Birmingham Friends of The Earth newsletter - Oct-Nov 2011

Birmingham Friends of the Earth Campaigning at local, regional and national level to protect the environment NEWSLETTER OCT - NOV ‘11

Stop The Planning Free For All A town with the bus station in one place, a shopping street with small shops in another place, and another, then a new shopping centre with some dedicated bus services and a big car park in a newly developed centre away from the other places. Can you see why public transport might struggle? Would this be the place you would choose to live?

The town exists, in Poland, Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski, and, from experience, is not satisfactory. Such a thrown together uncoordinated mess might be the norm in future in England and Wales, should current government proposals, go ahead unchanged. Towns and cities in Great Britain have made some great leaps forward in Continued on Page 14

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- Warehouse News

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- Fracking Hell!

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- A Sustainable Framework for UK Aviation?

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- FoE’s 40th Anniversary Conference

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- Membership Form

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- Stop The Planning Free For All (cont.)

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- Birmingham Bike Trains

20 - In The Media – Support for food waste collections 22 - Volunteer Spotlight 23 - Contacts

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Campaigns Digest Autumn brings some new campaigns and some old favourites return in the form of annual events, such as In Town Without My Car Day and Buy Nothing Day.

Energy and Climate Change The Big Energy Conversation that we have been involved with over the summer has led to us developing a great deal more knowledge about renewable energy schemes in Birmingham and people’s thoughts about how the situation can be improved. We have had some volunteers writing up great case studies that we can learn from on a local level and pass the information on to inform national campaigners, too.

to ensure that we switch to more community-based projects that share the benefits better and can take more people out of fuel poverty.

Planning Our most urgent campaign for now is on the new National Planning Policy Framework, for which we urgently need to put pressure on MPs to make sure that significant amendments are made before it goes through the House of Commons as part of the localism bill. The desperately-needed protections for the environment are completely missing from the draft policy published by the government, so this would have a massive impact on our ability to protect local communities if it is passed. Read the main article for more details.

The desperatelyneeded protections for the environment are completely missing from the draft policy published by the government

The next step is a campaign where FoE will be taking on the power of big energy companies and trying

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Campaigns Digest Local issues connected to this are also at the forefront of our thoughts at the moment and we are supporting local people running campaigns to protect the markets in the centre of Birmingham and to stop supermarkets in Acocks Green and Stirchley. You can read more about the Markets Campaign in our guest article and I’m sure that there will be more on supermarkets soon

We will be launching our report on Birmingham’s waste at the Sustainability Forum at the beginning of October

Waste This month we have had some great support from Friends of the Earth nationally for our campaign to Halve Birmingham’s Rubbish, as they produced a survey showing how much people with food waste collections are in favour of them.

This led to an appearance on radio to talk about it and we now have over 600 signatures on paper and electronic versions of our petition.

We will be launching our report on Birmingham’s waste at the

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Sustainability Forum at the beginning of October, which we hope will lead to the council taking forward the recommendations from it into their Municipal Waste Review.

Transport For In Town Without My Car Day this year, we have been inspired by an idea from Brighton and ran five Bike Trains into the centre of Birmingham along different routes.

This has taken on a lot of the work I mentioned in the last issue about working together with other cycling organisations. We have also had contact with lots of businesses who have helped to promote it and some lovely independent coffee shops who have helped us to feed all the cyclists at the end of the route. See the article for more details.

Hopefully this will lead to more collaboration and better contact for our other transport campaigns as we move into the new year. We are still pushing for proper trains to be running through Kings Heath, Moseley and other parts of the city as well as Bike Trains and hope that the government will keep its promise not to neglect those if the High Speed Rail line is built. We also hope to launch a new project soon to engage more communities in planning their streets to be safer and greener.

Joe Peacock

Warehouse News Birmingham Friends of the Earth put a new environmental monitoring system into its building ‘the Warehouse’ at the start of the year.

We cannot really draw any conclusions from it until we have collected at least a year’s data, but I thought it might be worth sharing our experience of installing and running it.

The monitoring system takes electricity, gas, water and waste into consideration. Electricity is monitored 24/7 by a rather nifty gadget from a company called Enistic. The Enistic meter has an easy to use web interface that makes analysing data really easy.

We can now see which area of the building is using electricity at any time, allowing us to compare performance with the week, month or year before. We have already been able to spot when electrical devices have been left on overnight and informed their owner that they should have been off.

