EIMissue9

ISSN 2043-0140

AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2010

BUILDING FOR HEALTH GREEN ROOFS SCOTTISH WATER RWM 2010 AIMC4 CHRIS PACKHAM

INTRODUCTION FROM THE EDITOR Environment Industry Magazine is now well into its second year of publishing. I have always had a clear idea of how the magazine will evolve. We have spent the last eight issues on a massive learning curve and slowly things have fallen into place. One of the biggest concerns I have had so far is that each edition of the magazine covers a significantly different subject every time and although we have some regular editorial inclusions such as Invasive Species, Contaminated Land and Education and Training, there has been a lack of regular features inclusive of all industry sectors.

The ethos of the magazine has always been to truly represent the environmental arena both in terms of subject matter and audience.

The environmental arena can be described as how human activity impacts on the natural environment. The ultimate product of this impact is the built environment and as such every area of the environmental industry is a prelude to or defined by the built environment. Every aspect of human development is driven to theoretically improve our lives. These ideas give form and boundaries to a concept; they allow us to determine the extent of “the environment” but also to see the connectivity between industry sectors involved in working in the environment. This is the basis for Environment Industry Magazine – to share ideas and information across the environmental arena.

This issue is the beginning of our evolution, a metamorphosis which introduces new broad industry related sections into the magazine: Waste, Energy, Water, Green Building, Land Management, Timber etc.

Each section will comprise of editorials provided by industry leaders who will be writing their opinions of what they see as pertinent to their industry. We have already demonstrated our commitment to good quality editorial and we offer a pledge, that by increasing the coverage of the publication, we will not dilute the content. All editorial features are written by invitation only, however we welcome feature ideas and synopses from any readers and with the new diversity of editorial and regular feature sections, we will endeavour to include them in the publication.

With the new delineation of industry sections there are so many editorials to introduce in this foreword, all of them of equal importance and interest but one of them is worthy of special comment because of the opportunity it holds for some of our readers. AIMC4 (page42) is a pioneering project with a vision to research, develop and deliver the volume production of homes. The project is a collaboration between a number of partners: Stewart Milne Group, Crest Nicholson, Barratt Developments, H+H UK Ltd, BRE and Oxford Brookes University. The consortium is looking for suppliers to get involved in this project and would be pleased to hear from companies who feel they may have innovative solutions to offer in any of the areas discussed in the editorial. Anyone wishing to contact the consortium can apply through the website www.aimc4.com Finally, having given a blatant plug to the New World Vietnamese Restaurant in the last issue, I thought I would use this opportunity to support a good friend who has finally (after a number of years of nagging) managed to put pen to paper and write his first novel. Inganno is a thriller and I know it has nothing to do with the environment but if you want to while away a few hours during the summer hols, it is available at www.amazon. co.uk and is a really enjoyable read.

If you have any comments or questions for Environment Industry Magazine or any editorial requests, please send them to me at alex@enviromedia.ltd.uk Enjoy the rest of the summer.

Alex Stacey Alex Stacey Managing Director

Image: Rolf, The Editor and the Proof Reading Team

We will also run an independent focus in each issue (this one in particular being on the health sector, John Cooper, Chairman of Architects for Health, and Lizzie Philips, from the Centre of Healthcare Excellence Group, are providing their opinions of sustainable development in NHS construction). I hope these changes are as exciting to you as they are to us and I hope that the magazine can become a stronger voice in the Environmental sector.

ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE |1|

CONTENTS NEWS: PAGE 4 - 23

FOCUS: PAGE 28 - 35

NEWS Page 23 - Ideas In Transit - parkatmyhouse.co.uk

Paul Beauchamp - Ordnance Survey

Page 24-25 - UK-SDA - Climate Week - Terry Nash

Executive Director UK-SDA Page 26 -

Steve Grant Column

GREEN BUILDING: PAGE 38 - 49

BUILDING FOR HEALTH Page 28 - 31 - Is The NHS Sustainable - John Cooper Chair Architects for Health Page 32 - 35 - Does The NHS Need To Prescribe Its’

Buildings A Dose Of TLC

Lizzie Phillips - Centre of Excellence

Healthcare Group

TIMBER: PAGE 50 - 69

Page 38 - 39 - From Greater Green - Green Roofs and Healthcare - Paul Shaffer CIRIA Page 42 - 46 - AMC4 Consortium - Dr. Elizabeth Ness Group Sustainability Executive Crest Nicholson PLC

Page 52 - 54 - Focus On Due Diligence - John White Chief Executive Timber Trade Federation Page 56 - 59 - Cradle To Cradle - Paul Clegg CEO Accsys Technologies PLC

Page 48 - 49 - Improve Insulation, Save Energy And Money - Neil Marshall National Insulation Association

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

Alex Stacey Tel: 0161 3410158 Fax: 0161 7668997 Email: alex@enviromedia.ltd.uk

Environment Industry Magazine is proud to be the official media partner for the UK Sustainable Development Association.

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 EnviroMedia Ltd. Environment Industry Magazine welcomes contributions for publication. Submissions are accepted on the basis of full assignment of copyright to EnviroMedia Ltd unless otherwise agreed in advance and in writing. We reserve the right to edit items for reasons of space, clarity or legality. |2| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

WATER: PAGE 68 - 76

ENERGY: PAGE 60 - 67 Page 58 - 60 - Where Is Our Energy Going To Come From John Abbatt - Principle Consultant ADAS Page 66 - 67 - R22 Ban Offers Real Energy Saving Potential - Donald Daw Commercial Director - Mitsubishi Electric

Page 70 - 72 - Innovating Towards A sustainable Water Source For Scotland - Grant Nairn Director Of Innovation and Technology Scottish Water Page 74 - 76 - Scotlands’ Unique Competitive Market For Water - Alan Sutherland - CEO Water Industry Commission For Scotland

WASTE MANAGEMENT: PAGE 90-103

LAND MANAGEMENT: PAGE 78 - 88 Page 80 - 82 - Code Of Practice Delivers On Re-use of soil Clive Boyle - Vice Chair EIC Contaminated Land Working Group Page 84 - 89 - Rota Sonic Drilling - Wesley Wray Business Development Manager Boart longyear

Page 92 - 94 - RWM Show Preview Page 96 - 98 - Creating New Life From Old Tyres Peter Taylor - OBE Sec General Tyre Recovery Association Page 100 - 103 - Issues In The Metals Industry Ian Hetherington - Director General

British Metals Recycling Association

MISCELLANY: PAGE 104 - 140 Page 105 - Environment Agency Prosecutions Page 106 - 108 - Invasive Species - Taking Action To Control Non Native Invasive Plants - Simon Ford Nature Conservation Advisor - National Trust Page 110 - 113 - Conservation - Does Offshore Renewable Energy Development Benefit The Coastal Eco System Dr. Andrew Gill - Dept. of Natural Resources Cranford University Page 114 - 116 - Mapping - Technology For An Unpredictable World - Richard Waite - Managing Director - ESRI UK Page 118 - 120 - Training CPD in Environmental Management - John Osborne - Product Manager Training BSI Group Page 121 - Summit Skills Column Page 122 - 139 - Case Studies Page 140 - Famous Last Words - Chris Packham ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE |3|

Best Faces in Fundraising Send a Cow wins a National Award.

International development charity Send a Cow has won an award for the ‘Best use of Face to Face Fundraising’ for their new regular giving scheme called Family Friend.

Beating shortlisted charities, Action for Children and Care International UK, the development charity collected their Institute of Fundraising award at the Hilton London Metropole. The charity was commended on its thorough training and friendly down to earth approach when talking to the public.David Smith, Fundraising Manager said: “We are so thrilled that we have won this award with the help of Home Fundraising and it just goes to show what a great regular giving scheme, Family Friend is. Our face to face fundraising has been received really well over the South West and we hope it will continue to do so!” Helped by Home Fundraising, Send a Cow launched its door to door campaign across the South West signing up over 770 local households to becoming Family Friend’s themselves.

For £10 a month supporters can choose a country and follow an African family’s journey out of poverty.

Do You Give A Cow?

https://www.sendacow.org.uk/join-family-friend

Enviroco waste collections get hi-tech routing treatment from Paragon Hazardous waste management company Enviroco Limited is implementing a hi-tech computerised route optimisation solution from Paragon Software Systems. The transport planning software simplifies complex route planning and helps Enviroco meet exacting service requirements across the company’s UK-wide customer base.

The Enviroco system incorporates specially calculated ITIS road speed data to give greater journey accuracy for mixed long haul and city driving. The Paragon software has reduced planning time from four days to a few hours. It also allows Enviroco’s transport management team to adjust the plan to include urgent call-outs and last-minute changes requested by the customer.

Howard Jonas, Enviroco Operations Director said “We collect packaged waste from customers across the UK – including Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and the Isle of Wight. Collections vary in frequency from site to site, plus we have to deal with ad hoc requests and emergencies. Paragon brings new levels of accuracy to our route planning and it removes laborious manual processes. Our staff now have more time for customer service and to manage and improve our efficiencies. Importantly, with Paragon we start with efficient and accurate collection route plans and, whatever changes we have to make along the way, we know that the software will re-optimise the routes. It also allows us to run ‘what-if’ scenarios – for example, changing collection times to certain sites to see whether we can improve service further. The software shows exactly what is possible if we make these changes. The software has also highlighted some extra capacity so that Enviroco can add further collections to the plan. The calculations are complicated as there are so many variables to account for in meeting customers varied service requirements. With Paragon, however, we can see the loads on each vehicle and sequence in additional collections where possible. This means we can use our fleet and driver resources to the full,” says Howard Jonas.

Enviroco is now also looking at Paragon Fleet Controller for tracking real-time vehicle activity against the plan. This additional software will also alert customers of updated delivery times when the vehicle is an agreed number of minutes away. |4| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

Cash support announced to help fight larch tree disease

Woodland owners will be given access to a £600,000 support package announced today to help tackle the outbreak of Phytophthora ramorum infection in Japanese larch trees (Larix kaempferi) in a mix of Forestry Commission and privately owned forests in South West England, and in woodland managed by Forestry Commission Wales in South Wales.

The package has been put in place by the Forestry Commission from funding made available from Defra’s £25 million, five-year Phytophthora management programme. The first £100,000 has been earmarked to give private-sector owners access to professional advice about how to have infected trees felled and marketed in ways that comply with biosecurity and other regulations.The £500,000 balance will be used to prevent further spread of the disease. It will help owners with the costs of clearing immature Japanese larch from affected sites, both privately owned and those managed by the Forestry Commission, especially those most likely to cause further spread of the disease.

Roddie Burgess, head of the Commission’s Plant Health Service, said: “Woodland owners need to make decisions about how they deal with these outbreaks to comply with requirements imposed on them under the disease management programme”

Image © Forestry Commission

What a whopper! To feed anaerobic digester Two of the largest hoppers ever built by Tong Peal are now being assembled into a Lincolnshire anaerobic digester, one of the first exemplar projects supported by the Environmental Transformation Fund. The project is taking shape at Staples Vegetables plant at Wrangle, near Boston, where vegetables out-of-specification at the packhouse or bypassed in the field will be used to generate electricity for supply to the site and surplus for the grid.

The digester will need a constant flow of vegetables and also maize to maintain 24-hour a day operation – and Tong Peal were tasked with designing and manufacturing suitable intake hoppers. To handle the daily load the two 130 cubic metre capacity hoppers had to be massive — 19 metres long, four metres wide and four metres high. The hoppers were fitted with twin scrapers not hauled by rubber belts as with conventional intake hoppers but by chains resembling those used on a ship’s anchor. The vegetables or maize are then picked up by spinning blades in a teaser assembly to provide a steady flow into the dosing modules where the ‘diet’ is mixed with water before going into the digesters.

The galvanised steel hoppers, made in modular form and each weighing 35 tonnes, are now being installed at the digester which is expected to begin operating in October and be running at some 50 per cent capacity by the end of the year. Heat generated by the digestion will be used to chill packhouse areas through heat absorption coolers, reducing energy usage considerably, with excess heat warming the offices and staff buildings.

