Go Greener, Australia

Thanks everyone for being patient while I sorted out my blog hosting. Sorry, subscribers: I think you got a test post that Wordpress sends out automatically upon install. Anyway, on with the new content…

The other day Wilma from O2 mentioned that The Australian Consumers’ Association is starting a campaign against greenwashing in our supermarkets, and you can help by letting them know of any bad examples you’ve seen.

Choice Magazine, which is run by the ACA, checked the environmental claims made on 185 products found in supermarkets. They compared them to this list from TerraChoice about the different ways companies can try to make their products seem greener than they actually are. You can read their report here: Green claims on supermarket labels.

Luckily, only a small percentage of them actually lied on their products. However, many of them are making vague, unsupported claims that don’t amount to much more than a way to make us feel all warm and fuzzy when doing our shopping. They don’t break the rules, they just hope that we aren’t doing our homework. This leads to a perception that we’re doing a lot to help the environment, when maybe all we’re doing is lining the pockets of marketers. Meanwhile, companies going to a lot of trouble to do the right thing will get lost in a crowd of pretenders.

Choice is starting the Green Watch campaign to make the standard for ’self-declared environmental claims’ applicable to all green claims instead of only being voluntary. They also want the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to get tough when enforcing the Trade Practices Act for green claims, and for the government to get their legislation up to date with the newer phrases being used (like sustainable or greywater-safe).

Right now they’re just gathering data - so take their Green Claims Survey to let them know of anything you’ve seen that you think is an example of greenwashing. You can also let them know if you’ve seen any eco-claims that you thought were actually useful and set a good example for other companies.

This Saturday, people around the world will be turning off their lights for an hour between 8 and 9pm. It’s called Earth Hour, and it’s an event started in Sydney last year to raise awareness of the things anyone can do to help battle climate change. I joined in last year, lighting some candles and chilling out for a while, and I’ll be doing it again this year. Perth has joined in this year too (news.com.au, via Wilma at O2WA).

As always, these sorts of events attract some criticism. Some people reckon that turning off lights for an hour is a drop in the ocean of what needs to be done. But I think it’s a drop in the ocean we didn’t have before, and if hundreds of thousands of people join in (over 200,000 have signed up at last count), then all those drops add up to a lot. Individual action doesn’t look like much by itself; but what is community action except lots of individuals doing the same thing together?

You can sign up for Earth Hour at the website (not essential, just nice to do). Then just switch off at 8pm on Saturday. Take a bubblebath, or tell ghost stories, take your pets for a summer night’s walk… whatever you like. Afterwards, check in at the website to see more ways you can save energy in your home, at work and at school.

Today I saw a National Geographic video on YouTube about the Tasmanian Devil (via Grist). It was good to be reminded of one of our unique animals that’s currently close to extinction. The Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service has some more sound clips and videos for you to watch, as does the DPIW site aimed at children and schools. Even though Devils are cranky little buggers, I still think they’re cute

Tassie Devils are a carnivorous marsupial not found anywhere outside of Australia, or even on the mainland. Well, at least until we sent some to Princess Mary in Denmark as a baby shower present (what’s wrong with a nice bunch of flowers, anyway?). They were nearly hunted to extinction by the first European settlers, but in the 1940s were officially protected. They play an important (and yucky) part in their ecosystem by eating dead animals, which prevents the spread of disease and insects. Without them, feral cats and imported foxes move into the area and prey on over 70 species of native birds and smaller mammals, as they’ve already done on the mainland.

Their numbers in the wild were increasing after they were protected, but now they face a new threat: Devil Facial Tumour Disease, which is one of only 3 types of cancer that can be caught as a disease. Scientists researching the cancer have found that the Devils are suffering particularly badly because they have very little genetic diversity. Having been hunted to such low numbers in the wild, and then losing habitat to farming and logging, leaves them in very small and in-bred groups that have lower resistance to disease. This is something that could happen to any animal or plant that’s pushed to small, isolated areas. Researchers are trying to breed healthy Devils in captivity, with the aim of releasing them back into the wild to increase the variety in the population.

