Awareness for green issues is picking up, especially in the past three or four years. There’s a lot of interest in it, there’s a lot of curiosity but again, unlike traditional business or traditional ways of managing enterprise, the environmental side is quite multifaceted. It’s not only focused on technology, it’s not only focused on innovation and R&D, it’s also focused on all the stakeholders you have which include the community, which include your workforce, your investors and (other) stakeholders. So it’s quite multifaceted and the approach which we have adopted has to be all encompassing and with all of these factors it is not a one-shot solution…it has to be quite diverse in its approach and I think that new development of thinking, of the whole system approach rather than addressing certain elements of a system is something that is slowly growing now.

After all, not only our financial systems but our business methodologies are based on 18 hundred, the 18, 15 and 16 hundred models…it’s a few hundred years old…with a populous of, let’s say, two to five hundred million people on the planet (back then)…we are looking at six, seven billion people now. So there’s a totally different measure to resource economics when you scale it up. We can’t have that old Cornucopia Concept (to guide us) any more.

Promat Technology Trends:  …so can it be assumed that ISO 14001 is the be-all to end-all of sustainable greening…?

YP/SEC: It is a benchmark, it is definitely one of the many greening tools which are, let’s say, out there…but it’s only one…it’s only basically allows you the facility to track your environmental impact. Now, what you do with that information is totally different and how you utilise that information is different. We have noticed a lot of companies saying “we are green because we have ISO 14001”. So we are “OK, let’s have a look at the statistics that you have and so now what are you doing with all of this information, how have you increased the efficiency of your plant, how have you improved upon the emission factor of you generating this kind of product, what kind of processes have you put in place to not only reduce waste but to perhaps look at other streams of either raw materials or using that waste for other purposes? How is your company green? Is there are green consciousness in your organisation or is this just in the Environment, Safety and Health Department that this exists in? What are you doing with this information? It’s a different Green Consciousness, a Green Business and Enterprise. Having certification that exists in one department or company might be different from another.

Promat Technology Trends:  Please explain to pragmatic things that have to be done in order to Green Eco Labelling certification?

YP/SEC: It’s a very straightforward process. In fact all you have to do is go online, go to our (SEC) website…and it’s all there! Our website has a list of criteria of various types of product types and materials that have been assessed. Each one of those has a list of aspects that need to be addressed, that the products need to be either tested against or we need to have substantial proof that the product does comply to that clause of that requirement. Based on that, once you collate all that data, if it is a testing requirement then it has to be done by an (independent) third party, an accredited test laboratory. Now if you come from Japan, for instance, and you have an eco label we assume that that is already done. I believe almost every country has an accreditation council of sorts that recommends and approves laboratories for certain types of testing. So if you can prove that that laboratory is a credible laboratory and it is up to date depending on where you got your product tested, then we can accept those test results as well. Again, this specifically targeted to most of the developed nations…Japan, Korea, Australia, US, Canada, Europe…so if the test reports come from there and it is from a reputable third party source we can most probably accept those. Once that is done and all the data collected, you collate that data on the specific product or products that you have…and apply for a certification audit! □

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