Are You in "Green Place Poverty"?

A quarter of people living in towns and cities suffer from "green place poverty", with easy access to fewer than three parks or countryside areas, according to the National Trust.

The National Trust said many members of the public were missing out on access to the natural world, despite its importance to people's quality of life. Coastlines and beaches, parks and wild open spaces are all highly valued for fresh air and space, relaxation and to see wildlife.

A poll of 1,000 people by Opinion Leader for the Trust found that across England, Wales and Northern Ireland one in eight said they had access to two or fewer green spaces. In urban areas the number rose to one in four, and among black and ethnic minority groups the figure was one in three.

Online surveys of 1,200 people on the National Trust website found 98% of people thought having green spaces near them was important to their quality of life.

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Lifestyle Green at Castle Espie

I seem to have taken not many pictures of the show and more of the park, but that's typically me. I shall update you with a full rundown of events of this years jam packed (with visitors, stalls and talks) show.

Delivered Milk is Cleaner, Greener and Easier to Swallow

Since the early 90's, milkmen have struggled to remain competitive in the market against the convenience of 24/7 supermarkets with loss leading pricing tactics. This has inevitably saw a decline in the number of milkmen in the UK by over 10 000 in the last ten years, as more people turn to the supermarkets and existing clients (as they were often elderly) pass away. It's a tough life for milkmen rising as early as 2am, to go to the dairy to load their floats with the milk for the day. A job they love, but under the pressure from the supermarkets, one which pays a standard wage. Self-employed, to make a living they need to sell at least 500 gallons a week, they have little time off, even during bereavement and illness.

But as people try to green their lives some are turning back to the milkman as a way of receiving their milk fresh and green daily (or we hope).

The latest figures from WRAP, the Waste and Resources Action Programme, suggest that the UK milk industry is responsible for 130,000 tonnes of plastic waste, every year. To put that into perspective this is the more than the amount of plastic that is required for the total annual use of plastic bags in the UK.

Or ... 19 066 667 600 bags ... to be precise is the milk industry equivalent.

Plastic is a funny substance and can't really be recycled more than once, so there are limitations as to the amount of times it can be reused, and even more limitations on the types of products that they can replace, not to mention the way in which the plastic is collected, sorted and recycled. It takes 1.75 kilograms of petroleum (in terms of energy and raw materials) to make one kilogram of HDPE.

Or ... 228 229 285 litres of petroleum ... enough to power a Peugeot 107 for 3.08 billion miles.

Milkmen use cute clinky glass bottles (not all, best to ask first, avoid shock later), these can be reused twenty times before they need to be recycled. They also are virtually infinitely recyclable, although quality tends to degrade after the seventh time. The added advantage is the milkman collects the empty bottles on his next delivery, this allows the bottles to be effectively removed from all waste streams.

Most milkmen in the UK travel on clean green electric milk floats which emit no CO2 emissions other than those from electricity generation, and the milk floats are exceptionally efficient in terms of energy used, compared to petrol or diesel vehicles. One manufacture of these vehicles is Smith, who have diversified into other electric powered commercial vehicles.

We know know the packaging is greener and the distribution, but what about production, either way it is the same, but should we be consuming diary products at all? They are after-all renowned for the carbon intensive farming. The carbon footprint of 1 pint of milk is 596g of CO2.

1.05g of CO2 / 1ml of Milk

Now comes the real choice in what you consume and how it can affect your carbon footprint, organic milk uses three times less energy to produce because it doesn't require energy-intensive fertiliser. This should in effect reduce CO2 emissions by 55%, assuming 83% of CO2 is from production.

0.47g of CO2 / 1ml of Organic Milk (estimated)

So if you don't have a milkman already, it might be an idea to find one, I went in search, if you live in Northern Ireland, you can contact your local dairy, or visit Dale Farm. For the rest of the UK, you can try Find Me a Milkman or Deliver Milk.

Whilst delivered milk is slightly more expensive, this added cost also means you will likely never run out of milk, it's fresh, it's delivered and when saying I'm just going to the supermarket for milk, you categorically spend twenty times that of what you intended to buy in the first place, half an hour in the store and another 15 minutes driving there and parking in the packed out supermarket, and it doesn't come in a cute clinky glass bottle.

