Environment Industry Magazine - Issue 28 by Environment Industry Magazine

Water Scarcity Jonathon Porritt Marine Conservation Sustainable Palm Oil Retrofit

value loves waste Used catalytic converters often contain precious metals of considerable value which can be recycled and recovered by a reliable and trusted partner. With over 100 years of service and an established culture of integrity, BASF Metals Recycling can provide customers with superior overall value. When waste is valuable, it’s because at BASF, we create chemistry. www.converter-recycling.basf.com Our recycling services include: ■ Automotive catalytic converter substrates ■ Spent chemical catalysts ■ Industrial resins, filters and sludges ■ Targets and shields ■ PGM jewelry and dental scrap ■ Electronic scrap

Contact BASF Metals Recycling to learn the value of your waste materials: Email

precious-metals@basf.com

Cinderford, UK Milan, Italy Rome, Italy Shanghai, China U.S. & Canada

+44.1594.827744 +39.03.6251.2563 +39.06.4199.2289 +86.21.3750.1228 +1.800.336.8559

BASF is a full service provider of precious metals services and leverages its more than 100 years of experience to create a tangible competitive advantage for customers.

fro m the

Editor It seems almost surreal that the last time I wrote the introduction for Environment Industry Magazine, for issue 27, I was sat in my hotel room in Hong Kong, suffering slightly from the rigours of a long haul flight and preparing for the endeavours of Eco Expo Asia. So here on a blustery winters evening back in England, that “hairdryer like” 30oC temperature and relaxing Jasmine Tea seems a very long way away. I should explain Environment Industry Magazine is the only UK publication chosen as a media partner to Eco Expo Asia. A privilege we are rightly proud of. Eco Expo Asia is the Leading Environmental Protection Fair in Asia, and being located at the gateway to China makes it a truly unique event. It has an amazing blend of the most exciting developments from mainland china, the individuality of Hong Kong and a wide variety of international innovations. Both eastern and western countries are represented by the exhibitors and buyers.

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Mr Olle Zetterberg, CEO, Stockholm Business Region, Ms Julia Xu, Head, ALBA Asia, Mr Shigehiko Nakayama, Recycling Business Promotion Team, Panasonic Corporation, Mr Jean Pasternak, Sustainability Services Director, Schneider, Albert Lam, Deputy Director of Hong Kong’s Environmental Protection Department and Mr. Dominic Teh-Chuan Yin, Chairman of HAESCO (Hong Kong Association of Energy Service Companies) and CEO of GCSDC (Greater China Sustainable Development Council). This year Waste management was the major focal point and participants engaged in a green dialogue exploring new solutions for waste reduction. Waste reduction has become a global issue but it has an even stronger resonance in Hong Kong.

The theme of this year’s event was “Green Tech for a Low Carbon Economy”. Nearly 300 exhibitors from 19 countries and regions took part, including firsttime participants from Indonesia and Switzerland. Pavilions included those from Canada, Germany, Japan, Macau, Russia and Switzerland, along with four from the Chinese mainland. Hong Kong’s Environmental Protection Department, Green Technology Consortium and Green Council also featured pavilions.

Hong Kong produces 1.27kg of municipal solid waste each day per capita, an amount way higher than that of other cities in the region. The three landfills are close to saturation point, and the city’s waste problem has become imminent. Waste reduction is the most effective solution. Albert Lam, Deputy Director of the Environmental Protection Department, said that “Compared to Seoul and Taipei, Hong Kong’s waste reduction infrastructure is still inadequate. To achieve the 60% waste reduction target by 2022, the government will be promoting waste reduction, improving efficiency, and undertaking legislative amendments, etc., including stepping up recycling and implementing waste charging, to promote waste reduction at source.”

The fair was separated by 8 thematic zones: Air & Water Quality, Business of IP, Eco-Excellence, Ecofriendly product, Energy Efficiency & Energy, Green Building Solution & Service, Testing, Inspection & Certification and Waste Management & Recycling. Every year the organisers pull together an amazing selection of speakers for the conference and seminar sessions, including presentations from

The exhibition was just as impressive and as usual there was some fantastic innovations; my personal favourite was Airypack. Director Andrew Yan has developed a lighter luxury packing solution of such fantastic quality that reduces the packaging weight by around 40% - imagine how much could be saved if smart phone manufacturers pick up on this idea? www.airypack.com. FINIMA innovations lived

We have been supporters since 2009 and we have seen the fair grow and improve year on year.

up to their name with a impressive micro marine energy solution the AIMMER, Ocean Wave Energy Harvesting System which should really put them on the map (see picture). Unfortunately their website is under development but I shall put it here anyway for the record www.finima.co The final gem I want to highlight is a fantastic remote water sampling and monitoring solution from Chinese company Yungzou Tech, their unmanned surface vehicle designed for fast and emergency sampling and monitoring. (See Picture) www.yunzhou-tech.com Eco Expo Asia hosted 12,952 trade visitors this year, an 8% rise on last year. May I suggest if you are looking to do business in the environmental sector in China then this is a necessity in your event Calendar, and you get to spend a few days in one of the greatest cities in the world. I haven’t left much room to comment on this issue of Environment Industry Magazine. Fortunately, and as usual, it is of such a high calibre there isn’t much I need to say about it, however I am still blown away by the efforts and talents of our graphics team. The layout and designs in this issue are quite stunning. Patricia Wouters’ editorial on water conflict is a particular favourite and the editorials on marine conservation zones are incredible. Also our editorial content is as high a quality as to which you have become accustomed. Our Retrofit focus has comment from Nicholas Doyle, Places for People, Chris Cheshire from United House and Rick Holland from The Technology Strategy Board. And I must insist that you take the time to read our regular columns from Jason Drew and Steve Grant. Enjoy the Magazine and if you have any comments, suggestions or editorial ideas please send them to me at editor@environmentmagazine.co.uk.

Alex Stacey Editor

Contact: Vivek Pandey (Director) Tel: 0161 341 0156 Email: vivek@environmentmagazine.co.uk

BlooGlobe Limited, 254a Bury New Road, Whitefield, Manchester, M45 8QN

Alex Stacey Tel: 0161 3410158 Fax: 0161 7668997 Email: alex@environmentmagazine.co.uk

Every effort is made to verify all information published, but Environment Industry Magazine cannot accept responsibility for any errors or omissions or for any losses that may arise as a result. Opinions expressed in articles do not necessarily reflect those of BlooGlobe Limited. Environment Industry Magazine welcomes contributions for publication. Submissions are accepted on the basis of full assignment of copyright to BlooGlobe Limited unless otherwise agreed in advance and in writing. We reserve the right to edit items for reasons of space, clarity or legality.

environmentmagazine.co.uk | 3 |

Contents Energy

News 6

News

The Watercooler

Jason Drew

Steve Grant

Energy Efficiency solutions -- Richard Scott, Head of Energy Efficiency, E.ON Connecting Energies & Iain Walker, Head of SME Sales and New Connections at E.ON

Harnessing social networks -- Dr Catherine Bale, Research Fellow University of Leeds, Energy Research Institute & Centre for Integrated Energy Research

Cover photo: Girish Gopi

Food & Packaging

Air Quality 40

Smart, Cost-Effective Solutions for Air Quality -- Jim Mills, Managing Director of Air Monitors Ltd.

Air Quality – should we be doing more? -- Roger Barrowcliffe, Chair of the Institute of Air Quality Management

Responsible palm oil production and supply -- Bob Norman, GreenPalm

The Clock is ticking to achieve RSPO certification -- Alasdair McGregor, Technical & Business Development Manager, BM TRADA

The Nation’s Favourite Packaging Material -- Andy Barnetson, Director of Packaging Affairs at Confederation of Paper Industries

Conservation 46

Marine Protected Areas Justine Saunders, Principal Marine Consultant for Fugro EMU

Land Management 48

Surfers Against Sewage -- Andy Cummins, Campaigns Director, Surfers Against Sewage

What is a Marine Protected Area? -- Dr. Jean-Luc Solandt, Senior Biodiversity Policy Officer, Marine Conservation Society

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Sustainable excavated materials recovery – Is it now time for the next step? -- Nicholas Willenbrock, CL:aire

Land Remediation Relief legislation -- Matthew Farrow, Executive Director, Environmental Industries Commission

For more news, editorials, and product reviews, visit www.environmentmagazine.co.uk

Sustainable Build & Civil Engineering

Waste & Recycling

110

114

This Green Business -- Nicholas Doyle, Places for People

Recovering value from waste -- Dr Darrell Alec Patterson, Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Chemical Engineering, University of Bath

Residential Retrofits -- Marion Baeli, Associate, Paul Davis + partners

United House delivers two UK firsts -- Patrick Egan, Construction Manager, United House

The WEEE Reformation -- Dr Philip Morton, CEO of the UK’s largest Producer Compliance Scheme, REPIC

Water 116

Water Conflict and International Co-operation -- Dr Patricia Wouters, Professor of International Water Law

122

The Retrofit Challenge -- Rick Holland, Lead Technologist, Low Impact Buildings IP

Water Efficiency -- Lauren Abbott, Marketing Manager, Gorenje

Retrofitting – tackling rising energy bills -- Chris Cheshire, business leader for innovation, United House

Timber & Forestry

124

The Right Treatment -- BASF Water Solutions

Miscellany

100

106

AdBlue: The Unpleasantness of Environmental Enforcement -- Simon Evans, Marketing Director, LubeTech

108

Why does a Sustainability Professional want to be a part of the Transport Systems Catapult? -- Ben Harris, Transport System Catapult start up team

C a s e

Transport

S t u d i e s

Asset in a class of its own -- Stephen King, President of the UK’s Timber Trade Federation and Commercial Director of SCA Timber Supply

126

Environmental Prosecutions

128

Product Guide

130

Ethical printing in a sustainable world -- Angela De Vorchik, Operational Marketing Manager UK, Arjowiggins Graphics

134

Carbon Credit Fraud -- Aziz Rahman, Rahman Ravelli solicitors

136

Betteshanger Sustainable Parks

137

Solar solution for Asset International

138

The Academy of the Jewish Museum

139

Accoya construction projects in Greece

140

PET-Recycling Plant at PFR Nord GmbH

141

CAB 56

143

The Chapel of St. Albert the Great

145

Newham Hospital

147

Benthemplein water plaza

148

Famous last words -- Elizabeth Block speaks with Jonathon Porritt about his new book 'The World We Made' environmentmagazine.co.uk | 5 |

News Unilever extends partnership with BT to help it grow sustainably

Unilever, one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies has awarded BT a three-year extension to its IT outsourcing contract. Unilever operates on a global level with its world-leading brands, including Wall’s Ice Cream, Dove beauty products, Lipton and Knorr, consumed by two billion people daily. BT has worked with the company for more than a decade, providing innovative and sustainable network services and solutions, which are helping the company, grow its business more efficiently and sustainably. The new deal reaffirms Unilever’s commitment to using BT’s portfolio and managed services around the world to help it achieve its ambitious plans to grow its business, while reducing its environmental footprint and increasing its social impact. As well as delivering a fully integrated network providing voice, data, video and mobility services to the company’s 173,000 employees across nearly 100 countries, BT is also delivering collaborative services such as audio-conferencing and videoconferencing. These services are helping Unilever become an increasingly more agile business and introduce more sustainable ways of working. Enabling its employees to work more flexibly and increasing the use of audio and video conferencing is helping Unilever reduce travel spend, increase productivity and efficiency and drive down costs. It also reduces its CO2 emissions and its overall impact on the environment, a key objective of the company’s sustainability ambitions.

An effective solution to halt the progression of the Tiger mosquito in Europe Originally from Southeast Asia, Aedes albopictus (Tiger mosquito) is now considered a "growing problem in Europe" by the World Health Organization. In order to stop the proliferation of the Tiger mosquito, Dominique Hauptmann and the BioBelt team, the designers of the BioBelt device, are making an innovative and effective solution available to Europeans concerned by this problem, whether individuals or professionals.

A vector of invasive and infectious diseases such as chikungunya and dengue, the Tiger mosquito has already caused indigenous cases in several European countries (France, Italy, Spain). In addition to their potential hazardousness, Tiger mosquitoes also stand out as a significant nuisance for the residential areas they colonise: biting at any time of the day, present both in urban areas and in the countryside, they can be rife for up to 6 months in the year (May to October). As a result, the Tiger mosquito could become a real enemy for health in the coming years. An innovation developed 3 years ago in collaboration with a team of German entomologists, BioBelt is the first effective, ecological and sustainable device to combat the Tiger mosquito, protecting from mosquitoes inside a range going from a few hundred to several thousand square meters. BioBelt is odourless and is based exclusively on the reproduction of the biological markers produced by humans that attract mosquitoes; it is designed to be completely harmless to the human, animal and plant environment. Designed by the BioBelt team following a global study of what is being done to fight the Tiger mosquito, BioBelt is a combination of the best mosquito and environmental practices identified in the world. It addresses the entire life cycle of the mosquito through a dual action: • one is destructive, to reduce the density of the mosquito colony living in the immediate environment • the other is protective, to preserve the place where people spend the bulk of their leisure time. Thus BioBelt not only enables communities to serenely and comfortably occupy once again the open spaces where they live, but also stops the spread of the insect. Imposing itself as an essential alternative to chemical treatment processes, BioBelt has already been installed by many individuals and hotel and catering professionals of the Mediterranean coastal region, to their great satisfaction. James Gathany, CDC | 6 | environmentmagazine.co.uk

News

Raising awareness

European legislation, to cut the permissible levels of lead in drinking water, will come into force in December 2013. At present, the allowance is 25 micrograms to one litre of water; this will be reduced to 10 micrograms per litre. Lead is used in the manufacture of many plumbing pipes and fittings, including copper, brass and some plastics. John Griggs, Principal Science Officer for the Chartered Institute of Plumbing and Heating Engineering (CIPHE) is concerned that the new legislation may catch out some manufacturers. “Manufacturers and suppliers of plumbing materials need to be aware of the issue and take action to ensure that their products meet all the relevant UK and European Legislation.” Although the water supplied to a building may be ‘wholesome’, the plumbing fittings within the building can degrade the quality. Testing for levels of contaminants in drinking water will be carried out at the consumer’s taps, not the boundary of the property.

A hotel in leafy Warwickshire is greening up its four-star facilities by investing in energy saving showerheads available on tap from a neighbouring company. Stoneleigh Park Lodge, set in the grounds of Stoneleigh Park, is having new environmentally friendly showerheads installed in the en-suite bathrooms of its 58 bedrooms. Renewable energy specialist Integr8, also based at Stoneleigh Park, are supplying the showerheads, which are designed to reduce water consumption, and heating costs ensuring a constant flow of hot water at peak times. The innovative technology injects air into the water flow, which results in up to 70% less water used as each drop is plumped with oxygen. Stoneleigh Park Lodge can expect to benefit from significant savings in water and heating, as well as maintenance costs because to the showerheads are coated in a protective resin that combats the build-up of mineral deposits.

John would be very interested to hear from manufacturers involved with pipes and fittings to find out what they have done to reduce levels of lead in their products. John can be contacted on email at johng@ciphe.org.uk

The showerheads are aimed at the commercial market with higher shower usage such as hotels, gyms, health clubs and leisure centres.

City Link Sets Itself 80% Waste Recycling Target

Mitsubishi Motors Plug-in Hybrid EV System, has been awarded

Premium express parcel carrier City Link has appointed waste and recycling market leader Biffa to help it meet an ambitious green target to recycle 80% of its waste within the next nine months. As part of the new deal, which represents a commitment of around a million pounds by City Link, Biffa will monitor and report on all the main types of waste being generated on a monthly basis, enabling City Link to focus on the types of material to recycle, assess tonnages involved and identify new areas for recycling. The new waste management policy will be rolled out to all City Link depots from this month. Some improvements will be immediate and achieving the goal of recycling 80% of City Link’s waste streams will take between three and nine months.

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the "RJC Technology of the Year 2014" by Automotive Researchers' and Journalists' Conference of Japan (RJC). The Plug-in Hybrid EV System features a high-capacity drive battery, front and rear motors, generator, and gasoline engine for generation of power as well as for driving at high speeds, featuring hybrid driving that provides a longer all-electric cruising range and is powered mainly by the motors. The Plug-in Hybrid EV System automatically selects an optimum drive mode for driving conditions and remaining battery charge from three drive modes:

1. EV Drive Mode 2. Series Hybrid Mode 3. Parallel Hybrid Mode The Plug-in Hybrid EV System was highly acclaimed for its high environmental performance, smooth acceleration, as well as quietness of a luxury vehicle.

If you have any news stories, please submit them to news@environmentmagazine.co.uk

New Training Programme Offers Woodfuel Producers a Bright Future

A new European training programme has been launched which, in the UK, will help woodfuel producers meet the anticipated boom in demand created by the Renewable Heat Incentive. The Wood Energy Training programme was developed by SAC Consulting (a Division of SRUC) and training provider Rural Development Initiatives Ltd (RDI) with partners in France, Estonia, Turkey, Finland and Austria. Aimed at those working in woodfuel production or running a woodfuel business, the programme’s 50 trainers across Europe will teach key skills required for producing high quality woodchip or firewood.

The Global Canopy Programme announces the launch of the REDD Desk 2.0

(REDD - Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) REDD Desk 2.0 is an innovative knowledge platform to support greater understanding, knowledge sharing, and capacity building for the implementation of REDD+ worldwide (www.theredddesk.org). With over 11, 000 unique visitors a month the REDD Desk is already the world’s largest online resource for REDD+ information, news and analysis.

The REDD Desk 2.0 now includes:

REDD Countries – a database of information and analysis on REDD readiness across 26 countries to support global transparency and the accessibility of information on REDD+. Compare and contrast national REDD+ strategies, explore legal frameworks, analyse financing flows, and find detailed information on REDD+ initiatives, including a list of national pilot projects and other readiness activities.

The programme’s content draws on the experience and expertise of countries like Finland and Austria which already have mature woodfuel supply chains. The programme’s development was funded by the EU Leonardo da Vinci Transfer of Innovation fund. Those signing up for the course will undertake more than 60 hours of guided learning, which can be taken in modular format or as part of existing land based qualifications. Anyone interested either attending; hosting or incorporating the Wood Energy Training Programme course further details are available at www.eduforest.eu

REDD Markets and Standards - a platform providing comparative information and analysis on REDD+ markets, standards, and methodologies. Explore and analyse how each standard deals with different features for the design of REDD+, such as additionality, leakage, permanence, and reference levels. REDD Encyclopaedia - A comprehensive and fully linked online encyclopaedia that defines and explains over 300 key concepts related to REDD+. This supports a clearer understanding of key ideas and issues and allows users to engage in current debates on REDD+. REDD Resources - A global knowledge hub for the latest news, research and developments from the international REDD+ community, for policy makers, researchers and other practitioners.

BASF completes divestiture Management (IWM) business

Industrial

Water

BASF has announced the successful closing of the transaction to divest its subsidiary Industrial Water Management France SAS headquartered in Lyon, to Degrémont, a subsidiary of SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT. SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT is a strategic partner to further expand the service-oriented Industrial Water Management business and gives the IWM employees a long-term perspective. BASF’s Water Solutions business remains focused on offering a comprehensive and in its industry unique range of water treatment chemicals and membrane filtration technology for the industrial and municipal waste water treatment sector, “We continue to create chemistry that is tailored to our water industry customers” said Matthias Halusa, Vice President of BASF’s Water Solutions business.

environmentmagazine.co.uk | 9 |

News

Electric Vehicles trial reveals fears are a thing of the past following analysis by Cenex and Oxford Brookes University Drivers taking part in the UK’s Ultra Low Carbon demonstration trial give EVs the thumbs up says a report produced by Cenex and Oxford Brookes University. After 349 vehicles, covered over 1.5 million miles and 270,000 journeys, the analysis reveals that drivers were blown away by their performance and adapted almost immediately to driving and charging the vehicles. Cenex – the UK’s first Centre of Excellence for low carbon vehicle technologies - has announced the results of the Office for Low Emissions Vehicles (OLEV) and the Technology Strategy Boards (TSB) ultra-Low Carbon Vehicle (ULCV) demonstrator programme. The report, entitled ‘Assessing the viability of EVs in daily life,’ analyses the experiences of 349 drivers who took part in the study that aimed to give a robust account of the usage patterns and perceptions towards EVs. The vehicle and driver information were collected and analysed by Cenex and Oxford Brookes University. Launched in 2008, the ULCV demonstrator programme was the first UKwide major trial that aimed to expose EVs to multiple drivers and drive cycles, monitor the performance of the vehicles in real-world scenarios, and understand customer perception and concern around EVs and its charging infrastructure. Over the duration of the study, more than 1.5 million miles were driven and over 51,000 charging events were recorded from the 349 vehicles. Information from the vehicles and the drivers were brought together to give a robust and thorough account of the usage patterns and perceptions towards EVs during the first 12 months of vehicle deployment.

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At the outset, Drivers did not want to compromise their daily routine and commonly stated that the car needed to fit their lives rather than vice versa. However, drivers showed immediate Primary Adaption as the EV was seen as simple to drive; and unfamiliar components such as regenerative breaking were adapted to within the first trip. Old performance stereotypes associated with previous generation EVs were successfully countered and the current EVs were seen as fun to drive, smooth and rated very highly on acceleration. Over a third of drivers stated that their EV had superior performance to their normal car. Before the trial, drivers did not anticipate any significant problems with charging their EV, or any safety issues. Driver’s actual experiences showed that charging was even more straightforward than they had initially imagined. Drivers had a preference for charging vehicles as opposed to going to petrol stations to refuel. This is likely to be due to drivers valuing the freedom of not being tied to expensive fuel prices and the convenience of charging at home. However, a very high proportion of drivers remained convinced that public charging sites were essential. The average trip length achieved in the EVs was 5.1 miles and the average daily mileage was 21.4 miles. Little range anxiety was experienced during the trial because the vast majority of drivers kept comfortably within the capable range of EVs. 75% of daily use consumed less than 50% of the battery capacity. Finally, EVs were seen as a viable mobility option and 80% of trial participants could imagine replacing their ICE with an EV and 50% intended to do so.

If you have any news stories, please submit them to news@environmentmagazine.co.uk

SUNSELEX Germany files for insolvency

Waste seashells can solve waste water problem

SUNSELEX AG in Germany has filed for insolvency at the Magistrate Court in Munich, due to a possible loss of liquidity. The German firm is among the most experienced in international project planning and realization of solar parks and reacts to the desolate solar PV market situation in Germany. The core mechanical business unit was unable to operate profitably in the local market. For months there has been an effort to drastically reduce the local workforce, however, due to continued negative market development in realization of projects, the management was forced to pull out of the German market altogether. As interim insolvency administrator the Court selected the experienced legal expert, Dr. Philip Heinke, of JAFFÉ attorneys, specializing in international corporate insolvency law.

The thousands of tonnes of waste seashells created by the edible seafood sector are being put to use by the University of Bath in a new waste water cleaning project. Dr Darrell Patterson, from the University’s Department of Chemical Engineering, used waste mussel shells to create a cheaper and more environmentally friendly way of ‘polishing’ waste water, which could be used to remove unwanted substances like hormones, pharmaceuticals or fertilisers.

Since its foundation in 2007, the company was built around the installation of solar plants and has an installed capacity of 1.2 GWp. Knowledge in engineering, project realization and steering, as well as consultation for solar park development are additional core competencies by SUNSELEX key personnel and already in strong demand internationally.

Finally a tertiary treatment is used to further improve the quality of the water before it is released. There are different methods of tertiary treatment, and one of the most effective is the photocatalysis of water to remove any final trace contaminants.

Earlier this year, during the Intersolar conference in Munich, SUNSELEX Group successfully presented its competence in modularity for the segments of planning and engineering, global supervision and realization of mechanical and electrical installation, as well as O&M and monitoring. With a long-term perspective and an international focus, SUNSELEX now aligns itself to its new business model during this restructuring process; with support from the interim insolvency manage

Traditional wastewater treatment broadly takes three stages. The first involves the removal of any solids and oils, the second filters the water and degrades the biological content of the sewage which are derived from human waste, food waste, soaps and detergent.

This process normally uses titanium dioxide which is expensive. By replacing this with a material from the calcium derived from seashells called hydroxyapatite, which can also be found in teeth and bones, Dr Patterson is aiming to significantly reduce the cost and reusing a renewable unwanted waste product.

Energy saving project wins international competition A pioneering project by the University of Southampton, which aims to improve energy efficiency in the home, has won the British Gas Connecting Homes Startup Competition.

Dr Reuben Wilcock and Professor Alex Rogers, from Electronics and Computer Science, won first prize for MyJoulo at an event which saw 25 companies from around the world pitching innovative products and services in the home energy sector. As well as the award, which was presented by Baroness Martha Lane Fox of lastminute.com, the researchers received a cash prize of £30,000 and the chance to run a trial with selected British Gas customers. MyJoulo is a simple process, which provides personalised energy-saving advice with the minimum of time and effort – and at no cost. Only three steps are involved in the process: first you register with the project online and you receive your free Joulo data logger (which looks and works just like a conventional memory stick). You place this on top of your central-heating thermostat and leave it for a week to collect data as you continue to use your heating as normal. You then upload the data from the logger to a website to receive instant personalised advice on how to reduce your heating bill.

The research was carried out using mussel shells, but other types of seashell could feasibly be used to produce photocatalysts, making this technique globally applicable. The project will now go on to look at the wider applicability of this technology and the scaling up of shell-based photocatalysts to industrial level. Photo: Damien Pollet

environmentmagazine.co.uk | 11 |

News

Solar wind – the next renewable breakthrough?

A pioneering new service for renewable energy developers and wind farm owners is being launched by environmental and engineering consultancy Wardell Armstrong. “Solar wind” is designed to optimise the full capacity of expensive grid connections by incorporating ground-mounted solar panels on the same site as wind turbines. With an estimated total capacity of onshore wind across all stages of development now as high as 19,703MWe, planning permission is becoming ever harder to secure. Returns can be high but are limited by turbines typically generating only around 35% of their capacity because of variations in wind strength – even though grid connections are sized at maximum capacity. The cost of these connections can be a very significant portion of development capital cost. Their availability in parts of the UK is also becoming increasingly constrained. Anything that can be done to improve utilisation and make the best use of expensive assets is therefore very worthwhile.

Bacteria in drinking water are key to keeping it clean

Bacteria commonly found in drinking water creates conditions which enable other – potentially harmful – bacteria to thrive, says research by engineers from the University of Sheffield. The research, published in the latest issue of Water Science and Technology: Water Supply, points the way to more sophisticated and targeted methods of ensuring our drinking water remains safe to drink, while still reducing the need for chemical treatments and identifying potential hazards more quickly. The research team, from the University of Sheffield’s Faculty of Engineering, studied four bacteria found in the city’s drinking water to see which combinations were more likely to produce a ‘biofilm’. Biofilms are layers of bacteria which form on the inner surfaces of water pipes. “Biofilms can form on all water pipes and as these are usually non-harmful bacteria, they don’t present a problem,” explains lead researcher, Professor Catherine Biggs. “However, biofilms can also be a safe place for harmful bacteria such as Escherichia coli or Legionella to hide. If the bacterial growth is too heavy, it can break off into the water flow, which at best can make water discoloured or taste unpleasant and at worst can release more dangerous bacteria. Our research looks at what conditions enable biofilms to grow, so we can find ways to control the bacteria in our water supply more effectively.”

New for 2014: Heating & Plumbing Roadshow to be co-located alongside Energy Efficiency & Renewables Roadshow

Record roadshow signals successful 2014 for energy efficiency & renewables industry Award-winning exhibitions go the extra mile to educate trade professionals Energy Efficiency & Renewables Roadshow, the UK’s leading series of shows, racked up record mileage in an effort to educate thousands of trade professionals nationwide. This September, the organisers travelled more than 1100 miles to take invaluable information to 5000 trade professionals to venues from Edinburgh to Exeter. The Department of Energy & Climate Change led the line-up of 35 topclass talks by lifting the lid on the eagerly anticipated Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive. Dozens of presentations were provided on everything from ECO to energy monitoring, from heat pump installation to insulation and beyond. What’s more an exceptional exhibition offered visitors a showcase of suppliers that was second to none and included big name brands like Adey, Baxi, Gas Safe Register, GE, Glow-worm, Graham, Knauf Insulation, NAPIT, Natwest, NICEIC, Plumb Center, PTS, Rexel, Vaillant, Viessmann & Worcester. The new Heating & Plumbing Roadshow will be launched alongside the Energy Efficiency & Renewables Roadshow on the following 5 dates: 9th September 2014 Westpoint Arena, Exeter

Funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the research isolated four bacteria from water taken from a domestic tap: two were widely found in drinking water everywhere, one was less common and one was unique to Sheffield. The researchers mixed the bacteria in different combinations and found that, in isolation, none of them produced a biofilm. However, when any of the bacteria were combined with one of the common forms, called Methylobacterium, they formed a biofilm within 72 hours. “Our findings show that this bacterium is acting as a bridge, enabling other bacteria to attach to surfaces and produce a biofilm and it’s likely that it’s not the only one that plays this role,” says Professor Biggs. “This means it should be possible to control or even prevent the creation of biofilms in the water supply by targeting these particular bacteria, potentially reducing the need for high dosage chemical treatments.” Domestic water supplies in the UK are regularly tested for levels of bacteria and, if these are too high, water is treated with greater concentrations of chlorine or pipe networks are flushed through to clear the problem. However, the standard tests look for indicator organisms rather than the individual types which are present. Testing methods being developed by the Sheffield team – as used in this research – involve DNA analysis to identify the specific types of bacteria present.

11th September 2014 - Ricoh Arena, Coventry 16th September 2014 - Highland Centre, Scotland 18th September 2014 - Event City, Manchester 23rd September 2014 - Sandown Park, Surrey

“The way we currently maintain clean water supplies is a little like using antibiotics without knowing what infection we’re treating,” says Professor Biggs. “Although it’s effective, it requires extensive use of chemicals or can put water supplies out of use to consumers for a period of time. Current testing methods also take time to produce results, while the bacteria are cultured from the samples taken.

The Energy Efficiency & Renewables Awards will also return on 11th September 2014. For more information, on the roadshows & the awards, email team@energiseevents.co.uk

“The DNA testing we’re developing will provide a fast and more sophisticated alternative, allowing water companies to fine tune their responses to the exact bacteria they find in the water system.”

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MORE DRYING, LESS TIME! Our new Gorenje tumble dryer D9664E has a remarkable capacity of 9KG and one of the best energy ratings on the market! Our D9664E comes with a heat pump meaning we offer a A-40% energy rating and Senor IQ technology so your laundry is dried just right every time!

www.gorenje.co.uk

News

Beautiful Brownfields photo competition winner 2013 Earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Martian Landscape

by Oliver Lancaster, Wales & West Utilities

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If you have any news stories, please submit them to news@environmentmagazine.co.uk

“A view into the Great Opencast at the abandoned Parys Mountain mine workings near Amlwch on Anglesey. Note the windmill in the background which was built in the late 18thC to pump water out of the mine shafts and adits. Parys Mountain is a mass sulphide deposit which was mined for many years and was once the world’s centre of copper production. Latterly, the windmill was used to recover copper through precipitation from the acidic

waters pumped from the mine network. The site is still plagued today by acid mine drainage into Dulas Bay, the receiving water of Afon Goch (Welsh for ‘Red River’), however has benefitted from remedial measures to neutralise the drainage and precipitate-out the dissolve metals at source. Ships used to call in to Dulas Bay overnight – the contaminated waters used to kill off the barnacles and save maintenance down-time in dry-docks.”

environmentmagazine.co.uk | 15 |

News

It’s Shoebox World time again!

Bleona from Montenegro

Over the past 23 years, through , Samaritan’s Purse has delivered 100 million gift-filled shoeboxes in over 100 countries. While the ‘window’ for dropping off shoeboxes is now closing, it’s not too late for people across the country to send gift -filled shoeboxes to disadvantaged children around the world this Christmas! You can still take part through Shoebox World – a fun and interactive programme to create a shoebox online. It’s a quick and easy way to create a shoebox gift for a child overseas! You can choose from a great selection of toys, education supplies, hygiene accessories and other items. Samaritan’s Purse volunteers will then place the chosen gifts in decorated shoeboxes and send them for distribution overseas to vulnerable children, boys and girls between 2 and 14 years of age. Gift-filled shoeboxes created online can also include a personalised message and/or a photo for the child receiving their shoebox, a simple thing to do but something that makes each shoebox so special, so memorable.

Esma & Resye from Kosova

Samaritan’s Purse UK Executive Director Simon Barrington said: “We want to tell children receiving these shoeboxes that, whatever their circumstances, people in the UK do care about them and are thinking about them this Christmas.” People wanting to create a shoebox online through Shoebox World need simply to go to www.shoeboxworld.org.uk.

Boys from Swaziland receive their Christmas gifts | 16 | environmentmagazine.co.uk

News

Biffa’s kerbside service collects 135 tonnes of WEEE A ground-breaking initiative by municipal contractor Biffa has helped six English local authorities capture just over 135 tonnes of unwanted domestic electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) as part of normal household collection services. Since Biffa rolled out its first WEEE collection service in late 2011 for Woking Borough Council, residents in participating authority areas have recycled 135.24 tonnes of small household WEEE, as well as 7.64 tonnes of waste batteries. Of the six councils, Woking is top performer with 37 tonnes, followed by Surrey Heath with nearly 27 tonnes. According to WRAP, British households purchase and dispose of about 1.4 million tonnes of electrical and electronic goods each year. Less than 10% of this is currently reused, a worrying statistic as research shows that around a quarter of WEEE disposed of at household recycling centres is in working order and could be worth more than £250mmillion if sold. The UK is expected to generate around 10 million tonnes of WEEE between now and 2020.

BYOD trend drives number of consumer owned mobile devices used at work to exceed 1bn by 2018

A report from Juniper Research has forecast that the number of employee owned smartphones and tablets used in the enterprise will exceed 1bn by 2018, as the growing trend of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) redefines business connectivity. This represents almost 35% of the total installed base of consumer owned tablets and smartphones. Consequently, the report notes that there are a number of issues and implications that need to be addressed and a single policy or measure may not be sufficient while devising future BYOD strategies. The report, Mobile Security: BYOD, mCommerce, Consumer & Enterprise 2013-2018, found that whilst BYOD has the potential to benefit organisations in terms of enhanced employee satisfaction and productivity, the threat from unprotected employee mobile devices is of significant importance. Juniper Research contends that for businesses adopting BYOD, there is a need to consider mobile devices as just another endpoint - while devising measures to mitigate the challenges and the risks of managing a multi-platform environment. Photo: Michael Coghlan

| 18 | environmentmagazine.co.uk

Major milestone for HS2 as first piece of legislation receives go-ahead

The sleekly styled Honda FCEV Concept

HS2 has taken a major step forward today as the High Speed Rail Preparation (paving) Act received Royal Assent following its successful passage through Parliament.

made its world debut at the Los Angeles International Auto Show. The Concept expresses a potential styling direction for Honda’s next-generation fuelcell vehicle anticipated to launch in the U.S. and Japan in 2015, followed by Europe.

The Act received overwhelming cross party support throughout its Commons and Lords stages, with both MPs and Peers joining with the Government to emphasise the importance of HS2 to the country’s capacity needs and growth ambitions and pushing for it to be delivered as soon as possible.

Honda’s next generation fuel cell-electric vehicle will feature the world’s first application of a fuel-cell powertrain packaged completely in the engine room of the vehicle, allowing for efficiencies in cabin space as well as flexibility in the potential application of FC technology to multiple vehicle types in the future.

This Act allows expenditure on essential preparatory work, including construction design, on Phase One and Phase Two of HS2 and all future phases of a high speed rail network. It also provides reassurance to continue making compensation payments to those affected by the route.

Significant technological advancements to the fuelcell stack have yielded more than a 60% increase in power density while reducing the size of the stack by 33% compared to the FCX Clarity. It is anticipated to deliver a driving range of more than 300 miles with quick refuelling of about three minutes at a pressure of 70 MPa.

The Paving Act will allow expenditure to be incurred on: Undertaking more detailed design work, letting contracts for designing the construction of the line, designing the realignment of existing railway, planning the movement of utilities, carrying out ground investigation and ecological surveys and making compensation payments to homeowners.

Showcasing exciting and modern styling, the Honda FCEV Concept features sweeping character lines underscored by an ultra-aerodynamic body. The Honda FCEV Concept also delivers ample passenger space and seating for five passengers.

News

London Store marks the arrival of Model S in the UK Tesla Motors has now opened its first retail design store in the UK at London’s Westfield Shopping Centre in White City, one of the capital’s most popular shopping destinations. The new store features interactive displays and design studios enabling more and more people to design their own Model S and learn all about the award winning and critically acclaimed electric vehicle. The opening was marked by Tesla Motors’ CoFounder and CEO Elon Musk, who hosted a special opening evening for UK customers: “Tesla is taking the UK market very seriously, and there are more stores and service centres to come. We’re also going to establish a Supercharger network so Model S customers will be able to drive long distances anywhere in the UK using our network for free, forever. The first Supercharger will be energised next quarter and we’ll aspire to have the entire country covered by end of next year. Most importantly, we are hard at work with Right Hand Drive Model S, and we aim to deliver the first one by the end of March 2014.” Following the launch of the new London Store Tesla has now announced that the official on-the-road price for Model S in the UK will start from £49,900.

| 20 | environmentmagazine.co.uk

THE UK'S BIGGEST COMMERCIAL VEHICLE SHOW

The number one road transport and logistics event in Britain, catering for every operatorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s business needs, the CV Show has become the leading meeting place for suppliers and operators alike - a true one stop shop for the industry. Located at the NEC, at the heart of the motorway network, the Show is open from 8.30 to 5.30 April 29 - May 1.

www.cvshow.com

For exhibitor details please call +44 (0) 1634 261 262 or email sales@cvshow.com

News

POWER-GEN Africa & DistribuTECH Africa announce Conference Programme

POWER-GEN Africa and the inaugural DistribuTECH Africa have announced a formidable line-up of top international and local speakers for their 2014 conferences, which are now officially sanctioned as CPD (Continual Professional Development) events by the SAIEE (South African Institute of Electrical Engineers). The 2014 conferences will run concurrently, alongside the power sector’s premier expo, from 17 - 19 March at the Cape Town International Convention Centre. They will attract African dignitaries and international energy experts from sub-Saharan Africa, the USA, UK, Germany, Italy, Russia and further afield, who will deliver their insights in a programme designed by an Advisory Board of African and international power industry experts. In a comprehensive programme spanning five tracks across the co-located events, speakers will include South African Energy Minister Ben Martins, Eskom Group Executive Dr Steve Lennon, and Nampower Namibia Managing Director Paulinus Shilamba. Senior executives from key local players such as SASOL, Shell and Alstom will deliver talks or participate in in-depth panel discussions alongside high-ranking executives from top energy

| 22 | environmentmagazine.co.uk

organisations from across the continent and the globe, including the Nigerian Presidential Task Force on Power, EDM Mozambique, the Ethiopian Power Corporation, Electricite de France, the Lesotho Highlands Water Commission and the African Development Bank, as well as respected academics and industry leaders. Global event organisers PennWell report that more than 2100 attendees from 63 countries and six continents attended the inaugural POWERGEN Africa 2012, and they expect the 2014 event to attract even larger numbers of high-level decision-makers and address key technology and development issues for the sub-Saharan Africa energy marketplace through a comprehensive educational programme and three-day exhibition. The events will include two technical tours – to Eskom’s new Centre for Substation Automation and Energy Management Systems (CSAEMS), Cape Town Peninsula University of Technology; and to Eskom’s Ankerlig Power Station (previously known as the Atlantis OCGT power station), one of five gas turbine power plants in South Africa. A series of Technical Training Workshops will also

give delegates the unique opportunity to receive training in various categories of the generation, transmission and distribution fields. “PennWell, as the biggest global event organiser in the power sector, is proud to be part of any new frontier or development, promising both business opportunity and the potential to transform lives. The current huge demand for the delivery of vital, secure energy services to the rapidly-expanding economies across the African continent offers one such opportunity,” says Nigel Blackaby, event director and director of conferences at the PennWell International Power Group, UK. “POWER-GEN Africa and DistribuTECH Africa bring together power engineering planning and technology expertise from fuel supply, through power generation, right across the grid and down to the level of the customer’s meter. All the elements that African utility companies are responsible for will be on show here, with the event being designed to be a meeting place to exchange views, discuss experiences and learn new ways to expand and strengthen the power industry across the many countries of Africa,” says Blackaby.