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InterfaceFLOR – A National Example of Excellence! at Business in the Community Awards Carpet tile manufacturer honoured for its pioneering achievements in sustainable business practice InterfaceFLOR, a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of carpet tiles has been named the national Example of Excellence by Business in the Community, in the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Climate Change Award in association with the Mayday Journey. Now in its thirteenth year, the Business in the Community Awards for Excellence identify and celebrate companies having a positive impact on the community, environment, industry and workplace. Halifax-based InterfaceFLOR received the Climate Change Award for its pioneering achievements in sustainable business practice. The award was presented by Radio 4’s James Naughtie at a ceremony held at the Royal College of Music, followed by a gala dinner hosted by HRH The Prince of Wales, President of Business in the Community.The Example of Excellence is a significant achievement awarded by a panel of industry expert judges following a rigorous selection process. The winners must be able to demonstrate: significant impact, innovation, commitment over a sustained period of time, a radical approach to embedding sustainability into their business model and overcoming significant

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challenges to embed responsibility into the business.As part of its Mission Zero pledge, InterfaceFLOR aims to eliminate any negative impact it has on the environment by 2020 through the redesign of processes and products, the use of new technologies, elimination of waste and harmful emissions while increasing the use of renewable materials and energy sources. Lindsey Parnell, President and CEO of InterfaceFLOR EMEAI said “We are proud and delighted to have achieved a BITC Example of Excellence Award, It is a real honour for InterfaceFLOR and recognition of the enduring commitment of all our employees to eliminate our impact on the environment by 2020.

Tesco powers 25 vans with Gasrec’s sustainable fuel from landfill sites Tesco is commissioning 25 Iveco EcoDaily light commercial vehicles fuelled by sustainable Liquid Biomethane for its online grocery shopping and delivery service tesco.com. The fuel is made by UK company, Gasrec (the first commercial producer of Liquid Biomethane in Europe), and is created by extracting naturally occurring methane from organic waste in landfill sites and converting it to a high quality clean fuel.

Gasrec will initially supply fuel for the 25 Liquid Biomethane-fuelled 5.3 tonne Iveco EcoDailys to Tesco’s dedicated regional distribution centre for its tesco.com home delivery service, at Greenford. If the vehicles prove successful, then Tesco has said it will consider rolling out Gasrec biomethane-powered vehicles across more of its tesco.com fleet. The first vehicles will come into use in August 2010.

Gasrec’s Liquid Biomethane is created by extracting the natural gas produced from biomass in landfill. The gas is then converted to Liquid Biomethane, has the lowest carbon footprint of all the renewable vehicles and is commercially competitive against diesel and petrol. In addition it can be directly substituted for both Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). This Liquid Biomethane is then used to fuel dedicated gas-powered or duel-fuel vehicles, or for decentralised (off grid) power generation.

All tesco.com drivers who will be driving the new Gasrec vehicles will be fully trained and familiarised with the new vehicles by the time the vans come into commission in August.

Richard Lilleystone, CEO of Gasrec, says: “Biomethane has been described as the sleeping giant of sustainable vehicle fuels. The adoption of the fuel by Tesco and other such businesses is a sure indicator that the giant has woken. Tesco will enjoy the substantial environmental performance and cost savings benefits that the use of our fuel facilitates. At the same time, it avoids the issues of limited range and sub- standard performance that many of the alternative fuel systems engender. especially electricity. Furthermore, it’s locally sourced – this is all produced from organic waste in the UK.” Dino Papas, Fleet and Equipment Operations manager of tesco.com, says: “Reducing our carbon footprint is something we take very seriously, and have made a clear commitment to. Using Gasrec’s Liquid Biomethane is an important part of that commitment. But vehicle performance is also extremely important, so we can get goods to our customers on time. Gasrec’s Liquid Biomethane we hope will prove to be a real viable alternative to diesel for us.”

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EUROPE BLOWS ITS ANNUAL FISH BUDGET BY FRIDAY 9 JULY New research reveals that Europe could not feed itself on fish from EU waters for more than 189 days a year, and from Friday 9 July it will be dependent on fish caught elsewhere.

Consuming far more than our depleted European seas can produce is making the EU increasingly dependent on fish from elsewhere, according to a new report from leading independent think-tank nef (the new economics foundation) and OCEAN2012 The report, Fish Dependence: The increasing reliance of the EU on fish from elsewhere, provides a clear demonstration of this unsustainable trend by mapping resources onto a calendar year and then finding the day when the EU effectively starts to live off the rest of the world. It shows that:

moment we’re not managing them properly.

The upcoming reform of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy presents a unique opportunity to ensure that these ecosystems are protected for future generations.”

The report points to the reform of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy as a unique opportunity to turn this situation around and provide a policy framework that will restore marine ecosystems to healthy levels and deliver a fair allocation of resources internationally.

As a minimum this will require the following actions.

• If the EU were

• Reduce fishing

only to consume fish from its own waters, it would effectively run-out of fish on 8 July 2010, making it wholly dependent on imported fish from around the world from 9 July onwards, based on current levels of consumption.

capacity to bring it in line with available resources by improving data collection, transparency and reporting; and by prioritising scientific advice in determining catch quotas.

•

• Since 2000, the

EU’s Fish Dependence Day has occurred earlier and earlier in the year and is now nearly a month sooner, revealing an increasing level of fish dependence.

• For a number of member states the specific date from

which they become dependent on fish imports is: Spain, May 10; Portugal, April 2; France, June 20; Germany, May 5; Italy, May 6; and UK, August 4.The effects of EU overfishing of its own fish stocks are masked by the increasing amounts of fish imported from elsewhere.

• Growth in aquaculture has failed to halt our increasing dependence on fish from elsewhere.

With 72% of assessed fish stocks in European waters overfished, it is clear that a more alternative sustainable and fairer model of fishing and consumption is needed.

“Safeguarding the marine environment is vital if we want to make efficient use of EU resources, and protect livelihoods and economies,” said Aniol Esteban, head of environmental economics at nef and co-founder of OCEAN2012. “The EU has some of the largest and richest fishing grounds in the world, but at the |8| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

Make conservation profitable, by making access to resources conditional on social and environmental criteria.

•

Promote responsible consumption among all EU consumers, and implementing measures that are conducive to more responsible fishing outside EU waters.

•

Use public funds to deliver social and environmental goods by investing in environmentally constructive measures, research, and stakeholder involvement, as well as enforcing sustainable quotas and practices.

These aims contrast with the current funding of overcapacity in the fishing fleet, through modernising vessels, and failure to control overfishing, such as access to fisheries stocks.

In order for this to happen, policymakers need to look beyond the short-term costs that could result from reform and give priority to the long-term benefits that healthy marine resources will provide.

Ashden Awards 2010: World’s leading green energy awards announce UK winners Low carbon energy champions from all over the globe were recognised at the 10th annual Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy, the world’s leading green energy awards at the Royal Geographical Society. Businesses, schools, local authorities and charities were among the UK winners, all of whom have made significant carbon savings through the use of renewable energy or energy efficiency measures.

The overall UK Gold Award winner is the Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust for their achievements in cutting energy consumption and devising a unique electricity capping system, dramatically reducing household carbon emissions by nearly 50 percent.

The Ashden Awards champion and reward life-changing ideas: from smokeless stoves in Ethiopia, to green schools in the UK, to solar powered education in Bangladesh. Six UK and six international projects were chosen as winners and received their awards from internationally renowned natural history filmmaker Sir David Attenborough. Award winners received £10,000 or £20,000 to invest in future sustainable energy work.

Sarah Butler-Sloss, Founder Director of the Ashden Awards, said: “Our winners

© Ashden Awards: Isle of Eigg

© Ashden Awards: Northwards Housing

demonstrate how local sustainable energy can not only help save the planet, but also transform communities across the UK by creating jobs, regenerating communities, tackling fuel poverty and educating our future citizens to live sustainably”.

David Attenborough said: “These award-winners are champions at delivering practical ways of protecting our planet and its precious biodiversity through the use of sustainable energy. They are reducing carbon emissions and protecting local eco-systems, whilst improving the lives of the people they touch. They deserve to be celebrated for their important role in tackling both climate change and poverty. ” Six UK organisations won the awards following a rigorous judging process by nine leading experts in the field:

© Ashden Awards: Suffolk County Council

UK Gold Award winner: The Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust, Scotland This is an island community that has embraced self sufficiency and a radical green lifestyle by carefully managing its energy use, actively encouraging energy-saving in everyone’s daily life and generating 90 percent of its electricity through renewable energy.

Northwards Housing, Manchester A scheme that has given 70 percent of North Manchester’s social housing a top to toe energy efficiency overhaul, bringing tenants real comfort and lower fuel bills, and resulting in serious carbon reductions.

Suffolk County Council, Ipswich This forward-looking Council is making big strides towards sustainability by helping local schools switch their oil-fired boilers to greener wood-fired boilers and boosting Suffolk’s supply chain for biomass fuel through sustainable forestry.

© Ashden Awards: Willis Renewable Energy Systems

Willis Renewable Energy Systems, Belfast The Solasyphon is a plumbing innovation that speeds up and simplifies the retro-fitting of solar water heating in existing homes, saving the cost and carbon impact of buying a new water tank.

Okehampton College, Okehampton, Devon Students, staff and governors of this dynamic secondary school in Devon are heading towards carbon neutrality with an exciting array of energy-saving activities both inside and outside the college gates, while inspiring and supporting their eleven feeder primary schools to follow suit.

© Ashden Awards: Okehampton College

St Columb Minor, Newquay, Cornwall The Eco Team and staff at this primary school are taking a practical but fun-packed approach to driving energy use down by making eco pledges in class and at home, generating energy with wind and solar, and giving their building a green overhaul with £120,000-worth of funding. |10| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

© Ashden Awards

NEW STUDY CONFIRMS BRITAIN RELIES ON RAIL FREIGHT The British economy is boosted annually from £870M by the rail freight industry new research from Network Rail reveals today. The freight industry further indirectly supports an economic output of £5.9B, over six times its direct turnover. Rail transports over 100B tonnes of goods worth around £30B every year.

NATION’S RAIL GREEN IS ON TRACK IN WESTBURY The rail green movement has started as Network Rail begins recycling the first 10,000 tonnes of track materials at its brand new recycling centre in Westbury.

This also marks the launch of Britain’s very first dedicated purpose built rail recycling hub.

Built to cater for 25% of the country’s disused track materials, the Westbury recycling centre is integral to Network Rail’s wider aim in building a greener and more costeffective railway.

The centre is among three hubs to be built in Britain, it will bring £2m worth of benefits, contributing to the company’s target in cutting costs by 24% in five years.

It will also assist to boost Network Rail’s rate of re-use/recycling rail material waste to 95% by 2014.

Martin Elwood, director for Network Rail’s national delivery service, said: “A good railway not only contributes to the environment, it also contributes to the success of the country.

Our recycling hubs in Westbury and across the country are part of this vision.”

Most of the 110,000 sleepers will be reused on the railway. In addition, 30,000 tonnes – the weight of around 150 trains - of waste steel from rail and fixtures will be recycled.

These will be supplied to UK’s steel industry for local manufacturing or for export, contributing to UK’s £2.9B trade in steel. Each tonne of scrap recycled by the steel industry saves 1.9 tonnes of iron ore and 0.6 tonnes of coal.

FORGEMASTERS JOINS BRITISH HYDROPOWER ASSOCIATION Sheffield Forgemasters has become a member of the British Hydropower Association (BHA) to develop its significant involvement in manufacture for a global hydropower market.

Forgemasters has moved further into the renewable energy market over recent years and with hydropower being the most reliable and least environmentally intrusive of all the renewable energies.

Since 2008, the Brightside Lane forge has supplied many hydro shafts and components globally to projects which include China’s Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River. Becoming a member of the BHA will provide greater business and project opportunities.

