What is

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What is Green?New ACCC Legal Implications and
Certification

• Jean Cannon

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50 of Australians pay more for sustainability
They BELIEVE it is Sustainable
BELIEVE is the key word
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ACCC
Green Marketing and the Trade Practices Act,
November 2007 Fines up to 1.2Million SAAB
Woolworths
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What is Under ACCC Review?
Enviro That
Eco This
Images
Vague Promises
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They Specifically Mentioned Frogs
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What does a Frog Mean?
My frog makes a comment on some environmental
issue in every newsletter. I can back up my
environmental credentials
Last newsletter the frog reminded people about
the 100 tons of CO2 per year that Australian beer
fridges emit and they are even more inefficient
if they are built into cupboards.
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ACCC

• Claims must be able to be backed up with records
  and facts.
• Greenwashing is really fraud.

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Marketers sell on emotion

• They build emotion connect with the buyers.
• It is their job.
• They must NOT stretch the truth

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Green Product Standards

• Good Environmental Choice Australia (GECA),
• Greenhouse Friendly,
• Eco-Buy and
• EcoSpecifier.

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Green Product Standards

• Vague and confusing.
• Who really knows who audits these standards?
• How rigorous are they?
• Where they are recognised?

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Prove How?
Prove What?
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What is Proof?
Collect data Document their green
credentials. Do they only sell green
products? How do they really know that their
green products are truly green? What are their
own practices?
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Supply Chain Traceability
They need to have Evidence of chemicals at
every step Evidence of energy at every
step They also need to consider their supply and
distribution chain.
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Organic Confusion

• Perception that organic is safe and
  environmentally friendly
• Organic certification does not always cover all
  the significant environmental impacts
• Some of their green is woolly

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Organic Confusion

• Nippys Orange Juice food poisoning incident
  caused by manure contaminated water
• Red Tipped Bananas
• Red Bananas from ISO 14001 farm
• The shop said organic

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EMS In Ag Projects?

• Wide range of EMS in Agriculture programs.
• Large budget, a lot of work by very well meaning
  people.
• But how many of them really delivered a rigorous
  EMS or were many of them EM and some only a dab
  of E?
• Did some verge on greenwash?

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One Meat Industry Group

• I was invited as one of only two who were
  actually qualified auditors.
• No concept of conflict of interest
• Just ticking off a simple checklist.
• It was NOT certified green meat,
• Not certified green management practices.
• Little consideration of the bigger picture
  including the larger environmental impact of the
  operations and lifecycle of the inputs and
  outputs both product and waste.
• Lack of understanding of standards

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An Australian Standard

• A fishing industry group developed its own
  standard funded by FRDC.
• They registered their standard with Standards
  Australias SAI Global who audited it and found
  that it did not stack up as a standard that would
  be able to be audited against.
• They had no concept of what is an auditable
  standard.
• How many other product standards actually checked
  with Standards Australia?

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Marine Stewardship MSC

• Supermarkets in the UK and World Wildlife Fund
  (WWF).
• A product standard certifying that the fishery
  itself is sustainable
• Expensive to audit, (our fisheries have a much
  greater diversity than the North Sea) overlaps
  Com law.
• No impact on the on-boat and in-shed practices of
  each fisher.
• I am currently working with a fisher from an MSC
  fishery doing ISO 14001 to get the business
  improvement that comes from ISO 14001.
• She said MSC is the certification you do if you
  dont really want to be certified.

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Carbon Credits

• Carbon Neutral?
• What does this mean?

• Planting Trees?
• How is this managed?

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Carbon Trading Another bag of worms

• Additional ACCC guidelines coming for
• claims relating to carbon offsets,
• representing a reduction of greenhouse gases, and
  
• carbon neutrality, where the carbon emissions of
  the company or a product or service are negated
  by offsets.
• Interestingly, the airlines vary enormously in
  their reporting of the greenhouse gas emissions
  of the same aircraft flying the same route

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How good is the accounting?

• A common mistake is to claim carbon neutrality
  for a product but only consider emissions during
  manufacturing and not the total life cycle, which
  includes use and disposal.
• And this does not even touch on some of the tree
  planting practices to claim carbon credits.

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One Challenged Claim

• A design and print company claimed carbon neutral
  in 2006
• ACCC forced them to rethink the total life cycle
  of its services.
• The printers included the soy-based,
  biodegradable inks in the printing factory in
  Melbourne when measuring the companys
  environmental footprint,
• but were surprised that the source of the paper
  was also questioned.

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Carbon Accounting

• Worse than the GST
• The first 300 start reporting July 1
• A7 billion software and system set up costs
• Lets concentrate on reduction

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Manage Green Practices

• ISO 14001 has
• Systematic Identification of all its significant
  environmental impacts
• Including product and energy impacts
• Demonstrated that these are managed in a
  sustainable manner
• Feedback and review

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Manage Green Practices

• Includes
• Training
• Maintenance
• Control of contractors
• Contingency planning
• ISO 14001 brings real benefits to the individual
  business by increasing its efficiency and
  improving its environmental impacts.

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ISO 14001

• It is far more satisfactory to say, as so many
  overseas brands do, produced by an ISO 14001
  certified business than trying to dream up
  various new standards.
• Essential for food into the UK most of EU

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ISO 14001

• Internationally accepted recognised standard
  
• The only standard that certifies environmentally
  sustainable management
• It requires you to identify all your activities
  and impacts as well as the legislation and
  regulations that apply to you.

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ISO 14001

• Demonstrate you do everything a reasonable
  person can be expected to ensure that you and
  all your employees, including contractors, comply
  with the law.
• You identify and systematically analyse the
  actual and potential impacts of ALL your
  activities and also of emergency situations.

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ISO 14001 in Agriculture

• This is particularly important on farms where the
  home-life of families and the workplace are mixed
  and kids grow up helping.
• Some if the interested parties who could be
  impacted on, or cause the environmental impacts
  may well be your children and their friends who
  visit.

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What Next?

• Develop and monitor a management system with
  feedback to control these environmental and
  legislative risks and to keep this compliance up
  to date with effective feedback loops and
  continual improvement.

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Build in an effective feedback loop

• Record problems including minor incidents and
  near misses to build prevention
• Add internal auditing.
• For certification you pay an independent
  qualified third party auditor to check that what
  you say complies with the standard and that you
  actually do what you say.

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This is real and effective green management!

• And it does not have to be difficult.
• The trick is put a lot of effort into identifying
  and analysing all the potential and actual
  environmental impacts
• Then what resources are needed to manage them.
• Add a well designed slimline system to control
  those impacts.

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This is a bit like an iceberg with only a small
amount showing
Slim System On a Broad Foundation

• The day to day working system does not add a lot
  of overheads to the business.
• Keep it simple.

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ISO 14001 is certification of the management
practices

• ISO 14001 benefits both your business and the
  environment

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And it does not have to be difficult.

• Identify ALL activities
• Build a broad foundation
• Then a stable slim-line system
• It takes careful planning the better you do
  this the better your system works for you.

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ISO 14001 is the only credible whole of business
green