Web: www.powergenafrica.com

In addition to the conference programme, POWERGEN Africa and DistribuTECH Africa offer a substantial and world-class exhibition floor, playing host to a number of world-class suppliers and service providers, from home and abroad. Those attending POWER-GEN Africa and DistribuTECH Africa will also be able to take part in free training workshops provided by leading suppliers and thereby enhance skill levels, plus the new addition of a WADE Africa Decentralized Energy Workshop. There are also two fascinating technical tours available to those who book in advance. For the full Preliminary Conference Programme and to download the Pre Show Guide, detailing the conference, exhibitor list, floor plan, hotel and registration information, as well as Technical Tour and Workshop details please visit www.powergenafrica.com or www. distributechafrica.com.

REGISTRATION & EARLY BIRD DISCOUNTS

Discounted Early Bird rates are available for Conference Delegates who register before 18 February 2014. Registration can be completed online at: www. powergenafrica.com or www.distributechafrica. com. Registering for one event provides access to both, including all conference sessions and entrance to the exhibition floor, plus all networking receptions. Register Now www.powergenafrica.com/register.html

+ More Information www.powergenafrica.com

environmentmagazine.co.uk | 23 |

News

DONG Energy to build Gode Wind 1 and 2 offshore wind farms in Germany

DONG Energy has decided to build the offshore wind farms Gode Wind 1 and 2 in the German part of the North Sea. The construction will represent a total investment of approximately EUR 2.2bn billion. Gode Wind 1 (330 MW) and 2 (252 MW) will consist of 97 turbines from Siemens Wind Power, each of 6.0 MW/154m rotor, with a total capacity of 582 MW. The wind farms will be able to supply CO2-free power corresponding to the annual electricity consumption of approximately 600,000 German households. DONG Energy has already secured unconditional grid connection confirmation from the TSO, TenneT, for Gode Wind 1 and 2. “The investment in the 582 MW Gode Wind projects will be our biggest ever and will cement our leadership position in offshore wind. Being constructed in an area with good wind and soil conditions, relatively close to shore and in a cluster where we can harvest synergies from other offshore wind projects, the Gode Wind projects provide a sound business case for DONG Energy,” said Executive Vice President Samuel Leupold, who is responsible for DONG Energy’s wind power activities. DONG Energy will receive a fixed price per kWh of electricity produced for the first ten years of operation, following which DONG Energy will receive the market price.

Air Products joins Power Up project

AFC Energy, the fuel cell energy developer for industry, is pleased to announce that Air Products PLC has agreed to become a key strategic partner within the Power Up programme, the Company’s leading project to generate and supply electricity by using surplus hydrogen produced at a major chemical plant. Air Products, one of the world’s top industrial gases groups, replaces Industrial Chemicals Limited, the Essex-based chemicals manufacturer, which had planned to participate in the €6.1m million EU-backed project, as announced by AFC Energy in June 2012. The project will install one of the world’s largest alkaline fuel cell power systems. As a result of the partnership with Air Products, the project will now be sited in Stade, northern Germany, where Air Products operates a major industrial gas processing plant that sources hydrogen from an adjoining major chemicals complex operated by Dow Chemicals. The Company commenced its work on the Power Up project in April 2013 and remains on track to install the first KORE system in Germany during 2014 with it expected to become operational in the second half subject to local permitting. AFC will initially install two fuel cell systems in stages with a total 500kW electrical output. This first system will be capable of running with 24 cartridges, expected to generate approaching 250kW when it reaches full power.

| 24 | environmentmagazine.co.uk

Five-speed 457 HT delivers productivity benefit for Dunmow

Specialist waste and recycling company Dunmow Waste Management has added a JCB 457 HT Wastemaster wheeled loader to its growing fleet, to handle an increasing volume of material at its Chelmsford, Essex head office site. Painted in Dunmow’s distinctive white livery, with highly visual red chevrons at the rear, the machine is equipped with super high-lift loader arms, a 4.5m3 toe-tip bucket and SG Revolution solid tyres. The loader also comes with a full rear radar system, auto lubrication, a weighing system, fire suppression and a deluxe operator’s seat. Dunmow has chosen to specify the machine with the optional five-speed ZF transmission with lock-up torque converter, which locks the transmission in every gear from second to fifth to prevent losses and reduce fuel consumption. However, while this transmission has been primarily designed to provide maximum efficiency on longer load and carry operations, the company is not looking for maximum travel speeds. Instead directors Sam Malins and Edward Barnes calculate that third gear in the five-speed transmission is lower than third gear in the four-speed box, which was used on the firm’s previous 456 loader. This lower ratio allows the operator to use third gear smoothly and productively within Dunmow’s recycling operation, reducing fuel consumption and increasing performance.

INVASIVE SPECIES ARE SERIOUS IN THEIR PURSUIT OF DOMINATION.

ARE YOU SERIOUS IN YOUR PURSUIT OF ERADICATION? We are. The Invasive Non-Native Specialists Association (INNSA) is the industry body for companies involved in controlling and eradicating invasive non-native species. Membership of INNSA demonstrates professional knowledge and understanding of invasive species and the best methods for eradicating them. Registration provides members with a recognised accreditation backed up by a comprehensive insurance scheme.

INNSA aims to:

• Encourage the highest standards within the industry

• Represent members’ and sectors’ interests at all levels of the legislative and regulatory process by providing interfaces between the industry and the government, other industry and non-industry organisations.

• Improve the business climate in which the industry operates • Promote and protect the interests of our members • Provide members’ customers and clients with peace of mind and quality standards assurance

SERIOUS? THEN CONTACT US. Registration demonstrates commitment, expertise and professionalism in your field.

www.innsa.org info@innsa.org alternatively call us on 0161 723 6457

News DIO lights the way to carbon cuts on MOD estate

The Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) is lighting the way to hit Government energy saving targets, whilst saving money and providing a better working environment for staff. DIO has upgraded lighting across its Sutton Coldfield site, installing a new range of lamps and tubes under the Ministry of Defence’s (MOD) ‘Spend to Save’ initiative. This reduces DIO’s annual carbon footprint by as much as 120 tonnes of carbon per annum. Working with its industry partner Carillion Enterprise to install the new lights, the upgrades contribute to a brighter working environment. They will also save some 290,000 kWh of energy each year and cutting the site’s annual £186,000 electricity bill by 16% (£30,000). Tracy Buckby, from DIO’s Utilities team, said: ”DIO’s priority is to support our Armed Forces as they prepare for operations, but the MOD has a duty to balance delivery of this support with measures that help to achieve Government targets to combat the threat of climate change. The MOD has one of the largest built estates in the UK and Overseas, which consumes a huge amount of energy and water. The MOD is committed to significantly reducing its impact on the environment through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption and waste. In addition, energy prices are continuing to rise - with MOD’s energy bill last year of £379,411,069. At Sutton Coldfield, DIO has installed new LED recessed light fittings within its conference rooms enabling savings of up to 30% in energy consumption and providing up to four times extended lamp life. These lights are the first of their type to be installed for evaluation within the Regional Prime Contract Central under the ‘Spend to Save’ initiative. If trials at Sutton Coldfield are successful, they will be included in future re-lighting programmes across the region. All old materials will be recycled, providing a sustainable scheme and ensuring maximum utilisation of resources.

Ocean acidity is increasing at an unprecedented rate The unprecedented rate of ocean acidification is one of the most alarming phenomena generated by climate change and the only way to mitigate the dangers it represents consists in reducing CO2 emissions significantly. This is the conclusion of the summary of the Third Symposium on the Ocean in a High CO2 World which were presented at the Conference on Climate Change in Warsaw (Poland). The document represents the conclusions of 540 experts from 37 countries reflecting the latest research on the subject. It was prepared by UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), the Scientific Committee on Ocean Research (SCOR) and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP). It emerges that all the oceans, which together absorb close to one quarter of CO2 emissions generated by human activity, have experienced

| 26 | environmentmagazine.co.uk

an overall 26% rise in acidity since the dawn of the industrial age. Twenty-four million tonnes of CO2 are absorbed by the seas daily and, if current emission rates are maintained, the level of the ocean acidity worldwide will rise by 170% before 2100, compared to the pre-industrial age. As acidity increases, the ocean’s ability to process atmospheric CO2 emissions declines, reducing their ability to mitigate climate change. This phenomenon is even more worrying in view of other threats to marine ecosystems such as rising water temperatures, overfishing and pollution. While sea grass and some phytoplankton species seem able to cope with higher acidity, other organisms, such as corals and crustaceans are likely to be severely affected. Substantial changes in marine ecosystems are expected and they are likely to have a major socioeconomic impact. Experts expect

seashell fisheries to lose some $130bn annually, if current CO2 emissions remain unchanged. While expertise regarding the effects of CO2 on the marine environment has grown, it remains difficult to provide reliable projections regarding its impact on whole ecosystems. Questions still to be answered include: Will some of the species that will have disappeared be replaced? Will some be able to adapt? For this reason, scientists are pleading in favour of initiatives that will enable them to learn more about acidification, such as the Ocean Acidification Network co-founded by the IOC and the International Ocean Carbon Coordination Project (IOCCP) set up by the IOC and SCOR. They also call for the establishment of international mechanisms capable of handling specific questions regarding ocean acidification so as to ensure that they receive the attention they deserve in climate change negotiations.

News

Fishing boats in Ullapool at dawn

Andrew Bennett

UK sea fisheries statistics released The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) has published its annual statistical report ‘UK Sea Fisheries Statistics 2012.’ The report includes detailed figures on the UK fishing fleet, the number of fishermen, the quantity and value of landings, international trade and the state of key fishing stocks. The quantity of fish landed has increased, while the value has decreased, primarily due to a reduction in the average price of pelagic fish, driven by a fall in the market prices of mackerel. In 2012 UK vessels landed 627,000 tonnes of sea fish (including shellfish) into the UK and abroad with a value of £770 million. The UK fishing fleet remained the sixth largest in the EU in terms of vessel numbers and around 12,450 fishermen were reported as active in the UK www.marinemanagement.org.uk/fisheries/statistics/annual.htm

| 28 | environmentmagazine.co.uk

News

African impact launches Christmas & New Year volunteering experiences in Zambia and South Africa UK travellers looking for some sun and a meaningful Christmas can help disadvantaged communities in need this year In a bid to encourage members of the public to give something back this festive season, volunteering operator African Impact (www.africanimpact.com), has launched a unique Christmas volunteering experience aimed at bringing some festive cheer to vulnerable members of the community in Livingstone, Zambia and KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, while providing much-needed support and continuity for its community outreach and conservation projects in these regions. Hoping to entice greater numbers of volunteers this Christmas, African Impact has created a flexible project suited to individuals affected by time constraints by offering short-term placements from one to four weeks in duration. Volunteers will gain teaching experience in a challenging environment, will work with, and have the opportunity to give love and attention to, disadvantaged children and work across a variety of other community initiatives. In South Africa volunteers will also have the opportunity to work on the many wildlife conservation projects located at Thanda Private Game Reserve, while enjoying many of the extra trips and tours that can be arranged in this beautiful location. Rachael Greenwood, Business Manager of African Impact’s Livingstone Community Project explains: For most of us, Christmas means hoards of shoppers, material gifts and plenty of food and drink,. iIn certain parts of Africa the story is not quite the same. I like to think that for most of us Christmas is also a time of giving and a time to focus on family, friendship and community spirit so we are hoping that people might stop and take a moment to consider how they might be able to help just a little bit, because even a little help goes a long way and actions always speak louder than words. In their free time, volunteers will also have the opportunity to see the Zambezi River and Victoria Falls at their most spectacular in December. Enjoying a traditional African Christmas followed by fun and games, will ensure volunteers have a Christmas they will never forget! African Impact’s Christmas volunteering options start from £660 and include the project fee, airport transfers, orientation programmes, all daily transfers to the project, full board and lodging at the volunteer house and 24/7 support from the African Impact team.

| 30 | environmentmagazine.co.uk

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News Moixa wins share of £5m boost for UK energy storage innovation

The Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) has announced a £5m boost to energy storage innovation, with separate contracts awarded to Moixa Technology, and to REDT to build UK energy storage demonstrators. The contracts are part of the second phase of a £17m energy storage competition launched in Oct 2012 by DECC. Led by Moixa Technology, a consortium including KiWi Power, Good Energy, AVC NextGen and Northern Power Grid, will deploy innovative smart battery and efficiency systems in houses to reduce peak energy demand, lower electricity bills and help balance electricity networks. The project will impact real people across hundreds of homes, and housing associations, with deployment in London, North East (Northern Power Grid Region), South West, Southend-on-Sea and in community pilots. The Moixa consortium will deliver a 0.525Mh+ grid scale Distributed Energy Storage (DES) system, by deploying MASLOW smart batteries across 300 homes/sites in 2013/14. The system works locally to store renewable or night energy and power growing peak demand, from electronics, lighting and Internet of Things (a proposed development of the Internet in which every day objects have network connectivity). This also improves energy efficiency by coupling storage with DC LED lighting, and innovative DC-DC power sockets, and provides resilience. Overall the system works as grid electricity-storage, where batteries can be charged on demand at optimal times for the grid, such as at night, when there is excess renewable wind energy being generated or when local voltage or performance issues occur.

PHS Wastekit rolls out ‘Jingle Bales’ campaign to help retailers clear Christmas card RETAILERS are being urged to take action now to avoid the annual ‘Christmas cascade of cardboard’, which is already piling up in many warehouses and stock rooms across the UK. Up to 800% more cardboard waste will be managed within retail outlets this Christmas, according to PHS Wastekit. Increased levels of packaging means warehouse and ‘back area’ operations become more congested at Christmas creating logistical challenges for warehouse and stock room staff.

Martin Hewitt, commercial director of PHS Wastekit, said: “Space is at a premium at this time of year and retailers need to optimise their back area and their stock room spaces by implementing an efficient baling process. As part of our ‘Jingle Bales’ campaign we’re helping our customers develop efficient strategies on stock room cardboard flow and emergency maintenance processes, as well as educating them on health and safety issues surrounding the baling process. While stock flies off the shelf in a festive frenzy, it can be tricky to keep order of the back areas at retail outlets. Those who do not take proactive action will quickly become swamped, leading to chaos, lost sales opportunities and health and safety risks. If baling policies are not reviewed at Christmas it can spell chaos for retailers, especially the multiples where the sheer volume of cardboard packaging can be a real logistical and health and safety headache.” See www.orwak.co.uk for advice on increasing Christmas baling capacity.

| 32 | environmentmagazine.co.uk

BRowNFIELD LAND IN ScoTLAND 2014

E BL LA AI 1 4 AV 20 S Y TE AR R A NU A RD J BI 0 Y IL 1 R L NT EA U

CONFERENCES

New techniques and practical Solutions for improved Risk Assessment and Remediation of Brownfield Land in Scotland

5 FEBRUARY, gLASgow TEAchER BUILDINg, ST ENoch SqUARE, g1 Hear the latest review on policy, regulatory perspectives, waste management and sustainability in Scotland’s remediation industry.

SPEAKERS & ToPIcS INcLUDE: Achieving improved risk assessment and waste management when developing contaminated land Francis Brewis, Scottish government

Accurately assessing the risks to human health from B(a)P Alison Searl, Iom consulting Ltd

Identifying the threats caused by rising mine waters in abandoned mines Dr Ian watson, The coal Authority

Exploring the feasibility of landfill mining Simon Ford, Ricardo-AEA

Laboratory perspective: Update on recent changes affecting monitoring and laboratory analysis hazel Davidson, DETS Update on the development of Category 4 Screening Levels by DEFRA mike quint, Environmental health Sciences Asbestos in soil Alan Jones, Institute of occupational medicine

Outlining the costs, benefits and practicalities of developing and using a Soil Treatment Centre John curran, Soilutions Examining the potential of biomass from energy crops grown on brownfield Dr Richard Lord, University of Strathclyde

■ With more speakers to be confirmed

www.BRowNFIELDBRIEFINg.com/EVENTS/BRowNFIELD-LAND-ScoTLAND OR REgiStER bY pHONE ON 020 8969 1008

News / The Watercooler SLR Management Limited, the international environmental consultancy, regrets to announce that David Richards, Chief Executive of the Company, passed away at the age of 55.

After establishing SLR in 1994, David oversaw the growth of the business from a small UK operator into one of the fastest growing and most profitable environmental consultancies in the UK, with international operations across Africa, Australasia, Canada, Europe, and the USA. In line with the Group’s succession plans, Neil Penhall, formerly Managing Director of SLR Consulting and an Executive Director of SLR Management, will assume the role of CEO with immediate effect. Neil will be working closely with the Board and the broader executive management team across the globe to continue with the planned growth and diversification of SLR.

Recognition for Safeguarding Public Health

Prof. Rodney Cartwright, Chairman of the Chartered Institute of Plumbing and Heating Engineering's Board of Trustees, has been presented with an Honorary Fellowship by the Society of Public Health Engineers (SoPHE). The award was presented at SoPHE’s 10th Anniversary Dinner, in recognition of his venerable contribution in safeguarding and protecting public health.

ARM Strike Gold at Green Awards

The UK’s leading specialists in the design and implementation of natural wastewater treatment solutions have won a Green Apple Environment Award. ARM Reed Beds walked away with the gold in the utilities category for its ground-breaking work with Essex & Suffolk Water (part of Northumbrian Water Ltd) at its Hanningfield Water Treatment Works (HWTW), near Chelmsford. Competing against 500 other nominations, of Britain's greenest, ARM was one of three shortlisted companies.

Wolseley UK Wins HR Award for Talent Management

Wolseley UK has won a prestigious HR award for its work on attracting, developing and retaining employees. The plumbing and heating distributor was shortlisted in the Personnel Today Awards in three categories: Excellence in Learning and Development, Managing Change and Talent Management, before going on to win in the Talent Management category, impressing with their development programme and employee engagement across a dispersed workforce.

Iveco has Received the “Europäischen Transportpreis für Nachhaltigkeit”, a European Transport Award for Sustainability, Based Upon the Performance of its Stralis LNG (Liquified Natural Gas).

The decision was made by a jury including representatives from the transport industry, the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA), the media, research and German state institutions. Running on LNG fuel, the Stralis LNG (up to 330 hp) is not only extremely clean – exceeding Euro VI levels – it is also much quieter. This makes it wellsuited for inner-city applications such as early morning supermarket deliveries. Plus, thanks to a range of approximately 750 km, it can also be used for long-distance routes. Together, the vehicle’s use of high quality fuel, low fuel consumption and the price of LNG makes a very strong economic proposition.

Chris Monson Made Honorary Member of BSRIA

BSRIA is pleased to announce that Chris Monson of Trend has been awarded Honorary Membership of BSRIA. This is only the 8th time this honour has been awarded in the 58 year history of the Association and the award is made to recognise an extraordinary contribution to the Association and the independent promotion of best practice in the building services industry. A leading figure in the building controls industry, Chris has always been a supporter of best practice, values he shares with BSRIA. After helping to develop and run the BEMS Centre at BSRIA, he joined Council in 1989, and then the BSRIA Research Panel. He was quickly recruited to the Board and served uninterrupted from 1994 till 2010; in 1999 Chris took on the role of Chairman and served the Association with distinction.

Scheme That Saves Thousands Wins Top National Award

A scheme that will save £380,000 of taxpayer’s money per year has won two prestigious national awards. Officers at South Staffordshire Council have won the Citizen Award at the national GeoPlace Exemplar Awards for their work to overhaul waste collection in the district. Using local data- including the latest address information, street data and new route-mapping technology, officers have been able to increase efficiency whilst saving nearly £400,000 of taxpayer’s money in a single year, a reduction of 15%. The use of the council’s local address dataset was an essential part of the project and used to incorporate key service attributes to enable route optimisation to generate real world scenarios. The data contained information about properties on assisted collections, additional bins and locations where collections were restricted between certain times. The new technology introduced 150 new waste and recycling routes across the district. In total the council along with Biffa Municipal Ltd performs 135,000 collections a fortnight to 46,000 properties. The council also received the ‘2013 Exemplar Award’, awarded to organisations who have found ways to deliver better services more efficiently, and really make a difference to local residents. | 34 | environmentmagazine.co.uk

ENVIRON

Elects UK Managing Principal to Global Board

International environmental, health, safety and sustainability consultancy ENVIRON has appointed UK Managing Principal, Niall Smiddy, to its global board. The board works with ENVIRON’s CEO Steve Washburn and COO Tom Vetrano to provide strategic direction for the business. Smiddy’s term will run for three years and is one of six positions elected by ENVIRON’s 140 Principals worldwide.

To promote new appointments and award successes, email news@environmentmagazine.co.uk

Renowned Sustainability Opinion Leader Wijkman Joins Board of TCO Development

Anders

Anders Wijkman, internationally recognized author and thought leader in the field of sustainable development, has been appointed to the board of TCO Development. Wijkman brings over 30 years of leadership in humanitarian and sustainability issues from previous roles as a member of the EU- and Swedish parliaments as well as Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations. Wijkman is together with Professor Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker CoPresident of Club of Rome and a Councillor of the World Future Council, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture & Forestry as well as the World Academy of Art & Sciences. He also holds several board positions in organizations focusing on environmental and sustainability issues.

Maviga Appoints New Non-Executive Director

Maviga International, one of the UK’s leading processors and suppliers of pulses and other specialist crops, has appointed Kees Kempenaar as Non-Executive Director. Kees brings with him over 30 years of industry experience and will help develop and deliver Maviga’s overall business strategy. He previously worked at Cargill at a number of locations around the world in both financial and control functions.

Award Winning Health & Safety is a Team Effort

WaveWalker Recognised With British Engineering Excellence Award

Fugro Seacore collected the New Mechanical Product of the Year award for the WaveWalker 1 walking jack-up at this year’s British Engineering Excellence Awards (BEEAs). WaveWalker is an innovative, eight-legged 'walking' jack-up barge (self-elevating work platform - SEWP) which was designed especially for marine operations in rough seas, surf zones, beaches and other intertidal locations where operation of traditional SEWPs is uneconomic. As well as operating safely whilst elevated, its bi-directional movement allows it to move and relocate without floating. Because the impact of sea conditions on operations is reduced, WaveWalker can considerably boost productivity in tasks such as geotechnical site investigations, drilling, trenching, pipeline and cable-laying, blasting and other marine and underwater work.

Bernd Kohlstruck Joins i-Energy as Global Sales Vice President to Lead International Expansion i-Energy has announced the appointment of Bernd Kohlstruck as Vice President, Global Sales. Mr. Kohlstruck brings to i-Energy over 20 years of international sales, marketing and management experience, with a proven track record of business leadership in the solar and wind power electronics field. i-Energy is a Taiwanbased leading developer and supplier of advanced photovoltaic power conversion and optimization products. The company was founded in 2009 and designed, developed and manufactures one of the most efficient microinverters worldwide.

Jussi Pesonen Elected Chairman of the Finnish Forest Industries Federation

The Board of the Finnish Forest Industries Federation has elected Mr. Jussi Pesonen, President and CEO of UPMKymmene Corporation, as its Chairman for 2014. President and CEO Kari Jordan, Metsä Group and CEO Jouko Karvinen, Stora Enso Oyj were elected as deputy chairmen. In addition to the chairmen, the following new members were elected to the Executive Committee: Managing Director Kalle Kantola, Haapajärven HaSa Oy, Mill Director Martti Savelainen, Sappi Finland Operations Oy and CEO Tomi Yli-Kyyny, Vapo Oy.

Leading provider of forecourt maintenance services, E&S Environmental Services, has won the Health & Safety Performance Award at this year's APEA UK Petroleum Industry Awards. The award comes thanks to E&S' encouragement of staff to come up with new ways to make their daily tasks safer and more efficient, through its own Innovation Award scheme. Ideas now implemented by E&S include the development of a range of long handled tools to improve body positioning in a variety of tasks and the provision of rock salt to make work areas safe in winter.

Anesco Picks Up Prestigious Judges Award at Cleantech Awards

Industry leaders named the company as the stand out cleantech company and the second fastest growing in Europe. Anesco, which works with businesses, local authorities, housing associations and homeowners looking to reduce their carbon emissions, has been honoured as a leader in its field. Despite coming up against larger, long established global firms, Anesco ranked within the top ten fastest growing companies in Europe for the second year running.

Dr. Yonghua Yang and Dr. Eric R. Allen (Posthumously) Receive Arthur C. Stern Award Taylor & Francis and the Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association (JA&WMA) are proud to announce Dr. Yonghua Yang, a research engineer with Envirogen, and Eric R. Allen (posthumously), formerly a professor in the Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences at the University of Florida, as the recipients of the 2014 Arthur C. Stern Distinguished Paper Award. Their prizewinning paper, which was published in 1994, developed a quantitative knowledge of the principle and operation of a microbial biofilter system for removal of hydrogen sulfide from waste gas streams and determined the operating parameters necessary to optimize the performance of such a biofilter system. The winning paper, entitled “Biofiltration Control of Hydrogen Sulfide 1. Design and Operational Parameters” discusses how the laboratory scale biological filter systems for control of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) in waste gas have been studied and the optimum design and operating parameters determined. It also goes into depth on the extensive tests that have been conducted to evaluate the effect of various filter bed operating parameters such as temperature, retention time, H2S concentration, and H2S loading rate.

environmentmagazine.co.uk | 35 |

News / Opinion

Jaso n Drew / So mal i Pi rates

Why Pirates Make Great Environmentalists WE need Pirates not the UN to save our seas. Born out of environmental disaster – Somali Pirates are now doing more to help restore marine ecosystems in Africa than any interest group on the continent. Let me Explain. We cannot fix everything at once but we have to start somewhere and where better than the most easily solvable environmental crisis – our seas. There is general agreement among scientists, the fishing industry and politicians that deep-water fish stocks are over-exploited. Political imperatives, like getting re-elected, get in the way of any effective government action. We can still manage our seas and provide enough, for all, forever. It’s not too late. The only practical solution for saving our seas is the creation of marine reserves. We protect large parts of our wilderness through national parks, but have largely ignored the protection of our seas. Wherever they have been introduced, marine reserves have benefited the fishing industry: fish are given the space to breed and reproduce, and when they become too dense they migrate to areas where they can be sustainably caught. During the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, coastal nations agreed to create marine reserves that would cover 10% of the world’s oceans by 2012. To date as little as 1% of the oceans are covered by reserves and many of those are poorly controlled and still allow fishing. This failure to deliver should be considered a crime against humanity. The perpetrators – our government leaders and those of the NGO’s they fund – should be held to account and prosecuted. Now where do the Pirates come in? Well – the Horn of Africa has descended into societal collapse as a result of environmental degradation, climate change and damaged ecosystems. With state failure in the region, so went the rule of law. International companies rapidly flowed in to dump unwanted and otherwise expensive to handle toxic waste into Somalia both on land and in their seas. The rapacious global fishing fleets then moved into their territorial waters. In a free for all feeding frenzy, they then emptied their seas of the fish that once provided a sustainable livelihood to millions of Somali fishermen.

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Those fishermen, whose seas had been raped, then turned to the one thing they could to feed their families – piracy. From a small start they have made a great business out of a profession they were forced into. I would expect nothing less from the hard working and entrepreneurial Somalis. The unexpected outcome has been a miraculous restoration of the marine ecosystems along their coastline and the cessation of all the illegal dumping that plagued the region. The Pirates have created one of the largest well-patrolled marine reserves on the planet. The 2000km of Somali coastline out to say 300km is an area equivalent to the size of France. The presence of Pirates is preventing dumping and halting all but sustainable coastal fishing. This is arguably the largest effectively enforced marine reserve on the planet. The mega trawlers that previously plundered their waters are scared off. Pirates are doing what the UN does not have the will to do. Perhaps the Pirates will in time return to the subsistence fishing they once enjoyed – calmly and sustainably fishing their seas. We need to abolish the global institutions we currently suffer under – they are the products of post war industrial revolution thinking. We need new institutions and leadership to manage our future in this, the sustainability revolution. The introduction of a global network of national and open water marine reserves under the stewardship of a new global fisheries body would be a start. Lets get repairing the future. Photo Credit: MC1 Eric L. Beauregard;

News / Opinion

Steve G rant / Cli mate Con s p i rac y

Steve Grant Motivated Reasoning During a recent and impromptu get-together, the subject of climate change came up – as it does. It was an unseasonably warm evening, and an otherwise perfectly reasonable and rational guy was making it clear that he thought the whole 'climate change thing' was a bandwagon that people thought they could make money out of, and that the wagon was now losing its wheels. And not before time, he added. One or two others present weren't so sure, and despite warning glances from my good lady wife, I inevitably joined the 'debate'. All the usual and tiresome arguments, counter arguments and nuggets of non-information were trotted out, and any time anybody got near making a telling point, the goal posts were simply moved out of shot. Eventually, it came down to the 'fact' that the entire climate change thing was a global conspiracy. 'They' were all in it together, to secure funding for themselves and to support each other – securing taxpayers money for their various cronies and crackpots, which clearly included me and one or two others in their number. We were well intentioned, but quite brainwashed. We simply didn't want to look the facts in the face. That conversation petered out and with exasperated shrugs and some expert guidance from the missus aforementioned, things moved on. But it got me thinking about conspiracies and conspiracy theories. The Holocaust never happened. The CIA killed Kennedy, and the FBI Martin Luther King. We never landed on the moon, that was all done on a film set. Prince Philip ordered Diana's death, Bush organised 911 to justify his war on terror, and the whole shebang is run by Jews, or in another well known scenario, shapeshifting lizards. That's not a joke – one David Icke sold out Wembley Arena this year with his reptilian conspiracy theory. So why is it? What makes seemingly otherwise rational people think – and believe – like this? Why are these conspiracy theories so widely accepted? Well I'm far from the only person asking that question and it seems that a consensus is emerging. Basically – people need a narrative. 911, for example, is so terrifyingly random and such a massive thing to comprehend, a conspiracy theory – almost any conspiracy theory – is easier to cope with and to hang on to than the reality itself. Most of us realise only too well that we live in a frighteningly disorganised world absolutely chock-full of religious, political and economic motivations leading to all kinds of acts and events – most of which are impossible to predict and therefore take us by surprise.

It's a chaotic, random world, and with religion playing less of an 'answer all' role in the West, conspiracies are taking their place, providing people with reasons, if not reason. Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive scientist at the University of Western Australia, published a paper in the March 2013 edition of the Journal Psychological Science that received widespread praise for looking at the thinking behind conspiracy theories about science and climate change. His team carried out an online survey and found that: 1. the more people believed in free-market ideology, the less they believed in climate science; 2. the more they accepted science in general, the more they accepted the conclusions of climate science; 3. the more likely they were to be conspiracy theorists, the less likely they were to believe in climate science.

Lewandowsky found that belief in a conspiracy theory is psychologically different from evidence-based thinking. A conspiracy theory is immune to evidence; indeed that is something that serves as a definition. Further, as evidence against the theory is presented, it is easily turned on its head as part of the whitewash – a part of the conspiracy. Those who confront a theory with evidence to the contrary are either a part of it, or have been brainwashed by the media -– who are in turn all part of the conspiracy. The evidence then becomes evidence to support the theory, and confirms it by suggesting it's probably wider than they thought. In other words – you can't make an argument against it. Add to this the power of the internet, and conspiracy theories have their perfect Petri dish. Belief in conspiracy theories (it seems that people seldom accept just one) now has a 'proper name' by which we can recognise and discuss it: 'motivated reasoning'. The issue is being recognised as a problem and serious investigations into the logic of crowds in real-world situations is being carried out in the hope they may find a way forward in understanding how to reason with what we now know to be less-than-reasonable masses. What a crazy world we live in.

+ More Information http://pss.sagepub.com/content/24/5/622

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Air Quality

Ji m Mi l l s / A i r Quali t y / Publi c Heal t h

Smart, Cost-Effective Solutions for Air Quality IN this article, Jim Mills, Managing Director of Air Monitors Ltd highlights the importance of air quality to Public Health and reports on initial feedback from new smart air quality monitoring technologies. More than 400,000 Europeans died prematurely from air pollution in 2010. Nearly 29,000 of these early deaths were in the UK, which is more than those that resulted from obesity, alcohol and road accidents. However, death certificates never give ‘Cause of death’ as ‘Poor air quality’ and as a result air pollution rarely hits the headlines. According to the World Health Organisation, longterm exposure to poor air quality increases the risk of developing cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, as well as lung cancer. So, with the UK’s towns and cities failing to meet air quality safety limits, the cost to the NHS must be enormous. The problems associated with obesity and alcohol are in the news every day, but poor air quality is invisible – out of sight and out of mind. The Great Smog of London in 1952 was famously responsible for the early deaths of around 4,000 Londoners, but roughly the same number die prematurely in the capital every year from air pollution. So why is this not regarded as a public health emergency? Well, in 1952 you didn’t need to analyse the air – you could smell and see the pollution. Today, the pollutants of greatest concern are almost invisible, so networks of monitoring stations span the UK, tracking air quality for Defra and local authorities. This air quality data is available to the Public via numerous websites, but many question the value of this information because when rain is forecast, people can carry an umbrella, but when the air quality is poor, there is little that the public can do to protect itself. International, national and local authorities therefore have a responsibility to protect the public from air pollution and that means they have a duty to monitor air quality. Without monitoring, it would not be possible to assess the extent of the problems or to determine the effectiveness of political initiatives or other measures such as traffic management, abatement or emissions reduction. The UK’s monitoring network is one of the finest in the world providing high quality data which is used to determine compliance with EU directives and to report to the European Commission. It is, by definition, both a local and national network of over 100 monitoring stations scattered across the ►

| 40 | environmentmagazine.co.uk

Air Quality

Ji m Mi l l s / A i r Quali t y / Publi c Heal t h

ppb readings for the common pollutants. Many have tried and many have failed, but we have been encouraged with the performance of the new AQMesh air quality monitors. AQMesh 'pods' are completely wireless, using battery power and GPRS communications to transmit data for the five main air polluting gases to 'the cloud' where sophisticated data management generates highly accurate readings as well as monitoring hardware performance. The pods can be mounted anywhere and moved easily, helping to lower the cost of monitoring whilst radically improving flexibility. AQMesh fills the gap between reference monitoring stations and diffusion tubes, and this development could not have been better timed. The public purse is under great pressure and this technology offers massive cost reduction opportunities. With accuracy ~10% AQMesh pods are providing an opportunity to monitor air quality where it matters most, without major capital and operational costs.

Completely wireless, battery powered AQMesh monitors use GPRS communications to transmit data for the five main air polluting gases to 'the cloud' where sophisticated data management generates highly accurate readings.

UK. However, it cannot provide information from all of the places in our towns and cities where air pollution is currently an issue. There are also over 600 local authority monitoring sites and information from these could be much better used to tackle local air pollution and help inform national policy if the information from these sites was managed more efficiently. One of the key challenges affecting these monitoring networks is the ability to monitor pollution hotspots. These are mostly urban locations where air quality is particularly poor, affecting large numbers of people, and usually due to high levels of traffic and low levels of wind dispersion. However, in the past it has been difficult to site monitoring stations in such locations because of the size of their footprint and planning requirements. To compound the problem, the UK has significantly less monitoring stations than most of our European partners per head of population and has, in the past, perhaps relied too heavily on computer modelling where the lack of accuracy renders the data largely unsuitable for action planning and assessment purposes.

A further issue with monitoring stations is of course cost. We estimate that a typical reference monitoring station for NO2 and PM10 has a capital cost of £40,000 and an ongoing operating cost per annum of £4,000, so it is only right that the value of this expenditure is scrutinised. As stated above, air quality is a critically important public health issue, so monitoring has to take place, but it will have to be as efficient and as effective as possible, and this means that there will be a greater emphasis on the utilisation of new lower cost technology. The spatial limitation of reference monitoring stations can be supplemented with diffusion tubes, which are easy to site, low in cost, but have poor accuracy (~20%) and only provide one reading per month. So, at one end of the scale we have a reference station which costs tens of thousands of pounds, and at the other we have a £10 diffusion tube. Seems like there’s a gap?

AQmesh

For decades, the air quality sector has sought low cost monitors that could provide accurate

NOx Reference Station

AQMesh

Diffusion Tubes

Purchase cost

£12,000

£4,000

£10 each

Annual operational cost

£2,000

£930

£120

Accuracy

****

***

NO NO2 NOx

NO NO2 O3 Temp RH Atm. Pressure

15 min. Av.

Data

Frequency

NO2

1 month Av.

AQMesh offers performance closer to reference stations but for a much reduced cost | 42 | environmentmagazine.co.uk

Over 20 pods have already been purchased in the UK by universities, councils and transport authorities, and over 150 units have gone overseas. Data is now flowing in via the cloud and results are looking very good. For the first time, we are proving that we can measure at single figure ppb levels, operating in many different locations and climatic conditions. The pods have been easy to install and simple, intuitive software is included at no extra cost and runs on almost any connected platform, PC, tablet and smart phone.

AQWeb – new data collection and communication technology

Utilising the latest information technology systems, we can make data more easily available to traffic management, planning and healthcare professionals. With the benefit of ‘live’ data, it will be possible to make both immediate and longterm structural changes to the infrastructure of our towns and cities to improve air quality at both a local and national level. Air Monitors, for example, is currently involved in several EU funded projects that use this approach; often referred to as ‘smart city’ technology, whereby information relating to both cause and effect are managed simultaneously, providing a better understanding of how to improve not only air quality, but also other aspects of sustainable urban living.

Summary

Air quality is a massive public health issue that represents a heavy drain on the NHS. However, smart solutions are now available to help manage the air quality in our towns and cities more effectively. These solutions rely on the availability of (almost) live data from the locations of greatest concern, so it is fortuitous that new low cost technology is now available to make this happen ■

+ More Information Air Monitors is a privately owned company providing technical support, maintenance, calibration, operation, analysis and reporting services in addition to the sale or hire of monitoring equipment. www.airmonitors.co.uk

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Air Quality

R o ger Bar rowcli f f e / I AQM / A i r Quali t y Management

How important is air quality for most people in the UK? The answer is probably not that important on a daily basis when compared with many other concerns that impinge directly on peoplesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; lives. For the citizens of many Asian cities, coping with thick visible smogs, air pollution is a much more prominent concern.

