Gordon Brown: Charge for Plastic Bags ... or Else

Gordon Brown writing for the Daily Mail today has announced plans that if UK retailers can not reduce their reliance on plastic bags over the next year he will enact plans to introduce a mandatory charge on each bag, and reveal the revenue generated.

The Prime Minister will introduce legislation next month to impose a charge of 5p or even more on all giveaway bags next year if they fail to comply. Yesterday, the trade body which represents 33,000 convenience stores said they are ready to accept a plastic bag tax in a bid to reduce the number handed out.

Supermarket Tesco used 3bn plastic bags last year. It does not charge for them, instead offering bonuses such as extra clubcard points if they re-use bags. A Sainsbury's spokeswoman said the supermarket had a policy of encouraging its customers to "reduce, reuse and recycle". She also said that since April 2007 there had been a 10% reduction in the number of free plastic bags given out, which is the equivalent of 85m bags. A spokesman for Asda said it was on target to reduce the environmental impact of its carrier bags by 25% by the end of 2008.

"I am convinced we need to act - and the time to act is now. I have already made clear that over time, we should aim to eliminate the single-use plastic bag altogether."
Gordon Brown

A voluntary agreement brokered by the Government to reduce the use of plastic bags by 25 per cent is behind target. Official figures show the number of bags issued by retailers has fallen by only 7.4 per cent in a year. The written feature in today's Daily Mail follows on from yesterday's announcement by Marks & Spencer to introduce a five pence per bag charge nationwide after trials in Northern Ireland and Southwest England. The trial saw a reduction in plastic bag use by 70% and raised substantial funds for environmental charity Groundworks Northern Ireland.

"The company wanted to make it easy for our customers to do their bit to help the environment. On top of this, our customers will be raising valuable funds to go to our partner charity, Groundwork, to invest in much-needed green spaces in our neighbourhoods".
Sir Stuart Rose, Chief Executive, Marks & Spencer

The plastic bag is a blight on our environment, to find out more reasons on why plastic and paper bags damage our environment check out Paper or Plastic?

Picture: Plane Stupid Protest Over Heathrow Expansion

Plane Stupid protest over the Heathrow Airport expansion for three hours atop the roof of the Houses in Parliment on Wednesday.

Energy Saving Day

Energy Saving Day, a 24-hour initiative aiming to reduce the UK's electricity use, began at 18:00, in an effort to curb climate change by turning off devices not in use. Aptly named E-Day, information will be updated real time from the National Grid, they will also monitor how much difference it makes to consumption, while power companies will identify customers wanting home insulation as part of the event.

"I'm delighted by the way in which so many organisations from all sectors of society have been prepared to see what they can do to help tackle climate change. They have offered to set aside their day-to-day differences in order to highlight that they accept the available science, agree that saving energy is a good idea, and want to simplify and widen access to some of the other potential solutions to climate change."
Dr Matt Prescott, Originator, E-day

Part of the Grid's job is to forecast demand for electricity. It says its forecasts are usually accurate to within 1% - so comparing demand across the 24 hours of E-Day with its predictions should provide an accurate measure of whether the initiative has made much difference.

However you can join in and follow the nations progress online at E-Day. Currently the UK is using 1.7% more electricity than normal. In contrast to the BBC planned Planet Relief, E-Day is less likely to cause problems for the National Grid, it's a good way of raising awareness of energy saving, however it is unfortunate that the event was not publicised more as empowering more people will have a stronger reaction.

Recycle Your Clothes

As part of Plan A, M&S are offering those donating their old M&S clothing to Oxfam a free £5 off voucher, when you spend £35 in store on clothing, home or beauty. To claim simply take your unwanted M&S items to your nearest Oxfam. Please note that this offer may only apply in Ireland. If you know otherwise please let us know in the comments section.

The Woman Who Stops Traffic

With road transport being a major contributor to UK CO2 emissions, with approximately 91m tonnes emitted annually, and up 1.3% on 2006. Channel Four last night screened the Woman Who Stops Traffic, one woman named Kris, with her aim of reducing gridlock in the town of Marlow, Buckinghamshire, which has one of the highest car ownership rates in the country, through a no car day.

