Your partner for a greener future!
- Solar photovoltaic power solutions
- Energy assessments and implementation of energy efficiency measures
- Sustainability assessments and holistic sustainability solutions
OUR MISSION
To help stop the degradation of the Earth's natural environment by being protagonists for harmonious, sustainable business and lifestyles, through personal transformation and a range of sustainable products and services, promoting the reduction of pollution and wasteful consumption.
OUR VISION
To be participating inhabitants of, firmly implanted in, a 100% sustainable, zero waste world - expansive in vision, inclusive in nature.
ENERGY ASSESSMENT
As part of a solar PV system, it pays, both in terms of capital expenditure and long-term investment (in case of financing), to perform an energy audit of your premises. We include this as a FREE service if you proceed to install a solar PV system with us.
WHO WE ARE
1 Green Planet was born of the growing realisation that we, as a collective humanity, privately and commercially, have increasingly come to pursue, and sometimes aspire to, a predominantly consumptive lifestyle, and that the natural world is bearing the majority of the brunt for this, as is clearly shown in the latest WWF living planet report:
With more than 20 calendar years of Professional ECSA registered Engineering experience in our team, we are thoroughly inducted into, and acquainted with the hard realities of the turnkey Engineering, Procurement, Construction, and Management (EPCM) environment. It was in this industrial, mining, and mineral resources processing environment that we found it most sobering to realise how rare a deep awareness of humanity’s impact on the natural world is. We realised we had to change tack, for the greater good, and start contributing directly to a solution, or part thereof, before we die. It’s that serious.
Such were humanity’s unprecedented successes (especially over the last 50 years or so), that we now wield in our minds and hands the power to destroy most of vertebrate life on Earth, in the blink of an evolutionary eye. The cumulative local, and remote effects of our consumptive lifestyles, inherited and chosen, have already ushered in the fastest mass extinction in the history of our planet. Sobering fact: from 1970 to 2014, the AVERAGE abundance of vertebrate species (excluding humans) has declined by 60% due to human activities - some species thus being much worse off than this (e.g. the abundance of populations monitored in the freshwater system has declined overall by 83% during this same period). In terms of surface area, planet Earth currently has more terrestrial surface area affected by human activities (approximately 75%) than unaffected, which explains how it came to be that habitat loss and habitat degradation (and not climate change, as is popularly held) are currently the major contributors to species decline. Mining and large scale freshwater consumption are tremendous culprits here, and we have chosen to focus our effort on alleviating the impact of habitat destruction and –degradation, and freshwater use due to coal mining for coal-fired power generation (in the African context) by offering alternative clean solar Photo Voltaic (PV) electricity generation.
A key focus for us is commercial solar PV electricity generation, thoroughly grounded in our PV Green Card installer accreditation. We pair this focus with more holistic sustainability services, ranging from the assessment and management of clients’ overall sustainability, to their energy, carbon, and water use. We do assessment, management and reporting of sustainability according to the guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI G4 Guidelines)), closing the loop and rounding off an holistic approach by providing a channel for recycling of PV system waste (e.g. damaged PV modules, inverters, electrical and electronic components, and batteries)– with a zero landfill cradle-to-cradle strategy(as opposed to a cradle to grave approach).
The world finds itself firmly in the grips of an economic system with inexorable momentum, that will undoubtedly exceed the current state of decline of the natural world before increased health and biodiversity becomes the norm. It is imperative that humanity starts contributing towards a solution rather than further exploitation of Earth’s natural resources if today’s children are to inherit a richly bio-diverse world rather than an impoverished one.
Our journey has led to considerable personal lifestyle transformations towards sustainability and conservation, and we wish 1 Green Planet to serve as a vehicle to bring pragmatic and holistic transformation to a wider audience.
PS: We sponsor free professional counselling or psychotherapy for readers of the latest WWF living planet report. Contact us for your free referral.