The gas meter information is taken manually from two separate meters; one for the oven in the cafe and one for our backup boiler. We hope to be able to connect these meters to the Enistic system at some point, as taking a reading once a week will make it difficult to identify if the boiler has been running overnight.

It is still useful information though.

Trent to find out that it is just outside the resource room window.

Getting a reading is quite laborious and involves opening the metal covering in the pavement with a screw driver, cleaning the screen on the meter and then taking a photograph of it. The photograph is necessary as the writing is too difficult to read by eye alone. The readings will allow us to spot if / when there is water leaking in the building, although this process would be made a lot easier if it was also automated.

The waste monitoring is even more exciting than the water as it involves me donning a large set of gloves and diving into the bins to find things that really ought not to be there. I take on the mannerisms of a detective and try to trace the source of the plastic milk cartons and aluminium drinks cans that really should have gone into the recycling. Imagine a smelly, less interesting version of Miss Marple, where she climbs around in bins.

I guess this means that very frequent, precise monitoring can help to change behaviour quicker than weekly monitoring, unless you are prepared to do a lot of detective work. As the Enistic system is quite expensive, expect to see me wearing a deer stalker hat and smoking a pipe for a while.

Phil ‘Sherlock’ Burrows

The water meter was quite difficult to find and involved a call to Severn

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The shops and companies here have all come together because they are dedicated to working towards a healthier, more organic city.

So if you want to help make Birmingham a cleaner, greener place to live, or you just want to eat some good vegetarian food, then come to The Warehouse and see what’s going on.

SPROCKET Cycles

Sales, service, repairs, accessories. Bikes also built to your own specifications.

Open Monday & Wednesday to Saturday, 10am-5pm Established over 15 years ago in the Friends of the Earth Building in Birmingham The Warehouse Café has a reputation as a quality provider of vegetarian and vegan food in Birmingham.

“Real people serving real food with local, organic and fair trade leading the way” Guardian Unlimited.

To see the delicious menu go to www.thewarehousecafe.com For bookings and enquires Telephone 0121 633 0261 Email info@thewarehousecafe.com

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0121 633 0730

• 100% vegetarian and vegan; • A large selection of organic and fairtrade products, most supplied and delivered by a workers co-operative; • Vegan owners - no meat or dairy products sold.

Open • Mon, Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat 10am - 5:30pm, • Thurs 10am - 6:30pm, • Sun 11am - 3pm.

Fracking Hell!

Last year a company called Cuadrilla Resouces began drilling into the rock at Preece Hall, near Blackpool, to begin extracting gas in formations of shale rock.

Fracking involves pumping a mixture of water, sand and chemicals at high pressure into the rock deep underground, to split it apart and release the natural gas inside. The operation is currently on hold due to two small earthquakes in Lancashire, which may have been caused by the fracking, but will no doubt start up again soon.

move away from fossil fuels now and massively invest in low carbon technologies.

In the US, a Cornell University study concluded that greenhouse gas emissions from shale gas are higher than those for coal. Methane is 21 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide and it appears that the process of splitting rocks open increases the chances of the gas escaping into the atmosphere considerably.

In the US, a Cornell University study concluded that greenhouse gas emissions from shale gas are higher than those for coal.

There is enough CO2 in the known reserves of conventional fossil fuels; coal, oil and gas to trigger runaway climate change, without tapping into the so–called unconventional fossil fuels such as shale gas and tar sands. It’s quite simple, if we want to leave a liveable planet to future generations we need to rapidly

As if the climatic effects are not enough to deter us there are other grave environmental concerns surrounding shale gas. Drilling to depths of 10,000ft means penetrating the water table, this runs the risk of contaminating aquifers with chemicals that are extremely toxic to people and wildlife. There is also clear evidence that the fluids leach radioactive

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radium from the rocks to the surface.

YouTube entitled ‘Fracking Hell: The Untold Story’.

In response to these environmental concerns, the French parliament has voted for a nationwide ban on the process of fracking.

Birmingham Friends of the Earth believe the UK should follow suit, as do the hundreds of protesters who assembled close to where the current drilling operations are taking place on 17th & 18th September in the ‘Camp Frack’ peaceful protest.

And if you havn’t done so already, please sign the e-petition calling for a moratorium on Shale Gas in the UK - http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/ petitions/14271 Robert Pass

If you want to find out more there is a short documentary describing the problems with Shale Gas on

Appeal for Volunteers Planning affects everyone and we need to protect the planning system as well as helping communities with planning applications already being lodged for developments we see as being unsuitable in creating a sustainable future.

