www.everythingsgonegreen.co.uk

We’ve been thinking about experimenting with a green roof here at Everythings Gone Green Towers for quite some time now. Our house roof is far too steeply pitched but our garage, in the back garden, is an ideal candidate for some green roof experimentation.

Green roofs, which can be partially or completely covered in vegetation, are an excellent way to reduce your carbon footprint. They can be installed on existing properties and new builds and provide so many positives.

The Sedum green roof is much like turf, and can be rolled out quickly and easily. Sedum is a large genus of around 400 species of succulents, so they are virtually maintenance-free because they soak up a lot of moisture.

Beyond sedum green roofs, your imagination and the structure of the building, are the only limits with some green roofs having ponds and trees!

New research from energy and environmental consultancy, Atmos Consulting, says that green roofs are definitely beneficial. Whilst we’re looking at a domestic green roof here in Farnborough, Atmos Consulting have been looking at the viability and impact of green roofs on businesses. They say that green roofs help businesses to achieve their sustainability targets and that the “payback times” are getting shorter.

The benefits of green roofs, according to research, are numerous. Atmos say that green roofs are:

• Heat Insulators  Green roofs insulate buildings and thereby cut energy costs. As an example, a recent study has shown that green roofs save 2 litres of fuel oil per square metre.
• Cool Insulators  By insulating a building in the summertime it has been seen that heat absorption of a building can be reduced by as much as 84% – By keeping the temperature down the need for cooling is reduced, thereby cutting the use of air conditioning and encouraging further cost savings.
• Durable: Green roofs are expected to last between 2.5 and 3.5 times longer than roofs made from “standard materials”. Again, the cost of repair and replacement of a regular roof is much reduced over the same lifetime.
• Pollution Reducers: A square metre of grass can remove 0.2kg of particulates per annum. They also trap chmicals and pollutants that would otherwise go straight to drainage systems. (If water companies had to treat waste water less would water bills go down?)
• Run-off Reducers: A green roof will retain as much as 90-100% of of the very critical first hour of heavy/storm rainfall and around 50-60% of run-off over the period of a year. Again, drainage costs are reduced and this aids the management of flood prevention.
•  Wildlife Habitats: Insects, birds and other wildlife love green roofs and so they are a boon to increasing local ecology and biodiversity.
• Sustainable: Government-set sustainability targets can be partially met by installing a green roof. Of course, there are many other factors but green roofs play a contributory role in meeting BREEAM assesments for instance.
• PR Generators: Installing a green roof can generate lots of positive publicity. Local and national press, trade magazines, environmental, energy and green publications and organisations will be happy to promote further the news of green roofs in domestic and commercial applications.

Vicky Ward, Ecological Consultant at Atmos, is positive about the green roof revolution, saying;

“Green roofs have long been popular with companies that want to better the environment, and go a long way to achieving sustainability targets.

“Thanks to developing technology the payback periods are becoming much shorter, making green roofs a sound financial investment. We urge anyone developing new properties or renovating existing ones to consider them.”

If you’re thinking of doing your own green roof project we highly recommend you take a look at the book Small Green Roofs: Low-Tech Options for Homeowners, co-written by Dusty Gedge, among others, who you can follow on twitter, handle @greenroofsuk.

{EAV_BLOG_VER:d8d8317f40d9f024}Hot on the heels of our local McDonalds Litter post comes a story we spied on the BBC website: Greenpeace links big brands to Chinese river pollution.

According to Greenpeace two rivers in China have been found to contain toxic chemicals used in the textile industry. Samples were collected from the waste water outlets of two textile firms at the Yangtze River delta, in southern China, and the Pearl River delta, in eastern China, and found to contain nonylphenols and PFCs.

Greenpeace said that whilst some brands such as Adidas, Nike and Puma had policies in place  to restrict the use of dangerous chemicals in finished products, the textile manufacturing process was still full of holes, particularly regarding waste water discharge and especially in China where environmental laws are particularly slack.

