Month: November 2017

3rd Modular Construction and Pre-Fabrication ANZ 2018

Building on the success of the 2nd edition of the Modular Construction and Prefabrication ANZ 2017, Clariden is pleased to invite you to the 3rd Modular Construction and Pre-Fabrication ANZ 2018 in Sydney on 28 February – 2 March and in Melbourne on 5 – 7 Marchat the International Convention Centre Sydney and Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

The 3rd Modular Construction and Pre-Fabrication ANZ 2018 is the event platform that exhibits the latest techniques and technology in the modularization and prefabrication context. Discover best practices from modular builders that have successfully built modern modular commercial and residential buildings in and out of the region.

Themed “Innovation. Sustainability. Efficiency. Quality.”, the 3rd edition of the conference will focus on best practices and new innovative techniques and technologies that will strengthen and enhance the uptake of modular construction methodology in the ANZ construction industry.

A new addition to this year’s conference is the Construction Tech, Equipment & Automation Innovation Showcase where you will discover the latest construction automation technologies that will help you improve worksite productivity and efficiency through automation. From innovations such as bricklaying robots, driverless trucks/bulldozers to 3D printing and inspection drones you will discover the latest tools to improve productivity, enhance construction safety and elevate quality.

Enjoy an additional 5% discount on top of the Early Bird promotion when you register for the conference by keying in the promo code: MCISCA5PERCENT

For more information on the conferences, please visit http://claridenglobal.com/conference/modconandprefab-anz2018/ and register for the events.

City Rail Link’s Annual Review is now available

In this year’s sustainability review City Raily Link reveal how they have saved enough diesel to drive to the moon nearly three times, how the techniques adopted by CRL truck drivers could save you $200 at the pump each year and how NZ sourced steel will be supporting the historic Chief Post Office building when they build the tunnels beneath it.

Click here to read more.

 

ABC shows how to win the War on Waste – and there’s more to come

 

Taken from the Fifth Estate website.  Katie Camero | 9 November 2017

Grassroots groups have been plugging away on waste for decades with limited success, but ABC’s War on Waste has come along and with it birthed a national movement and an ongoing, urgent conversation about how we must do things differently.

According to ABC impact producer Andy Marks, the program exceeded its viewership target by 50 per cent, reaching 3.7 million Australians and impacting individuals, cafes, organisations and schools across the country.

The series’ first three episodes, aired in May, focused on food waste, plastic pollution and coffee cup and fashion waste, along with many other issues that contribute to the eight per cent growth in Australian waste each year.

In his role Marks works directly with the public, NGOs and third party partners to help them engage their communities in what is now a national movement.

News articles covering the series received 1.5 million page views, and over 50 highly active national and local Facebook groups have sprung up independently, helping spread awareness on Australia’s waste problem.

There are also 42,000 posts on Instagram, increasing by the day five months later, promoting the series’ hashtag #WarOnWasteAU.

It’s the ABC’s biggest campaign yet.

Marks says the breadth of the audience was incredibly wide from young to old, covering the entire population. Forty per cent were under 50 – double the ABC average.

Impact on communities and organisations

Waste pollution is an issue individuals, organisations and governments have been struggling with for several years, yet one TV series seems to have generated more success in just a year.

In the first episode, host Craig Reucassel interviewed a banana farmer in Queensland. He wanted to bring awareness to the disheartening reality that about 40 per cent of edible bananas produced are thrown away, just because they don’t meet supermarkets’ aesthetic standards, being either too big or too small.

A clip on this encounter was released on social media and it quickly received over 16 million views, making it the biggest social media post in ABC’s history.

“This was an emotional piece to film because it touched people to see people working so hard on the land, and having such a passion for that product, to just see it dumped back into the ground again,” Marks told The Fifth Estate.

“It really surprised people and struck a chord.”

Coffee culture was another area positively influenced by War on Waste.

Organisation Responsible Cafes helps coffee shops promote reusable cups by providing support and promotion to cafes that offer discounts for customers that bring in their own cup.

Prior to the series’ debut, they had 420 member cafes, but just three days after the broadcast of episode three, which tackled coffee cup culture, they grew to 1050 members. They now have over 3000.

War on Waste also helped them design a survey to measure coffee cup behaviour, and found a 117 per cent increase in reusable coffee cup use since the series aired.

Some coffee shops across Australia have even stopped serving single-use cups and universities like UTS are briefing students on the importance of the issue.

Planet Ark also attributes its spike in members and volunteers to the War on Waste. For the period the series was on, they saw a 60 per cent increase in traffic, in comparison to their usual 19 per cent annual growth.

Schools have benefitted too

Schools around the country have also reported positive feedback from War on Waste.

The series has been shown in classrooms, coursework projects have been based on the show and some are running their own projects to reduce waste in their communities.

One school even produced a zero-waste theatre production inspired by the series.

Wagga Wagga Public School in NSW wove 900 plastic bags in one of their fences in the shape of a whale to spread their messages to drivers and pedestrians on reducing plastic use.

