Inspiring Energy Events

The annual Ashden Awards for sustainable energy enterprises were presented in London this month and I was lucky enough to be able to join their seminar at the Royal Geographical Society.  The morning session, chaired by Jonathan Porritt, focused on UK projects and the international session in the afternoon was chaired by the Guardian editor, Madeline Bunting.  During each session, the five finalists in their category screened a film summarising their project's achievements and the representative of the organisation gave a short speech about their work.  In the case of the UK finallists, this was posited as an "elevator pitch" to Chris Huhne and David Cameron, to persuade them what needs to be done to make Britain a great place to invest in sustainable energy technologies.

The films themselves are one of the Ashden Awards greatest achievements.  I look forward to screening them to the right audiences when the opportunities arise but you can view them yourself on the Ashden Awards website, for both the UK and international finalists.

After the films and pitches, the Chairs facilitated a couple of really useful discussion of pertinent issues - in the case of the international session, Local Clean Energy for the Poor.  This brought in technologists, regulators and investors and considered some of the artificial obstacles raised by institutional backers, aiming to verify the outcomes achieved with their support.  This discussion also highlighted the merits of grid vs. off-grid energy systems, with all parties agreeing that mini-grids, as seen in Peru and Ecuador, are often the best way to bring efficient, low carbon energy to poor rural communities.

As in previous years, I was greatly inspired by the overseas projects, which seem to exemplify courage and creativity in meeting the needs of - literally - billions of under-served people in the developing world.  I was privileged to chat at length with Suraj Wahab Olugburo, the founder of Toyola Energy Ltd of Ghana, who explained his elegant business model that provides work and income for over 500 entrepreneurs in making and selling the Toyola stove, which allows families to cook on half the charcoal needed for traditional stoves.  His simple credit scheme allows the local sales agent to give the stove to a family, with a collecting tin: each day that the customer does NOT need to pay for charcoal (because the stove halves their usage), they put their charcoal money into the tin.  After a few months, they have saved enough to pay for the stove!

The UK projects were also an inspiration this year and I was delighted to learn that one of the finallists, Radian Housing, was about to open a flagship project in Windsor, where they have built 9 new houses in Tinkers Lane - one is Code 6 (essentially zero carbon) and the others are all Code 5 dwellings, which are highly efficient in the way they use energy.  I was delighted to attend the opening ceremony last week, where our Mayor cut the ribbon and some of the residents opened their new homes to all the visitors.  We were a distinctly non-technical audience and the main take-home message was that these houses are very attractive, liveable homes that require no special skills from their residents.  Sure, some behaviours can be learned (for example, with a huge solar PV power station on the roof, it's worth running the washing machine when the sun is shining) but all the buildings' clean technologies simply run themselves itself without placing any responsibilities on the household.

It was a great pleasure to learn that these two finallists, Toyola and Radian, received the two Gold Awards at the Ashden Awards ceremony, on the evening of the day after the conference.


The other inspiring energy event that I have attended this month was, surprisingly, the RBWM Sustainability Panel at the Town Hall in Maidenhead.  After a slow start, discussion moved to the Government's disclosure requirements for greenhouse gas emissions.  The responsible officer outlined the framework of Scope I, Scope II and Scope III reporting but focused on the costs and complexity of data-gathering and analysis.  The councillors set a different pace, however, reminding the panel that residents expect leadership from their council and that time is of the essence in moving to meaningful reporting of these GHG emissions.  This decision was passed unanimously.  Good on them!

The same tone was maintained when considering energy reporting, with annual overviews by invoice described as insufficient and unsatisfactory.  The vice-chair, Councillor Sharp, called for electricity and gas usage by site to be reported "at least monthly".  On Energy Action Plans, the Chairman called for focus on the significant few actions, to make real progress.  Lastly, proposals for solar photovoltaic installations up to 50kWp on council buildings were reviewed and the vice-chair, Cllr. Sharp, now well into his stride, said, "We must do it now.  Must do it now!"  The Chairman concurred, saying "We want it and we want it tomorrow."

Having sat through a few of the previous administration's Sustainability Panels, which I felt were typically bogged down in politics, I found the new council's can-do mentality so empowering.  In the closing words of the Chairman, Cllr. David Coppinger, it's time to move from talking to doing.  Amen to that.

Let's recycle more!

