Our Environmental and Sustainability Commitment
Maxwell International Australia, like Lowepro worldwide, is committed to corporate responsibility for environmental best practice. The company takes considerable steps to minimise trade waste, employs easily recycled packaging and water-soluble inks, and is seeking new ways to employ recycled materials in the production of its products, without in any way causing any detrimental performance reduction.
Lowepro's Primus bag and Polar Bears International
Lowepro, for its 40th anniversary in 2007, launched the Primus, the industry's first photo backpack made from more than 50% recycled fabrics. The material was made from the recycled output of 22 PET water bottles. A small step – but a major start to a new chapter in Lowepro's commitment to conservation and the environment. Keep a look out for more exciting news on this front.
 A percentage of the proceeds from the sale of this bag are now helping Polar Bears International in its quest to arrest the decline of habitat for Polar Bears, a fast-declining species, caused by loss of pack ice in the Arctic, attributed to global warming. Lowepro made its first donation as a result of the successful sale of these backpacks, in an undisclosed amount for the first six months, but comprising tens of thousands of dollars. Maxwell's parent company, DayMen in Canada, has a long history of actions supporting conservation. More than a decade ago, DayMen's founder, Uwe Mummenhof, committed the company to helping save the Spirit Bear from extinction. As a result of the pressure by DayMen and many other like-minded organisations, in March 2006 the Canadian and British Columbian governments finally agreed to declare 1.8 million hectares as a national park free from logging and most mining, given over to a wildlife park for these extraordinary creatures. Lowepro is now embarked on a similar campaign to save endangered Polar Bears from the effects of global warming.
A commitment to carbon emission reductions
Many people share a sense of frustration at the apparent inaction of governments of all persuasions to legislate programs immediately for reduced carbon emissions in businesses, homes and public institutions. Enlightened individuals and companies are simply just getting on with it. You can too.
Maxwell in Australia is a distribution company. We import manufactured products. Our Lowepro bags are made almost exclusively from a non-renewable resource, oil-based fabrics. We warehouse and distribute them to retailers. Consumers use our bags and other photo accessories for a number of years. When they have finally come to end of life, typically they go to landfill as consumers clean out their homes. We believe such practices afford many opportunities for change, and much more sensible use for products at the end of their practical life. In the case of fabrics, recycled PET fabrics are now becoming available. To date only one of our most advanced bags employs this, but more are sure to follow, as costs come down. At present such recycled PET fabrics are sharply more costly than virgin fabrics – however their quality is identical.
Since the start of 2008 we at Maxwell International Australia are now committed:
- To reduce our carbon footprint through more economical and efficient transport, storage and packaging methods
- To assess transport methodologies and vehicles for considerable reductions
- To review how we communicate worldwide, through reduced air travel and increased use of electronic communication without the need for paper and
- To work with a broad range of distributive industries, including the Australian Industry Group, its AEEMA offshoot, The Photographic Imaging Council of Australia and Photo Marketing Association International, and our transport and waste-processing partners, to reduce unsustainable losses of raw materials going to landfill that could otherwise be conserved and re-used in the manufacture of goods after recovery and re-processing.
This is a long and complex journey. We, like many others, are only at a very early stage in improved practice.
We represent two companies that have already achieved the coveted ISO 14001 environmental certificate, for production and environmental best practice: Velbon Tripod Company (China) - Obtained ISO 14001 certification in 2006, and Tamron Co. Ltd, Japan, has accreditation for several of its Japanese and China factories. Other factories from whom we purchase are working towards these standards, but are not there yet. At present we have no means to measure these companies' emissions during the manufacture of the products we import. In future years we expect to add this to our inventory of outputs and start to measure the achieved reductions there too.
The journey to reduced emissions
Maxwell has set a goal of reducing its own carbon footprint by 25% by the end of 2011. The program started in January 2008. This program will ultimately save money, not only carbon emissions and energy use. A very simple first step was to reduce lighting over-use in our office in Sydney, reducing lighting load (and 40 fluorescent tubes out of 90 in the office), for what will amount to an estimated 38% emissions reduction in this area. Not next year – but already achieved thanks to just one person deciding to act under the umbrella of the company's detailed sets of goals for lighting, heating/cooling, transport, office equipment use, storage and warehousing, packing materials and design! That is an immediate reduction of 1.6kW electricity consumption per hour or about 12kwh a working day, a 12% overall consumption reduction already achieved! (Lighting of course is only part of our electricity use – there's air conditioning, power for office equipment, hot water etc. We have yet to evaluate how much reduction in air conditioning has occurred, but chances are that ambient temperatures have been reduced in the office, reducing the cooling energy required for comfortable working conditions by a measurable amount.
Once we have established a transparent and auditable process of measurement, we will start to publish our progress on this important journey. To aid others interested in pursuing similar paths, we intend to publish several white papers for you to download and study, with links to sites to help you make your on assessments and measurements and start on what can be a very rapid initial reduction in emissions and energy use.
What were our annual carbon emissions as of January 2008?