We need someone to help us log some of this work and coordinate the work we’re doing to stop the planning free-for-all. If you have a little time to spare and would like some experience in recording such activity and promoting our vision of sustainable development, please email campaigns@birminghamfoe. org.uk.

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A Sustainable Framework for UK Aviation?

The Department for Transport, DfT, published a Scoping Document to consult the public on developing a new aviation policy under a sustainable framework, in March 2011.

The Coalition considered the previous government’s 2003 White Paper, The Future of Air Transport, fundamentally outdated and failing to adapt to the increasing climate change challenges. Being “not antiaviation”, the DfT is calling for progressive policy scenarios that, on one hand, introduce tougher emissions standards, incentivise technological advancements, meet the increasing passenger demand, and improve well-being and quality of life, and, on the other hand, balance the benefits through empowering aviation’s economic role in tackling the budget deficit.

Birmingham FoE is conducting research to produce its response to the Scoping Document. The research is focused generally on the national trends , but particularly on the Regional Connectivity and Regional Airports section. In the interest of presenting a real case study, the investigation will use Birmingham Airport runway extension as a benchmark for some of the figures, which will support recent analysis that proved the negative economic, social and environmental implications of regional airport expansion. Not

only that, but also Birmingham Airport already has unused capacity and thus the planned £25m public subsidy to the runway extension will be unlikely to increase passenger demand.

These implications will be reflected in the number of jobs created/ retained in the aviation industry, balanced with the resulting tourism deficit in the local area. Moreover, such expansion will make meeting the CO2 emissions targets even harder, notwithstanding the continuing ignorance of including Radiative Forcing measuring in the assessments (this measures other impacts due to emissions being released high up the atmosphere).

Birmingham Airport already has unused capacity and thus the planned £25m public subsidy to the runway extension will be unlikely to increase passenger demand.

The DfT published its Aviation Forecast last month, on which the responses to the consultation

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should be based. The assumption of expanding some regional airports was implicit in their analysis, so we need to argue against this and ensure Birmingham Airport does not become Heathrow’s 3rd runway.

Furthermore, some assumptions around the future oil prices, economic growth, and consumer demand were overestimated and implausible. The emissions forecasting practices were not in line with recent research that has been able to make better estimates of the emissions from aviation.

The assumptions of Biofuels penetration in the aviation market didn’t take into consideration the dangerous consequences on food prices worldwide and increased deforestation. These are signs of a fundamental detachment with the national and international climate agenda.

Alternatively, we will be supporting investments in better operational procedures, technological advancements, and behavioural measures that maximise the utility of the current airports’ capacity.

This will help sustain the climate

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agenda and push economic growth and jobs creation toward more sustainable and responsible directions. Our submission will be made publicly available. If you would like to contribute to the consultation, you can do so by submitting your evidence-based response to DfT before 20th of October.

The assumption of expanding some regional airports was implicit in their analysis, so we need to argue against this and ensure Birmingham Airport does not become Heathrow’s 3rd runway.

Link to the consultation: Sustainable Framework for UK Aviation www.dft.gov.uk/ consultations/open/2011-09 Link to the DfT Aviation Forecast 2011:www.dft.gov.uk/publications/ uk-aviation-forecasts-2011 Alaa Khourdajie

FoE’s 40th Anniversary Conference Another year and another Friends of the Earth local groups conference, this year FoE turned 40 and to celebrate, 4 of the previous directors of FoE reminisced about their previous experiences as leader, which I thought provided a useful historical context to some to our current campaigning.

In keeping with the 40 years theme the conference was entitled ‘The route to 2050: the next forty years’ as one might expect many of the talks and seminars were spent discussing and planning the future direction of the organisation.

While there were far too many enlightening and inspirational moments to list them all, some of particular note included; Nnimmo Bassey, Chair of Friends of the Earth International informing us of the global challenges the environmental movement faces in the coming years. His talk reminded me that local groups, such as BfoE, are part of much wider international movement seeking environmental justice. Kate Pickett’s, author of ‘The Spirit Level’, lecture on the link between income inequality and social problems, which includes amongst other things carbon emissions, was of great interest.

Conference also provided a great opportunity to feed into some of the new national campaigns that FoE will be ruining in the coming year.

Of particular personal interest was the forthcoming Bees campaign (watch this space for more info!),

which sees FoE moving back into campaigning on issues of biodiversity.