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The Westbury centre is linked to the railway, so that materials can be transported by trains to remove the need for up to around 1,200 lorry journeys per year. The centre is also built with recycled fixtures and fittings, including rail, lighting and office accommodation, and with drainage that is equipped with an automated dust-busting system.

Network Rail is currently developing two other dedicated recycling centres at Whitemoor and Crewe. Around 90% of the 1.48M tonnes of construction and maintenance waste, including concrete, steel rail and used ballast, were re-used, recycled and recovered last year by Network Rail.

Roads and highways top priority for investment In the face of further public funding cuts, investment in roads and highways has become more of a priority for the general public according to the latest public service satisfaction survey, released by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE). The survey, which monitors change in attitudes to key public services in the UK, shows that 55% of respondents now think that roads and highways should be the first or second priority for investment, compared to 49% in the first quarter of this year and only 37% this time last year.

The results follow a string of announcements from the new coalition Government detailing significant budget cuts for local transport projects and warnings that there are still more cuts to come. Just this week Chancellor George Osborne called for all departments to cut 40% out of their budgets, with the Department for Transport unlikely to escape with its £7B capital budget intact.

Potholes facts (Source: The Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) Survey 2010, conducted by the Asphalt Industry Alliance): • • •

1.2M pot holes were filled last year. £90.9million spent on filling pot holes last year £16.7million was paid out in compensation claims in 2009

Over the past 10 years there has been a significant increase in the number of visual road defects (inc. cracking, potholes and patching) (ALARM).

• • •

England: 40% increase London: 21% increase Wales: 127%increase

ICE says further funding cuts to local roads would be extremely detrimental. The engineers’ recent State of the Nation report found local transport networks to be in poor condition, grading it as a ‘D’ or ‘at risk’ sector.

It said that as well as needing improved connectivity to national networks and a shift from reliance on private car travel to reduce emissions, there is an increasing need to properly address the growing backlog of maintenance work with long-term preventative solutions not quick fixes. It has been estimated that to clear the existing backlog only would on average take 11.5 years and cost local authorities over £40 million each.

This was exacerbated by the severe 2009/10 winter, which caused a 40% increase in potholes. According to the Asphalt Industry Alliance, there is road damage every 120 yards, with the average cost of repairing a pot hole at £78. In light of these issues, the report said any further funding cuts would be disastrous and called for investment to be maintained and wisely allocated.

ICE president Paul Jowitt said: “Our local roads are already under-funded, with a budget shortfall of £1.2 B across local authorities and maintenance works backed up to the extent it will take more than a decade to address.

Image courtesy of the pothole gardener

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JCB SECURES HUGE ORDER WITH LEADING LONDON PLANT HIRER JCB has won a huge order– including 42 tracked and wheeled excavators – from one of the country’s leading plant hire firms.

The multi-million pound deal has been secured with London-based Lynch Plant Hire and includes a fleet of 20 JS220 and 20 JS130 tracked excavator models in addition to two wheeled excavators, a JS175W and a JS130W all manufactured at JCB Heavy Products in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire.

The excavator order has been placed in response to increased demand from Lynch Plant Hire’s customers for machines which can operate in the demanding road and rail sectors. The deal also includes 40 JCB Loadall telescopic handlers and six backhoe loaders made at JCB’s World HQ in Rochester.

Several of the machines have already been delivered and are already performing on high profile projects across the UK. This includes the JCB wheeled excavator models carrying groundworks as part of the M25 motorway widening scheme.

Lynch Plant Hire Director, Robert Lynch said: “One of the key criteria when selecting our plant is product quality ensuring that our customers have access to the best equipment available and that it is always up to the task.”

Pictured (l-r) are JCB Heavyline Sales Manager (South) Steve Bradley; UK and Ireland Sales Director Yvette Henshall-Bell; Lynch Plant Hire Directors Merrill and Robert Lynch and Greenshields JCB Major Accounts Director Paul Serby.

Prize fund of £25,000 announced for best geography ideas GeoVation, the geography innovation awards programme now in its second year, has announced a prize fund of £25,000 to support the development of winning ideas. This year the Ordnance Survey-backed initiative is asking entrepreneurs, developers and community groups to focus their efforts on using geography to address three distinct challenges.

The first is around the question “How can Britain feed itself?”, where geography could play a vital role in helping connect people to farming and locally produced and sustainable sources of food. Among the ideas already submitted are the building of urban rooftop allotments and the creation of the “real” Farmville, where people could share and buy real produce.

Chris Parker, one of the programme organisers, comments: “GeoVation this year is all about investing in areas where we think geography can play a positive role in enabling change.

“We believe that geography can help producers and consumers work together in ways that have not been possible before and we’re offering seed funding to help make that happen.”

Sam Henderson of Agrarian Renaissance, an organisation seeking to reconnect local farmers to their communities, supports the challenge: “The global food crisis of 2007 and 2008 prompted the Government to seriously think about food and food policy in the UK for the first time in decades. That crisis, coupled with the ongoing battle against climate change, means there is increasing pressure to source food in a sustainable way.”

The GeoVation organisers believe the manipulation of geographic data could transform what is possible for food production in the UK. Entrants have until 3 September to submit their ideas, before a shortlist will be invited to pitch at a Dragons’ Den style event in the new year for a slice of the prize fund.

Anyone interested in being a part of GeoVation should visit: www.geovation.org.uk/challenge/ |14| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

High Street Retailers Squander Air Con Energy in Heatwave Make It Cheaper, the business price comparison service, has uncovered a third of high street chains are wasting huge amounts of energy by operating their air conditioning below the recommended Summer store temperature of 24°C, Furthermore, of all the stores measured in the experiment, which took place on a sweltering July day, just one store kept its doors closed to prevent the cool air escaping.

Armed with thermal imaging cameras capturing temperatures at shop entrances, the Make It Cheaper team researched retailer habits on London’s Oxford Street when the outside temperature in the South East recorded a sizzling 28.4 degrees Celsius. The experiment looked at a number of factors to identify the efficiency of the air conditioning, measuring the outside temperature, the temperature at the shop entrance and whether the doors were open, closed or automatic.

The research shows that retailers are effectively burning millions of pounds by blasting up their air conditioning to make for a pleasant shopping environment and yet leaving their doors wide open.

Key findings include: • A third of stores operated below 24°C, against advice on the Carbon Trust’s website, which recommends that air conditioning doesn’t operate below this temperature.

• Whilst there was a difference of as much as eight degrees between outside and inside temperatures, just one store - Debenhams - kept its doors closed to prevent the cool air escaping and the warm air entering.

• At 20.1 degrees Celsius and a huge 8.3 degrees cooler at the door than the outside temperature, Next was the worst offender.

• Boots, River Island and Ann Harvey did not fare much better, at 21.1, 21.6 and 22.4 degrees respectively. Boots at least had automatic doors, though these were recorded as open almost all the time due to the high volume of traffic into and out of the store.

of up to 20% – equivalent to more than £300m – are possible across the sector.

Cutting down on unnecessary waste and getting the right energy contracts go hand-in-hand for any business. Switching business energy suppliers can reduce bills by as much as 50%. Taking energy efficiency measures can bring down annual bills by a further 10%-30%.

Store

Store temperature (degrees Celsius)

Next

20.1

Boots*

21.1

River Island

21.6

Ann Harvey

22.4

Uniqlo

23.3

Thorntons

23.9

Russell & Bromley

25

Starbucks

25.6

BHS

25.6

Barratts

25.9

TopShop

25.9

John Lewis

26

Nike

26.6

Debenhams**

27.3

House of Fraser

28

GAP

28.1

H&M

29.1

HMV *Automatic door open due to footfall **Doors kept closed

29.1

Jonathan Elliott, managing director of Make It Cheaper, commented: “Shopkeepers in New York get fined $400 by the City Council if they have their doors open with the air con on because it burns so much more energy to cool a shop than it does to keep it warm. This can only be a taste of things to come when the government’s CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme kicks in over here and forces retailers to re-think how they use energy in their stores.

According to figures from The Carbon Trust, the retail sector is responsible for over five million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year. It is estimated that energy savings ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE |15|

New system for dealing with confidential waste brings a trio of benefits to Derby Hospital’s NHS Foundation Trust Riverside Waste Machinery, Veolia Environmental Services and Kelpack have helped Derby Hospital’s NHS Foundation Trust achieve significant security, cost and environmental improvements, following investment by the Trust in a new confidential waste management system.

Confidential hospital waste which was previously transported and incinerated off-site to create energy from waste, is now being shredded and recycled in a move which is improving the hospital’s carbon footprint.

Simon Marriott, project manager for Skanska, the hospital’s hard facilities management provider, explained: “Our ongoing aim is to improve the recycling performance of the Trust and divert as much waste away from landfill and incineration as possible. We knew that shredding and recycling our confidential waste would improve our environmental performance so we asked our waste and recycling partner Veolia Environmental Services to help us find the best solution.

Riverside’s managing director Chris Oldfield said: “Data protection has never been so important. Hospitals are required to comply with the European standard for paper shredder security and must achieve a minimum of DIN level 3. We have strong expertise in the management of clinical waste and were able to recommend and implement the best solution for the hospital to ensure that they met their DIN level obligations. With holes of less than 25mm diameter the UNTHA RS30 shreds items into small confetti-like particles which when combined with the mixing action ensures utmost confidentiality.”

Below: Derby Hospital

Derby Hospital’s shredded waste now feeds automatically into the Kelpack 200 model compactor. The compacted waste is then taken by Veolia Environmental Services for recycling in the West Midlands before going to a paper mill for re-pulping.

Simon Marriott explained: “We’ve eliminated the need to store the waste and we are seeing cost savings of 30-35% as we receive a rebate from the paper mill of around £15 per tonne.

“The environmental benefits are also clear to see. Vehicle loads have been reduced as the compacted waste takes up approximately 85% less space. In addition the vehicles no longer have to travel further distances to the incinerator.

And as we’ve replaced incineration with recycling, we’re moving up the waste hierarchy and improving our carbon footprint.”

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ENVIRONMENT: European Commission to provide £13.76 million (€16.4 million) for six LIFE+ projects in UK UK nature conservation is to be given a major financial boost of £13.76 million (€16.4 million) as the European Commission has approved funding for 6 UK projects under the third call for the LIFE+ programme (20072013), the European fund for the environment. The projects range from across the UK and cover actions in the fields of nature conservation, environmental policy, and information and communication.

Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik said: “The LIFE+ programme continues to fund high quality, innovative projects with a high level of added value for the EU. I believe that these new projects will not only make a significant contribution to nature conservation and to improving the environment, they will also help raise awareness across Europe of the key environmental challenges facing us, notably biodiversity loss, water scarcity and climate change.”

While all of the projects come under the LIFE+ programme, four of the projects come under the LIFE+ Environment Policy and Governance strand. In total, they have been awarded €12.4 million.

SSCM4ECAP (Buckinghamshire County Council) The project will develop an innovative ‘bottomup’ approach to Green Public Procurement. It will demonstrate the use of supply-chain strategies to improve the environmental performance of local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and achieve local authority sustainability targets.

EDOC (The Environment Agency of England and Wales) The Electronic Duty of Care (EDOC) project intends to develop a national, Internet-based interface to record the collection, transportation, treatment and disposal of waste materials. This aims to enable the monitoring and mapping of waste management without creating a mountainous paper trail. iGREEN (The Environment Agency of England and Wales)

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The iGreen project will demonstrate how environmental guidance for SMEs can be taken to the next level by developing joined-up service provision through the NetRegs website. It will deliver innovative solutions around intelligence gathering, product creation, and dissemination of environmental information and messages through multimedia and multiple channels. Tools will include a legislation generator for Environmental Management Systems (EMS) and environmental e-Learning tools for six different industries.

