Category: Archive

The value of the OPEC basket rose to a record high of $US63.84 a barrel just before Easter, reported The Australian Financial Review (18/4/2006, p.20).

Crude prices break records everywhere: North Sea Brent crude oil broke up through $US70 a barrel for the first time, the value of the Mexican crude oil basket hit a record level and the price of the AsiaPacific benchmark crude oil, Tapis crude, upon which Australian oil prices are based, hit a record $US74.60 a barrel, or a record price of more than $100 a barrel.

West Texas Intermediate reaches record highs: The widely followed US benchmark crude, West Texas Intermediate, reached new record price highs for almost every future delivery month.

Chinese demand continues to increase even as prices rise: Even though oil prices have now more than tripled in the past four years, demand continues to swell. China’s crude oil imports are accelerating, climbing 25.3 per cent in the first three months of this year from a year earlier to 37.13 million tonnes. China is the second-largest oil consumer in the world after the US. China imports 40 per cent of its crude oil needs. Over the next 15 years, the number of vehicles in China is expected to increase fivefold, helping to double China’s overall demand for oil. By 2020 China is expected to import 70 per cent of its oil needs compared with 40 per cent today.

Spare global crude oil production capacity falls: Meanwhile, spare global crude oil production capacity has fallen from more than 5 million barrels a day five years ago to about 1.5 million bpd today. The bulk of that is in Saudi Arabia.

The Australian Financial Review, 18/4/2006, p. 20

Source: Erisk Net  

Aboriginal activist Murrandoo Yanner has attacked the State Government for backing down on a promise to protect wild rivers, reported The Courier-Mail (17 June 2006 p41).

Mr Yanner yesterday labelled Gulf of Carpentaria development as rapacious and short-sighted, saying agricultural groups had mounted a successful fear campaign.

Acting Premier Anna Bligh said on Thursday that she would delay a decision to protect four rivers in the Gulf of Carpentaria – the Gregory River, Settlement Creek, Staaten River and the streams of Morning Inlet – the first rivers nominated for declaration under the Wild Rivers Act. Mr Yanner said Gulf indigenous people wanted the rivers protected.

In Parliament last week, opposition natural resources spokesman Jeff Seeney tabled a speech by Cape York Peninsula leader Noel Pearson who said he feared the laws would leave indigenous people to die on welfare. The Carpentaria Land Council, which represents traditional Gulf rivers owners, backed Mr Yanner. Gulf regional chairman Barry Walden said the State Government should hold firm.

The Courier Mail, 17/6/2006, p. 41

Source: Erisk Net

Last month, this column reviewed the impacts of shipping by plane, train, and automobile (and ship, of course). This time we dig a little deeper, looking at the impacts of the actual packaging materials that companies choose.

Those who ship products confront a boatload of packaging options, when you consider both the outer container and the inner materials used to cushion goods and fill space. Much like the perennial grocery-bag dilemma, opinions abound about which combination is "best" — and few of those opinions are conclusive.

Should you use a cardboard box instead of a plastic bag? How about shredded newspaper filler instead of foam "peanuts"? Logic might dictate that tree-based materials trump petro-based ones. But logic might be wrong.

So what’s the best call when you’re going green? The bottom line: It’s the weight, stupid — that is, the heft of the material, not its recycled content — that most influences the environmental impacts of your bags and boxes.

Bag It

Recently, a study commissioned by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. EPA offered one of the more comprehensive looks at the environmental impacts of transport packaging. It might even cause some manufacturers, retailers, and distributors to rethink their strategies.

The study analyzed more than 20 packaging options, including boxes, padded and unpadded bags, and several kinds of loosefill materials, made with both recycled and non-recycled content. It found that shipping items in bags — whether paper or plastic, virgin or post-consumer — had the lowest energy profile, including lower consumption of fossil fuels, less solid waste, and lower emissions.

Using corrugated boxes, including those made from post-consumer recycled content, was deemed to have a much higher impact. The heaviest combination (a corrugated box and molded-pulp loosefill) was found to weigh 26 times more than the lightest option (a linear low-density polyethylene, or LLDPE, plastic bag).

"The study confirms the waste-management hierarchy of reduce and recycle," explains David Allaway of Oregon DEQ’s Solid Waste Policy and Program Development office. "Regardless of what the material is made of, the shipping bags have lower energy requirements and emissions because they weigh so much less." (The full report — a weighty 500-plus pages — can be downloaded from DEQ.)

The findings of the study — which focused on materials used to deliver "soft" goods such as clothing and other relatively unbreakable products directly to consumers, as opposed to electronics and other more sensitive goods — are significant, since they are contrary to many companies’ tendency to focus on post-consumer recycled content as the main environmental attribute in selecting shipping materials.

