Where: Eco Standard South Africa, a Resource and Standards Council for the sustainable building product and material sector in South Africa, and EcoExhibit, South Africa’s first physical space designed to give builders and contractors a chance to view groundbreaking products and services in one convenient setting.

Company Websites: http://www.ecostandard.co.za/ and http://www.ecoexhibit.co.za/

In a building world of many men shines one very busy lady, Rayne Neave. She is the granddaughter of Laurie Wale, a renowned pioneer in the building industry who among many achievements started the Building Center. By blending the work of her influential grandfather with her own drive for a sustainable world, Rayne came up with Eco Exhibit in August 2008. From Eco Exhibit spawned her latest project, Eco Standard South Africa.

Q:  How did the need arise for Eco Standard South Africa?
A:  Being concerned with my own credibility within the industry, I wanted to represent products at the Eco Exhibition that were legitimate. Many companies who claim they are ‘greener’ than next, and we have no real way to gauge if their claims are accurate statements or not. Hence the birth of Eco Standard South Africa.

Q:  Can you tell us how you put your idea into action?
A:  I started with the idea of creating a checklist to tick a couple of boxes so I could gauge whether they were genuinely environmentally orientated or not. But I quickly realized that to only do a checklist would further greenwash the industry. I would be offering people the opportunity to brand themselves as green, which wouldn’t be robust and would only perpetuate the problem. I engaged with Jeffares & Green, an environmental consulting firm, and Keith Struthers, an architect from Natural Architects. I really just facilitated the process, I’m a great visionary, but I’m not an expert and won’t claim to be. Together we came up with the first criteria which we have piloted on a couple of companies.

Q:  And Eco Standard is not for profit, right?
A:  Right. In coming up with the pilot, we realized there is a huge need for a standard body for sustainable building materials and to become a commercial body would defeat and limit our opportunity to really affect awareness and change in the building sector. It became obvious that a non-profit organization could facilitate the industry and South Africa far more objectively then a commercially driven entity.

Q:  How will you ensure transparency? Will assessments be available online?
A:  Yes, we will encourage transparency and disclosure of an organizations environmental practice. Whether to gain an eco-label or not, by doing so you will become part of Eco Standard’s database of information, such as water, waste and so forth. This will be freely available online for people to access.

Q:  Will you be helping companies who don’t meet the standard?
A:  Yes, currently its set up where each assessment requires an on-site audit and then documentation verification, and depending on the rating results, this is followed with the auditors feedback. Jeffares & Green have audited all companies in the piloting phase and will continue to manage this role, Eco Standard hopes to open it up to industry and train different organizations in the assessment audit process, allowing for many organizations to carry out on-site audits, these independent auditors will filter all assessments through our panel at Jeffares and Green. This will open up business opportunities and economic opportunity for South Africa as a whole.

Q: What have been the obstacles?
A: Because it’s new, a lot of people feel threatened because they know nothing about it. Industry are resistant, it’s the unknown, but companies who are already green are ready to support this movement and are keen to have their efforts legitimized. The government sectors overall have been a bit difficult in facilitating us; however the City of Cape Town has been great in supporting the initiative. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Q: For people who want to get involved, what can they do?
A: Create industry awareness. We will have a technical committee so people with expertise who want to participate in sitting can come forward and those who are well known in the green industry may get involved in the advisory board. Another thing that would make a huge difference is if corporate organizations start specifying that their building suppliers need to disclose through Eco Standard. That is one way to accelerate the movement towards legitimately green suppliers.

Eco Standard offers industry the opportunity to meet their environmental and social responsibilities and make a genuine difference.

Where: African Agenda, a professional conference organizing company

Company website: www.africanagenda.com

Claire Davidson joined African Agenda in August 2008 as their conference and marketing coordinator. But she also holds another title: Greening Manager. This second position developed out of several conversations with Managing Director Keith Burton about their shared passion for protecting the environment. He already had a few green practices in place including recycling stations, turning off the geyser at night, but they both agreed they needed more. Soon, with the support from Keith and Kristen Tremeer, one of the other directors, Claire began evaluating the company’s work processes to see how they could reduce its environmental footprint, internally and externally.

Q: Why did you feel your company needed a ‘Green Policy’?
A: According to me, conferencing and the waste it generates is the reason why we needed to implement a green policy. An international conference can involve people flying in from all around the world to attend, there are usually paper registrations for each delegate, handbooks and paper research books to be printed, hotel and transport resources utilized, as well as paper, plastic, “stuff” in delegate bags and if there is a exhibition running parallel to the conference, the shipping and production of exhibition materials. In short, conferences can generate a lot of waste – African Agenda felt that we needed to implement a green policy to counter-act these wasteful elements of our sector.

Q: Which policy came first, internal or external?
A: They emerged at the same time essentially. The offices always had recycling bins and recycling collected, but the formalization of the internal office policy (including new elements such as composting, sustainable procurement) happened at the same time we launched the external conference policy.

Q: What companies did you look at for inspiration?
A: We didn’t really look at any other companies, but we did look at the guidelines from Convention Industry Council’s Green Meeting Report as inspiration for the structure of our external policy.

