ICIS News

Resources: ICIS News:

May 2003

In this issue:

Editorial

Environment

• New EU treaty cuts environmental requirements
• Hopeful news on the waterfront
• Clearing the air in Europe
• Iceland opens hydrogen filling-station

Business

• New Standard for non-financial reporting
• Eat ice cream with a green conscience
• Feel good about hardwood
• Branding_ a new fixture in management circles?

Eco-tourism

• Did you know …
• Eco-tourism and comfort can mix
• Charter flights_ an option for eco-travellers

Design

• Biodegradable plates
• Plastic plant-fibres

Ethics

• Sony fights ethical battle with Maoris

Case Story

• Laughter, the natural painkiller

ICIS Calendar

Resources

Books

Contact ICIS

Editorial

And so spring came to this part of the world!
It is May and everything is green. We see the shades of green going from yellow through to brown and blue. A most amazing and magical time of the year!

ICIS is progressing slowly but surely. Flexibility is our key word these days. Listening to the needs in the area of sustainability whether it is from the design world, the world of architecture or the business world.

In March we organised a.o. a sustainability day for a large Danish Insurance company. The focus was to look at how to implement sustainability in the company using input from knowledgeable people involved in sustainability both in Denmark and abroad. We also ran a creativity model based on Edward de Bono’s The Six Thinking Hats which proved both constructive and inspiring.

We are now waiting to see what progress the company makes towards creating a sustainable development strategy. The decision-makers involved seem very interested and keen to further the process.

Corporate Social Responsibility seems a perfect task for businesses like insurance companies to engage in and practise, as their business is about and for people.

The ICIS News which follows have been gathered over the past two months and is a recap of what’s been happening and what’s being communicated about sustainability in this corner of the world.

Karen Blincoe
Director, ICIS

Environment

• New EU treaty cuts environmental requirements

The EU convention has issued a new treaty draft, in which environmental considerations have been grossly paired down. The draft has left out the previously included obligation to integrate the environment in all political and economic decisions. European environmental organisations are trying to strengthen the environmental aspects of the new treaty. In the meantime, the Danish government is being criticized on its home turf for its passivity, which belies the effort the Danes originally put into the integration of environmental criteria in the Amsterdam treaty.
Source: Politiken, April 25, 2003.

• Hopeful news on the waterfront

Although there was widespread disappointment at the slender results of the Johannesburg summit last summer,[1] a number of countries are taking follow-up measures in the area of water care. The goal of halving the proportion of people in the world without access to drinking water by 2015 is still alive. This March, the city of Kyoto initiated a global preliminary meeting on the subject of water. In May, Ukraine’s capital Kiev will host a regional European meeting with a broader environmental scope. Eastern European countries are particularly keen on making an effort, and many have already reformed their water laws. According to Palle Lindgaard-Jørgensen, head of the Danish office for international environmental support, water care projects stand a good chance of receiving financial support from the EU. Source: Miljø Danmark, March 2003

• Clearing the air in Europe

Since the 1970s, European cities have made considerable progress in reducing certain types of air pollution: lead-contamination has virtually disappeared, and the amount of sulphur we inhale has reached acceptable levels. Simultaneously, new problems have emerged, which cry out for solutions. One of the greatest health dangers in our cities today is probably small particle-emission. The current environmental debate includes evaluations of new technologies such as particle filters. The Danish environmental office recently issued a new study, entitled Cleaner Air – the Danish Effort, which studies environmental solutions and their effectiveness. This piece may provide a useful backdrop for international discussions. Source: Miljø Danmark, March 2003

• Iceland opens hydrogen filling-station

“Nothing happens without a dream, and we must dream of sustainable development,” says Valgerdur Sverrisdottir, Iceland’s minister of industry. Iceland has voiced the intention to create an oil-free society, where transportation vehicles run on hydrogen. A hydrogen filling-station opened on April 25, 2003 on the outskirts of Reykjavik, as a first step toward green transportation. Hydrogen is being produced on the spot by electrolysis, which splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. The new filling-station will service three busses – representing four percent of Iceland’s public transportation network. Backing the project is Icelandic New Energy, an alliance between Icelandic investors, DaimlerChrysler, Norsk Hydro and Shell Hydrogen. They are, however, not funding the experiment, which is financially supported by European taxpayers through EU funding. Source: Politiken, April 25, 2003

