October-November 1998

 Toward Waste Prevention Performance Indicators - An OECD Initiative
Waste prevention has been a long-term environmental goal of many countries for decades. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is now addressing the fact that 25 years of environment and waste policy related endeavors across OECD countries have not as yet produced any widely accepted indicators to measure performance in waste prevention. This deficiency is worrisome since the inability to measure progress on this front is an obstacle to progress in achieving the goal of waste prevention itself. Indeed, the latest OECD data indicate that municipal waste has increased in Member countries by over 35% (overall) and 25% (on a per capita basis) since 1980.

Initially, this OECD work is considering a "family" of possible indicators relating to the assessment of actual, as well as potential, waste prevention. The scope of the work includes both consumption- and production-related wastes. The longer term goal is to have a performance measurement system for evaluating the separate contributions of waste prevention measures and other activities to overall waste minimisation and de-materialisation at the macro-level, and to establish links to appropriate micro-level and sectoral indicators.

This project has been initiated through the OECD Expert Group on Waste Minimisation, with oversight by the Working Party on Pollution Prevention and Control, and in collaboration with the Working Group on the State of Environment. The outcome from this project is to be integrated into the OECD Core Set of Environmental Indicators. It will also help to underpin OECD Environmental Performance Reviews. The continuation of the waste prevention indicators work, as with related OECD waste minimisation projects, is subject to the availability of voluntary funds in upcoming years. Funding contribution proposals from public and private organizations are welcomed by the OECD Secretariat. 

For further information, please contact: Fabio Vancini, OECD, Paris, tel +33 1 4524 7695, fax + 33 1 4524 7876, E-mail: fabio.vancini@oecd.org.

Ecofrig - The Green Refrigerator
Driven by changes in lifestyle and consumption patterns, refrigerators have become an item of daily necessity in modern lives. The increase in demand for refrigerators has outpaced the economic growth rates of many countries around the globe. "Ecofrig" is an environment friendly refrigerator which uses the safe hydrocarbon (HC) technology for coolant and insulation. This technology is safe for both the ozone layer and the climate, while the currently used technologies, CFCs and their substitutes HFCs, are not. The chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) technology is harmful for the ozone layer which shields us from the dangerous ultra-violet rays. Research in the recent past has concluded that the thinning of the ozone layer is due to CFCs and other ozone depleting substances into the atmosphere. Exposure to ultra-violet radiation leads not only to skin cancer but also to genetic mutations. Under the Montreal Protocol for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, signed by the International Community in 1987, CFCs will be phased out from many applications. The hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are ozone friendly but their emissions contribute to global warming. In fact, they are a part of the six green-house gases which are controlled substances under the Kyoto Protocol for climate change. 

Ecofrig is also known as Greenfreeze, a name given to it by Greenpeace International, which is campaigning for this technology to be adopted all over the world. The Ecofrig technology is freely available world-wide. In fact, over 90% of all refrigerators manufactured in Germany are based on this technology and several other countries are promoting it. On International Ozone Day, 16 September 1998, environment and consumer groups in India launched an awareness campaign which will promote the adoption of the climate-friendly Ecofrig. The event was marked by a two day National Consultation on "Ecofrig-The Indian Dimension", organised at New Delhi by Consumer Unity & Trust Society, India. The participants included representatives from refrigerator manufacturers, media, non-government organisations, research institutions, and various government departments.

For further details please contact Mr. Rohit Jindal at E-mail: cutsjpr@jp1.vsnl.net.in.

Human Development Report 1998
The 1998 Human Development Report was launched in The Hague, the Netherlands, on 9-10 September. The central theme of this year's report is "Consumption for Human Development". The report finds that public and private consumption will top $24 trillion this year, i.e. twice the 1975 level and six times that of 1950. It also finds that gaps between the world's richest and poorest people have been steadily widening, and that in Africa, the average household consumes 20 percent less than it did 25 years ago. In many poor countries in South Asia and Africa, fast-growing populations are depleting natural resources, and household purchasing power is declining. Richer nations, on the other hand, are reducing population growth while increasing consumption. The 20 percent of the global population in high-income countries account for 86 percent of private consumption; while the poorest 20 percent of the world's people consume only 1.3 percent of the pie, according to the report. The report says that Americans spend more on cosmetics, $8 billion annually, and Europeans on ice cream, $11 billion, than the estimated cost to provide basic education ($6 billion) or water and sanitation ($9 billion) to the more than 2 billion people worldwide who go without schools and toilets. Military expenditures are also disproportionately high. Worldwide, countries spend $780 billion on the military and people spend $400 billion on illicit drugs, the report says. 

