www.everythingsgonegreen.co.uk

I brought a car at the beginning of July. After going 21 months without driving, I decided it was time to get back on the road. (You can see how I previously fared after 9 months without a car)

The number one reason for getting a car was that my family are back in the country. We need to get littl’un to school, do the shopping and have a life where we don’t have to worry that everything takes so much longer than normal.

The first example is picking them up from the airport. Normally we have a good friend who gives us lifts whenever we need them – we’ve done him some big favours so we get a few in return. Relying on him to help us out all the time would be a bit much, besides he isn’t always available since he works. Picking up the family during the daytime would have been hugely disruptive to him.

Then there’s the convenience factor. To get to London Heathrow Airport is a 20 minute drive. Sure, there’s the joy of parking, waiting and the extortionate fees for an hour’s worth of leaving your car in a piece of “prime” real estate, but that’s nothing when compared to the alternative which is either a £50 taxi, 20 minute drive straight to your door or the £14 bus to Woking then a train from Woking to Farnborough and then either a 30-40 walk home with suitcases (!) or a £7 taxi.

It was easier to buy a £325 car, spend £25/month on insurance, £75 for 6 months tax, put a £50 tyre on it and a £40 starter motor.

But then, 6 weeks later, we were offered a slightly bigger car. An estate that I can put my mountain bikes in. 4 doors so that passengers can get in and out easier. 5 gears instead of 4 (try driving the motorway in a 4-speed Metro) and comfort. But a 2.3 litre engine as opposed to a 1.1 and insurance at £50/month (I shudder to think what the tax disc will be!) [update: The VED for six months was £118.50]

The other advantage is that business has been picking up and I’m being called out to more IT support jobs and cycling has been fun – turning up sweaty, soaking wet from the rain, even with blood and gravel rash at a client meeting one day.

So, fellow greens, I’ve turned to the dark side. I’ve got a car again and I’m biking less than I have been. I’m using less public transport and I’m walking less, so I’m contributing to the obesity epidemic (not really) and CO2 emissions! I’m sorry.

There are pros and cons to walking, cycling, public transport and driving. I’m all for all these forms of transport but in the most balanced manner. I did go out for a 3 hour off-road ride through the woods on Thursday night, so I haven’t completely turned over to the dark side, but with school coming up, business booming and a life of slavery to the wage, this has to be done.

I hope you’ll forgive me

…at least that’s what I think it said…

Many years ago there was an editorial piece in the catalogue of howies, the ethical activewear company.

Underneath a typical photo of a scene in China where hundreds of people were on bicycles, the caption read;

“One day they’ll all want cars”

Or something like that.

In the years since that was said, the prophecy came true. China industrialised on a massive scale and people wanted cars.

And yesterday’s Guardian newspaper reported that China has now overtaken the USA as the world’s biggest consumer of automobiles.

That means there are no more than 1 billion cars in the world, roughly one for every 6-7 people alive.

The worrying thing is the other statistics in the Guardian story, take this for instance:

According to a report by the trade journal Ward’s, 35m new cars and lorries were sold worldwide last year – the second-biggest increase ever recorded. That is 95,500 extra vehicles being added to the global traffic jam every day.

Nearly 100,000 new cars sold every day, worldwide – that’s not going to save the planet.

For the car manufacturers this is good news – they believe there is plenty of room for greater consumption of their products. More consumers equals more sales equals more turnover equals more profit.

For the environment this is clearly worrying. In just ten years between 2000 and 2010 the number of cars and motorbikes on Chinese roads increased by a factor of twenty. In the next two decades that number will double again.

The motor manufacturers would love to shift another 900 million units, but is there enough resource to do so? With the price of scrap metal, nearly a billion more cars is not sustainable is it? Let alone the amount of polution to be pumped into the atmosphere.

For the full story read China’s love affair with the car shuns green vehicles

It’s been reported today that the cycling industry is worth some 3 billion pounds to the UK economy.

