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.

Environmental disasters are currently at the forefront of world news with the BP gulf oil catastrophe in particular dominating the headlines over the last few months. In response,  explore.org, the non-profit multi-media organization, has teamed up with HATCH to champion the selfless acts of others through a short film award at this year’s HATCHfest Bozeman film festival.

The explore/HATCH Award presented by explore.org will be given to the filmmaker who best tells the story of a remarkable individual’s actions in response to a devastating environmental event.

Winner of the explore/HATCH award will be flown to HATCHfest Bozeman September 22-25 in a full expenses-paid trip and be presented with a Canon HD SLR camera package from explore.org’s founder, Charles Annenberg Weingarten, and HATCH.

If you’re interested in submitting your film then please visit http://explore.org/about/explorehatch_award/ for full details. The deadline for filmaker submissions is August 25th. Good Luck!

If, like us, you’re one of those households with a TV, satellite receiver, games console and other devices plugged in to one socket on the wall, you’ll have probably noticed how inconvenient it can be trying to save energy by constantly trying to plug/unplug/switch off all the time. We want to switch off all the devices that we don’t need but reaching the gang socket behind the TV stand can often be really awkward.

That’s where the excellent Energenie Automatic AV Standby Shutdown, a standby power saver, comes in – This device looks just like a 5-way gang socket extension except for the excellent energy-saving features: You plug the extension in place of your old one and first plug the satellite receiver in to the “always on” socket. Then the other devices, such as our TV, Wii Fit, DVD Player and amplifier are plugged in to the remaining sockets.

Next, you switch the gang extension on via the big green button and then place the infra-red sensor in a place where it will pick up a remote signal from one of your infra-red remote control handsets – we chose the TV’s handset.

Once the extension has been “trained” you can now use the TV remote control to operate the Energenie power saving extension. Leaving the device on, it recognises when power is being consumed by your TV, games console etc and when there is minimal energy use and it recognises all devices as in standby… it switches the gang extension off and saves you power.

We’ve been really impressed by the Energenie standby power saver – Once you switch the TV off at night the other devices are quick to follow and within 30 seconds your electrical items are all switched off with only the “always on” satellite receiver in standby.

We’re thinking of getting one of these for our PC setup too so that we can have our PC and printers off but keep the broadband cable modem on.

With 4 controlled sockets, an always on socket and a 1.5m cable this remote-operated power saving device will also reduce fire risk and save you money too.  If you want one now (and we recommend it to any green household) then go to Amazon to get your Energenie automatic AV standby shutdown device.

I’ve just had an interesting note from Volvo Cars UK regarding the Emission Equality Congestion Charge campaign.

As you may already know, London has a Congestion Charge which aims to limit the amount of traffic in busy London streets. The benefits are numerous and the reduction of traffic is beneficial in many ways. London residents see & hear less vehicles (70,000 less vehicles a year, according to official figures, public transport flows better, cyclists have a better time getting around, the air is less polluted and money goes into local government coffers (hopefully to invest in better public transport and cycling schemes).

There are however concessions to the Congestion Charge with the Alternative Fuel Discount – to qualify for this discount vehicles

“must be powered by an alternative fuel, bi fuel or dual fuel, and not solely by petrol or diesel. It must also meet strict emissions criteria.”

Under the current rules, the AFD gives drivers a 100% discount, but Volvo Cars UK believe the method of discounting is now obsolete because the Volvo S40 DRIVe emmits less CO₂ than most hybrid vehicles and it is the current What Car? Green Car of the Year.

Volvo questioned the fairness of the AFD scheme saying that, if the discount should exist then it should not bias any one particular technology over another. You can see their point: If a hybrid emits more CO₂ than a Volvo S40 DRIVe and gets a 100% discount then that’s hardly fair is it?

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has since launched a consultation on this matter, the Emission Equality Congestion Charge Campaign, instigated by Volvo.

The Mayor of London’s new ‘Greener Vehicle Discount’ proposes that any cars registered after 1 January 2011 that emit less than 100g/km of CO₂ and meet the Euro V standard for air quality will be exempt. In addition, and as a way of encouraging the uptake of electric cars, the same exemption will apply to full battery electric and plug-in hybrid cars.