It is argued in the report that consumption contributes to human development when it enlarges the capabilities and enriches the lives of people without harming others, is fair to generations both future and present, and encourages lively and creative individuals and communities. According to the report, the five goals for linking consumption and human development are: (1) raise the consumption levels of more than a billion poor people still unable to meet their basis needs, (2) adopt sustainable consumption patterns that reduce environmental damage, (3) discourage patterns that reinforce inequalities and poverty, (4) protect and promote the rights of consumers to product information, access and safety, and (5) achieve more equitable international burden-sharing in reducing and preventing global environmental damage and poverty.

The book also includes the Human Development Index (HDI), which ranks nations according to education and health criteria, as well as traditional economic figures like per capita gross domestic product. This year Canada, France, Norway, the United States, Iceland, Finland, the Netherlands, Japan, New Zealand and Sweden rank as the top 10 of the 174 nations surveyed. At the other end of the scale, the ten least developed countries in human terms are, from the bottom up, Sierra Leone, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Burundi, Ehtiopia, Eritrea, Guinea, Mozambique, and Gambia. Other Indices included in the book are the Gender-related Development Index (GDI), the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), and the Human Poverty Index for Developing Countires (HPI-1).

The Human Development Report 1998 is published for the United Nations Development Programme, by Oxford University Press; Tel: (800) 451 7556; website: http://www.oup-usa.org.
You can also visit the HDR website at http://www.undp.org/undp/hdro, or E-mail to: hdro@undp.org.

Sources: HDR 1998, and article in the New York Times, "Most Consuming More, and the Rich Much More", 13 September 1998.

"Business and NGO Relations and Sustainable Development"
Relations between businesses and NGOs range from antagonistic to collaborative. A range of international NGOs such as Amnesty International, the World Wide Fund for Nature, and Oxfam, as well as local "grassroots" groups in both industrialized and less industrialized countries are developing market-oriented strategies to pursue their objectives. Some tactics involve confrontation and protest: the fight between Greenpeace and Shell over the Brent Spar oil platform being an example. Newer tactics involve engagement with business and the development of strategic partnerships to help improve the performance of companies involved. An example is the Ethical Trading Initiative in the UK, bringing together development NGOs, unions, and companies to promote better labour standards globally. Other examples are the Environmental Defense Fund in the United States, and WWF and Intergamma in the Netherlands. At a recent conference of the International Society for Third Sector Research in Geneva, a number of practitioners and researchers expressed interest in the emerging and diverse relations between business and civil society.

In follow up to this interest, the School of Policy Studies of the University of Bristol has organised an internet discussion list focusing on relations between businesses and NGOs, and the promotion of responsible entrepreneurship. The list has been set up to examine the issues through the sharing of information on new initiatives, case studies, reports, articles, and news, as well as open debate. The list currently has members from 19 different countries.

For further information, please contact Mr. Jem Bendell, School for Policy studies, University of Bristol, tel: +44 (0) 117 974 1117; fax +44 (0) 117 973 7308, E-mail: usjcb@bris.ac.uk. You can also visit the website: http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/business-ngo-relations. 

More information about the first book on strategic partnerships between businesses and environmental groups,"In the company of Partners", by David F. Murphy and Jem Bendell (1997) is available at: http://www.greenleaf-publishing.com/catalogue/intheco.htm.

Guide to Green Energy for Companies
The non-profit Center for Resource Solutions in San Francisco is making available, free of charge, its color brochure, "Take Your Company Green: A Guide to Cleaner Electricity". The brochure includes the public relations, environmental and health benefits of buying renewable energy based green electricity, an Easy Energy Form for quick response from providers, and a 5-step plan for companies that want to purchase green power. This brochure makes it easy for companies to choose renewable energy based electricity, with easy-to-follow instructions and contacts for Green-e Certified providers. Using cleaner energy is becoming a powerful community and corporate ethic across the United States, since switching to renewable energy based electricity demonstrates a company's commitment to a cleaner environment. Companies that purchase electricity from a Green-e Certified Electricity Provider can display the Green-e Seal in advertising, retail outlets, labels, and other marketing materials. 