We have had kerbside recycling in Windsor for quite a few years.  Several years ago, I learned that our local authority, the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, won't accept mixed plastics (ie., plastic food packaging other than bottles) for recycling.  At this point I took Greenpeace's advice and started to clean and collect my family's own mixed plastic packaging (yoghurt pots, margarine tubs, ready meal trays, fruit punnets, etc) in anticipation of future recycling services.  My collection of mixed plastics has featured prominently in the local paper and was also used artistically last year, to make a "10%" sign in front of Windsor Castle, in support of the Global Day of Doing on 10 October 2010 (10/10/10).

Other Boroughs across the country now collect mixed plastic - the latest to announce this service is the neighbouring Woking Borough Council, who have a contract with Biffa to recycle all types of plastic (other than bags and films) within their domestic, co-mingled kerbside collection.  Biffa have acquired Greenstar WES and their new mixed plastics recycling facility, opened this month in Redcar, will be able to sort and bale 20,000 Tonnes of mixed plastics each year.

Closer to home, this morning Neil Grundon (a founder member of our Sustainable Windsor group) showed me around Grundon's materials recovery facility (MRF) in Colnbrook.  They are able to sort and bale steel and aluminium cans, paper and cardboard, mixed plastics.  They also collect glass which is used as aggregate in roadbuilding or for recycling.  Grundon recycle household waste from nearby boroughs such as Guildford, Spelthorne and Hillingdon.  I took some of my mixed plastic packaging along with me today, to see how well their sorting process coped with it.

I was delighted to see my carefully laundered yoghurt pots and margarine tubs flying along the final conveyor into the mixed plastics silo, ready for baling.  Black plastics are hard to sort, at present, because an optical process, near infra-red reflectance (NIR), is used for the sorting.  However, these could be separated from the final waste stream in future by an additional sorting machine that is "trained" to work on black plastics.

Recoup, a charity promoting the RECycling Of Used Plastics, publishes an annual report on the collection of plastic packaging from UK Households.  In their latest report, RECOUP reports that mixed plastics (ie., rigid plastic packaging other than bottles) are actively recycled by 120 local authorities in the UK, out of 401 that they contacted.

Despite all this progress in the recycling of mixed plastics nationally, the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead seems to be locked in a recycling time-warp!  The Royal Borough's current waste and recycling contractor is Veolia and there is no indication on the Veolia website that they are prepared ever to provide a mixed plastics recycling service to their municipal customers.  The waste and recycling contract for Windsor and Maidenhead is up for renewal this year.  Clearly Biffa and Grundon are competent, commercial partners who should be allowed to tender for this valuable contract.  Will the Council insist on the provision of a wider range of recycling streams from the company that successfully tenders for this valuable contract - or will the business stay with Veolia because they can offer the lowest price?

Sustainable Living, beyond energy

In my recent post, "The Basics Revisited", I covered the essentials of cutting carbon by saving energy at home.  Here I want to look beyond energy and explore the vast question of how to live more sustainably in our consumer society.  I can do no more than scratch the surface - whereas the film, "No Impact Man" gets uncomfortably close to the bottom of this issue!

While I am doing my best to reduce the impact of my everyday living on the environment, I remain comfortably affluent and middle-class. In discussing these matters I am aware of the risk of hypocrisy in bleating about sustainable sourcing while poverty, war and natural disasters are ravaging millions of families around the world.  My purpose in writing this is not to solve the world's problems but to offer you practical ideas and encouragement to make your life a bit greener by cutting waste and making the most of what you have.  I hope this will make you a little happier and it will also rub off on the people around you.  This article, published in the Wall Street Journal last month, compiled decades of research that demonstrates the best way to persuade other people to make ethical and environmental choices is to lead by example.  When we do what we say, practice what we preach, other people take notice.  "You must be the change that you want to see in the world" - Mahatma Gandhi.

Food and Drink
We had friends round for dinner on Saturday.  While dinner parties are not about sustainability, I was very happy with the menu we prepared.  To start, ricotta and herb-filled courgette parcels in beetroot cream (from the Montali vegetarian cookbook).  For main course, MSC-certified lemon sole with Atlantic prawn and breadcrumb gratin.  The dessert was FairTrade chocolate mousse with walnuts and cream.  Tragically, I used Divine's 85% cocoa recipe which turned the mousse rock hard.  Lesson learned!