R oger Bar rowc li f f e

Chair of the Institute of Air Quality Management

That was the situation too in Britain not so long ago, when domestic coal burning was commonplace in towns and cities. Now that air pollution is much less obvious, without the same associated impact on visibility, the assumption for many people is that it is not a pressing concern. Yet it is known by policy makers to be beyond dispute that exposure to current levels of air pollution shortens our lives by several months on average, most severely in south east England and less so in the north west of the UK. Put another way, this means that air pollution is the likely cause of premature death on a wide scale and for some individuals the loss of life will be several years. As a public health issue, air quality ought to rank alongside issues such as obesity, which exacts a similar toll on premature mortality. The fact that it does not is a puzzle to those of us in the profession. The ever increasing weight of evidence showing the association between air pollution and effects on health ought to be a major driver of change and legislation. To a degree, this has been the case over some decades, with the European Commission taking the lead role. It is this body that has set standards for the airborne concentrations of the key pollutants and has imposed emission standards on road vehicles, as well as tackling other sources,

Air Quality -

such as industry and shipping. It is evident from monitoring, however, that the existing legislation is not yet delivering air quality that is good enough to prevent substantial health effects occurring in the population. The UK is not even achieving compliance with ambient air quality standards in many places, typically in towns and cities where road transport is the dominant source of pollution. In a world where public health was the prime concern, the focus would be on continuous improvements to air quality beyond mere compliance with legal standards, since the health benefits of doing so would continue to be realised. Translated into economic terms, the value of these benefits would become very significant and almost certainly far outweigh the costs of reducing emissions. We have arrived at a time, however, when environmental concerns are being pushed to one side as governments place a higher priority on economic growth and recovery from the financial crisis. In some influential circles, attention to environmental problems is seen as a luxury that cannot be afforded. This is false and dangerous thinking, but it is a view that is often expressed by some prominent members of government. This view coincides in the UK with a prevailing philosophy that â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;burdensomeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; regulation must be reduced. Progress

Should We Be Doing More?

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Web: www.ec.europa.eu/environment/air/

in improving air quality has never been achieved without regulation and this creates a potential conflict between the perceived need to assist businesses (by removing ‘barriers’) and the need to meet air quality standards. A recent manifestation of this in England was the proposal in August by Defra to amend the Local Air Quality Management (LAQM) regulations, first introduced in 1995. Part of the thinking behind these proposals was to reduce the ‘burden’ on local authorities and remove ‘bureaucracy’. Unnoticed by most of the population and the news media during the summer holiday period, these proposals provoked a near universally hostile response in the short consultation period of six weeks and an unprecedented number of submissions to Defra for an air quality issue. Along with many other organisations and individuals, the Institute of Air Quality Management objected to much of the analysis behind the proposals, which, if implemented according to Defra’s preferred option, would see much of the impetus to measure air quality and identify problems diminish at a local level. The suggestion in the proposals was that removal of a statutory duty to declare Air Quality Management Areas (AQMAs) would lead local authorities to devote their resources instead to the development and implementation of action plans and, hence, a solution to air quality problems. This is surely naïve thinking. Without a statutory duty to declare AQMAs, hard pressed local authorities are much more likely to use their scarce resources to address other problems. It is true that the LAQM regime has not, by itself, delivered good air quality for all parts of the country – not that it was ever intended that it would be the sole mechanism for doing so. It has undeniably, however, diagnosed many problem areas that would otherwise not have been accounted for and built up a body of expertise in local authorities that would not otherwise have existed. In creating the concept of AQMAs, LAQM has given local authorities a means to invoke air quality in planning applications where it might otherwise be ignored. In short, it has shifted the air quality landscape markedly at the local level and provided a framework and structure that has greatly boosted the understanding of air quality problems. Understanding any problem is a major step along the way to solving it. Where LAQM has not been a conspicuous success is in developing action plans that can lead directly to air quality improvements. This should not be a surprise, since many of the problems faced in towns and cities stem from the emissions of road vehicles, which cannot be controlled by local authorities, unless by the introduction of such schemes as low

emission zones. These can be very controversial and politically hard to implement. In the end, lower concentrations of key pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and PM2.5 in urban areas will come about through lower emissions from vehicles. The record of EU vehicle emission standards in reducing emissions on the road has been rather patchy over the last 20 years. The introduction of the three-way catalyst control technology on petrol engine cars form 1992 onwards was undoubtedly successful and has significantly reduced emissions of NOx and CO from this source. If the same performance from diesel engine vehicles had been achieved, many of our air quality problems would not exist. Relative to a petrol engine, the diesel engine emits far more fine particles. In addition, it also emits far more NOx relative to the petrol engine with a three way catalyst. It would appear that diesel-engined vehicles are mostly responsible for the fact that, for much of the last decade, the observed concentrations of NO2 in many places have not declined at the rate anticipated and the rate commensurate with the theoretical reductions in NOx emissions that successive EU emission standards should have brought about. For a long time, this was an unexplained phenomenon with no convincing explanation. More recently, research studies using remote sensing techniques at the roadside to measure real vehicle emissions in conjunction with vehicle type identification through the use number plate recognition technology has demonstrated that certain types of diesel engines have been making a disproportionate contribution to NO2 concentrations near roads. Moreover, it would appear that these vehicles are emitting at rates that are substantially above those implied by compliance with EU emission standards. In this case, regulation has failed to deliver air quality improvement. A big part of this problem seems to be that diesel engines emit far more NOx when operating under a high load condition than the low load conditions specified by EU test cycles on which standards are based. In practice, this means that cars driven aggressively, or undergoing frequent stop-start conditions, as experienced in traffic congestion, are emitting considerably more than they should. This discovery has caused the Government to revise its thinking on what we emit nationally and what is influencing ambient NO2 concentrations at the roadside and in urban areas. The EU has responded by introducing a new emission standard for both light duty vehicles and heavy duty vehicles (the Euro 6 and Euro V standards), that is much more stringent in terms of both the allowable emissions

and the test cycle used to define the emissions. Further, the manufacturers will have to demonstrate in-use compliance after a period of time. This new standard is aimed at bringing ‘real world’ emissions much closer to those specified by the standard. If it is successful in this aim, then NOx emissions will progressively reduce as new vehicles enter the fleet and the older, more polluting vehicles are replaced. The turnover of heavy duty vehicles is especially influential in reducing overall emissions. This improvement should manifest itself in routine monitoring results very soon if these predictions are correct. It will not be before some years have passed before the full benefits will be seen, however. In the meantime, many places will not be compliant with EU limit values and the Government faces some awkward questions posed by the Commission on this failure. It is not the only member state with this difficulty it should be said though. Whilst the future may offer some hope for NO2 concentrations, the struggle to reduce concentrations of PM10 and PM2.5 is a more complex and protracted one. Atmospheric particles are the most likely of all pollutants we encounter to be the cause of the many health effects increasingly being identified as associated with the exposure to air pollution. Premature mortality, cardiovascular disease, cancers, low birth weights and many other health effects have been shown to be associated with increased exposure to air pollution. The influential International Agency for Research on Cancer ( IARC ) declared outdoor air pollution as a Group 1 carcinogen on 17 October of this year, particularly for lung cancer but also with a strong association with bladder cancer. Particles arise from a multitude of sources and human activities and some of these sources are not easy to control and regulate. There is some way to go before air quality is improved to the extent that avoidable health effects are eliminated and the intriguing question perhaps is to what extent does the Government, and also the public, have the appetite and will to implement the measures that will achieve this goal? We need cleaner vehicles, but also an awareness that exposure to harmful air pollutants can occur in a variety of environments, including the home. Air quality for most people in the 21st century is far better than it was in the 20th century, but much more progress needs to be made before it is truly an issue that politicians can safely neglect ■

+ More Information Institute of Air Quality Management www.iaqm.co.uk

Photo: Andrew Hitchcock

environmentmagazine.co.uk | 45 |

Conservation

Ju st i ne Saund ers / Mar i ne Co nser vati o n Z o nes / Fug ro E M U

Marine Protected Areas

Ju st ine Sau nd ers

Principal Marine Consultant for Fugro EMU

Within the European Union, the establishment of a network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) is required to meet obligations under a number of international agreements including the OSPAR Convention (in the NE Atlantic), the World Summit for Sustainable Development and the Convention on Biological Diversity. Under existing European Directives the UK already has an extensive network of MPAs through the designation of Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) for species and habitats and Special Protection Areas (SPAs) for birds. However, in the UK these areas are not sufficient in terms of their management levels, spatial scale, and representative coverage of UK marine habitats to ensure that the UK meets international agreements and, more specifically, the conservation objectives set out in the 2011 UK Marine Policy Statement. As such, the UK Government is committed to ‘creating a UK-wide ecologically coherent network of MPAs as a key element of its wider work to recover and conserve the richness of our marine environment and wildlife’ by 2012. The establishment of further MPAs will also assist with the achievement of Good Environmental Status under the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive. The Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 aimed to build on and improve protection of marine biodiversity by introducing a new type of MPA referred to as a Marine Conservation Zone (MCZ) for English and Welsh territorial waters and adjacent offshore UK waters. Recommendations for a network of 127 MCZs in all English seas and offshore Welsh waters were published by Defra in

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September 2011. Of these sites, 31 were submitted to the UK Government in 2012 for consultation in a first tranche. As at 21 November 2013, 27 of these sites have been approved. A further 93 sites were held back, with future designation dependent on a review of their underlying environmental evidence. Three sites were deemed unsuitable for designation, as the socio-economic costs of the site were considered to outweigh the ecological conservation advantages. The existing MPA network in Wales already covers 36% of Welsh territorial waters. Therefore, the Welsh Government’s approach to using the new MCZ power was to increase the levels of protection within 3-4 existing MPAs rather than create new sites. However, the 2012 consultation responses to the proposals expressed strong concerns that additional management measures would create unacceptable socio-economic impacts and that there was little evidence of the benefits. Similarly, the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010 provides for the designation of MPAs in Scottish territorial waters and adjacent offshore UK waters. In Scotland, 33 possible MPAs were consulted upon (July-November 2013) and a further 4 MPA search locations remain to be fully assessed in 2014. If every one of these proposals were taken forward for designation, the new MPAs would represent 11% of the area of Scotland’s seas. Of the 41 MPA search features listed in the MPA Selection Guidelines, 38 are adequately represented by the evolving MPA network.

Web: www. fugroemu.com

Finally, MCZs may also be introduced in Northern Ireland territorial waters under the developing Northern Ireland Marine Bill. The approach here uniquely includes a number of seabirds. The first issue that becomes obvious in the overview above is the disjoint in the timing of MPA designation processes throughout the UK with the process in England running at least several years ahead of that in Northern Ireland. Furthermore, there is uncertainty in the individual designation processes themselves, affected as they are by the quality of underlying ecological evidence and the lack of information on potential benefits (ecological, societal and economic). Recently completed seabed and habitat surveys have confirmed inaccuracies in the modelled habitat maps that selection of the MCZs was based upon. The Government argues that adequate evidence is needed to support the management measures specified for each site, particularly where the fishing activities of other European member states in waters beyond our six mile limits may need to be regulated in order to achieve conservation objectives. The key sticking point for all interested parties will be the management measures defined for each site. It is the level of protection they afford that determines the conservation benefit of the MPA but also the socio-economic cost of designation and the consideration that developers will need to give designated sites in the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process. The Science and

Technology Committee, appointed by the House of Commons, criticised the Government for not producing a clear statement on how management measures will be decided and tailored to specific MCZs. Following Committee recommendations, the Government will publish an indication of the timetable for introducing management measures with the Government response to the consultation on MCZs. The different MPA processes in the UK also introduce potential boundary issues where a developer may need to consider the impacts of their project on different conservation objectives under different legislation in different countries. However, this is no different to the cross-boundary issues that offshore wind energy developers have needed to resolve and there are lessons to be learned from their EIA process and stakeholder approach within the UK and with neighbouring European countries. Given that the lifecycle of a project from scoping to completion of the EIA can take many years, it is obvious that assessments will need to be flexible to any policies that develop during this time and will need to be reviewed regularly. This may introduce additional cost for the developer, particularly where entire assessments need to be redone or new mitigation measures consulted upon. Early consultation between the developer and regulator will help the developer to plan for potential changes to the baseline, and for both to recognise potential shifts in assessment requirements and to mitigate this.

Despite this uncertainty however, there is still plenty of scope for development of marine renewable energy. Sectoral planning of renewable energy has aimed to avoid most areas of conservation interest (e.g. Pentland Firth Strategic Area Plan) or at least add clarity over what the likely constraints might be (e.g. Regional Locational Guidance and Strategic Environmental Assessments for wave and tidal energy in Scotland). Marine planning systems in development in England and Scotland aim to add further clarity. For the tidal stream sector, particular issues will include effects on designated migratory fish species, basking sharks and marine mammals from installation noise, interactions with the turbines and mooring systems, and electromagnetic fields from the power export cable. Piled devices, gravity bases and slack-moored devices may all interact with sensitive benthic habitats. The sc ope of monitoring surveys will need to be set to suit potential designations in the future â&#x2013;

+ More Information www.fugroemu.com justine.saunders@fugroemu.com Background photo: Robert Haandrikman

Deepwater coral reef (Lophelia pertusa, Primnoa resedaeformis and Paragorgia arborea) with File Shells (Acesta excavata) in Norwegian waters.

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Conservation

A nd y Cummi ns / Mar i ne Pol luti o n / S A S

Surfers

Against Sewage For generations the seas and oceans have often been thought of as a perfect place to dump our waste. The seas are so vast, and in comparison our waste is so small. How could any adverse impact ever be measured? â&#x2013;ş

A nd y Cu m m i n s Campaigns Director, Surfers Against Sewage

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Web: www.sas.org.uk

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Conservation

A nd y Cummi ns / Mar i ne Pol luti o n / S A S

Combined Sewer Overflow that regularly discharges into ST Ives Bay, Cornwall.

Unfortunately, we’ve been damaging our marine environment as far back as the industrial revolution. And since then as we’ve not only exponentially grown in numbers, but we have increased our capacity to generate waste and also invented many more products we need to dispose of, including developing new persistent and polluting materials that nature can’t deal with. Since the industrial revolution the states of the sea has declined dramatically. I’m a water user, environmentalist and campaign director at Surfers Against Sewage (SAS). I’m going to highlight some of the self-inflicted issues threatening our coast and marine environment. Surfers Against Sewage was born in Cornwall in 1990 by a group of surfers sick of falling ill after using the sea. Today, the staff and many of the volunteers at SAS still surf, ride waves and enjoy being on the sea as often as life lets them. This is what makes the team so passionate about protecting the marine environment. We are indicator species, still falling ill after using the sea. From a single issue pressure group SAS has transformed into a powerful charity still working on water quality issues along with successful campaigns against marine litter, climate change and damaging coastal developments. And SAS represent surfers, waveriders and coastal lovers from all walks of life.

Water Quality

Although great improvements have been made around the coast, the UK is still under threat from

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alarming amounts of untreated human sewage discharges. That’s why water quality remains a core campaign for SAS, challenging the disturbing increase in sewage discharged via combined sewer overflows (CSOs) and the revised European Bathing Water Directive about to strip many UK beaches of their coveted standards. Sewage is no longer ‘continuously’ discharged to sea, as it was a decade ago. But now our combined sewerage system is so oversubscribed and poorly maintained it’s almost permanently at bursting point. And when it rains, that burst point is quickly breached and the dreaded CSO opens up and untreated human sewage and storm water is discharged into our seas and rivers. The pollution is made up of pathogens associated with Hepatitis A & E, Ecoli, Gastro Enteritis and many more. The storm water often contains heavy metals from urban run off or nitrates from farm land. It’s a nasty cocktail that shouldn’t be discharged into the environment. There are approximately 31,000 CSOs around the UK, mostly hidden up rivers. But the pollution they discharge impacts the health of the coastline and those who use it. The Sewage Alert Service is an initiative developed by SAS to help warn water users for free and in real time when sewage is discharging at their favourite beach. This information is available as a free app or SMS message and available at www.sas.org. uk. It’s not a solution, but it helps pressure water companies and Government to reduce the number of spills these CSOs are allowed to discharge per

year. Yes, you read that correctly, these discharges of untreated human sewage and storm water are licenced and permitted!

Climate Change

The basic science behind climate change is now accepted by the overwhelming majority of the scientific community and most scientists agree that the impact will affect the whole planet in many different ways. The impacts of climate change will be felt first in the UK at the coast. Increased storms will put extra pressure on the sewerage system as well as causing the chaos associated with these storms; increased storm activity will reshape our coast line and threaten coastal communities with increased wave activity challenging the coastal defences. Increased sea temperatures will change the coastal habitats and raise sea levels. These are all happening now; to what intensity they happen in the future can still be influenced, if we act NOW. Legislation is in place to help us reduce our impact (Climate Change Act 2008) but Government policy and support is currently lacking and the private sector is even slower to implement changes to prevent changing our climate. Here is an opportunity to use your consumer power to influence the businesses you interact with. Reward the good companies with repeat business and recommendations. Vote for the party that looks to be strong on tackling climate change. Scientists are suggesting the initial impacts will be relatively small, with small global increases in sea levels and temperatures, a slight increase in severe storms, ►

Conservation

A nd y Cummi ns / Mar i ne Pol luti o n / S A S

until a tipping point is breached and then it will be too late. The impacts will be devastating. We won’t be able to offset the pollutants we’ve already inputted to the environment and there will be a lag before their associated impacts are felt and the environment that supports our way of life will be changed beyond recognition. In order to limit the impact of climate change and reduce the probability of extreme events, such as the global collapse of major ice sheets or shut down of the Gulf Stream, measures must be taken to reduce global CO2 emissions. SAS believes that everyone has their part to play in this including individuals and communities, industry and Governments worldwide. Here are a few things SAS recommends to start to help you reduce your individual carbon footprint: ► CAR SHARE – When travelling to the beach, share the driving with your mates. ► ENERGY SWITCH – Change to a renewable energy supplier. ► SAVE WATER – Each litre takes a lot of energy to treat and supply – saving water is saving energy! ► TRAVEL CONSIDERATION – When planning a surf holiday, consider your destination and the impact of your method of travel. Carbon emissions from air travel are considerable. Perhaps replace a flight to Bali with a road trip to France or Spain more often. Travel less and stay longer! ► SWITCH OFF – Don’t leave appliances on standby and turn off the lights when you leave the room! Marine litter is an issue that is impacting every beach in the world. In some places there is more plastic than plankton. Plastic is persistent, is frequently brightly coloured and usually floats. Tragically many marine species have evolved to recognise coloured floating objects as food. Millions of sea birds, dolphins, whales, sharks and turtles die every year from ingesting or entangling in marine litter. Plastic has only been widely available since the 1950s and since then we have managed to scatter it across every beach in the world. Because the problem is so great there can’t be one single solution. However, SAS is working at community, corporate and Government level to tackle the growing tide of marine litter that washes up on UK beaches every year. The rapidly rising number of SAS beach cleans help directly remove marine litter from the environment and raise public awareness, and longer term SAS initiatives including Return To Offender, Break the Bag Habit, Think Before You Flush and No Butts on the Beach aim to solve litter problems on a larger scale. Annually, SAS mobilise approximately 5,000 community beach clean volunteers and educate thousands of people on the issue through school talks and outside events. We also distribute marine litter campaign materials to hundreds of businesses throughout the UK to help them combat the crisis with us. The more supporters at every level who take action with us, the more we can achieve. At Government level, Surfers Against Sewage has joined forces with three other leading environmental charities to launch the Break The Bag Habit campaign, calling for a levy on singleuse bags in England, following the success of such levies in Wales and Ireland. At industry level, SAS’s award-winning Return To Offender campaign

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SAS Campaign Director and marine indicator species testing the waters.

Marine litter can be found on every beach in the world.

directly challenges some of the world’s biggest manufacturers of consumer products to reduce packaging levels, use more sustainable materials and support more activities to protect our coastal environment. In 2014, SAS will be producing a Marine Litter Report, assessing the status of the crisis, current initiatives and activities available to tackle the issue, legislation that can help drive improvements and detailing an ambitious action plan for the future, involving individuals, communities, beach managers, industry and Government. Looking at the state of our seas it’s clear that we need to protect vast areas quickly before we change them permanently. Fish stocks are declining whilst the numbers of plastic particle per square mile of ocean is increasing, dramatically! It will be a fatal mistake to think because the seas are so vast, so is their capability to absorb our waste. We need to act now; every one of us can reduce our

impacts through changes in our behaviour, industry needs consumers to support them in low impact alternatives and Government need to show strong and holistic leadership to ensure a future for our seas and our specie. If you don’t care about the state of the seas you need to know that without a healthy sea, it’s impossible to have a healthy human population ■

+ More Information www.sas.org.uk www.protectourwaves.org.uk

Conservation

Dr Jean-L uc Soland t / Mar i ne Management / M CS

Marine Conservation Zones DR. Jean-Luc Solandt, Senior Biodiversity Policy Officer for the Marine Conservation Society discusses whether Marine Conservation Zones are the answer for better management of English seas, and highlights some of the challenges of the implementation process.

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Web: www.mcsuk.org

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Conservation

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Dr Jean-L uc Soland t / Mar i ne Management / M CS

Web: www.mcsuk.org

What is a Marine Protected Area?

A Marine Protected Area (MPA) is a general term for an area of sea that protects, conserves or recovers one or more parts of the marine environment. A Marine Conservation Zone (MCZ) is a protected area designated under the 2009 Marine and Coastal Access Act, which presently are being designated in English waters. They are designed to protect and recover both representative habitats, and rare and threatened species and habitats, including superabundant muds, sands and gravels alongside the threatened habitats and species that are vulnerable to direct physical impact, extraction or pollution.

Why have Marine Conservation Zones?

There has been a dramatic decline in the ecosystem services provided by Europe’s seas over the past 100 years, and science is only recently starting to account for this. In many instances, we rely on historical accounts such as vast oyster beds the size of Wales, occurring off the East Anglia coast in the 1880’s, and individual Bluefin tuna the size of 5 men caught off Whitby in the 1930’s. The current state of UK seas indicates that our marine ecosystems are changing to a completely altered state. Our seas are becoming dominated by more primitive life forms, such as worms and jellyfish, with only remnant hotspots of marine biodiversity. These hotspots are generally in places out of the reach of trawlers and away from the impacts of pollution. Although these remnants are obvious candidates for MCZs, it is essential that the wider ecosystem services provided by our seas, such as food, oxygen provision, carbon capture, clean water via natural filtration, and natural coastal defences, are recovered to provide the necessary conditions for our own species to survive and prosper.

How many protected areas do we already have?

The world came together in 1992 for the Convention on Biodiversity, to ensure that remnant areas of rich biodiversity are preserved for future generations. As a result, we have 200 or so relatively small

European Marine Sites, a type of MPA secured under the Habitats Directive EU legislation to conserve both birds and seabed fauna and flora across UK waters. Up until now, their management has been weakly applied, particularly to fisheries. These areas are generally considered to be successful by UK business and conservation sectors, as their designation hasn’t necessarily been a block to commercial activities, but has encouraged business to grow in sympathy with the marine environment. It is rare for the Habitats Directive to simply block marine developments.

How many MCZs do we need?

Guidance issued by the government’s own nature conservation advisors isn’t specific about the ‘number’ of MCZs there should be, rather the proportion of species and habitat types protected, and the size of the areas to be protected. For those features that are either rare or threatened, there is guidance that states a higher proportion of their populations are protected, such as maerl coralline deposits that are more than 5,000 years old, or dense, rare species-rich horse mussel beds. Guidance on site size ensures that ‘boundary effects’ are kept to a minimum, for example impacts from an influx of sediment from nearby aggregate dredging, or noise impacts from heavy construction or piling. Distribution of sites is also considered. Sites should be close enough together allowing exchange of larvae between habitats that host similar species to maintain a healthy, genetically interchangeable community.

What will they restrict?

The essential issue that the business community wants to know is what these sites will restrict, yet we currently have no idea of what the restrictions might be. It is likely that restrictions will only be made when there is hard evidence of the distribution of vulnerable features that currently exist on the seabed. This decision will cost the taxpayer - it is estimated that it could cost £1m for every site to be adequately surveyed to gain enough evidence to counter the threat of judicial review by industry. This position is not desirable for the recovery or ►

Ryan Townley Photo: Clive Martin

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Conservation protection of the marine environment as the more time spent collecting data, the more sites will be degraded, e.g. by bottom trawling. Neither is it fair on business that needs to know, for investment’s sake, what it can and can’t do in MCZs now, and into the future. The confusion around MCZs can be divided into four specific areas: 1. Management and various restrictions within sites will differ for different features depending on their vulnerability to a number of impacts, and the conﬁdence nature conservation agencies have in mapping the distribution and condition of these features. Gathering enough data to enable this approach is an enormously costly process in terms of time and resources. 2. This ‘feature-based’ approach to management will not protect entire sites. Protecting entire sites is the logical and sensible approach taken by California, the Great Barrier Reef, and wider Australian MPAs. It is a practical way to manage sites, providing clear ‘zoned’ conditions for management that means regulators and business clearly understand what will and won’t be allowed in sites. 3. The designation process of allocating sites was handed over to large stakeholder groups dominated by industry and regulators. Scientists only offered

Dr Jean-L uc Soland t / Mar i ne Management / M CS

advice, rather than actually saying where sites should be, or what management would be required to protect and recover sites. The stakeholder groups weren’t offered an understanding of required management measures for any of the sites they were suggesting. 4. When considering site selection the original guidance offered to stakeholders contained information on considered or proposed management measures for just one ‘type’ of MCZ – so called “reference areas”. These areas offer the highest level of protection allowing no extractive or depositional human activity, thereby providing a reference point indicating what the marine environment will recover to. There were no other management measures considered for any other MCZ – as a result, industry stakeholders were hugely conservative, assuming their activity may be restricted within each proposed site. This led to unnecessary antipathy towards the process from a multitude of sea users. If the regional management guidelines were proposed these sea users would likely be supportive to management measures that only restrict a few of the most damaging activities.

The process of establishing sites for MCZs

Government used its nature conservation advisors, Natural England for inshore seas <12nm and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee for waters

from 12nm – 200nm, to provide guidance on how to designate sites. Four stakeholder groups were set up in different parts of the country, to designate regional sites as part of a single network of protection in English seas. The recommendations of the four regional stakeholder groups were developed by project teams in each region, and a scientific advisory panel of UK experts constantly reviewed progress. The stakeholder process lasted from spring 2010 to September 2011, when 127 sites were proposed, including 65 “reference zones” – the highest level of protection. There were 1,000s of meetings, with government estimating that over 1,000,000 people were involved in discussions, a process that cost tax payers nearly £9m. The Science Advisory panel has recommended that if all the sites were designated then government would achieve its policy under the Marine and Coastal Access Act of delivering an ecologically coherent network. However, out of the 127 sites that have been recommended, they have consulted on only 31 sites where they believe the evidence is strong enough to counter the threat of judicial review. At the time of writing there are no indications how many of the 31 will be designated and if there will be further tranches of designation – even if there are, this won’t happen during this period of government.

Chris Wood | 58 | environmentmagazine.co.uk

Web: www.mcsuk.org

Greg Morgan, RSPB

Our impact on wildlife can be seen around us. Above, an adult Gannet with rope around its bill.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have had their own processes. The Scottish government is being more ‘top-down’ in its designation process. It has convened a much smaller stakeholder group that is commenting on 33 sites proposed by nature conservation advisors, Scottish Natural Heritage. These are all being consulted on at present. Wales, by contrast, already has over 30% of its marine waters protected in European Marine Sites designated under the Habitats Directive, and is seeking to better manage these sites and include a greater number of features within the sites for protection. It may also provide more specific management recommendations for sites.

Government priorities and misallocation of cost-benefit arguments

The government has made the process overly burdensome. It has gone down a ‘feature-based’ approach. This is acceptable to a certain degree, and if we had unlimited resources we would be able to record what is on every square metre of seabed. However, this is an impractical and impossible position, so we need to consider the greater good of protecting our seas and recovering our ecosystem services. The governments’ own Impact Assessment of the process was unbalanced, as it only considered the potential costs to industry from the designation of sites, and not the potential benefits to industry or to wider society from the ecosystem services that

effectively managed MCZs would bring. This is likely to be as a result of traditional economists writing this Impact Assessment as well as the current economic climate in which growth is required above all other considerations. This is at the heart of the problem for conservation. It isn’t considered to be ‘management’ in the interests of sustainable industry. If it were to be so then we would have an entirely different debate. In order to re-balance the Impact Assessment, MCS collaborated on a survey with the University of Aberdeen that indicates the value of protecting the 127 MCZs is worth over £1bn for the angling and diving sectors alone. This dwarfs the potential cost to industry of the sites. The ‘feature-based’ approach to protection will be an expensive headache for UK inshore and offshore regulators themselves. They will have to demonstrate to their communities the reasons for the vulnerability of individual features on the seabed, and manage accordingly on an individual basis. This incremental protection won’t provide recovery that the marine ecosystem in our country can do naturally, if left alone from man’s activities. Once the damage is stopped from bottom trawling, areas have recovered on the Isle of Man, South Devon, and Western Scotland. Often they change to a state different from the original condition,

thus making the ‘status’ of the site at the point of designation less meaningful. It is the management that is the real key to conservation success.

Solving the mess

Government has backed itself into a corner. Should we rip up the rule-book and start again? Not necessarily. Many MPAs become successful over long timescales. An awareness of the progress on MPAs that we have that are well-managed should be factored into the development of newly designated MCZs, and progressing more effective management measures of those we get designated in the short term. A government with a will to deliver a zoned approach to managing entire sites will achieve faster success than persisting with feature-based conservation. If we follow the Australian model we may stop the damage and start the recovery much more quickly ■

+ More Information Marine Conservation Society UK www.mcsuk.org

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Energy

R i c hard Sco tt / E.ON /Energ y E f f i c i enc y

Energy Efﬁciency Solutions FOR those charged with finding ways to achieve genuine financial savings for a business or organisation, the energy efficiency of buildings, facilities and equipment should now be at the top of the priority list. R ic hard Scott

Head of Energy Eﬃciency, E.ON Connecting Energies

Energy efficiency in buildings is an area of significant innovation – both in terms of the inherent technology, advanced control processes and investment support mechanisms enabling its uptake. E.ON supplies energy and energy services to 5m customers across residential supply, small and medium size enterprises and major corporate. The services on offer to those customers – like their businesses – vary depending on what provides most benefit. There is no such thing as a ‘typical’ business or organisation when it comes to energy consumption, and its size will never automatically dictate the size of its usage or efficiency. For instance, a small business that perceives its own consumption to be low may need to be just as rigorous at managing costs, and therefore waste, as those that are very energy intensive. With this in mind there needs to be help available right across the board – from simple yet effective advice for small companies, all the way up to stringent investment plans and guaranteed savings from new technology for larger organisations.

Thinking Big: Contracts

Energy

Performance

An Energy Performance Contract (EPC) is a partnership between a customer, or client, and an energy services company (ESCo), designed to save energy for as long as possible. Based around an alternative means of facilitating investment in relevant and proven technologies, it allows an organisation to implement the key changes needed to improve the energy efficiency of its buildings or facilities without having to raise the

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required capital. A combination of the best energy conservation methods is designed to suit the specific circumstances of the client; these are then installed, commissioned and potentially even funded by the EPC provider, such as E.ON. The client need not make any capital investment, but instead pay a monthly service fee to the ESCo with the contract entirely guaranteeing a level of energy savings sufficient to more than cover the fees charged. There is no pay-back period to consider, as zero capital has been spent by the client, meaning they are cash positive in the first year. The EPC provider brings extensive energy saving expertise, accredited technologies and saving guarantees – and can act as an investor if the client chooses not to invest directly itself. By combining multiple technologies and an on-going optimisation service, the returns for a client choosing to invest its own capital can be very attractive. Where capital is tight and the EPC provider invests, the savings guarantee ensures the client is cash positive from year one, entirely removing any nagging doubt that the technology may not deliver the savings the manufacturer promised. The EPC delivers the peace of mind that the savings will be achieved or the provider will otherwise be liable to invest further in order to close the gap. As well as helping businesses, local authorities, and other organisations to improve building performance, meet environmental obligations and achieve lower maintenance costs through investment in modern building services, the client will also retain all the additional future savings after the contract has come to an end. An EPC is fundamentally a contractually binding method of reducing energy consumption that facilitates capital investment and guarantees

Web: www.eonenergy.com

Government initiatives such as RE:FIT have helped to boost awareness and uptake amongst public sector institutions. Under the RE:FIT framework, the design, implementation and maintenance of the EPC for public sector buildings can be funded entirely through public funds or the EPC provider. lowered energy consumption without compromising operations or comfort levels. These are just as applicable to large businesses as public sector bodies; as yet however, just a small minority of private UK organisations are taking advantage of the process.

What’s happening in the UK market?

With energy savings contractually guaranteed in this way, long-term EPC agreements represent an attractive and low risk opportunity for clients to manage energy consumption, carbon emissions and cost. Despite these benefits, however, uptake in the UK remains relatively low. There are various estimates around the current level of EPC activity in the UK, all putting the overall market value significantly below £200m which is, at most, a tenth of the value seen in the US1. It is clear that a great deal is still to be done to break the perceived barriers in this country and capture e nergy savings that might otherwise be lost. E.ON recently commissioned independent research into awareness and perceptions of EPCs, based on qualitative interviews with senior decisionmakers and consultants in the field of energy and environment. The study found that even some experienced professionals were unfamiliar with the opportunity, understandably confusing it with the Energy Performance Certificates required for efficiency ratings when selling domestic and nondomestic buildings. Perhaps more significantly we found that, while guaranteed savings and funded investment in technologies is understood and has significant appeal, there remains resistance. This seems largely due to apprehension about committing the organisation to a long-term arrangement, as well as a degree of scepticism on the potential to achieve the guaranteed level of savings suggested.

to boost awareness and uptake amongst public sector institutions. Under the RE:FIT framework, the design, implementation and maintenance of the EPC for public sector buildings can be funded entirely through public funds or the EPC provider. EPCs are a core activity for E.ON’s Energy Efficiency Team. Our aim is to be proactive in this space and we have become one of the most successful providers under the RE:FIT framework, recently winning our fifth contract. To date these include Newham University Hospital in East London and portfolio partnerships with Ealing and Leeds City Councils. From our experience working successfully within the public sector we can demonstrate the true value of EPCs, with these projects delivering guaranteed savings of up to 30% on annual energy consumption. The private sector is missing out on an attractive proposition. EPCs are neither exotic nor particularly new, and they are a particularly low risk proposition for larger UK organisations. Aside from the fact this is already a major and well established market in North America and Australia, EPCs are already generating clear and significant value for those adopting them in the UK. ►

What can we learn from the public sector?

In the UK, the public sector is very much leading the way when it comes to entering EPC partnerships, the majority being implemented in the local government, education, and health markets. Inevitably this is partly due to budget pressures, but it also comes down to the availability of agreed procurement frameworks for running an EPC. For example, government initiatives such as RE:FIT have helped

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Energy

Iai n Wal ker / E.ON / E P Cs

Energy efficiency for SMEs By Iain Walker, Head of SME Sales and New Connections at E.ON

Whilst EPCs offer a secure and viable solution for larger public and private sector organisations looking to get ahead of the curve in terms of efficiency, small-to-medium sized businesses can access relevant alternatives to cut their energy costs and manage consumption. Recent research from E.ON found that Britain’s small business owners could see savings of up to a quarter or more2 on energy bills with simple improvements and changing behaviours to improve efficiency.

Across all small business sectors, the proportion of energy used for lighting can range from 6% in agricultural businesses to 28% in retail. But around three quarters3 of that energy could be saved by installing low energy LED lighting. The proportion of energy used for heating is typically between 35% and 58% with savings of up to a third4 possible by improving heating such as installing a modern, efficient boiler.

E.ON has created an ‘Energy Toolkit’ which is designed to help its small business customers use no more energy than they need and to do so in a way that fits alongside their busy lives. Customers can request a free wireless energy monitor giving a real-time display of how their energy use stacks up and have access to energy saving advice relevant to their specific industry and company size ■

Small business owners are required to do many things – they are often the boss, sales agent, secretary, procurement department and accountant all in one. No owner wants to run an inefficient business but they may not always have the capacity to keep on top of it themselves, at all times. However simple measures from all staff, such as switching off appliances when not in use, or investing in more efficient replacements for energy-hungry equipment such as heaters, compressors and refrigerators, can help small business owners achieve significant savings on their bottom line.

A solution for SMEs

To help SMEs manage their costs and energy usage, E.ON has launched a range of tailored measures and advice designed to give companies greater control of their consumption. Depending on the type of business, E.ON estimates that by looking across the range of energy monitoring options available, small manufacturing companies might save up to 26%2 on their energy bills, with office-based firms potentially seeing savings of up to 38%2.

+ More Information 1 2

What are the top three energy consumption drivers for SMEs?

Regardless of sector, the top three draws on power for most small businesses are room and water heating, air conditioners and refrigerators. Lighting tends to be another major element. By simply monitoring where and when energy is used most business owners can learn more about how their business is powered, and identify where the biggest changes, and therefore savings, could be made.

BSRIA, 2006, review of EPC market, Frost & Sullivan – Credo Research. Potential savings in this range are dependent on industry sector. Percentages quoted are indicative assuming a business adopts every recommended energy saving measure and achieves maximum savings from each measure, having started with no measures implemented. Savings have been calculated by aggregating Gateway Energy Solutions’ estimates of maximum possible saving from each measure. Choosing modern LEDs over Tungsten Halogen lights will use less than a quarter of the energy. Using a 7W LED instead of a 35W tungsten bulb will save 80% (7W / 35W x 100 = 20%) (For more information on lighting, see, Carbon Trust: Display Lighting). Figure taken from Which. Older boilers may operate at less than 55% efficiency, which means running costs are over third higher.

This editorial is illustrated in practice in the Newham Hospital case study on page ???? Details on energy consumption available at www.eonenergy.com/for-your-business/small-tomedium-energy-users/energy-toolkit/

CASE STUDY

By making use of an E.ON energy monitor and bespoke energy saving advice, Lime Indian restaurant in Nottingham managed to cut its bills substantially. Sohail Rana from Lime explains: “With all the kitchen appliances we need, as well as the lighting and air conditioning, energy is one of our biggest single costs and can amount to as much as 10% of our total outgoings. “The energy monitor from E.ON really opened our eyes to the running costs of certain items. We could see the impact of our energy usage instantly and quickly learned the air conditioning units were the most expensive items to run. We now only use them when they’re needed, rather than leaving them on out of habit, and that simple change has seen real savings – around £1,400 per year just by implementing some simple changes.” | 62 | environmentmagazine.co.uk

Energy

Dr Cat her i ne Bale / Energ y Tec h nolo g y Uptake / So c ial Net wo r k s

Harnessing Social Networks:

To Promote Energy Technologies

It makes good financial sense to insulate your house. In many cases, putting in loft insulation pays for itself in about two years. So why hasn’t everyone done it? Figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change reveal that, at the start of January 2012, only 60% of homes with lofts had loft insulation of at least 125mm, 59% of homes with cavity walls had cavity wall insulation, and just 2% of homes with solid walls had solid wall insulation. With around one in five households classified as being ‘fuel poor’, it’s little wonder that the UK is known as the ‘Cold Man of Europe’.

Dr Cat her ine Bale

Research Fellow University of Leeds, Energy Research Institute

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The barriers to adoption of energy-efficiency measures in households are well documented. They include both financial (e.g. the cost of upfront investments) and non-financial (e.g. hassle, lack of awareness/information, convenience etc.) considerations. Initiatives such as the Green Deal aim to tackle the barrier of up-front investment by offering households a loan for installed energyefficiency measures; this is later paid back through the householder’s energy bills. However, uptake of the scheme has been woeful, and critics and industry alike have outlined the many flaws in the policy.

