Friday, March 25, 2011

Resource

I’ve just spent the last three days presenting the IEMA approved Internal Auditor course to seven delightful delegates from various sectors. I love presenting in-house courses where everyone knows each other and they have lots of experience and requirements in common but courses based in ECUS with randomly selected delegates can be wonderfully enlightening. They may sometimes be more difficult because you may be trying to meet the needs of a delegate from a major manufacturing company whilst not neglecting the needs of a delegate from an office based company but the synergies you get can be marvellous. On this course we had some real experts in their fields who were very generous in sharing their knowledge and not only was it enlightening, it was fun.

I’m often surprised by how much people already know but I’m also occasionally disconcerted about what they are not aware of. On most of our courses we link waste and resource use, and sometimes quality as poor quality management can lead to a lot of waste.

On this particular course we talk about major resource issues that we are or will soon be facing. Some resources are, of course, renewable, but only if we manage them sustainably. Examples might be timber, soil, fish and so on. Some things are not renewable except in geological time scales, for example, metals and minerals. Some are not renewable at all and will eventually be exhausted, for example helium, oil and coal. All of these things, to one extent or another, are essential to our way of life. Rare earth metals, for example, are used in tablet computers, hybrid cars, wind turbines, catalytic converters and the more efficient solar PV panels.

Many of the resource issues are exacerbated by where the deposits of the materials are and the environmental impact of their exploitation. The vast majority (~97%) of rare earths are now sourced from China and with this effective monopoly comes increasing concerns for availability. Every time I have googled ‘China, rare earth’ in news over the last several months there have been stories about this issue. Today the news is of a huge increase in taxes making the cost per tonne more than $100,000. The availability and price of oil is also very much affected by the location of most oil reserves.56% of world oil reserves are in the Middle East, currently suffering from a period of unrest.

My big surprise was that when I asked my training group who was aware of the idea of peak oil no-one said yes. Resource depletion is a massively important issue that will affect us all in many different ways and peak oil is one of the most urgent and important. With reference back to my resilience post of a few weeks ago, imagine how we would live without cheap fossil fuels. Our whole complex society depends on each complicated component being sourced from wherever it can be made most cheaply and delivered Just In Time to wherever it is needed. This can only work in an era of cheap oil. Currently oil is not as cheap as it was, bouncing around $100 per barrel.

At the same time that there is a global problem with oil, there is a national problem. The UK was, for a good amount of time, energy self sufficient thanks to the North Sea oil and gas fields. This is no longer the case. Last year we had to import more than 40% of our gas. 40%!! No wonder the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) produced The UK Low Carbon Transition Plan in 2009. It wasn’t just about climate change. To a large extent it was about keeping the lights on for all of us.

I spend a fair amount of time keeping up with what is happening with resource issues and I occasionally read through the comment threads as well. When I’m feeling strong. More often than I care to remember there are major skirmishes about how best to deal with these, whether governments should try to legislate to bring down consumption and hence protect out current comfortable lives for longer or whether the market should be allowed to operate without control. The argument is that as prices increase due to scarcity the almighty market will step in and cause the production of more of the important commodity. This only works if there is more of the commodity available to be extracted within a workable timescale. With oil it takes around ten years from discovery of a resource for an oil well to become fully productive. Oil wells are also no longer being drilled in easily accessible places where the return on investment is high so prices have to be consistently high for a long time for new well to be worth developing. If this does not work then the market is supposed to rush out and produce hyper-efficient vehicles, power supplies and the associated infrastructure. Also, presumably, people will be induced, by the cost, to look at minimising their own energy usage.

This is a wonderful idea as was the idea of taxing pollution sources with a tax escalator on fuel prices. The recent UK budget has, again, dealt a blow to the theory. Oil prices are rising so the chancellor has stepped in and instead of raising tax by the expected 3p/litre has reduced it by 1p/litre. I know that all drivers and transport companies are struggling at the moment with high prices but how is the omnipotent market supposed to save us all if the government steps in whenever we reach a level where it should start to work?