On a lighter note this years conference saw BFoE receive its first Earthmover award, for photo of the year. The photo in question, which has graced the covers of this very newsletter, saw a handful of BFoE dressed as anti-consumerist Father Christmas’ parading through Birmingham for ‘buy nothing day’.

Aside from all the formal talks and seminars the gathering of local groups provides a chance to network with like minded individuals from across the country, it is always interesting to hear the specific challenges facing each region.

As exhilarating and informative as ever, and always one of the highlights of the year. My only hope is that conference 2012 can be equally enjoyable and educative.

Richard Sagar

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Campaign Meetings Monday Night Meetings – 7:30pm at the Birmingham FoE Warehouse, Allison St 10th October: General Meeting 17th October: Campaigns Action Meeting 24th October: Campaigns Action Meeting 31st October: Campaigns Action Meeting 7th November: General Meeting 14th November: Campaigns Action Meeting 21st November: Campaigns Action Meeting 28th November: Campaigns Action Meeting

Other Events 3rd October: Sustainability Forum 5th October: Sustainability West Midlands conference 8th October: Skillshare on using the media, The Warehouse 10th October: Get Birmingham Moving, Canon Hill Park 22nd October: Community Orchards event, Lickey Hills 26th November: Buy Nothing Day See Northfield Eco Centre for their many events and workshops www.northfieldecocentre.org

Farmers’ Markets Birmingham University: 4th Wednesday of the month 9am-2pm Harborne: 2nd Saturday of the month 9am-2pm Kings Heath: 1st Saturday of the month 9am-3:30pm Kings Norton: 2nd Saturday of the month 9am-2pm Moseley: 4th Saturday of the month 9am-3pm New Street: 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month 10am-4pm Solihull: 1st Friday of the month 9am-5pm Sutton Coldfield: 2nd Friday of the month 9am-3pm Jewellery Quarter: 3rd Saturday of the month 10am-3pm Stirchley Community Market: 1st Tuesday of the month 4pm - 8pm

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Stop The Planning Free For All

recent years with some streets praised for their look and feel. In general, there are not miles of roadside development stretching away from towns, but rather a clear division between town and country.

This, with population growth putting pressure on provision of housing, is quite an achievement.

Is there anywhere more suited to standards than the layout of towns that might stand for many years, decades or centuries?

For many years, Friends of the Earth would campaign for development of ‘brownfield land’ rather than building on farmland or other Greenfield land. Housing developers disliked the idea of building on land where there had been earlier uses, the clean-up of the land usually being more expensive. The idea of leaving swathes of empty urban land unused whilst building afresh on farmland became unpopular with many people. By restricting the availability of open fields, refreshing towns and cities with new buildings became the norm.

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Continued from front page

With anything worthwhile, a standard has to be set. There is nothing unusual with an exam result from school, or the workings of a nuclear power station, requiring following rules and meeting and exceeding standards. Is there anywhere more suited to standards than the layout of towns that might stand for many years, decades or centuries?

Rules are, however, annoying.

Rules get in the way and frustrate progress. Dump that barrel of waste in the river and get back to the workplace to make some money.

Buy the land, put up the building, and get people back to work quickly in the unregulated shed. When it comes to home life, you want to put up a porch without filling in a form. The planning process slows you down, the Confederation of British Industry saying in April: ‘the pace of the planning process needs to be improved dramatically if the UK is to compete internationally’.

The way the process has worked in recent years is that a set of rules ‘planning guidance’ applied nationally. Below this, more detailed standards and expectations applied on a ‘regional level’. The regional level had a democratic element with some effort being put into suggesting where gravel pits, power stations, forestry and housing would go. Rolling back a map with a maniacal laugh, evil planners would pour a requirement for new hoses onto an unsuspecting

borough. The democratic bit was the input of puzzled individuals pleading their case and well-funded firms wheeling out the lawyers to change the rules (and later to get around them). The final level in the planning system was the local level planning that would state what local schools, shops, roads and parks are to be provided when areas where change is allowed, get developed.

Cumbersome it may be, but it meant that everyone could find the plan for the land in their area and to not be deceived. It also meant that it was much clearer for developers to know where and what type of development should take place, so if they proposed something that fitted with the plan and policies, there was every chance that they would gain permission for it.

