www.everythingsgonegreen.co.uk

This green and pleasant land, in our opinion, isn’t green enough. We’re not just talking about environmental and energy-saving initiatives but also the fact that this country was once covered in trees and mankind, in his infinite “wisdom”, has seen to remove so many of them. However, Norfolk County Council have been planting trees in rural villages, not for environmental reasons, but for traffic calming.

The new Coalition Government, in its ruthless drive to cut costs, has slashed the road safety budget, meaning that local authorities are free to choose whether or not they can invest in speed camera initiatives. To the complete dismay of road safety campaigners, cash-strapped councils are rumoured to be bailing out of road safety schemes despite the fact that some cameras can actually generate revenue, not to mention saving lives.

But Norfolk County Council’s innovative idea, at a cost of £70,000, appears to be slowing drivers down. On the approach to four of the county’s rural villages, Martham, Horstead, Mundesley and Overstrand, the council’s strategic planting scheme seems to be having an affect.

Planting 200 trees at these four locations, the council have created a “lazy diagonal” on the approach to the villages with the trees planted at ever-decreasing distances apart. The idea is that the tress play with the drivers’ peripheral vision so, as they approach a village at speed, the placement of the trees creates the sensation of increased speed so the drivers naturally apply the brakes and slow down.

As well as reducing speed and hopefully accidents, the initiative is also a carbon reduction scheme and, in part, a historic restoration exercise. Looking back at old photographs of Norfolk, councillors saw that the “avenue affect”, a classical sight in France, has been lost in this county and the tree-planting strategy was also restoring these bygone vistas.

Stuart Hallett, Norfolk’s casualty reduction manager said that the trees were not replacements for speed cameras, especially on fast roads, but as the planting of the trees in the rural locations was reducing speeds by around 2MPH it was showing positive results in the villages.

“What we tried to do in some locations was get over this idea of the village dominating the road environment, not the road dominating the village, so the driver’s perspective is ‘I am travelling through a community, I need to respect that and slow down’.”

said Hallett in an interview with The Independent.

The scheme has yet to release the full figures but let’s hope they get the results they need. A reduction in costs, carbon emissions and in road casualties coupled with the re-greening of this land sounds like a very positive win-win situation for drivers, for villagers and for the environment too.

Just a little snippet for you, but an extremely important one…

We’re currently reading John Fagan’s excellent green handbook Managing4Good, a “guide to responsible and sustainable business” and we stumbled across this nugget of information in the quotation at the foot of page 27. In a case study of communications company BT the text in the illustration reads:

BT plc believes that the reputation it has gained as a result of its Corporate Responsibility activities is maintaining and building its market share in a competitive market. It estimates that corporate (social) responsibility accounts for over 25% of image and reputation impact on customer satisfaction.

Wow!

Let’s just highlight the important bit of that snippet shall we?

…corporate (social) responsibility accounts for over 25% of image and reputation impact on customer satisfaction.

So there you go, folks, having a socially responsible and sustainable business is a winner with customers and accounts for a quarter of your image and reputation.

Thanks for the headsup to is4profit, the business advice website, who pointed out John Fagan’s book.

Ignore the name on the device (We’re thinking of going to our friends at Ecotricity for their green gas scheme) but this is our new smartpower meter. OK, we’ve had it a few weeks now, but this little device is a lifesaver. OK, moneysaver. Energysaver.

Since plugging this meter we’ve monitored our electricity consumption, which is pretty low we think anyway, and it’s made us even more aware of our energy use than ever. It’s interesting watching the meter as the kettle is boiled or the fridge kicks into life but we’re happy that we’re consuming very little (Compared to some households we know)

The other device that has helped us reduce our electricity costs has been the excellent Energenie Automatic AV Standby Shutdown gang socket which totally switches off our TV, Wii & DVD when we’re not using them.

We got this from our gas supplier but if we can find a link or place where you can grab one too we’ll let you know.

Does anybody else think it’s ironic that we have to plug in an electricity-consuming device to monitor our electricity consumption?

I hadn’t been in to my local branch of B&Q, the DIY store, for many months but, being just down the road from my office, I popped in today to get a light bulb for my fridge and was impressed with the sheer range of energy saving lightbulbs they had on offer.

Unfortunately the little lightbulb for the fridge was only an F-rated one but I did pick up an A-rated outdoor lightbulb too whilst they were at a good price (only £1.00) But anyway, check out this selection – enough green lightbulbs to warm the heart of any green…