"We have not found the environmentally friendly packaging material that doesn’t cause environmental impacts," Allaway says. "Sometimes I think that gets lost in the enthusiasm for changing materials or using recycled content."

Weight and See

Allaway is quick to point out, however, that "this is not a paper-versus-plastic study." Rather, he says, it’s about factors that are too often overlooked: "The lesson is to pay attention to weight and volume," he says. "Weight matters." Indeed it does. In 2004, Ontario became the first jurisdiction in North America requiring companies to contribute toward recycling fees based on the weight of their packaging.

In fact, more than 30 countries across Europe and Asia currently mandate some form of producer responsibility for packaging, according to Raymond Communications, which produces publications and conferences on the topic. As more such laws come on board, these seemingly simple decisions are becoming increasingly important.

Even aside from governmental regulations, choosing the right packaging can save a company, well, a bundle. Norm Thompson Outfitters, for instance, estimates that it is saving around $1.15 million each year by increasing its use of lightweight polyethylene shipping bags — $664,000 in freight, $415,000 in materials, $75,000 in labor — instead of using cardboard boxes.

Spend Your $.02

And even small steps add up quickly. Nike slaps "Re-Use It" stickers on incoming boxes in one warehouse, then does just that, saving more than $50,000 a year. And Toyota implemented a system of returnable plastic containers to ship floor mats to a distribution center. After eliminating disposable pallets and cartons, the supplier was able to pass along savings to Toyota in the form of a reduced unit price for floor mats.

In the end, says Allaway, the rule of thumb is to first make sure that your shipping cartons aren’t oversized, in order to reduce the use of packaging materials. (Smaller packages can also decrease freight impacts, as many long-haul trucks fill by volume, not weight.) Once you’ve downsized, select combinations that weigh less than the other comparable options. And only then, focus on making the "right" green choice: "Once you’ve chosen the material, by all means use post-consumer recycled content," says Allaway.

Pack It In
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality offers checklists for evaluating packaging options, methods for reducing waste, a rundown of waste-prevention regulations, and other useful information. See also the Reusable Transport Packaging Directory and a report on environmental packaging in the overnight shipping industry, both available on GreenBiz.com.

Joel Makower, founder of GreenBiz.com and cofounder of Clean Edge, Inc., is a writer, speaker, and strategist on corporate environmental practices, clean technology, and green marketing.

Tulsi Tanti enjoyed what can only be described as a windfall in September last year when he sold a minority of shares in his company, Suzlon Energy, which makes wind turbines, on the Indian stockmarket, reported The Economist (20 June 2006, p.74).

Electricity India’s biggest bottleneck: He was in the right business – alternative energy – in the right market, at the right time. Of all the infrastructural bottlenecks impeding India’s growth, a shortage of electricity may be the most crippling. And in the three years ending in April, India’s stockmarket had outperformed the overall emerging-market index by 45 per cent. The issue was 46 times oversubscribed.

Growth hub: His company is only 11 years old. It is now based in the state of Maharashtra, in Pune, a manufacturing hub that, because of its wealth of colleges, has also become a magnet for the information-technology and outsourcing industries.

Power costs limit potential: But its origins are in a neighbouring state, Gujarat, where Mr Tanti started in the textiles business. He found prospects stunted, and identified the main difficulty: the cost and unavailability of power, which accounts for a particularly high proportion of operating expenses in that industry.

Wind evangelist: In 1990 he invested in two windmills, saw the potential and became an evangelist for wind power. Having formed Suzlon in 1995, he gradually quit textiles. He now counts 260 mills as customers.

Power rationing commonplace: In Pune, too, electricity is in short supply and expensive. Last year, in the sweltering summer months, it was without power for three hours most days. As elsewhere, industrial consumers have to pay high tariffs while in the countryside power is subsidised (and, when an election looms, often free).

Wind farms sell back to grid: Wind power, as Mr Tanti tells it, is the answer. In India a firm wanting to invest in wind power does not need to build captive windmills. Rather, it can buy a generator to be installed on a shared farm, which delivers electricity to the local state-electricity board. If the buyer delivers to the board enough electricity to cover all his own needs, he is spared scheduled power cuts.

Good economics: Even if it is only part of his electricity needs, he is able to recover the capital cost in a few years, and hedge his power costs for 20 (the life of a wind turbine) at a fraction of the normal industrial tariff.

Not to mention the tax: Another "key driver" is tax. Rahul Bajaj, chairman of Bajaj Auto, which makes motorbikes and three-wheelers, and is Suzlon’s biggest customer, says wind power would not be viable without the tax benefits it brings. Most important is an accelerated depreciation allowance of 80 per cent in the year of installation.

Tendulkar knows a good thing: That may help explain why Aishwarya Rao, a film star, and Sachin Tendulkar, India’s most famous cricketer, have invested in wind power.

The Economist, 20/6/2006, p. 74

Source: Erisk Net