Ekoni Blog

Today HRH Prince Charles launched his accounting for sustainability project. Launching the project he said, “There was a time when we could say that there was either a complete lack of knowledge, or at least room for doubt, about the consequences for our planet of our actions. That time has gone. We now know all too clearly what we are actually doing and that we need to do something about it urgently. Better accounting must be part of that process.”

The aim of the project to develop systems to help organisations to measure more effectively the environmental and social costs of their actions. Stage one of the project has been a review of the current state of play in the measurement and reporting of organisational sustainability in the UK and internationally.

The research to date has identified a number of trends. There is clearly a growing awareness of the need to preserve the environment, and considerable strategic commitment in both the public and private sectors to adopting the principles of sustainability. There are however relatively few practical mechanisms for managers to use to translate strategic sustainability vision into operational reality.

The Prince’s Accounting for Sustainability Project will develop a range of measures to help organisations embed sustainability into their decision-making processes and report their performance in this respect more clearly and consistently.

Over the course of the next year the project team will work with a variety of organisations to ensure that the approach developed is effective and adds genuine value to business processes.

The initiative was launched at St James’s Palace, London to an audience of 200 business leaders, representatives from the voluntary sector, faith leaders and politicians. There were also speaches by The Prime Minister, Lord Browne, Chairman of BP, and The Bishop of London.

The Accounting for Sustainability website was launched at the same time as the initiative and contains many resources that will be helpful to business.

From Ethical Design Lab.

Over half of all Britons now seek out ‘ethically sound’ products. You want to be good. However, you don’t want to make too many sacrifices in the process. This message became clear as we looked at the results of a special Observer poll tracking the nation’s shifting shopping patterns. If this sounds a little like you, consider yourself a ‘conscious consumer’ - somebody who, if the effort is not too great, thinks: Why not do the right thing? In partnership with American Express RED, we’ve produced a magazine dedicated to this new consumer. Welcome to your world. Lucy Siegle, The Observer’s ethical expert, examines the trade-off between consumption and conscience.

Interesting article, although the page is supported at the bottom by text adverts for cheap flights and flying lessons. The Observer should take a bit more care here.

Thousands of people delivering some ear bending political noise - right on the eve of critical international climate talks, and just over a week before the Queen’s Speech which could see the introduction of a bill to help stop climate chaos.
Have a look at the I Count website.

This is the Tree Council’s festival to mark the start of the tree planting season, and a nationwide celebration of trees and woods. Across the country there will be lots of opportunities to plant trees, or to take part in events, walks, talks, songs, story-telling and tree dressing.

See the Tree Council Website.

If you can receive BBC television, there’s what looks to be an excellent series on BBC 2 called The Trees That Made Britain. It’s headed up by Tony Kirkham, Head of the Arboretum at Kew’s Royal Botanic Gardens, and sadly I’ve just found out that it started last week. :( Oh well, looking forward to tomorrow nights episode.

An amazing little creation from Tobias Wong and available at Suck UK, this ingenious and innocuous little device contains solar cells, batteries and LED’s; it collects sunlight by day, and releases it by night. The Sun Jar has no switches either, so it’s always on. Perfect for the conservatory or garden.

Seen at Treehugger

The US’s Environmental Working Group is protesting at the current McDonalds promotion  where they are giving away toy Hummers with “Happy Meals”. So what have they done? They’ve set up a good little site where you can post your own messages on a  McDonalds sign. Some funnies there as well…

If you use Ecover’s products, and get annoyed sometimes that certain shops don’t stock them, here’s a handy way of making sure that you’ve always got some. Ecotopia sell large packs of all of their cleaning products, in 5 litre and 25 litre containers. Or type in “Ecover” in the search box at Goodness Direct. Just fill up your smaller bottles with it.

Jolly handy.

Little point of trivia that we found out when deciding what to name the project - Ekoni is a small town in Eastern Indonesia, with a population of 8358. There’s also some similar info here.

An Inconvenient Truth, the Al Gore led documentary film (and book) is running well in US box offices, having taken over 20 million USD. Paramount are donating 5 percent of sales to The Alliance For Climate Protection, meaning a whopping 1 million USD. Watch the trailer at YouTube.