Cinq nouvelles usines de traitement des résidus verts
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Trois percées pour l'environnement à Montréal
Trois semaines, trois annonces de taille pour l'environnement. Le portrait de la ville évolue alors que la place qu'elle réserve à l'environnement grandit à vue d'œil. Afin de mieux s'adapter aux changements qui s'annoncent, les organisations ont intérêt à en prendre note. Au cours des prochains jours ce blogue affichera trois mini-analyses des retombées de ces annonces pour les entreprises, ONG, OSBL et compagnie. Restez des nôtres.
La première annonce, celle de cinq nouvelles installations pour traiter les résidus organiques à Montréal et en région, dont trois bioréacteurs qui produiront de l'électricité à partir du méthane dégagé par la décomposition, permettra d'augmenter sensiblement le compostage résidentiel et commercial.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Blogue bilingue
Soucieux de n'exclure personne, je publierai dorénavant en Français et en Anglais, en alternance. Afin de publier plus souvent, les textes ne seront disponibles que dans une langue à la fois - mais vous pouvez toujours m'adresser directement vos questions à ianaérobaseduragence.ca, et il me fera plaisir d'y répondre.
Clarity for the Green Economy goes bilingual
Publishing in a bilingual city such as Montreal often means excluding one audience or another, so this blog will now alternate between English and French-language entries in an effort to inform and engage both. I prefer to post frequently so will not publish translations of the text, but interested readers can always contact me directly at iandon'tspamsustainableagency.ca for information regarding posts, including translations.
ISO 26000, the key to making sustainability accessible?
The world's first universally-applicable sustainability standard is entering the final stretch. ISO 26000, ISO's first “soft,” ie. non-technical standard will be finalized and put to a vote in Copenhagen this May 17-21st. Let's hope the Danish capital is a luckier location for ISO than it was for international climate negotiations...
As Paul Hohnen, co-founder of the Global Reporting Initiative writes in this recent post on the Ethical Corporation website, the crucial vote may not pass. Concerns over content, cost and certification could lead some countries to vote against the new standard. For a analysis of these issues, click here.
As a user and proponent of the GRI guidelines, I would nevertheless welcome a standard designed to be more flexible. From the outset, ISO 2600 was meant to help all organizations – big and small, businesses, NGO's etc. - integrate sustainability into the every-day working practices. For more than 10 years, the GRI has helped companies measure, improve and communicate their impacts on people, the environment and the economy, but it has come under criticism for being too long, too restrictive and too expensive to be useful for smaller companies.
At sustainable.Agency, we've worked hard to adapt the GRI into a series of tools to help SME's measure impacts, set reductions goals and communicate in ways that will make their stakeholders stand up and take notice. And yet, our client's need for reports that are easy to use and read (five pages or less) has required tweaking the guidelines to the extent that we qualify them as “GRI inspired.” ISO 26000 could therefore be invaluable in spreading sustainability and transparency to groups that haven't yet been engaged by the green shift.
At a conference in Montreal last February on responsible purchasing, Denis Pronovost, a member of the Canadian delegation working on ISO 26000 said that far from competing with the GRI guidelines, ISO aims to complement it by setting out broad-based goals for implementing sustainability within organizations. He also expressed reservations concerning its length, saying that the Canadian delegation would likely oppose a document more than 100 pages-long. Any bigger, he said, would be an obstacle for smaller organizations with limited time and resources. “We want as many organizations as possible to use the standard, and they won't if it's too long.”
Any developments will be posted on this blog when they become available.
As Paul Hohnen, co-founder of the Global Reporting Initiative writes in this recent post on the Ethical Corporation website, the crucial vote may not pass. Concerns over content, cost and certification could lead some countries to vote against the new standard. For a analysis of these issues, click here.
As a user and proponent of the GRI guidelines, I would nevertheless welcome a standard designed to be more flexible. From the outset, ISO 2600 was meant to help all organizations – big and small, businesses, NGO's etc. - integrate sustainability into the every-day working practices. For more than 10 years, the GRI has helped companies measure, improve and communicate their impacts on people, the environment and the economy, but it has come under criticism for being too long, too restrictive and too expensive to be useful for smaller companies.
At sustainable.Agency, we've worked hard to adapt the GRI into a series of tools to help SME's measure impacts, set reductions goals and communicate in ways that will make their stakeholders stand up and take notice. And yet, our client's need for reports that are easy to use and read (five pages or less) has required tweaking the guidelines to the extent that we qualify them as “GRI inspired.” ISO 26000 could therefore be invaluable in spreading sustainability and transparency to groups that haven't yet been engaged by the green shift.
At a conference in Montreal last February on responsible purchasing, Denis Pronovost, a member of the Canadian delegation working on ISO 26000 said that far from competing with the GRI guidelines, ISO aims to complement it by setting out broad-based goals for implementing sustainability within organizations. He also expressed reservations concerning its length, saying that the Canadian delegation would likely oppose a document more than 100 pages-long. Any bigger, he said, would be an obstacle for smaller organizations with limited time and resources. “We want as many organizations as possible to use the standard, and they won't if it's too long.”
Any developments will be posted on this blog when they become available.
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