If you want to help the Tassie Devils, check in with TassieDevil.com.au and make a donation for use in developing tests and vaccines. If you’re in Tasmania, you might be able to volunteer some time to help with monitoring local populations and breeding programs. The website also lists zoos and national parks where you can see one for yourself - Perth Zoo apparently has some, I’ll have to visit for a look.

If you’re an ANZ bank customer, and you oppose the Gunn’s pulp mill in Tasmania, check this out:

GetUp.org.au is asking ANZ customers to speak to their bank managers about the pulp mill. ANZ is considering funding the pulp mill, and could be swayed against it if they think that it will affect the way the public sees them. GetUp is asking people to tell ANZ that they’ll take their business elsewhere if they fund the mill - they have a list of facts to help you work out what to say. You can sign up here on the ANZ campaign page.

The Tasmanian government has signed over large amounts of state forest to Gunns for the next 20 years. Given how urgent the problem of climate change is getting, it’s madness to deliberately chop down ancient forests which would otherwise be absorbing carbon dioxide for us. The trees will only be used to make wood pulp which will then be turned into paper in Japan, while we get our forests taken away and a dirty mill in their place, and Gunns gets the profit.

At this point, the campaign is focused on ANZ customers only, so I’m not able to participate, although I’ve joined in previously. But I thought some of you might be interested.

A while ago I posted about Browne’s “Chill My Ride” competition where you could win a Hummer. A few people who read my post contacted Browne’s parent company Fonterra to complain about this. Eloise Dortch (read my interview with her here) received a reply to her letter from Paul Murphy, their Marketing Manager for Fresh Dairy. Eloise and Paul have agreed to let me show you some of what they wrote.

When Eloise wrote to complain, she said that although she was a long-term customer of Brownes because it’s a local business, she didn’t like the current “win a Hummer” promotion. She explained why Hummers are bad for the environment, providing facts and figures.

“Perhaps you heard that Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governor of California, recently got rid of his Hummer? That was because a Hummer emits an average 11 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions each year. This is nearly three times as much as the average small car. Or put it another way: 11 tonnes-a-year compares to 14 tonnes-a-year that the Federal Government says Australians currently emit per person. Imagine what would happen to our total emissions if we all drove Hummers.”

She then went on to say that she would reconsider her boycott if the promotion was ended.

Paul Murphy replied that Fonterra, as one of Australia’s leading dairy companies, was aware of the environmental problems caused by greenhouse gas emissions, and had been working on improving the issue for some time. From his letter:

During the period 1998 to 2006, Fonterra has achieved a 21 per cent reduction in the total amount of carbon emissions from its dairy operations (approx 78,000 tonnes per annum).”

Fonterra participated in the original Greenhouse Challenge program established in 1995 - this was a voluntary program, and many companies didn’t do much after joining. I think a 21% reduction in emissions represents a serious effort. He went on to say:

I apologise if our ‘Chill my Ride’ promotion appears to indicate that we are not sensitive to environmental issues. Your feedback certainly prompts us to be more thoughtful when developing promotions in the future.”

Eloise replied:

“A cut in emissions of 21 per cent over nine years for such an energy-intensive industry is reasonably impressive. However such a simple thing as this poorly-considered promotion has for me undone any good that such environmental policies achieved for your company’s image. To quote a friend who saw your response: “Being good in one area doesn’t give them license to be bad in another.” “

Like Eloise, I’ll be boycotting Brownes while this promotion is running, and if they choose to do anything similar in future. This promotion is irresponsible and undoes the good work put in by many people to raise awareness of the problems caused by the pollution from our cars (or our enormous ego-substitutes, depending on what you drive).

However, one of my additional reasons for not buying their products anymore was that I found out that Brownes was no longer a locally-owned business. As regular readers will know, eating locally is one way to reduce your eco-footprint.