The Lemon Sole link, above, takes you to the START initiative, which encourages us all to - yes - start doing a little to help protect our climate and the diversity of life on earth.  To buy sustainable seafood, look out for the MSC logo. Similarly, to buy products from the developing world, from bananas to coffee, sugar to cotton and roses to red wine, look out for Fair Trade.  It is often slighted as being "less good" than some other people's schemes but, honestly, it is the best across-the-board consumer signpost for ethically sourced produce.  Rarely seen in Tesco now, this is the best argument for shopping in Sainsbury's (their own-label teas and ground coffees, their bananas and their Taste the Difference jams are all fair trade) and the Co-op.

The important point is not to restrict yourself to finding only the most ethical and sustainable ingredients but rather to develop your sense of particular things to avoid.  I've been trying lately, for example, not to buy products containing palm oil that do not state it is sustainably sourced.  It is practically impossible to avoid this ubiquitous ingredient - it doesn't even have to be listed in the Ingredients Declarations! - so I'd prefer to give my business to companies that recognise the importance of sustainable sourcing.  Sainsbury's "Pure" soap and Nairns oatcakes are just two examples.  So far, I haven't found a low-fat vegetable spread that claims sustainably-sourced palm oil and I am waiting for the likes of Unilever to fix this.  Fortunately, that's exactly what they are going to do.  This week they launched their Sustainable Living Plan, committing to source ALL their ingredients sustainably within a decade. I hope they will move fast on palm oil while there are still orang-utans left to save.

More broadly, the most sustainable food is local and seasonal.  We've lost touch with the gardening year so most of us, myself included, are pretty woolly on what's in season each month.  Of course, the best remedy is to grow your own and gain a real connection with the soil.  Reading the labels to find home-grown veg at a decent price per kilo is a poor substitute but it does help to home in on seasonal produce!  Conversely, Mike Berners-Lee points out in his book, "How Bad are Bananas?" that a single kilo of organic cherry tomatoes grown in Britain in March has a carbon footprint of 50 kg CO2!  That staggering figure is the highest carbon footprint of any food.  He advises us to buy tinned tomatoes in the winter / spring, or fresh tomatoes grown in warmer climes like Spain, to avoid the intensive fossil fuel heating of greenhouse-grown crops.  While the transport impact of shipments within Europe is much smaller than heating the greenhouses, I do try to avoid fresh, perishable foods that are flown from South America - 12,000 miles away.

The golden rule of sustainable housekeeping is to plan your meals and make a list.  Buy only what's on the list, cook only as much food as needed and eat everything you prepare - leftovers make great ingredients!

Waste and Recycling
For years, the mantra of environmentalists has been "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle".  We tend to skip over the first two so let's just remember that they mean buy only what we need, make it last and, when it breaks, try to repair it or use it in another way.  Throwing things away is the last resort (and  there is no 'away') but we are all becoming accustomed to the third R, recycling.  My council (RBWM) has introduced a progressive policy of commingled recycling, with consumer vouchers to reward residents for recycling.

I find it ironic that they are aiming to maximise weight of recycled material by giving away vouchers for buying more stuff!  More serious is the fact that they will collect NO PLASTIC, other than bottles, in their doorstep recycling service.  Other packaging they consign to landfill includes aluminium foil and drinks cartons!  These exceptions are absolutely crucial and must be addressed - either by upgraded doorstep recycling or expanded "bring sites" for residents to recycle these materials.  I hope that my readers will be motivated to collect all these packaging materials and find ways to recycle them because, let's face it, the decision to send stuff to landfill is a personal one.  I refuse to send mixed plastic packaging to landfill so I am filling my garage with bags of the stuff, cleaned and ready to recycle when the Council finally recognises their duty to enable this.  Foil and cartons are much simpler (as are batteries and compact fluorescent lamps) because there are "bring sites" that I can take them to when my boxes are full.

Transport and Travel
I covered driving in a much earlier post but the key points bear repeating.  Personal transport is one of our largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions.  Nowadays, a typical car emits something like 150g CO2 per kilometre.  We drive an average of 12,000 miles a year.  Assuming we're always alone in the car, this emits  around 3 Tonnes of CO2, which is 20% of the average Briton's total of 15 Tonnes/year.

