We've been saying this for a while!

It seemed quite obvious to us at Leap that the ICT sector is a massive carbon abuser. Businesses say about giving up paper as it saves the environment but the increased demands on bandwith and server use is several times more detrimental to the environment. Alright it saves businesses money on marketing by specifically using the web and it also gives the feel it's not harming the environment, simply because that information to date hasn't been available. But now from one of our clients it is.

An instant counter balance would be to change business electricity use to a 100% renewable electricity tariff and the only true one of those and the only one we'd ever use to date is Good Energy's supply.

matt


The ‘Inefficient Truth’

An Inefficient Truth is the first research report produced by Global Action Plan on behalf of the Environmental IT Leadership Team. The Leadership Team is a unique gathering of major ICT users from a range of different sectors (NHS, John Lewis, Sony etc) who are committed to taking practical action to cut carbon dioxide emissions.

The report contains four sections.

The first section assesses the environmental impact of the ICT sector which is virtually the equivalent of the aviation industry.
Section two analyses survey results from major ICT users and discovers how quickly and effectively the sector is responding to the environmental agenda.
The third section takes a snapshot look at some case studies illustrating how companies are implementing practical solutions that are reducing carbon emissions and saving them money.
Finally, there is a Call to Action from Global Action Plan setting out some of the challenges facing Government, vendors and users in order to move the sector towards a lower carbon future.
An Inefficient Truth is the first part of a longer journey which will see Global Action Plan using its position as an independent practical environmental charity to help cut carbon emissions from the ICT sector. Please contact me for more details on how we are working with the IT industry further.

http://www.globalactionplan.org.uk/event_detail.aspx?eid=ef0cecc6-2621-4a3c-962c-e4758b8952f8 – to download the full report

http://itn.co.uk/news/3bc1df24a662a3db3f3d911a7a83ef32.html - ITN Video coverage

Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/dec/03/carbonfootprints.carbonemissions?gusrc=rss&feed=technology

The information and communication technology (ICT) sector in the UK has a carbon footprint as big as the aviation industry, according to a report released today.

ICT equipment accounts for 3-4% of the world's carbon emissions, says the report by Global Action Plan, which warns that growth in carbon emissions from the sector is exacerbated by government policies requiring higher levels of data to be stored.

The report found that 61% of data centres only have the capacity for two years of growth and 37% of companies are storing data indefinitely due to government policy.

It also revealed that 86% of ICT departments surveyed did not know the carbon footprint of their activities, 80% of respondents did not believe their company's data policies to be environmentally sustainable, and less than 20% have even seen their energy bills.

The report, An Inefficient Truth, is understood to be the UK's first survey to measure awareness between the use of ICT in business and its contribution to the UK's carbon footprint.

More than 60% of the chief executives, IT director and senior decision makers from 120 UK enterprises which took part in the survey said time pressures and cost were the biggest barriers to adopting sustainable ICT policies. They believed that recognised standards and tax allowances would help the sector to reduce emissions.

Global Action Plan is calling on the government to provide incentives to help companies reduce their ICT carbon footprint and to review its policies on long-term data storage to take into account the carbon implications.

It wants ICT vendors to improve the quality of their environmental information, for ICT departments to be accountable for the energy costs of ICT equipment and for companies to ensure their ICT infrastructure meets stricter efficiency targets.

Trewin Restorick, the director of Global Action Plan and chairman of the environmental IT leadership team, said: "The average server has roughly the same annual carbon footprint as a [sport utility vehicle] doing 15 miles per gallon.

"With carbon footprint now equal to the aviation industry, ICT, and how businesses utlitise ICT, will increasingly come under the spotlight as government seeks to achieve carbon cutting commitments."

He added that ICT departments have been "slow off the mark to address their carbon footprint", but awareness was now growing.

"To turn this into action, ICT departments need help. They need vendors to give them better information rather than selling green froth, [and] they need government policies to become more supportive and less contradictory," said Restorick.

Tom Kelly, the managing director of Logicalis UK - sponsors of the report – said under-utilisation was a prime example of "energy abuse". The report found that almost 40% of servers are underutilised by more than half of their capacity.

He called on business to evaluate the efficiency of existing ICT infrastructure and improve efficiency in order to avoid legislation.

"A flabby business that guzzles budget and energy is likely to be a prime target for impending legislation," said Kelly. "In short, efficient IT equals green IT."

US pull sucker punch at Bali?

this is from George Monbiot, always worth listening to.