Investigating the Youngor Textile Complex near Shanghai and the Well Dyeing Factory near Hong Kong, Greenpeace said that Abercrombie & Fitch, Adidas, Bauer Hockey, Calvin Klein, Converse, H&M, Lacoste and Puma amongst others, were connected to the guilty polluters.

After being contacted by the BBC regarding these claims Adidas distanced itself from the pollution at the Youngor plant saying they did not source fabric from the plant and did not use Youngor for processes involving water that was discharged into the River Fenghua. H&M, Nike and Puma also told the BBC the same story. No other brands would comment on the pollution issue.

Lacoste were the only clothing brand that said they took the matter seriously and said they’d investigate further.

So, the brands are in the spotlight again, let’s hope they fulfill their social responsibilities and start bringing their suppliers into the green world!

{EAV_BLOG_VER:d8d8317f40d9f024}I had an opportunity to chat with one of our local street cleaners the other day and he was saying that our local McDonald’s was the worst offender in terms of the sheer amount of litter he had to pick up. One day during the week he completely filled 10 large refuse sacks full of just McDonalds trash.

This is no surprise when you go to McDonalds, Farnborough Gate, or McDonalds Drive Through in London Rd, Camberley, on a Sunday morning – Both of these places are completely covered in fast food trash. Whilst they open and spark-up the fryers and rush to serve hungry punters with cheap food, the streets are still awash with the filth from their wrappers.

This is nothing new, it’s being going on for years. Whilst McDonalds has attempted to change its image from a fast food joint with primary-coloured, bright red and yellow fascia and fittings to this new “green” and “sustainable” image of raw wood and earthy tones, serving healthy salads to divert you from its core products of sweet, fatty burgers, the average McDonalds client is still a litter lout. A local traffic cop was even spotted throwing his McDonalds wrappers out of his squad car window. When questioned, he said he was only putting it there temporarily until he could pick it up and get to a bin! So why didn’t he keep it in his car then?

This leads on to the fact that the local penalty for dropping litter is £50 on-the-spot fine. If the threat of forking out £50 because you threw the rubbish from your 99p burger on the floor is such a deterrent then why are the areas around McDonalds still such utter sh*tholes when it comes to litter?

Like a Leopard can’t change its spots, McDonalds can’t brainwash the public by painting things green, serving the occasional dish of leaves, sponsoring football and sticking tiny messages on its cartons saying “please be responsible and place this nicely in a litter bin rather than out of the window of your big-bore Vauxhall Nova, you chavvy little scumbag!”

McDonalds is synonymous with high street litter. McDonalds is a champion of “keep Britain dirty”. There may very well be a McDonalds environmental policy, but its not worth the pixels it’s printed on.

As I have been told, first hand, it’s cheaper to pay someone to pick up the litter than it is to try and take the perpetrators to court – whether it’s the police or a council employee slapping £50 fines on the offending chav’s cars or taking the multinational to task for its worthless, caring image, to give someone the minimum wage for picking up their crap is the low-cost option.

It’s not just us either. Check out Nigel Ball’s McJunk. Nigel’s been on the case of McDonalds junk since 1999 and he’s even published a book about it. Then there’s the filthy McDonalds restaurant in Adelaide a few years ago… Not McLoving It? No, us neither.

{EAV_BLOG_VER:d8d8317f40d9f024}Tucked away on page 17 of this week’s Star Courier local newspaper is a little story about our Farnborough Airport (FAB)

It starts:

“Planes from Farnborough Airport might be pumping carbon dioxide into the sky but the airport itself has been praised for its green efforts.”

The airport has been awarded Airport Carbon Accreditation at a level coined as “reduction” level which the paper notes is “the second highest of four possible ratings.”

Being interested in the environment around here I looked up the Airport Carbon Accreditation scheme’s website and discovered that “reduction” level isn’t the second highest but the second lowest!

The first (lowest) level, mapping, is where the airport actually identify the sources of CO2 emission, calculate their carbon emissions, produce a carbon footprint report and have a 3rd party verify this, in this case the Carbon Trust.

The second level, where Farnborough Airport are now, is reduction which means they have successfully achieved the “mapping” level and have provided evidence of effective carbon management procedures. They have also shown that their reduction targets have been achieved, although what these targets are, we do not know.