Focusing her efforts on three different local traffic hot spots, the eight local schools, high street and the industrial estate which employs 8000 residents. After a harsh initial response from community leaders and the community itself, a four week campaign to promote the car free day on 01 February, Kris and her supports eagerly watched on to see if the fruits of their labour, council money and the future of Marlow. A shaky start saw large numbers of vehicles at day break, but by morning, the areas around the traffic hot spots were literally no car zones. Reducing traffic by up to 40%, and reducing those pupils that travel to school by car to only 10%.

If you missed the first episode in this new series, why not log on to 4oD, to stream or download the latest channel four television shows. Is this the model for the rest of the country?

The show follows on from Transport for London's latest increase in the congestion charge for cars which exceed emissions of 225g/km (or for cars manufactured before March 2001, an engine size over 3.0 litres). Cars that do not meet the new threshold will be forced to pay a congestion charge of £25. But the types of car that fall into this category include some family favourites, with some larger vehicles such as the Land Rover Freelander 2 2.2, BMW X5 3.0d and Porsche Boxster 2.7 falling into the lower price category.

To find out if your car is over or under check out the government website, VCA Car Fuel Data.

"Some really surprising cars will be caught by the £25 charge. A 2.0-litre petrol Vauxhall Zafira - a family MPV - emits 228g/km of CO2 and will have to pay. And there are plenty of 4x4s and sports cars that will pay the minimum charge of £8."
Dan Stevens, News Editor, Autocar

An alternative to the car is train travel is often seen as a relatively clean way to travel, and rightly so. The carbon emissions produced by train travel are between two to three times less than by road. Currently, rail travel accounts for about 7% of traffic but emits only about 0.2% of the carbon monoxide, 2% of nitrous oxides and 1% of volatile organic compounds produced by the transportation sector. The best electric trains produce less than a third of carbon than diesel trains, and with the efficiency of electricity production improving this too will get better. The trouble is, only 40% of trains in the UK are electric, the lowest proportion in Europe.

I will be reviewing the new more efficient, carbon friendly and shorter Eurostar service to Paris, in May, as I take a short trip to London and Paris (if Eurostar would like to send me free tickets just let me know). For more information on train travel, the Man in Seat Sixty-One can help.

Whilst on the topic of trains, and in more general terms Stagecoach, the firm that operates bus services across the UK, holding a 16% market share, and controls 25% of the rail market, including South West Trains, East Midlands Trains, and a 49% stake in Virgin Trains, the operator of the West Coast Main Line. This week announced "encouraging" like-for-like revenue growth was 14% on train services and up 7% on bus services compared with the same period (fours months from Oct 31).

Sorry for the late updates as I have been very busy at work and ill lately. In positive terms it has made me think about greening my work more as a solution to future unresolved problems. The news over transport emissions in recent weeks has shown that we need to tackle what is a growing dependence on cars, with the main method by local and national government of getting those out of their cars via green taxes, but are these effective methods?.

With ever increasing fuel costs, added tax is certainly pricing lowest income families out of the market, the new £25 congestion charge and higher road taxes will focus on high CO2 emitting vehicles, the majority of which are the highest priced and aimed at the luxury market. The hefty increase will certainly serve as deterant to high emitting cars in London, and should make people think twice about what they buy, as in future the bar will be lowered to include more cars.

I do not live in London, but since Tuesday night I have been transfixed about buying a new bike, as a method of travelling to and from work and general exercise, maybe even for my late night lurks to Tesco. But in a funny way I find myself asking the same questions as aired in the Woman Who Stops Traffic. Where will I lock it up? Will it be safe? Will I be safe? ... I shall update you on my outcome next week when I will confirm my final decisions. Which I hope will be a resounding "get on yer bike". As I am a bike newbie any advice would be welcome, hence I might ask some blogger out there in the field to write an article.

When the Lights Go Out

More than three million people were left without power after a nuclear reactor shut down in southern Florida. People were stranded in lifts, while several hospitals and Miami airport had to use back-up power.

Florida Power & Light Company said the cause of its reactor shutdown was unclear but added there was no danger. State officials said the problem at the reactor south of Miami may have been caused by line failure at a regional sub-station.