Published on Monday, December 17, 2007 by The Guardian/UK
We’ve Been Suckered Again by the US. So Far the Bali Deal Is Worse than Kyoto
America will keep on wrecking climate talks as long as those with vested interests in oil and gas fund its political system
by George Monbiot

“After 11 days of negotiations, governments have come up with a compromise deal that could even lead to emission increases. The highly compromised political deal is largely attributable to the position of the United States, which was heavily influenced by fossil fuel and automobile industry interests. The failure to reach agreement led to the talks spilling over into an all-night session.”

These are extracts from a press release by Friends of the Earth. So what? Well it was published on December 11 - I mean to say, December 11 1997. The US had just put a wrecking ball through the Kyoto protocol. George Bush was innocent; he was busy executing prisoners in Texas. Its climate negotiators were led by Albert Arnold Gore.

The European Union had asked for greenhouse gas cuts of 15% by 2010. Gore’s team drove them down to 5.2% by 2012. Then the Americans did something worse: they destroyed the whole agreement.

Most of the other governments insisted that the cuts be made at home. But Gore demanded a series of loopholes big enough to drive a Hummer through. The rich nations, he said, should be allowed to buy their cuts from other countries. When he won, the protocol created an exuberant global market in fake emissions cuts. The western nations could buy “hot air” from the former Soviet Union. Because the cuts were made against emissions in 1990, and because industry in that bloc had subsequently collapsed, the former Soviet Union countries would pass well below the bar. Gore’s scam allowed them to sell the gases they weren’t producing to other nations. He also insisted that rich nations could buy nominal cuts from poor ones. Entrepreneurs in India and China have made billions by building factories whose primary purpose is to produce greenhouse gases, so that carbon traders in the rich world will pay to clean them up.

The result of this sabotage is that the market for low-carbon technologies has remained moribund. Without an assured high value for carbon cuts, without any certainty that government policies will be sustained, companies have continued to invest in the safe commercial prospects offered by fossil fuels rather than gamble on a market without an obvious floor.

By ensuring that the rich nations would not make real cuts, Gore also guaranteed that the poor ones scoffed when we asked them to do as we don’t. When George Bush announced, in 2001, that he would not ratify the Kyoto protocol, the world cursed and stamped its foot. But his intransigence affected only the US. Gore’s team ruined it for everyone.

The destructive power of the American delegation is not the only thing that hasn’t changed. After the Kyoto protocol was agreed, the then British environment secretary, John Prescott, announced: “This is a truly historic deal which will help curb the problems of climate change. For the first time it commits developed countries to make legally binding cuts in their emissions.” Ten years later, the current environment secretary, Hilary Benn, told us that “this is an historic breakthrough and a huge step forward. For the first time ever, all the world’s nations have agreed to negotiate on a deal to tackle dangerous climate change.” Do these people have a chip inserted?

In both cases, the US demanded terms that appeared impossible for the other nations to accept. Before Kyoto, the other negotiators flatly rejected Gore’s proposals for emissions trading. So his team threatened to sink the talks. The other nations capitulated, but the US still held out on technicalities until the very last moment, when it suddenly appeared to concede. In 1997 and in 2007 it got the best of both worlds: it wrecked the treaty and was praised for saving it.

Hilary Benn is an idiot. Our diplomats are suckers. American negotiators have pulled the same trick twice, and for the second time our governments have fallen for it.

There are still two years to go, but so far the new agreement is even worse than the Kyoto protocol. It contains no targets and no dates. A new set of guidelines also agreed at Bali extend and strengthen the worst of Gore’s trading scams, the clean development mechanism. Benn and the other dupes are cheering and waving their hats as the train leaves the station at last, having failed to notice that it is travelling in the wrong direction.

Although Gore does a better job of governing now he is out of office, he was no George Bush. He wanted a strong, binding and meaningful protocol, but American politics had made it impossible. In July 1997, the Senate had voted 95-0 to sink any treaty which failed to treat developing countries in the same way as it treated the rich ones. Though they knew this was impossible for developing countries to accept, all the Democrats lined up with all the Republicans. The Clinton administration had proposed a compromise: instead of binding commitments for the developing nations, Gore would demand emissions trading. But even when he succeeded, he announced that “we will not submit this agreement for ratification [in the Senate] until key developing nations participate”. Clinton could thus avoid an unwinnable war.

So why, regardless of the character of its leaders, does the US act this way? Because, like several other modern democracies, it is subject to two great corrupting forces. I have written before about the role of the corporate media - particularly in the US - in downplaying the threat of climate change and demonising anyone who tries to address it. I won’t bore you with it again, except to remark that at 3pm eastern standard time on Saturday, there were 20 news items on the front page of the Fox News website. The climate deal came 20th, after “Bikini-wearing stewardesses sell calendar for charity” and “Florida store sells ‘Santa Hates You’ T-shirt”.