It’s clear that financial incentives alone are not enough to persuade people to adopt energyefficiency measures. A different tactic is needed. We know that people are influenced by social factors that affect their habits, behaviours and decisions with regard to energy. The importance of social-network influences on behaviour is well recognised outside of the energy-policy domain; network interventions (purposeful efforts to use social networks to accelerate progress towards a goal) have been successfully used to promote behaviour change with regard to health-related issues. The adoption of energy-efficiency behaviours clearly has much in common with the adoption of other behaviours or innovations, yet the insights from social network theory have so far been underexploited in the area of energy policy. There is, however, mounting evidence of the role of peer influence on the decision to adopt domestic energy technologies. Research from a study conducted in the USA found that one third of a sample of people reported sharing information

Web: www.engineering.leeds.ac.uk/eri/

about energy use. Importantly, they also found that, of those households, 85% shared information verbally and only 3% reported sharing through online social networking sites, indicating that faceto-face interactions are the predominant method of communication. Findings from another US study offer significant evidence for a peer-influence effect on adoption of solar photovoltaic panels, suggesting that the pathways by which peer effects work include the visibility of the panels, and word of mouth. While not all energy-efficiency measures have the visibility of solar panels, some, such as external wall insulation, may do.

by) other households on a network, we could explore what might be leveraged in order to increase uptake across the whole network population. We found that social interactions between family, friends, colleagues and neighbours could be more critical to an energy campaign’s success than financial incentives or environmental arguments.

Another study found that personal referrals are more likely to make people feel confident in their decisions, particularly if there is a high degree of uncertainty around a technology. If your neighbour tells you their new loft insulation means they are now toasty and saving money, that may have a powerful effect on your views.

Local authorities have a unique role to play in encouraging the adoption of energy-efficient measures in both the social and private domestic sectors, as they are a trusted source of information and have local knowledge of the needs of their residents and communities. With councils coming under increasing pressure to find cost-effective ways of reducing local carbon emissions and helping their residents with ever-increasing fuel bills, the new models may provide the tools for finding ways in which energy-efficiency programmes can be delivered more effectively.

To understand the role of social influences on the uptake of domestic energy technologies, a group of researchers here at the University of Leeds combined real-world data with mathematical modelling techniques to explore the ways in which energy-efficiency measures spread across households in a city. By modelling the adoption decisions of individual households connected to (and therefore influenced

One benefit of using these complexity modelling techniques is that social influences can be brought into a quantitative model for the first time, giving official planners the basis of a new tool for planning more successful campaigns.

Using smarter ways of harnessing social influence through the networks that people are already part of might be a better way of getting the energy-efficiency message across than relying on personal motivation alone. Recommend-a-friend initiatives, for example,

harness social networks and peer influence and may lead to more network connections, which in turn can lead to a wider uptake. While there are still gaps in our understanding of the mechanisms of diffusion for specific innovations, the benefits of network interventions are becoming clearer. We know people are influenced by others in their social network, and we have shown through theoretical modelling that network interventions could yield increased uptake of energy technologies, especially where local authorities hold trusted relationships with communities. At a time of limited resources and great imperative for action in the face of rising fuel bills and climate change, it’s high time that these social influences were harnessed to maximise the impact of policy initiatives that aim to fix our draughty homes ■

+ More Information The full paper, Bale, C.S.E. et al., “Harnessing social networks for promoting adoption of energy technologies in the domestic sector”, Energy Policy (2013), is available: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ S0301421513009579# A copy can also be requested from Dr Catherine Bale; c.s.e.bale@leeds.ac.uk

environmentmagazine.co.uk | 65 |

Food & Packaging

| 66 | environmentmagazine.co.uk

B ob No r man / Sustai nable Palm Oi l / G reen Pal m

Web: www.greenpalm.org

Responsible palm oil production and supply

Bob Nor man GreenPalm

Addressing issues complex

palm

means market

oil

sustainability

understanding and

suppor ting

growers at ground level. A global perspective is necessar y as well as a thorough grasp of complicated and interwoven supply chains, says Bob Norman of GreenPalm. Things are progressing well, with many oil palm plantations on

becoming

Sustainable

Palm

Roundtable Oil

(RSPO)

cer tified and 15% of global palm oil being produced sustainably. However, one of the RSPOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s major challenges is engaging smallholders who are responsible for 30-40% of palm oil production. â&#x2013;ş

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Food & Packaging

B ob No r man / Sustai nable Palm Oi l / G reen Pal m

In terms of palm oil consumption, there is sometimes a misconception that product manufacturers in the US, Europe and Australia are the largest users of palm oil, but this isn’t the case.

Palm oil is here to stay. Its widespread use is global. In the West it is used extensively in a variety of processed forms and one in every two supermarket products contains a palm oil ingredient. It is also popular as a bio fuel and an animal feed additive. In Asia, palm oil is consumed in significant quantities as a cooking medium. The reason for palm oil’s popularity is its high yield and also its versatility. Each fruit from the oil palm tree contains about 50% oil and requires ten times less land than other oil-producing crops1. Vegetable oil production around the world totals over 144 mmt (million metric tonnes) per year, of which 54 mmt is palm oil. This volume is expected to double by 2050. The palm fruit is incredibly versatile. Oil is obtained from both the flesh and the kernel: • Palm oil from the flesh is split into solid palm stearin (20%) and liquid palm olein (80%), which is popular in Asia as a cooking medium. Approximately 60% of palm oil consumed has been further processed into a palm oil derivative or blend before it is used as an ingredient in the products we buy from the supermarket. Palm olein and palm stearin might be blended with other oils, or further processed, to produce new oils with different physical and chemical characteristics. Shortening, margarines, frying oils, whiteners, emulsiﬁers, toffee fat and gravy granules – all require different derivatives of palm oil. • Palm kernel oil (PKO) is also split into olein, which is used in confectionery coatings and margarines, and stearin, which is commonly used in confectionery. Reﬁned oil from the palm kernel is widely utilised in beauty and cleaning products.

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• Palm kernel expeller (PKE) is the part of the kernel left after the oil is extracted. PKE is rich in minerals and often used as an additive to animal feed. The oil palm tree can only be cultivated in tropical areas of Asia, Africa and South America. The top three palm oil producing nations are Indonesia (50%), Malaysia (35%) and Thailand (3%). Of the 54 mmt of palm oil produced in 2012, India consumed 15%, Indonesia 14%, China 12% and the EU 11%2. In terms of palm oil consumption, there is sometimes a misconception that product manufacturers in the US, Europe and Australia are the largest users of palm oil, but this isn’t the case. There is a huge market in Asia for palm olein. Indeed, over 25% of palm produced is used domestically, predominantly as a cooking medium. Responding to the potential negative environmental and social impacts of oil palm farming is not a case of banning palm oil, or replacing it with another oil. A zero palm oil policy is simply not realistic when it comes to a product so widely used and upon which so many individuals rely for their livelihoods. Over 4.5 million people3, including many independent smallholders, earn their living from palm oil – many of whom live in developing countries. Better managed plantations and oil palm smallholdings serve as models of sustainable agriculture, in terms of economic performance as well as social and environmental responsibility. Sustainable sourcing of raw materials is in the interest of ingredient and product manufacturers keen to secure sales from increasingly environmentally and globally aware consumers. The bottom line, however, is that we need to protect

our planet for future generations, including its rainforests. Our rainforests provide specific habitats for endangered species and are also home to many communities. We all share a responsibility in looking after our rainforests – from farmer to consumer and from East to West. The answer lies in engaging growers, refiners, manufacturers and consumers. Rainforests can be protected and communities can be supported by the palm industry. Helping stakeholders understand their role and responsibility within a global context is key. Working with farmers, from large plantation owners to independent smallholders, to farm sustainably. Lobbying national governments to facilitate sustainability. Putting pressure on ingredient and product manufacturers to source sustainably. Mobilising consumers to buy sustainably. This is the foundation of an effective global strategy to achieve palm oil sustainability. So, how can this be achieved? The RSPO holds a critical role. The RSPO was established in 2004 to promote the production and use of sustainable palm oil ‘for people, planet and prosperity’. Founding members of the RSPO include WWF, AAK, Unilever, MiGros and the Malaysian Palm Oil Association (MPOA). The RSPO is a membershipbased organisation for growers, processors, traders, manufacturers, NGOs and retailers. It operates an international certification scheme. For growers to become certified they must adhere to eight principles including ‘environmental responsibility and conservation of natural resources and biodiversity’ and ‘responsible development of new plantings’. Currently, 15% of palm oil globally is certified by the RSPO4 and, as of late 2012, RSPO-certified palm oil plantations cover an area approximately 22 times

Web: www.greenpalm.org

the size of Singapore island – and this continues to grow. However, there is work still to do. So how do we move forward toward 100% sustainable palm oil production? Of the certified sustainable palm oil (CSPO) produced in 2012, 14.64% was delivered through segregated and mass balance supply chain options. (Segregated CSPO is oil which is kept separated from non-CSPO throughout the supply chain. Mass Balance oil is oil which might have been mixed with non-CSPO at any stage of the process. However, a supplier cannot supply an amount which exceeds the amount of CSPO purchased.) Over 37% was delivered via the Greenpalm programme, but 48.26% is still waiting for a buyer. Why is this? Part of the reason is the significant quantities sold domestically. Many people in the developing world use palm oil as a cooking medium. Fully segregated CSPO has a higher market value, so even though there is a reasonable supply, the demand is limited. Product manufacturers across the globe have the problem of interwoven supply chains. Using fully segregated CSPO is complex and therefore costly. A Chinese manufacturer of cleaning products could potentially produce thousands of products from hundreds of suppliers based in locations across the globe. The task of actually mapping their palm and palm kernel oil usage is daunting. To guarantee 100% segregation across all those products is, currently, unrealistic.

It is this perceived complexity of committing to sustainable palm oil that has deterred some manufacturers from supporting RSPO-certified palm oil and palm kernel oil.

and, whilst the sustainability agenda is progressing in this region, it is not moving as quickly. GreenPalm is the ideal option for engaging these regions and promoting the support of CSPO.

The palm industry needs the support of consumers and manufacturers from the US to China and India to the UK. To achieve this requires a global understanding of the importance of sustainable palm farming, and an acknowledgement that complex supply chains cannot be resolved overnight.

In addition, many smallholders farm inland with poor road access to ports and are only able to sell locally. GreenPalm supports their commitment to sustainability wherever they are located, whatever their size and whoever they are selling to. Indeed, GreenPalm now has smallholder members across Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.

GreenPalm is a simple solution for supporting RSPO-certified palm because it bypasses the supply chain. Manufacturers can off-set their palm use by buying GreenPalm certificates from RSPO-certified growers, representing an equivalent volume that has been produced in line with RSPO principles and criteria. Suppliers stay the same but manufacturers can directly support sustainable palm production whilst engagement and collaboration takes place within the physical supply chains, and at its source – the very place where it matters. The benefits of the GreenPalm programme are wide reaching and go beyond protecting the environment. Since 2008, RSPO-certified growers have, together, earned a premium of $45m via the scheme. For growers, however, possibly the greatest benefit is inclusivity. The largest demand for CSPO (certified sustainable palm oil) is from Europe, Australia and the US, but this accounts for just 13% of all palm oil sold. The largest consumer market for palm is Asia

GreenPalm makes a difference because it’s a game changer on the ground. It doesn’t just target European or US retailers and manufacturers trying to meet their own CSR objectives. GreenPalm is positioned to change markets in Asia, as well as the West. With GreenPalm, geography and supply chain complexities simply don’t matter. This is why GreenPalm is currently the best option for palm growers, processors, manufacturers and retailers wanting to make a commitment to sustainable palm oil ■

+ More Information For more information, visit www.greenpalm.org or follow @greenpalmoil on Twitter. 1 2 3 4

www.greenpalm.org/en/about-palm-oil/what-is-palm-oil Ibid www.betterpalmoil.org/about www.rspo.org

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Food & Packaging

A lasdai r Mc G rego r / R SPO / B M T R A DA

The Clock is Ticking To Achieve RSPO Certiﬁcation by A la sda i r Mc Gregor

Technical & Business Development Manager, BM TRADA

The clock is now ticking for British firms to show their commitment to the responsible sourcing of palm oil. In light of growing concern over the significant environmental impact of palm oil cultivation — a key driver of deforestation and biodiversity loss — the majority of UK retailers have made a voluntary commitment to sourcing 100% certified sustainable palm oil (CSPO) in their own brand products by 2015.

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Web: www.bmtrada.com

The European Union, meanwhile, has adopted new legislation which will introduce compulsory labelling of specific vegetable oils for all food products in 2014 — meaning that, for the first time, palm oil will no longer be a 'hidden ingredient' on the supermarket shelves. The message to manufacturers is loud and clear: after a slow start, the tide is finally turning in favour of certified sustainable palm oil as the market commodity of choice, and those who fail to prepare will suffer the commercial consequences. Today, palm oil — extracted from the fruit of oil palm — is the most widely produced vegetable oil worldwide, accounting for more than 50% of total global oils and fats exports. Its popularity with producers lies in the fact that it has the highest yield of any oil crop — an average annual oil yield of 3.5 to 5 tons per hectare. For consumer goods manufacturers, the versatile properties of palm oil and palm kernel oil make the commodity highly attractive in the food and chemical industries. This has led to palm oil

becoming a ubiquitous, and virtually irreplaceable, ingredient found in thousands of supermarket products from consumable goods including margarine, soups, biscuits, chocolate bars and ice cream, to shampoos, skin lotions, detergents, soap and candles. It's no surprise, then, that the worldwide demand for palm oil has grown rapidly in recent years, with production likewise increasing to meet it. In the last decade, global production has doubled to 56 million tonnes and by 2020 is expected to expand by another 40% to 78 million tonnes. Rising demand for palm oil, however, has been matched by growing concerns over the sustainability of its cultivation and the impacts on local populations and the environment in the crop's growing regions: South East Asia, Latin America, and Central and West Africa. Though big business, the production of palm oil comes at a heavy cost. Since the 1990s, the area

of land used for cultivation in equatorial regions has increased by over 40%, accelerating deforestation with an area roughly equal to the size of Greece now cleared every year for its cultivation. In Indonesia for example, which along with Malaysia accounts for some 85% of the global palm oil production, the palm oil industry has accounted for around a quarter of the country’s forest loss — a major contributor to climate change. It has also destroyed critical habitat for endangered species including orangutans, elephants and tigers, and has led to social unrest through the displacement of indigenous communities. Because of this, Indonesia is now ranked as the third-highest emitter of greenhouse gases after the US and China. Clearly, palm oil production cannot be allowed to continue in this fashion if we hope to reduce the effects of climate change and biodiversity loss, and that's where the food production, personal care and chemical industries — those sectors that create the biggest demand for palm oil — come in. ►

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Food & Packaging

A lasdai r Mc G rego r / R SPO / B M T R A DA

Since the 1990s, the area of land used for cultivation in equatorial regions has increased by over 40%, accelerating deforestation with an area roughly equal to the size of Greece now cleared every year for its cultivation. BM TRADA has been working with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) since 2009 to help manufacturers and other businesses involved in the palm oil supply chain move towards a more responsible and sustainable production model. Established in 2004, the RSPO is a global, multistakeholder initiative which counts environmental and social NGOs, banks and investors, growers, processors, manufacturers and retailers of palm oil products among its 1,300 members. BM TRADA initially became involved with the RSPO working group process to help with the development of their sustainable supply chain scheme. Their aim was to achieve the sort of success demonstrated by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) which has helped increase the growth in well managed forest concessions and provides consumers with assurances that the timber and paper they buy has been produced in a responsible manner. It became apparent that this sort of chain of custody certification would be of immense use for refiners, ingredient manufacturers, Fast Moving Consumer Goods producers and their retail customers in proving their palm came from sustainable sources. BM TRADA was the first certification body approved by the RSPO and recently achieved world first accreditation under the new requirements for RSPO Certification Bodies. The accreditation — overseen by Accreditation Services International (ASI), one of the world’s leading accreditation bodies for sustainability standards systems — takes things to the next level by aligning BM TRADA's palm oil chain of custody certification scheme with internationally recognised standards.

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Accreditation gives a certification scheme greater credibility as it requires that certification bodies are checked to ensure that their competence, impartiality and performance capabilities are of the highest standards and that a mechanism is in place for dealing with CBs who fail to meet these standards. The benefit to clients is that the scheme is more robust and credible than ever before, and once certification is in place, a higher level of confidence is delivered to consumers. Today, BM TRADA is the UK market leader for RSPO certification and we expect strong growth of the scheme as we approach 2014 and the 2015 deadlines laid down by retailers for sustainable palm oil moves ever closer. In addition to retailer demand, national commitments for sustainable palm oil have been established in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. These national statements have committed the respective countries to move towards sustainable palm oil and are reflected in governmental purchasing policies. In the UK, consumption of sustainable palm oil is currently at around 30 to 40%, but the likes of Sainsbury’s, Morrison’s, Aldi, Marks & Spencer are now pushing hard to meet their time-bound commitment to 100% certified sustainable palm oil in their own brand products and are increasing the pressure on their supply chain to convert to certified palm oil. These initiatives are building the momentum needed to raise consumer awareness of the issues related to palm oil production and applying the necessary pressure on the industry to get certification, thereby helping the RSPO achieve its aim of transforming markets to make sustainable palm oil the norm. As a knock-on effect, the UK and Europe will almost certainly serve as a benchmark for other parts of the world with huge consumer markets, such as America, China and India.

A Rabin

The bottom line is that as with forest products before them, the provenance of agricultural products are becoming more important to consumers, who want reassurance that the everyday items they're buying aren't contributing to deforestation and climate change. Given this, the RSPO palm oil supply chain scheme is now at the point where it is a 'must have' rather than 'nice to have' certification for manufacturers and suppliers wishing to win new clients and retain existing ones. Major British companies including United Biscuits, Premier Foods and Allied Bakeries are well on the way — if not there already — to using 100% RSPO certified palm oil, but it is equally important other businesses follow suit or risk being frozen out of the market. Certification bodies such as BM TRADA have an important role to play within the manufacturing industry in terms of education and awarenessbuilding of sustainable palm oil, especially as the RSPO has limited opportunity to do its own marketing other than at an international level. The UK Government is also playing its part, having set up an advice and information service through the Central Point of Expertise on Timber (CPET) to help UK businesses and government procurers work towards 100% sustainable palm oil. It is important to note that the only means of guaranteeing the sustainability of palm oil is through RSPO supply chain certification, though the GreenPalm book and claim scheme, endorsed by the RSPO, has served well as an interim measure for companies wanting to support sustainable palm oil. RSPO certification allows companies who handle palm oil to show that their supply chain is secure and traceable, and provides credible evidence of a product’s sustainability. It is applicable to all food

Web: www.bmtrada.com

and non-food products that use palm oil and/or its derivatives, and proves that the product originates from well-managed, certified sources. Certification also verifies that they are not mixed with products from uncertified sources at any point in the supply chain, except under strict management controls. There are three supply chain models that can be used within the RSPO system: -

Identity preserved — physical isolation from all other palm oil sources Segregation — physical isolation from non-certified palm oil sources (allows mixing with other certified palm oil) Mass balance — allows mixing of certified and non-certified palm oil in a controlled environment, ensuring that the volume of certified palm outputs never exceed the certified inputs.

RSPO certification does involve an initial investment but given the UK's commitment to sustainable palm oil it should be viewed by organisations as an important investment that will bring significant benefits — clearly demonstrating a commitment to environmental practices, meeting the expectations of major manufacturers and retailers, and helping gain access to new markets. The RSPO is also dedicated to making certification as effective as possible improving the operating practices of palm oil production, and is about to undertake a revision of the current supply chain certification document with the purpose of removing anomalies, ambiguities and inconsistencies. This is scheduled to be completed within the first quarter of 2014. Now is a critical time for all those involved in the palm oil supply chain. The need for traceability is becoming increasingly important and labels and certificates will be increasingly challenged as the RSPO scheme continues to build credibility and extend its reach. Don't ignore the ticking clock. The countdown to sustainable palm oil is well under way and if you’re not certified by the close of next year, you risk being unable to compete in your market place ■

+ More Information BM TRADA provides independent certification, testing, inspection, training and technical services. We help customers large and small to prove their business and product credentials and to improve performance and compliance. With an international presence across many industry sectors, we offer a special focus and long history of technical excellence in supply chain certification, product certification and testing, and technical services.

BM TRADA became involved with the RSPO working group process to help with the development of their sustainable supply chain scheme, aiming to increase the growth in well managed forest concessions and provide consumers with assurances that the timber and paper they buy has been produced in a responsible manner.

For more information about RSPO certification: www.bmtrada.com Title Page Photograph: Vincent Poulissen

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Food & Packaging

A nd y Bar netso n / Co r r ugated Pac k ag i ng / CP I

The Nation’s Favourite Packaging Material Corrugated is the most trusted packaging material in the UK and has helped industry to deliver its goods to market safely, for over a hundred years. And in these early years of the 21st century, it remains the safe and sustainable packaging solution that it has always been.

A ndy Bar net son

Director of Packaging Aﬀairs Confederation of Paper Industries

Corrugated has stood the test of time because it has proved to be a hugely flexible packaging medium that is not only economical, but also has a superb environmental record. It is the most recycled packaging material in the UK – over 80% is reused – and as a direct result, an area the size of Greater London is saved from landfill every four months.

According to FEFCO’s European Database for Corrugated Board Life Cycle Studies, the corrugated sector reduced its carbon footprint by a further 4.8% over the three years from 2009 to 2011. This follows a cut of almost 12% in the previous threeyear cycle.

New boxes are made from recycled material and where new fibre is used, it comes from sustainably managed forests, using fast-growing softwoods such as pine and spruce, which are accredited by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).

The average carbon footprint of corrugated packaging is now 746 kg/t, compared to 784 kg/t for the period 2006-08. These savings have been achieved through reductions in energy consumption and the industry’s use of recycled materials for the production of new corrugated packaging, which (across Europe) rose from 82% in 2009 to 85% last year.

This commitment to responsible forest management has made a huge contribution to the increase in the size of Europe’s forests (up by 30% since 1950). It is backed by significant investment in advanced technology by corrugated manufacturers to ensure that the processes involved meet the most stringent requirements of environmental legislation.

Recycling of corrugated is easiest when it is most convenient. Some local councils are now including corrugated cardboard in their kerbside collections from households. Alternatively, in most towns there are civic amenity sites and recycling facilities at supermarkets where people can take their recyclable material.

Landfilling of corrugated must be viewed as a last resort; such a versatile, easily recycled product should be recovered wherever possible, in order to make the most of the resources which went into its production.

From a domestic perspective, awareness of the benefits of recycling is generally on the increase, but authorities should be encouraging more households to separate corrugated from other recyclables, particularly from glass and plastic. Co-mingled collections are an option if there are suitable sorting techniques in place, otherwise the quality of the material is adversely affected.

Not only is recycling corrugated beneficial to the environment and to the nation’s carbon footprint, it is essential to the UK Corrugated Packaging Industry. Even though the sector is already surpassing government and EU targets, recycling corrugated ensures that fibres, which could otherwise be lost, can be reused.

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The latest set of carbon footprint figures released by The European Federation of Corrugated Board Manufacturers (FEFCO) points to more evidence that the Corrugated Industry leads the way on environmental matters.

Web: www.paper.org.uk

However, there is still quite a high proportion of corrugated found in the residual waste stream. This comes particularly from businesses, which are responsible for less than 10% of all waste managed by local authorities. An increasing number of councils are benefiting from providing commercial recycling collections but unlike domestic recycling collections, they are not obliged to do so. In many cases, councils can recover associated costs via income from the sale of materials. Cost might be a factor deterring local authorities from focusing on free commercial recycling collections of cardboard, as it’s likely that a business would baulk at having to pay extra for taking away segregated corrugated in addition to its residual waste. It’s a tricky decision for councils in times of austerity, but providing cardboard collections would intensify a reduction in general residual waste collection and councils could recoup the costs from the value of the materials. Commercial collections of corrugated packaging will not only boost the recycling rate, but help improve the quantity and quality of reusable material for the industry. It really is just a matter of convincing authorities of the value of such collections. Lightweight papers and new flutings are also key developments, enabling more efficient logistics management. For many years, the UK Corrugated Packaging Industry has been instrumental in driving down waste within the supply chain. It is a pioneering force in sustainable, lightweight, recyclable packaging that does not compromise the integrity of the products, but ensures that they still arrive in perfect condition. Even before the Courtauld Commitment was introduced, the UK’s Corrugated Packaging Industry had been making a significant investment in new technologies that are providing innovative packaging solutions, as well as bringing environmental advantages. While corrugated companies have been developing lightweight papers for years, new types of fluting are a more recent innovation, designed to allow the required compression strength to be achieved while reducing the space necessary to contain the product.

One of the many companies benefiting from innovation is Premier Foods, a leading food manufacturer in the UK. The business has reported impressive cost savings and increased productivity at its Ashford plant following an overhaul of transit and display packaging for its range of Batchelors dried foods.

Transportation is a major factor but with the advent of modern corrugated processes, such as new flutings that offer up to 23% storage space saving, the Corrugated Industry is offering extremely space-efficient packaging through better use of pallets, resulting in fewer vehicles on the road.

Implementing a corrugated solution has resulted in a 50% increase in throughput of up to 30 cases per minute, dependent upon product format, on the fastest of the three lines, with further efficiencies due to a notable reduction in bottle-necks. Big cost savings have been made on secondary packaging materials by eliminating the need for additional plastic transit packaging.

Boxes need to be designed to fill lorries from floor to roof. If every single lorry on the road was filled to complete capacity, the savings in fuel costs and CO2 emissions would be huge. Corrugated can adapt itself to product after product. Alternative packaging solutions, such as plastic, do not have this flexibility.

In the drinks industry too there has been innovative use of corrugated. The development of a specially designed inner lining in conjunction with leading beverage supplier SAB Miller, enables a cardboard take-home pack of branded bottled beers to become a coolbox when the consumer adds ice or water. The extension of a corrugated box into a chill cabinet demonstrates corrugated’s inherent flexibility. This makes it the natural packaging medium through which to explore opportunities that have not previously been considered and which otherwise might never have been attempted. This innovation has led to corrugated becoming a key component of the retail marketing mix, competing with, and also complementing, online product promotion, direct mail, television advertising and traditional publishing. Manufacturers and marketeers have had to rethink their retailing strategies to influence well informed consumers. A move to greater in-store retail promotion has coincided with the transition of corrugated from a packaging medium for transporting goods, to a three-in-one solution comprising product protection, advertising platform and merchandiser. However, whilst succeeding on the marketing front, corrugated still needs to tick all the right environmental boxes. In today’s challenging economic climate, it is quite right that supply chains are being scrutinised in an effort to drive down costs and meet environmental objectives. But when developing packaging solutions, many factors must be taken into account and elements such as transport efficiency are often overlooked.

Industry is increasingly making use of the opportunity for the height of corrugated cases to be calibrated to specific products, making it possible to carry far more on a pallet. A study by Ceres Logistics using sugar snap peas as an example, found that for exactly the same number of items per tray, corrugated is 33% more space efficient than returnable packaging in other materials, saving 141 truck journeys. The importance of utilising lorry space more effectively is often overlooked. Fewer vehicles mean fewer fuel miles which all contributes to a greener economy. Corrugated provides safe logistics and lower costs than alternative packaging systems because it is recyclable. Being single-use saves on administration and working capital. It will continue to evolve and adapt to the challenges ahead such as reducing further the carbon footprint and the environmental impact of packaging. Print and digital technology will become increasingly important and the industry will also need to work on the growing impact of e-commerce. Items ordered online often travel great distances meaning every piece of packaging has to perform at its best in getting goods to the consumer’s door, direct from the retail outlet, without any damage. Corrugated packaging has always offered protection without loss of flexibility, and the industry has continued to evolve to meet the needs of new, more efficient distribution systems. In the future, the innovative use of resources and combinations of components will ensure that corrugated packaging continues to offer a superb range of benefits for industry ■

+ More Information Confederation of Paper Industries www.paper.org.uk environmentmagazine.co.uk | 75 |

Land Management

Ni c holas W i l lenb ro ck / Def i ni ti o n o f Waste / CL : a i re

Sustainable excavated materials recovery – Is it now time for the next step?

by Nichola s Wi l lenb rock CL:aire

To ensure that excavated materials and contaminated sites are managed in the most effective and sustainable manner, it is important that the evolution of technology and methodologies is understood and that knowledge is collected and easily accessible. CL:AIRE (Contaminated Land: Applications in Real Environments) is a prominent support organisation in the land management sector. It is an independent, not-for-profit, public / private partnership created nearly 15 years ago to encourage the development of practical solutions to the problems of bringing contaminated and brownfield land back in to use. CL:AIRE works with leading professionals and academics in the field to carry out independent appraisals of remediation technologies and develop new approaches and protocols to common industry problems. When solutions and strategies call for collective thinking, CL:AIRE facilitates industry-funded initiatives, such as the Definition of Waste: Development Industry Code of Practice (DoWCoP). The scope of the DoWCoP currently relates to reuse of excavated materials whether contaminated or uncontaminated, natural or man-made. It can be applied to the following scenarios – reuse on the site of their origin, direct transfer, cluster projects and soil treatment facilities.

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Launched in 2008, over 600 people have now been trained in its use with over 240 practitioners becoming Qualified Persons. The DoWCoP requires a significant degree of self regulation; it relies on the professional integrity of everyone involved in the project. As of November 2013, over 800 projects had submitted declarations under the DoWCoP. Conservative estimates indicate the total volume of material reused to date to be over 25 million tonnes. Four key factors are assessed and proved in order to decide whether a material is a waste or not. Firstly, the Waste Framework Directive (Council Directive 2006/12/EC) must not be undermined. Secondly, the material in question must be suitable for its intended use (e.g. geotechnical and chemical properties). Thirdly, there must be a certainty of use for the material. Finally the quantities of the material must be appropriate for reuse. Cluster projects and or Soil Treatment Facilities offer the greatest potential for reusing materials amongst a number of projects. The principle of Cluster is to group development sites together; soils are controlled and treated at a central, shared, permitted hub site. This method can realise many sustainability benefits in comparison to ‘traditional’ remediation methods. To date there has

Web: www.claire.co.uk

been limited use of these approaches typically adopted by sites with a common landowner.

aware that quality soil products have a market and can cease to be waste using the DoWCoP.

Soils Treatment Facilities have been used more widely in Europe to date than in the UK. The large river networks and relevant engineering standards for reclaimed materials have helped establish the location and operation of some of these recovery facilities.

As and when construction and development increases, either through growth or via large infrastructure projects, there will be a need for soils recovery/disposal sites. To maximise the recovery of soils it will be necessary to have regional facilities that can store materials for re-use. In the future these facilities may recover materials from landfills to maximise reclamation of soils, metals and organic matter for energy production as certain materials get scarcer. This could also address the environmental burden of some of old landfills which require work to address diffuse pollution sources and widen our energy provision. To support the process of reusing excavated materials, CL:AIRE keeps a free register of materials and services which may fall within the DoWCoP. This aims to help link material holders with service providers or organisations requiring materials in order to make the process of finding project partners an easier and quicker process.

The UK soils recovery market has been limited partly due to the improvement of on-site in-situ remediation techniques. Other factors include the ease of disposal in terms of project timelines and the historical low cost of disposal. Significant increases in the level of Landfill tax have begun to change this situation and alternative options for surplus soils are now more in demand from project teams. Fixed Soil Treatment Facilities have not been featuring as part of hub site operations; this could be due to the limited market as a result of the recession. The situation could now slowly be changing. Exemptions for soils manufacturing sites have largely been replaced by permitted facilities. Such facilities are more

Those involved in the management of development sites are urged to register key information on materials and services which fall within the DoWCoP. These â&#x2013;ş

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Land Management

Ni c holas W i l lenb ro ck / Def i ni ti o n o f Waste / CL : a i re

are then held confidentially. CL:AIRE review the information provided and contact organisations where there is a possible project partnership to 'find homes' for the materials. The Register is a live webpage which can be accessed by anyone. If someone sees an entry of particular interest they are encouraged to contact CL:AIRE who will act to make the necessary introductions such that further discussions and information transfer can take place. CL:AIRE's independence in the market and its familiarity with the DoWCoP positions it perfectly to act as a trusted administrator of such an initiative. The CL:AIRE Register of Materials shows a market need for topsoil, landscaping soils and general engineering fills such as trench backfill and sub-base materials. The need for large scale storage and some treatment is also evident from large developments, especially those with large surpluses from basement digs and tunnelling operations. Further changes to the DoWCoP to better handle smaller outputs to market are currently being discussed by the DoWCoP industry steering group and regulators. The following items have been suggested for possible inclusion in a third version. • Introduction of a more streamlined procedure relating to small quantities of material reuse. • Expanded scope of the Direct Transfer scenario to include excavated materials that are not clean or naturally occurring (with appropriate limitations). • Allowance for the reuse of manufactured soils e.g. with the addition of PAS 100 compost, under the DoWCoP. • Qualified Person involvement with particularly large receiver sites such as soil treatment facilities on former landfills, e.g. a declaration following the treatment of 10,000m3. • A review of the role of the Qualified Person relating to verification reports (to provide greater confidence that best practice has actually been followed in reusing the excavated material). • Introduction of a Continuous Professional Development (CPD) element for Qualified Persons. • A review of the criteria for acting as a Qualified Person. • A formalised procedure to deal with frequently asked questions from practitioners and update of documents, e.g. the Declaration, Material Management Plan. • Detailed minimum information requirements, e.g. Desk Top Study information (particularly for Direct Transfer of clean naturally occurring soils where speed of production is key), tracking system, delivery ticket. • Provide greater context of where the DoWCoP fits with other documents / guidance, e.g. a schematic showing WRAP Quality Protocol / recent Defra’s guidance on Definition of Waste on “by products”, exemptions and Standard Rules Environmental Permits and to highlight other mechanisms for reuse other than in accordance with the DoWCoP. • Provide background to Watch point 15. • Expand on the definition of clean. • Explain how top soil is sold as a non-waste. • Storage of excavated material at a source site with no identified certainty of use, e.g. good quality material that it would be reasonable to assume a beneficial use would be found. In light of the possible move towards a third version, is it time for the waste industry to strategically plan for materials recovery facilities to handle and maximise reuse of this material? Europe has had such facilities for some time – is it now time for the UK to follow suit? Regional hubs could be the key to letting smaller developments also accrue the sustainability benefits of materials recovery and exchange. The market needs a clearer understanding of treatment technologies, relevant testing procedures and better understanding of the classifications processes for waste for disposal, but more importantly perhaps for materials for re-use. This will involve best practice sampling protocols, appropriate laboratory testing, especially the relevant leach testing and suitable-for-use assessment criteria. When the above are done correctly, good quality materials can be fully recovered for use by the construction and development sector, flood management agencies (and partners) and habitat creation schemes to enable sustainable recovery and re-use of materials across a broad spectrum of projects. Now could be the time to take the first step and set up the baseline facilities building on the experience of the Olympics site and similar operating sites in Europe. This step would need to be done in partnership with waste operators, earthworks contractors, the construction sector, wider public bodies and all

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those interested in development and regeneration projects. The end result would be enhanced protection for our environment and valuable habitats within a sustainable national growth strategy. CL:AIRE does not receive government funding to support the development and administration of its initiatives like the DoWCoP or the Register of Materials. Organisations who value this work and the other resources of CL:AIRE are urged to considering joining as Members. The scheme is the primary way to support the work of CL:AIRE; two Membership branches, Technical and Corporate, are available. Each branch has been designed to provide benefits appropriate to the different organisations commonly involved in the management of previously developed land. All Members are encouraged to feed back problems, concerns and needs through CL:AIRE to be tabled, prioritised and tackled for resolution – the more feedback provided, the sooner sector problems can be addressed. CL:AIRE's Membership scheme aims to bring the industry together and raise standards. By working in partnership with CL:AIRE, Members benefit from more efficient forms of regulation, greater confidence in the marketplace, high brand visibility and the ability to influence where future industry initiatives are focused. The principles of CL:AIRE’s Membership is to: • Foster a strong communications link with our Members – to listen and act on sector problems, concern and needs; • Provide increased brand visibility of organisations operating at the highest levels in the redevelopment sector; • Provide intelligent market information for the beneﬁt of all Members; • Use the market information to enable the development of better regulation to maintain and improve standards; • Help sustain CL:AIRE to further develop new industry initiatives which solve problems, save money and offer commercial opportunities, following the example of the Deﬁnition of Waste: Development Industry Code of Practice; • Provide support services for procuring organisations; • Continue to provide high quality dissemination of technical projects and initiatives in the areas of sustainable development. Finally, CL:AIRE is pleased to announce that Case Study Bulletin 11 (CSB11) is now freely available to download from the Publications Library area of its website. CSB11 - Remediation of Four Sites in Northwest England: A Successfully Completed Multi-Site, Multi-Consultant Cluster Project. This bulletin was written by Worley Parsons and details the conceptualisation, development and successful completion of the UK's very first multiple site, multiple consultant, Cluster project. This project has allowed the remediation of four sites, two of which were heavily constrained, and has delivered significant efficiency, sustainability and cost savings. The project was considered by the client, National Grid Property Holdings Ltd, regulators and all involved to have been very successful, completing on time and budget; 60% of all excavated material (70% of treatable material) was reused on the sites ■

+ More Information www.claire.co.uk

Land Management

EI C / A ECOM / L and R emed iati on R el i e f

Land Remediation Relief legislation

by Matthew Far row

Executive Director, Environmental Industries Commission The Prime Minister is alleged to have recently told aides to “get rid of all the green crap”. Fiercely denied by No. 10 of course – it would after all have been an odd statement from a leader who took office to lead the ‘greenest government ever’ – but its sentiment is one about which the Environmental Industries Commission (EIC) is greatly concerned. ‘Green’ can often mean different things to different people, but at its core refers to the most basic elements required for life including clean air to breathe and water to drink. If the Prime Minister isn’t so taken with the green however, EIC has long campaigned to get successive party leaders interested in a generally less appealing, but no less important, colour: brown. Britain’s proud industrial heritage and the transformative economic growth that came with it has advanced our quality of life in many ways which we now take for granted, but it has also left behind an unfortunate legacy of pollution – not least the creation of vast swathes of brownfield land. Government after Government has had continued pressure placed upon it to increase development of both domestic and non-domestic buildings at an ever increasing pace, and this leads to the question

of where to put it. A question not easily answered by a relatively small island nation. British society has long valued its natural spaces and has introduced restrictions to planning policy such as the creation of Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and the Greenbelt to ensure their ongoing protection. This increasing demand for development of housing and commercial properties, not least as the result of population growth, has therefore led to a conflict between preservation and ‘progress’. Since its inception in 1995, EIC – which acts as the voice of UK’s environmental technologies and services sector – has lobbied successive Governments of all colours to adopt a ‘brownfield first’ approach to the (re) development of land. Whilst in principle building on previously used land, and bringing back into use sites which have long been abandoned, is preferred to building on ‘greenfield’ sites, there is an acknowledgement of the reality that this is often more costly, making such development less appealing to those who have to pay for it – especially in an age of austerity where investment is hard to find and the bottom line ever more imperative.