The fourth episode of the series, War on Waste: What’s Changing, will premiere on 3 December at 7:40pm. It focuses on container deposit schemes, cosmetic standards for fruits and vegetables and how supermarkets are responding, and Reucassel tracks down our federal environment minister to discuss a federal ban on plastic bags.

“[Waste is] an ongoing challenge for all of us,” Marks says.

“We all play a part in the problem, and we can all play a part in the solution.”

Valuing externalities

The lack of valuation and recognition of natural and social capital continues to be a significant gap in the economic and financial models and methods we apply when identifying and developing business cases for solutions to meet social and economic infrastructure needs.

Inconsistent policy, a lack of long running registers of natural capital and unavailability of guidance for business have contributed to this gap. At the international level there has been a recent effort to fill this gap with consistent accounting frameworks. These frameworks at the base level are aimed at attaining a better estimate of the Total Economic Value of some resource, allowing a truer accounting for costs incurred against natural capital.

It is critical that natural and social capital are valued and integrated in solutions identification, options analysis and business case’s, to assist with uncoupling the politics from critical social and economic decision making, to attract alternative forms of funding and financing and to shift to regenerative and intergenerational social, economic and environmental outcomes.

This is a brief synopsis on the methods and state of play with respect to valuing social and environmental considerations. It is also therefore in essence a call to action to advocate and promote the need to value and include social and economic aspects in decision making processes and business cases.

Methods

The inclusion of environmental considerations into a Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA’s) is dependent on having a valid value assigned to the existence, loss or use of the good being considered. For instance, the value of clean water has been determined for some policies by finding the substitute cost of purifying or buying water after the degradation/loss of some source of water, i.e. watershed valuations. However, in this example the inherent value of the good isn’t considered, i.e. the existence value of the native area that is purifying the water, nor the ethical value of clean water in the environment to an individual. Another example would be the cost/benefit of health care related to an increase/decrease of air pollution from a policy. This will give a direct value to the policy outcome, however does not factor in the willingness of an individual to pay to reduce air pollution for any other reasons. This value is a non-market value, one to which a value has not been assigned in a trade or provision of service. These non-market values can have a significant effect on the total cost benefit analysis.

Non-market valuations are a large research area due to the importance of their inclusion into CBAs. The valuations fall into three main categories. Revealed preference techniques seek to determine a value for a good by analysing the behaviour of individuals in regards to their use of the good. For example, one could determine the value of a good examining the amount of money and time spent visiting a place, this is known as travel cost analysis. This approach has been used to value the Great Barrier Reef. Stated preference techniques seek to determine a value for a good by asking individuals to place values on different outcomes or policies and the prices that are associated with each option. The analysis leads to an estimate of willingness to pay for some good. This approach has been used in the wake of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill to determine the willingness to pay for the existence of populations of birds and fish in the spill area. This result was subsequently used as the basis of a punitive fine against Exxon. Thirdly, the most recent and least accepted is the use of wellbeing scores to give a value to a change in goods. This approach would determine the difference in wellbeing for either a time or place that differs with the change in access to or existence of the good, and would then calculate a value based on the wellbeing to income ratio. This method has as yet not been applied widely, but can theoretically address some of the biases involved in stated preference and revealed preference studies.

Benefits transfer is a method used to apply the results of a primary study conducted elsewhere to the policy site that is being analysed. Benefits transfer is according to (PC, 2014) the most used method to incorporating non-market values into cost benefit frameworks, as it is the lowest cost method. The reliability is greatly influenced by similarities between the primary study (or studies) in the ‘policy’ and ‘site’ being applied. This reliability problem is widely known in academia, yet is often ignored in policy analysis (PC 2014).

The secondary studies for benefits transfer are usually sourced from two environmental studies databases, EVRI and Envalue. EVRI is based in Canada and is backed by the Australian Federal government. It includes around 500 recent environmental and social valuation studies. This database has been used as a replacement for Envalue, as it has more recent studies and a larger number of studies available. Envalue was developed by the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, and contained around 1000 studies from Australia. However, it has since been discontinued although access is still available.

ISCA

ISCA is in the process of developing Version 2 of the IS scheme, which will include an Economics’ Theme which will include best practise in business cases, valuing externalities and benefits realisation. This is one means through which ISCA is partnering and working with both the public and private sector to raise awareness of the importance of valuing material externalities (specifically social and environmental).

Antony Sprigg

National Energy Efficiency Conference 2017

Registrations are now open for the National Energy Efficiency Conference 2017, which will take place on 20 – 21 November at Pullman and Mercure Melbourne Albert Park.

Now in its ninth year, the National Energy Efficiency Conference is Australia’s premier annual event on energy efficiency, bringing together up to 400 efficiency leaders, innovators, energy users and policy makers.

The theme for 2017 – Security, Affordability, Productivity – underlines the growing recognition that smart demand side investments are the quickest and cheapest way to solve Australia’s energy crisis, and keep our energy system reliable and affordable.

Visit www.eec.org.au/neec17 to view further details and to register for the Conference.