Hydro4LIFE (International Hydropower Association) The main aim of this project is to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Protocol (HSAP) and consolidate knowledge on hydropower sustainability performance in the EU. The project also aims to raise awareness and build capacity - primarily via an electronic outreach campaign - about the HSAP and hydropower sustainability performance among all relevant stakeholders, including Member State/EU regulators and policymakers.

LIFE+ Environment Policy & Governance projects are pilot projects that contribute to the development of innovative policy ideas, technologies, methods and instruments. Of the 308 proposals received, the Commission selected for funding 116 projects from a wide range of public and private sector organisations.

The winning projects, situated in 17 Member States, represent a total investment of €278 million of which the EU will provide some €120 million. Projects targeting innovation account for the largest share of EU funding (some €20.9 million for 17 projects). The most targeted area in terms of number of projects is waste and natural resources (20 projects supported by €19.3 million), followed by water and innovation (17 projects each). The remaining 63 projects cover various topics including air, chemicals, climate change, energy, environment and health, forests, noise, soil protection, strategic approaches, and the urban environment.

One project, Reintroducing Otis Tarda (Reintroducing the great bustard Otis Tarda to southern England) is to receive €2.2 million under the LIFE+ Nature strand.

This project aims to increase the population of great bustards on Salisbury Plain by extending the reintroduction programme to support the establishment of a self-sustaining population over the longer term.

LIFE+ Nature & Biodiversity projects improve the conservation status of endangered species and habitats. Of the 194 proposals received, the Commission selected for funding 84 projects from partnerships of conservation bodies, government authorities and other parties. Situated in 24 Member States, they represent a total investment of €224 million, of which the EU will provide some €124 million. The majority (74) are Nature projects, contributing to the implementation of the Birds and/or Habitats directives and the Natura 2000 network.

The other 10 are Biodiversity projects, a LIFE+ project category for pilot schemes that tackle wider biodiversity issues. The Commission is pleased to note the steady increase in the number of Biodiversity projects funded since 2007 (four (4) projects) when the category was introduced.

The RESTORE project came under the LIFE+ Information and communication strand and is to receive €1.8 million RESTORE (Environment Agency for England & Wales) The project will develop a network linking policymakers, river basin planners, practitioners and experts across Europe to share information and good practice on river restoration activities. A database of river restoration projects will be created, providing understanding of policy opportunities and constraints, the effectiveness of restoration methods, design issues and project costs/ benefits.

LIFE+ Information and Communication projects disseminate information and raise the profile of environmental issues, and provide training and awareness-raising for the prevention of forest fires. Of the 113 proposals received, the Commission selected for funding 10 projects from a range of public and private sector nature and/or environment organisations, tackling topics such as biodiversity, climate change, waste and water. The projects are situated in seven (7) Member States and represent a total investment of €12.9 million of which the EU will provide some €6.3 million.

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Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman announces reforms to over thirty of Defra’s arm’s length bodies.

Defra has around 90 arm’s length bodies, many of which were set up at a time when our understanding of and engagement with environmental issues was less mainstream. Most of the things that these bodies do are now part of what the Government does as a matter of course. Others are now no longer necessary.

Caroline Spelman said: “This Government is committed to being the greenest Government ever and the Structural Reform Plan published last week sets out how Defra will play its part in achieving this. Reducing the deficit is priority for the Government and all departments are playing their part in making efficiency savings. Together with Chris Huhne, I am determined to play the lead role in driving the sustainability agenda across the whole of government and I am not willing to delegate this responsibility to an external body. The effective delivery of public services is essential and I am committed to increasing the transparency and accountability of Defra’s public bodies and to reducing their numbers and costs. Times have changed since many of these bodies were set up and much of what they do is now everyday Government business.”

The Secretary of State announced that she will be: • Withdrawing Defra funding from the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC); • Abolishing the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution; • Abolishing the Agricultural Wages Board, the fifteen Agricultural Wages Committees, the sixteen Agricultural

Dwelling House Advisory Committees and the Committee on Agricultural Valuation; • Abolishing the Inland Waterways Advisory Council; and • Abolishing the Commons Commissioners.

Caroline Spelman continued: “We will continue to liaise closely with the Sustainable Development Commission’s partners and will work with business, civil society, local communities, universities and internationally, to help deliver sustainable development together. The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee will provide powerful democratic scrutiny of Government’s work in this area.”

The arm’s length body review will make Defra a leaner, stronger department – with a renewed and clearer focus on its key priorities and a simplified structure for delivering those priorities; underpinned by a robust, credible and efficient science base. The Secretary of State will continue to look closely at other Defra arm’s length bodies and will make any further announcements as appropriate.

Will Day, Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission, expresses his disappointment at Defra’s announcement that it intends to withdraw its funding for the SDC. “We are deeply disappointed that the Government has announced its intention to withdraw its funding from the Sustainable Development Commission. Our work has delivered efficiency savings totalling many times what the organisation has cost the Government, and contributed towards much greater sustainability in Government – both in the way it runs itself, and the decisions it makes about our wellbeing and our future. We note the commitment of the Secretaries of State for Defra and DECC to playing a lead role on sustainable development across Government.

We await with interest the details of how a degree of cross-government independent scrutiny is to be achieved.

However, what is important now is that the objectives we have championed – of properly balancing the needs of society, the economy and the environment as we respond to the pressing challenges ahead – find their way to the heart of all Government decision making. It will be particularly important to ensure that adequate plans are in place to ensure the UK Government can measure and verify its commitment to becoming the ‘greenest government ever’.

The SDC will be working hard with Government and the Devolved Administrations in the weeks ahead to make sure sustainable development is given an appropriate place, and that the legacy of our cutting edge advice and hands-on capability building continue to transform the UK for a bright future.”

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Countryside Council for Wales Appoints Aerial Surveying Specialist Bluesky Aerial survey specialist Bluesky has been appointed as contractor to the Countryside Council for Wales (CCW). The framework contract covers the provision of a range of data capture, data conversion and cartographic services to include the provision of ad hoc aerial photography services including traditional RGB photography for mapping and site surveys, infrared imaging to help assess the health and state of vegetation and LiDAR mapping for high accuracy height modelling to support the Council in its role as statutory advisor to the Government.

“We selected Bluesky as they clearly demonstrated experience and expertise in the relevant fields,” commented Mo Gash, Senior Cartographer at the Countryside Council for Wales. “The examples of work presented by Bluesky provided evidence of their capability, quality of service and response time - all essential components to support the environmental and wildlife work we carry out.”

Bluesky may also be called upon to create digital index maps for existing aerial photographs and provide geo-referencing and scanning services to the Council or its partners. CCW acts as a statutory advisor to the Government on sustaining natural beauty, wildlife and the opportunity for outdoor enjoyment in Wales and its inshore waters.

Pioneering research could pave way for more sustainable palm oil A radical research programme to map how the UK uses imported palm oil could halt the loss of rainforest thousands of miles away. Palm oil is a cheap ‘miracle product’ used in food, cosmetics, animal feed, tyres and biodiesel. But the expansion of plantations in South East Asia is wiping out forests, driving up greenhouse emissions and threatening wildlife such as the orang-utan. The oil can be grown sustainably without damaging forests and wildlife, and the research project will for the first time examine how palm oil is used by consumers in the UK. It will document how much we use, how much of that is sustainably sourced, and consider how changes can be made to lessen environmental damage.

The plans, announced by Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman at the First Global Business of Biodiversity (GBOB) Symposium in London. Caroline said: “Consumers and industry have the power to save rainforests and wildlife in areas like South East Asia. But, in the case of palm oil, we need to know more about our consumption in order to find solutions. We’re hoping to get these answers with the project starting next month which will map our use of palm oil.

“This coalition is striving to be the greenest government ever. That means considering our impact abroad as well as at home.”

At the GBOB, the UK and Dutch governments have also convened a business to business leaders meeting to discuss how to mainstream sustainable palm oil. This presents a rare opportunity for business leaders from right across the supply chain and the globe to meet on this issue. Industry players including M&S and Shell through to palm oil producers from Indonesia and Malaysia, are due to take part.

Some facts on palm oil: • • •

•

80% of palm oil is used for food. It is used in 1 in 10 supermarket products.

Malaysia and Indonesia account for around 90% of the world’s supply.

In just one province of Indonesia (Kalimantan), the planned expansion into peatland areas could eventually (over 30 yrs) release up to 1200 million tonnes CO2 – almost twice the UK’s total annual emissions.

World demand for palm oil is forecast to nearly double from 2000 levels by 2020. This is mainly due to rising food demand, but also due to demand for biofuels, including to meet EU renewable transport fuels targets.

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Ford gets a £450million boost to develop a new generation of environmentally friendly engines and vehicle technologies

Able UK Invests in Specialist Liebherr Industrial Rehandler Able UK Limited has taken delivery of a high-specification Liebherr A 934 C HD Litronic Industrial Rehandler for their ship recycling operations at the Teeside Environmental Reclamation and Recycling Centre (TERRC) at Able Seaton Port, Hartlepool. A long-standing Liebherr customer, Able UK has put its new specialist Liebherr machine to work as the main materials handler on this impressive facility, loading, stockpiling and managing the scrap metal elements of the vessels as they are dismantled.

European Investment Bank funding for research and development of a new era of low-carbon engines and commercial vehicle technologies at Ford manufacturing plants across the United Kingdom was signed off today at Ford’s Dunton technical centre. The package, backed by a 80% loan guarantee from the UK government, forms part of Ford’s £1.5 billion engine and vehicle development programme to be implemented over the next five years. The investment Bank will safeguard around 2,800 skilled jobs.

Ideas in Transit: How your driveway can be a real money spinner This issue’s Idea in Transit focuses on a problem I’m sure many of us are familiar with. You’ve driven to a sporting event, maybe a concert or perhaps you’re just out on a Saturday for a spot of shopping - and parking is a nightmare.

There are no spaces anywhere, but frustratingly there are dozens of empty driveways, whose owners are probably out with the same problem as you!

Well it is exactly this problem that Anthony Eskinazi, a maths graduate, sought to solve back in 2007 when he launched the site parkatmyhouse.co.uk. The site provides a place to link people who need to find parking spaces with those who have space to spare. And with the cost of public transport continually on the rise, the site has gone from strength to strength.

Owners of homes and businesses all over the UK with space for a car in their garage or driveway can advertise their space on the site and be linked to people needing somewhere to leave a car, when working or attending an event in an area with limited parking or unsatisfactory or expensive public transport. Use of the site is free to all who use it while those with space to let agree a fair fee with their parkers.

The design of Eskinazi’s site instantly maps the exact location of the nearest residential parking space close to the parker’s chosen destination.

Speaking in 2007 Eskinazi commented: “The idea came to me in San Francisco recently. I was attending a Giants’ game with a friend and found that there were massive queues to get into the stadium car park and a $10 charge. Yet I noticed lots of empty driveways in the neighbourhood. I didn’t have the owners’ permission to use any of these. In future, by using parkatmyhouse.com the owners will be able to make their space generate a useful income, instead of the money just going to traffic wardens. Those hoping to park will have an easy, affordable solution.’

ParkatmyHouse.co.uk has been welcomed as a green solution to parking. By reducing on-street parking, the service has helped ease traffic congestion, thereby making the roads safer for cyclists and pedestrians and more accessible for public transport and emergency vehicles. It also claims to have cut down the amount of carbon emitted by vehicles that would otherwise have circumnavigated areas in search of a parking space. By improving parking around major public transport hubs, ParkatmyHouse.com has encouraged people to use their cars for just a part of their journey and the train, tube or bus for the remainder of it.

So if you’re driveway lays empty during the day, you could find that it’s paved with gold. The site does however advise people to draw up a contract that covers rent and damage – for loss of keys, say – and a notice period for cancellation.

Parkatmyhouse supplies templates for a variety of agreements including one-off, long-term or monthly deals.