Business

• New standard for non-financial reporting

British accounting institute AccountAbility has recently launched the AA1000 standard for social and environmental reporting. Tom Delfgaauw, chair of AccountAbility, was quoted as saying that “the world of business is no longer believed ... Independent assurance of reporting has become extremely important.” The standard was backed by UK minister for corporate social responsibility Stephen Timms, who said that sustainability considerations were going to be more and more of an issue in the business world. The standard sets guidelines for accuracy and operation impact analysis, as well as auditor independence and competence in social-environmental issues. British Telecom (BT), Novo Nordisk, and the UK’s Co-operative Bank have said that they will adopt the standard.[2]
Source: Financial Times, March 2003

Eat ice cream with a green conscience

Frisco-Unilever has launched environmentally-friendly freezers in Denmark, and is to export the new technology to the rest of the world – except the USA. This initiative is a result of constructive dialogues with Greenpeace about reducing the emission of gasses which contribute to the greenhouse effect. Frisco’s new freezer technology is based on hydrocarbon, a substance which is said to affect neither global warming nor the ozone layer. Unilever Europe’s goal is to replace all their old freezers by 2005, to the extent that it is legal and economically sustainable. This would mean that 100.000 freezers should make space for their green counterparts each year in Europe. In the USA, giants of the chemical industry such as DuPont have been able to convince lawmakers that the hydrocarbon freezers are too easily combustible. Greenpeace is set to keep the pressure up in order to achieve the necessary 50-80 percent reduction of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.
Source: Politiken, April 30, 2003

• Feel good about hardwood

Environmental groups in Europe are focusing on the garden furniture craze which started affecting homeowners a few years ago. More often than not, buyers are tempted by hardwood pieces, which are both beautiful and robust. The problem is that much of the hardwood comes from highly dubious sources. Cambodia’s army lives off clearing forests and shipping the wood to Vietnam for crafting. In Indonesia, huge areas have been entirely cleaned out to make space for unauthorized agriculture and plantations. It is estimated that 70 percent of the wood imported from Indonesia is illegal. Nowadays, you can ascertain that your garden bench or table meets some basic environmental requirements by looking for the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) label. This label is sported by suppliers who take measures to help protect the old forests and their biodiversity. FSC is based on a set of global principles and criteria for sustainable forestry. It was initiated by foresters, the wood industry, and environmental and social organisations.
See www.fscoax.org
Source: Politiken, March 2003

• Branding: a new fixture in management circles?

Results from a recent Gallup poll show that the great majority of Danish companies consider branding important to them. Gallup’s head consultant Mogens Storgaard Jakobsen was quoted as saying that the interest in this latest business-to-business analysis was unprecedented. He partly considers this to be a sign that branding has become fashionable, and that some of the answers are based upon a perception of what is “politically correct”. At a deeper level, the analysis actually shows that many people only have a rather loose understanding of what branding really is, and that the idea often fails to trickle down from management to the rest of the company. Only 59 percent of the interviewed managers thought that their employees were sufficiently informed in this area. Jakobsen suggests that it should be a priority for corporations to move branding out of the marketing department and into all recesses of the company. They should also start seeing the concept as a function of not only communication and exposure, but of the product itself. Branding actually embraces all of the activities and parameters which affect buyers’ perception of the product and the company.
Source: Politiken, April 23, 2003

ICIS view: Based on this definition of the concept, and on the growing need for businesses to meet non-financial requirements (see earlier in this newsletter), branding will increasingly have to include information on the sustainability aspects of products and the companies behind them.
This aspect is being taken seriously by the multinationals.
They know that branding only works for them in a positive way if they are perceived as credible and responsible companies, not only with regard to their shareholders, but to all their stakeholders – including customers, staff, partners, suppliers and local communities.

Eco-tourism

• Did you know ...

_ A golf course in a tropical country such as Thailand uses 1.500 kilos of chemical fertiliser and pesticides a year, and an amount of water which would meet the needs of 60.000 villagers.
_ Mass tourism has surpassed industry as the greatest threat to many of the world’s mountain societies.
_ The Seychelles require a payment of $90 in taxes upon entry on the islands. The money is used toward environmental protection and the improvement of tourist facilities to that effect.

• Travel – eco-tourism and comfort can mix.