But while I was emailing Paul about this article, he mentioned that although Fonterra owned Brownes, Brownes products are still made from milk from WA farmers, and are still produced here in WA. This meets my own requirements for local food: although I’d prefer to see the profits stay in WA, keeping the source food and production local means that (for Perth residents at least) Brownes is still a lower-impact option compared to eastern states brands.

I hope in the future that Fonterra will make sure it’s marketing is in line with it’s day-to-day efforts to have less impact on the environment. This is why I think that it’s always worth the effort to write a letter to a company whose operations you disagree with: you never know what you might learn, and you might get them to reconsider their decisions.

Yesterday Eloise Dortch told us about the Smart and Green campaign she started with Jasmine Horobin to try to prevent the price rise for renewable electricity from major WA supplier, Synergy. Today she’s sharing her tips on how to create a grassroots campaign, and how to deal with the media. Thanks to Eloise and Jasmine, you can get started campaigning on an environmental issue you care about.

Jasmine and Eloise’s tips for a grassroots campaign

• Work with a partner – someone to bounce ideas off and share some of the work, frustrations and triumphs! Find someone you ‘gel’ with.
• Keep an eye out for personal development opportunities while you’re doing it. The contacts you make now could be future employers and colleagues. The campaign could be something you add to your resume.
• Pace yourself – beware of burnout. A campaign will swallow lots of time, but if you are enjoying the process, this will not be a bad thing.
• Welcome and seek input – but also feel comfortable about rejecting unhelpful advice and unsuitable suggestions.
• Spend time to think about the focus of your campaign during the initial research period. Time spent on this will help you navigate uncertainty later.
• Be adaptive. As issues progress, think about different ways to achieve the same goal.
• Remember Perth is a small place. Be respectful to all the people you deal with. Ensure your credibility – be transparent, reference your data, identify yourselves and your sources (provided they have agreed to it!).
• Provide feasible solutions to the people whose behaviour you are trying to change.
• Be bold, aim high – ask to see the Minister/Premier/managing director. These people have the most influence and decision-making power. Don’t under-estimate the value of your ideas and opinions.
• Be opportunistic. If you know someone in high places, or get a chance to buttonhole someone important, take it. Keep an eye out for news stories that may be relevant to your campaign and see if the journalist is interested in talking to you.
• Don’t be afraid to ask stupid questions. Just go and ask the person who will be sure to know the answer and keep asking until you are sure you understand the issues.
• If a student, look for opportunities to combine a campaign with your coursework; assignment requirements are sometimes flexible.
• Enjoy the process – you will gain an amazing amount of contacts, knowledge and confidence in a short space of time. Plus you might just save the world!

Media tips

Eloise was a reporter for The West Australian for six years in addition for working for several community and special interest publications. Here are her thoughts if you decide to use media to highlight your campaign. (more…)

A while back I mentioned the Smart and Green campaign against the increased price of buying renewable electricity in WA from Synergy. The price had risen to 18.4 cents per kilowatt hour compared to only 13.94c/kwh for energy from coal and gas plants. Eloise Dortch and Jasmine Horobin organised a letter-writing campaign, arranged for Synergy’s customers to be interviewed in local papers, and met with Synergy to see if they could stop the price increase. As it turned out, the price rise had to stay, but the campaign has certainly raised the profile of renewable power issues in WA. I’ve never started my own campaign before, and asked Eloise more about it.

Why did you decide to start the Smart and Green campaign? Had you done anything like this before?

No, I’d never done anything like this before. While working as a newspaper reporter, I had always steered clear of ‘showing my colours’ as someone having strong opinions on any one issue. That was simply a practical thing to do since I was always interviewing people from various sides of an issue. Since my teens I had been involved in passive forms of activism, if that makes sense, such as joining the odd protest march, donating or becoming a member of various ‘green’ organisations and signing petitions.