Ideas in Transit, is a unique five-year collaboration between Government, Commercial and Academic partners and will influence intelligent transport decisions at policy, social, personal and commercial levels. Parkatmyhouse is just one of the ideas showcased on the Ideas in Transit Innovations Portal www.ideasintransit.org ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE |23|

The mission of the UK-SDA is to respond to the well recognised need to make better use of the earth’s resources to avoid their premature depletion and the changes to climate that results.

Terry Nash (left) is executive director of the UK Sustainable Development Association (UK-SDA), and managing director of the award winning Gusto Group of companies.

Although apparently straightforward and wholly benign, this modest ambition can nevertheless be contentious, particularly if the main focus is on climate change which sceptics claim is an unfounded theory. What surely cannot be disputed, however, is that fossil fuels are finite, and sooner or later man will need to learn to live either without them, or use them at a substantially reduced rate. If that outcome also suits climatechange protagonists, so much the better.

Meanwhile, the public at large can be easily confused by the pros and cons of the climate-change debate, particularly when it is sometimes hard to distinguish solid well-founded argument from a vested interest.

What is sorely needed is the bringing of a new focus to the topic, equally accessible to the general public, industry, politicians and scientists alike.

All this serves to make the plan to designate the seven days commencing 21st March 2011 “Climate Week” particularly welcome.

Supported by commercial sponsors such as Aviva, RBS, Kellogg’s and edf Energy, this landmark event is also endorsed by luminaries such as Kofi Annan, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, and Al Gore.

National and international leaders have given their endorsement to Climate Week 2011

The aim of the week is to shine a spotlight on the need for every individual and enterprise to reduce their consumption of fossil fuels (or put another way help to prevent climate change), by making changes at work, mobilising their communities and educating people to find new ways of doing things.

A wide range of organisations will be taking part in the activities of the week, including individual businesses, charities, government bodies, public services, unions, schools, campaign groups, local authorities, faith networks, and membership associations such as the UK-SDA. Getting prepared …

With an undertaking on this daunting scale, work is already underway to ensure the widespread level

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of engagement that is envisaged, and will get into full swing with the Climate Week website due to be launched soon. Climate Week materials such as template posters, flyers, press releases and newsletter articles will also be available free to download, and available to order in print.

• Home, and domestic energy efficiency • Youth, and education and activism for young people

• innovation, and new ways of doing things

Meanwhile everyone should help to spread the word about how they can get involved by planning a standalone activity (such as staging a talk, workshop, press event or local festival or competition), or by entering the centrally organised competition and awards, or by simply publicising the event via your own newsletter, website or through social media.

Promoting small steps …

Like many long and difficult journeys, the first steps are very often the most difficult and most daunting.

With this in mind, Climate Week will be emphasising the small incremental steps that many organisations, communities and professions are already taking to make a start towards a low-carbon society.

For businesses, in particular, the week will provide a national occasion to showcase their environmental activities, offer leadership and engage with stakeholders and local media.

These vital changes are the way that most people will be able to contribute to the week which will be seeking to publicise the many stories of what is already happening across all sectors, regions and professions to reduce carbon consumption.

National activities …

The Climate Week Challenge will involve thousands of people all over the UK tackling the same task on the same day. The challenge will be revealed on-line on the first morning of the week. Participation will be free, and will be aimed at teams of four to six people.

Employers or education establishments will be able to enter any number of teams, with no prior preparation needed apart from having a table at which to work. The challenge will be categorised by age, with different levels of sophistication assuring that everyone from primary pupils to senior managers is given the same core challenge.

Quite apart from anything else, the Challenge will be a truly national shared event and Britain’s biggest ever live environmental competition, with the national winners being announced later in the week.

Alongside the Challenge, The Climate Week Awards will recognise exemplary work that helps to tackle climate change. Nominations can be made on behalf of your own project or organisation, or on behalf of someone else. Entries will then be evaluated by eminent panels of judges who will make the awards across a wide range categories.

Pick your theme …

A key feature of Climate Week will be the use of themed days that will help participants to become involved in the ways that are most appropriate to them; running throughout the week, the themes comprise:

• spirit, and the religious response

Typical examples will include the environmental education programmes within schools, organisations that recycle, the upgrading of existing homes, and measures to improve the environmental performance of new homes and other buildings.

Many individuals and enterprises of all sectors and sizes have a good story to tell about what they are already doing, and Climate Week will help to celebrate and disseminate this best-practice.

And also big ones …

Climate Week will also put the spotlight on the much bigger projects, innovations and inventions that will be playing their part in the low carbon society of the future.

Examples include a Manchester brewery powered by its own waste grain, cargo ships part-powered by wind, super-efficient cars of the future, the world’s first commercial tidal turbine made in Bristol, and largescale geothermal projects.

Above all else, however, it is to be hoped that Climate Week will help to focus the nation on the urgent need to substantially reduce the consumption of finite reserves of fossil fuels, whilst identifying what we can all do to support that mission in ways that also enjoy economic benefits.

For more information on Climate Week, contact; info@climate week.com.

• Leadership, and showing the way forward • Community, and embedding local change • Employment, and “green collar” jobs ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE |25|

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IS THE NHS SUSTAINABLE?

The NHS and the BBC, both created in the last century, have become essential components of our national identity. Cherished and criticised in equal measure, scrutinised in our press on a daily basis, the NHS is the last surviving monument of the post war command model on which our economy was based from 1945 until Thatcher’s second government.

And monument it is – a vast behemoth of an organisation with a budget of £100 billion a year, generating the sort of statistics to satisfy the schoolchild in all of us. It employs 1.35 million people -one in twenty of the country’s workforce- which makes it the largest employer in Europe. The NHS generates 5% of all road traffic, is the largest purchaser of food in the UK and is responsible for 3.2% of Britain’s CO2 emissions. The population flows through its doors and a million patients are reported to be seen every thirty six hours.

A component not only of national identity but of so many of our daily lives, its vast consumption of human energy – for both patients and staff- is not as effectively used as it might be. Despite the huge increases in investment over the last decade productivity has not markedly risen and there is still chronic systemic failure in parts of the service. Achieving even some of the objectives which successive reforms have tried to implement would liberate millions of hours of human energy. On a recent visit to a hospital I walked into a stereotypical waiting room –a dingy fluorescent holding area- in which fifty or so poor souls, the majority of |28| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

whom were elderly, were waiting to have their blood taken. Many had obviously waited for some time, many had made long journeys by bus or car to this market town to have a simple test which should have been done in their neighbourhood. When you add up the transport costs, the premises cost for that day and the wasted person hours, let alone the evaporation of the human spirit, this type of care is unsustainable on many levels and completely unnecessary.

Given its size and prominence the conversion of the health service to a low carbon model is of national importance. In 2008 the NHS produced an excellent sustainability document which set out the scale of the challenge, identified strategies for achieving very significant carbon reductions and set demanding targets for new buildings and the whole of its estate. Many examples of good practice are cited in this document, from savings in transport and procurement to the most encouragingthe NHS reduced its building energy usage by 20% from 1990-2000. The problem is that this report was written shortly before the banking crisis, when NHS investment was still being maintained at significant levels. It remains to be seen whether our new government will honour its obligations and actively pursue these objectives to achieve a 50% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 (from their 1990 baseline) or will plead poverty and quietly shelve this programme.

Much depends on their policies for NHS reform.

Since the 1980s every government has been engaged in a series of convulsive reforms to dismantle the centralised command model of the NHS and atomise its activities. Responsibility has been devolved to regional and local level through the creation of trusts, PCTs and strategic health authorities. But power – and seemingly much of the energy - has remained at the centre since all these governments, especially New Labour, have maintained a very tight control on funding and policy making. This is the contradiction at the heart of the last twenty years – despite disaggregation change has continued to be pushed from the top downwards with little evidence of professional reform or local enterprise. The Blair government responded to the crumbling NHS edifice it inherited with organisational reforms, huge increases in investment and the enforcement of policy objectives, much of which was done without the support of the medical professions. Targets were set, dictats were issued and

performance indicators applied with a vigour which was incongruously socialist in its faith in the transforming power of central government.

Every government since 1978 has contemplated changes to the NHS which were far more radical than anything they discussed in public or achieved in office.

No government, however, has dared to challenge the electorate’s faith in the status quo which appears undiminished. Until now that is. The national financial crisis and the persistence of systemic inertia within the health service despite a decade of massive investment may allow very radical changes to be discussed and implemented. Andrew Lansley’s July policy statement titled “Liberating the NHS” could be construed as another top-down reform to transfer power but it could result in the end of the command model and the privatisation of the NHS. It is also based to some extent on the notion of patient choice which is admirable but also problematic. For there to be choice there must be a greater supply than there is demand, with health providers competing to supply services. This notion can only be based on the calculation that the current health service is working way below its true potential and has reserves of surplus capacity which can be released by increasing efficiency and thus create competition. The alternative is that we – that is the taxpayer - will fund additional non-essential capacity in the short or medium term until the weak fail and the strong thrive, which seems preposterous in the current circumstances. Lansley’s position is that when trusts compete to secure a greater “market share” by improving their clinical effectiveness and/ or the quality of their services costs will be driven down and failing organisations will go out of business.

There is also an implication that the new GP consortia might catalyse this process, acting like HMOs in the USA demanding lower costs and better quality from service providers This view that there is surplus capacity may well be true but at this stage it is no more than an assumption and a crude one at that. There are undoubtedly huge inefficiencies in the health service but it also has tight margins - it operates one of the lowest ratios of doctors and hospital beds per head of population in Western Europe. The last government invested significant sums in our health estate but this investment had to address twenty years of absolute neglect, was not as far reaching as advertised and was ill directed.

Today, our spending on healthcare is broadly equivalent- as a percentage of GDP- to the rest of Western Europe, although our healthcare outcomes still compare unfavourably with most of our neighbours.

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local and community facilities, then a range of small redefined general hospitals with specialist trauma and teaching facilities at the apex. This reorganisation of services is finally being delivered across the country, albeit several years late. It will undoubtedly result in a reduction in the health care estate but it will still need substantive investment to create, through new build or refurbishment, the right buildings in the right place.

Not much of this can be generated locally – the level of investment required is beyond the current borrowing power or the amassed reserves of foundation trusts.

Under the current funding arrangements this money must come from central funding and it is highly likely this will now be denied, despite the level required being perfectly reasonable for an organisation with an annual budget of a hundred billion pounds.

We appear to have four options. 1. Continue an appropriately scaled investment programme to complete the process which may achieve real savings and genuine improvement; 2. Rely on foundation trusts responding to patient need and, in parallel, open up the market to private health care providers, despite the latter being an electorally suicidal course of action; 3.

Muddle along for a few years as we have done so often in the past, storing up trouble and running the service into the ground; 4. Cut the budgets sufficiently to engineer a collapse, resulting in the dismemberment of the NHS and its replacement with a mixed health care economy. The only two which would seem productive are 1 and 4.

How will all this affect the creation of a low carbon NHS? Currently 22% of the energy is expended on buildings, 18% on transport and 59% in real and embedded procurement of goods and services.

Somewhere in the region of £30 billion has been invested on the health care estate in the last decade – a colossal sum but one which amounts to about 4-4.5% of the overall NHS budget for this period. £16.5 billion of this was off balance sheet procurement through PFI, so £14 billion has been paid out of the public purse.

All the parties find it politically convenient to agree that the hospital building programme is now largely complete. Yet 21% of all NHS buildings predate 1948 and 75% predate 1985. Many of these are no longer fit for their clinical purpose and a sizeable minority are clinically unsafe. The vast majority are drab and provide very poor patient and working environments – we still cram thousands of patients in workhouse wards that were built for the nineteenth century poor. This is utterly unacceptable as is the energy performance of much of this building stock.

The size of the NHS estate can be significantly reduced.

Recent work has shown that there is significant surplus capacity and a huge underuse of buildings in the NHS, more than Tesco’s entire built footprint has been alleged, falls into this category. The costs of converting at least half of the hospital stock to meet current

clinical standards and achieve carbon targets are the same as their demolition and replacement with smaller more flexible premises. There has to be informed discussion about how we can maintain this programme in the current economic climate. We cannot have workhouse wards or crumbling estates pumping out CO2 like a leaking oil rig. We must also look at ways in which trusts can benefit from the redevelopment of their surplus property rather than being limited to selling land and watching others make the real profits.

