Goal For The Green

On September 10, 2008, World Wildlife Fund announced that Johnson Diversey, which is one of the world’s largest providers of commercial cleaning products and services, had joined their Climate Savers Program.

Johnson Diversey announced their plan to invest $19 million over the next five years, to achieve their commitments, but they anticipate an operational savings of about $31 million over the same time period.  This proves that sustainability is the right approach for both the environment and the bottom line.

Recently, I was given the opportunity to speak with Jon Matthews, of Johnson Diversey.  Given the recent award by WWF, and all the accomplishments Johnson Diversey has achieved, I could only come up with these three questions.

1. Where do you go from here when,  you are already at the top?

2. What plans does Johnson Diversey have for further and future sustainability?

3. Did you know that you were being considered for such a prestigious award?

During the interview, Jon Matthews, stressed that ” Our objective has always extended beyond financial growth to promoting the health and well being of our planet and the people who share it. We are excited about helping customers and our clients to become more sustainable, by helping them provide a cleaner and healthier environment.  It is our goal and commitment to reduce our individual carbon footprint and CO2 emissions.  On the path of sustainability, we are never done.”

Johnson Diversey was called upon to help fight the MRSA scare last year, that showed up in several high school sports locker rooms.  There was a high demand for sustainable solutions to eradicate the viral and bacterial germs.  Johnson Diversey makes a solution that contains excellerated hydrogen peroxide. During this time they found that they could not keep the product on the shelf. They discovered that they needed to treat the schools like a health care facility. They took on the job, and were successful in treating the spread of MRSA in the affected schools.  It has also been proven that the use of toxic free solutions in a school environment, enhances student performance and over all health and well being.

Johnson Diversey, was one of 18 companies world wide, to be considered for the award from the WWF. The entire process was two years in the making.  WWF hired an analytical firm to review the applications, collect and validate data, set a baseline, and test emissions. The entire process required meeting certain criteria and third party approval.

Are we being logical about Global Warming ? Probably not, since we now call it climate change.  It might be a little ridiculous to think that man caused climate change to happen.  Sure, we are a contributing factor, but we all know that the earth undergoes sometimes drastic climate changes-naturally!  Mother Nature has never needed any help in that area.  Even if we would have heeded the warnings 30 plus years ago, after the “gas crisis,” -much of what is happening now, would still be happening.  We have no control over it.  But, we probably have contributed to our crisis by not practicing good conservation.

So, what makes us think that we can change our habits and replace our energy demands with alternative sources, in just ten years?  Today, here in the United States, only 7% of our energy comes from alternative sources.  Hydroelectric power  comprises 36% of our total alternative energy usage.  Another 5% comes from the use of wind energy.  These two sources cannot be tapped into much further, without studies of the damage it causes to already fragile ecosystems.  Fish and wildlife suffer as a paradox of our need for alternative energy sources.  It seems the only time we hear about these unfair tradeoffs, is when people protest (NIMBY) not in my back yard, when it is time to build dams and install wind turbines into already settled communities.

Today, over half of our alternative energy is in the form of biofuels.  Sources such as switchgrass (it needs an enzyme to break it down) and ethanol (corn based) are our hope for renewable energy.  Geothermal and solar power (through photovoltaic cells) offer another 6% of our current alternative energy usage.  While these sources are promising, they supply a very minor amount of our total annual energy needs.

Will we meet the goal in ten years?  Probably not, but we have to start somewhere.  It is estimated that it will cost upwards of $2.5 trillion to achieve approximately half of our home based energy needs through alternative energy sources.   Some feel that the environmental impact of biofuels is worse than that of petroleum souces.  Sure, more information is needed in these areas, but we can’t stop progress.  We must move forward.  We should make more use of resources that we already have here at home.  More use of nuclear energy, natural gas, and ways to safely make use of hydrogen should be looked at more closely.

Tomorrow is officially Summer. But, here in the Puget Sound area, we got gypped out of Spring.  We can count on one hand, well maybe not quite two hands the few days that have come close to 70 degrees.

The truth is, it has been flat out cold.  In this month of June, Fairbanks ,Alaska has already had 10 days above 70. The “Icebox of our Nation,” International Falls, Minnesota has had four days top 70 degrees so far this month.  The mercury has been topping seventy in Oslo, Norway nearly every day recently.

Even Tomsk, Russia, in Siberia was warmer than Seattle on the 10th of June. They hit the 70’s in Siberia and we were still sporting our sweatshirts and hoodies at 55 degrees. The snow plows were back out on Snoqualmie Pass, clearing another 7 inches of snow, just last week. That’s happened only two times in the last 30 years. This has been a record year for snow in our mountains.

We are praying for a slow thaw, or we will be looking at terrible flooding like we had in December. It was the worst flooding here in over 100 years.

Perhaps we shouldn’t complain too loud, at least we don’t have to be looking for relief like they were on the East Coast last week, sweltering at more than 100 degrees in places. Not to mention, an early start to the fire season in California, in April, and an already record number of hurricanes, tornados and severe storms in the Midwest, doing billions of dollars of damage.

According to the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, which is a combined effort of more than a dozen government agencies, we can expect to see more severe and intense weather patterns ocurring. There will be more severe droughts, more disastorous (stormier) storms covering wider and more diverse places,plus more and deeper flooding as part of our changing climate.  Events that are rare to an area, can and will become commonplace. A rise from moderate to high sea surface water temperatures have been linked to increasing power and more hurricane activity.  Last season there were approximately 900 hundred hurricanes, this year they are expecting at least 1800 to pass through the Midwest.  The season started in April, and as evedent by the damage so far, has been relentless.

CO2 emissions have caused the global average temperature to rise 15-60 times faster than the natural historic rate. Our Earth’s climate system is changing more rapidly than some species are able to adapt.  These changes are already affecting more than half of Earth’s wild species.  More than 16% of all coral reefs have become damaged, or even died because of high sea water temperatures. Coral reefs may even become extinct in this century, if we don’t concentrate on controlling and stabelising CO2 emissions.  There is no time to waste on this issue.  It affects all life, even our own.