The next stages that Farnborough Airport needs to achieve are optimisation, where they engage third parties in the airport in their carbon reduction, and finally neutrality, where the airport itself ultimately becomes carbon neutral over all the emissions over which it has control.

Whilst there’s much back-slapping going on at the airport for their achievement, there’s still a long way to go. As the airport’s environmental manger states in the newspaper article:

“…our next environmental challenge is to develop carbon reduction strategies in conjunction with our tenants and service providers.”

This is good as it will achieve “optimisation” level, although who the tenants and service providers are, I do not know. If this includes the old airfield buildings which are now part of the IQ Farnborough business park then I’d recommend somebody turns the lights of in the empty multi-story car parks at night when there’s nobody there!

The main question that still needs answering though is this: What is the airport’s carbon footprint and what is the carbon footprint of the flights coming in and out of Farnborough?

TAG recently won their call to increase traffic at the airport from 28,000 flights a year to 50,000. If you believe the figures over at How much CO2 is released by an aeroplane? then you can see that a small business jet, most of FAB’s traffic, might emit 1.766 kg/km whilst the average CO2 emissions for a car are about 166g/km or, or, to equate better, 0.166 kg/km according to these figures. That means that, on average, a car emits ten times less CO2 than a small 9-man business jet but there are far more cars on the roads around Farnborough than there are planes to and from Farnborough Airport.

Interestingly, from a sustainability point of view, if you take another look at those figures you’ll see that they believe fuel consumption of the light jet is 0.684 L/km whereas a car that does 30MPG achieves 0.094 L/km (By using this fuel consumption conversion calculator, this kilometres/litres to litres/100 km conversion calculator and a calculator. The same small business plane uses 7 times more fuel than a car and emits 10 times more CO2 – There are more local car trips than plane journeys but what is the average mileage of these cars vs these planes.

Summary

Whilst it’s commendable that TAG Aviation are trying to make Farnborough Airport (FAB) more environmentally-friendly, there still seems to be a very long way to go. I’d be interested to know when they believe they’ll be able to achieve a carbon neutral status for the airport but I’m extremely interested to see the figures for CO2 emissions from the planes and what they intend to do to rectify that problem. (Plant more trees?)

Air quality is another issue and I know that for a fact because I work within spitting distance of FAB. Some days the waft of avgas is overwhelming and i wonder what sustained periods of breathing those fumes in do to our health?

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Vax have come up with a cardboard vacuum cleaner.

No, it’s not the practical equivalent of a chocolate fireguard, it’s a seriously cool, practical and very green product. This is how it works…

You get your Vax ev vaccum cleaner in its box. The box disassembles to become the corrugated cardboard panels of the vacuum cleaner and they fit around the motor housing, popping into place, no need for glue.

The cardboard panels are flame retardant and fully-customisable, meaning that when you get your felt-tipped pens out, you can design the outside of your Vax ev cardboard vacuum cleaner however you like.

And if you break any panels, that’s OK, because they’re cheap and easy to replace and, what’s most important, is that they’re recyclable too, so your flash new vaccum cleaner won’t cost the earth!

The brains behind this green and clean vacuum is industrial design student Jake Tyler, who developed the green vacuum cleaner in his final year degree project at Loughborough University. Jake spent a year working at Vax under their student placement scheme and was supported by Vax’ New Product Design (NPD) team.

Paul Bagwell, Director of NPD at Vax said:

“With sustainability becoming an increasing concern for manufacturers, the Vax ev shows just what can be achieved when young designers are encouraged to think creatively and push the boundaries of product design.

It’s so important that manufacturers such as ourselves support young British designers like Jake, as they are the key to this country’s future success.”

For further information on current industrial student placement opportunities at Vax visit their industrial placements page or email recruitment@vax.co.uk

You can see Jake’s green cleaner at the New Designers exhibition to be held at the London Design Centre from the 6th-9th July. Vax are also looking into a very limited production run of the Vax ev, so if you think this environmentally friendly vacuum cleaner is a great idea then badger Vax and tell them you really want one