The way in which we have organised new health care development has not encouraged real carbon savings. In many of the recent PFI schemes the energy running costs of the new facility have been a pass through and are being paid by the trust. There has been no real incentive in investing sufficient capital sums to reduce revenue expenditure. Investment in green energy sources and CHP is always discussed at the beginning of the project but is seldom achieved because it is an unaffordable within the constraints placed on capital investment model for new projects to achieve,ironically, ‘value for money’. In addition, the financial penalties imposed in PFI contracts if rooms or sections of the building are unable to be used because of defects or not meeting environmental standards, have resulted in rigid and often over-engineered solutions.

More importantly hospitals and other health care facilities are almost always designed in isolation and not as parts of larger mixed use developments. As we have made these buildings airtight and highly insulated we have created huge sources of heat which can export their surplus to neighbours as district heating, yet this is never done because the business case for a health care development must stand alone without external subsidy and cannot fund non-health related components. Large hospitals use 250 000 litres of water a day, much of which can be re-used as grey water or can at least water playing fields or gardens, yet this is seldom attempted. Furthermore they employ, between three and five thousand people, depending on their size,

sustaining whole communities as the largest employers in their town and sometimes county.

Transport accounts for 18% of NHS energy consumption. Moving care closer to the patient makes undoubted sense and should reduce patient travel.

Incentivising workable travel plans must increase.

The procurement of food is an excellent example of a blinkered culture. The ÂŁ500 million it spends amounts to only a minor part of the 59% procurement component of the NHS energy costs but is still a colossal sum.

We cook a lot of the meals destined for hospitals in Wales in an enormous factory. We then freeze this food, transport it hundreds of miles, store it in refrigerated conditions, reheat it, serve it and then throw a third of it away - an enormous waste of energy and a loss of human spirit. The Cornish hospital experiment sourced local produce even though it represented on paper a greater cost per meal than before. Smaller portions of tastier food resulted in greater patient satisfaction and significantly reduced waste, and much reduced food miles.

It is both irritating and boring that there is endless discourse in this country about achieving standards for health care and education which much of the rest of Europe takes for granted. A national health service requires an uninterrupted investment in people, buildings and services, as does any comparable commercial enterprise. The command economy died in the nineties. We either accept that the electorate want this service to continue to be funded publically and commit to reform and delivery or we introduce a mixed health care economy without convulsion and disorder.

There are fairly strong indicators as to which will be the most sustainable.

John Cooper John Cooper Architecture Chair: Architects for Health Writing as an individual

Image thanks to SXC fraz27

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DOES THE NHS NEED TO PRESCRIBE ITS BUILDINGS A DOSE OF TLC? Last year the NHS celebrated its 60th Birthday. During it’s time it has seen some radical changes. From advancements in medical science and technologies, to the way it is managed. However, how has the NHS Facility and Estate Management improved its energy efficiency?

With 20% cut in the NHS budget, is this bitter pill just going to be too big to swallow?

Brian Court from Community Solution has great experience in working with the NHS. Community Solutions, who have been running since 2004, help PCT’s manage their spaces better. He explains the typical problems that the NHS are currently facing; “FM’s are facing tough challenges. Overall the majority of the estates are ageing and consequently they are not that efficient. So many Facility and Estate Managers experience break downs and poor utilisation on their plant equipment. This has often lead to a continual ‘fire fighting’ approach, rather than pre planned maintenance and projects.”

"Overall the majority of the estates are ageing and consequently they are not that efficient."

At present most PCT’s receive two pots of money. One is to spend on energy and the other on improvements.

However with the price per unit on energy increasing, it has meant a smaller pot for improvements. This is |32| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

Lizzie Phillips

leaving FM’s in a catch 22 position, as with energy prices rising year on year, the improvement budget is likely to get smaller and smaller. Brian has had experience of this situation himself when he used to manage over 250 buildings for Department of Defence and understands their frustration. “I sympathise with them greatly as quite often you are wanting to improve facilities where required, which doesn’t always materialise.”

The NHS approach to sustainability varies from each PCT. Yet with dwindling assets not being maintained to their full potential, it means that many sites are just not operated to full optimisation. Although Brians’ feedback when talking to FM’s has been that “even if they find something that will reduce the energy cost they still have to find the capital funding. Most PCT’s have no encouragement to suggest or put energy saving projects forward.”

There have been huge developments in technologies in the last ten years that can make a big difference to larger estates. Some say that technology hasn’t been embraced as much as it should be within the NHS, but it must be difficult for FM’s to be active in searching out new technologies, if the money isn’t available.

Utilising and measuring energy and space is currently a hot topic. There are several programmes now on the market that can measure not only the energy per room, and the energy efficiency of the building, but can forecast and benchmark themselves against other PCT’s. Mass Plc has been working with PCT’s in partnership for over 20 years, to deliver solutions that cater to the clients specific FM needs. They provide completely web based technology so that clients can see at any time, anywhere the energy efficiency of a building. One of the most popular software solutions on the market is Archibus.

Archibus is an American product, developed in the UK and forms part of the CAFM group (Computer Aided Facilities Management). This solution enables facilities professionals, responsible for multiple buildings across their business, to control their energy utilisation through greater reporting and visibility of consumption.

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The ERIC (Estates Return Information Collection) scheme in place (where PCTs need to record their energy and space utilisation for Central Government) has put real emphasis on the importance of good reporting, Achieving only with access to live data. Richard Milner, from Mass Plc explains further; “The reporting of space and energy utilisation is becoming more and more relevant due to the personal cost savings available. By using software programmes, such as CAFM solutions, facilities managers can access valuable business information to help share their future projects and drive efficiencies and cost savings.”

"even if they find something that will reduce the energy cost they still have to find the capital funding."

A good example of where technology has enhanced building efficiencies can be seen at Norfolk and Waveney Mental Health Partnership (NWMHP). With the assistance of Mass, the team at NWMHP have been able to react faster to the challenges facing the healthcare sector, adopting the tools to take proactive approaches to overcome these. With a property portfolio including 35 buildings totalling 89,000 sq ft, it was important to THE TRUST that they could track KPI’s, automate ERIC returns and see the performance of the estates team. This then enables the Estates team to focus on other areas such as key financial data and forecast maintenance tasks and projects.

It is predicted that in the future, the NHS will introduce ‘Space Policemen’ who will determine if the building and its space is being used effectively. However there are currently no funds for this type of policing so technology is being used as an alternative.

Other technologies that have made a difference to the healthcare sector include PIR lights. These can be used in spaces to monitor activity, as well as energy saving on the lighting circuit. Manchester PCT are currently trialling this technology. PIR’s used along with daylight sensors in common areas means that lights only require to come on when required. The’re are many wireless technologies now available that are retrofit into existing buildings. Heating and ventilation are the biggest |34| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

running cost for hospitals, technologies such as variable speed drives can help reduce this cost considerably.

It appears that whilst the central NHS provideS technical information in their newsletters and bulletins, they are relying on the FM’s to be proactive in this field. Many FM’s are turning to external institutes and the help from private firms for help and advice. Steve Allen, Managing Director of Cavendish Engineers and a CIBSE Low Carbon accredited consultant explains more; “Estate and Facility Managers don’t always have the time to find out about the latest energy solution. Also when you have such a large portfolio of buildings it is difficult to see where the biggest difference can be made. Low Carbon Consultants have sometimes been misinterpreted as just inspectors, when most actually want to develop a long term energy reduction strategy that will see improvement year on year.”

Steve has seen a dramatic change in the attitude in the private sector since the introduction of Carbon Reduction Commitment scheme. He believes that the scheme will have a similar effect on the NHS. The scheme, implemented by the DECC (Department of Energy and Climate Change) is to cover all organisations using more than at the moment 6,000 mwh of electricity per year (equivalent to an annual electricity bill of about £500,000) and is mandatory to join.

In short, larger businesses will have to purchase an allowance to use large quantities of energy. This is currently priced at £12 per tonne. The revenue from the sale of allowances will be recycled back to businesses in the scheme. So those who use more than there allowance will be penalised. Whereas, organisations that reduce their energy allowance, will receive bonuses.

If PCT’s use less energy than they have allowed for they will be permitted to sell their allowances to other organisations that have not met their targets. This scheme therefore entices those to actively reduce their carbon year on year.

Cavendish Engineers, who have 15 years experience in the engineering and low carbon industry always advise their clients that metering and monitoring is key. Steve explains more; “The first starting point is to look at your energy bill.

Within the healthcare they are fortunate to have software that tracks their energy spending per building or even per room. Although FM’s are drilling down into areas of the building that are mostly costly to run, they then have the challenge of sourcing and recommending when technologies would reduce energy in the highlighted area. This is where a fresh pair of eyes can help facility and Estate Managers ‘think out of the box. “The NHS needs to work with private firms in cutting operability costs in the commercial way to ensure that they can still deliver.”

With the NHS collectively saving £15-£20bn in efficiency savings over the next five years, PCTS have put even more emphasis on justification of spending. It is predicted therefore that capability based budgeting could be introduced. This type of financial budget focuses on the resources you have and then ensuring you allocate those resources to make them justifiable.

So for example, if a cherry picker is only needed for just one out of the twenty five buildings on site and therefore is parked for three months of the year, under the new scheme they may be asked to consider hiring equipment rather than purchasing.

There has been some indication in the Healthcare sector that there will be migration into new efficient centres. Where this is successfully working is via the LIFT scheme. LIFT is a partnership between the PCT and Private company to deliver a building for 25 years. The building is then leased back from the private company, but the lease also includes all the running costs. The site doesn’t have an Estate Manager or team but does use sub contractors to carry out necessary services.

Community Solutions now have four PCT’s throughout the UK using the LIFT scheme Brian explains the benefits and how this scheme could be more frequent in the future; “the NHS will eventually have to move to newer premises, which will mean more partnerships with private firms. LIFT schemes will enable PCT’s to use their premises more efficiently, without the sole responsibility of having to maintain it.”

Mass Plc knows only too well the stress and strains that PCT’s are under, which is why, with the guidance of other partners decided to launch the Centre of Excellence Healthcare Group. The group is for professionals within the healthcare sector including; finance directors, Chief Executives and Estates Management Professionals.

It was set up with the aim to share experiences and challenges that the healthcare sector face. The launch took place in June this year at Mass Plc’s headquarters at Innovation House in Berkshire and another one is planned for November. Richard Milner the organiser of the group explains more; “We appreciate that these are challenging times within the healthcare sector and believe this group can act as the forum for professionals within the healthcare sector to share knowledge, engender best practice. It will also hope to establish where support is available from the private sector and how they can achieve their challenging targets.”

To find out more about the Centre of Healthcare Excellence Group please either visit: www.cavendishengineers.net or www.massplc.com.

Written by Lizzie Phillips on behalf of Mass Plc, Cavendish Engineers and Community Solutions.

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Green Building

©limpertsacadamy.com |36| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

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From grey to green – green roofs and healthcare Paul Shaffer, CIRIA

© Flag-Soprema UK Ltd - Addenbrookes Hospital

The growing trend to move away from our grey buildings to embrace a greener more natural built environment has brought about interest in the role of green infrastructure and in particular green roofs as they move more into mainstream use. Green roofs are increasingly shrugging off concerns about costs as its becoming recognised that with careful planning they can benefit the functioning of a building, helping to reduce its whole life cost on a number of fronts.

The World Green Roof Congress (www.worldgreenroofcongress.com), London, 15-16 September 2010 organised by CIRIA and Living Roofs, will showcase the performance benefits of green roofs and highlight the opportunities for greater uptake and delivery.