EIC’s Director of Policy and Public Affairs, Michael Lunn (centre) with Ben de Waal of AECOM (left)

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To address this acute market failure which puts environmental protection as secondary to profit, rather than working in tandem with it, EIC launched a successful campaign in the late 1990s for the introduction of a new tax relief which would incentivise the remediation of contaminated land and support the ‘brownfield first’ approach in a pragmatic way which would appeal to developers and house builders. This groundwork led to the introduction of the Land Remediation Relief (LRR) in 2001. The LRR aimed to make the development of brownfield sites financially viable by compensating developers for the remediation of previously used sites, and thus recognising the additional costs of mitigating contamination such as asbestos in soil, oil spillages, radon contamination, or even Japanese knotweed. The introduction of LRR was in itself a huge step forward, and for the first time made development on brownfield sites an economically, as well as environmentally, sound alternative to greenfield. Despite this progress in policy development between the LRR’s introduction in 2001 and 2004 a lack of awareness for the new relief and the

Web: www.eic-uk.co.uk

items to which it applies led to a frustratingly slow uptake. To remedy this, EIC and leading member Davis Langdon (now part of AECOM) undertook a sustained stakeholder engagement programme focussed on house builders, which importantly included the targeting of those regional offices tasked with the construction of buildings, and the corporate head office teams responsible for tax affairs. This combined approach meant that there was a crucial linkage between the people who were incurring the expenditure with those who were responsible for the company’s tax bill. A series of seminars, run in conjunction with other trade bodies such as the Construction Industry Research and Information Association (CIRIA) and the House Builders’ Federation, to promote entitlement and eligibility for the relief resulted in developers taking a more holistic view of brownfield development. This was a critical step to a wider understanding and usage of the relief, and one which subsequently saw a year on year growth in its uptake. As successful as the LRR was starting to become, its future was uncertain when, in 2011,

the Government’s Office of Tax Simplification recommended the abolition of 35 different tax reliefs, including the LRR. EIC set out a robust business case for the continuation of LRR and led a high profile and successful campaign. This resulted in the LRR being one of only eight tax reliefs to be retained whilst twenty eight others were abolished. To date, the introduction and retention of LRR has led to AECOM alone saving over £1bn for clients by 2012, with the total industry figure being higher. This has in turn led to the widespread regeneration of brownfield sites and urban redevelopments that may not otherwise have happened. In recognition of this sustained, committed effort to support the brownfield remediation industry and protect high environmental standards, EIC and AECOM jointly won the award for ‘Best Campaign for Brownfield’ at this year’s Brownfield Briefing awards. It is always nice to receive such recognition, and the award is a testament to what EIC was set up to do and what it does best – lobby in support of an industry which provides jobs, is an engine for growth, and improves our quality of life as a result of its work. But EIC’s proven ability to engage and influence government is only made possible by the

unrivalled breadth of knowledge, experience, and technical expertise of its member companies and the individuals who work within them who support our efforts. The campaign on LRR is only one example of the much wider lobbying work EIC undertakes to support an industry worth £122bn to the UK economy, and which employs approximately one million people. Similar campaigns continue to take place across policies, regulation and legislation, covering water and wastewater services; air quality; carbon management; energy efficiency in new and existing buildings; and waste management. To learn more about the work EIC does to lobby for the longterm growth of your industry, please do get in touch. We would be delighted to speak to you ■

+ More Information www.eic-uk.co.uk

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Sustainable Build & Civil Engineering

Ni cholas Doy le / Places f o r Peo ple/ R et ro f i tt i ng

This Green Business IT may have been a Chinese curse to live in interesting times, but right now I think we have arrived at an interesting moment for the green agenda and retrofit in particular. We are, if we believe the growing consensus, now postrecession. Some may argue that we are now also post Green Deal and may also be in post Supplier Obligation. If we lift our heads to view around us, there is a lot to see and ponder. So what does this new landscape look like? Looking back, we can see that only a few years ago the green agenda was still a marginal activity and what was happening either relied on public expenditure or personal motivation. It was the preserve of specialists and it carried an air of being an exclusive activity that was not to be tackled by regular folk doing a regular job. As a subject it had its own language, its own narrative and this often reinforced its own position at the margins as a result. And then something happened. Or more precisely quite a few things happened.

Nichola s Doy le

Places for People

First off, we gained a political consensus on climate change. It was happening and we had to do something about it. We had won our environmental argument. Then the increasing price of oil started a growing awareness of the limited resources we actually had. Whether that was - or is - a peak or not matters less than the fact we gained an economic argument for action: we had demand â&#x20AC;&#x201C; where were we going to get the supply from? In the UK something else happened. We began the debate around zero carbon for new homes. Ironically, where this had the greatest impact was on retrofit as people recognised that we couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t and shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just tackle new homes; it was in our existing homes that by far the biggest challenge

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lay. Our old leaky homes connected directly with people. And there we had our social argument. All of a sudden we were marching forward, this rag tag bunch of pilot projects, technocrats, social housing, retrofit pioneers, contractors and quangos all marching to the future of large scale retrofit. And then in the middle of the night on September 15th 2008 something happened that would send economic shock waves powering across the globe. Lehman Brothers, one of the most successful investment banks in the world, filed for bankruptcy. And the rest, as they will come to say, is history. The impacts were huge and complex but the fundamentals were obvious: the world was plunged into one of the deepest recessions it has ever seen and all bets were off. And like everything else, the environmental world did not go untouched. But I would argue that it has gained the most from the recession and has emerged in a much better place, if not quite shape, than it was before the recession. Why? Leading up to and through the recession all of the ground work for retrofitting was being put in place. The input of organisations such as the Technology Strategy Board and the extensive work done by social housing providers and those pioneers who

Web: www.placesforpeople.com

improved their own homes, means we know what to do, we know what works. I know there will be those who say we don’t, but I am working on the 80/20 principle – in 80% of cases we know what works and what doesn't. I will leave others to argue endlessly about the remaining 20%.

"The greatest impact was on retrofit as people recognised that we couldn’t and shouldn’t just tackle new homes; it was in our existing homes that by far the biggest challenge lay. Our old leaky homes connected directly with people."

We are also unburdened by public expenditure. We had become addicted to hand outs and programmes funded by government until we got to the stage when we seemed to have funding looking for a project. People were generating more opinions than action. It was never sustainable: if this was going to work, it has to stand on its own two feet. We have also seen mainstream business wake up to the potential of the green agenda. The personal motivation, while useful, was being replaced by the opportunity to generate a return. This has brought in new money, new investors, entrepreneurs and - more importantly - new ideas concerned with delivering what customers wanted and were willing to pay for. And the reason for this is that the fundamentals remain sound. And they are fundamentals that can generate value for investment. Before I outline this, I would argue that climate change, while now accepted, has no value here. It’s important - in fact THE most important issue - but it doesn’t have the currency or value to help move us forward. What does is the price of energy. It doesn’t matter what anyone says, the price of energy is going up. And fast. The global realities are that there will be increasing demand for energy and the cheap sources we have all enjoyed cannot meet this demand. We will have to look to off-shore sources, shale gas and renewables to meet that

demand. And here in the UK we have a massive energy infrastructure cost that is ticking up in the background. The simple truth is that energy is going to get very expensive. Increasing energy prices will for the first time make large scale investment in energy saving and energy generation possible. Anything that saves energy or generates energy will increase in value. For years the marginal return on energy saving and generation in the domestic sector was simply too low. With increased margins new money, new approaches, new ideas and new entrants will flood in to the market. They are already. We can look forward to a future where ‘green business’ is just ‘business’. Surely it can’t all be this straight forward. Of course it’s not and there are problems we need to address. While we have been released from the shackles of government expenditure, government still has a key role to play. Government needs to give the framework for business to operate in and above all it needs to give certainty so that business will invest. Whether that’s in new building regulations, housing standards, energy regulation or policies to support the market, we always want government to make the right decision, but more than that we need government to make the decision and stick to it, and stick to it for preferably two Parliaments, but certainly one. We also have a hang-over from before the collapse. The green agenda still has an air of mystery about it. Whether that is a perceived lack of technical knowledge or a fear of not being personally or morally motivated to take action, too many people fear making mistakes. I guarantee you one thing, ►

Leading up to and through the recession all of the ground work for retrofitting was being put in place.

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Sustainable Build & Civil Engineering

Ni cholas Doy le / Places f o r Peo ple/ R et ro f i tt i ng

There are too many people who want retrofitting to be perfect. It never will be. It involves two things – homes and people and they are never perfect. The only way people will gain the confidence to do more is to give it a go and then learn.

Even simple changes, such as roof insulation, can hugely reduce heat loss; something older houses in this country desperately need.

and this is certainly true of retrofit, people will make mistakes but it’s far more important that people do something rather than listen to the doomsayers, the naysayers, the ’I-wouldn’t-do-it-like-that’ sayers! There are too many people who want retrofitting to be perfect. It never will be. It involves two things – homes and people - and they are never perfect. The only way people will gain the confidence to do more is to give it a go and then learn. And we need to do more. Much, much more. And to do this we have to mean business. We need to create a new industry, one that is dynamic, innovative, generates its own investment and finds as many customers as possible. If we do this we will deliver real change and real carbon savings and yes we may stand a chance of tackling the thing that is the most important – climate change. But in some senses that must now become the by-product of this, not the raison d’etre. So let’s roll our sleeves up and start building this new industry and maybe have some fun along the way. How are we going to make the environment pay? Any new business should start with a business plan and the business plan needs some key elements – so here’s my starter for 10:

Vision: What is our future position, our direction, our aspiration? • We want to make the environment the most exciting and dynamic sector in the UK in ﬁve years, attracting more new investment than any other sector.

Mission: Why are we doing this? How are we going to create the value and who are our customers? • To make the maximum impact and the maximum return. • To reach as many new customers as possible. • To generate new products and services that deliver.

Values: What are the principles that guide our actions? How do we operate or aspire to operate?

Biomass boilers like the one above can be installed in older houses to update inefficient heating systems already in place.

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• Don’t ask what can people do for the environment but what the environment can do for them. • The environment is the most important issue facing human kind. We must ignore it to deliver it. • Only delivering what our customers want can deliver real change.

Web: www.placesforpeople.com

We can't just successfully tackle new homes; it is in our existing homes that by far the biggest challenges lie. Retrofitting will have a key part to play in Britain's sustainable future.

And so we could go on and create and develop our strategy, goals and plans and the resources. OK, I don’t expect many to agree with what I have outlined but that’s great – let’s all work up our own vision for this new industry. It doesn’t need consensus, it just needs people getting out there and doing things and making a good return for doing so. But the point is this – we have to think of the environment in a different way than we have before. We need to think of the environment as something that we are going to deliver as we would other products and services. We have to think how we are going to deliver them to as many people as possible. We are going to have to think of the new ideas and approaches that will help people get what they want and they need in their lives. And that is no more true that in retrofit. We have done the research, we are building a supply chain, we pretty much know what works and what doesn’t. What we need to do now is make this pay for business and its customers. We have to create this green business. It is the only way we are going to truly break out of the margins - the philosophical and the moral - and make this a mainstream activity that delivers the large scale change that we so desperately need ■

+ More Information Places for People

Places for People is one of the largest residential property development, management and regeneration companies operating across the UK in areas from strategic land, master planning, development and property management. The Group owns and manages 143,000 homes and provides housing including homes for sale, market and affordable rent. Uniquely the Group manages residential properties in all tenures and is one of the UK’s largest managers of private rented homes and leasehold properties. As one of the leading registered provider groups in the country it works in 205 Local Authority areas and is a not-for-dividend organisation, which means that the profits it makes are reinvested back into its core business of creating and maintaining sustainable places. Places for People is committed to creating successful places and enabling people to reach their potential. Places for People makes a long-term commitment to its communities and works to provide what they need to thrive, not only today but for future generations. Its developments are not just about housing but new schools, shops, leisure facilities, employment, access to training and specialist services. This is the approach that Places for People has taken on its award-winning developments - and the company’s long-term commitment and investment it makes in places has been recognised, by winning this year’s Building Awards Housebuilder of the Year, Landlord of the Year and the Homes for Scotland Award 2013. www.placesforpeople.com

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Sustainable Build & Civil Engineering

Mar i o n Baeli / Energ y / R etro f i t f o r the Fu t u re

residential

retro ďŹ t by Mar i o n Baeli

Asociate, Paul Davis + partners

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Web: www.pauldavisandpartners.com

Retrofit for the Future programme

The Retrofit for the Future (RftF) programme was initiated by the Technology Strategy Board in 2009 with £17m of funding through the Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI). The aim was to demonstrate innovative approaches to deep retrofitting of the UK’s social housing stock. The RftF programme was split into two phases: Phase 1 saw 194 design and feasibility studies developed, while Phase 2 took 86 of these studies and provided each with up to £150,000 to implement the retrofit proposals in more than 100 properties. Applicants to the RftF competition were required to take a ‘whole house’ approach to achieving: • 80% reduction in CO2 compared to 1990 emissions • CO2 emissions limited to 17 kg/m2/yr [20 kg/m2/yr for PHPP] • Primary energy limited to 115 kWh/m2/yr • This meant considering a household’s energy needs and CO2 impacts as a whole, and establishing a comprehensive package of measures to reduce them. These targets were extremely ambitious as prior to this programme only a few retrofit projects in the UK had ever claimed a similar level of energy efficiency. One such project, Grove Cottage (featured in our book – see below) was shown to participants of the competition. It had been designed using the PassivHaus strategies of fabric first and whole house design. To maximise the amount that the industry could learn from the projects, applicants were also required to include a comprehensive set of monitoring equipment in accordance with a standard specification. A central online database collects energy and environmental performance data from each of the projects and analysis of this data presented in the ‘Retrofit for the Future Revealed’ report is a key output from the RftF programme. (www.retrofitanalysis.org)

The 20 case studies of the book

The publication ‘Residential Retrofits, 20 case studies’ is a selection of 18 projects from this programme and two from private owners which aim to illustrate how UK practitioners have approached these challenging targets. All projects have similar typology (individual houses; there are no flats), tenure (social tenants), budget (including £150,000 funded by TSB except for the two privately owned houses) and targets (reducing CO2 emissions by 80%). Each of the Retrofit for the Future project teams followed their own procedures for designing their retrofit strategy, but had the same way of defining a baseline project pre-retrofit against which the proposed measures could be compared and the same energy prices. These individual houses have also been chosen to represent the UK housing stock in all construction variety – solid masonry, cavity walls, timber frame etc. – classified into two categories as either ‘pre1919’ or ‘post-1919’ (corresponding to the time when UK construction techniques shifted from solid masonry to more efficient construction with cavity walls), to offer as wide a picture as possible of what retrofit can entail. So these projects are certainly pioneering – among the first in the UK to aim for such levels of efficiency – but they were all also designed to lead to solutions that are replicable on a much larger scale. For example, they mostly use materials and products that are mainstream and readily available in the UK and can be mostly installed with minimal training of standard skilled labour. Of course difficulties have arisen and the need for further developments is certain, but these cases are aiming to draw out useful lessons learned for the whole industry as we are considering large-scale implementation of these deep retrofits.

Retrofit in the uk and within the european context

The UK housing stock is one of the oldest in Europe. It includes almost 13 million dwellings built before 1960 (the largest number of pre-1960 dwellings), including 4.7 million built before 1919, which is the least energy-efficient housing type of all. These now much-loved Victorian homes have a staggering average mean energy use (heating and lighting) of 480 kWh/m2/yr (emitting 9 t CO2/yr), while the more recent post-1990 dwellings’ mean energy use is little more than half of this figure at 270 kWh/ m2/yr (emitting 4.5 t CO2/yr). This difference is due to a better understanding of building physics through the years, the introduction of cavity wall construction (primarily implemented to prevent the passage of moisture into the interior of the building) and building regulations that are gradually becoming more stringent on the efficiency of building thermal envelopes.

Since 2000, the UK has reduced energy consumption per dwelling by 4%, which places it in the top half of EU27 Member States but below neighbouring countries including France, the Netherlands and Sweden, where consumption reduced by at least 10% over that period. While the UK has specific issues to address when considering retrofit (sash windows, for example), most other issues that practitioners will come across are common to all European countries and we can hope that the lessons learned will gradually be shared across Europe and the knowledge of best practice disseminated. A recent report, ‘Europe’s buildings under the microscope,’ a country-bycountry review of the energy performance of buildings, kick-started the spread of European data and research on how best to embrace this challenge.

Case studies summary Other than a reduction of CO2 emissions and energy demand, achieving optimum internal comfort is of course the main aim of these retrofits. We describe in this publication comfort with temperatures averaging around 21 degrees, relative humidity between 40-60% and CO2 concentration between 1,00 and 1,500ppm ►

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Sustainable Build & Civil Engineering

Mar i o n Baeli / Energ y / R etro f i t f o r the Fu t u re

Passfiled Drive, a 1950â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rendered solid brick house implemented the following measures: Fabric: Whole house external wall insulation; triple gazing; minimal cold bridges. Airtightness 1.4 m3/m2h@50Pa. Services: MVHR; Gas boiler; solar thermal. The results on primary energy are a reduction from 566 down to 210 kWh/m2/yr. The monitoring of the internal comfort reported a consistent temperature between 20 and 25oC. The relative humidity ranged between 50 and 70%RH and the CO2 concentration between 400 and 2,000ppm. The peaks at 2,000ppm where potentially explained by the extensive cooking which was prepared for a family of 8 at meal times.

Princedale Road, a Victorian terraced house certified to PassivHaus implemented the following measures: Fabric: Continuous whole house internal wall insulation strategy; triple glazing (look-alike sash); no cold bridges (joist-ends detached from existing external brick wall). Airtightness: 0.34 m3/m2h@50Pa. Services: MVHR (Genvex Combi); solar thermal; below ground heat exchanger. The results on primary energy are a reduction from 250 down to 128 kWh/m2/yr and from 120 down to 10 kWh/m2/yr for space heating demand. The monitoring of the internal comfort reported a stable temperature varying from 20 to 25 degrees throughout the year, a relative humidity ranging from just below 40 up to 60%RH and a CO2 concentration average at 620ppm varying from 380 to 800ppm. Overall very good results from one year of monitored data.

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Web: www.pauldavisandpartners.com

Conclusion

The Retrofit for the Future competition was a response to the challenge laid down by the UK Government’s target to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 80% by the year 2050. The competition sought retrofit strategies that might achieve very significant reductions in CO2 emissions and primary energy consumption. The monitoring data drawn from the 20 case study projects showcased here has shown very impressive results, further confirming that reaching or coming close to these challenging targets is achievable. The average figures for the 20 projects were as follows:

• CO2 emissions reduction reached 70% from pre-retroﬁt, just 10% short of the target. • CO2 emissions were 26 kg/m2/yr, 15% above limiting target. • Primary energy demand was 161 kWh/m2/ yr. Although 40% above the limiting target, this still represents a 67% reduction from the primary energy demand average pre-retroﬁt. As these 20 case studies were selected to illustrate various typical UK construction types (solid brick, steel, concrete, cavity wall, etc.), these results should give confidence to the industry that retrofitting the UK housing stock effectively is possible, no matter the construction type ■

+ More Information www.pauldavisandpartners.com

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Sustainable Build & Civil Engineering

Patr i c k Egan / Uni ted House / K i ngsto n He ight s

United House delivers two UK ﬁrsts at pioneering Kingston Heights development by Patr ic k Egan

Construction Manager, United House

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A new eco-friendly housing development in London is getting the energy for its heating and hot water directly from the Thames in a pioneering community heating scheme that could be replicated in many of our major towns and cities.

development. The system was formally switched on (Friday 18 October) by Edward Davey, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, and has been welcomed by both Kingston Council and the Environment Agency.

The New homes built by United House at the landmark £70m Kingston Heights mixed-use development for NHP Leisure Developments will receive all of their heating requirements using water from the River Thames, thanks to a pioneering new eco district heating system never seen before in the UK.

When complete, Kingston Heights will comprise 137 residential properties, including 81 private apartments and 56 affordable homes for national housing provider Affinity Sutton comprising of 38 affordable rented units and 18 shared equity, and a four star 142 bedroom hotel with meeting, banqueting and conference facilities.

Leading specialist contractor United House has delivered the technically challenging scheme on the banks of the river in the heart of Kingstonupon-Thames, which utilises a state-of-the-art heat pump system to harvest heat from the river water to provide heating and hot water for the residential

Equipment inside the specially-built pump house on the barge dock draws an average of 6.5 million litres of water per day from the Thames (average temperature of 9°C) and processes it through a heat exchanger, before being pumped into the development’s heating system. The water is then

Web: www.unitedhouse.net

pumped back into the river again with no harm to the environment or local wildlife. The groundbreaking system will save almost 500 tonnes of CO2 and reduce household heating bills by 20-25% over conventional gas boilers. Earlier this year, United House completed another construction first on the site, the highly-challenging encapsulation of a UK Power Networks electrical substation as part of the project – a technical feat never seen before in this country. The substation, comprising four 132kv transformers, was encased within a steel-lined concrete ‘box’ 200 metres long, 38 metres wide and four storeys high. Above this, a podium deck was formed to create a foundation for the residential apartments and hotel using 59 prestressed concrete beams, each 38 metres long and weighing 70 tonnes, imported from Ireland where they were custom-made. A 1,200 tonne super lift crane was required to lift the beams into position ►

Edward Davey, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, paid a special visit to the site to switch on the heat pump-based heating system in an official launch of the innovative, renewable system.

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Sustainable Build & Civil Engineering

Patr i c k Egan / Uni ted House / K i ngsto n He ight s

Above: The Power Station site before and during the construction of the encasing concrete box.

The substation distributes electricity to over 80,000 consumers in the area, and construction was planned in key stages in order to ensure the power supply remained uninterrupted. United House began construction on site in July 2011. The affordable housing element of the scheme is due for completion in December 2013 and the private residential element in 2014, with the hotel completed to shell and core in May 2014. Paul Brookes Architects were the planning architects and KDS & Associates Ltd are the delivery architects. The Kingston Heights Hotel

Kingston Heights open water source heat pump system – How it works The community heating technology behind the eco-friendly Kingston Heights housing development is based on an open water source heat pump system that is tried and tested and readily available. Energy from the sun is captured and stored in the river, as it is in any body of open water, and because this is replenished every time the sun shines it provides an endless supply of renewable energy. For the Kingston Heights development, water from the River Thames is pumped into equipment in the specially-built plant room adjacent to the river. This water passes through a high-efficiency heat exchanger, which transfers the low grade heat in the river water to an internal ‘closed’ water system before the river water is immediately returned, untreated in any way, to the river. A state-of-the-art, two-stage filtration system has been installed to ensure that no fish fry or other marine life can enter the system. Developed by the B & V Group, the largest independent water treatment company in the UK, the two intake filters positioned on the river bed are 600mm in diameter and 1.04m long. Each is capable of a water intake of 550m3 per hour although they are programmed to run at a maximum of 270m3 per hour, which minimises the actual velocity through the screen. With a mesh size of 1.5mm (which complies with the requirements of the Environmental Agency) and secondary, self-cleaning intake filters with a super-fine epoxy-coated carbon steel mesh of 100 microns, the filtration has been designed to ensure that no marine life can enter the system. The filters on the secondary units are also upgradeable to 70 microns filtration.

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Jeffrey Adams, Group Chief Executive of United House, said: “Kingston Heights is delivering a number of firsts – a ground-breaking new way to harness heat for homes from the Thames and building over a substation to provide new homes, without disrupting the power supply. United House is renowned for its ability to tackle complex, technically challenging projects and Kingston Heights is an outstanding example of our skills.” Mike Spenser-Morris, Managing Director of client NHP Leisure Developments said: “This is a pioneering scheme which forms the final piece of the jigsaw in the regeneration of this part of Kingston town centre We hope that it will pave the way for other developments to utilise some of the construction methods and sustainable technology that is being incorporated here. We are delighted to have appointed United House as our main contractor due to their exceptional management team, their professionalism in every area of the construction process, and their co-operative approach to dealing with the unique circumstances of this project.” ■

+ More Information www.unitedhouse.net

Sustainable Build & Civil Engineering

R i c k Hol land / TSB /R etro f i t A nal y s i s

The Retrofit Challenge Here in the UK, buildings have a very high environmental footprint. To start to tackle these challenges the whole lifecycle of a building needs to be considered. From concept, design and construction, through to commissioning, hand-over and operation.

R i c k Hol land

Lead Technologist, Low Impact Buildings IP The Technology Strategy Board is supporting the construction sector, with a variety of programmes and tools designed to accelerate innovation to improve sustainability in the built environment.

Our role

The Technology Strategy Board is the UK’s innovation agency. Its goal is to accelerate economic growth by stimulating and supporting business-led innovation. Sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Technology Strategy Board brings together business, research and the public sector, supporting and accelerating the development of innovative products and services to meet market needs, tackle major societal challenges and help build the future economy. The Technology Strategy Board has invested £48m in the Low Impact Buildings innovation platform over the past five years. This has been leveraged to nearly £118m with government co-funding (£31m); industry match funding (£34m); and aligned funding (£5m) to help disseminate findings. This has led to over 550 grants and contracts. The Low Impact Buildings programme has recently been awarded a further £60m over the next five years to support innovation to ‘industrialise’ the construction section so that sustainable, high | 94 | environmentmagazine.co.uk

performing buildings can be routinely delivered. We expect this investment to attract a further £30m from co-funders. The areas of focus are: • Digital design and engineering: next generation digital design tools to enable a more industrialised approach to both new buildings and retroﬁtting, including Building Information Modelling (BIM), ‘BIM-CAM’ (BIMenabled computer aided manufacturing), 3D/ additive printing technologies, and stronger vertical supply chain integration. • High performance materials and building technologies: including more integrated and composite products, smart components and assemblies with sensing, diagnostics and communication built-in. Also, climate resistant facades, climate active facades, and low cost embedded energy generation within facades. • Energy eco-systems: in response to the 2020 energy reduction targets being written into EU legislation, the EU sees smart grids as a signiﬁcant part of the solution with buildings ‘becoming the power stations of the future’. Decentralised, embedded generation will also bring greater energy security as well as resilience to climate impacts.

• Energy management and diagnostics tools: as energy costs increase, legislation tightens and performance-based contracting grows, the market in energy management is predicted to grow at 10% per annum. Energy management and diagnostic tools are being used to complete feedback loops, unlock a data driven economy, and enable business opportunities based on performance-based speciﬁcation.

The retrofit challenge

The UK is committed to reducing its carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. With around 45% of total UK carbon emissions coming from buildings – 27% from housing and 18% from non-domestic buildings – a sizeable part of that ambitious carbon reduction target will have to be delivered by energy efficiency improvements to the UK’s existing housing stock. Given that most of the homes we will inhabit in 2050 have already been built, ‘retrofitting’ – applying modifications to existing housing stock to significantly improve energy efficiency – presents itself as perhaps the major challenge. The scale of this task presents huge business opportunities for companies that can develop solutions that are effective and scaleable, at reasonable cost.

Web: www.innovateuk.org

Estimates put the value of the retrofit market at £200bn over the next forty years. Existing funding sources, including the current ECO and Green Deal schemes, are a small fraction of the future market. Once the ‘scaling up’ challenges are overcome, the retrofit market will rapidly open up as customers will be able to obtain much more suitable offerings from the building industry.

Retrofit for the Future – The story so far

In 2009 we launched Retrofit for the Future. It aimed to inspire and act as a catalyst for the retrofit market by showcasing innovative approaches to low-carbon retrofit, and to boost the UK retrofit industry. The Retrofit for the Future funding call was open to a wide range of companies. It saw the Technology Strategy Board invest £17m in ambitious projects around the country, using solutions with the potential to be applied to a wide range of housing. It encouraged ‘whole-house' solutions, which looked at the energy-efficiency of an entire property. The programme catalysed the retrofit of over 100 homes across the UK, with an ambition of achieving an 80% reduction in the CO2 emissions of each property. Now, with those demonstration projects completed, our detailed analysis, ‘Retrofit Revealed’ available at www.retrofitanalysis.org,

shows dramatic improvements can be achieved – and businesses are reporting real benefits from their involvement. The report also revealed those factors common to successful retrofit projects. They included: • Detailed and comprehensive project planning • Dedicated co-ordination of the project • Strong buy-in to the retroﬁt project mission by the project team • A strong understanding by site staff of the importance of good air-tightness • Strong supply chain management, particularly where control systems and innovative products are concerned • Early and frequent engagement with residents • Support staff training, to ensure effective ongoing help to residents.

Updating our results

Since publishing ‘Retrofit Revealed’ we’ve gathered more data about each retrofit and analysed this new information in greater depth. We’re incorporating this information into an updated, expanded final report for publication early in 2014. The www. retrofitanalysis.org website also contains the first analysis of monitoring data provided by Retrofit

for the Future projects. The data, which includes a series of charts showing the performance of the properties, including energy use, CO2 emissions, internal temperatures, air tightness and occupant satisfaction, has already been downloaded thousands of times since being made available.

Scaling up

With the government’s challenging 2050 carbon reduction target set and the majority of the UK’s 2050 housing stock already built, the key industry challenge is clear: identifying and scaling up those retrofit approaches with most potential to consistently deliver significant energy reductions at a realistic cost.. We’ve recently awarded funding to a range of project proposals, as part of the next stage of our programme to support innovation in this space through our ‘Scaling up Retrofit’ funding competition. The ‘Scaling up Retrofit’ funding programme allows project consortia to re-think their supply chains with mass adoption in mind, and deliver retrofit solutions which are a price-focused with guaranteed energy performance.. Enhancing the retrofit value proposition to customers will require fresh knowledge and significant innovation in a number of areas, including: ► environmentmagazine.co.uk | 95 |

Sustainable Build & Civil Engineering • new integrated products and solutions providing fast, low-cost, reliable upgrades to buildings • new approaches to reducing the time and cost barriers associated with selecting homes suitable for retrofit, conducting surveys to determine existing performance and recommending improvements • organisation of on-site workers to reduce disruption to customers, including trials of multi-skilled workforces • installation, fitting and fixing methods that reduce risk of error, and use of high-cost components such as scaffolding • new methods of measuring and assuring performance in use taking advantage of innovation in all these areas to increase retrofit take-up and improve property values through new business models providing project finance, guarantees and warranties, as well as long-term aftercare and service provision.

Boosting businesses

Many small companies have grown significantly as a result, and in several cases they have been able to take innovative products or processes to market after demonstrating their effectiveness through Retrofit for the Future ■

+ More Information Technology Strategy Board www.innovateuk.org United House www.unitedhouse.net AlertMe www.alertme.com

Case study: United House

One example is social housing contractor United House. As part of a retrofit project, the company worked on the installation of an innovative internal wall insulation system developed by the Sustainable Energy Academy. Using lasers to scan the internal dimensions of properties, the system enables the right insulation parts to be cut extremely accurately in an off-site environment. The technology was used for the first time in a Retrofit for the Future project at Bertram Street in Camden, without the residents having to leave the property – saving a great deal of expense and upheaval. The project reduced carbon emissions by over 60%, and more than halved fuel bills for the property. According to Chris Cheshire of United House, the project was extremely valuable as a proving-ground for the system, giving the company the material to market its services. He said, ‘Being able to take potential clients to a reference site where the tenants are great advocates for the process has been an absolute winner.' Taking part has helped United House go from strength to strength. After showing a Surrey housing association round the Bertram Street property, the company won a further order for retrofitting 110 houses, and it is currently working on 40 more.

Case study: Wattbox

Wattbox is another success story from the programme. This is a ‘smart control unit' that learns the typical patterns of energy use in households, helping them to use energy more efficiently. It was used in several different Retrofit projects and in some 30 different houses of different types. Wattbox was a non-trading start-up at the launch of Retrofit for the Future – a business right on the starting blocks, with two prototype units and a big idea. The Retrofit programme brought the opportunity to sell some fully functional products and demonstrate that they worked. Its success led to Wattbox being acquired by AlertMe, a smart home technology company, and winning several further contracts, including one to fit over 100 Wattboxes for a housing association that was also involved in Retrofit for the Future. As Wattbox managing director Adrian Coe explains, ‘Retrofit helped us make a business out of a good idea.'

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R i c k Hol land / TSB /R etro f i t A nal y s i s

this is

recycled

This is concrete The reuse of the concrete frame from this post-war development was a key part of both the structural and aesthetic vision. Refurbishing (rather than demolishing and rebuilding) has prevented four football stadia of material entering the waste stream. Building in concrete means a long design life. This is worth talking about.

www.thisisconcrete.co.uk

twitter: @thisisconcrete

Park Hill, Sheffield is nominated for the 2013 RIBA Stirling Prize.

This is Concrete is supported by The Concrete Centre

Sustainable Build & Civil Engineering

Ch r i s Chesh i re / Uni ted House/ W H IS CE R S

Retrofitting Tackling Rising Energy Bills Three particularly significant energy stories have hit the headlines recently, reflecting an increasingly austere picture. The UN says global carbon emissions have hit an all-time average high with little sign of waning, while the big six energy companies have now all announced that they will shortly be hiking up prices. Latest statistics also reveal that fuel poverty is on the rise, meaning that up to one in four families across the country are now spending more than ten per cent of their income just on staying warm. A great deal has already been said about ensuring that new-build properties are energy efficient and comply with the increasingly stringent Code for Sustainable Homes. With the Government’s 2016 zero-carbon target for new homes and more ambitious 2050 80 percent overall carbon reduction targets on the horizon, the emphasis has been on looking to the future. Steps here are already being taken and this will require farreaching changes in the way we think about, design and construct new homes - but what about Britain’s existing housing stock? Over a quarter of UK carbon emissions come from these homes and this figure isn’t set to change without action. There has to be a change in attitudes, placing more emphasis on retrofitting and ensuring that existing properties are energy efficient. There are a number of areas where retrofitting can prove beneficial but perhaps the most significant and effective is insulation. Progress has been made on the retrofitting of insulation to newer cavity walled homes, with around 70 percent of cavity walled properties in the UK now treated. However around eight million homes in the UK - about 29 percent of the total housing stock - have solid walls and of the | 98 | environmentmagazine.co.uk

by Chr i s Cheshire

Business leader for innovation, United House

326,000 high rise flats in England, this figure rises to 48 per cent. This means that they require above average amounts of energy to heat them, resulting in expensive bills and increased carbon emissions. It is possible to improve the thermal efficiency of solid-wall properties via internal or external insulation but as of April 2012, only 153,000 solid walled homes had been insulated in this way, leaving the vast majority leaking heat at an alarming rate. There are a number of reasons for this, exterior wall insulation is expensive and simply not practical to install in about 60 per cent of cases due to the construction of the building or tight planning restrictions. This leaves the other option of interior wall insulation but to date, only a tiny percentage of solid walled properties have been insulated in this way. Cost is the biggest barrier; interior wall insulation works out at an average of £5,000 per property – not taking into account the cost of temporarily rehousing tenants while the work takes place, which can cost up to £4,000 and cause severe disruption, especially to the elderly or those with young children. The loss of the Carbon Emission Reduction Target (CERT) and Community Energy Saving Programme (CESP) earlier this year has struck a blow to the financial incentives for social landlords and local authorities to install such measures. Meanwhile, the Government’s highly anticipated Green Deal has faced teething problems, with latest figures showing a disappointing uptake. The positive news is that there are solutions and systems being developed to make retrofitting more affordable and available on a nationwide scale. United House and The Sustainable Energy Academy (SEA) have been working together over

the past three years to develop a volume solution to the problem of insulating the nation’s social housing stock. Together, we have come up with the WHISCERS™ process – which stands for Whole House In-Situ Carbon and Energy Reduction Solution. WHISCERS is a patented, revolutionary technique which allows internal wall insulation to be installed in a single day, with minimal disruption and reduced cost. Most importantly, occupants do not need to move out whilst it is being installed. The process uses laser scanning to measure the dimensions of a room, allowing insulation boards to be cut off-site and installed quickly and efficiently with residents remaining in their homes throughout the entire process. For installers, it’s not that much more complicated than putting a giant jigsaw puzzle together. People can carry on with their lives with the work happening around them, with fitters also trained to remove and replace cornices, sockets and radiators. The real innovation of WHISCERS is in the way that it brings together several existing technologies to accomplish a positive result - less disruption, less waste and reduced cost. Traditional methods of installing internal wall insulation cost around £110 per sq m, but WHISCERS costs only £82 - a saving of 25 percent. This means that an average house can be insulated for around £3,500, saving around £1,500 over conventional methods, plus reducing additional costs for decanting tenants while the work takes place, which can amount to £4000 when removal services, loss of rent, postal redirection and tenant liaison are taken into consideration. For a typical solid-walled three bedroom property, installing WHISCERS can reduce energy use for

Web: www.unitedhouse.net

Laser scanning measures the dimensions of a room, allowing insulation boards to be cut off-site and installed quickly and efficiently with residents remaining in their homes throughout the entire process.

For a typical solid-walled three bedroom property, installing WHISCERS™ can reduce energy use for heating by around 40%, or 10 MWh per year – equating to around 1.9 tonnes of CO2 per year – a reduction in carbon emissions of 77%. heating by around 40 percent, or 10 MWh per year – equating to around 1.9 tonnes of CO2 per year – a reduction in carbon emissions of 77 percent. If the property has electric storage heaters in use this equates to a huge saving of around £600 in bills, dropping to around £400 for gas central heating at 2012/3 gas prices. The benefits are more than just monetary, some households in Britain will have been under-heating their homes due to financial difficulties, so adding insulation will dramatically improve their comfort and alleviate health problems triggered by cold, damp living conditions. Environmentally, the use of off-site cutting of insulation panels from larger boards also reduces wasted board area to just 10 percent. Plus, because the leftover materials are at the cutting factory, they are all recycled. The WHISCERS process has been in development and testing for three years, and a patent has now been granted. So far there have been over 146 installations including three early pilots, benefitting about 220 people. The investment has been significant – with nine of the United House team working on the project. United House undertook the first mass roll-out of WHISCERS on behalf of Mole Valley Housing Association (part of the Circle Group) in two tower blocks on the Goodwyns Estate in Dorking, Surrey. The scope of the project encompassed improving insulation and energy efficiency, while reducing fuel bills and carbon emissions in 104 flats in the two 13-storey blocks, constructed with concrete panel walls with no insulation. The work took place over six months, and using WHISCERS, the time taken to install insulation in each flat was cut from five days to under three days.

It reduced survey times, minimised material waste and avoided mess and dust in the homes. The work was very well received by residents and U-values reduced from 1.7 to 0.3 and heat loss in each flat by 40 per cent. The overall carbon efficiency of the building is expected to improve by up to 80 per cent which is very positive news, with fuel bills cut by around £445 for the tenants. UH/SEA won an Ashden Gold Award – our most prestigious award – in June this year. The judging panel was impressed at its potential to break down the barriers to making our housing stock more energy efficient, which they said could “revolutionise the home insulation sector.” In 2012, United House secured a €100,000 Eracobuild grant to develop WHISCERS in Europe over a three year programme. Eracobuild is a panEuropean initiative which looks at modernising construction methods and operation of buildings across the continent, which a particular focus on energy saving measures. United House is teaming up with the Vienna University of Technology and Athens University to trial the low-carbon retrofit technique in Austria and Greece and will be working with the universities to test the technique for insulating against solar gain and also thermal insulation. Nationwide measures are being put in place to help drive innovation and investment in this sector, one of which was the Retrofit for the Future initiative, launched last year by the Technology Strategy Board. This was a competition designed to highlight new technologies, materials and processes - one of which was WHISCERS - to catalyse the retrofit of over 100 homes, with the goal of reducing the in-use CO2

emissions of each property by up to 80 per cent. The competition was a success and the Technology Strategy Board has now published detailed results and analysis of each project under the initiative, forming a valuable and practical resource bank for anyone wanting to undertake a retrofit project in future. The Retrofit for the Future programme provided a crucial demonstration of how crossindustry collaboration from residents, contractors, designers, house builders and researchers can help stimulate discussion and help create new opportunities for the retrofit market. Ultimately the programme highlighted that retrofitting is both a viable and effective solution for our industry to helping tackle climate change; results showed that not only were carbon emissions substantially reduced but that residents living in retrofitted houses are more able to afford to keep their homes at a comfortable temperature, reducing the threat of fuel poverty. A further solution to make retrofitting more accessible could be for the Government to extend the Green Deal to people living in social housing, with funds available to councils to support major retrofitting programmes, in turn saving tenants and housing providers considerable sums of money in the long term. Providing new affordable, efficient homes is vital but we have to invest in older social housing stock to ensure that all residents benefit from improved living conditions and lower energy bills ■

+ More Information www.unitedhouse.net environmentmagazine.co.uk | 99 |

Timber & Forestry

Stephen K i ng / Sustai nable Ti mb er / TT F

Asset in a Class of its Own Stephen King, President of the UK’s Timber Trade Federation and Commercial Director of SCA Timber Supply, says there’s more value in timber than is commonly acknowledged.

