Gold in green

Issue 

Gold in green

By Tracy Sorenson

"There's gold in them thar green hills", declared a headline in the Sydney Morning Herald more than two years ago. In Australia, the main contenders for the prospective billion dollar waste management industry include Brambles, Cleanaway, the French company Compagnie General Des Eaux and the US-based Waste Management corporation.

This last should set alarm bells ringing. Waste Management has frequently been fined in the US for breaches of environmental standards.

In one particularly disturbing case, the company bought up loads of toxic waste and "managed" it by mixing it with road sealant. Animals living near the affected roads began to drop dead, and there was suddenly a whole new meaning for car sickness.

There is going to be a lot of money around for corporate greening. Environmental consultancies, new environmental technology firms, and legal firms are all gearing up to get their share.

The June 26 Australian Business reported that the Department of Industry, Technology and Commerce's Industrial Research and Development Board would set money aside for nine strategic research projects in environmental technology.

The first generic grants ($12 million) have been awarded to companies including Australian Newsprint Mills, Caltex Oil, BHP, Pasminco Metals EZ and Paper Products.

While some of the research and development in this area will undoubtedly be invaluable, questions about the environmental commitment of such profit-oriented firms are not unreasonable.

Kinhill Engineers, which has provided environmental impact studies for numerous big projects, has been the subject of bitter complaint by residents fighting to preserve Wolli Creek in Sydney from the F5 freeway. Kinhill's EIS, they said, read more like an argument in favour of the freeway than an objective assessment of its environmental effects.

Internal environmental audits are another growth area. These involve reviewing discharges and waste management practices at industrial sites, site contamination audits and audits of an ongoing development to see if it complies with the stated environmental impact. These assessments had been undertaken by 39% of the 352 companies answering a Coopers and Lybrand survey. Another 53% said that they were now considering such a move.

But some companies have been uneasy about their environmental problems appearing in printed reports and subject to, in the case of New South Wales, the new (and untried) search and seizure powers of the State Pollution Control Commission. They have thus given a sympathetic ear to lawyers keen to find their own niche in the corporate greening market.

Australian Business reported on June 20 last year that the legal firm Gadens Ridgeway was developing a program for clients which would transfer all of a company's "sensitive environmental information" from general management to the company's in-house lawyers, thus making it a privileged communication protected by legal confidentiality.

Meanwhile, the Trade Practices Commission's August issue of Fair Trading reports on the TPC's draft guidelines designed to curb misleading advertising of products.

The TPC's first assistant commissioner, John Tamblyn, told a marketing conference in June that there had been an outbreak of symbols and logos such as green spots, green ticks, platypuses, dolphins and endangered species appearing on packaging as signals that the products were desirable in environmental terms.

He said the "green" symbols had the potential to mislead consumers, particularly if their significance and accreditation were not clear. He warned that the TPC had the power to prosecute companies for misleading claims.

The federal government is working on a national logo to be awarded to products meeting specified criteria.

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