Q: What obstacles arose in implementing your Green Policy?
A: Hmm… well, it’s hard to manage the waste that accumulates from the exhibitions but we’ve discovered a lot of ways to reduce how much is produced. For example, early in the planning stages, we send out guidelines to the sponsors encouraging them to choose gifts that are functional, like reusable water bottles with their logo on them, and to choose gifts that are environmentally-friendly, like pencils made from recycled newspaper. In order to reduce the food and beverage waste, we have the leftovers collected by Feedback, a South African food redistribution program. We also started providing bulk items for condiments and beverages instead of those that are individually wrapped. We did have a reaction from a few international delegates who were dismayed that we were not serving bottled water – in order to overcome this we now place notices at water stations explaining that South Africa’s water is safe to drink and tastes good. Education is key!

Q: How much capital was needed to implement the new policies?
A: Really none. It just took time for me to evaluate our processes and figure out how we could change them to lessen our environmental impact.

Q: Have the budgets for conferences increased much now that you implement your ‘green policy’?
A: No, the difference in “greener” choices can often be cheaper (less packaging, less bottled water, choosing locally produced gifts that don’t have to be shipped from a far location). We have found that often being “green” saves our clients money! Occasionally we will find that some items, like eco-friendly banners, are marginally more expensive than standard ones, but overall these few occasions are far between. Overall, there is little difference when calculating to “go green” in the budget.

Q: How do your clients react to your ‘Green Policy’?
A: From the very beginning, we provide the client with a copy of our Green Policy so they know what’s going on. It’s much easier to incorporate the ‘green’ strategies from the start than to go back and weave them into what we’ve already organized. After the conference, we provide the client with a case study that includes the effects of our ‘green policy’ and we’ve received a lot of positive feedback.

Q: What advice do you have for other companies looking to create a Green Policy?
A: Figure out the largest impact areas and break them down into a document so you can see what you can do to improve. Breaking them down into manageable areas makes it so much easier to succeed.

For more information about African Agenda or to see their Green Policy, visit www.africanagenda.com.

So what kind of investment does the country and the region need?

Sustainable Investing has ‘arrived’ and is offering a smart way to generate long-term returns while respecting and contributing to economic growth that works for people and doesn’t have negative consequences for the environment. (Learn more…)

What was once considered a ‘side-line’ has now grown in importance for two reasons: the rise of social and environmental consciousness – spurred by climate change urgency – and  the fact that certain strategies for sustainable investing are proving they can consistently provide healthy returns. (Learn more…)

The same way ethical consumers can purchase products/services from socially and environmentally responsible companies, now investors, whether individual or institutional, can put their capital into ‘ethical’ portfolios and ‘green’ indices. To make things even more exciting, this SI wave has just crashed on the shores of Africa…

In July 2010, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) played host to the launch of AfricaSIF (African Sustainable Investment Forum), an independent, pan-African, not-for-profit network of investment practitioners. AfricaSIF aims to encourage the finance and investment sectors of African countries to advance sustainable development through integrating ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) factors into their investment decisions.

But this is not entirely new territory for Africa or South Africa, more specifically. In 2004 the JSE launched their SRI (Socially Responsible Investment) Index, which includes companies based on their triple bottom line performance.

Since then the operating environment has changed and the demand for responsible investment has grown substantially. In September 2009 the JSE started to provide live values of the SRI Index to the trading screens of thousands of investors worldwide, increasing visiblity and transparency (Learn more… ), and November 2009 brought the launch of Africa’s first sustainable investment fund by Sustainable Capital, an asset manager based in Mauritius.

The ‘E’ word is worth noting. The process and realities of EIAs touch on numerous community and social issues, but the name and the discussions are still dominated by enviro-speak.

What struck me was the cultural divides that still exist between environmentalists, social specialists, and the organizations that hire them. In the words of one of the panellists, “I am a social specialist and a skirt wearer. I speak a different [professional] language, but I will try to translate”.

She further justified what she was about to say:“I see the world through social glasses. I see everything from the perspective of communities”.

In fact, community voices are often the least heard of all, but something this conference successfully addressed.

A recurring theme in sustainability, is that environmental and social specialists – while well-intentioned – are embedded in their scientific points of view. And both groups inevitably come up against the different cultures and languages of the businesses and the government organizations they hope to influence.

This is not in itself a bad thing. We need to have people wearing different glasses so they can see things the rest of us can’t. This includes the businessman or woman who faces harsh realities of ensuring that the enterprise survives. If they’re pushing back, they might have a point.  But often it’s because they don’t have the knowledge or experience to immediately grasp the environmental or social view. They’re wearing different glasses.

There’s no shortage of passion and expertise in the business and sustainability realms. What we need is to cultivate a greater respect among different points of view – so that when everyone’s sitting round the table, we ALL listen EXTRA carefully and try to understand.

After ten years working in the sustainability industry, I’ve realized that the real potential for change is in the thousands of individuals who feel a personal drive every day to bring ethical values and environmental responsibility into their homes and their workplaces. There are more of them than you might think.

I know passionate and inspiring people doing amazing things in different ways and different places around the world. Whenever I’ve shared these stories with others, I’ve felt the electricity in the air and cogs turning in brains.

Probably the biggest hurdle for the caretakers and change agents is we often feel like we’re fighting a tidal wave on our own. We often don’t know where to turn for practical  – rather than theoretical or political – guidance and support.

This blog is about connecting the heroes and the great ideas that can heal the planet and our communities, one step at a time. And about actual, step-by-step advice from people who’ve done it.

If you’ve got stories to share, please leave your comments or email me at louise [at] earthethic.co.za