In answering the question “What’s the best thing about wood?” most people’s first response probably won’t include its carbon sequestration and storage properties, its quick build properties, nor its biomass heating potential. People interact with wood on a human scale. They connect with the look of the grain, the texture, colour and even the scent of the natural material. Academic studies in a number of countries have identified the emotional response to wood and its potential for improving well-being. It is estimated that one in four of us in Britain will encounter mental health problems at some point in our lives, which could cost the economy around £76bn a year. A material which is recognised as provoking feelings of comfort and relaxation, potentially reducing stress, should be high on the list for home-builders wanting to enact their corporate responsibility to society. Wood has a valuable role to play in bringing a natural feel back to interiors in both domestic and non-domestic environments.

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Even though these benefits can’t presently be financially quantified, they put timber in a class of its own as a building material.

harvested to lock away CO2 in its fibres, and trees suddenly assume an entirely different order of magnitude in terms of value.

Natural Value

The number of people living in cities world-wide has now exceeded those living in the countryside; noise levels are increasing wherever we go. Some nine years ago, CABE (the Commission on Architecture & the Built Environment, now part of the Design Council), looked at hospital design. Its report documented reduced patient and staff stress levels in areas with noise-reducing surfaces. Including wood in the design of buildings and their interior surfaces can help reduce noise problems, yet the value of this benefit, too, remains un-quantified, alongside timber’s ability to absorb and release moisture into interior spaces, and its contribution to reducing ‘sick building syndrome’. If they remain un-quantified they will eventually cease to be factored into design, removing a cost-effective way to improve healthy living standards. ►

Putting a price on natural assets such as forests and quantifying the value of their ‘ecosystem services’ is a burgeoning field of research, and one in which the timber industry in the UK is engaging fully. Last year’s Independent Panel on Forestry Report recognised the economic, ecological and social contribution of forests to UK PLC. The societal impact of air pollution is estimated to cost the country £16bn per year. Trees of all kinds help reduce this and contribute to clean air during their growth phase; they contribute to regulation of the water cycle, and provide a home for nature’s diversity. Add to that their role in nutrient cycles, recreation, and cultural heritage, plus wood’s ability when

Timber & Forestry

Stephen K i ng / Sustai nable Ti mb er / TT F

Somerville College, Oxford

Economic Value

Alongside the social and ecosystem services benefits – which the ONS has valued at £20bn – there is a strong case for timber in traditional economic terms. Britain’s timber industry employs around 150,000 people from forests to finished products. The capital cost of developing timber processing and manufacturing plants is far lower than other construction materials, and in England alone, increasing the use of timber could create a further 7,000 jobs, many in the rural economy, according to the Independent Panel on Forestry. Despite the continuing difficulties of the construction and manufacturing sectors in the UK, the timber industry has performed well, with an annual average turnover of £8.5bn, putting it in the top half of all UK manufacturing industries. No other construction material can supply such a range of tangible and intangible value: a value that extends inexorably into the future with every tree replanted by three more after legal and sustainablygrown timber has been harvested. Timber’s life-cycle benefits are also currently underplayed, with re-use, recycling into panel

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products and other materials, and end of life energy recovery, all being viable economic options. Other countries have recognised wood’s potential as a climate and cost-saver, and as a value-generator. In Canada, France, Japan, Slovenia and elsewhere, construction projects at different levels are asked to consider wood first for their design. Wood for Good’s “Wood First” campaign, started in 2012, was aimed at educating planning departments and the public sector about the carbon reduction benefits of using timber and to promote it to being a first choice material for sustainable design. Several local authorities have looked into this with Hackney notably holding a Wood First conference to debate the idea. The theme has been so popular it has formed the basis of many construction industry debates, at EcoBuild and beyond. Wood for Good has now extended the idea through Wood First Plus, a project to gather and present all life-cycle assessment data of the main list of timber products used in construction, so that designers and other specifiers can make an informed choice about the positive environmental advantages of choosing Wood First.

Promotion of wood’s thermal properties has so far been aimed at building designers and technicians. As an industry we must now take the message out further and make the general public aware that wood has the best thermal properties of any mainstream construction material – it insulates 15 times better than concrete, 400 times better than steel and 1,770 times better than aluminium. At a time when energy prices are spiralling, mainstreaming such information could give a boost to timber construction nationwide, with the benefits running from energy efficienct buildings all the way back to the forests. Seeing as an average saving of three tonnes of CO2 for each new 3-bedroomed timber-frame house is already achieved, it would also give the government’s mandated carbon targets a positive push in the right direction. With an election in view, political parties will be setting out their stalls on house-building levels. It’s the home-builders and developers, however, who hold the key to the increasing use of timber in buildings. Many of these are already seeing the benefit of using timber systems – Persimmon, for example, recently announced a huge expansion ►

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Timber & Forestry

Stephen K i ng / Sustai nable Ti mb er / TT F

As an industry we must now take the message out further and make the general public aware that wood has the best thermal properties of any mainstream construction material – it insulates 15 times better than concrete, 400 times better than steel and 1,770 times better than aluminium.

in its timber frame output for simple economic reasons. The factory conditions of timber frame manufacture often achieves higher levels of precision and quality control than on-site building methods, while the speed of the on-site assembly means enormous cost savings, meaning profits can be realised far quicker.

strength of our customers. Builders’ merchant buying consortia, for example, comprising mainly independent businesses, have strength in numbers and purchasing power. Promoting sustainable wood is one of the methods of levelling the playing field with their larger competitors, demonstrating their values and value to local builders.

The benefits in time to completion on site and the associated cost reductions are encouraging more house-builders to move to timber frame. With or without the new-build zero carbon target remaining for 2016, Wood for Good, the Timber Trade Federation and the Structural Timber Association are pushing forward the timber construction agenda. Continuing to foster closer links with Britain’s other timber-related organisations is helping to build a strong, concentrated voice that can affect change. That united front is much needed if our industry is to achieve its rightful place at the sustainable construction table.

Moving from demand to supply, there have been murmurings amongst the sustainability community of potential shortages of timber and wood products. Whilst the recent International Softwood Conference heard from delegates about possible short-term pinch-points on certain specifications, it has to be said that discussion of longer-term shortages was not filtering through from the suppliers and traders attending the (150-strong) gathering in Edinburgh. This is the only truly renewable mainstream construction material after all. Climate change may prove us wrong, however, and increasing extreme weather events may yet have their effects on worldwide demand for sustainable timber.

Further co-operation throughout the supply chain can also promote wood’s benefits to end users, as this autumn’s Grown in Britain campaign highlighted. With the majority of wood used in Britain still coming from outside the UK, and to compete effectively with other perhaps less sustainable construction materials, our industry should group its efforts around the message that all legal, sustainably-grown, and certified wood is good. Our message needs to draw in the collective

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Coming back to the future, our industry needs to promote wood as an asset to society’s health and wellbeing, to the climate, and of course to construction. Wood isn’t merely a commodity, it’s a precious material, to be harvested, processed and used intelligently, without waste. The value of wood goes way beyond the timber itself: it reconnects humanity with the natural world and brings the natural value of the forest into our homes ■

+ More Information Timber Trade Federation: www.ttf.co.uk SCA Timber Supply: www.sca.com/en/timber/Home Wood for Good: www.woodforgood.com

This

says

the f uture

Ask for SFI

you c are a bout of our forest s.

Wood from responsibly managed forests is an excellent choice for any new construction or renovation. Builders and architects are turning to products certified to the Sustainable Forestry Initiative速 (SFI速) Standard, endorsed by PEFC, to meet green building requirements. By asking for SFI, you are promoting sustainable forestry, helping to improve forestry practices and encouraging responsible purchasing of forest products. Look and ask for wood certified to the SFI Standard for all your projects. Visit sfidatabase.org for a list of SFI and PEFC products. Learn more at sfiprogram.org/green-building. Internationally endorsed by

PEFC/29-1-1

Transport

Si mo n Evans / Spi l l s / Lu betec h

AdBlue:

The Unpleasantness of Environmental Enforcement By Simon Evans

Marketing Director, Lubetech Following recent meetings between AdBlue, the Environment Agency/Scottish Environment Protection Agency and Lubetech, spill control provisions for Emission Reduction Solutions (ERS), (alternatively known as Diesel Exhaust Fluids or DEF) is coming under scrutiny, based on a number of factors. Unlike other common fuel-injection additives, DEF is introduced to the diesel engine by way of injection into the exhaust. Modern diesel engines run a 'lean burn' air-to-fuel ratio (overstoichiometric ratio) assuring more complete combustion of soots, preventing unburnt fuel from being exhausted. The excess of oxygen leads to production of harmful pollutants in the form of nitrogen oxides (NOx). Selective catalytic reduction is therefore used to reduce the amount of NOx released into the atmosphere. To achieve this diesel exhaust fluid (from a separate DEF tank) is injected into the exhaust pipeline where the aqueous urea vaporizes, decomposing to form ammonia and carbon dioxide. Within the SCR catalyst, the NOx are catalytically reduced by the ammonia (NH3) into water (H2O) and nitrogen (N2), which are both harmless; these may then be released through the exhaust. Standardised as ISO 22241 is an Aqueous Urea Solution made with 32.5% high-purity urea (AUS 32) and 67.5% deionised water. DEF is used as a consumable in selective catalytic reduction (SCR) in order to lower NOx concentration in the diesel exhaust emissions from diesel engines. The bestknown brand name is AdBlue, although there are several significant brand names also in the marketplace. Now, as a product specifically sold as an aid to environmental compliance AdBlue

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is used in huge quantities and volumes by plant, equipment and vehicle operators throughout the UK. Lubetech has learned that users now potentially face additional scrutiny from a less expected quarter as part of a what may be cynically regarded as a revenue generation exercise instigated by the Health & Safety Executive (H&SE) under their 'Fees for Intervention' scheme, introduced in October 2012: Issues raised concern the following:

1. Oil-only Spill Kits and absorbent product types typically carried in a supplemental tank by vehicles to deal with diesel and fuel spills are unsuited to DEF. By definition such oil-only spill products have hydrophobic capabilities to maximise oil capture while excluding water. Miscible solutions such as AdBlue are therefore fundamentally unsuited to remediation with such product types and in consequence a suitable supplemental spill kit must be provided. While the product poses minimal risk to operators, the urea solution is very polluting to groundwater and surface water and therefore provision must be made for containment. 2. Spills involving AdBlue must be handled as a chemical incident: DEF is not inherently dangerous but risk of ammonia fumes and the risk of temperature-induced vapour generation is high (DEF’s typically begin to give off ammonia at just +30°c – IBC’s stored in direct sunlight can easily see fluid contents reach +40-50°c). Consequently, incidents may have complex fluid/gas elements leading to a full Hazchem escalation. 3. Lack of specific training in storage and handling: AdBlue is a urea-based product held in aqueous solution, NOT a hydrocarbon: IBC’s or storage vessels containing AdBlue must be specifically suited to containment of urea; stored away from direct sunlight and under cover. While the product is not classified as hazardous material it is highly corrosive

on copper and aluminium alloys and can disrupt pipes, hoses, valves/dispensing systems including washers and sealing devices. Consideration must therefore be given to the suitability of dispensers and pipe work. PPG 7 (under EA guidelines) provides outline information, with separate specific guidance document, which must form the basis for all compliance. Serious incidents have already occurred and EA/SEPA wish to raise awareness as this reflects on companies that select DEF’s as beneficial to the environment. Lubetech reminds ISO 14001 business that ISO accreditation and EMS-compliance issues raises real risk for removal of accreditation. 4. In a typical co-mingled environment (where DEF & Fuels are found together), interceptor drains fitted to comply with PPG7 and hydrocarbon pollution prevention measures are seriously contaminated (and efficiencies reduced) by any combination of the fuel and the fluid. Awareness is very low that an Interceptor is NOT suited for capture of DEF spills. Therefore active containment of spills to prevent ingress to the Interceptor Drain is mandatory. Any site dispensing fuels and AdBlue from pumps should urgently address the suitability of provisions. Note: Sand is wholly unacceptable as a sorbent material.

Finally, EA & SEPA have become aware of spill products being sold as 'AdBlue Compliant' when they are no such thing. This has been confirmed by Lubetech site visits where we also see a worrying absence of separate planning and preparation for, and prevention of, DEF-related incidents. Lubetech therefore offers the following guidelines for Environment Industry Magazine readers, which should be read in conjunction with the wider requirements for regulatory compliance. If AdBlue is used, stored and/or dispensed, immediate review of spill control should be carried

Web: www.lubetech.co.uk

out utilising this simple 5-point framework: • Is the spill kit available – and suitable? • Is the storage device suitable? Associated valves and pipework? • Is the bunding suitable - and compliant? • Is the location of AdBlue appropriate? (away from interceptor and other drains, under cover) • Is your emergency plan up to date and your management and staff suitably trained? Finally, and importantly, Lubetech wishes to remind business of Health & Safety Guidelines in light of recent changes to those guidelines issued by the Health & Safety Executive at the start of August 2013. In October 2012 the H&SE assumed powers to charge a 'Fee for Intervention' to investigate material breaches of health & safety regulation. This fee is currently £124 per hour. In the first six months of operation some 5,766 invoices were issued, raising some £2,673,773 at an average invoice value of £464. Argued for safety not revenue generation, Lubetech has learned of a recent case where a 2-day site audit was concluded with a clean bill of health for the company. Using the washroom prior to departure the H&S Executive Inspector returned, noting that the soap dispenser in the washroom was empty - and therefore their entire visit was now to be regarded as an 'intervention'. The business has received an invoice for nearly £2,000… Now, new Guideline revisions issued by the H&SE on the 1st August place spillage protection at the very heart of the compulsory Risk Assessment (for any business with more than 5 employees), providing a revised document for completion. Given such safety scrutiny Lubetech asserts that AdBlue spill review and protection MUST be regarded as high priority for all users – and Urgent for those dispensing and storing on site. We also recommend it should be integrated as part of a full Risk Assessment for H&S and Environmental purposes. The requirement for the spill control exists, now, there is no reason for business to be caught out by unscrupulous so-called safety measures that penalise business for trying to be environmentally friendly and legally compliant. Through Environment Industry Magazine, Lubetech, the World Leaders in Spill Control, will be happy to offer free site advice and compliance guidance to UK business. This can be arranged through your local Lubetech distributor or via AdBlue Head Office to engage in a full review of compliance for not just AdBlue, but all spill control measures ■

+ More Information Lubetech: www.lubetech.co.uk Environment Agency: www.environment-agency.gov.uk

environmentmagazine.co.uk | 107 |

Transport

B en Har r i s / Transp o r t Sy stems Catapu l t

Why does a Sustainability Professional Want to be a Part of the Transport Systems Catapult?

BEN HARRIS, part of the Transport System Catapult start up team describes how he got involved in this new initiative. Back in July 2013 I attended a Transport Knowledge Transfer Network event in London. The event showcased some of the new innovative technologies and concepts that were being developed in the transport market. Dr Daniel Ruiz, Interim Director, introduced the Transport Systems Catapult (TSC), a new Technology Strategy Board concept to make it easier for UK companies to commercialise new ideas and compete more readily on the international stage. Listening to Daniel talk I realised that this new initiative, whilst set up to encourage growth, had at its very centre some of the guiding principles that sustainability professionals have been working to introduce into the marketplace: understanding better the reasons for transport and reducing the need; managing the system so that movement is integrated across modes; resilience in the network through modal shift; more efficient forms of transport; greater accessibility; whole life cost; and understanding residual value. These mechanisms encourage the use of technology in the short term and shifts in business models in the long term that will encourage sustainable decisions. Decisions which have the potential to reduce energy consumption, make better use of resources, increase resilience, provide better access to transport and reduce the impact of the system whilst increasing mobility. After speaking to Daniel and being told about the secondments to the interim team I snapped up the opportunity; my company, the sustainability consultancy Temple Group, recognised the leading vision that the TSC was looking to introduce and was very supportive of my application. What is the TSC trying to do? The TSC has been set up to respond to the challenges that face the transport sector and encourage growth. Transport is essential for the UK: for example, not many people realise that without it we would run out of most | 108 | environmentmagazine.co.uk

foods within seven days. In recent years the global demand for transport has increased significantly faster than the investment required to meet it, resulting in growing levels of congestion across all transport modes. It is becoming harder to build new infrastructure and the impact of transport on the environment and on communities continues to be a growing concern. According to the European Climate Foundation, transport accounts for a quarter of the EU’s energy use and carbon footprint and, whilst the overall carbon footprint has reduced, carbon emissions from transport continue to rise. There are huge challenges facing the sector, with aging assets and long term ‘mega trends’ such as ageing populations, movement to greater urbanisation, a need to tackle climate change and respond to climate impacts. The UK is predicted to be the EU’s most populous nation by 2050. What can the industry do to tackle these problems? New technologies and investment in the current system can help to meet some of these challenges but we need to get more for less across the transport network, increasing its effectiveness whilst supporting local communities and reducing the impact on the environment. We need a more integrated approach. Recent research for the European Commission demonstrates how cost effective this can be. Innovations such as integrated ticketing and information integration can have benefit cost ratios of over 5:1. By bringing together information about travel patterns with solutions that focus on benefits for the user significant improvements can be made to the way in which transport is planned, operated and used. The London 2012 Olympics demonstrated what can be achieved by predicting both demand and travel hotspots, and providing tools and information for passengers to ease journey planning, including a

Web: www.ts.catapult.org.uk

The London 2012 Olympics demonstrated what can be achieved by predicting both demand and travel hotspots, and providing tools and information for passengers to ease journey planning, including a very effective awareness campaign ‘Get Ahead of the Games’. Photo: Chris Sampson

very effective awareness campaign ‘Get Ahead of the Games’. The Zurick mobility strategy successfully sought to increase demand for public transport by measures to improve pedestrian provision based on the premise that ‘every passenger is also a pedestrian’. These initiatives unlock the potential of a truly multi-modal approach. Further advances have the potential to radically change the way goods are transported; 3D printing as a concept has the potential to introduce a whole new way of delivering freight. We are also seeing a generation of people using social media in a whole new way and fewer people learning how to drive. There is a new way of viewing transport starting to emerge; to consider ‘mobility’ first and how we can utilise new technologies to deliver intelligent vehicles, intelligent infrastructure, intelligent freight and provide information to users so they can make intelligent decisions. This way of thinking about transport has been coined ‘intelligent mobility’. As well as being more cost effective intelligent mobility also provides a more sustainable view of transport. Transport users will have greater access and choice. The needs of the individual will be met by the system rather than the modes responding to the needs of the system. Over time greater efficiency will further reduce the impact on the environment whilst continuing to provide greater mobility. What does this mean? Could we see a future where there are seem-less journeys? Where social media helps you to predict travel patterns and smart phones provide insight into a fully integrated travel plan? Could we see integrated transport systems created through collaboration between the different modes? Could we see new forms of travel, like autonomous vehicles? Will this new form of mobility enable us to reduce our impact on the environment? Could we use less energy and alternative forms of energy? Could we maximise the value of resources? Could we continue to improve

safety in transport and reduce health impacts whilst increasing accessibility and promoting growth? If we think about ‘mobility’ rather than ‘transport’ then a range of possibilities start to emerge. The digital revolution changes the dynamic of movement, in the way that we plan, operate and use transport but also in the way that we define movement. What will the TSC do? The TSC will provide what Neil Ridley, Chief Business Development Officer, describes as the ‘missing middle’, a collaborative environment which enables the sector to play with new concepts. The National Transport Systems Modelling facility, which is currently under development and supported by the TSC, is one example of this. It will connect models from the Highways Agency, Transport for London, Network Rail and the National Air Traffic Control system. Combining these models enables us to understand the gaps between the models and the understanding of movement of goods and people. As the model grows and new organisations can plug into the concept it becomes a powerful collaborative space for creating new ideas, testing new concepts and innovating within the transport sector. The TSC is also supporting practical applications of new transport concepts. Along with members of the Automotive Council, Department of Business, Innovation & Skills, Milton Keynes Council and industrial partners the TSC is supporting the Low Carbon Urban Transport Zone (LUTZ) programme. LUTZ is based in Milton Keynes, a test-bed for innovative transport systems. It addresses the key challenge of how to increase mobility by exploring the potential for effective and cost-efficient movement of people in a city. One of the first programmes for LUTZ is the introduction of autonomous pods into the city centre. This is taking place in a number of stages,

commencing with a limited number of pods, with drivers, on segregated routes, moving to the fully autonomous pods mingling with pedestrians. Intelligent mobility must capture the power of social media and engage a wider stakeholder group to be effective. Working with an exciting social enterprise start-up, Commonplace, along with the Royal College of Art, the Transport Systems Catapult is looking at how information from social media and smart phone applications can be used to build ‘sentiment maps’ which map stakeholders opinions on the transport they use. We are asking how this information can improve transport and the way people use and feel about the transport system. The TSC is still in its early stages and is engaging the industry in these new concepts, looking to build on what has gone before. Neil Ridley explains, “We’re in ‘receive mode’ at the moment… What we are doing won’t replace what other organisations such as ITSUK have been doing. The TSC will complement by bringing into the mix different thinking which will complement the pure technology efforts. Its aim is to think about how technology can provide different services by bringing together organisations which might not naturally speak to each other.” What the TSC has identified is a huge commercial opportunity for the transport sector in delivering intelligent mobility. But beyond that the benefits are far reaching for society, the environment and the economy as a whole. By taking a new approach to transport we can create sustainable growth in the sector and meet some of the long term challenges. The UK has the opportunity to lead the global market in these sustainable technologies ■

+ More Information Please visit www.ts.catapult.org.uk to find out about the work the TSC is doing and how to get involved. environmentmagazine.co.uk | 109 |

Waste Management

Dr Dar rel l Patterso n et al / Waste R ecover y

Recovering value from waste: Developing the Resource Streams and Raw Material Mines of the Future

â&#x2013;ş

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For more news, editorials, and product reviews, visit www.environmentmagazine.co.uk

Dr Dar rel l A lec Patterson

Department of Chemical Engineering and Centre for Sustainable Chemical Technologies, University of Bath

Dr Mark Ian Jones, Ju n Hasl i nda Shar i f f u d d i n

Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Auckland

IN a world of increasing awareness of environmental issues and responsibilities (which are increasingly being enforced via legislation as well as financial incentives and penalties), the minimization of by-products and waste from industry is becoming a major focus. As part of our research we are seeking solutions to achieve this for industry, and as an exemplar we are investigating waste minimisation, recycle and reuse for the aquaculture industry, by addressing the problem of the waste produced in shell fish processing. As an exemplar of this aquaculture waste we chose mussel shells. In New Zealand, where this work was primarily based, 95,000 tonnes of green lipped mussels (Perna Canaliculus) are produced annually and the export and domestic supply was estimated in 2010 at more than of $200m[1]. As a result, this part of the aquaculture industry creates a large and significant by-product of shells that are mostly disposed to landfill. This is a direct problem for industries that produce half shell products such as oysters and mussels for restaurants and fully shell-removed products. Annual NZ mussel shell waste has been estimated at 12,000 tonnes, and this wastage is set to get worse, with the shellfish industry expected to grow from a $300m a year to a billiondollar industry by 2025[2]. This is just New Zealand; looking at the industry worldwide the problem (and opportunity) is much larger: the shell fish industry worldwide is orders of magnitude larger, with large organised and competitive industries in many industrialised nations, including the UK, as well as Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, the USA, Canada and South Africa. Therefore the possibility of producing a useful product from these shell wastes will greatly enhance and ensure sustainable economic development as well as address waste management problems worldwide. An excellent framework to look at the utilization of any waste stream (including seashell wastes) is the well-known hierarchy of waste management practice, where the priorities are to try to eliminate, reduce or recycle the waste first by looking at the source of the emissions. Failing that, the waste is to be put to use by trying to recover energy from it. Failing that, one should treat the waste stream to lessen the risk and environmental impact. The last and final option is to dispose of the waste. A further driver to exploring and investing in the upper levels of the waste management hierarchy in particular, is the fact that it is becoming increasingly â&#x2013;ş

environmentmagazine.co.uk | 111 |

Waste Management

Dr Dar rel l Patterso n et al / Waste R ecover y

Annual mussel shell waste in New Zealand has been estimated at 12,000 tonnes, with the shellfish industry expected to grow to a billion-dollar industry by 2025 . Looking at the industry worldwide the problem is larger, with large organised and competitive industries in many industrialised nations. 2

Ramon F Velasquez difficult to ignore the rising waste disposal costs, which is being driven by growing waste volumes, inefficient use of resources, under-utilized byproducts, the imposition of tighter standards, increasing shortage of disposal space and the scarcity in the supply of replacement disposal facilities. As outlined above, these pressures are being felt in the aquaculture industry, providing an additional driver for the utilization of their waste. With all of this in mind, we have focused on waste recycling and reuse, viewing waste as an additional valuable resource rather than as something that should be disposed of and forgotten. This is because mussel shells (and indeed all sea shells) are a rich source of calcium carbonate, which in this research is utilised in the synthesis of a material called hydroxyapatite (HAP), Ca10(PO4)6(OH)2. So, to turn the shell waste into this value-added product, we developed a novel pyrolysis-wet slurry precipitation for the synthesis and manufacture of HAP from mussel shells (and therefore potentially all sea shells) (details of the work can be found here: [2]). This really is potentially a case of rags to riches for the shell waste: HAP is a high value product (typically 90-120 US$ per kg and up to 5000 US$ per kg for very high purity)[3,4] and this process may represent a more economically favourable alternative since it uses waste materials that are abundantly available. The HAP produced by our process can have a range of uses (such as a bone replacement material and separations of biomolecules), but to maximize the environmental return on recycling and reusing this waste material we optimized it as a photocatalyst for wastewater treatment. Photocatalysis is a rapidly developing wastewater treatment technology that can fully mineralise a wide range of pollutants. It works through the light (usually ultra violet light) activation of a photo active catalytic material to produce reactive chemical species that will break down molecules in gaseous or liquid waste streams. It is best applied on wastes that contain molecules that cannot be degraded or

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removed by other, more conventional, treatment technologies (such as the sort of biological degradation processes you find in municipal wastewater treatment works). The most commonly used and most active photocatalysts are powdered semi-conductors such as titanium dioxide and zinc oxide. However the problems with these catalysts are that they are expensive and consist of metals that have limited availability on Earth. Using HAP as a photocatalyst overcomes this problem – it contains readily and widely available atoms, can be made from renewable sources (such as waste mussel shells, as in the present work) and, depending on the required purity can be inexpensive to make. So, with the usage clear, our overall aim was (for the first time ever) to convert waste mussel shells into HAP, to act as photocatalyst in the degradation of wastewater pollutants. We have so far studied two model wastewaters: a model dye wastewater (methylene blue) and a model pulp and paper resin wastewater (dehydroabietic acid). Results are very promising – these model wastewaters can be degraded down to environmentally acceptable levels using the shell-derived HAP with UV light. This indicates the viability of testing these new waste shell derived photocatalysts for a wider range of wastewater compounds and moving on to more real (and therefore more complex) wastewaters. Work is currently continuing on this. Overall, our work hopefully shows a way forward for this kind of waste stream (and others), as it allows two existing environmental sustainability problems to be solved: pollution remediation and the transformation of a significant existing waste material into a useful commodity. The challenge now is to try to apply this model across a wider range of waste streams. Our work beyond mussel shell wastes will go a small way towards this. However this important area needs to be supported and developed by as many people as possible – there are a finite amount of resources on our planet and so we should be looking to treat waste as a used resource, not just as we produce it (i.e. dealing with

current wastes), but also the waste of the past – we have already a legacy of wasted resources largely languishing unutilised in landfills and other waste storage areas. The challenge and the opportunity is to now utilise these, like we have for the mussel shell waste. Our work hopefully shows that if we can develop the appropriate processing technologies (e.g. extraction, reaction, separation) to recover and reuse our waste, the waste streams and landfills of the past will be the resource streams and raw material mines of the future ■

Title Photograph: Ty Nigh

+ More Information www.fish.govt.nz/NR/rdonlyres/48A980A9-BCBC4F76-9999-752D67D399AC/0/9SpeciesFocusTheGre enshellMussel.pdf, accessed 21/11/2013.

SHARIFFUDDIN, J.H.; JONES, M.I.; PATTERSON, D.A. (2013) Chemical Engineering Research and Design, 91(9), 1693–1704. dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cherd.2013.04.018 (and references within).

www.alibaba.com/showroom/hydroxyapatite.html accessed 21/11/2013

4 www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/aldrich/2893 96?lang=en&region=, accessed 21/11/2013.

Email: d.patterson@bath.ac.uk Twitter: @drdapatterson

Waste Management

Dr Ph i li p Mo r to n / R EP I C / W E E E

The WEEE

Reformation ON 11th October, the Government announced that the UK is to adopt a ‘collection target and compliance fee’ system for household WEEE collection as of 1st January next year. Dr Philip Morton, CEO of the UK’s largest Producer Compliance Scheme, REPIC, discusses what a collection target and compliance fee system means in real terms.

In August this year, BIS published the results of its widespread consultation on the Government’s proposed amendments to the UK’s WEEE collection and reporting system. The results clearly demonstrated that all stakeholders were in favour of a more equitable and transparent system which could be delivered by either Option Three or Four of the four options proposed by BIS. Three months later, BIS has chosen Option 3 as its policy direction and says the UK will adopt a Collection Target and Compliance Fee system going forward. The initial positive stakeholder views were echoed by representatives from the WEEE treatment sector, producers, Producer Compliance Schemes (PCS), waste management and Local Authority (LA) sectors at a Round Table discussion

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in London. At the meeting – initiated to discuss how to ensure a smooth transition to the new system – those present collectively welcomed the greater level of choice that the new regulations will bring.

Greater Flexibility, Freedom of Choice

Under the current system, LAs and other collectors are required to hand over all WEEE to a producer compliance scheme free of charge, regardless of the WEEE stream. Where some collection streams represent a net cost overall after collection, transport and treatment, others have a net value. Recognising the potential net gain to be drawn from the latter, under the new system, approved collectors of household WEEE will no longer be obliged to hand over all WEEE streams. Instead,

each individual LA operated site will have the option to ‘self-treat’ WEEE streams. Any self-treated WEEE must undergo proper treatment and be reported into the UK system to count towards the UK Member State target. In many cases currently, there is an informal agreement in place, whereby the net value from certain WEEE streams is credited back to Local Authorities or their site operator. The new regulations in effect formalise this pre-existing informal agreement, safeguarding the Local Authorities’ and site operators’ interests.

Self-treatment and de-risk

Local Authorities or their site operators opting to self-treat need not do so alone. They can continue

Web: www.repic.co.uk

waste management partner or PCS and ask them to rebate the net income. I suspect we will see a mixture of solutions depending on each individual Local Authority choice, and we know from LA representatives at the round table that choice is important to them.

Guaranteed FOC Collection

Any WEEE streams the LAs or their site operators choose not to self- treat will continue to be collected free of charge by producer compliance schemes for treatment. At the beginning of each compliance year, schemes will be given a tonnage target to collect in proportion to the total market share of their members during the previous year. The new regulations also state that a producer compliance scheme must carry out free of charge collection from any LA that requests it, regardless of the scheme’s collection target. This means PCSs cannot stop collecting once they reach their target, which guarantees WEEE will always be collected free of charge from any LA operated site. In this respect, Option 3 comes with the built-in safeguard that any WEEE will be collected free of charge from local authority sites and properly dealt with by their partner of choice.

Compliance Fee

For schemes, the flip side of the system’s ‘collection target’ is the ‘compliance fee’ element: schemes collecting less than their collection target may pay a fee per tonne of their shortfall as an alternative mode of compliance. On the other hand, those who exceed their target must self-finance the excess costs (or retain the income gained) from the surplus WEEE. As for the fate of the fees collected: the consensus among stakeholders is to distribute this back to Local Authorities to invest in the collection network and further encourage WEEE collection. to partner with their preferred waste management company or PCS, thereby de-risking any movement in the market value of materials, or they can do it themselves. The choice is theirs.

The theory behind the compliance fee is to set it at a level to encourage producer compliance schemes to collect the amount of WEEE they are obliged to secure on behalf of their members.

This method will also help ensure that some materials that may have escaped the WEEE system in the past, can be captured and the tonnage used to contribute towards the UK’s WEEE collection rate. This is an important element of Option 3, and a necessary one if the UK is to meet the higher EU revised collection targets.

Ensuring that the compliance fee is calculated at the appropriate level will be key to ensuring that the new system works – the fee must be set at a level that will incentivise collection – too low or too high could influence market behaviour. The methodology to calculate the compliance fee is yet to be determined, but fees and potentially the methodology may vary from year to year.

In short, the good news is that any LA or their site operator has the freedom to choose to selftreat WEEE. The even better news is that it can do so itself, or if it prefers, can contract with its

Any chosen methodology should be published, and calculations should be managed at arm’s length by an independent third party to ensure

full transparency of the system, whilst maintaining proper commercial confidentiality between participants.

Practical matters

Last year, the Government initiated its Red Tape Challenge to ease the amount of reporting and paperwork and to address unnecessary cost for UK stakeholders across all industries, not just WEEE. One practical implication of the new regulations is that if an LA intends to self-treat any WEEE stream, this must be declared in advance for the full compliance year. The above changes will have a direct impact on reporting mechanisms, should include WEEE from currently unreported routes and are of benefit across the stakeholder community, ensuring the UK has an effective, efficient and economically sound, sustainable solution.

What next?

BIS has said the existing regulations will be revoked on 31st December this year and the new Regulations will come into force from 1st January 2014. What remains in the meantime is the requirement for all stakeholders to work together constructively to encourage greater levels of WEEE collection within the new system.

Conclusion

All WEEE stakeholders can find something positive with the Government’s chosen option of a Collection Target & Compliance Fee solution. The new system will safeguard Local Authorities’ interests, introduce a level of flexibility and the freedom of choice, and essentially facilitate the opportunity for LA to make money without ever having to face a cost. We can all look forward to a fair and equitable system with a clear audit trail for WEEE collection and treatment. The revised system should provide a practical solution to incentivise recycling and ultimately help the UK reach the new and increasing EU WEEE recycling targets ■

+ More Information REPIC is a not-for-profit company established in January 2004 by leading companies in AMDEA, SEAMA and Intellect – three of the main trade associations in the electrical and electronics industry – to meet their producer obligations under the WEEE Directive. www.repic.co.uk

environmentmagazine.co.uk | 115 |

Water

Dr. Patr i c ia Wouters / Water Co nf li c t / L aw

Water Conflict and International Co-operation by Dr Pat r ic ia Wouter s

Professor of International Water Law

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Web: www.chinainternationalwaterlaw.org

Two members of the Karo tribe, who depend on the Omo river's annual flood for cultivation and livestock. The largest infrastructure project in Ethiopian history - the Gibe III dam, threatens their way of life, and there is a risk that the resulting water scarcity could lead to violent conflict. Photo: Marc Veraart

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Water

Dr. Patr i c ia Wouters / Water Co nf li c t / L aw

Located in the heart of the Yangtze River, China, is the world’s largest hydroelectric dam - The Three Gorges Dam.

Bev Sykes

The world is covered by water and yet under 1% of it is freshwater, the essential ingredient for life in all of its dimensions. The global community has come to appreciate the grave potential for conflicts over water, exacerbated by growing demands and uncertain supplies. The impending ‘global water crisis’ has focused attention across the world, providing the impetus for a growing number of water security-related reports from all sectors and at all levels. The UN’s analytical brief on this topic, released on World Water Day (21 March 2013) against the backdrop of the UN’s International Year of Water Cooperation highlighted some of the challenges facing the global community in this respect. In that document water security is defined “as the capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable quality water for sustaining livelihoods, human well-being, and socio-economic development, for ensuring protection against waterborne pollution and water-related disasters, and for preserving ecosystems in a climate of peace and political stability”. This compendium of securityrelated issues illustrates clearly the great pressures on the world’s fresh-water resources, heightening the potential for increased conflicts over water. From an international legal perspective two connected issues arise: how will national governments ensure the security of supply for | 118 | environmentmagazine.co.uk

domestic use and how will such strategies affect international water security? Within these broad and complex questions are nested issues related to identifying and implementing measures to ensure agreed priorities where conflicts-of-use almost inevitably arise. Conflicts over water, at both the domestic and international levels already occur with threats of more to come – just search the topic on the internet and a long list appears even in today’s news reports. The issues relate not only to diminishing quantities, but also to diminished qualities of water resources. My current work in China and Asia reveals almost daily news stories on water-related issues, mostly dealing with scarcity, pollution and extreme events (floods and droughts). Similar challenges arise across the developed and developing world, and so the question is: how to address the global water crisis? Will the future of life on earth be compromised because of water scarcity? Money talks - the private sector is concerned and becoming more engaged in this sector; water now

features as an important agenda item for the World Economic Forum; international banks, such as HSBC, UBS and others have issued their own water risk reports, and the corporate sector, such as IBM, Coca-Cola, Nestles and many others are engaged in assessing the business risk associated with water insecurity. The public sector, such as the UN, national governments, NGOs and the global community at large, continue to convene international meetings seeking forward-looking solutions. The recent high level meeting convened by the Tajik government in Dushanbe (August 2013), building on its legacy as proposer of the UN resolution leading to the UN Decade on Water, brought together high-level actors to explore options for enhanced water cooperation. And yet despite this proliferation of reports, meetings and activities, water conflicts persist and will increase in the future.

Regional water security concerns

While national governments have difficult challenges at home, such as recent protests in Chile over mining and logging companies 'leaving all of Chile without water' (Guardian, Marianela Jarroud in Santiago

Web: www.chinainternationalwaterlaw.org

for IPS, part of the Guardian development network theguardian.com, Wednesday 24 April 2013), water disputes are even more complex when the contest is between national sovereign nations. At present the upstream-downstream watercourse State scenario presents one of the hardest situations – such as the case on the Nile where upper riparian Ethiopia proposes dams upstream on the Nile; or the case of China on the Brahmaputra and the Mekong; or Turkey on the Euphrates-Tigris, and Tajikistan on the Syr Darya with the Rogun Dam. In each of these upstream-downstream scenarios, the very essence of international relations is put to the test – just how far does national sovereignty justify transboundary water development? Asia, the “region with the most countries that have the potential to create and spread the main threats to humanity today”1, provides perhaps the most challenging case study for transboundary waters; many of the great rivers that service huge populations across the region originate in the Himalayan ‘Water Towers’. China shares 40 major international watercourses with its 14 riparian nations. As an upper riparian on most of these shared freshwaters, China faces the ‘upstream’ water resource development dilemma: how to develop uses of transboundary waters in ways that meet national and regional development needs? China already faces water scarcity and many of its neighbour riparians suffer similar threats, with adverse economic impacts. As only one example, India is forecasted to become "water-stressed" by 2025 and "water-scarce" by 2050.