To learn more, visit the Green-e web site (www.Green-e.org) or call toll-free 888-63-GREEN or 415-561-2100.
Source: Yahoo! Finance, and Centre for Resource Solutions

Environment Watch Western Europe - Special on "Europe and the Path toward Product Policy"
In the August-September News and Trends, reference was made to the Green EU Product Policy and a new study on actions to create a coherent EU framework for greening product policy. Environment Watch Western Europe has dedicated a special issue to the discussion of the Environment Directorate's Report "Integrated Product Policy (IPP)". The special issue discusses how Integrated Product Policy can be defined, and describes the product-oriented policy activities of the five EU member states included in the the report: Austria, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, and Sweden. It also mentions the product policies in Norway, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Germany. The special issue has a section on the implementation of the IPP across the EU and possible barriers of trade thereof; and recommends short-term and medium term actions to implement an EU-wide IPP. The special issue also considers the effects of the policy measures on regulators, industry, and consumer sovereignty.

Source: Environment Watch Western Europe, Special, Volume 7, No 16. 
For obtaining this special issue, please contact Cutter Information Corp, Tel: +1 781 641 5125, or in North America, +1-800 964 5125; Fax: +1 781 648 1950, or in North America, +1-800 888 1816; E-mail: dcrowley@cutter.com.

International Emissions Swap
Japan and Russia have agreed to trade greenhouse gas emissions credits: Japanese firms will help 20 Russian power plants and factories cut their emissions, and in exchange, Japan will acquire the right to emit the same volume of gases saved in Russia. Japan is banking on such deals to meet its target of a six percent cut in 1990 emission levels by 2012. Russia will have a supply of pollution credits because its industry is producing less emissions than 1990 levels, in part because of the stagnation of industry.
For further information, contact the Japanese Environmental Agency; www.mofa.go.jp/global/home.html; Tel: +81 3 3581 7244.
Source: Tomorrow - Global Environment Business, Number 4, Volume VIII, July-August 1998.

Supplier Involvement
The July-August issue of "Tomorrow" includes an article on supplier involvement, entitled "Chain Reaction", inspired by Interface's first day-long seminar on Greening the Supply Chain, which was attended by 150 representatives from among the company's top 60 suppliers. Interface is among the growing pool of companies that have come to the realization that environmental sustainability can only be achieved by engaging the entire value chain of companies involved in their products and services - from suppliers to customers. To explore how to raise suppliers' environmetal awareness, a dozen leading companies have joined a new Supply Chain Working Group sponsored by Business for Social Responsibility, a business association that encourages socially responsible practices. So far the working group has focused on identifying best practices to encourage environmental advances in the supply chain and on crafting tools and metrics to measure performance. Companies proactively greening their value chains are finding that the exercise can spur innovation throughout their management practices.

Engaging the entire value chain in the environmental process educates smaller companies, often in developing countries, that do not have ready access to environmental management resources. Greening the chain can radically change the traditional relationship between customer and supplier. It can also disrupt the traditional manufacturing process, sometines even prompting a company to sell services rather than goods. Furthermore, there are savings to be made in encouraging an eco-efficient philosophy, though costs are just one reason why companies choose to become more environmentally responsible. Some companies, for example, stake their image at least partly on environmental leadership, and need to ensure that the high product standards to which they are held accountable are maintained among their suppliers. The latter are often more than happy to cooperate, since they think they can learn new skills from the bigger companies which they can benefit from with other customers. Sometimes, a supplier takes the initative to upgrade environmentally to get a foot inside the door of a client with green values. Finally, service companies nowadays often follow the manufacturers in raising the environmental bar for suppliers.

Source: Tomorrow - Global Environment Business, Number 4, Volume VIII, July-August 1998.

Green Households? Domestic Consumers, Environment and Sustainability, by Klaas Jan Noorman and Ton Schoot Uiterkamp (Eds), Earthscan Publications Ltd., London, 1998, 267pp.

This book is a detailed and interesting examination of trends and patterns in energy consumption in the Netherlands from 1950 to the present, with more limited examination of water consumption and waste generation. It also reviews the economic, social and technological changes that have produced those trends and patterns, and the effects of public policies on the trends. It focuses on household consumption of energy, including energy embodied in goods and services, as well as energy directly consumed, thus covering almost two-thirds of total national energy consumption.

The book is particularly valuable as a detailed empirical national study of energy consumption for use in designing national policies for sustainability and for comparison with similar studies in other countries. The book is a product of the Netherlands HOMES project (Household Metabolism Effectively Sustainable) of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at the University of Groningen. It consists of ten chapters, by different contributors to the HOMES project, examining various aspects of household consumption, including, in addition to energy and water use, housing design and land use, ownership, use and energy efficiency of cars and appliances, prices of energy and water, and public policies that have affected consumption, intentionally or unintentionally. 