With cycle-manufacturing, cycle accessory manufacturing, retail and other cycle-related employment all thrown into the mix, that’s a healthy figure and a good sign of the state of the cycling industry in this country.

As many as 23,000 people are employed in these UK cycle and cycle-related industries and they contribute some £600 million to our economy in wages and taxes.

Last year 3.7 million cycles were sold in the UK, that’s up 28% on 2009′s figures, and apparently manufacturing accounted for £51million worth of revenue in 2010.

The total number of UK cyclists is now estimated at some 13 million, although not all of these cyclists are full time bikers.

Why?

Well, motoring is getting more expensive. I recently had to buy a car and was shocked that in the 18 months I’ve been out of driving a car, fuel has rocketed to around £1.45 a litre. £20 in the car doesn’t get us much above the quarter tank full and that only lasts some 80 miles or so

And when you hear stories that youngsters are being charged thousands for car insurance, like this 20 year old apparently being given a £53,000 insurance quote (on a Vauxhall bloody Corsa!), you can see why people would rather walk or cycle.

A few of my friends have been involved in, for instance, the Cyclescheme and had discounts of around 33% on some decent cycles (Specialized and Giant cycles – both good brands) and they’ve certainly added to the ranks of cyclists in this country. We’re especially lucky around here, having some great cycle paths in Farnborough and some really excellent off-road tracks in the surrounding MOD land.

What’s more, cyclists apparently have o7.4 sick days a year less than their non-cycling counterparts who take off 8.7 sick days per year, so that’s further proof that cycling is good for you.

So, rising fuel and insurance costs, improved cycle networks and concern for the environment are all factors influencing Brits to get out on their bikes and skip using the car…

…long may the cycling revolution continue

{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?

A three-year campaign has been launched today in an ambitious bid to switch car journies to buses by 2014.

Whilst this may seem a tall order for car-loving Brits, the organisers of the Greener Journeys campaign believe this can be achieved if just 1 in 25 car journies are taken by bus instead.

The Greener Journeys campaign is a coalition of bus companies who will encourage drivers to take the bus instead by giving away a million free bus trips!

According to Claire Haigh from Greener Journeys:

“A recent survey found a fifth of motorists would be prepared to swap to public transport for reasons to do with the environment. Just one double-decker bus can take 75 cars off the road, considerably reducing emissions levels.”

By taking 1 billion car journeys off our roads, greener bus journeys will save an estimated 2 million tonnes of CO₂. But it’s not just the environment that will benefit.

Greener Journeys commissioned an experiment that compared the stress levels of 30 commuters taking similar journeys by var and by bus. The experiment found that thos commuters that took the bus were 33% less stressed than those who drove their cars.

“The improvement in the comfort of modern buses might be a reason the bus is less stressful when compared to congestion, traffic jams and the cost and difficulties of finding parking,” Ms Haigh said.

For more information, or to enter to win free bus tickets, visit www.greenerjourneys.com

Last December I had gear change issues on the Subaru Legacy. So, in light of finances, the environment and a great excuse to “give it a go” I gave up the car.

I let the tax disc expire, declared Statutory Off Road Notification (SORN) because, if you don’t declare, it gives the DVLA an easy opportunity to squeeze revenue from lazy/unsuspecting motorists. I also cancelled the insurance and then left the car on the drive.

Nine months later, what’s it been like without a car?

Shopping

Well, at first there was the noticeable issue of not being able to simply go to the shops at any time and do a “big shop”. Not having the car limits the amount of shopping you can carry. Being restricted from the boot of an estate car to either a couple of bags, if waking, to a rucksack, if cycling, is quite a downsize in terms of capacity. Carrying a crate of beer is out of the question.

And then there’s the times you can go shopping – If it’s chucking down with rain, it’s probably best to stay in. Snow? Again, if it’s treacherous in a car then it’s insane to go out on  a bicycle. As for night or day – the quickest way to one of the local stores is across meadows by the Blackwater River – at night it’s extremely dark down there – I wouldn’t advise the Mrs or my kid to travel that way at that time of night.