Prof. Patricia Wouters, GWP Technical Committee member, at the GWP Consulting Partners meeting 2013 Photo: Global Water Partnership

International law has a role to play in this contest over water. Water law serves three key functions: (1) it defines and identifies the legal rights and obligations tied to water use (broadly defined) and provides the prescriptive parameters for resource development and management; (2) it provides tools for ensuring the continuous integrity of the regime - that is, through monitoring and assessment of compliance and implementation, dispute prevention, and settlement; and (3) it allows for modifications of the existing regime, in order to be able to adapt to changing needs and circumstances. This operational framework provides the parameters and mechanisms for transboundary water cooperation. The duty to cooperate is the bedrock of international law, reflected in the fundamental tenets of the UN Charter. Despite the many shortcomings of the international legal system, including the UN, it is the foundation for relations between and among sovereign nations. The tension between national self-interest and the ‘global good’ continues to be played out in a number of arenas. In the context of transboundary water management the universally endorsed ‘rules of the game’ in international law have crystallized into a body of customary and treaty law, evidenced in significant state practice around the globe. Aligned with the ‘duty to cooperate’, the governing principle of international water law is that each watercourse State is entitled and obliged to an equitable and reasonable use of transboundary water resources. This primary rule of international law is codified in the 1997 UN Watercourses Convention (which will shortly enter into force) and has been behind the 20 years of successful implementation of the 1992 UN Economic Commission of Europe (ECE) Transboundary Waters Convention. Both of these instruments, each negotiated under the auspices ►

China shares 40 major international watercourses with its 14 riparian nations. As an upper riparian on most of these shared freshwaters, China faces the ‘upstream’ water resource development dilemma: how to develop uses of transboundary waters in ways that meet national and regional development needs?

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Water

Dr. Patr i c ia Wouters / Water Co nf li c t / L aw

WaterAid - Abir Abdullah

Clean water from the river side well, Debachari, Chittagong Hill Tracks, Bangladesh.

of the UN, provide important substantive and procedural rules, including mechanisms for dispute avoidance and settlement, which together facilitate meaningful transboundary water cooperation. Returning to the Asian case study, we note that: (i) water insecurity is a growing threat across the region; (ii) treaty practice is growing but patchy and the UN Conventions have not been fully embraced; (iii) transboundary water cooperation provides a unique opportunity for regional cooperation. The recent spate of regional outreach State visits by China’s President Xi and Premier Li, including a raft of bilateral agreements and regional engagements (ASEAN and Shanghai Cooperation Organization) signals an increased attempt by China to implement its ‘good neighbourliness’ foreign policy strategy. What this means in transboundary water resources cooperation shows some traction in the SinoKazakh Declaration of 7 September 2013, where a commitment to move forward on transboundary water allocation between the two nations was agreed. As demonstrated under the state practice under the UN Economic of Europe Transboundary Waters Convention, regional cooperation is facilitated

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through legal frameworks, supported by institutional mechanisms and regional stewardship. This has been accomplished in large part through the multilateral Meeting of the Parties under the UNECE TWC agreement – a model that has evolved to meet changing challenges across Europe. The ‘duty to cooperate’ means working together in effective and open ways – legal agreements go a long way to providing pathways to get this done. The soft path to transboundary water cooperation (such as soft law, under-developed treaty regimes and so forth) provides a platform for enhanced engagement across national borders. Water insecurity is a threat that affects us all. Transboundary water cooperation must be pursued as we seek peaceful ways to address the impending global water crisis and international law must be part of these efforts ■

+ More Information Patricia Wouter is a Professor of International Law, Founding Director of Dundee UNESCO Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science (Director to June 2012); currently appointed under China’s 1000 Talent Programme as visiting Professor at Xiamen Law School, heading up the China International Water Law Programme: www.chinainternationalwaterlaw.org 1

Guardian, Marianela Jarroud in Santiago for IPS, part of the Guardian development network, Wednesday 24 April 2013

BATHING WATER PROTECTION THROUGH REAL-TIME MONITORING & SOURCE MITIGATION SMART & SIMPLE, LOW COST SENSING TECHNOLOGY

BLOCKAGES & CSO SPILLS REPORTED IN REAL-TIME

FROM PUMP CONTROLS TO CONTAINMENT WEIRS Data is delivered over our private and secure Radio Data Networks to Gateways that interface directly to existing SCADA / outstations. There is no need for cellular coverage, mains power or to modify manhole covers. Â Small scale PC based systems are also available for private site operators such as airports.

Water

L au ren A bbott

Marketing Manager

L auren A bb o tt / Water Ef f i c i enc y / G o renje

Water Efﬁciency and the 'Green Appliance'

Green issues are incredibly important to Gorenje, and have been for a long time, continually informing everything we create. The history of environmental protection in Gorenje dates back 40 years to when the company built its first waste water treatment plant. Since 1985, environmental issues have been managed by a dedicated ecology department. A major development came in 1998 was when Gorenje adopted the strategic plan of the Gorenje Group, which made the environmental protection strategy one of the Group's top operational priorities. The same year, the company was awarded the ISO 14001 environment management standard, and in 2003, it met the criteria to be listed in the EMAS register. Today, environmental protection at Gorenje is not merely a commitment and an indisputable responsibility, but also a business activity that is incorporated and developed in the field of waste management, recycling waste electric and electronic equipment, providing consulting services, and restoring ecologically degraded areas. Gorenje has an excellent attitude towards ecofriendly appliance development and management of technological procedures. The company has won numerous international prizes for appliance development and is included on the eco lists. In respect of the strategy of introducing clean technologies, Gorenje is a leader for sustainable energy use, and was ranked third among the 65 companies of the EU-15, with our closest competitor ranking 22nd. The results testified that our approach to sustainable development is truly very successful in the segments of environmental protection, as well as social aspects, and economics and business administration, which is inevitably related to these efforts.

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At Gorenje, we have chosen a consistent and permanent environmental policy because we believe that our attitude towards the environment reflects our attitude to ourselves and the generations to come. We consider the environment to be inseparable from ourselves. This is where we live, and where our descendants will live. Commitment to sustainable development of home appliance production is one of the company’s key goals. We are systematically planning the reduction of any environmental burden and carefully monitoring the implementation of our environmental objectives. The environmental management system includes systematic reduction of effects on the environment: emissions, consumption of fuel and water, and waste generation. More than 80 per cent of Gorenje’s total environmental impact is anticipated in the product planning phase. In addition to design and functionality, meeting the criteria of eco-friendly

design is of utmost importance, including the entire life cycle of a product starting from development, through manufacturing and use, to handling after the expiry of useful life. Integration of ecological requirements into the process of product planning regularly brings new challenges of looking for innovative solutions that result in increasing energy efficiency, lower water consumption and new construction solutions. New concepts come to life at Gorenje only if they can be implemented in an environmentallyfriendly manner. Products are not only made from environmentally sound and recyclable materials, but also manufactured using environmentallyfriendly technological procedures. The approach of introducing clean, eco-friendly technologies has developed at Gorenje since the company’s beginnings. Through its development, Gorenje has incorporated numerous environmentally-friendly technological

Investment in improvement of Technological Procedures and equipment over the last decade has resulted in huge reductions in the environmental impact of each Gorenji Product:

Decrease in Hazardous Waste Generated

Decrease in Waste Disposed

Decrease in Water Consumption

Decrease in Natural Gas Consumption

Web: www.gorenje.co.uk

improvements in its production programmes. Gorenje was the first manufacturer in Europe to reduce and then completely abandon the use of ecologically detrimental refrigerants and propellants in refrigerators and freezers, which it did in 1993; in 2000, environment-friendly powder coating was introduced, and in the last 10 years, water consumption per finished product has been reduced by 470 litres. In the area of washing machines and dryers, environmentally-friendly powder lacquer coating was introduced in 1999, and the introduction of modern technological procedures led to water consumption reduction of 175 litres per appliance produced. Investment in improvement of technological procedures and equipment in the last decade has resulted in a 42 per cent decrease of hazardous waste generated per product, 54 per cent decrease in waste disposed per product, 76 per cent decrease in total treatment plant load, 65 per cent decrease in water consumption per product, and 39 per cent decrease in natural gas consumption per appliance produced. It has taken time for the consumer to latch onto the environmental issues and the benefits of ‘green’ appliances, but awareness is certainly increasing, thanks in no small part to the efforts of manufacturers to encourage consumers to choose an eco-appliance, with reduced water and energy use. We are finding that many consumers now see an energy efficient appliance as a necessity, and so choosing one has become more of a priority. Consumers are much more careful with their money, monitoring where every penny goes, and then looking for possible ways to reduce costs. They have become aware that by investing in a water and energy efficient appliance, while the initial outlay may be more expensive, they will save money over the long-term as the resource use will decrease. However, while feedback is indicating that ecofriendly and efficient products are moving up the consumer priority list, it is important for the manufacturer and retailer to continue to work together to educate and guide the consumer, in order to ensure that the appliances they choose are both efficient, and suitable for their needs.

The new Gorenje W9665K 9kg capacity washing machine featuring SensorIQ technology to ensure water use is kept to an absolute minimum.

The laundry market has seen real innovation and investment on the part of the manufacturer, in order to make its products as efficient as possible. Laundry appliances undergo very heavy use, especially for those with large families, and the consumer is aware that that this could make their resource use high. Manufacturers such as Gorenje are incorporating sensor technology into their washing machines, which manages exactly the right amount of water required for each and every wash to ensure that not a drop is wasted. Some Gorenje washing machine models feature intelligent SensorIQ technology with numerous integrated sensors constantly monitors the washing process, making sure the use of energy, water, and time is kept to the minimum. Based on collected data, the intelligent SensorIQ technology automatically adjusts and optimises the washing process according to the selected program and the type and weight of the laundry. This clever technology guarantees that only the resources that are needed are used, and no more. Although some consumers may not realise it, the capacity of an appliance can also have an affect on a household’s water use too. A large capacity washing machine, for example, allows the consumer to wash more in each load, meaning the laundry can be done less often, saving water, energy and even time. The latest and top of the range washing machine from Gorenje, the W9665K, boasts a generous 9kg capacity, affording much more space for bulky items such as blankets and duvets. It uses just 65 litres of water per cycle and features a highly efficient ‘A+++20%’ energy rating. Dishwashers offer the homeowner real savings on water use. The dishwasher boasts far less water use than washing up by hand, however the consumer still needs educating about this fact and there are still some consumers who believe these appliances to be water hungry, even though some market-leading models use just six-litres of water per cycle. The new Gorenje GS 62214W dishwasher uses 12 litres per cycle, very little compared to hand washing, which can use as much a 100 litres per time.

The penetration of dishwashers in the UK market is still fairly low, at around 35 per cent as of last year, however this is certainly on the rise. The UK consumer is slowly beginning to appreciate the dishwasher more, particularly now that it offers far better levels of energy and water consumption, and more stylish designs have begun to enter the marketplace, so the signs are good for the future. We believe dishwasher penetration will continue to grow as more consumers appreciate the raft of benefits they offer, and more people begin to see them as a necessity as opposed to a luxury. Many consumers now realise that while a dishwasher is an investment at the outset, long-term it will cut their water and energy use, and so can help to decrease bills. Looking ahead, the ‘green’ appliance market is certainly an exciting one with products that will continue to develop at a lightning speed, offering the consumer even better energy efficiency and water use. We believe that key trends for product development will be the integration and use of smart grid technology to allow consumers to minimise energy costs, with remote operation of appliances also an area of interest. These are all interesting areas of development, and this is an inspiring time for the manufacturer. However, a key factor to remember is to ensure that alongside minimal water use and a great energy rating, it is vital to maintain the quality of the appliance and the results it produces. The economic climate has influenced the consumer to think about their energy and water use in order to reduce monthly bills. We hope this has changed the consumers’ mind-set for the better, and to invest in eco-friendly products not just to save them money into the long-term, but to protect our planet too ■

+ More Information Gorenje UK Telephone: 0208 247 3980 Website: www.gorenje.co.uk

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Water

B A SF Water Soluti o ns / Water Treat ment

The Right Treatment IT is colourless, odourless and has no taste. Everyone knows H2O. Dihydrogen monoxide, on the other hand, sounds more mysterious, maybe even threatening – but water, whatever you may call it, is a fascinating chemical compound. Humans, animals and plants all need water to survive. Water cools, cleans and dissolves. As steam, it produces electricity in power plants.

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More than 70% of the Earth is covered in water. Nevertheless, there are some areas where water supplies are not sufficient to meet demand. Almost one billion people do not have access to clean drinking water. Water is not only scarce in developing countries. Cities such as London, Barcelona, Mexico City, Houston, Sydney and Singapore also do not have enough. And sometimes there is enough water, but it is of poor quality: it is unsuitable for drinking and can even make people ill. In theory, existing freshwater supplies should be sufficient to quench the thirst of the roughly 7 billion people living on this planet. But in reality, these water resources are distributed unevenly and are in high demand: more than two-thirds of global water supplies are used for agriculture and are therefore no longer available as drinking water. As well, industry needs water for its production processes. So it is vitally important that this precious resource is not wasted. BASF’s products contribute to efficient water use and the company is developing solutions for the water supply of the future.

Drinking water – vital to life

A lot of our drinking water comes from groundwater or surface water sources. Before it flows to households, this water is treated by waterworks, which de-acidify it using activated carbon. However, this process also oxidizes iron, creating tiny molecules that cannot be filtered out of the water. Help comes in the form of flocculants such as Magnafloc® LT from BASF. They separate solid molecules from fluids and thus help to remove the finely distributed impurities from the water. In dry regions, the sea is also becoming an increasingly important source of water. Although the volume of water available is almost unlimited, it has to undergo a complex desalination process. Many seawater desalination plants operate using thermal techniques. Similarly to a kettle, the seawater is heated using lots of energy to create steam from which drinking water is produced. This leaves behind a salty brine, which is then returned to the sea. However, the desalination process creates stubborn deposits. Crystals which form in the heating pipes and distillation chambers can lower efficiency so much that the plants need to be cleaned every two

Web: www.watersolutions.basf.com

Title Image (Left): The small pores of the Multibore® membranes filter out viruses, bacteria and other materials from water.

Wastewater Saltwater Wastewater treatment plant

to three months. In order to considerably lengthen the time between cleanings, dispersing agents such as the water-soluble polymer Sokalan® from BASF are used. They comprise long polymer chains with a negatively charged molecule strand. Due to the resulting electrical charge, they can dock onto the salt molecules, preventing crystals from growing or taking hold. The same principle is applied in reverse-osmosis desalination. In this method of seawater desalination, saltwater is put under high pressure using a strong pump; this forces the water through the reverse-osmosis membrane and leaves the salt behind.

Process water – the source of production

Industry uses water as a cooling agent, solvent and detergent, as well as to manufacture products. In doing so, industrial companies must overcome some of the same challenges we all face at home: scale can build up in boilers, components can rust and solids can clog up pipes. Products from BASF help to keep plants running smoothly for as long as possible, without the need for frequent maintenance. For example, BASF has developed the Antiprex® product line. Biodegradable Antiprex® CM prevents mineral build-up and Antiprex® MSA is used as an environmentally beneficial detergent. Neither one contains phosphorus so they do not contribute to algae growth. Accounting for around 20% of water use, industry and energy companies are the second-biggest consumers after agriculture. Accordingly, BASF has set itself ambitious goals for the responsible use of this valuable resource. This is especially true for the approximately 60 BASF sites – around one-fifth of the total – that are located in water stress areas. One of these is the Tarragona site in Spain, where BASF was the first chemical company to achieve gold-level certification according to the European Water Stewardship (EWS) standard. With the help of the EWS standard, companies and agricultural operations can evaluate how sustainably they use water resources. For the certification of the Tarragona site, the third-party institute TÜV

Industry Desalination plant

City

Waterworks

Freshwater

Drinking water, process water and wastewater: how an efficient closed-loop water system works. assessed and tested the entire water management performance. The test criteria demonstrated that water is abstracted in accordance with sustainable principles. This means, for example, that the Tarragona site only draws as much water as it needs. Furthermore, the certification shows that good water status is ensured, high conservation areas are protected and all activities are subject to an appropriate level of control. The assessment also requires a water recycling strategy and a cohesive crisis management strategy to be in place.

Wastewater – part of the water-cycle

Every year, private households, industry and businesses worldwide generate more than 160 billion cubic meters of wastewater, which is sent to treatment facilities. While more than 95% of the households in Germany are connected to the public sewage system, in India only 6% of the larger cities even have a sewage network. To treat sewage, flocculating agents such as BASF’s Zetag® are used. The long-chain molecules unroll in water like a ball of wool and attract even the smallest particles of dirt, creating larger flakes that accumulate and can be filtered out of the water. This ultimately produces thickened sludge and clear water. Once the sewage sludge is sufficiently dry, it can be incinerated for energy recovery or used as fertilizer in agriculture.

Ultrafiltration membranes – all-rounders for water systems

Ultrafiltration membranes help us to utilize a diverse range of water sources. Used, for example, to pre-treat seawater before desalination, the extremely fine pores of the filter can separate out impurities, such as algae, from the water. Used in water treatment, they reliably filter out the tiniest microorganisms, such as viruses and bacteria; this even makes it possible to turn wastewater into drinking water. The membranes work in a similar way to conventional filters. While water molecules can squeeze through the pores that are only a few nanometers wide, suspended solids like sand, clay, algae and even pathogens get caught in this barrier. The BASF subsidiary inge® produces ultrafiltration membranes under the Multibore® brand name for a wide range of applications. BASF also uses these membrane modules. The core is made of BASF’s high-performance Ultrason® plastic ■

+ More Information BASF Water Solutions E-mail: water.solutions@basf.com Website: www.watersolutions.basf.com

Heat transfer unit of an MSF-Thermal Seawater Desalination plant before and after the use of Sokalan® PM 15 I.

environmentmagazine.co.uk | 125 |

Misc / Environmental Prosecutions Stourbridge man to pay over £5,000 for illegal waste activities

On 29 October 2013, John Parsons of St Marks Road, Lye, Stourbridge, was sentenced at Redditch Magistrates’ Court to four charges relating to illegal waste activities. He pleaded guilty at an earlier court hearing. The 36 yearold was fined £1,500, ordered to pay £4,096.05 in costs, along with a £120 victim surcharge totalling £5,716.05.

October / November OCTO

Hebden Bridge man jailed over illegal waste operation

A Hebden Bridge man who was wanted for waste crimes in Todmorden is now beginning a 25-month jail term. Two investigations carried out by the Environment Agency, in 2010 and 2012, revealed that Butterworth’s company, Springwood Trading, was operating a waste transfer station at its Pudsey Road site without an environmental permit or planning permission. Butterworth admitted two counts of knowingly permitting the operation of a waste facility without an appropriate environmental permit. He was also found guilty of four counts of operating a regulated facility without a permit, three counts of depositing controlled waste, and one count of failing to provide waste transfer notes after being served notice to do so.

Darlington firm and four family members guilty

A Darlington-based business and four family members have been convicted of multiple waste crime offences following a 10-week trial at Teesside Crown Court. Albert Skip Hire Ltd, its manager Raymond Anthony Shepherd, and his brother and company director Paul Stuart Shepherd, were all convicted on 8 November following an Environment Agency investigation. Family members Jack Richard Shepherd and Tony Leigh Shepherd were also convicted following earlier guilty pleas. Illegal activities were carried out from 2009 to 2011 at the skip hire firm’s base in Dodsworth Street, and at another site, West Musgrave Farm, St Helen, Bishop Auckland. At the Dodsworth Street site the company was storing and depositing waste on an access road, for which there was no permit in place. In July 2011, an enforcement notice was served upon the company, requiring the waste to be removed but was ignored. The site had an environmental permit that allowed storage of some waste, but there was more waste on site than was allowed. The Environment Agency suspended the site’s permit and ordered the waste to be removed. However, waste continued to be taken to Dodsworth Street between October 2011 and March 2012. No environmental permit ever existed for West Musgrave Farm. But investigations into activities there revealed that construction and demolition waste was deposited at the farm between August and December 2009. Waste was also seen being taken to the Farm in 2010 by skip wagons bearing Albert Hill Skip Hire’s name and logo. Jack Shepherd was involved in depositing the waste. He signed a waste transfer note that allowed a driver for another company to deposit controlled waste at the site.

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The charges were brought by the Environment Agency under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the Waste (England & Wales) Regulations 2011. Mr Parsons approached a waste management site in the West Midlands and took 120 bales of refuse derived fuel* (RDF) waste in return for payment. Between October 2011 and November 2011 he then illegally deposited the bales at three locations across the Midlands, where there were no environmental permits in force. The first location was Blakeshall Farm, Wolverley. Officers from the Environment Agency visited the site on 4 October 2011 after receiving reports that waste had been tipped at the farm. Officers saw around 100 bales wrapped in layers of polythene. Where the bales had torn, officers could see they contained plastic, wood and other material. The bales had gone from the farm by 18 October 2011 but appeared on land at Brook Street, Lye around the same time. The bales were subsequently removed by 15 November 2011. Between 1 November 2011 and 15 November 2011 the bales appeared at Haywood Bridge, Mucklow Hill where some were torn open and the contents scattered around the site. Mr Parsons was given the opportunity to remove the waste from Haywood Bridge and supply waste transfer notes to show that it had been disposed of correctly. Instead of providing properly completed waste transfer notes, he provided invoices that did not comply with legal requirements. *Refuse-derived fuel (RDF) is a fuel produced by shredding and dehydrating solid waste. The waste is then baled and can be incinerated in order to produce energy. Although RDF is a fuel it is still considered to be waste and its storage must comply with relevant legislation. In this case, there is no evidence to demonstrate that the RDF waste bales were fit for purpose.

Swindon waste company ordered to pay more than £70,000 for waste offences

A waste disposal company based in Swindon and one of its officers have been ordered to pay £73,000 in fines and costs after allowing dust to escape from their site and operating without an environmental permit. Averies Recycling (Swindon) Ltd, based at Marshgate Industrial Estate in Swindon pleaded guilty at Bristol Crown Court on 13 November 2013, to causing a nuisance to neighbouring businesses with dust generated from their waste operations. In addition the company also pleaded guilty to operating a waste transfer station without an environmental permit. The company was fined a total of £11,000 and ordered to pay costs of £60,000. Lee Averies, 44, an officer of Averies Recycling (Swindon) Ltd pleaded guilty to causing the company to commit the dust offence by neglecting to ensure appropriate measures were in place or followed to control dust from escaping the Marshgate site. He was fined £2,000.

Fine for persistent waste offender

Skips loaded with waste were stored on a Bedford Farm without the owner’s permission. The farm owners had initially allowed Kenneth Joseph Murphy to park his skip lorry at the site and then agreed to allow him to store empty skips there. The waste, which was mainly household clearance and construction waste, should all have been taken directly to be disposed of at a permitted site. CCTV footage taken on 3 September 2012 showed a 12yard skip being emptied into an empty skip already at the site and a smaller one arriving at the site and being left there. Environment Agency Officers went to the site the following day and saw six skips full of waste. A week later a notice was served by the Agency to remove all the waste from the farm. Murphy, of Church Road, Steatley, Luton, was fined £3,333 for illegal waste activities at Hill Farm in Flitwick Road, Maulden. He was also ordered to pay costs £3,099.45 and a victim surcharge of £120.

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Four arrested as part of crack down on waste crime

On 13 November, the Environment Agency raided 10 premises in the Midlands in a bid to crack down on criminals connected with large scale illegal dumping of baled waste at sites across the West Midlands. Following detailed intelligence work, surveillance and information gathered from members of the public and police, Operation Argument was launched. The Environment Agency, along with West Midlands Police, West Mercia Police and British Transport Police simultaneously raided 10 premises, both industrial and residential, across the West Midlands and West Mercia to carry out arrests, execute warrants and obtain evidence. Four individuals have been arrested and will be interviewed in custody at Wednesfield Police Station by Environmental Crime Team Officers. Six illegal waste sites, mostly warehouses, have received over 2,000 bales of waste weighing 1.4 tonnes each. Removal costs for the waste are estimated at over £3m and much of the cost will be borne by the landowner for each site. This illegal waste activity is thought to be as a result of organised crime and the Environment Agency is working with a number of partner agencies to piece together intelligence to focus enforcement on the key players. Further arrests are planned.

Guisborough and Driffield companies must pay £10,000 for pig slurry pollution

Two companies have been ordered to pay more than £10,000 after unlawfully discharging pig slurry into a Saltburn watercourse and killing more than 1,300 fish. F Brunton & Sons Ltd, of Barnaby Grange, Guisborough, and N C Buckton Ltd, of South Cattleholmes, Wansford, Driffield, have each been fined £8,000 and ordered to pay £2,333.98 in legal costs after admitting an illegal discharge in March 2012. The firms were sentenced by Teesside Magistrates, following an Environment Agency investigation into reports of a smelly, green pollutant seen in Skelton, Saltburn. Investigation revealed Andrew Brunton had been spreading slurry on his farms in the area via a contractor, Neil Colin Buckton, of N C Buckton Ltd. Sampling at Barnaby Grange Farm revealed that slurry had been able to flow off the fields into drains which fed Sandswath Beck, which in turn feeds Skelton Beck. The pollution was visible for 3km from the discharge, and dead fish were seen over a distance of 10km. It was estimated that among the wildlife killed were 150 sea trout, 800 bullhead, 400 stickleback, 20 minnow and at least one salmon. An assessment of the impact of the pollution concluded that all invertebrates, apart from worms, downstream of the slurry discharge were dead.

High Court orders site owner to clear Orpington site

The Environment Agency has successfully secured a full High Court order against Waste4Fuel Limited and Mr. Bryan Hughes, the director of the waste facility in Orpington, requiring them to clear the site of combustible waste or be held in contempt of court At a hearing at the High Court, the judge signed an order compelling Waste4Fuel Limited and Company Director Mr Bryan Hughes to clear the site of all combustible waste by the end of April 2014. The deadline was arrived at following a negotiation process between Mr. Hughes and the Environment Agency, and the end of April 2014 was considered the earliest achievable deadline. The Court Order reduces the volume of waste allowed to enter the site and requires a 24 hour presence on the site to reduce the risk of fire. The Environment Agency will be monitoring closely activities on site to observe these requirements are being met between now and the end of April. The hearing examined promises made at a previous High Court hearing to take steps to reduce fire risk on the site. Inspections carried out by Environment Agency officers earlier this month found that works had not been completed by the High Court agreed deadline of 30 September 2013, so the matter was referred back to the court.

Wiltshire farmer who ran illegal landfill ordered to pay back £209,980.00

A farm owner who operated an illegal landfill on his land in Wiltshire has been ordered to repay £209,980.00 under the Proceeds of Crime Act (2002) – and warned he faces two years imprisonment if he does not pay up. He was also ordered to pay a contribution towards the Environment Agency’s costs in the sum of £10,000. Mr Guy Wentworth, 73, of Ewins Hill Farm, Aldbourne, Marlborough, Wiltshire was convicted on 21 March 2011 after pleading guilty to one charge of operating, between April 2006 and July 2010, his farm as a landfill for the depositing of waste without an environmental permit or exemption certificate. The chalk strata that underlies that part of the farm was being strip excavated and stockpiled and the void was being backfilled. The waste was directly trucked into the landfill area both from off the farm and from the recycling facility in the farm. The quantity of fill was assessed as 36,000 cubic metres. At the sentencing hearing at Salisbury Crown Court on 6 May 2011 the judge said that the repeated warnings by the Environment Agency and lack of response by the defendant made this a serious offence which crossed the custodial threshold for sentencing. For the offence Mr Wentworth was sentenced at Salisbury Crown Court to a term of six months imprisonment, suspended for 12 months. At this hearing the Environment Agency made an application for confiscation of Mr Wentworth’s assets under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

Elver netsman banned for illegal fishing

A Bridgwater man has been banned from elver fishing for four years after he was caught fishing in a 'no go' area on the River Parrett. Christopher Bond was also ordered to pay £900 in fines and costs. Appearing before Taunton magistrates, Christopher Bond of Eldergrove Close, Bridgwater was fined £82 and ordered to pay £800 costs after being found guilty of illegally fishing for elvers at Huntspill Sluice on 7 March 2013, an offence under the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act 1975. At an earlier hearing, Bond’s fishing companion, Paul Evans, of Furlongs Avenue, Bridgwater, also received a four year ban after entering a guilty plea. Magistrates fined Evans £350 with £400 costs. The two men were ordered to pay victim surcharges of £20 and £30 respectively.

Suspended prison sentence and community service means end of the road for illegal waste tyre site in Southampton The Environment Agency has prosecuted the operator of a Southampton-based business for illegally stockpiling thousands of waste tyres at an industrial estate. Mr Alan Skinner, who operated from Unit D8 of Marchwood Industrial Park, Southampton, Hampshire, appeared at West Hampshire Magistrates’ Court on 4 November 2013. Mr Skinner pleaded not guilty to the offence but was convicted by the Court on 7 November. He was given a four month suspended prison sentence, ordered to do 100 hours community service, and pay costs of £5,495.

In April 2011 Mr Skinner registered exemptions with the Environment Agency for the storage, use and recovery of waste tyres at his business. In August 2011, upon inspection, Environment Agency officers saw that Mr Skinner had considerably exceeded the permitted number of tyres at the site and was storing thousands more in an adjacent unit that was not at all authorised. Mr Skinner had six weeks to reduce the number of tyres on site to the exemption limit or apply for an environment permit which, if granted, would allow him to operate on the scale he wanted. He neither reduced the number of tyres nor applied for an environmental permit. When officers visited the premises in November they found it abandoned, and before he left, Mr Skinner had deliberately imported even more. The final number of tyres weighed approximately 390 tonnes, almost ten times the quantity permitted by the exemption.

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Misc / Product Guide

Rental solution for old landfill gas analysers

Ashtead Technology has an effective, low-cost solution for customers dealing with gas analyser obsolescence. Geotech landfill gas analysers first manufactured in 1999 have now been replaced and updated to incorporate the latest technology, such as GPS and Bluetooth. For users of these much older analysers, the facility to rent instruments from Ashtead Technology’s latest models provides a smooth transition from redundant instruments to the latest technology. The analysers manufactured before February 2007 include the GA2000, GEM2000, GA2000 Plus and GEM2000 Plus analysers with serial numbers from GA4999 to GA09149. Geotech’s aim is to service these analysers for as long as possible (typically, the life of an analyser is 10 years), but this series of analysers was first manufactured 14 years ago, and the cost of replacement parts for the original design has now become preclusive. Customers with these instruments now have the option to rent • For more information please visit www.ashtead-technology.com

Mobile LED Light Tower with Diesel Generator

The WCDE-4-4X300W-LED mobile light tower is a high power mobile lighting system designed to provide efficiency and performance surpassing that of comparable metal halide towers. This high output LED light tower features four 300-watt LED lamps producing 118,320 lumen of light output paired with a diesel generator and control system mounted to a single axle trailer. The trailer has a 2,000lbs rated single axle, dual safety chains, and a standard 2 inch ball style coupling hitch for simple hook-up and towing. Power for this mobile light tower is provided by a water-cooled Kubota diesel engine turning a 6,000 watt, 120/240 VAC generator with four wire hook-up and external ground. Some key features of the power generating system includes key operated electric start, low oil pressure and high temperature automatic shutoffs, and a 30 gallon fuel tank for long run times. The tower assembly consists of an extendable mast built from galvanized steel, which can be raised to a maximum of 30 feet using two included hand winches with built in self-braking safeties. • For more information please visit www.magnalight.com

Roofspace to discretely rainwater

used store

The new AquAttic rainwater harvesting system is a new innovation from Discrete Heat, which is cleverly designed to capture rainwater and store it in the roof space of a house or small building. It uses rainwater catchers on the roof and low profile water storage tanks fitted into the unused space in the eaves. It’s a great way of conserving and recycling water as well as making savings on water bills. AquAttic uses gravity to collect and run the rainwater through the system unlike more traditional models that require electric pumps. By eliminating any electrics AquAttic has no running costs or any controls to fail or service. 50% of water usage in households is for applications other than human consumption such as washing machines, dishwashers, toilets and gardening. The AquAttic system can provide up to 50% of a household’s water needs providing non-potable applications with free, recycled water. The system comprises rainwater catchers that are located across the width of the roof and roughly a third of the way up and are available in varying lengths up to 2.4 m ensuring maximum harvest. Any debris gathered during dry spells is immediately washed with the next rainfall due to the specifically designed shape and any smaller particles within the water are filtered out through the 120-micron filter each inlet has, preventing damage to internal plumbing. • For more information please visit www.aquattic.co.uk

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Jaga launches eGuide portfolio

Jaga Heating Products UK has released its first ever Electronic Guide which is available as a free download, intended to help architects and engineers make informed decisions when identifying solutions for façade heating applications. Glazed façades are an extremely popular design choice, especially in high rise and prestige buildings where it is important to consider heating and cooling requirements as part of the design. In response, Jaga wanted to provide architects, engineers and contractors with a comprehensive overview of façade heating, the options available and the considerations necessary to ensure the right product is chosen for the right application. RIBA and CIBSE approved CPDs are already available and this latest resource will provide a useful reference guide for the designer. Titled “A Guide to Façade Heating,” the free and informative download is the first in a series of Jaga eGuides, which will cover important heating and ventilation design problems. • For more information please visit www.jaga.co.uk/technical-support/eguides/

Pallmann presents Karakal for recycling rubber waste back into fine powders

A new grinding system from Pallmann enables energy-efficient recycling of vulcanized rubber waste back into fine powder for direct reuse in rubber processing. A key feature of the Karakal is its ability to devulcanize the rubber as it pulverizes it, so that it can be used in place of virgin material. Karakal is a type of twin-roll mill that has been designed specifically for recycling waste from production of technical parts, as well as waste arising from retreading truck tyres. It accepts material pre-cut to a particle size of 4 mm or less, and which is fed to it continuously by a series of screws positioned along the gap between the rollers. Pallmann has applied for several patents on technology incorporated into the equipment. Large amounts of rubber waste from old tyres are already re-used, but mostly as a low-grade filler in building and construction. Some is also pyrolyzed into carbon black, oils, fuel gas, and other residues. In the past, cryogenics have been used for producing powder from rubber waste, b ut this creates particles with cubic geometries, which are not best suited for incorporation into new compounds. More recently, conventional roller mills have been used, but these create particles of around 800 to 1000 micron, which is too big for reprocessing operations. This process is also very energy-intensive. • For more information please visit www.pallmann.eu

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Palintest launches portable Photometer 8000 field kit for on-site water testing

The new, upgraded Photometer 8000 Field Kit from Palintest has now been launched for use in the drinking water, wastewater, surface water and process water markets. The kit brings together a portable multiparameter photometer and all required accessories to conveniently and accurately test in almost any application environment. Equally suitable for use in the lab or in the field, it successfully and economically answers the call for a single water technician’s kit that is suitable for virtually any situation and set of test parameter. Included within the kit’s sturdy IP67 case are cuvettes, sample preparation apparatus and interface cables to allow USB or RS232 connection of the Photometer 8000. Transport containers within the case allow users to carry any of the range of tablet or liquid reagents used for determination of species such as ammonia, nitrate, heavy metals and chlorine. • For more information please visit www.palintest.com

Award winning eco brand THTC launch new Hemp Tees for Christmas

Award winning ethical street wear brand THTC have released their new offering of organic hemp t-shirts, in time for what promises to be a very vibrant Christmas season for the cult brand. The new range includes a number of THTC’s longest running designs and several brand new prints. As always, the brand draws attention to several social and environmental issues, from pesticide conglomerate Monsanto to overfishing, BP’s planetary destruction, the war machine and global warming. Other designs are heavily influenced by music and street culture. The artwork has been created by street artists such as Mau Mau, Gibla74, Dutch designer Oberon and Herse, from London. The tees are made from a fine, hypoallergenic blend of 55% hemp and 45% certified organic cotton, complimenting THTC other range of 100% carbon neutral organic cotton tees, hoodies, polo shirts and sweaters, which are certified by The Fair Wear Foundation and The Carbon Trust. • For more information please visit www.thtc.co.uk

Powerful New Electronic Surface Listening Device for ‘Hands Free’ Leak Detection and Pinpointing

Acoustic water leak detection technology leader HWM has launched the Bmic handsfree leak-monitoring device. With a beltmounted control unit for hands-free operation, the lightweight Bmic is comfortable, easy to use and provides high quality sound reproduction. To avoid unnecessary excavation and ‘dry holes’ which do not expose the leak on an underground pipe, the Bmic helps leak technicians precisely pinpoint the leak location from the surface. Available as standard with the proven “elephant’s foot” windproof microphone or in the Bmic Lite package with a lightweight hand probe and “tripod foot”, it offers an economical way to improve the leak pinpointing and repair process for all levels of requirement. The “elephant’s foot” microphone, planted on the ground at surface level, provides superior sound quality by reducing background noise, allowing the user to accurately identify where the leak is and exactly where any digging should take place. The hand probe option is also available to use with attachable tripod, or for making direct contact on accessible pipes and fittings - enabling the operator to carry out traditional acoustic surveys. A simple push of the button on the belt-mounted control unit activates broad-band amplification technology to make the sound clearer and pinpointing even easier, and the windproof housing on the microphone coupled with the included studio quality headphones ensures the best possible audio quality. • For more information please visit www.hwm-water.com

Yokogawa’s ScopeCorders add realtime power analysis to wide-ranging measurement capabilities.

Portable data acquisition recorders can capture and analyse transient events and trends for up to 200 days in power, mechatronics and transportation applications. – Yokogawa has added two new instruments to its ScopeCorder family of portable multi-channel data-acquisition recorders. The new DL850E and DL850EV (Vehicle Edition) ScopeCorders incorporate a number of new features to allow engineers to measure and analyse a wealth of signals in real time and to speed up development and fault finding in areas such as power electronics, mechatronics and transportation. In addition to the high-speed multi-channel capabilities plus long memory and isolated input channels found in Yokogawa’s established ScopeCorder family, the new DL850E instruments have the ability to carry out the real-time measurement and analysis of electrical power. All members of the ScopeCorder family are equipped with a set of basic arithmetic mathematical functions such as addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, fast Fourier transformation and other computations, but the new DL850E versions also offer the /G5 option for real-time measurement of electrical power as well as the existing /G3 option for real-time mathematical computations and digital filtering and the /G2 option for user-defined computations. • For more information please visit www.marshall-tufflex.com

New LED cove luminaires from Luxonic

Designed for cove and under-shelf lighting, the new Covelux LED from Luxonic Lighting represents the highest quality in LED interior lighting. The highly efficient LED luminaires are slim and discreet, providing users and specifiers with direct or indirect lighting that enhances the aesthetic of any interior space. The elegant luminaires can be used for recesses, ledges, valences and under-shelf or cabinet lighting. Particularly suitable for use within retail, Covelux LED from Luxonic adds style and give a contemporary feel to office spaces, leisure facilities and luxury hotel complexes. • For more information please visit www.luxonic.co.uk

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Misc / Printing

A ngele De Vo rc h i k / Ehti cal Pr i nti ng / A r jow igg i ns G raph i c s

Ethical Printing in a Sustainable World A ngela De Vorch i k

Operational Marketing Manager UK, Arjowiggins Graphics

Although the sale of printed books is on the decline due to the rise in e-book sales, over 200 million printed books are sold each year. With the average printed book producing 4kg of CO2 emissions, there is an increasing emphasis on publishers to turn to more sustainable business practices. The desire to reduce the impact of publishing on the environment is driven by increased consumer awareness of Corporate Social Responsibility and vastly improved green technologies. As such, companies are finding sustainable, quality products, which help to reduce their environmental footprint and provide added business value, more accessible than ever before. Choosing to print on recycled paper can also help to communicate brand values and the quality and variety means there are suitable stocks for any purpose, allowing companies to use recycled paper without sacrificing on print quality or environmental commitments. For example, organisations that represent environmental causes may choose to print on a natural shade of recycled paper that looks and feels recycled, while other brands may feel that they need to print on bright white recycled papers for a more corporate look and feel. It is now more common than ever for companies to provide a wealth of information to their consumers, and share details of the manufacturing processes and supply chain, which means getting sustainability wrong can impact not only a company’s reputation, but also the bottom line. Author Jonathon Porritt was acutely aware of this when publishing his latest book, The World We Made: Alex McKay’s Story From 2050 (Phaidon

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Press). It was important for the author, as a renowned sustainability expert, that the printed version of the book was as sustainable as possible. It needed to be reflective of the narrative of the book, which presents an optimistic view of the world in 2050 – a world that is genuinely sustainable. So when publishing the book, his choice of printing and paper supplier was crucial to live up to these values. Arjowiggins Graphic was selected as the paper provider and Pureprint Group as the printer – two companies with an outstanding record on sustainability issues. The book was printed on a combination of high quality 100% recycled FSC®Certified papers – Cocoon Offset, Cocoon Silk, Cyclus Offset and Cyclus Print using inks that were made from vegetable-based oils not mineral oils and no isopropyl alcohol was used during printing to reduce ground-level ozone.