There is a great decision tool on the Start website, to help you work through the choices of whether to keep an old, inefficient car or replace it with a shiny new, low-emisisons model.  Living without a car for a couple of years taught me to view them as antisocial constructs!  Of course, we need them for commuting, shopping and holidays.  Indeed, the car is a greener choice than the plane for our summer hols but still we are poisoning our atmosphere and tarmacking our countryside to make this choice possible.  Accidents result in horrendous cost and suffering for the unlucky victims - frequently the people who chose to walk or cycle, without the protection of a steel box packed with airbags.  What is impossible to appreciate when regularly driving all over the place, for all sorts of reasons (good and bad), is how dependent we are on these machines and the freedom they provide, as they propel us wherever we wish to be on a cloud of carbon emissions from highly-refined fossil fuels.  

Ours is a genuine and complete addiction and it is not clear how we will ever break the habit.  If we can't quit then let's at least cut down a little!  With cars, like flights, it is time for us to begin weighing up whether each journey is necessary.  Our commute to work might not be optional but the school run, the quick trip to the post office or the corner shop, might be better and more enjoyable without the car.  Clean your boots, pump up your bike tyres and get outdoors!  I now walk to town for all the minor errands and only drive to the supermarket for a big shop once a week.  Even this could be ordered online, and delivered by a fuel-efficient multi-drop driver but I'm not usually that well organised.


There are endless other categories and tips but this is a blog post not a Haynes manual.  Please have a look at some of the book references in my last post - particularly Chris Goodall's comprehensive "How to live a low-carbon Life".  I would be very interested in your own suggestions so please add your comments to this page.

A visit to the Council

I have been collecting mixed plastic packaging (ie., food trays, tubs, pots, etc. but not bottles, bags, expanded polystyrene or film) at home for the past two years and have tried throughout that time to contact the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead and ask them to recycle it.

In February, the local paper carried this story, with a picture of me glaring from a mountain of binbags full of our accumulated plastic. This led to an invitation to addresss the Council's Sustainability Panel, which met last night.

I had the honour of speaking before presentations from the Head of Packaging at each of our two largest retailers. My message was that many residents of the Royal Borough labour under the mistaken belief that their local authority recycles mixed plastics. These are therefore carefully cleaned and placed in the purple recycling boxes, along with bottles and cans, for kerbside collection by the council's contractor, Veolia, who then strip them OUT and send them to landfill!

Since 64% of our waste still goes to landfill, I said, it is the duty of the local authority to extract these valuable materials from our waste stream and recycle them. Pure picked polymers (ie., mixed plastic packaging SORTED into separate types) have a commercial value of £50 - £150 per Tonne.

I was saddened by the response from the council officers responsible for waste management, who said that reclaiming additional plastics from the waste stream would add greatly to the cost and would not make much difference to the tonnage going to landfill (because of the low density of plastic packaging) and also by the somewhat cynical allegation that many other authorities across the country are only 'pretending' to recycle these materials while actually burying, burning or exporting them to the developing world.

On the other hand, I was heartened to learn that the borough's contract for waste management is up for renewal in 2012 and that stringent environmental criteria could be included in the specifications for tender. My comments in response were that the Goverment's Waste and Recycling Action Programme (WRAP) had made the case for mixed plastics recycling and that RECOUP has developed comprehensive tools and analysis to enable more local authorities to do this in future.

When the senior packaging people from Tesco and Sainsbury addressed the Council, their presentations were inspiring, impactful, relevant and positive. It was a privilege to hear these thoughtful and informed contributions and this confirmed my view that retailers really are striving to green their operations because their customers expect this of them.

I was particularly moved by the forceful support for my position on post-consumer recycling of mixed plastics from one of these speakers - who told the Councillors that the myth of '36 types of plastic to sort' is an archaic hang-up from the past. There are just 4 or 5 high value polymers to sort and there are automated sorting facilities in operation around the country.

He went on to say that non-bottle PET is a high value material that can't be left to go to waste, that polypropylene (PP) is the next high value target for collection and that 'on-the-go' bottles and cans, thrown into street bins, are a problem that must be solved.

He said that his customers send him more letters about the availability of local recycling facilities than anything else and that bringback facilities in store car parks are destined to be replaced by kerbside collection as Councils increasingly fulfil their responsibility to recycle more of the domestic waste stream.

I was invited to visit the waste management officers in the coming weeks and am optimistic that, away from the political atmosphere of a Council panel, there is much that can be achieved and that there will be a shift in Council policy towards greater recycling in the coming years. Bring it on.