This article explores their benefits when applied to healthcare buildings and uses some examples to demonstrate what can be achieved. Healthcare providers have begun to address the quality of place within the design of buildings and local environments. The buildings now have to respond to changing demographics, patterns of sickness, expectations and the challenges of climate change. It is also possible that the major building programmes of yesteryear are going to be affected by public sector cuts with limited spending on capital and revenue – meaning that buildings have to be cheaper to build and maintain.

The perceptions of healthcare are changing, with greater focus being placed on well-being, mental health and the delivery of healthy, therapeutic places. Buildings need to be well designed and comfortable, integrated to the quality and sustainability of our surrounding built environment.

Green roofs can help healthcare providers positively respond to these challenges and like most green infrastructure provide a variety of functions that benefit a healthcare building in a number of ways: •

•

•

•

•

storm water management: most green roofs contribute to surface water management and can reduce the requirement (and potentially costs) for surface water management infrastructure elsewhere within the development. climate change mitigation: research undertaken in Canada suggests that green roofs can provide benefits in terms of reducing the need for cooling in the summer through air conditioning which is a key consideration to the well-being of patients. Some research has also identified that green roofs can also reduce the need for heating in the winter. This reduction in the requirement for heating and ventilation can also reduce energy consumption and the building’s carbon emissions. biodiversity and amenity: research suggests that providing views of greenery and more importantly access to nature can reduce stress levels, improve mental well-being and relieve the sense of overcrowding in many cities.

On a more functional note, green roofs can also help to protect the water proof membrane and increase their ‘life’ by as much as 60 years for a roof with a normal life expectancy of 30 years.

Other benefits include air quality, water quality and climate change adaptation.

The benefits of green roofs are becoming increasingly appreciated by those working on the construction and built environment sectors. The opportunities for delivering multiple benefits are being realised and will continue to support their implementation into buildings, places and spaces. These benefits will be showcased and discussed at the World Green Roof Congress 2010. |38| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

Case study 1

Alumasc green roof for Belfast City Hospital When Belfast City Hospital Trust built a state of the art new cancer unit, a specialist ZinCo green roof from Alumasc was chosen to create a picturesque landscaped area within the top floor of the building.

The new cancer unit contains 84 in-patient beds and a state of the art radiotherapy suite as well as outpatient clinics and academic and research facilities. Architects, Ferguson & McIlveen chose to incorporate the green roof to provide a scenic area for patients to look out upon and use as a garden to help aid recovery.

The 6,000m2 was formed using Alumasc’s Hydrotech structural waterproofing membrane, ZinCo green roof system and Harmer drainage outlets. Hydrotech is a fully bonded reinforced seamless coating, which is fast and easy to apply, with no falls and has a lifetime expectation equal to that of the building. The ZinCo green roof system replicates a naturally occurring ground soil structure, but incorporates highly efficient thermal insulation and drainage. As well as benefiting patients, the project contributed towards improved local air quality, reducing carbon emissions and improved local biodiversity.

Cameron Landscapes of Belfast, have since won a national Association of Landscape Contractors, Ireland (ALCI) award for the green roof element of the project.

Alumasc is a premium sponsor of the World Green Roof Congress ŠAlumasc Exterior Building Products Ltd - Belfast City Hospital

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Case study 2

Bauder green roof for East Dwyfor Community Hospital East Dwyfor Community Hospital is a purpose built 30 bed healthcare facility located on a greenfield site just outside Porthmadog, North Wales. The site, located at the edge of Snowdonia National Park, demanded an approach that minimized the impact on the local environment from the building as well as preserving the scenic views.

The incorporation of a 2500m2 Bauder Extensive Green Roof allowed the building to blend in with the surrounding countryside, enabling the provision of a hospital in a sensitive area, providing the local community with a much needed service.

A green roof can also help reduce maintenance and running costs as the green roof extends the life of the roof, potentially eliminating future replacement costs.

East Dwyfor Hospital is forward thinking and has its sights firmly set on its patients well being and healing.

The Bauder extensive roof highlights the environmental benefits whilst providing a greener outlook for patients, staff and visitors alike.

Bauder is a premium sponsor of the World Green Roof Congress

©Bauder UK Ltd - East Dwyfor Community Hospital

Case study 3

Flag-Soprema green roof for accommodation at Addenbrooke’s Hospital Sanctuary Housing Associations’ £20 million build of four blocks of affordable accommodation at Addenbrooke’s Hospital Cambridge has seen 12 areas of Flag-Soprema Optigreen ‘Economy’ green roof installed.

Each of the 6-storey buildings was of step design over the top 3 floors, the green roofs having been designed for their contribution to water retention using a low maintenance sedum/herb/grass planting mixture. Rainwater permeates the soil and passes into pipes before being collected in storm cells. Landscaping also incorporates swales to collect water and manage flood risk following periods of heavy rain.

Brown roof areas are covered with a 150mm layer of soil from the site in order to provide a balanced ecosystem for both insect and bird life. What was once an area of barren car park now provides a balance of controlled environmental contribution within a sustainable construction programme.

External elevations to the rooms are made primarily from natural, undecorated cedar obtained from sustainable sources. Photovoltaic cells heat domestic hot water while large areas of glazing throughout the 100 apartments are shielded by brises soleil.

Zinc, recognised as the most sustainable metal used in construction today, was also used for cladding of the ground floor.

Flag-Soprema MD Steve Greaves added, “This type of design shows how virtually any living space can be designed to incorporate a green roof area. The fact that it has been used within a hospital of worldwide reputation is good for the green roof industry as a whole”. The hospital is due for completion later in 2010.

Flag-Soprema is a premium sponsor of the World Green Roof Congress Right: © Flag-Soprema UK Ltd - Addenbrookes Hospital |40| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

AIMC4 CONSORTIUM Consortium leads the way to Code level 4 The knowledge and skill exists to build sustainable homes; the challenge is how do we make them available in volume, at a competitive cost and desirable to the consumer. A unique consortium of partners has come together to deliver a pioneering project that will address these issues. AIMC4 is a project with a vision to research, develop and deliver the volume production of homes – constructed using a range of different materials - to Code level 4 energy performance but with fabric first solutions.

This innovative three and a half year undertaking is worth £6.4 million, £3.2 million of which has been invested by the consortium members: Stewart Milne Group, Crest Nicholson, Barratt Developments, H+H UK Ltd, BRE and Oxford Brookes University; with a further £3.2million contributed by the Technology Strategy Board.

Core to the project is the adoption of innovative fabric solutions that embed reduced carbon emissions in their performance, lowering the need for low and zero carbon technologies thereby making the homes more affordable and practical to live in. Fabric first solutions are important because: •

•

the strength of developers lies in creating homes and embedding reduced carbon emissions in the fabric of the home which means they are there for the long-term without ongoing maintenance issues householders must be encouraged and supported in reducing energy demand within their homes.

House builders have long raised concerns about the risks associated with the long-term maintenance and success of some technologies.

Through engaging with suppliers in construction and other industries from the UK and overseas, the project will deliver an affordable, consumer-friendly, efficient solution. On top of which, the outcome will be suitable for mass-market application, enabling the creation of mainstream zero-carbon homes.

The objectives of AIMC4 Broadly the project aims to: • Generate a mainstream fabric solution for Code level 4 energy performance.

• Research and develop new design and build |42| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

processes that will drive innovation in the supply chain and foster the emergence of new suppliers. This will accelerate the development of new materials, components and systems, creating a supply chain capable of delivering innovative products to support a UK ‘fabric first’ approach and to drive cost efficiencies.

• Deliver improved understanding of consumer needs and aspirations for low carbon homes and of consumer response to different technology solutions. By focusing on fabric and primary building services, the project will deliver a minimum of 12 homes with a fabric and primary services approach, meeting Code level 4 energy performance and consumer needs.

The homes will be built at locations across the UK and sold on the open market.

• Use project outcomes at all stages to broaden wider industry knowledge and capability to develop sustainable homes in a more affordable, consumer friendly and efficient manner on a mass scale to meet government timescales. The work will also focus on skills requirements, market response and excellence benchmarks.

Enhancing the supply chain The commercial concept is to deliver a step change in both design and build process efficiencies while also ensuring that the end product is consumer friendly.

The AIMC4 consortium partners include three leading developers who are giving a clear and challenging specification to the supply chain. The pull provided by developers provides an opportunity for collaborative product and process development, and the scale of the consortium allows suppliers to accelerate new technologies to market.

A feature of the project will be engagement with industries outside of construction. The project will engage with the most appropriate and innovative suppliers across industry and improve the supply chain network through sandpits, innovation competitions and contact with Knowledge Transfer Networks, academic

bodies and other sectors.

Already 35 suppliers have been selected to enter the AIMC4 marketplace as a result of a UK-wide call to participate in two sandpit days. Some of the companies chosen are specialists in building materials; others come from the aerospace and automotive industries.

Groundbreaking solutions range from innovative heating and hot water systems to new insulation products, including some in the early stages of development.

The design and build processes The developers will create three teams to build their houses and a minimum of 12 homes will be built at locations around the UK using different potential build technologies selected from: advanced timber frame, masonry and potentially hybrid solutions.

The design process will be streamlined, notably through the application of 3D intelligent Building Information Modelling (BIM). This will be used throughout the design process to streamline activity and maximise cost efficiency.

Monitoring waste, both in terms of time and of materials, will be a crucial aspect of the entire process.

Construction waste will be measured and minimised using BRE’s SMARTWaste tools to audit the source, type, amount, cause and cost of waste.

efficiency and measure productivity. The tool diagnoses and quantifies ‘waste’ in man hours of non-added value time. It identifies who is carrying out work onsite, what they are doing, where they are doing it and for how long. Activity sampling determines the efficiency of the process and identifies delays and other non value added activities. Up to 30% of time spent onsite can be identified as waste – either double-handling of materials, rework due to design or work methods, supply chain issues or incorrect programming.

CALIBRE looks to drive this out through capturing data on performance, setting and measuring against benchmarks, and quantifying where improvements can be made.

Construction Lean Improvement Programme (CLIP) methodology will be adopted throughout design and construction to improve quality, cost and delivery. CLIP was created in 2003 in response to the Egan report, ‘Rethinking Construction’. CLIP process engineers will work with the project team to look at issues of waste and develop solutions to drive them out by: • benchmarking processes and products • improving processes and productivity • developing the supply chain.

CLIP covers the full range of construction processes, from site to boardroom, and extends from product and process benchmarking to team working and team leader training. Typically this has resulted in efficiency savings of between 10 – 40% on time and capital.

Another BRE tool, CALIBRE, will be used onsite to drive

Top row left to right - Ross Holleron, Principal Consultant, BRE, Terry Ritchie, Group Technical Manager, Barratt Developments, Paul Cartwright, Consultant, BRE, Oliver Novakovic, Consultant, BRE Bottom row left to right – Michael Finn, Group Design and Technical Director, Barratt Developments, Elizabeth Ness, Group Sustainability Executive, Crest Nicholson, Stewart Dalgarno , Group Research and Development Director Stewart Milne Group |44| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

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•Stephen Stone, CEO of Crest Nicholson plc said: “This pioneering research project is exactly the bold step needed to address the reduction in carbon emissions required from new homes and to drive delivery of Government targets.

Stimulation of innovation in the UK supply chain, via the sandpit process, has already started to expose new, costeffective industry solutions. This momentum, combined with the collaborative expertise of the partners, will ensure a step change to underpin the delivery of desirable, sustainable communities and ultimately meet the needs of our customers”.

•Mark Oliver, Managing Director of H+H UK Ltd said: “H+H UK Ltd believe in the aims and objectives of the AIMC4 group as originally conceived, in that it is possible for homes to be built without the need for extensive and expensive renewable technologies, whilst meeting the Government’s expectations for Code level 4 energy conservation as set out in the Code for Sustainable Homes (CfSH) initiative.