Jasmine and I decided to start the campaign because we were both really cross about the issue. Synergy’s NaturalPower customers were already paying more to buy renewable electricity at a time when conventional coal-fired electricity in WA was clearly under-priced. Since the price of conventional electricity for small business and households in WA is to remain capped until 2009 it seemed insane and completely regressive in terms of action on climate change that only NaturalPower and SmartPower were experiencing a price hike based on inflation.

How did you decide on your tactics?

This was a process of evolution. Very early on, Jasmine and I recognised the need to be transparent and open in our dealings with anyone who came into contact with our campaign. An initial step was to see if any other group planned to take action and to see whether we could add value to their activities or whether we would be doubling up. We also talked to just about everyone we could think of who understood WA electricity policy or could add to our understanding of the issues. Although the two of us had previously worked on an energy policy document for WA as part of a university assignment, there was still aspects of the WA electricity industry we had trouble getting our heads around. So we went to conferences, made a lot of phone calls and met a lot of people. We found most people were deeply annoyed about the decision but no one was taking action on it.

The next step was to write proforma letters to be sent to Synergy’s managing director and to State MPs, to test the instructions we developed for emailing these and then to write the covering email that would be sent to all the people we hoped would join our campaign. We double-checked and tested this a few times by forwarding it to different email accounts in our names. Having two heads for all of this helped! We then sent out the first wave of emails to friends and family, waited a few days to see if we had stuffed up in anyway and then began expanding the network of people we emailed. As we thought of more contacts, we kept emailing it out.

We asked people to cc the proforma letters they sent to Synergy and their MPs to a special ‘SmartandGreen’ email account we had set up so that we could keep track of the rate of participation. We also invited people to send us their feedback. Some people were critical of our campaign because they said it would put more people off buying ‘green’ electricity. We responded to each email with our thoughts about such issues.

What kind of response did you get from the public, and from Synergy?

Synergy responded pretty quickly – by the end of the campaign in October/November – its managing director, Jim Mitchell, had received 48 emails from our campaign direct to his email in-box. Synergy’s head of corporate relations, Andrew Gaspar, developed a standard letter which Synergy sent to the campaign participants – however many people, of their own accord replied to this, thus further engaging Synergy on the issue. Meanwhile, certain MPs, most of whom happened to be Labor and thus in Government, started to receive multiple letters from their constituents and we were copied in on their responses which were mainly promises to investigate the matter. In total, 36 letters were sent to 13 MPs that we know of.

(more…)

Yesterday we went to the Perth Walk Against Warming protest march, which was held in Fremantle. We took advantage of the free public transport to get there from the city.We got there a bit early, and picked up a sign to carry. They had 4 or 5 different climate change signs for the people who hadn’t brought their own. We wandered around the Esplanade park doing some people-watching. There were also stalls for various causes and products; I signed a petition to stop mining in the Burrup region, and Dave bought me some organic sunscreen. Some poor guy was in a panda suit for the WWF - he must have been baking alive in there, but he was still performing for the kids.

Who was there?

There were all sorts of people there - from kids in prams to nanas with parasols; some people brought their dogs or their bongo drums; some had homemade signs, some had professionally-made ones. As for politicians, the Greens members had flags and matching Green shirts, which looked impressive when they stood in a group. There were Democrats as well, and a large bunch of people in Kevin07 t-shirts. I didn’t see any other minor parties, or any Liberal party representatives either.

There were quite a few people there promoting other causes. I think it’s better to keep the protest focused: promoting every issue under the sun makes you look like you’re just there to complain, while having a short list of specific actions you want lets people know exactly what you want from them, and what you’re trying to achieve. It’s a fine line though, because you also want to show that many different types of people support your cause, and having identifiable groups helps that. I think the organisers did well in this regard, because as an entire group I thought we looked pretty much on-topic.

The walk

The day started with a welcome to the land by an elder Aboriginal, then the Fremantle mayor spoke, and a few conservationists, then off we went!

