blog to discovery

Through my job I have learnt how to help businesses reduce their negative environmental impact by minimising their resource use, and through my implementation of concepts from Getting Things Done I have learnt how to do things! By combining this knowledge I have developed a method of using GTD to help reduce personal negative environmental impact (or increase positive impacts).

For a business to improve its environmental performance, it is beneficial for it to develop an Environmental Management System (EMS) as this provides a structured approach to taking action. The key stages of an EMS are shown below and enable the business to understand its impacts on the environment and then easily identify how to improve efficiency. In case you don’t know the Getting Things Done workflow I have also included that. I’m not going to explain each stage of either diagram so if you want to read up about the topics I would recommend Envirowise for EMS and Get Rich Slowly for GTD.

There were two interesting news items on the breakfast news this morning about climate change; obviously the Live Earth concerts and also the plan to educate UK children about climate change. News items on environmental stories always interest me as an environmental consultant and even though I don’t work on the energy side these two stories did get me thinking, so I thought I would share my thoughts with you.

Educating children about global warming

I have nothing against teaching global warming in schools, in fact I think the earlier these type of issues are taught the better. However what amazes me is that it isn’t already taught. I learnt about global warming when I did A-level chemistry (aged 16-18) which was over ten years ago so assumed it was an accepted part of the curriculum now. In fact, it was my A-level chemistry course that really started my interest in environmental issues.

I’ve just watched The Inconvenient Truth. I first came across Al Gore when I read his book Earth in the balance at university for one of my assignments. Now, when politicians are trying to out do each other on how ‘green’ they are (in the UK anyway), I found it very interesting to hear that Al Gore’s interest in this subject is long standing and not for current political gain. Out of interest, my attraction in environmental studies started when I studied environmental chemistry as part of my A-level chemistry course.

I found the film absorbing, which surprised me because I had heard it was based around a live presentation. I already knew most of the facts, but I’m always happy to have a refresh, especially in such an easily digestible format. What I found fascinating was the amount of data Al Gore had to backup his arguments, which was more detailed or newer than any I’ve seen before. I found the film very convincing (perhaps not surprisingly) and I hope it has had the same impact on other people.