Transport for London (TfL) invites feedback on the new proposals with the deadline for responses by 2 August 2010, so visit their website to express your views on the proposed changes to the Congestion Charge.

Once a decision has been reached, the results will be published and the changes will be in force from 4th January 2011.

Welcoming the announcement, the MD of Volvo Cars UK, Peter Rask, said:

“When we started the Emission Equality campaign, it was clear to us that the discounts offered to hybrid and alternative fuel cars were out of date and unfair to the many thousands of motorists who’d decided to take a different technical route to achieving a lower level of emissions.

“On behalf of all manufacturers of conventionally-powered low emission cars, all we asked The Mayor for was a level playing field. I’m very pleased that this consultation has been launched and the proposals could give Londoners a far broader choice of low-emission cars in the future.”

Volvo already offers a sub-100g/km Volvo C30 SportsCoupe with prototype full battery-electric C30s in the pipeline and plans to release a V70 plug-in hybrid estate in 2012 that emits less than 50g/km CO_2.

There are many things you can do to reduce the amount of heat and money lost in your home, and a lot of them are easy and cheap. From watching the temperature of your thermostat to covering up draughts from fireplaces and windows, there’s something for everyone.

To coincide with the Government announcement of £17m to improve energy efficiency in social housing around the UK, we caught up with experts from the Energy Saving Trust and Technology Strategy Board to find out what their top tips were.

In the following video, discover how small actions on your part can save both cash and the environment.

For more information visit www.innovateuk.org

I just flicked the TV on before going to work and caught a story on BBC1’s “Breakfast” news show highlighting the fact that we will all be getting more junk mail in the UK.

Apparently Royal Mail’s management have agreed to pay conditions with the postal workers’ union just so long as Britain’s postmen start shoving more junk through our letter boxes.

The deal is said to be quite lucrative for Royal Mail and for the union, which had previously agreed that postal workers should only deliver three items of junk to an address per week, this is quite a compromise.

On the BBC Breakfast show the presenters questioned two guests; one a proponent of “direct marketing” and the other a representative of the group Waste Watch. (Sorry I don’t have any more detail, I missed the names and the introductions)

What we saw was a scruffy talk about junk mail with a lack of clarity on exactly which form of junk mail was being discussed with the direct marketing representative spearheading a charm offensive on behalf of junk mail.

Junk mail, by my definition, is any brochure or advertising that comes through my door unsolicited. What Royal Mail seem to be advocating, and making money from, is “unaddressed mail”. This “unaddressed mail” includes those envelopes addressed to “the owner” or “the occupier”.

With those two terms, junk mail and “unaddressed mail” cleared up nicely the people on the sofas then proceeded to discuss the generic term “junk mail” which allowed the direct marketing guy to positively present his figures. I suspect he was talking about “unaddressed mail” but was allowed, pretty much unchecked, to spin the facts as applying to junk mail/direct marketing in general and not purely “unaddressed mail”.
“Mr. Direct Mmarketing” said that 80% of direct marketing was opened and read by recipients. He also added that direct marketing is not a waste of time because the process generates around £130 billion of business a year. In addition he said that less than 2% of household waste is direct marketing/junk mail. He also repeated the soundbite, a couple of times, that the perception that “junk mail is bad” is “a complete myth”.

In response the representative of Waste Watch said that only 1% of junk mail was acted upon.

The direct marketing guy relished the opportunity to market his industry virtually unopposed and massaged the figures to his own advantage. £130 billion is a lot of business but how much of that business is won by direct marketing via “unaddressed mail”? How much is won by door-to-door direct marketing? How much business and revenue is generated by junk flyers?

I was a little surprised at the smug fact that less than 2% of household waste is junk mail/direct marketing. Was this by weight or by item? I decided to have a quick look in my recycling box that sits in the kitchen. OK, the food waste goes into a bucket and onto the compost so I didn’t count that.

Granted, there was more general recyclable material by weight and bulk, especially considering there are steel cans, aluminium beer cans, cardboard boxes, cardboard tubes etc but the item count?

• Junk mail – 20
• Recycling – 30

That’s probably about a week or two’s worth of recycling on show and the junk mail is all direct marketing and no “unaddressed mail”.