If you have a milkman I'd love to hear your comments and the price you pay for a pint of milk to debunk the ideas that milkmen charge exorbitant prices! I have faith.


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Five Green Terms that Have Entered the Dictionary in 2008

The Chambers Dictionary have added five new green terms to their version of the dictionary. You probably use them every day, if not, start splurting the latest ecobabbel;

Electrosmog
Electromagnetic fields emitted by computers and mobile phones

Eco-village
Small ecologically-sustainable communities

Carbon Footprint
Measure of the impact human activities on the environment

Green Tax
Tax on environmentally unfriendly or unstainable activities

Food Miles
Distance travelled in the distribution of food


The new terms are in the 11th edition, so you can't find them using their online version just yet, hence the definitions above are the provisional industry definitions. Their inclusion does show the interest and concerns in environmental issues across the world.

Build a Green House in a Day

A day might be a bit optimistic, but you can order these beautiful prefabricated homes and they are delivered complete. That would have been a real show stopper on Grand Designs. Yes, I did say prefab. The great thing about these homes are they are Green, they are made from recycled steel, and come complete, they can be configured to the site as required and can be built to take advantage of the climate. Decks provide shade and reduce solar heat gain, with wide doors for natural cross ventilation. Each unit is built to meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Certification from the United States Green Building Council. Not to mention the Forest Stewardship Council certified EcoTimber flooring comes from responsibly managed sources. There is alot more to see, and too many other things to mention.



If you want one, you can snatch a cute little Rincon 5 series (1 bed / 1 bath) for $179 000, before installation. Or go to a Skyline 2.6 for just shy of $1m (including installation). Or if you want to be creative just get a custom home. If you are in love already, visit Marmol Radziner Prefab.



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Lifestyle Green 2008

After a massive success with their first environmental focused exhibition at the Kings Hall in Belfast in September 2007, LifeStyleGreen will be back for their second environmental show on Saturday and Sunday the 13th and 14th September 2008 at Castle Espie, Comber, County Down. Exhibition space is limited, and already some big local brands have signed up, some returning for the second year. Exhibition space is available from £20/m2, for the two day event.

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.

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.

Reducing Commercial Refridgeration Costs

I mentioned before about becoming a green provocateur, and trying to suggest ways to companies to reduce their energy consumption, saving money and reducing CO2 emissions. Whilst I have yet to be proactive, I belive my first attempt failed stiffling my ambitions, as I received no reply.

I thought I would look closer to home for my second choice and thus emailed the directors of my medium sized employer, with about 140 employees. The issue at hand was commercial refridgeration, at each of the ten locations they operate, each store has about two to four commercial refridgeration units.

The solution to reducing the energy consumed across the group is a small wax cube measuring about 3 inches squared and simply mimics the food in your fridge, by hooking up the fridge or freezer thermostat. As the air temperature in the unit rapidly changes the food temperature does not drop as quickly. The wax cube allows the fridge to work less hard, more efficiently without compromising food quality or safety, by reducing the amount of cooling cycles. Typically saving about 16 to 33% of the energy required.

Savings on walk-in fridges and freezers could be as high as 1500 kWh per annum, which would translate to about £150 in savings and almost 750kg of CO2 reduced. My quick calculations suggest as a group we could save about 40 000 kWh per annum, £4000, and almost 20 tonnes of CO2, across our ten locations, I will also forward this on to our parent company which operates almost 1000 locations across the UK.

So what is this miracle wax cube with such potential, it is the eCube. Developed by Guy Lamstaes and colleagues and gained them a place on the Guardian's fifty people who could save the planet.

It has some strong support across the industry with testimonials from;

"We have carried out an independent trial with an eCube in one of our on-site kitchens, through the trial we made an energy saving of 17.78%. Based on these savings we will be rolling out the eCube across all of our sites. It is a simple idea that seems to be very effective in energy saving which will lead to a reduction in CO2 emissions."
Mike Wells, Head of Facilities, npower

If you are interested in having an eCube or two, you will be happy to realise they don't cost the earth at a mere £25 each, with a potential payback in two to four months, it's not a surprise how these are being implemented across the country.

Which Came First, the Chicken or the Power Plant?