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Interesting link

This is a useful and interesting chart which puts radiation fears into perspective. Have a look here.

Friday, March 18, 2011

On yer bike!

Well life has been very exciting at ECUS these last few weeks. We are now fully installed in the Meadowhall office and are settling in nicely. As predicted we are missing the charity shops, the independent cafes and restaurants and Margaret, our wonderful cleaner for many years. There are those who think that Meadowhall is a suitable substitute and there seem to have been a few trips out to M&S and Greggs. Chris has even found a possible replacement for Vittles to provide lunches for the EMS Internal Auditor course that I’m running next week. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

One of the things that continues to be a topic of conversation for us in our new place is how we all get to work. Most of those who have always driven continue to do so, finding the easy access from the M1 is a boon. Those of us who walked to work are considering out options.

One of the main reasons I used to walk to work, other than the fact that I got rid of my car and First cancelled the bus, was that it gave me some exercise that didn’t involve treadmills, aircon and MTV. Catching two buses, one into town and the other out to Meadowhall on the other side, would do away with that. Also, it is expensive and takes a long time. My first solution has been to walk to the station, it takes about three quarters of an hour, hop onto the train to Bridlington at 8.41, get off again five minutes later at Meadowhall and walk along the Transpennine Trail to the back gate into the car park. This has turned out to be both quite pleasant and good exercise. Because I’ve hardly been in the office lately and one thing and another, I’ve done that trip to work several times but not the trip back. The trip that involves the long uphill drag home.

This morning I was all set to walk in again but, predictably, I ended up running late. Oops! Not to worry though. I had an alternative just waiting to be tried. I couple of weeks ago I went shopping. Now I’m not a woman who enjoys shopping. Shopping for clothes is always disappointing because I’m not a size 10 and shopping for food is boring. This was different though and I had a personal shopper and everything. A helpful young man called Tom. I went to the Edinburgh Bicycle Cooperative at Nether Edge in Sheffield. I told Tom what I wanted and within a matter of minutes I had a bike ordered and all the extra stuff you have to buy these days; pannier rack, lights, locks, helmet, mudguards (!) and cycle clips. Which I immediately misplaced but a couple of red Post Office elastic bands do very well. A week later I was in possession of a beautiful white Specialize Ariel bike, a girly bike (no cross bar). I love it.

So when I was already five minutes late I looked to Ariel to save me. I manoeuvred it onto the road and then walked it down the hill. It’s got good brakes but that hill is too scary to ride down. I doubt I’d be able to stop at the bottom. And then I rode it, via back roads and cycle-paths, to the station and loaded us both on the Brid train. A special reason for choosing that train is that it arrives on the platform allowing immediate ramped access to the Transpennine Trail. I arrived at work on time and happy.

Full of myself and my achievement I decided to cycle the entire route home. There was plenty of advice available, both on the internet and in the office. I was assured that the best route back was following the Five Weirs Walk. Unfortunately the map I printed off was too vague to be useful and anyway, it fell out of my pocket at some point. I didn’t worry though. This is such a high profile path that it would be bound to be well signposted. Or, as it turned out, not. And it was getting dark and I had to get home under my own steam as a bike that fits in a train doesn’t fit so well on a bus or in a taxi. The off-road sections of the route were wonderful. Some of the route was on-road though. I could have coped with the occasional on-road section if I hadn’t found that the red cycle paths petered out without a sign in sight to point to where to go next. Luckily, at one of these junctures, I recognized the 69 bus route that I had taken three days last week and followed that into town. I had been hoping to avoid bus routes but the drivers, perhaps recognizing an unconfident cyclist, gave me a wide berth. I finally arrived home with a great sense of triumph and a need for a soft cushion to sit on.

