goals.

“The University will bring its expertise to help Vancouver achieve its inspiring goal, while building knowledge by adapting the innovative principles and programs that have worked well at UBC to meet the needs of a world class urban centre.”

Some features of this partnership:

• UBC will provide grants for 10 eligible graduate students enrolled in UBC Masters or PhD programs to support the Greenest City 2020 Plan and its implementation. Each student will work on one of 10 long-term goals of the Vancouver 2020 Greenest City Action Plan which include green economy/green jobs, greener communities and human health.
• The City of Vancouver will provide wood waste for UBC’s Bioenergy Research and Demonstration Project. Trees and branches that fall in parks or on city streets, as well as other clean wood waste material, will now create energy by fuelling clean, renewable biomass-based heat and power for UBC’s Vancouver campus

Some of the goals:

UBC has set greenhouse gas emission targets beyond already-achieved Kyoto targets to:

• reduce GHGs by an additional 33 per cent from 2007 levels by 2015
• reduce GHGs to 67 per cent below 2007 levels by 2020
• eliminate 100 per cent of GHGs by 2050

The City of Vancouver is on track to meet Kyoto targets, and to:

• reduce community emissions by six per cent below 1990 levels by 2012 (on track)
• reduce community emissions by 33 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020
• reduce community emissions by 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050

Here is the link if your interested:

http://vancouver.ca/mediaroom/news/detail.htm?row=72&date=2010-05-11

I decided to do a little research on these “eco-friendly cigarettes” that I once saw in the states.

Introducing: An electronic cigarette that contains  nicotine

These cigarettes contribute to sustainability in the following ways:

– Instead of smoking one time use cigarettes, eco-friendly smokes are reusable

– The waste of smoking real cigarettes versus these reusable cigarettes is 30x more

– Smoke from eco-cigarettes are odorless

– Switching will save smokers approximately $1600 a year

– Eco-cigarettes can deliver nicotine in controlled amounts

– Eco-cigarettes exclude other harmful chemicals normally present in cigarettes

For more information: http://ecoki.com/green-smoke-cigarettes/

Just before sustainability marketing class last class, I went to staples to buy some lined paper. To my pleasant surprise, there were many eco-friendly choices. Amongst the bunch, I feasted my eyes this blue sky-ed green grass-ed pack and grabbed it. Of course, I am not such a shallow consumer as to just pick the prettiest package and buy it… I read the cover too! It differed from the other eco-friendly papers because instead of being recycled paper, it was made from sugarcane waste!

I decided to look up some information about the Sustainable Earth brand by Staples, but didn’t find too much impressive information. So instead, I decided to do some research on sugarcane waste and what other ways that we are currently extracting its uses to its fullest potential.

Sugarcane waste or bagasse is frequently used as fuel and in paper making. As fuel, it is used as bio-fuel and is often used to generate energy for sugar mills. The energy is enough to fuel the mill and them some! The CO2 that is created from burning the bagasse is equivalent to the amount of CO2 that the sugarcanes absorb in their growing phase. They call this ‘greenhouse gas-neutral’. As a fuel, it also serves in producing electricity.

As for paper production, 5-10% of paper worldwide is made up of agricultural crops. Bagasse is the most notable one. Agricultural paper production is valued between $5-10 billion dollars! In my opinion, thats a lot of dough for something that is a by-product for sugarcane juice!

As for the paper that I bought from Staples, its just all-right. It is very thin and you can see the contents past the paper easily. But at least it doesn’t rip apart when I erase on it!

Hope my blog was informative… I’ve been thinking about starting a new episode format to my blogs… it would be called “The Green Road Less Taken By” (OK. My friend Robert Frost gave me a little help with the title but…) – It would be about me and my daily struggles with myself to make the right choices.  Just an idea…! =D

Hey everyone!  Thanks for dropping by my blog.

Like many of you, this is my first attempt at a blog. I am glad I can share this experience with all of you and I look forward to reading your blogs as well. 🙂

I suppose I will start my blog by voicing my opinion about some of the topics brought up in class. In particular, regarding the video we watched in class last week. I thought it definitely had many good ideas such as targeting the 100 most influential companies to induce change. However I think it is somewhat naive to think that the rest of the world would just follow them. I think that the speaker’s assumption that ‘the rest of the thousands of companies would need to turn green as a result of a competitive advantage (of being green) from those large companies’ has flaws. People choose certain products over other products not ONLY because they’re environmentally friendly or because they’re Fair Trade Certified. How consumers choose products completely differ between each person. Some may value taste, some may value low price, and some might just buy the one in the shiny packaging! I guess what I am trying to say is that it is all well and great that these large companies are making these movements toward environmental sustainability, but I think it will need much more than just the cooperation of these large conglomerates to persuade the mind of the consumers. I mean, no matter how corporately responsible Mars Bars is, I’ll always prefer Coffee Crisp (unless Coffee Crisp was dumping nuclear waste into baby orphanages or something!)

This brings me to my next point: during that video there was a section where they talked about a chocolate company producing something like 350% more coca with just 40% of the land. This worries me in 2 aspects. First, usually when less is used for more, that entity will tire out or even die at a quicker rate. An example is instead of using two arms to lift, you are using just one arm to lift everything. The earth and soil is a living organism and from the sounds of this type of utilization, it sounds almost dangerous from an ecological perspective. Secondly, if this chocolate company is only using 40% of the land, would they be forgoing that land to another company? Or would they keep it and rotate their crops so that the soil can have some time to replenish in nutrients? If another company takes over just to grow more crops, then it isn’t really addressing the issue of over-using our resources, just merely making their own processes more efficient. I’d just like to hear a little bit more detail about that since I assume they’d mention it if it was something worth mentioning!

Nonetheless… I thought the speech consisted of great ideas and great goals!

I apologize for this pessimistic/critical post, I’ll try to keep future ones more up-beat! =)