So, in terms of “unaddressed mail” my own personal figure tallies up with the marketing guy – less than 2% of my household waste is “unaddressed mail”, infact, this week, it’s 0%, but hardly a fair representative figure.

In terms of weight of junk mail, again, it’s probably very light and may well be about 2% of my recycling.

But as a proportion of my waste it’s 40%.

Hold on – there’s a BIG flaw in my manipulation of the figures here – it’s only a week or so’s worth of rubbish AND it’s only my recycling.

Yes, I have only thrown away ONE item of rubbish this last week – a pasta packet, that’s it.

So, back to the BBC breakfast story; who is right and who is wrong? Who lost and who won?

Well, the direct marketing guy probably won the charm offensive, he marketed his own corner really well and was given free reign to use some great figures and say twice, “it’s a myth” that junk mail is bad. And yes, my own example of rubbish is from a green guy who wastes very little anyway – of course “the average household” may well waste SO MUCH MORE and the junk will be an even tinier percentage of their household waste.

But as time goes on and we become less wasteful, the guy from Waste Watch is right. If only 1% of the junk mail message gets through then 99% of the paper, print, energy and manpower is wasted on going straight back into the bin/recycling. It may make the commercial world go around but 99% waste is not sustainable from an environmental perspective.

So, if you guys & girls out there have any figures to demonstrate the direct marketing claims one way or another then please feel free to let us know

Personally I think it’s a big shame that Royal Mail are keen to promote more waste for the sake of money. Read the Royal Mail door-to-door opt-out page. It’s almost laughable that they’re trying to get you to reconsider before you even send your details in;

Opting out means no one at the address will receive unaddressed mail items – is this acceptable to everyone living at the property?

Yes. The cat doesn’t need double glazing or a conservatory or a kebab or a pizza or a valuation on the property or timeshare or a haircut…

Diarmuid Gavin gives his top tips on preparing your sustainable garden for summer

After one of the longest and coldest winters most of us can remember, the first shoots of spring are slowly starting to emerge. And while it is still too early for the nation’s gardeners to start preparing the beds and borders in their gardens, there is plenty to be done indoors, particularly when it comes to seeding.

However despite many of us pledging to get back out and into our gardens this year, barely a third of gardeners are aware of the serious environmental issues surrounding the use of peat.[1]

Nowadays, with environmental concerns high on everyone’s agenda, choosing your compost is as important as the seeds you select.

Every year, 3 million cubic metres of peat is used in the UK for horticultural use and sales of multi-purpose compost. But the extraction of peat releases Significant amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, as well as damaging lowland raised peat bogs, which are home to many rare animals and plants. Just under half a million tonnes of carbon dioxide is emitted in the atmosphere each year as a result of peat extraction from UK sites alone; that’s comparable to the total emissions of over 100,000 homes. [2]

Fortunately there are environmentally friendly compost solutions available , and in the following video, gardening guru Diarmuid Gavin shows you how to make your garden green in every possible sense – using peat-free compost to reduce your carbon footprint and preserve our valuable peatland habitats and wildlife.

For more information visit www.direct.gov.uk/buyingcompost

[1] One Poll Survey, over the period 27028 Jan 2009, 2000 respondents

[2] The UK’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory records emissions of 420,000 tonnes a year for peat extraction from UK sites. However, 57% of the peat that we use in the UK is imported, mainly from the Republic of Ireland and the Baltics.

Last night I went to a climate change consultation with my local Rushmoor Borough Council.

40 local residents were invited down to Aldershot on a cold February night to discuss the borough’s policy and, arranged into small groups, we brainstormed Rushmoor BC’s plans for the environment and the future.

Of course, the number one topic raised was the issue of climate change itself. Currently, if you spend a lot of time in the media, the subject of climate change seems to be getting a real kicking. The Climategate affair, involving the leak of data from the University of East Anglia on the eve of the Copenhagen summit, followed by the controversy over the predictions of retreating Himalayan ice and now Sir David King’s attack on the IPCC mean that a lot of scepticism is creeping in and, last night, a few dissenting voices were heard in the room.

