The EU Ecolabel, our work in China and the new age of austerity 28.06.10

Trewin's blog

EU Eco label

Tuesday saw a ferociously early start catching the Eurostar to Brussels to be on the jury for the EU Ecolabel Awards. Many years ago, whilst at Friends of the Earth I sat in on some of the early tortuous groups seeking to set up the criteria for the Ecolabel.

As a concept it has many strengths. It is a pan-European logo that is only awarded to products and services that can prove environmental credentials across their entire lifecycle – from cradle-to-grave. It has relatively robust criteria and is renewed annually.

For all those people who say that there are too many logos on products and they don’t know which to trust, the Ecolabel should be the answer.

Unfortunately, its strengths are also its weaknesses. Undertaking credible lifecycle analysis is complicated and expensive. The democracy of the system in setting standards means that there are constant battles with entrenched corporate positions. The label has also suffered from its attachment to Central Governments who have lacked the resource and creativity needed to effectively market it.

Despite these weaknesses, I believe that the Ecolabel should be supported and pressure put on more companies to use it. The judging provided some areas of optimism. The label is gaining credibility in certain sectors such as the paper industry and cleaning products.

The largest growth area is in hotels and the schemes we saw were highly innovative. There were also a couple of examples where larger companies are using the logo as an integral part of their wider marketing initiatives. The more of these schemes that take place and the more they are celebrated, the greater the prominence of the logo will become.

Big shovel society

Since the election of the Coalition Government, I am learning a whole new language. New Labour badged charities as ‘The Third Sector’. Now, under the new Government, we are known as ‘Civil Society’. Many in this newly created society are currently scratching our heads and trying to work out our role in turning the concept of the Big Society into reality.

This week a Conservative Councillor tried to define the concept for me by explaining that when we had heavy snow this winter, residents in the UK tended to call their council to clear snow from around their homes whereas in the Netherlands residents get out their big shovels and cleared it themselves. She explained that it is the role of charities to help change values and behaviour to this different mindset.

There then followed a long debate about how best this could happen. Examples were used including Marks and Spencer and the National Trust where ‘tribes’ are being created in which people are beginning to live life differently. In these tribes there are leaders in the organisations who are driving change but crucially their customers and members have given them their permission and support to act.

It was decided that this point of permission was crucial in driving change. For instance, there have been examples where fireman have been trained to give people energy advice when they carry out home fire checks and these have been successful because the householders generally trust and respect firemen.

Similar schemes providing advice from either energy companies or councils have been less successful as this trust/permission does not exist to the same degree.

Working in China

This week we got some excellent media coverage for our work training Chinese teachers about climate change. The project has been supported by the British Council for a number of years and has involved members from our excellent schools team spending several weeks in China running large-scale training events for Chinese Teachers.

It has been a fantastic learning experience for us. The work we do in UK schools involves students taking a lead on the project. They are encouraged to investigate their own schools’ resource use, create plans for change, run communication campaigns to get the message out to the whole school and then to measure and celebrate achievements.

For the Chinese teachers this is a radical new approach and it is one that they have openly embraced and started to introduce into their teaching techniques. We have also learnt that the Chinese Government is fully behind the education programme and has given us a surprising level of freedom and access to teachers.

Knowing this gives me hope that we will create change on the scale that we need to and makes me feel very proud that from very humble beginnings Global Action Plan is starting to live up to its rather ambitious name!

The new age of austerity

The Budget clearly indicated that we are about to hit a period of acute financial austerity. I suspect that this will have a devastating impact on environmental charities such as Global Action Plan and we are already making plans for an organisation that will look radically different next year.

It will not just be financial austerity that we will be facing but also resource austerity. This week, after the driest May for 20 years, United Utilities announced that they might have to consider introducing hose-pipe bans. I am fairly certain that water shortages will be back on the media agenda as the summer progresses.

Over the next few months, Government Departments will be deciding what to cut. I hope that they decide to invest in initiatives that will make it easier for people to use energy and water efficiently.

There are many simple steps they could take including adding water efficiency to the Green Deal energy scheme, helping social housing providers install more water efficient products and even creating a ‘toilet’ scrappage scheme to replace the 1 million toilets that currently pour 13 litres of water away every time they are flushed.

If they don’t implement initiatives such as these, prices will rise hitting the most vulnerable people in our communities and the environment will continue to be needlessly degraded.