Let us consider instead the other great source of corruption: campaign finance. The Senate rejects effective action on climate change because its members are bought and bound by the companies that stand to lose. When you study the tables showing who gives what to whom, you are struck by two things.

One is the quantity. Since 1990, the energy and natural resources sector - mostly coal, oil, gas, logging and agribusiness - has given $418m to federal politicians in the US. Transport companies have given $355m. The other is the width: the undiscriminating nature of this munificence. The big polluters favour the Republicans, but most of them also fund Democrats. During the 2000 presidential campaign, oil and gas companies lavished money on Bush, but they also gave Gore $142,000, while transport companies gave him $347,000. The whole US political system is in hock to people who put their profits ahead of the biosphere.

So don’t believe all this nonsense about waiting for the next president to sort it out. This is a much bigger problem than George Bush. Yes, he is viscerally opposed to tackling climate change. But viscera don’t have much to do with it. Until the American people confront their political funding system, their politicians will keep speaking from the pocket, not the gut.

George Monbiot is the author of the best selling books The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain.

Marbel Eden Project photoshoot

Ok, so I'm very bias here and perks of our clients made a great opportunity to get my fantastic daughters involved in one of our newest clients projects. The client was Marbel - Beautiful, safe, environmentally friendly and naturally made wooden toys to help your child learn through play. They have a wonderful range of toys and Leap was called in to work on their 2008 showcase catalogue, which will be out in January 2008. With a 3 week turnaround...

As with all our work we are producing the brochure for the first time on 80% recycled stock and we managed to beat the price of the previous brochures virgin stock! And nice vegetable based inks.

Leap also arranged the photo shoot and we pulled in a favour with our old workplace Eden, an ideal setting for a bunch of kids (and some kid like adults) to to a days photo shoot in the Warm Tropic Biome. With the excellent snapping of one of Cornwalls finest photographers Bob Berry. (shot attached is one of Bobs http://www.bbphoto.net/ )

About 30 seconds after this very excitable shot of Bo was taken she came a cropper and tore the skin off her knees. Alas it was then time to whisk her and her sister Gracie away to nursery so Daddy could continue the shoot.

www.marbel.co.uk

more habbits

This ones for my lovely business partner (and girlfriend) Clare. Still don't understand how she beat me - I personally think she's slightly damaging to the environment... well more than I.

matt

story of stuff

this is long but a great eye opener! ENJOY OR NOT;)


http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Team Habbits

this could become a really useful tool and I've asked my whole team to create their habbits. Although I'm disappointed that there isn't too much between us on eco levels and there was me thinking I was super green...just shows. Admittedly they could be telling pork pies to get on my happy side:)

Great idea though and interesting to play with, every part of the body, eyes, feet, hands, butt etc represents and environemental aspect, ie food, travel, technology.

Attached are me, Darren our senior creative and Graham who does all the nice (and way over my head) coding.

Cornwall Sustainability Awards

Wowie,
we won two awards at this years CSA07 held at the wonderful Trebah Gardens. We won the SME and Overall winner categories in which we were up against some mighty fine 'doing the right thing' sustainably active Cornish businesses. And keynote speaker for the awards Charlie Brown, environmental manager for Ikea has asked us to come and see them to talk further, based on hearing our presentation. Which was about how it is so important for design to take it's creative lead with sustainability to help solve climate change and how we do it with Leap.

A big thanks to Claire Wilcox who heads up our operations for taking the time to put a well written entry in.

Just one choice

Just one choice

In eight days Al Gore is going to address the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, Indonesia. At his urging, I've signed an important petition showing I support his important call for a visionary treaty to address the climate crisis. I hope you will too.

http://climateprotect.org/standwithal

The world's elected leaders must take the steps necessary to solve global warming. It's not too late. We have the opportunity now to improve the Earth's future for our children, and their children. If we don't act, we will only have ourselves to blame.


Please sign the petition today. Click here

today

Well it's been a while, and we have as usual lots to tell you but just not today.

Today the team will be attending the Cornwall Sustainability Awards where Leap has been shortlisted for the small business category. It will be a good time for us all to get together and have a breather from our fast paced and currently transient studio. Take some time out, see friends, clients and other business that are pushing their environmental boundaries.

I'll let you know the outcome and I'll also give you an update on Cornwall Design Week, student portfolio clinics, meeting TV presenter of Dumped, Rob Holdway and our plans for the future.


matt