The EU environmental commission has adopted guidelines for awarding the flower label to hotels. Next summer we can travel in style and still make an environmental statement, by picking hotels which have committed to improving the environment and reducing their use of resources. The criteria which hotels have to meet to “flaunt the flower” are a series of obligatory requirements including energy and water use, waste and water treatment, and an environmentally responsible choice of cleaning products. There are also stipulations regarding the creation of non-smoking areas, education of the staff, and information of the hotel’s guests about the environmental effort. It seems that a great number of large and medium-sized facilities will be able to join. Smaller business units and charter hotels which are serviced by local energy and water supply systems below the indicated standards are unlikely to comply. Spain is topping the charts with an environmental record which almost surpasses Scandinavia’s in that area, says My Travel’s Lennart Haglund.
Source: Politiken, Wednesday April 23, 2003.

Charter flights – an option for eco-travellers
It’s difficult to avoid air travel if you want to relax on a sunny beach somewhere, but for emerging eco-travellers some options are better than others. Charter tours are the least polluting alternative when you have to book a flight for the holidays. Flights are booked up to an average 80-90 percent – 97 percent for companies such as My Travel in Scandinavia – as opposed to a mere 60 percent for other carriers. There are also more seats on a charter plane, which means less fuel used per passenger. My Travel is to replace all of its planes with new Airbuses, which will reduce their use of fuel by yet another 20 percent. The bottom line is that the amount of petrol per charter tourist will then equal that “consumed” by one passenger in a four-person carpool to the same destination. Charter companies are also seeking to improve their waste disposal routines. Most of the airports in Spain and Greece are establishing systems which can handle sorted waste upon arrival, and 80 percent of the waste is handled correctly, according to Lennart Häglund from My travel.
Source: Politiken, April 23, 2003
See also: www.startour.dk and www.mytravel.dk

ICIS View: Though the most environmentally-friendly choice may be to reduce the amount we travel, most people see this as a quasi-impossible scenario. What we can do is evaluate the amount of pressure we put on the environment both through our choice of carrier and our behaviour once we arrive at our destination. Many charter agents have guidelines for this on their websites.

Design

• Biodegradable plates

Designers Lene Vad Jensen and Anne Bannick made a splash at the international lifestyle fair Ambiente with “PapCorn”, a line of biodegradable plates. Originally, the plates were to consist solely of corn. People would first eat the food off the plates, and then the plates themselves! As the costs of such a line turned out to be unaffordably steep, the plates are now fashioned out of a combination of corn and bio-plastic. The original intention behind the product is still an interesting story to tell. The bio-plates are now on sale at trend-setting stores such as Colette in Paris, and The Conran Shop in London. Last but not least ... Tupperware has shown great interest in “PapCorn”!
Source: Politiken, Tuesday, April 2003

• Plastic plant fibres

by Henning Wettendorff, ICIS information officer, based on a recent conference on plastics in Copenhagen.

Plant fibres can successfully replace 80% of the chemical composites in plastics. The shift away from chemistry in petrol-based plastic and toward the use of virtually infinite natural fibre resources is not only spurned by concern over environmental pressure caused by plastic production and waste. The plant fibre composites have a number of advantages over conventional plastic composites, not least in in large-scale production environments in car-making countries like Germany, US and Japan.
In a recent seminar initiated by the design club of the Danish plastics industry, industrial designers met with representatives of the fibre industry at Danmarks Designskole. Among the speakers was scientific forerunner in the field, dr. agro. Per Ole Olesen from Copenhagen’s Agricultural University who concluded that while natural plastic composites may not be exactly biodegradable, they are burnable, recyclable and even combustible to a considerable extent.
The Danish Centre for Plant Fibre & Biomass Technology was founded in 1996 as a joint venture between the agricultural university, Risø National Laboratory, Novozymes A/S, The Technical University of Denmark, and Danmarks JordbrugsForskning (Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences). While the centre’s funding has been cut back by the conservative government, Olesen and others have managed to keep promoting the use of plant fibre technologies in direct cooperation with industrial players and educational institutions. http://www.cefi.dk
At the conference, designers maintained a focus on production rather than life-cycle aspects. Jørgen Rasmussen of Design Nord lined up some of the pros and cons in terms of plant fibre plastics.