What I learned from this exercise in unprepared confidence was that really a bit of pre-planning would have been useful. We’ve produced some great travel plans over the years and have given lots of advice about how best to ensure people travel safely. We recommend that copies of the, often, free maps are obtained and kept at the office. We recommend all sorts of information and help, much of it available from the council or organizations like Pedal Ready and Sustrans and, again, much of it free or very reasonably priced. We’ve just been a bit busy sorting out what fixtures should be in the toilets (we women would like a mirror for example) and who brings in the milk, to do this important job. I think I might volunteer.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

George...don't do that!

It wasn't just Alison out and about recently - we all went to this event but Alison wrote it up:


Leaving work on time and a glass of wine always heralds a good start to an evening. And this one was no exception. The environmental management team minus Catherine :( but plus our most faithful groupie (Sally, Yvonne's daughter) trooped off to see one of our heros in action the other night at the Showcase.

George Monbiot was in town for one night only. I wasn't sure what to expect. We frequently read his blog and almost got him to agree to meet us for lunch at our last Away Day, but aside from knowing he is an excellent scribe with very well-formed personal views on a progressive society, we didn't know much else.

The format worked well - George opened the event with a 10 minute speech presenting an opinion on the changes to the NHS. And then he opened up the discussion to the floor. It was well attended with young and old there in equal numbers. He has done these events a lot in the past few years and took care to allow equal comments from men and women. Whilst I expect he was preaching to the converted in many cases, it was also a great opportunity to challenge our own opinions by listening to comments from a wide range of people in the audience. There were chatterboxes, quietly considered opinions, rambling comments, rants, left wingers, right wingers and bang in the middle wingers and swearers. We talked about the economy, society, the power of individuals, climate change, fossil fuels, supply and demand models and prostitution.

But the one thing I took away from it is the huge variety of opinions that are out there and the correspondingly huge privilege we have in terms of being allowed to express our opinions in public in this country. I agreed with some and I completely disagreed with others. But that didn't reduce the respect I had for anyone in the room. They are all entitled to their opinions. It would be great if we could find a way to get more and more people from all walks of life interested in sharing their views in this way.

So George....please keep doing that!

Friday, March 4, 2011

A 'lean' approach to sustainabilty

Alison has been out and about again. Here she reports on an interesting topic:

I can honestly say that I never stop learning in my job. That is a privilege but also hard work sometimes! It means you constantly have to review how you think, what you are doing and how you are advising your clients.

Working with the manufacturing sector has taught me a lot about efficiency and waste, and not just tangible efficiency and waste. Time, use of raw materials, distance travelled, stock management, communication between the office and the shop floor; all of these elements of manufacturing have the potential to create tangible waste and intangible inefficiencies in the system.

However, when I look at that list of potential wastes I immediately think about sustainability as opposed to lean manufacturing. It is clear that the two are inextricably linked. Generally speaking, efficient processes, efficient use of raw materials, reducing miles travelled and improving communication are tools that we use in our jobs to discuss the environmental element of sustainability with clients.

Sustainability is about the environmental AND social impacts of the economic activities that we carry out. So we can’t forget the social side of this too. It may be that more efficient or ‘leaner’ processes in manufacturing leads to loss of jobs as processes become streamlined or automated. That is a challenge for society as a whole – if you ask a manufacturer what their primary aim is it will probably be something like ‘creating value’ not ‘creating jobs’.

On Tuesday I was at an excellent event on ‘Lean Office’ organised by the very practical and supportive Manufacturing Advisory Service. Despite the potential challenges of having ‘lean’ organisations on society, it is a tool that can be effectively linked to sustainability. Carrying out value stream or process mapping of any organisation’s processes can highlight areas of waste within the system that may be able to be managed out. Reducing physical waste has an immediate cost benefit to the company and will help you conform to the new legal requirements of adhering to the waste hierarchy (reduce, reuse, recycle).

We need to start taking a broader approach to all these tools and concepts available to organisations – sustainability effectively challenges us to see the bigger picture and look at things as a whole, without forgetting people and the environment. Taking a ‘lean’ approach can be an excellent starting point.

Alison Fanshawe