The government wants a simpler system with policy being in a little over 50 pages (down from over a thousand). This really does seem to offer a much simpler way, and there are a lot of merits in making the policy easier to understand and more accessible to the public.

However, it is not so simple if the wording is like the conditions of a bank account or ‘lawyer-speak’. The reason that planning documents are long is because they have to cover every angle and be very explicit about what is and is not acceptable (we all know how different people can interpret the same text in very different ways if there is ambiguity).

Unfortunately, much of this structured planning is to be ripped up, along with a great deal of the protection of people’s neighbourhoods, green spaces, local facilities and nature. The government’s NPPF (National Planning Policy Framework) is set to replace the thousand plus pages of planning policy with around fifty. Obviously, such a reduction in size is bound to have an effect on the quality of the policy, and it appears that the overriding aim of the NPPF is to deliver as much economic growth as possible.

The document states that there should be ‘a presumption in favour of sustainable development’.

Sustainable development you say? Surely that’s a good thing?

Well yes, it should be, but alas the NPPF doesn’t actually give

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a definition of what ‘sustainable development’ is, and whilst us at Friends of the Earth have our own ideas about what it means, there are lots of others in business and the council that have very different ideas – ones that will only succeed in sustaining the urban spiral, with the loss of our parks and countryside, and the creation of disjointed developments that will cause traffic chaos and have massive detrimental effects on our communities.

‘Community Plans’ will have to be paid for by the community, leaving it a luxury for only those who can afford it, or a developer with vested interests to sponsor it.

This strategy for increasing the amount of planning approvals by removing vast swathes of planning policy seems rather bizarre to us.

It’s a bit like having a strategy to reduce crime by abolishing massive amounts of laws! If the Home Secretary was to suggest such a strategy he’d quickly find himself

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out of a job, but Greg Clark, the Minister for Decentralisation and Planning, seems to think this is a great plan for our planning system.

In addition to the government’s NPPF planning free-for-all, the Localism Bill is also being pushed through. The Government claims that this will allow a greater say for local communities. However, this bill includes no clear process on how local people will be involved.

Much has also been made of the new ‘Community Plans’ that will allow local people to define what development takes place in their area, but again we are being sold a poor deal. ‘Community Plans’ will have to be paid for by the community, leaving it a luxury for only those who can afford it, or a developer with vested interests to sponsor it. What’s more, these plans will only be able to allow more development rather than be able to block bad or unwanted development. Hardly giving power to the people, is it?

So what can we do to save our communities and our green space from the fast buck merchants, prevent us all living in a disjointed concrete jungle, and make sure our right to be heard and involved in shaping our communities is protected and improved? Well, we can respond to the Government’s consultation on the NPPF. It might seem complicated, but really you only need to ask for a few keys parts to be altered and added to

make this policy way better. Here’s what they are: Removing the presumption in favour of development, so developers will need to pay more attention to planning policies and local plans.

Outlining the need to respect environmental limits, making sure plans and planning proposals address issues such as climate change and resource use.

Defining sustainable development, as laid out in the existing PPS1 (Planning Policy Statement 1) and the U.K Sustainable Development Strategy, ensuring that development delivers within our integrated social, economic and environmental objectives. This includes: • Living within environmental limits.

• Ensuring a strong, healthy and just society.

• Achieving a sustainable economy.

• Promoting good governance.

• Using sound science responsibly.

• Please respond in writing to: Alan C Scott – National Planning Policy Framework Department of Communities & Local Government Elland House Bressenden House London SW1E 5DU or online at:

www.communities.gov.uk/ publications/planningandbuilding/ draftframeworkconsultation As an extra, or if you don’t have much time to write a full response (although it would be great if you could), please take a couple of minutes to sign up to these online actions from Friends of the Earth, Living Streets, and The National Trust, all of whom are very concerned about the impacts the NPPF would have: Friends of the Earth action: www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/ fair_future/press_for_change/ ask_for_improved_planning_ framework_32211.html Living Streets action: www.e-activist.com/ea-action/ action?ea.client.id=1719&ea. campaign.id=10987 National Trust action: https://nationaltrust.polldaddy. com/s/developing-for-people-notprofit Please also take this additional Friends of the Earth action to improve the Localism Bill and make sure local people have a voice and have real involvement in shaping their communities: www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/fair_ future/press_for_change/your_ voice_your_plan_30306.html Ben Mabbett

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Birmingham Bike Trains This year, Birmingham city centre was transformed for World Car Free Day, as 5 bike trains pulled into the city centre and cyclists took over Victoria Square. We wanted to get as many people as possible to experience how easy, fun and practical it is to commute to work by bike. In cities such as Brighton, Copenhagen and Amsterdam cycling is more than a specialised sport or a family day out, it is a way of life. Why not Birmingham?

the cyclists on each route will take on the task of organising these for themselves.