It may be surprising to know that chicken waste is reused as a source of fuel to generate electricity, with over 75% of chicken litter from major poultry farms in the United Kingdom being reused in this method.

Northern Ireland often exports its chicken litter to mainland Britain as a way to efficiently reduce waste and reuse the energy stored in the bedding as no facility exisits in the country. The 1.8m chickens produced each week, create 250 000t of chicken litter annually. Hence this weeks decision by major chicken producers O'Kane Poultry, Glenfarm Holdings and Moy Park, who have been supplying poultry bedding for use as a biofuel to power stations in England and Scotland for a number of years, to join together as a consortium, known as Rose Energy, to propose the first energy plant which will convert agricultural biomass into electricity in Northern Ireland.

As well as poultry litter, meat an bone meal, commonly known as MBM will also be used as a fuel source. Both of which are inert, non-toxic substances.

The proposed site in Glenavy, near Lisburn, is in an ideal location between the two major poultry processing areas in NI. It is also located next to Ulster Farm By-Products, which will be a major supplier to the plant of one of the fuel sources – meat and bone meal. Furthermore, the plant will serve to reinforce the electricity infrastructure in an area which is currently deficient.

The £100m power plant will have a capacity of 30MW, and could effectively power 25 000 homes, assisting up to a third of the Northern Ireland obligation to source 6.3% of its energy from renewable sources by 2012. The government intends to exceed this figure and achieve 12% and is providing a funding package for suitable green energy initiatives to help develop viable projects.

This development is a viable solution to address the disposal of agricultural biomass, which is now included under an EU directive, whilst also providing an additional source of renewable energy. It will also assist in reducing emissions produced from exporting chicken litter, via road and sea,to mainland Britain.

"This is an exciting project for Northern Ireland, using proven technology to deliver huge benefits to the province on two key fronts - improving the environment and generating renewable energy. The plant will provide an opportunity to use two valuable biomass fuel sources locally, which have for several years been used as fuel for similar plants in GB. Rose Energy represents a huge financial commitment, the majority of which is being privately funded. The relevant government departments are aware of our proposals and have indicated their support in principle. We are working closely with them to secure the remaining funding required to realise this project."
Mike Alcorn, Director, Rose Energy

Depending on the success of their planning application, the new facility should be operational by 2010.

NB: Generic Picture

A Green Directory

We are hoping to showcase individuals, businesses or projects with a green message or agenda on an ocassional basis in their own words, this is to get an insight into the aims and reasoning why they began greening the world in the first place.

The first of these is the Green Providers Directory, a UK based online directory listing companies by specific category, and without the need to publish a big 2.5" thick paper directory. Dr Gary Robertshaw is the project director and continues for us;

"There are many ‘green’ sites that discuss the problems of environmental damage and climate change. However, it seemed to me that they were largely passive in nature and failed to engage mainstream consumers, which is needed to facilitate change on a larger scale and not just stimulate debate amongst core eco-consumers.

As a long time green campaigner I therefore decided to set up The Green Providers Directory to encourage more consumers to use environmentally friendly, ethical and organic goods and services. The premise of the directory is based on consumer power. That is, if large numbers of consumers can be educated and convinced of the dangers of climate change, then their combined demand for greener goods and services will cause a paradigm shift in buying behaviour and force more companies to adopt policies that reduce harm to the environment

Each company listed in The Green Providers Directory has been vetted against their stated ethical policy. We routinely reject applications because they fail to meet our criteria and we have also been keen to avoid associations with 'pseudo-green' national corporations who are using the growing concern to jump on the green bandwagon, whilst continuing to pursue non-sustainable business practices. To that effect, you will not find supermarkets, car makers, tobacco companies, etc...anywhere in the directory. As The Green Providers Directory is privately owned and not-for-profit there is no requirement to affiliate with any particular company - it's completely unbiased and independent.

The basic concept is that visitors to the site can be confident in finding true green companies for all their everyday needs. The advice given is impartial and there is no active selling. This gives the site a point of differentiation from other 'green' directories and instills greater credibility."

The Green Providers Directory has certainly built up a good following, listed in The Guardian's environmental section and on green.tv, the United Nations Environmental Programme and members of Ethical Junction. If you are looking to buy green start here.