From an interim internal audit, we have assessed total Maxwell carbon emissions at 480 tonnes a year, as our base point. Our goal is to achieve a 10% reduction by the end of 2008, and a 25% reduction by the end of 2011. All other emissions will be offset by the purchase of Gold Standard Carbon Offsets, until a formal emissions trading program is in place nationally, or internationally, at which point we may adjust our program.
The way ahead
We do not yet have any magic answers that will get the next 35% reduction in our emissions beyond the initial 25%. All of us need to achieve the generally accepted international goal for at least a 60% reduction in emissions by 2050. We believe that a 25% four-year reduction goes a long way to change day-to-day thinking. The sooner we start reducing carbon emissions, the better the chance that worldwide a ceiling of 480ppm can be achieved, before a gradual reduction back to the sustainable 350ppm the world enjoyed until 1900. Maxwell's program will also create a working environment where the creative ideas of our people, our customers and our trading partners will rapidly identify other ways to continue improved practices.
Until we can totally eliminate all emissions, we will be purchasing Gold Standard carbon offsets to make up for all our remaining carbon emissions: Driving to and from work, transport, building emissions and the like. Gold Standard? Carbon Offsets that involve investments in renewable energy, such as solar or wind power. Unfortunately, while tree planting can create other environmental gains such as soil improvement and reductions in soil salinity, when trees are cut down they give back to the atmosphere most of the carbon they took up while they are growing.
One thing is already clear. The first stages of emission reductions are sharply less costly than prior practice. So cleaning up the environment is also good news for investors; and it's good news for customers because we will be better placed to continue to offer affordable products for you, our customer, to enjoy.
What sorts of things have we achieved immediately?
As in most projects, there is always low-hanging fruit. Several Maxwell employees had already achieve a carbon-neutral footprint through the purchase of carbon credits for those carbon emissions caused by personal transport, air travel, electricity consumption etc. The company is now selecting renewable energy options for the company's electricity services and employs recycled paper in almost all in-office use wherever practical. A major switch to e-mail in place of routine mailed business communication has reduced paper consumption by 30% long-established patterns, with consequential reductions in transport, energy use and other resources employed. But against that, our business is growing, we have more communication and reductions are hard to maintain. So whole new thinking is needed.
A simple example of how we found a way to rapidly reduce paper use internally
The default settings in Microsoft Word set margins left and right on a Letter-sized page at 3.15cm. We are now re-setting our 16 PCs to the correct A4 paper size used in Australia. We reduce margins to 2.54cm (one inch) on the left and 1.9cm on the right, with a 0.2cm reduction in top and bottom margins. That, in combination with a reduced default point size to 11-point from the default 12-point, will, in combination, produce a 25% increase in available space for written material per page. We calculate this could reduce overall paper by 15% alone. Adding a "Duplex-print" default to our office printers further reduces paper consumption by 1/3. Ideally all materials will ultimately be viewed and stored electronically. Over a year we expect to reduce paper consumption by 80 reams or 40,000 printed pages. That's about 7 whole trees. It will also save toner, the energy used by the copiers and printers. All new monitors are 5-Star energy-efficient types. Many desktop machines have been replaced by laptops, typically reducing power consumption per PC from 200 watts to 85 watts. Lesson: Look holistically at your total information flow and see where the savings can be made. They add up.
Meetings, meetings, meetings
Time was when the management group got together three or four times a year 8 people fly internationally thousands of kilometres, occupy hotels, sit in slowly warming rooms all day and then eat and drink a bit too much for a couple of nights. Recently we substituted our first international management meeting with a Webex conference over four hours. Apart from our Australian managing director having to get up at 2.00 am for the 8.00am Californian start time, which was 6.00pm in Europe, we saved nearly a six-figure sum in airfares, accommodation and meals, we concentrated the meeting into four hours, achieved some key information flow and discussion time and got back to business within minutes, having effectively also saved five days of travel and meeting time. Although the planes still flew (but without us on board) our own carbon footprint was reduced by nearly a hundred tonnes. Eventually, replicated across thousands of international businesses, some flights will be cancelled, or growth will be limited, costs will be reduced and productivity will grow. While there's no substitute for face to face ideas exchanges, such actions will be used progressively to help our company and many others make do with less, while being more productive and cost efficient. Being sound in carbon reduction does not have to cost more, it usually costs less, uses resources more wisely.
Maxwell International Australia's Homebush premises, an existing building, has been fitted out with leading-edge lighting energy efficiency in its new showroom, using electronic ballasts, daylight long-life-low energy fluorescent lighting and HMI high-intensity spots, achieving over 85% luminous efficiency compared to the typical 28% of a household incandescent lamp. The new air conditioning plant for the company's IT resources meets maximum applicable energy efficiency standards for its size. By mid-2008 we will have installed improved thermal sensors to control different zone temperature needs more precisely, further reducing energy used.
At the same time the company is committed to ensure that none of these initiatives add measurable net cost to our products or services.
John Swainston – Managing Director, February 2008
Read a list of useful environmental links and explanatory documents |