Outages were reported in south-east Florida, the south-west coast and as far up as Tampa and lasted for up to three hours.

Video: Fight to Green Business

Greening business is an essential task to reduce waste. According to our friends at Lets Green this City in San Francisco each office employee wastes 770g of high grade paper, which could otherwise be recycled, every day.

The number of people in employment for the three months to November 2007 was 29.36 million in the UK. If we also wasted 770g each per day, we would as a nation be wasting 22 600 tonnes of paper a day, or about 385 000 trees a day.

Paper can easily be recycled and offers a high revenue payment per tonne recycled, if your business is yet to start recyling waste paper, this simple change could reduce costs and increase revenue.

Some Paper Facts (Source: GreenPrint)

• 1 ton of paper = 400 reams = 200,000 sheets
• 1 tree makes 16.67 reams of copy paper or 8,333 sheets
• Average cost of monochrome printed page .67 pence
• Average UK office worker prints 38 pages per day, which is at 232 working days per annum is 8,816
• Average of 29% of which is wasteful printing creates 2,556 pages per year of unnecessary paper waste
• For every user in your organisation, based on these findings, in printing terms alone generates 61.34 KG CO2 requiring 142 kWh of energy to be consumed to supply the paper
• Printer Ink is one of the most expensive liquids to purchase. To fill an Olympic sized swimming pool with ink would cost around £11.8 billion
• One ton of paper requires the use of 98 tons of various resources
• The Pulp and Paper industry is one of the more destructive and energy consuming industries in the modernised world
• One tonne of paper uses over 19,000 gallons of water
• In order for us to consume our fair share of the world's wood resources we would need to reduce our consumption by 73%.
• The UK is the fifth highest consumer of paper and board in the world.
• On average, each of us consumes 198 kg of paper and board per year.
• London offices churn out three and a quarter million tonnes of office and printing paper a year.
• The US conservation pressure group Conservatree has calculated that on average one ton of uncoated non-recycled printing and office paper uses 24 trees.
• Paper accounts for 42% of industrial forest use.

SeaGen To Install Marine Current Turbine

Sea Generation is to install the first marine current turbine capable of generating commercial amounts of energy at Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland.

The 1.2MW turbine is capable of powering 1000 homes. The plans were shelved last year when SeaGen were unable to obtain suitable vessel to plant the system in the bed of the lough. SeaGen will be installed by the crane barge Rambiz, in an operation which will take up to 14 days. The turbine will first be picked up from Harland and Wolff in Belfast after final assembly. The SeaGen system will be connected to an existing grid connection adjacent to the sewerage substation south of Strangford. A 450m long HDD bore hole 300mm diameter will be drilled 20m below the seabed so that during installation the 11kV power cable can be pulled through the duct.

"We have carried out extensive engineering and environmental studies to ensure the very best means of installation and operation. As long as the weather is good and there are no last minute operational issues to contend with, we should have SeaGen deployed by the end of March.
Martin Wright, Managing Director, MCT

Strangford Lough has one of the world's fastest tidal flows making it an ideal choice for testing the SeaGen turbine. Whilst no one can be sure of the impact on marine life, the likely impact will be minimal with slow rotar speeds unlikely to cause death or injury to marine mammals. Producing clean energy from such an untapped source will if the results are forthcoming see a boom in the commercial use and viablity of marine current turbines.

Picture: Zero Carbon City

Masdar City will be constructed in the desert on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi. The aims are to use only renewable energy sources, and to eliminate 99% of the waste stream. This artist's impression shows wind turbines on the edge of the city and public transport links running through. The six-square-kilometer city designed by Foster and Partners, will be capable of housing 47,500 people, who are scheduled to start moving there in 2009. Construction is expected to take 10 years.

The city will be placed to take advantage of the cool sea breezes, while a perimeter wall around the entire city will protect buildings from the hot desert air and noise from the nearby Abu Dhabi airport.

No cars will be allowed in the city. People will get around through an electric light-rail system that will be linked to the center of Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

efergy Energy Monitor

I previously wrote about how in March 2008, all households will be entitled to gain an energy montior from their electricity firm to monitor real time how much energy they are using, as they use it. These devices have their critics and plaudites, with various international studies recording reductions in energy use by 1 - 11%.

