Saab not that green: watchdog

It will be interesting to see if the ACCC is successful with this action (I don't know the facts of the matter of course) but at the very least it is a reminder to organisations of the need be able to substantiate green claims -- and for consumers to not to take them at face-value.
It's tempting and comparatively easy to claim 'green-ness' -- you only have to look at the avalanche of people committing to become carbon neutral in the last 18 months to see that -- but you if haven't done your homework too you're exposing your company's reputation to a disproportionate risk (not to mention misleading people).
My former company, Dell, became the first IT hardware vendor to commit to becoming carbon neutral last year but did so only after having thoroughly understood its carbon footprint and committing to lowering its overall carbon intensity 15 percent by 2012.
(Carbon intensity in this case means the ratio of carbon emissions to company revenue and is, I believe, a more useful measure environmental impact than the volume of emissions alone, since large a company will logically produce more carbon than a small one.)

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As an IT journalist ...

So begins the commerical for Acer's for Gemstone consumer notebooks running on Australian FM radio at the moment. The speaker, who goes on to promote the sounds features of the model, doesn't give his name (perhaps he's a dentist with a journalism degree from the Ponds Institute) but it's not a voice I recognise. It's not the first time a company has used an actor to play a professional in an advertisement of course and I suspect audiences these days tune out messages like this (perhaps Acer and Telstra share an advertising agency :-) but it made me wonder how actual journalists feel about it.
Update: Here's an Australian IT journalist who thinks Acer's tactic here is a bit dis-honest, Dan Warne, on-line editor of Australian Personal Computer, on his personal blog and APC . Kudos to Dan (and to fellow journalist David Flynn for tracking down the source).