Birmingham Friends of the Earth teamed up with Sustrans and Push Bikes to get people commuting to work by bike and had a great turn out, with around 70 participants coming together from Quinton, Acocks Green, Sutton Coldfield, Cotteridge and Kings Heath. The bike trains went along the main routes into town, picking people up along the way, and everyone had the chance to see how safe and simple it is to cycle, even during rush hour. The sun was out, people were in good humour from all the sunshine and exercise. The event finished with a celebratory round of Fairtrade tea, coffee and breakfast in Victoria Square, provided by three ethical, independent cafés: Six Eight Kafé, Brewsmiths, and Urban Coffee Company.

We thought it would be great to organise Bike Trains for a number of reasons:

The feedback we’ve had from participants has been great with calls for more frequent Bike Trains to happen! We’re hoping some of

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Cycling is good for the environment. It produces zero carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that is polluting and warming Earth the most. Human activities create about 27 billion tonnes a year of CO2, and each time we use a car, plane or train, we contribute to global warming and climate change.

By riding a bike, you can help curb this. The pollution from public transport also makes buildings dirty and causes respiratory diseases, whereas cycling does none of these, which is good news for the city and people of Birmingham.

Cycling saves lives – literally! One in four people in the UK are obese and the University of Oxford’s Department of public health has discovered there has been a “dramatic rise” in obesity-related deaths. Experts in The Lancet say

that 30 minutes of daily exercise is the “bare minimum for health” and cycling is very easy to integrate into your daily routine. (It is also door-to-door and therefore very convenient.) A Dutch study has shown that people who cycle have fewer sick days: “The more often people cycle to work and the longer the distance travelled, the less they report sick.” What’s more, research has proven that the health and other benefits of cycling outweigh the potential risks such as being involved in a road traffic accident or exposure to air pollution.

The pollution from public transport also makes buildings dirty and causes respiratory diseases, whereas cycling does none of these, which is good news for the city and people of Birmingham.

Cycling saves you money. We know that there’s an economic crisis, and we know that there’s a debt crisis, but few people know that cycling to work can save you a lot of money.

For the people who did the Banners Gate to Victoria Square route, that’s £6 for the day if they normally drive a car, which works out to £160 a month. Going from Quinton to town by bike and back on a daily basis would save you a whopping £1,222 a year! Just think of all the things you could spend that money on. You also save on parking costs, and if you’re fed up of waiting in queues at the petrol station and being stuck in traffic, cycling is really the way to go.

We tried to get as many people as possible involved in the event, and contacted forums, elected councillors, and the media. We tweeted, e-mailed, got articles posted on blogs all over the city, put posters up and handed out flyers.

Disappointingly, Birmingham City Council failed to provide as much support as we’d have liked in promoting the event, although the cycling officer did provide a gazebo, a couple of tables and some hot water. Two councillors, Martin

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Straker Welds and David Radcliffe, out of the fifty or so we invited gamely joined the trains at Moseley and Row Heath Pavilion and were very enthusiastic about the day.

Media coverage was great as Midlands Today put a helmet cam on one rider, and filmed the ride from start to finish, as well as taking video footage of the gathering at the end. A film crew also filmed the event for Friends of the Earth’s 40th anniversary and all our photos are up on Facebook.

Most of all, however, it was great to see so many commuters congregating in the sunshine and

wearing smiles at the end of their journey. How often do you see that in a car park of a morning?

More Info: 1) http://environment. nationalgeographic.com/ environment/global-warming/ pollution-overview/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Carbon_dioxide 2) http://www.nhs.uk/ news/2010/02February/Pages/ obesity-death-records-jump.aspx2) Gergana Manassieva

In The Media – Support for food waste collections

This month Friends of the Earth received much press coverage for its survey results on people being very happy to use “slop buckets, i.e. have their food waste collected separately.

This is a big vote of confidence for our campaign to get Birmingham City Council to introduce such a system in the Municipal Waste Review, which is happening later this year.

I was quoted in the Birmingham Mail saying: “With widespread concern over rat problems in Birmingham, secure food waste containers would

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drastically reduce the problem, as has happened in areas which benefit from these collections.”

