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Eco Techno
Posted by: Doug Stewart
I’ve just arrived home from sustainabilitylive at the NEC where I was attending the Kyocera Green Card Conference. I had gone under the guise of education and networking but really it was because I needed some nerd time. I completely understand that this level eco fascination is not universal. Heavy engineering and systems for monitoring systems aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. To be honest I’m glad I don’t live in that world but I do have a geeky fascination for eco tech and the trade show did not disappoint. In fact I may have gone too far this time. I now know more about fluid dynamics than is strictly necessary in a desk job.
The conference was interesting but I was disappointed by the language used by many of the speakers. Michael ‘Johna’ Barclay the Environmental Manager from the WWF reminded us all of our apocalyptic future which made me want to jump on the next plane to the Bahamas to see the coral before it’s all bleached.(‘You like scuba?’)*
We were also treated to Barclays Capital patting themselves on the back for their ISO 14001 achievements. Well done, very good, impressive even. Now let’s work on the oppressive regimes and arms dealers.
Adrian Harding from the Environmental Agency admitted that in its present form the WEE Directive gave no incentive to companies to make their products more recyclable or reprocessable. But he said that they were working on it so that’s alright.
It was good to hear the work Warwickshire Climate Change Partnership have been doing giving away chocolates for good eco behaviour, and they are fans of Futerra so might come down for a lunch and learn to tell us about it.
The high point was meeting Mark Shayler from eco3. Great ideas, very positive and a real understanding of eco effectiveness and greenwash. Seeing the queues at the CIBSE stand to play on their Wii was also quite amusing. Did we advise them on their recruitment strategy? Next it’ll be shillings at the bottom of a pint.
*Claude the naked dive instructor in Along Came Polly. Is it wrong to find humour in a chick flick?
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I go to these kinds of conferences with some suspicion. There are no doubt some legitimate organizations; but for the GLOBE 2006 conference, Dow Chemical was there touting about their environmental initiatives but the representative refuses to admit responsibility for the many people that were killed and genetic mutations from an explosion at a Dow Chemical plant in Bhopal, India in 1980s. It's unfortunate the legitimate companies get mixed up with these big companies greenwashing.