Having come across the efergy energy monitor, many months ago, I decided to buy it last week on impulse after seeing it in an email newsletter. The device is available for about £35 - £45. I got mine from ecohamster, ordering at lunchtime and having it the next day. After a two minute installation, I was able to watch my electricity consumption real time, and with the wireless display able to run around the house turning everything off to see the noticeable change.

The device also records the amount of electricity used each day, and you can view daily, weekly and monthly consumption rates.

To alert you to impending emissions nightmare, you can set an alarm when your consumption goes above a set level, which if you are me is triggered by everything from the kettle to the washing machine.

Since installation on Thursday, in four full days we have seen our usage reduced by about 33% (from the daily average from our last electricity bill), through better management of how we use electrical devices and becoming more aware of when to switch things off, especially the high powered devices and things we have forgotten about. At night before bed or leaving the house it also serves as a method for acceptablity, if the reading is high, then we go around the house to ensure all appliances are switched off that need to be off.

These are great devices, and serve a truely important purpose, if used and monitored on a regular basis. If not it is likely that you will not see savings on your electricity bill. Should we keep up our energy monitoring at current rates, we should save about £200 annually, not to mention reduce our CO2 emissions too, even though we are on a green electricity, someone else can use those green units instead.

Picture: Enercon E-126: World's Largest Wind Turbine

The world’s largest wind turbine is now the Enercon E-126. This turbine has a rotor blade length of 126 meters (413 feet). The E-126 is a more sophisticated version of the E-112, formerly the world’s largest wind turbine and rated at 6 megawatts. This new turbine is officially rated at 6 megawatts too, but will most likely produce 7+ megawatts (or 20 million kilowatt hours per year). That’s enough to power about 5,000 households of four in Europe.

Via MetaEfficient

Dirty Polluting Lorry ... £200 Please

Each year in London, approximately 1000 people die prematurely as a result of poor air quality. From today any vehicle in excess of 12t entering the Low Emissions Zone, covering 610sq miles, which is not certified as meeting EU exhaust limits will be required to pay a £200 fee. Failure to make payment will result in a fine of £1000.

By July the scheme will be extended to include coaches and buses, and by 2010 will include some vans and lorries (trucks).

The LEZ is in operation 24 hours a day, unlike the Congestion Charge which operates from 0700 to 1800 each day. According to TfL, traffic in the original central congestion charge zone fell 20% since the scheme began in 2003, expexted a further fall of 15% when it expanded the zone size and increased the fee in 2007.

All lorries made after October 2001 automatically comply with the EU standards of particulate emissions of 0.05g per km. Older vehicles can be adapted to comply with the rules.

TfL has identified 120,000 lorries of over 12 tonnes inside the zone during the previous six months of monitoring and estimates that approximately 10% do not meet EU standards.

"Despite significant improvements in recent years, London's air pollution is the worst of any city in the UK and among the worst in Europe. The LEZ aims to reduce traffic pollution by deterring the most individually polluting diesel-engine lorries, buses, coaches, minibuses and large vans from driving within our city."
Nick Fairholme, Operations Management, Low Emissions Zone (London)

A further 70 LEZ are planned or currenly implemented across the EU. This new legislation will not only serve to improve air quality with non compliance vehicles being forced with a retrofit, it may also ensure commercial vehicles are replaced with newer, more efficient vehicles. With the inclusion of small lorries / vans in 2010 could see more companies switching to alternative commercial vehicles like the Modec, which is exempt from LEZ, Congestion Charge, parking fees and also offers free charging at some points in London. These measures should also reduce CO2 emissions in the areas they are trialled.

Separately this weekend, the ex-chairman of oil giant Shell, Sir Mark Moody-Stuart told BBC News that EU should ban the sale of cars that do under 35 miles to the gallon.

"We need very tough regulation saying that you can't drive or build something less than a certain standard. You would be allowed to drive an Aston Martin - but only if it did 50-60mpg. When we eliminated coal fires in London we didn't say to people in Chelsea you can pay a bit more and toast your crumpets in front of an open fire - we said nobody, but nobody, could have an open fire."

Read more from Sir Mark Moody-Stuart at the BBC Green Room.


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