I also went on Radio WM to talk about it and gathered a largely positive response from listeners in their emails, calls and texts.

The story was also reported widely in national papers and mostly the coverage was positive, although the Telegraph did try to even things up by reporting the complete opposite: Doretta Cocks, of the Campaign for Weekly Waste Collection, said the ability of slop buckets to cut down how much food is thrown away has

been “vastly exaggerated.”

certainly shouldn’t be the case!

She said many people with the system suffer from maggots and smell.

The Guardian reported it as “Survey reveals strong support for UK food waste collection” and even the Daily Mail had a story entitled: “Majority of residents DO want councils to run ‘slop bucket’ service alongside bin collections”.

We are hopeful that the Council will see the sense in making our streets cleaner and the waste system more efficient, so that you will all enjoy using such collections soon. http://www.birminghammail.net/ news/birmingham-campaigns/gogreen/go-green-news/2011/09/20/ separate-waste-collection-call97319-29454480/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/ earthnews/8757766/Slop-bucketsdont-smell-finds-survey-but-usersfail-to-cut-food-waste.html

“Food is wasted because of people’s buying habits – people do a weekly shop and buy too much. It is not about bringing in an unpopular bin system that causes smell and pests, it is about changing the behaviour of the big supermarkets so they do not encourage overbuying.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/ environment/2011/sep/13/foodwaste-collection http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ article-2036871/Come-collectscraps-Majority-want-councils-runslop-bucket-service-alongside-bincollections.html Joe Peacock

We would agree that people’s buying habits and supermarket shopping is partly to blame for there being too much food wasted, but maggots are something that may have been in slop buckets many years ago, but with a modern sealed bin, it

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Volunteer Spotlight Joe Peacock interviews Gergana Manassieva

writing letters to MPs! In the short amount of time I’ve worked here I’ve been able to get involved in many different ways. One was the Bike Trains event to promote cycling in Birmingham, another has been a stall in Kings Heath and I hope to get involved in the Close the Door campaign.

[...] nothing appealed to me as much as BFoE did

How long have you been involved with BFoE? I came to BFoE in June, but I joined FOE as a member in 2004.

How did you first find out about BFoE and what made you decide to get involved?

I searched for the local group on the national FOE website, I also went to the voluntary services centre in Digbeth, but nothing on their system appealed to me as much as BFoE did. FoE I feel is the only environmental organisation with enough clout and experience to influence government and actually change things.

What do you do at BFoE? Anything from picking up porridge to

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What do you think is the most important environmental issue and why?

Consumption. It’s the single most important factor that drives the destructive practices in the world today. Forests being chopped down for furniture, paper, to grow palm oil or produce beef for our burgers, seas being overfished – I am really happy FOE will have a campaign on this soon.

What’s your best green tip/ advice?

It’s a bit of a cliché but it’s true; “put your money where your mouth is”. We’re all consumers and that is our “power”. How we spend our money is like voting, and it’s worth spending the extra 10p on organic milk because you know it’s going towards making the world more natural and healthy.

Contact us: Friends of the Earth (Birmingham) The Warehouse 54-57 Allison Street Birmingham B5 5TH Tel: (0121) 632 6909 Fax: (0121) 643 3122 E-mail: info@birminghamfoe.org.uk Web: www.birminghamfoe.org.uk

Friends of the Earth is: - The largest international network of environmental groups in the world, represented in 72 countries.

- One of the UK’s leading enviromental pressure groups.

- A unique network of campaigning local groups, working in more than 200 communities in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

- Over 90% of its funds come from its supporters.

Birmingham FoE: Campaigns at a local level to effect environmental change (in ways which feed into national and international policy) through:

Chair: Benjamin Mabbett Campaigns Co-ordinator: Roxanne Green Campaigns Support Worker: Joe Peacock General Manager: Phil Burrows Treasurer: Margaret Lynch Aviation: Joe Peacock Climate Change & Energy: Robert Pass Waste: John Newson Planning: Benjamin Mabbett Transport: Martin Stride Newsletter Editors: Deborah Cox Antonio Roberts Zoe Wright Website Editor: Phil Burrows Talks: Joe Peacock and others All enquiries and callers welcome.

Find us on page 74 of the B’ham A-Z, grid ref: 4A

- Direct action - Lobbying - Education - Empowering others to take action - Participation and representation through public fora

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Birmingham Friends of the Earth