The walk itself was shorter than I was expecting. This was a good thing, as it was really hot, about 36 degrees. We did a loop out to the main cappuccino strip in Freo, ending back at the park. There were a lot of spectators, pausing their shopping to watch us go by. Most seemed happy just to watch, a lot gave us the thumbs up, and a few laughed or swore at us. Our group was over 5000 strong, according to The West Australian, but Dave thinks it was closer to 8000. We were led by the Chameleon Brass band, who played some jazz and funk tunes, with about 20 people holding up windmills that look like the ones you get on wind-farms. It was quite a nice effect to see them turning in the breeze. There were also some giant puppets (not sure what they were to represent, except for the anti-nuke one); a few drumming bands; a group of cheerleaders called the Greenies; and everyone else of all shapes and sizes milling around in-between.

Afterwards they had speeches by the invited political representatives, with each one highlighting that the Liberals were a no-show. Another man spoke about what the consequences of climate change are for Australia, and what action we need to stop it - less of the “change a lightbulb” and more of the “no new coal power plants” variety. Then a few bands started to play, and we took a last look around before heading to the pub for a refreshing beer.

Other marches were held around WA and Australia - ours wasn’t the largest, but I think Perth was well-represented. I hope the number of people marching around the nation gives our politicians a clue about how seriously voters take this issue, and that we want serious action on climate change.

Turnbull has approved the Gunns pulp mill in Tasmania. After rigorous scientific assessment, he’s increased the number of conditions imposed on the mill from 24 to 48. This’d be great if they were actually going to monitor any of those conditions after the mill is built. Since Gunns has always ignored regulations in Tasmania, the extra conditions will make any difference at all.

Turnbull says the mill will be “world’s best practice”, but this is a lie - chlorine bleaching has been discontinued by the pulp industry elsewhere in the world because it’s too toxic, but Gunns wants to use it for this mill. Meanwhile, they’re still allowed to chop down the native old-growth forests of Tasmania to feed to the mill to make pulp. Those native forests are the only home for many native animals facing extinction; now they’ll be halved in size, from 11% to 5% of the original forest that remains.

The good news is that just because Turnbull has approved it, it doesn’t mean it’ll get built.

• The Tasmanian Greens are still going to fight against it and say there are grounds for a possible High Court challenge to Turnbull’s decision
• Federal Liberal MP Ben Quin has resigned from the Liberal party over the issue and will contest his Tasmanian seat as an independent because the mill approval represents a “fundamental failure of democracy”
• Geoff Cousins is campaigning to ask the ANZ to refuse finance to the project

Some YouTube links

• Greens Senator Christine Milne explains why they won’t give up
• The Chaser: Premier Lennon and Pulp Millsy - since Lennon likes mills in his backyard, they visit his house with Millsy from Season 1 of Australian Idol

Now that climate change is on the agenda for the upcoming federal election, have you wondered what your MP thinks about it? Probably not! But now that I’ve asked you, I’m sure you’re curious

The Big Switch sent out a survey about climate change and it’s solutions to each sitting Member of Parliament. You can search for your Federal MP to see what their climate change policies are. If they haven’t answered The Big Switch survey, you can email it to them to see if they respond. They’ve also assessed the policies of the major parties plus a few of the minor ones (Democrats, Greens, Family First), and some opposing candidates are answering the survey too.

I sent the survey to the Labor MP for my seat and haven’t had a reply yet. I also emailed Kevin Rudd: first I got a form letter response with Labor’s general environment policy, so I replied that that was nice but I’d like to see the survey questions answered. Recently I got another form letter from his office, but this time more closely addressing the survey questions. I sent it to the Big Switch to see if it could be used to give Rudd a rating on climate change, so we’ll see how that goes.

The site also has information about what climate change is, what you can do about it, and what people in your community are doing about it. It’s very encouraging to see so many people making an effort to change their lifestyles and neighbourhoods.