Panasonic Corporation announced its new midterm management plan that covers the next three years from April 2010 to March 2013. Panasonic President Fumio Ohtsubo unveiled the plan, called GT12 (Green Transformation 2012), that is designed to bolster the Panasonic Group's growth potential — essentially, becoming the number one green innovation company by 2018.

2018 marks the 100th anniversary of the company's founding. As the first step towards the goal, Panasonic will devote the next three years to making group-wide efforts in shifting its paradigm for growth and laying a foundation to be a Green Innovation Company, while integrating its contribution to the environment and business growth.

Centennial College's “Industrial & Building Energy Expertise Training Program (IBEX)” can train your new or existing personnel to be an energy manager. The program includes rigorous academic learning and actual energy audits. The reduced energy costs enjoyed by your company will pay for the program many times over.

Funded by the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) and offered by the Centennial Energy Institute, the program is on online e-learning, self paced module (Module 1: Six topics and one workshop, covering eighty hours of training and Module 2: Ten sections and five workshops, covering one hundred and sixty hours of training), to help facility managers, engineers, career retrainers, and technology students/graduates, to develop competency in facility energy management, energy conservation and energy retrofit projects.

How are your products packaged? Can you see effective ways to reengineer the distribution model to prove an economic advantage to your customer base while at the same time reducing the environmental impact of your product packaging? Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is coming, and if you can be ahead of the curve you may win market share, lower operating costs and set a good example as an environmentally responsible company.

EPR extends the traditional environmental responsibilities that producers and distributors have previously been assigned (such as worker safety, prevention and treatment of environmental releases from production, financial and legal responsibility for the sound management of production wastes) to include management at the post-consumer stage.

Half of Canadian small business owners (52 per cent) currently have (46 per cent) or are considering (six per cent) implementing a green plan or environmental policies for their business, according to an RBC small business survey.

Small businesses that already have a plan or policies in place are more likely to concentrate on reducing energy (63 per cent), while those that are considering a green plan are more likely to focus the plan on environmental standards (31 per cent) and supply reduction (55 per cent).