Ethics

• Sony fights ethical battle with Maoris

The Japanese electronics giant has stumbled against the same stone that Lego recently tripped over: Sony has issued a new, violent computer game - “The Mark of Kri” – which makes clear references to the Maori people’s culture and language. Representatives from the Maori people in New Zealand have now started an ethical battle which questions the multinational’s right to use a Maori universe, as well as Maori words and expressions in a commercial product. Lego’s fight with the Maoris revolved around the company’s “Bionicle” series, whose figures included references to the Maori religion and culture as well .[3] Lego got out of trouble by committing to stop all future use of Maori myths for commercial purposes. They also formulated rules of conduct concerning the commercial use of traditional people’s languages and cultures. Sony has officially expressed regrets over the Maoris’ outrage, but has affirmed that the main character in “The Mark of Kris” actually was inspired by features from Japanese and Eskimo peoples. Steve Dykes, head of Sony Computer Entertainment, is quoted as saying that creative license should be allowed in the production of games, which are, according to him, works of art along the same lines as books and films. Source: Politiken, April 30, 2003.

Case Story

• Laughter _ the natural painkiller

Clowns are making their entry into the Danish hospitals after showing that their antics help children conquer fear and pain. Several years ago, the children’s ward of Skejby Hospital was the first to introduce clown Gunil one day a week. Now doctors and nurses walk around with soap-bubble bottles and small toys rattling in their pockets, and practise the kind of pain relief which Gunil has taught them to administer. Together with one of the staff nurses, Gunil – Birgit Mogensen in “civil” life – has put together a detailed report on the beneficial effects of clowning in hospitals. The report notes the transformation of hospital culture from a serious, overly ordered system to an environment where fun is legalised, children become partners in the healing process, and fear is greatly reduced. There is less pressure on parents and hospital personnel, children are more prone to accept treatment, and hospital stays are shortened. According to the nurses, it’s important to allow children to break free of their sickness, and make it possible for them to heal more quickly by concentrating on something fun. This is not an easy thing to do when daily work is a matter of life and death: the hospital staff has had to gather up courage to tackle things in a new, potentially controversial way. Gunil has given them that courage. “With Gunil it is possible to work around the pain and fear, and reach the child behind the illness,” says head of the children’s ward Bent Windelborg, M.D.
Source: Politiken, Wednesday April 30, 2003

Education for hospital clowns
Gunil is working on a curriculum for hospital clowns. She herself has gleaned her knowledge at the Dell’ Arte theatre school in California (USA), and through Social Sciences studies in Denmark. The hospital clown education will stretch over one year, and will cost DKK 37.000.
See www.gunil.dk
Source: Politiken, Wednesday April 30, 2003

Patch Adams
Hospital clowning started with Patch Adams, M.D., who introduced humour and laughter as healing agents in his hospital wards. Patch Adams devotes his life to reforming bedside manners in healthcare. His aim is to provide free healthcare to all those who need it, and to show that joy and friendship are natural medicines.
See www.patchadams.org and the movie Patch Adams.

ICIS Calendar

ICIS Business Seminars (Bus) and Master Classes (MC)

Please note the following ICIS master classes in particular – one in June and two in August:

12th -15th June, Teaching Sustainable Design (low cost)
27th –30th August, Sustainable Architecture (low cost)
28th – 31st August, IT and The Changing Workplace

The first two courses are low cost, because participants will teach each other and so we won’t hire outside lecturers.
ICIS has received a grant for the course on sustainable architecture.

For programme and info please contact: helle@icisfoundation.org
or visit us at www.iciscenter.org

Resources

• Following are a few web resources which can shed light on some of the topics discussed in this newsletter.

Corporate Social Responsibility
www.greenbiz.com
www.sustainablebusiness.com
www.wbcsd.org
www.ceres.org
www.csrwire.com

Environment (general)
www.sd-online.org
www.earthwatch.org
www.envirolink.org
www.sustain-online.org
www.sdgateway.net

 
Organizations (WWF, UN, Greenpeace)
www.greenpeace.org
www.igc.org/econet
www.wwf.org
www.unep.org

Alternative Economy
www.greenmoneyjournal.com

Books

• Gesundheit! by Patch Adams, with Maureen Mylander
  Healing Arts Press, Rochester, VT
  
• House Calls, by Patch Adams
  Robert D. Reed Publishers, San Francisco, CA
  See www.powells.com
  

Contact ICIS News Editor: Karen Svensson