Why Green Ticket?

Australian companies are unwittingly risking hard-earned profit through environmental awareness breaches. Companies are risking fines from $400,000 to $3million, depending on the State, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. If you have received a fine then you have also spent thousands of dollars on legal fees, management time and effort, potential court costs, clean-up costs, new environmental management documents, and compulsory training. This does not include reputational costs. In many cases the real cost is 10 to 20 times greater than the fine.

So, any fine, of any size, is ultimately a major impact on a company. Most of these fines are potentially avoidable. For as little as $30 per employee, specific workforce environmental awareness would have eliminated the environmental risk.

I have been involved in environmental management for more than 35 years, and I have been training workers on environmental risk management ever since. Originally, this training was paper-based, class room delivered, with the use of a costly trainer. But times have changed, new efficiencies are to be had in the digital space and Green Ticket, Australia’s first large-scale, digital environmental training company is responding to the market with a library of 22 digital environmental training courses.

Environmental awareness and staff training have been attracting increased attention in the courts and in the eyes of the regulators.

In late 2016, a Land and Environment Court of New South Wales case saw the then residing Chief Judge, Hon. Brian Preston, state that “practical measures could have been implemented, such as staff training, which would have prevented environmental harm.” He said, “by failing to implement these measures the objective seriousness of the offence committed was increased”. (Environment Protection Authority (EPA) v Custom Chemicals Pty Ltd). The judgement stated, “Custom Chemicals’ training of its staff was extremely inadequate” and the company was ordered pursuant to s 250(1)(f) of the Protection of the Environment Operations (POEO) Act, to “cause its employees to attend a training course”.

Adding to this awareness by the judiciary, there is a further changing landscape for business.

The NSW EPA has recently implemented a new robust and transparent calculation method of monetary benefits a company has made while operating illegally. The EPA can subsequently seek a court order requiring an offender to pay back monetary benefits. Now that a robust calculation method has been developed, this may encourage other state environmental regulators throughout Australia to follow suit in recovering monetary benefits from offenders.

Managing environmental risk is not rocket science. There are a number of simple, well-developed tools that can help. A fundamental outcome, however, is employees knowing what they should, and more importantly should not do, as well as knowing how to use the tools.

Green Ticket is based on adult education principles, using visual, audio, and written elements, designed to be interactive, practical, and specific. The result is an environmentally skilled and aware workforce with a set of core site environmental rules, and a company confident in its environmental management policies and implementation by their staff—saving reputation, and potential financial fines.