Other than that shopping is restricted to what can be carried so it has to be very efficient. Get only what you need and no more. Necessities in, luxuries out. The further one has to travel to get specialist items, the greater this applies so most essentials tend to be purchased closer to home.

Work

Strangely enough, when the car was taken off the road England was then hit by snowstorms. Cycling in the snow can be fun but is ultimately pretty tough and an insane pursuit when the snow has turned to ice. Getting to work then had to be done on foot. The first day back at work in the new year took over an hour (it’s a 40 minute walk) and there was nobody in the building – NOBODY. 20 offices and not a soul in sight!

Cycling to work is quicker than walking but slower than driving, that is IF the roads are clear for the car. On a clear road it’s a 10 minute car journey but with traffic it can take anything up to an hour. Cycling however takes around 20 minutes plus it keeps you fit too.

Carrying kit to work is also limited to a rucksack so in the summer it’s OK but winter cycling means cramming a change of clothes, waterproofs etc into the rucksack. Your bag’s heavier & bulkier and you don’t want to be breaking anything by forcing it into there.

Of course, you have to either carry a change of clothes or have spares at work – working in a sweaty t-shirt is a no-no as is sitting there soaked from the rain or caked in mud (If you took the off-road route)

Leisure

Leisure pursuits have been impacted greatly by not having a car. Getting to far-away places has been tough so the spare time activities have had a more local flavour for the last nine months.

Last summer it was straight to Stonhenge, park up, walk around, enjoy the summer solstice. This year it all had to be cancelled due to the lack of transport. Getting a bus to Salisbury on a Sunday night to travel via whatever means necessary to see the sun up and then get back in time for work was an impossibility.

So far this year has centred around Farnborough (Not much to do other than a couple of nice pubs), Guildford, an evening in Basingstoke, a trip to Reading and one day in London. The places to visit have been limited by the lack of a car but at least knowledge of the rail network is improved.

One afternoon was spent in the wonderful old town of Aldershot, home of the British Army; the taxi fare there was £15 but the return journey by bus was just £2.20

So, Can You Live Without a Car?

Yes you can but it’s tough, especially for someone who absolutely loves cars.

It’s also hard work in the bad weather, difficult if you have a small family, if you have to be smart, wear a suit etc.

The trains are expensive, impromptu journeys are expensive, getting direct from A to B often involves a convoluted route, you can’t carry much and you’re often at the mercy of the weather.

The positives are that you save on insurance, road tax, fuel and maintenance. That may well be a saving of many hundreds of pounds a year but when you look at the prices train operators charge you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul.

However, one big saving is CO₂; your emissions are negligible. Public transport can be fun, especially with a big group of people. You get to see things locally that you didn’t see before, you get to know your local routes better, all the short cuts etc.

Travelling to the local train stations (there are three within a 20 minute bike ride/40 minute walk) is better by bike but you worry that your expensive ride is locked up at the station and could get stolen. Walking is better then but takes longer.

So it all depends on your circumstances, where you live, how far away the shops, schools, work is, how far away your friends live, what the roads are like etc.

Conclusion

It has been good fun and public transport is definitely on the travel agenda from now onwards. Trains can be expensive (especially long distance), buses can be relatively expensive and having one bus & rail company’s director in The Times Rich List every year shows that they’re making  a pretty penny out of people who have to use their services.

Cycling is great when the weather’s good as is walking and, best of all, it keeps you fit and healthy.

But there are times when I feel I need a car; I’d love to visit some of my relatives with my family and travel door-to-door without the expenses incurred from train, bus and taxi journeys.

If oil was so expensive that everybody had to give up driving there’d be a time of tough change in people’s lifestyles. But if the public transport companies (that are owned and operated by private companies – ironic, I know) could facilitate cheaper travel then more people would use buses and trains and economies of scale would kick in.

I still want to drive but during the summer I’ll cycle to work and back thank you

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.

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.

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.