Purpose: Accelerate the rate of change in consumer behaviour
Education: Throughout the event from exhibitors to speakers and film
Production: Walking the talk in our own production
This all amounted to a respectable number of stalls, live music and educational talks held in the Brisbane botanical gardens.
.jpg)
As is typical of these kinds of events, there was an interesting cross-section of exhibits. There were the small companies advertising predominantly different solar solutions for consumers, a range of environmentally friendly products and foods, politcal groups and a minor presence from some of the bigger companies focusing in the environmental field in Australia. Aside from the environmental products and foods, which I see as the reason people get dubbed 'greenies' when they mention sustainable engineering, corporate sustainability or the like, most exhibitors seemed very professionally set up and it was great to see just how much interest and room there is in the Australian market for green companies.
However, one of the things I was most impressed with, was the involvement of the Queensland government in Greenfest. I wasn't really aware of just how many programs were being run by the government and the level of thinking (and money) that had gone into them. I must admit that I tend to dismiss state government programs as being generally inefficient and missing the point, but there were some fantastic ideas being pushed at Greenfest, everything from state-wide ethanol initiatives (sugar cane, not corn), to green car guides, to free (for Brisbane city residents) energy monitoring and efficiency audits for your home. I haven't yet looked fully into the details and progress of these programs, but from the surface they look very promising and if nothing else are a very positive step in the right direction. I can only hope that they are not just 'crowd pleasing' programs and that they are the first step in the direction of real green policies and improvements, not only in Queensland but Australia wide.
Another good thing was to see the presence of some serious corporate consulting companies in this space, again I saw this as evidence of a growing industry in Australia for green technology and corporate sustainability.
Unfortunately, I was very disappointed to see a distinct lack of any really big companies/organisations in the green technology sector. For example there was no presence from the Australian Institute of Engineers which have some active societies and projects in Queensland, nor were there any major corporations with green programs. I think if companies are really serious about gaining the most benefit from their green programs then they need to be active in events such as this, otherwise how do people know what's going on? It's the same as the Queensland government's presence, it highlights some of the major programs that they have going and provides people with a chance to understand them a bit better. The only reason I could think of is that Greenfest is simply not big enough yet, nor does it have a big enough following in the corporate world to warrant the presence of these big companies an organisations. Hopefully, as the festival grows over the coming years it can begin to merge these bigger organisations into its lineup.
Having said that, there was a presence from a couple of auto companies, including Mini (BMW), Suzuki, Saab and Telsa all of which had some excellent ideas that came from very different lines of thought. Again though, it was interesting to see that Honda and Toyota, both of which have some obviously great hybrid vehicles weren't present. I particularly liked some of the smart computing technology built into the Saab biofuel demo car, which allows the car to adapt to different ethanol mixes in fuels, anywhere from 0-85% ethanol. This is already an old concept in Europe where the car was introduced in 2006, but this kind of car hasn't reached the Australian market yet, largely due to the lack of high ethanol fuels available.
However, one of the things I was most impressed with, was the involvement of the Queensland government in Greenfest. I wasn't really aware of just how many programs were being run by the government and the level of thinking (and money) that had gone into them. I must admit that I tend to dismiss state government programs as being generally inefficient and missing the point, but there were some fantastic ideas being pushed at Greenfest, everything from state-wide ethanol initiatives (sugar cane, not corn), to green car guides, to free (for Brisbane city residents) energy monitoring and efficiency audits for your home. I haven't yet looked fully into the details and progress of these programs, but from the surface they look very promising and if nothing else are a very positive step in the right direction. I can only hope that they are not just 'crowd pleasing' programs and that they are the first step in the direction of real green policies and improvements, not only in Queensland but Australia wide.
Another good thing was to see the presence of some serious corporate consulting companies in this space, again I saw this as evidence of a growing industry in Australia for green technology and corporate sustainability.
Unfortunately, I was very disappointed to see a distinct lack of any really big companies/organisations in the green technology sector. For example there was no presence from the Australian Institute of Engineers which have some active societies and projects in Queensland, nor were there any major corporations with green programs. I think if companies are really serious about gaining the most benefit from their green programs then they need to be active in events such as this, otherwise how do people know what's going on? It's the same as the Queensland government's presence, it highlights some of the major programs that they have going and provides people with a chance to understand them a bit better. The only reason I could think of is that Greenfest is simply not big enough yet, nor does it have a big enough following in the corporate world to warrant the presence of these big companies an organisations. Hopefully, as the festival grows over the coming years it can begin to merge these bigger organisations into its lineup.
Having said that, there was a presence from a couple of auto companies, including Mini (BMW), Suzuki, Saab and Telsa all of which had some excellent ideas that came from very different lines of thought. Again though, it was interesting to see that Honda and Toyota, both of which have some obviously great hybrid vehicles weren't present. I particularly liked some of the smart computing technology built into the Saab biofuel demo car, which allows the car to adapt to different ethanol mixes in fuels, anywhere from 0-85% ethanol. This is already an old concept in Europe where the car was introduced in 2006, but this kind of car hasn't reached the Australian market yet, largely due to the lack of high ethanol fuels available.
Anyways, all in all I thought it was a great event, well organised and with a decent turnout. I can only see this event growing in the years to come as more organisations get involved with it and community interest grows.
No comments:
Post a Comment