The book notes that a number of public policy measures have been taken recently to reduce energy consumption, including building regulations, subsidies for energy efficiency, and environmental taxes. It also notes, however, that many other public policies, particularly before the oil price shocks, inadvertently contributed to the growth of consumption. Public housing policy contributed to the reduction in household size, as did increased pensions which allowed more elderly people to live independently. The development of satellite cities to prevent urban sprawl and preserve open land, as well as improved road networks, increased commuting distances. Working hours have been reduced and vacation time increased, allowing more energy-consuming leisure activities. The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the introduction of policies to reduce the use of cars, such as fuel taxes, carpooling incentives, parking restrictions and reduced speed limits, but these have apparently not been sufficient to overcome the forces increasing the use of cars.

The book also contains the results of a consumer survey regarding consumption and the environment, which does not provide much support for a consumer-oriented approach to sustainable development. The Dutch are very attached to their cars, young people even more than older people, despite their belief that the use of cars should be reduced. Willingness to change consumption patterns was no greater among those with greater environmental awareness, and education levels had almost no impact on consumption patterns. Young people have more consumer goods than older people and expect to have even more in the future. As the above selective summary indicates, the book is full of interesting data on consumption trends in the Netherlands, particularly for energy, and on the socio-economic factors underlying those trends. Little attention is devoted to the environmental impacts of those trends, their sustainability, future projections, or strategies for changing the trends. Nonetheless, the book provides essential data and information for such analyses.

Extracts from a book review by Ralph Chipman, Division for Sustainable Development; E-mail: chipman@un.org.

New Indicators Web-site: An interactive Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare
Friends of the Earth, the New Economics Foundation and the Centre for Environmental Strategy in the United Kingdom have put together a website on indicators of sustainable development - with a focus on the most widely used comparative index of well-being - the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW). The political opportunity in the UK is that the Government is currently rewriting its sustainable development indicators strategy, and the Parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee has called for new indicators of welfare to be developed. The site shows how ISEW - as an alternative to Gross Domestic Product - is constructed, and allows users to change the weightings in the index to create welfare indicators of their own. The site is designed to overcome the concerns some UK commentators have with the ISEW.

The site also shows ISEWs for other countries, explains why such indicators are important, and has a range of links to other sites which deal with sustainability indicators. 

For more information, contact Simon Bullock, Tel: (+44) 0171 566 1683, Fax: (+44) 0171 490 0881, WEBPAGE: Http://www.foe.co.uk/progress.

Which world?: Scenarios for the 21 Century
"Which world?" examines long-term trends and analyzes 3 scenarios (Market World, Fortress World, and Transformed World) both globally and for each of 7 major regions around the world. It was published in October '98 by Island Press and is available in U.S. bookstores and on the web at Amazon.com. It will be released shortly by Earthscan in the UK and by other publishers in Germany and Japan. Information about the book, including synopses of the scenarios and much of the underlying data is also available on the web, in a site intended for educational purposes, at www.hf.caltech.edu/Whichworld/.

For more information, contact Allen Hammond, World Resources Institute, E-mail: allen@wri.org.

Green Business Opportunities: Sustainable Consumption - Choices and Challenges for Future Development
The October-December Issue of the Indian Quarterly "Green Business Opportunities" focuses on Sustainable Consumption, and includes several interesting articles on the topic. Examples are "Can we Consume our Way to Sustainability?" by John Elkington, the Chairman of SustainAbility Ltd; and an article on sustainable consumption patterns in OECD countries. The issue also includes a discussion of the report of the Kabelvag Workshop, "Consumption in a Sustainable World", and an article by Mr. Raekwon Chung, Counsellor of the Korean Mission to the United Nations, about the forthcoming Korean Meeting in East Asia: "Sustainable Consumption Patterns and Developing Countries".

To obtain a copy of this issue, "Green Business Opportunities: Sustainable Consumption - Choices and Challenges for Future Development" (Volume 4, Issue 4) , October-December 1998, please contact: Environment Management Division, Confederation of Indian Industry India Habitat Centre, Zone IV, 4th floor, Lodi Road, New Delhi - 110 003, India, Tel: 469 11 51 or 460 25 23, Fax: 460 25 24.
 
Previous versions of "News and Trends"

News and Trends August-September 1998 

News and Trends June-July 1998