The important consensus though was that climate change is happening. It’s not just global warming or global cooling, but variations in “local” climate all over the world and, whether it’s man-made or natural, it’s best to prepare for it.

So, that first hurdle over, Rushmoor BC presented their plans for the next 20 years. The big issue locally is the Aldershot Urban Extension, meaning that our neighbouring town of Aldershot is to be the subject of a 4,500 home expansion. Whilst brownfield sites are preferable for new builds, it seems inevitable that so many more homes will be needed and the council will have to develop a new “town” of so many houses.

This will surely impact upon on our small Borough which is already a busy commuter area (with great links to London and the south coast via train and motorway). The plans are to lessen the impact of any new development, and Rushmoor BC made bold statements to meet and exceed environmental building standards by an additional 15%.

That prompted questions of “are the current environmental standards stringent enough?” meaning that beating them by 15% is a fairly easy task plus that age old question of “the council says it will meet & beat standards but will it actually do it?”

Many ideas were bandied around in our group with a lot of focus on restoring localisation, creating closer community, water run-off into the River Blackwater etc. Plus there was great interest in the proposed new power plant, powered, presumably, by local waste and providing heat & energy. The notion of creating an “eco town” was popular with the notion that Rushmoor could be as well-regarded as the city of Brighton which is always thought of as one of Britain’s greenest urban places.

The usual topics of individual wind & solar power arose with ground-heat pumps and green roofs being thrown in for good measure.

Overall, a wealth of ideas were explored and there seems to be a consensus that the majority of people were in favour of bold steps in order to make the borough a greener place in terms of planning over the next 20 years or so.

The Natural Environment

The second part of the night revolved around Rushmoor’s natural environment. Surrounded by military land, we are blessed with a fairly natural environment that is protected by its ownership under the MOD.

The consensus was that we should not only protect every single piece of green environment that we have around here but that we should also restore and improve upon it. Natural and man-made attrition of the trees in the borough is something close to my heart as I’ve seen numerous trees come down locally over the years, never to be replaced. Do we get an organisation like the Woodland Trust involved to help us re-green Rushmoor?

Cycle paths were mentioned again as local citizens expressed a desire to expand cycle routes and to encourage more use of cycles in the borough. One resident even complained that where he locked up his cycle in the North Camp part of town they had removed the cycle racks and never replaced them!

Conclusion

There was a very healthy discourse over the evening and a number of people felt as though this was just the first of many discussions regarding the environment in Rushmoor. The many notes that were made were taken away to be digested by the council and they will have much food for thought.

Some great ideas came out of the meeting and, for starters, I would like to see the replacement and replanting of more trees, an extension of cycle tracks and a push to get more people cycling, loft insulation for all, better buses and routes and a green roof initiative.

Every piece of green and MOD land must be fought for and preserved and the inevitable expansion of Aldershot MUST be sustainable, green and a benefit to current residents not a detriment.

Finally, I’d like to see flights to Farnborough Airport capped as they are. I’ve seen no major benefit to the local economy from the planes flying in and, working near the airfield, the avgas fumes are unpleasant and unhealthy, not to mention the M3 motorway and the ridiculous “sound barrier” erected for residents who brought houses right next to the M3 but complained it was too noisy! (irony?) Thanks to them the sound bounces off the wooden fences and pollutes an even greater area.

Let’s hope Rushmoor Borough can only get safer, greener and cleaner.

A friend has just come back from CES 2010, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Now whilst the green in all of us asks why should we be interested in MORE gadgets to make last year’s model obsolete and thus generate more waste, CES 2010 had quite a green theme this year.

But apart from the show being carbon neutral I wanted to say how impressed I am with YoGen.

YoGen is a hand-held device with a pull-string that, when drawn, it turns a mini flywheel alternator, thus producing power. Apparently about 1 minute of pulling the string is enough to charge a mobile phone.

YoGen comes in two styles: black and clear. YoGen is also available for either the universal LG/Nokia/Sony Ericsson Micro-USB or Apple 1-3 Mini-USB. Unfortunately (for me anyway) the YoGen isn’t yet available for the iPhone 3GS but it *is* compatible with iPhone 3G.

If you want yourself a YoGen for free power then visit the YoGen store and pick up a YoGen for $39.99