Carbon offsetting could be as simple as investing in a solar farm, but there are many more interesting ways to do it. ‘Charismatic’ carbon offsetting provides additional benefits, such as recreation value and wildlife habitat.
Examples include planting trees here in the UK or supporting communities in developing countries.
Find out more here, in an article I have written for Transform, the journal of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA).
Death is one of the few certainties in life. This article in Transform, the journal of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment, explains why I think that natural burials form an ideal sustainable business model.
Doing Good Better challenges us to make more effective choices about how we spend our time and our money. If, like most of us, you buy Fairtrade or give money to cancer charities, it might make you think again. The book illustrates the complexity of some of the biggest challenges the world faces, and makes a good attempt at cutting through that complexity.
Although this book is targeted at individuals, many of the principles can also be applied to organisations. They could be particularly useful when considering environmental objectives as part of your environmental management system.
If you would like some support in choosing and setting environmental objectives, please call Julia on 07904 389889.
Quest for Future Solutions is delighted to be helping to organise the Environment and Sustainability symposium at this year’s Malvern Festival of Innovation. Join us on 10 October to learn about innovation in making cities more liveable – and sustainable; how innovation in the insurance industry can help us stop climate change; innovation that can help us use energy more flexibly, making renewable energy work better for us all; how innovation in actuators can be used to tackle climate change; and how innovation is helping us to recycle critical and strategic elements such as rare earths.
We often talk about climate change and the impact it is likely to have on future generations. It’s time for us to change this rhetoric – climate change is something that’s already impacting on people’s lives. One example is in the world of sport.
As the Premier League season has just started, we’ll start with the example of football. Football is mainly played in the winter months in the UK. With a 26% increase in winter rainfall since 1900, it’s becoming harder to play – have you ever tried to kick a ball across a field with a coating of water, or to get to a match when all the roads are flooded? In 2013/14 and 2015/16, there was over 150% more rainfall than average, impacting on the grassroots game in particular. Local clubs are losing five weeks every season on average because of bad weather, and with even wetter winters predicted, this is likely to get worse.
Golf courses suffer from the same issues when there’s heavy rain, but the biggest issue that many face at the moment is rising sea levels and increased storms leading to more coastal erosion. Some of our most iconic golf courses are on the coast. The sea at Montrose has moved 70 metres inland since the 1980’s. They are considering the need to move the whole of the links course, which would mean losing a big slice of sporting history.
International cricket is also suffering from adverse weather conditions, with 5% of matches since 2011 having to be stopped. The local game is also being affected. In Cardiff, Glamorgan Cricket Club has lost more than 20,000 overs so far this century because of extreme weather.
Clubs and governing bodies are beginning to recognise the issue and take action to reduce their climate impact, as well as adapting practices to cope with the changes. We worked with Manchester United from when they started their environmental management programme in 2001, through certification to ISO 14001:2004 and their successful transition to ISO 14001:2015 earlier this year. If you would find our expertise helpful for your sports club, call Julia now on 07904 389889.
Statistics used in this blog have been taken from the Climate Coalition’s Game Changer report on climate change and sport.