The financial cost of saving the planet became a bit clearer last month, after AGL Energy sold Westpac 10,000 tonnes of emissions trading units, settling in 2012, at a nominal price of $19 a tonne.

We’re all starting to feel the lifestyle costs too, as any bloke who’s ever had to use a waterless urinal will attest. But spare a thought for the Earth-loving folk at Axa Asia Pacific in Melbourne, who recently moved into a Docklands building rated ‘5 star’ by the Green Building Council of Australia.

Not only does the whiff of ‘H2Zero’ cubes threaten the corridors, but one of the building’s green initiatives was a glass roof to maximise natural light. And maximise it does, to the extent that some Axa staff have put up beach umbrellas over their desks, and on a sunny day, hats and sunscreen are in greater demand than on St. Kilda esplanade.