Challenges for publishers

The road to becoming sustainable isn’t always smooth. Recently, we carried out research in the UK which indicated that despite the economy remaining the main issue impacting printers and designers (67%), over a third of respondents (37%) felt the environment was the biggest challenge facing the business. The research, conducted with over 120 printers and designers, further indicated that one of the greatest environmental challenges facing businesses over the next 2-3 years would be finding ways to appropriately communicate their environmental practices (25%). This is why choosing to use recycled paper (rather than non recycled paper) can be a major part of

Web: www.arjowigginscreativepapers.com

a business’s environmental agenda since it can reduce waste to landfill, water usage, energy usage and CO2 emissions. The quality of recycled paper has increased dramatically and innovations in the process of recycling have enabled paper to reach new heights of sustainability and quality, making recycled paper an option for business for multiple purposes. For example, in the last two years Arjowiggins Graphic has continued to push its sustainability targets and the company now commits to sourcing the same volume of office waste paper from the UK as it takes to produce the amount of recycled paper demanded for the UK market. On top of this, we have also developed a state of the art process at our Greenfield de-inking pulp plant, in France, to ensure that waste paper can be de-inked and recycled into bright white pulp without using harmful chemicals and bleaches. Recycled paper is providing publishing a steppingstone for meeting sustainability goals - 47% of printers and designers indicated an intention to move to using recycled paper in the next 2-3 years.

The World We Made was printed on a combination of high quality 100% recycled FSC®Certified papers – Cocoon Offset, Cocoon Silk, Cyclus Offset and Cyclus Print using inks that were made from vegetable-based oils not mineral oils and no isopropyl alcohol was used during printing.

By using green products, such as Arjowiggins Graphic recycled papers, publishers are able to take advantage of Arjowiggins Graphic’s strategy and commitments in reducing the use of forest resources and mitigating the impact of processes on the environment, enabling publishers to demonstrate a strong commitment to sustainable development. ►

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Misc / Printing

A ngele De Vo rc h i k / Ehti cal Pr i nti ng / A r jow igg i ns G raph i c s

Photo: Linda Lane

Arjowiggins Graphic has also increased the share of fibres used from FSC® certified forests from 50% in 2008 to 90% in 2013, with the remaining fibres from PEFC certified forests.

information about the green credentials for all of the brands it manufactures - enabling customers to directly compare the different stocks of papers they use.

Evolution is key to sustainability and businesses must constantly seek to innovate and improve their operation with new tools and tactics to lessen environmental impacts – yet there is always more that can be done.

For example, The World We Made: Alex McKay’s Story From 2050 book was published using 100% recycled, FSC® certified paper leaving a carbon footprint of just 1.8kg CO2 emissions per book, compared to the 4kg of CO2 emissions for an average book.

Third-party endorsement is key

Climate schemes from organisations such as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) can help to drive companies to seek new ways to innovate and improve. They do this by setting ambitious emission reduction targets that, in turn, encourage them to develop innovative technologies to increase the sustainability of their business and meet these emission targets. The WWF’s climate savers programme was initiated to ensure the sustainability plans and actions of leading corporations were constantly stretched to cut CO2 emissions. As well as Arjowiggins Graphic, other members of the programme include Sony, the Coca Cola Company and Nike. Arjowiggins Graphic is also one of the 25 global transparent leaders on the WWF environmental paper company index 2013. Arjowiggins Graphic itself has also rolled out an environmental calculator that calculates the environmental savings that can be made by using recycled paper compared to virgin fibre paper. In addition, the company also provides customers with Environmental Declarations that contain detailed

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Using quality, recycled paper is an excellent way of demonstrating one’s commitment to the environment, however efforts can go unnoticed unless the green credentials are shown. By including accreditations and recycled paper endorsements, publishers can demonstrate to their readers how they are minimising their effect on the environment – showcasing meaningful strides in sustainable business practices ■

The environmental impact of the book was reduced by 17,120kg of landfill, 371,887 litres of water, 35,013kWh of electricity, 3,105kg of CO2 and greenhouse gases, and 27,817kg of wood, compared with virgin fibre papers.

What publishers should consider when buying paper

So how can publishers ensure they are sustainable when it comes to print and paper? It is important they choose papers made from recycled fibres as a priority and opt for products that have official eco-accreditation (European Eco-label, Blue Angel, NAPM Recycled label) and the FSC® Recycled certified label. Publishers should also select vegetable-based inks that are partly sourced from renewable sources, limit the use of texts on coloured backgrounds, keep shaded areas to a minimum and reduce the use of varnishes and lamination. Publishers can also use service providers committed to environmental procedures, such as ISO 14001, for all printing requirements and feature the Ecolabel logos used to help spread good practice.

By including accreditations and recycled paper endorsements, publishers can demonstrate to their readers how they are minimising their effect on the environment.

+ More Information www.arjowigginscreativepapers.com

Misc / Legal

A z i z R ah man / Car b o n Cred i t Frau d / L aw

Carbon Credit Fraud

CARBON credits were designed to make the world a greener place by helping industry do its best for the environment. Unfortunately, green issues are not what have attracted some of those involved in carbon credit trading. Carbon credit fraud is a phenomenon that is on the rise.

A zi z R ahman

Rahman Ravelli Solicitors

But while carbon credit fraud may be a recent development, the techniques employed by those using them for fraud are not so new. Here, Aziz Rahman of specialist business crime and fraud solicitors Rahman Ravelli examines the issues in this sort of crime and some recent developments. There can be little doubt that carbon credits were one of those ideas that was genuinely intended to make the world a better, greener place. With carbon credits, industry was supposed to become more conscious of its environmental footprint. Companies and organisations were given a mechanism by which they could make sure the impact of their activities could at least be offset. It started in 1997, in Kyoto, Japan, when a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) was initially adopted for use. This framework, usually referred to as the Kyoto Protocol, was created to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In short, the protocol allows industrialized nations to meet their GHG obligations by buying reduction credits from other countries. So if one country cannot meet its GHG reduction target, it can buy credits from other countries that

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have credits to spare. It seemed an idea dreamt up with the best of intentions…but it came to offer opportunities for those who were more concerned with earning an illegal fortune rather than saving the planet. The signs that something was wrong started to appear roughly five years ago. In July 2009 the UK government announced it was making carbon emission trading ‘zero rated’ for VAT purposes, making it impossible to claim VAT on the sale of carbon credits in the UK. This was not an attempt to encourage trading in carbon credits. In fact, it was just the opposite – the government took the action because of a prosecution that saw carbon credits used in a £38m VAT fraud. The carbon credit was now officially seen as a means of perpetrating fraud. I wrote in the Rahman Ravelli newsletter about carbon credit fraud last summer. The article was prompted by the City of London Police obtaining their first criminal convictions and prison sentences for carbon credit fraud. Two men were jailed for running an international boiler room operation that moved nearly £6m of investors’ money to bank accounts in Canada and the United States. Some of the money

Web: www.rahmanravelli.co.uk

was used to fund lavish living in Marbella. On this occasion, however, police were able to trace much of it, recover it from the frozen bank accounts of the defendants and return it to the victims. The court was told that the duo targeted thousands of people with offers of carbon credits and shares that they claimed were highly profitable. In reality, these were worth next to nothing. The men behind the fraud had obtained the names of potential victims through the share lists of legitimate companies. They recruited staff to cold call people, telling their victims they were offering an unmissable opportunity and enticing them into parting with their money. By the time of the trial, police had found more than 1,800 victims. Many of these knew little or nothing about exactly what carbon credits are – or the fact that their resale value can be next to nothing. Since that summer article, carbon credits have repeatedly proved to be the weapon of choice for those looking to defraud people or organisations out of large sums. They may have been used in VAT frauds originally but now they seem to be just as attractive to the type of person who used to be trying to dupe investors into pouring money into disreputable timeshare schemes or non-existent share issues. Just last month, six men were charged over their involvement in an alleged £11m carbon credit fraud. Earlier this month, it was disclosed that the Insolvency Service had wound up 19 firms over the last 15 months that had attracted a total of almost £24m from investors by offering virtually worthless carbon credits. The 1,500 people convinced to hand over their money had no idea that carbon credits have little or no value when sold as shares or bonds. Consumer Minister Jo Swinson said these companies had led investors to believe they would gain huge returns by investing in trading permits that gave corporations the right to emit one tonne of carbon dioxide. What the investors did not know was that such permits were of little value because big companies usually trade in carbon credits on bulk. Unfortunately, they fell for high pressure sales talk that played heavily on the idea of would-be investors’ wish to invest their money ethically. I have seen how carbon credits have emerged as a potential vehicle for fraud. We were involved in the £38m fraud case we mentioned earlier that prompted the government to rush through the closure of VAT loopholes. If that had not been done when it was, such carbon credit fraud would have cost the UK an estimated £2.2bn. The case brought the issue of carbon credit fraud firmly into focus and highlighted how criminals could create a chain of bogus companies to trade carbon emission allowances and escape detection. The theory behind the Kyoto Protocol was quite clear: carbon credits would give companies an incentive to cut their carbon emissions and then sell any spare carbon credits that they had. The reality was that criminals soon became aware that they could buy them VATfree in one EU country and then sell them on in the UK. They would add the VAT to the price they sold them for in the UK but then keep the VAT money instead of paying it to the government. The result? A

clear illegal profit through VAT fraud. That route may now have been shut down by the government. But, as the Insolvency Service has shown, carbon credits are still a vehicle for large-scale fraud. Carbon credits are a relatively new concept compared to investments such as stocks and shares, jewellery, property or commodities. Yet they are very often being used in the same way that those involved in fraud have used many other such assets. There is no doubt that people looking to make fraudulent gains from carbon credits use the classic boiler room ruse of telephoning people to sell them something that is worth far less than they claim. It appears that many of them also resort to the odd spot of bribery and corruption to gain access to the carbon credits and the rights to sell them. When this is considered, it is clear that carbon credit fraud is simply a new twist on the old boiler room-style fraud. Carbon credit fraud ticks all the boxes of the classic boiler room model: the recruitment of staff to carry out the straightforward selling of shares of little or no value, charging massively inflated prices for them, attempting to portray an air of respectability and insider knowledge and operating abroad so as to be beyond the grasp of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Having handled many of the largest and most highprofile boiler room cases, I know the importance of the right legal advice for anyone who believes they may have invested in a boiler room fraud. The correct legal guidance is equally vital for someone arrested for working in a boiler room who believes that they are innocent of any wrongdoing. Such an idea is not so far fetched as it seems. After all, carbon credits are quite clearly a legitimate trading commodity. They are recognised as a legal means of trying to control pollution and are recognised by governments, international trade bodies and

the hugest and most high-profile corporations and organisations around the world. When this is considered, it is feasible that anyone employed to cold call and sell carbon credits to would-be investors would assume they were doing nothing illegal. One aspect of the boiler room model we considered earlier is the staff. Often a boiler room hires people on low wages – people who may consider the boiler room as a rare chance of a permanent job. Often they may be too ignorant or desperate to work to consider the exact nature of what they are trying to sell over the phone. Of course, they should know what they are selling is worthless. But how easy is that to determine when you are working the phones for a pittance of a wage? If someone is prosecuted for involvement in a boiler room – regardless of what was being sold to investors – this could well prove to be a main plank of their defence. With carbon credits, the legal defence argument is very likely to go something along the lines of “Well, if perfectly intelligent, rational investors were prepared to put their money into the carbon credits on offer then how was my client expected to know any better than them that what he was selling was no good?’’ It is an argument that may well be heard in courts around the UK in future years, as the full extent of carbon credit fraud becomes known. Carbon credits are a new idea for this century – an attempt to put right some major wrongs. Unfortunately, when in the wrong hands, they seem to have caused more damage than their creators could ever have envisaged ■

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Misc / Case Studies

Case study Betteshanger Sustainable Parks Hadlow College has unveiled the Betteshanger Sustainable Parks development. The development, of which this is the �irst phase, is an outstanding £40m economic and social regeneration project for �inding future global solutions in green technologies on the former Betteshanger Colliery site near Dover.

The scheme will bring over 1000 jobs to East Kent through a combination of construction and sustainable roles in its �irst phase, creating a centre for green technology business, a national centre of sustainable energy and mining heritage, educational provision and enhance rural tourism to the region. The Betteshanger Sustainable Parks vision will see the 121 hectare Betteshanger Colliery site transformed into a 21st Century global laboratory for green technologies that brings together business, education, mining heritage, green technology and rural tourism. This will create economic and social regeneration acting as a catalyst to support much needed growth. Work on the site will commence in three phases in 2014 comprising: • A bespoke green technologies enterprise complex, a catalyst for creating new markets, technologies and products – Betteshanger Sustainable Business and Commerce Park will be 6,700 square metres of low carbon buildings for companies in food security, environmental technology and green business. • World-class research and development supported with education at Betteshanger Sustainable Education Centre in environmental and countryside programs, climate change, sustainability, agro ecology and agronomy production in phase 1, with further educational opportunities for undergraduate and postgraduate researchers in phase 2. • A new national eco-tourism visitor destination for over 100,000 visitors per annum at the Betteshanger Sustainable Energy and Mining Heritage Park, showcasing mining heritage and sustainable energy production set within an innovative Landscape Laboratory. The park, a gateway to East Kent historic heritage will provide life-long learning, retail, gardens, external public spaces and events. The scheme has widespread support. Led by Hadlow College Group with the Homes and Communities Agency, Dover District Council, East Kent Spatial Development Company and private sector partners. Nationally it has support from the Departments for Communities and Local Government and Business, Innovation and Skills, the Industrial Coal�ields and Coastal Communities Alliances, Kent MPS and Kent County Council. The Homes and Community Agency (HCA) is the Government's key delivery partner in unlocking land. As the landowner, the HCA actively marketed Betteshanger and selected Hadlow College as the preferred bidder. The site was sold to Hadlow College in the summer of this year..

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For more information: www.betteshangerparks.co.uk

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Case study Solar solution for Asset International Now is the time for companies to take a fresh look at solar energy.

In April of this year solar experts, Brilliant Harvest, designed one of the UK’s largest roof-mounted solar arrays for Newport manufacturer, Asset International. A few months on and the solar panel system has already outperformed predictions by producing 12% more energy than predicted. It has also regained over 10% of the initial capital expenditure. Brilliant Harvest �itted 1,040 solar modules and 7 inverters as part of the solution, which was designed to produce 222,000kWhs of electricity and deliver 112 tonnes of carbon savings for Asset International’s factory. The factory is using 100% of the energy produced on site to help protect the business from rising energy costs for the next few decades.

Jeff Ingvaldson, Founder and Managing Director of Brilliant Harvest comments: “We are delighted our solar PV strategy is meeting Asset International's objectives earlier than expected. Now is the time for companies to take a fresh look at solar energy. For anyone with doubts about related costs, solar installation has proven to be more and more affordable and can generate great savings as well as providing an income stream.” Graham Bennett, Operations Manager at Asset International says: “We have always been committed to reducing our carbon footprint and were becoming concerned about rising energy costs. The initial results show companies can be green and more ef�icient in generating energy.”

For more information: www.brilliantharvest.co.uk

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Case study The Academy of the Jewish Museum Accoya, the world-leading modi�ied wood product manufactured by Accsys Technologies, has been selected as the main cladding material for The Academy of the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Designed as an extension to the current Jewish Museum, the 25,000 sq. ft. one storey Academy has been created with cube shaped timber structures which will house the museum’s library, archives and education centre. The selection of timber as the primary construction material has been a poignant decision. The use of wood represents the wooden crates used to transport books and precious objects.

Manufactured using Accsys Technologies’ proprietary process, Accoya is one of the most advanced modi�ied wood products on the market delivering outstanding levels of performance, stability and durability. In most cases matching or exceeding the performance attributes of tropical hardwoods, it also boasts excellent environmental credentials by using wood sourced from FSC certi�ied and sustainable forests – while being 100% non-toxic. Joerg Neben, Accoya Project Manager for Roggemann who oversaw the project installation, said: “Accoya was, and always has been, a fantastic product to work with. For such signi�icant architectural projects as this, a reliable and durable material able to withstand challenges of the external environment over a long period of time is key, and Accoya meets each of these demands.”

Bryan Crennell, Sales and Marketing Director for Accsys Technologies, said: “We’re delighted that Accoya has been chosen for the cladding of this striking and signi�icant building. With durability guaranteed for 50 years above ground, this will enable The Academy to support the museum in telling the story of the Jewish people in Germany for many years to come.”

For more information: www.accoya.com

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Case study Accoya construction projects in Greece Long dry Mediterranean summers and mild wet winters have proven to be no hurdle for Accoya wood. The world’s leading modi�ied wood, which is produced by Accsys Technologies, has recently been selected for several construction projects throughout Greece. A total of 92 Accoya windows have been installed at one residence on the Greek Island of Paros, whilst on the mainland, high performance windows and doors have been installed at a beautiful and idyllic church.

Given the long and intense heat experienced during Greek summers with temperatures above 40oC it is common for wood materials to degrade rapidly due to the harmful effect of the sun’s ultraviolet rays. The temperature during the day can be extremely hot and the evening can be much cooler. However these issues are not a problem with Accoya wood as it can handle the intense sun and rapid variation in temperature that can cause many wood species to shrink and swell, making windows and doors liable to cracking and sticking and causing issues with the coatings. Therefore Accoya can be used successfully in hot, sunny climates and outperform other timber species. Manufactured using Accsys Technologies’ proprietary acetylation process, Accoya is one of the most advanced modi�ied wood products on the market delivering outstanding levels of performance, stability and Class 1 durability. Matching or exceeding the performance attributes of tropical hardwoods, it also boasts excellent environmental credentials by using wood sourced from FSC certi�ied and sustainable forests as well as being Cradle to Cradle Gold certi�ied and carbon negative. Accoya’s high levels of durability and sustainability also saw it selected for a private residence on mainland Greece. The owners installed a stunning decking project made from Accoya to complement their swimming pool. This type of project would ordinarily present various challenges for wood materials, due to the risk of moisture penetration and the intense summer heat. Such applications demand a durable material that is resistant to UV degradation, rot and decay, and not liable to be attacked by insects. Accoya matched the project speci�ication completely.

For more information: www.accoya.com

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Misc / Case Studies

Case study PET-Recycling Plant at PFR Nord GmbH The Mensing Group of Companies in Hohenwestedt (Germany) invests almost €10m in the construction of a new PET recycling plant. The construction of the recycling plant is associated with the formation of PFR Nord GmbH in Hohenwestedt. About 30 new jobs have resulted there. On the whole, Mensing Group, which also includes AFA Nord GmbH and TM Recycling GmbH, has a headcount of about 80. Situation before: A modern PET recycling plant should be set up anew. PET will be purchased in different qualities. Clear PET should be obtained in the plant in highest purity, and thus separated of contaminants and discolourations. The sorted clear PET should be shredded, washed, and sold as PET �lakes after sorting. Current situation:

The PET bails are opened up and separated using bail opener. The metals are separated using an overbelt magnetic separator and eddy �low separator. Films and �ines are separated on a ballistic separator. Contaminants such as PVC and other plastics are then sorted out using the REDWAVE NIR Technology. Using multi-level sorting, a high-purity clear PET fraction is produced with a high ef�iciency. The pure and clear PET is shredded and washed to be sold as PET �lakes. Plant description: Since June 2013 the new processing plant for clear PET from PFR Nord GmbH is in operation. Around 100 tonnes of PET bottles are processed in this plant per day.

PET are purchased in bales at different qualities (80/20, 90/10, 95/5, etc.). The bales are opened and separated by a bale opener, then the magnetic parts are separated using an overbelt magnet. Films and �ines are separated using a ballistic separator. Following the ballistic separator, the 3D fraction is passed through an eddy current separator to isolate the aluminium. The next step is the separation of contaminants, such as PVC using a REDWAVE sorting machine, which recognises and reliably separates different plastic materials using near-infrared.

The colour sorting, including recovery using REDWAVE is done in the next steps. With the REDWAVE NIR/C, the different materials and colours can be identi�ied and separated ef�iciently.

The sorted clear PET in the highest purity is shredded and washed, and sold as PET �lakes after sorting. | 140 | environmentmagazine.co.uk

For more information: www.pfr-nord.de

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Case study CAB 56 CAB 56 (Cooperative des artisans du bois) invited over 1000 cooperative members and guests from industry and local government to celebrate the 15th anniversary of CAB 56 and also the inauguration of their new automated storage facility almost exactly 2 years after beginning construction.

After just 15 years of existence CAB 56 has developed into one of the leading co-operative purchasing societies for timber based products and building materials in France with over 350 members. Typical members of the co-operative are local carpenters, joiners, roo�ing contractors, interior decorators or small building contractors which appoint the management on a yearly basis. A new 4500m² warehouse, which is situated in Plescop nearby Vannes in Brittany, was planned to expand the storage capacity of long goods, chipboards, laminate panels and palletized material.

In addition to new high bay cantilever racking (OHRA), motor driven conveyor systems (HAMON) connecting service areas and a total three automated aisle changer stacker cranes (KOETTGEN), the project also included a new order ful�illment software (INNOLOG) system (WMS) interfaced with the in-house ERP system to integrate all storage, picking and distribution tasks on the entire 20,000m² site. The project design team from CAB 56, AXISBOIS consultants, and OHRA as the general contractor for racking, software and stacker cranes divided the new distribution concept into three speci�ic zones and implementation stages: • • •

Zone 1 – automated storage and retrieval of chipboards, MDF and laminate. Zone 2 – automated storage and retrieval of diverse building materials such as aluminium pro�iles, windows, door blanks or parquet �looring. Zone 3 – Integration of all other storage areas on the site, including outdoor storage into the WMS system via barcode and radio frequency control terminals on all handling equipment.

The Construction of the 20m high building started in June 2011 and the main building structure including slab and cladding and roo�ing was prepared by the end of 2012. The erection of just over 900 tons of racking construction began in January 2012 and was completed after 4 months. In February 2012 the �irst crane was installed and started working in April 2012. By the end of August 2012 the �inal 2 stacker cranes were installed and in operation. ►

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Misc / Case Studies

Case study (cont) CAB 56

The �inal integration of outdoor storage areas were �inalized in March 2013. In Zone 1 a fully automated stacker crane handles chipboard packages of up to 5.1m and 5 tons or pallets of laminates either for customer orders or manufacturing orders from the in-house cutting and edging facility and operates in 3 separate aisles. Integrated chain belt and roller conveyor systems collect the goods from the crane and transport the material to the appropriate workstation. In Zone 2, 2 stacker cranes with a load-bearing capacity of 4 tons and a handling capacity of lifting goods of up to 4.2m in length to 12.5m high and operate either in a fully automatic mode for after-hours stock re�ill operations or semi-automatically, in a “man to goods” mode, combining manual picking for multiple orders or multi-line orders with the advantage of automatically guided transfer from one storage position to another. Eight aisles are accessed by the two stacker cranes, which, as with the automatic crane in zone 1, can change from aisle to aisle. With a top speed of 150 metres/min the cranes can handle more than 50 full loads per hour. In all areas the racks used are cantilever rack as these provided the most �lexible storage variants for the diverse stock of CAB 56. The cantilever racking is 14.5m high and 75m long, with a load-bearing capacity of 19200 kg per column. The racking design also provides the superstructure for the upper guide rails of the stacker cranes

The �inal stage of the project – zone 3 – entailed the integration of all new and existing storage areas on the entire site, even outdoor �loor areas and order preparation docks, into the WMS system and equipping fork lift trucks with mobile radio controlled order ful�illment terminals, transferring paperless order information to operators and providing enhanced real time performance information for the site management.

For more information: www.cab56.com

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Case study The Chapel of St. Albert the Great The new chapel is a peaceful and warm structure that brings students, staff and local residents together.

The Chapel of Saint Albert the Great, which has been serving students and staff, and the wider community since 1931, is situated on George Square at the University of Edinburgh. The chapel, designed by Simpson & Brown Architects was completed in late 2012 and aims to provide a modern space for worship but also to increase capacity and improve accessibility. A new access was created from Middle Meadow Walk so the chapel is now a feature for the many people that walk along this popular route.

The choice of materials was an important factor in the design of the building. Joinery manufacturer Sandy Bruce from SK Bruce Joinery helped source ‘a beautiful looking timber that is stable and has an excellent colour and grain’, says Stuart Allan from Simpson & Brown Architects. American white oak was chosen for the ceiling cladding over the altar and sanctuary spaces. The ceiling is support by four tree-like Corten Steel columns. The timber has a natural �ire resistance which was signi�icantly important as the whole interior of the church is white oak. It also meets acoustics requirements as the oak linings prevents any issues with reverberation. The timber not only meets all the aesthetic and technical requirements but it has also created a distinct atmosphere. ‘The smell of oak as you enter the chapel was not something envisaged during design stages but is actually now considered very important to the experience’, says Stuart Allan. Deep, angled window reveals allow natural light to gently enter the space, which is characterised by the warmth of the timber pews and the beautifully crafted timber ceiling, which extends outdoors, beyond the west window. A sedum roof further melds the building to the garden. A thick masonry wall, constructed out of large clay blocks clad with sandstone, interprets the historic boundary between the townhouses and provides a solid mass and weight to the building form. Angled windows are formed within this wall to allow light in and also to maintain the focus towards the sanctuary, providing oblique views of the garden.

A combination of clerestory glazing, ventilator windows and a light well with opening roof lights provide both natural light and ventilation. Daylight is accentuated by mirrors and �iltered through continuous oak slats along the length of the chapel. ►

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Misc / Case Studies

Case study (cont) The Chapel of St. Albert the Great

The west wall behind the sanctuary is glazed and connects the chapel with the garden and its changing seasons, playing an important part in the worship calendar. The external �inish on the roof is sedum, again connecting the building to its garden setting, and minimising its visual impact from above. The new chapel provides a unique and beautifully designed space for peace, re�lection and worship. The project won an RIAS Award for Best Gathering Place 2013, a RIBA Award and was shortlisted for the 2013 RIAS Andrew Doolan Awards. The chapel is open all day and can be accessed from George Square Lane which runs parallel to Middle Meadow Walk.

American white oak (Quercus spp.) American white oak has a creamy coloured sapwood and a light to dark brown heartwood. White oak is mostly straight grained with a medium to coarse texture, with longer rays than red oak, producing a distinctive and attractive grain pattern. American white oak is widely available and is a popular choice in export markets around the world for many furniture, �looring and joinery manufacturers due to its colour consistency and the high volume of square edged lumber production, and veneer availability. The wood is hard and heavy, with medium bending and crushing strength. It is low in stiffness, but very good in steam bending. To be used externally without preservation a timber has to have a minimum durability rating of Class 3, moderately durable. American white oak meets these requirements. As with all timber, if sapwood is present then preservative treatment will be required. Photography: Chris Humphreys

For more information: www.accoya.com

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Case study Newham Hospital E.ON have begun working with Newham University Hospital in East London to improve energy ef�iciency and reduce carbon emissions.

The project is amongst the very �irst of the London Development Agency’s (LDA) RE:FIT programme which aims to reduce the capital’s carbon emissions by updating public buildings with the most effective energy saving measures. E.ON have developed a six-year Energy Performance Contract with Newham University Hospital. The bene�its • Guarantees the level of energy savings that will be achieved for the available budget • Reduces carbon emissions and energy costs • Will exceed the investment requirements set out in the RE:FIT programme • Delivers additional operational bene�its over and above energy and carbon reductions

The project E.ON’s Carbon Consultancy team were tasked with designing a speci�ic energy solution, within a tight public sector budget, to meet guaranteed energy saving requirements. It was clear that the current air handling units at the hospital were installed when the building was constructed in 1982 and as such are relatively old and inef�icient. Upgrading to modern, signi�icantly more ef�icient units would therefore form the central plank of the solution. The proposed design: • met the hospitals budget • met the return on investment requirements • reduces energy consumption • reduces carbon emissions • minimises disruption to patients, staff and visitors The �irst phase of the project involves replacing air handling units (AHUs), which supply heating, cooling and ventilation to wards and theatres, with a more energy ef�icient systems.

Overall, this simple project reduces the hospitals energy consumption by more than 940,000 kWhrs1 per year and is expected to pay for itself within seven years, whilst cutting the hospital’s carbon emissions by more than 3,000 tonnes2 over the same period. Future improvements, including further Air Handling Plant replacement and Dry Air Chilled Heat recovery, are planned to reduce the hospital’s energy use further. ►

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Case study (cont) Newham Hospital

The technology The new AHUs will use heat recovery, where heat is taken from the extracted air and transferred back into the supply air without mixing the two streams. This is important in a medical application such as a hospital, where ‘contaminated’ extract air should not be reintroduced into the building. The AHU’s will not only help the hospital meet its objectives to reduce energy consumption but will also contribute to the carbon goals for London. RE:FIT The purpose of RE:FIT is to assist public bodies in London to signi�icantly reduce carbon emissions from buildings which will help London achieve its overall target of cutting carbon emissions by 60% by 2025 (as set out in London’s Climate Change Action Plan 2006) 1

Total Energy Usage is based on the projected target usage �igure provided by the Trust in the Information pack supplied to Clients. Savings based on baseline energy consumption of 1,751,596 kWhrs provided by Newham University Hospital and expected energy consumption of the new system of 809,865 kWhrs from the energy conservation equipment manufacturer.

CO2 calculations are based on 2009 DECC/Defra conversion factors for Kgs of CO2 per KWh which are: 0.18396 for Gas and 0.54418 for Electricity

For more information: www. eonenergy.com/sustainable

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Case study Benthemplein water plaza The world's very �irst water plaza is under construction at Benthemplein in Rotterdam-Noord as part of the MaxiGreen initiative – an EU-wide campaign to improve a range of green spaces and heritage areas across NorthWest Europe.

On Monday 29th October 2012, construction of�icially began on the creation of the multifunctional water plaza with depressed seating area, space for visitors to play and practice sports and a low-lying skatepark and sports �ield. In a world �irst, these areas will function as above-ground reservoirs to temporarily retain rainwater and decrease pressure on the sewage system during heavy rainfall.

Alexandra van Huffelen , Rotterdam Alderman of Sustainability, Inner City and Public Spaces, said “Rotterdam's Benthemplein is the �irst large-scale water plaza in the world: an innovative Rotterdam solution to temporary urban �looding and, thus, an inspiring example to other cities. Benthemplein is being transformed into a colourful square that balances ample space for urban activities with surrounding greenery and water. Water plazas also contribute to a green, healthy, climate-proof, attractive and economically vital Rotterdam.” With an abundance of pavement in the city, water often only goes in one direction – into the sewers. Benthemplein Water Square – conceived by urban planning expert Florian Boer of De Urbanisten and architect Marco Vermeulen – will enable the city to store 1,700 cubic metres of water. Equivalent to 8,500 bathtubs of water, the unique system will help residents of Agniese neighbourhood to keep their feet dry whilst providing them with a beautiful new square. “Along with climate change come increasingly intense downpours; these are so heavy that the sewage system cannot handle the high volume of water all at once,” said Chris van der Velden, member of the Schieland and Krimpenerwaard Higher Water Board council. “If no measures are taken, highly urbanised cities featuring numerous buildings and extensive pavement in particular will experience substantial �looding.”

Benthemplein was a rather �lat, unattractive square sandwiched tightly amongst schools and homes. Portfolio holder Nils Berndsen (Noord submunicipality) said: “We were asked by students from Zadkine College whether the square perhaps could be made more attractive. We really took the time to consult with the residents and others who frequent the square and �ind out what their needs were.” As a result of the detailed consultation and design process, the project required a multipurpose design with space for relaxation and play, a depressed seating area, a skatepark and a sports �ield. During the design stage the square began to take on its own identity, whilst combining much-needed water storage with a huge improvement of the quality of the urban public space – in line with the MaxiGreen initiative.

For more information: www.urbanisten.nl www.wallaard.nl www.schielandendekrimpenerwaard.nl

Designed by DE URBANISTEN and constructed by Wallaard construction, Benthemplein Water Plaza was commissioned by the Schieland and Krimpenerwaard Higher Water Board and the Municipality of Rotterdam. Set for completion late 2013, this ambitious and unique project will recon�irm Rotterdam’s growing reputation as the ‘Water City of the Future’. environmentmagazine.co.uk | 147 |

Misc / Famous Last Words

Famous Last Words Eli zab eth Block s peak s w i th Jonathon Por r i tt ab ou t hi s new book Th e Wo rld We Ma de

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Jo nathon Po r r i tt

Web: www.jonathonporritt.com

How many times have you heard a speaker say he has no crystal ball or no silver bullet...? Well, fortunately for mankind, Jonathon Porritt has both. Jonathon Porritt CBE, founder director of Forum for the Future, has written “a story” from the viewpoint of 2050, when we have, thanks to innovation and progress on the blights of nationalism, tribalism and xenophobia, achieved a sustainable world, mainly powered by renewable energy. Yes, we came back from the brink! ►

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Misc / Famous Last Words

Jo nathon Po r r i tt

"How was it that so many very clever people screwed up so spectacularly in the first decade of this century – and very nearly sank capitalism in the process?" - Alex McKay

"The World We Made", which has all royalties going to Forum for the Future, is described as part history, part memoir. It's a "memoir" from the future in that takes the form of an illustrated diary written by a schoolteacher called Alex McKay, aged 50 in 2050. So it could also be described as “fiction” – or sci-fi. We are looking into the future – and it is good.

significant. Huge numbers of off-grid people will be able to benefit from renewable energy. Solar is the single most important energy source along with wind and small hydro. Yes, the message is getting across. Even the World Bank has realised that that it should recognise small-scale renewable and other emerging technologies.”

So what we have here is the exact opposite of the vision of the future presented in the 2009 film "The Age of Stupid". In that film, the late Pete Postlethwaite is the only human being still alive, and he looks back mournfully, as only Pete could, on the missed opportunities to combat climate change. The title refers to the fact that we all saw climate disaster looming - and did nothing, or not nearly enough. We were, in a word, stupid.

Shocks to the System

So Jonathon, aka Alex, takes us through the categories of agriculture, energy, climate change, technology, travel, and even health and human rights, to show what is possible - if we could only share his vision. Or, more prosaically, get our act together. “I am angry but excited,” Porritt said in a phone interview. “So few people realise their power. The solutions already exist. But we need that sense of excitement.” Some of the solutions he looks at include nanotechnology, 3-D printing and biomimicry – or learning from the natural world, to put it simply. Let’s hear it, for example, for the Namib desert beetle, an unpleasant looking creature with expertise in “water vapour harvesting”. This beetle does not carry a plastic water bottle or look for the next oasis. It is prepared. The best aspect of the book is the humour: it is great fun to read about the Houston Concord of 2020 on GHG, and the Treaty of Kiev of 2022, which effectively banned new nuclear reactors, after a series of cyber attacks. And did you know about Lawyers for Life? This group formed in 2018 to promote an International Court for the Environment. Ecocide became a criminal act by 2025! Let me give you a flavour of Porritt’s style. You may laugh, but then again you may cry. This is excerpted from the “Climate Challenges” chapter: “It’s five years ago now, but all our friends are still talking about 2045 as if it were yesterday. Quite simply, it was the worst year ever from the point of view of climate change. “The Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico were devastated by two of the worst hurricanes in recorded history; there were droughts across Africa

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Jonathon Porritt and much of South America; wildfires burned out of control for weeks on end in Australia, Russia and Canada, and terrible flooding spread across Europe, Pakistan and India. “The irony is that we all thought we were doing so well at that stage.” So when I said that it was “great fun” to read about future accords, you should note that Porritt does not expect early miracles. Reality check, in the best sense: many of the positive initiatives with future dates that Porritt discusses are actually based on current work, such as the US Navy's Green Fleet. And the photos, allegedly from the future, were necessarily taken now. For example, a ship with solar sails is in production by Solar Sailor, Australia - or at least in the works. And Porritt pays attention to the small things: his book is printed on what is 100% recycled, FSC certified paper. And the book itself can be recycled. Even the inks were made from vegetables based oil, not mineral oils. And he had the book’s carbon footprint assessed by The CarbonNeutral Company, with any remaining carbon emissions offset by a donation to the LifeStraw Carbon for Water Project in Kenya. Not all authors are so aware.

Feeding the World

Porritt has a chapter on famines and food shortages in the 2020s and 2030s that shocked people into a “radical rethink” about food and land use. So I took the opportunity to ask him about ECREEE, the renewable energy and energy efficiency arm of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Were these regional efforts important? Porritt replied: “These efforts are enormously

OK, that’s enough optimism. The fact is that in Porritt’s vision, global environmental progress is made through “shocks to the system” – bigger hurricanes, killer tornadoes, lasting droughts, etc. Or the Shanghai Inundation of 2024. The very next year China decided to close down its coal-fired plants by 2040! As Porritt said, “Our ability to do things in a planned way is limited. Therefore these shocks have one good benefit: they wake up the politicians.” However, I am writing this a week or so after the terrible typhoon in the Philippines – and a day or two after Canada, Australia and Japan retreated from their climate change targets. And just after international talks on marine reserves in the Antarctic broke down - again. And there were new warnings of increased ocean acidification. True, some politicians are now getting a bit braver in daring to link this typhoon and previous “natural disasters” to climate change. For example, a year or so after Hurricane Sandy, President Obama has made some new noises about the effects of climate change. And a Philippines minister is on hunger strike to demand better regulation from the world’s great powers. That is not so surprising - but even some British politicians are beginning to speak out. But the reluctance of three major countries to remain committed to their targets shows that politicians are quite capable of sleeping through their wake-up calls. To be fair, Porritt is aware of the snooze button. As indicated above, in his book, one of the worst “shocks to the system” comes in 2045. So I suggest all readers tighten their seat belts as we go towards 2050. It will take a lot of nasty shocks to defeat the power of corporate money, another topic tackled by Porritt. And to overcome the politicians’ lack of vision. But this book is very important. It shows what is possible, starting now ■

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