“As a manufacturer and supplier of Aircrete, (in itself an eco friendly and sustainable building material), H+H’s contribution to the AIMC4 project is inherently based on our technical knowledge, both from our own product and the construction industry as a whole. The spread of the partners within the consortium, from house builders to manufacturers, sustainability experts and a university to help monitor the success of the initiative, provides an excellent springboard for success and H+H UK are very pleased to be part of the work currently being done.”

Once completed and occupied, post occupancy evaluation, led

by Oxford Brookes University, will assess: • how the ‘as-built’ performance compares with

design performance, for carbon emissions and indoor air quality • ease of use and maintenance of the home • resident satisfaction with their living environment and home • the relationship between building performance and residents’ behaviour and perceptions.

Evaluation techniques will range from interviews and focus groups for residents to thermal imaging co-heating tests and environmental audits for the homes.

Web-based home user guides will be developed through focus groups. The project will also consider the potential for intuitive home controls. The insights gained will help customise and improve manufacturers’ information for end-users and will inform future customer service requirements offered by the developers.

With three major housing developers joining forces with major suppliers of timber frame and masonry solutions, plus a raft of experts, all with excellent sustainability credentials, the AIMC4 consortium believes that the totally holistic approach will provide the necessary elements of research, design, the very latest state-of-the-art technologies and, most importantly, the experience of the end users, to move towards truly sustainable level 4 homes that will meet the ambitious targets set by Government.

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•Fionn Stevenson, Co-director of OISD:Low Carbon Building at Oxford Brookes University said: ‘We are delighted to be collaborating in a unique partnership that will provide innovative housing solutions which have been thoroughly evaluated at the design and build stages and as lived in. Occupant behaviour can account for up to 50% variation in energy use when comparing the same house types, so this aspect of the study is vital.’

•Stewart Dalgarno, Director of Product Development, Stewart Milne Group, said: “We are very excited to be working with this innovative consortium, for which we are the industry lead partner, and to be part of the groundbreaking AIMC4 initiative. Not only does the project allow us to make a proactive contribution to shaping the delivery of zero carbon homes, it also offers a long term commercial and technical advantage within the house building industry.

“We, along with the other AIMC4 partners, believe the collaborative approach can assist in setting and informing the zero carbon agenda, which would be impossible to do individually. By bringing together the different perspectives, technologies and skills, the consortium is able to look at every possible avenue to ensure the most robust, customerfocused, deliverable and cost-effective solution to low energy sustainable housing is achieved.”

•Mark Clare, Chief Executive of Barratt Developments plc, said: “What makes this project so exciting is the prospect that we might make a huge stride towards lower cost zero carbon housing.”

•Dr Peter Bonfield, CEO of BRE said: “With our mission to build a better world through new knowledge generation, BRE is delighted to be involved with a world class R & D project like AIMC4. It will undoubtedly pave the way for huge changes in the future delivery of low carbon sustainable, affordable homes in the UK. This is hugely important because the homes we live in are currently the major single source of carbon emissions – to meet our 2050 CO2 reduction target of 80% we have to build homes that are not dependant on fossil fuel for energy generation. As well as the environmental benefits this project will bring, it also has huge significance to potential homeowners who are currently crippled by huge energy costs that show no signs of abating.

This is why the outcomes and learning that AIMC4 delivers will be eagerly awaited not only at home, but by our colleagues across the globe who are faced with the same issues in housing provision.”

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Improve insulation, save energy and money

The National Insulation Association (NIA) is a not for profit organisation representing over 90% of the home insulation industry in the UK. As a membership organisation, it actively supports the Government’s accelerated programme for insulation and its intention to raise awareness, not only of the amount of heat lost through inadequate insulation but also of the amount of money that householders can save by having their home properly insulated.

The NIA states that there are currently 9 million cavity walls and 15 million lofts that require insulation.

Research carried out by the Association also shows that over two thirds of people do not realise just how much heat is lost through uninsulated walls and roofs (50% of heat is lost through the roof and cavity walls and a shocking 45% through solid walls alone).

The cost of insulating the loft and cavity walls is relatively modest at around £500, including a subsidy under the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target programme, and will save the average home around £265 per year in energy costs. Homes with solid walls cost slightly more to insulate but the energy saving is significantly higher – around £550 per year (walls and loft). So what types of insulation are available?

Solid Wall Insulation The UK’s housing stock is estimated at approximately 24.5 million dwellings and, of that, approximately 36% are non-cavity wall construction – solid brick, solid stone, pre-1944 timber frame and non-traditional (i.e. concrete construction). It is estimated that there are around 7 million properties with solid walls that need insulating. Improving the thermal efficiency of solid wall properties is therefore an area which has massive potential for the future as there has been little work |48| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

done to date. More and more individuals are now starting to recognise the advantages of insulating such homes and there are many cost-effective solutions available.

Solid walls can be insulated either externally or internally and either option will greatly increase comfort, while also reducing the running costs and the associated environmental impact.

For older properties in need of re-rendering or re-pointing (both of which are expensive procedures), external cladding is an alternative solution that will replace the need for this job as well as provide far better thermal performance.

Internal insulation typically consists of either dry lining in the form of flexible thermal linings, laminated insulating plasterboard (known as thermal board) or built-up system using fibrous insulation, such as mineral wood held in place using a studwork frame.

Cavity Wall Insulation Cavity wall insulation is an inexpensive, easy-to-install process that sees the insulation material injected into the cavity between the inner and outer leaves of brickwork of the external wall of a property. There are a number of different insulating materials but they all work in the same way to cut heat loss.

Cavity wall insulation work is carried out according to guidance laid down by the Cavity Insulation Guarantee Agency (CIGA) and workmanship and materials are covered by the independent 25 year CIGA Guarantee to provide homeowners with reassurance and peace of mind. See www.ciga.co.uk for details.

Loft Insulation With as much as a third of heating costs escaping through the roof, loft insulation is a very effective way of reducing heating bills.

While most UK homes already have some degree of loft insulation installed, for the majority this is inadequate and should be topped up to today’s standards of 270mm.

The NIA recommends that installing loft insulation should be carried out by professionally trained experienced NIA members - to avoid technical risks.

For example, a high standard can only be achieved by insulating across the top of the ceiling joists as well as between them and including the loft hatch. Pipes and tanks also need to be insulated to avoid freezing and other key considerations include ventilation to avoid condensation and safety aspects of electrical wiring and fittings.

If everyone in the UK installed 270mm loft insulation, we could save around £520 million and nearly three million tonnes of CO2 every year.

Draught Proofing One of the most inexpensive and instantly effective energy efficiency measures for a home – yet often overlooked – is draught proofing. In fact only a quarter of all dwellings in the UK are adequately draught proofed.

not only prevent expensive heat loss and save energy, but will also increase comfort levels whilst guarding against ingress of bad weather leading to the damage of internal decoration. The NIA recommend that this is carried out by a professional approved installer to ensure the greatest benefits are achieved.

The Next Step: A large proportion of householders are unsure if they have insulation measures already installed in their home or whether it reaches the recommended standards.

NIA approved installers provide free home surveys and are experienced to recommend the most suitable and practical insulation options for each individual property.

They also have access to information regarding grants and subsidies to help make the cost of insulating homes even more affordable and accessible to all. The NIA recommends contacting one of its installer members, as they are not only trained to the highest standards but also governed by a strict Code of Professional Practice.

For more information about the NIA, including a list of members throughout the UK, visit the website at: www.nationalinsulationassociation.org.uk

Regardless of weather conditions, expensive heat will leak through ill- fitting doors, windows and any unsealed gaps in the property.

There are several types of materials available to help prevent air leakage, which include: brushes, sealants and extruded strips of profiled foam and rubber. Good quality draught proofing materials will carry the BS 7386:1997 approval mark and will

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TIMBER

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TIMBER TRADE FEDERATION FOCUSES ON DUE DILIGENCE BY JOHN WHITE CHIEF EXECUTIVE

On 6 July 2010 the EU passed new due diligence legislation, banning illegal timber from entering the EU market. The legislation is the culmination of a long lobbying effort by the UK timber industry through the Timber Trade Federation.

The new law will require anyone placing wood and wood products on the EU market to show that they have done the necessary due diligence on its origin. Others in the supply chain will have to record their supplier and customer. And there will be a ban on illegal timber.

The new legislation is essential to ensure that, as the focus on ‘green’ building increases, the use of wood continues to rise by finally laying to rest any suggestions that wood is not the best environmental choice. Wood is, quite simply, the most environmentally friendly building material available. It is endlessly renewable – carefully managed forests mean that, on average, for every tree that is cut down, three more are planted – and trees are natural carbon stores, absorbing and storing carbon over their lifetime.

While it is no surprise that architects are increasingly turning to timber to help meet their environmental responsibilities, timber’s aesthetic and structural appeal has seen the development of some amazing venues over the past few years. With wood being used for everything from tower blocks to railway bridges to sports stadia, this is a trend which is set to continue. The Timber Trade Federation (TTF) is the leading trade association in the UK representing the interests of those involved in the timber industry. It is committed to growing the use of wood through innovative and high quality representation to politicians, industry and customers. Over the past few years the TTF has been reinforcing the environmental credentials of wood. Through its Forests Forever campaign, the Federation promotes the unarguable environmental advantages of wood and wood products and acts as the environmental voice of the timber industry, while the Wood Costs Less marketing campaign is helping to deliver the message to a wider audience.

Last year, the TTF went one step further and made environmental due diligence a condition of membership. John White, Chief Executive of the TTF, explains why the industry took such a bold step: “The profile and attention received by the timber industry on sustainability issues on the global political scene is very high with climate change, issues of poor governance and deforestation dominating debate. As an industry we have a product that can tick all the environmental boxes – it is endlessly renewable and it absorbs and stores carbon.

In fact, it is the best weapon we currently have against climate change and we should be using as much of it as we can. Whilst many companies use existing certification schemes to demonstrate legality and

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To identify companies that have signed up to the RPP or have a similar audited scheme, the TTF has launched a new ‘Responsible Purchaser’ logo. The new logo, which can be used within a company’s marketing once they’ve successfully completed the audit, will ensure that companies following their due diligence requirements will be easily identifiable to prospective customers.

But John White has a final message for those who don’t have due diligence processes in place - the market for timber within the EU and the UK is changing and if companies have not yet recognised this, they need to get moving. Those that don’t may well be sitting wondering in a few years time where all their suppliers have gone.

The timber industry has a responsibility to ensure the wood it sells is both legal and sustainable. The construction industry also has a role to play – it needs to ensure that it specifies wood that meets the highest environmental standards, in particular that it comes from sustainable sources. By looking for the Responsible Purchaser logo, those in the construction industry can be sure they are working with companies who take this issue seriously. sustainability, we need to go further where they don’t exist and prove that we are sourcing our timber responsibly.”

As part of its commitment to helping its members deliver on due diligence requirements, the TTF introduced its flagship due diligence tool, the Responsible Purchasing Policy. This tool is in line with the EU Regulation which recently received approval by the European Parliament.

The TTF’s Responsible Purchasing Policy (RPP) is a risk management tool, which helps a company assess products for evidence of legality and sustainability of supply, as well as encouraging suppliers to improve their sourcing practices. Each member using the RPP is independently audited by an accredited certification body, with the aim of increasing the amount of independently verified legal and sustainable timber entering the UK market.

As John White explains: “Around 70% of the wood we use in the UK is imported, of which 84% comes from expanding sustainable European forests. The vast majority of wood now used (over 80%) is fully certified under schemes such as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) or the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC). The RPP fills an essential role where no formal certification scheme exists.”

As well as the RPP, the Timber Trade Federation, through the UK and EU Governments, helps suppliers in tropical countries obtain independent verification of the legality of the wood supplied through the Timber Trade Action Plan. |54| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

With climate change now very much a part of the political scene, forests and their importance in mitigating climate change will be at the forefront of tackling climate change. At the implementation level the trend to implement responsible stewardship of materials along with taking account of the Life Cycle Analysis of construction products will grow. As John White says “Consideration of sustainability issues in construction is here to stay, and the construction industry should be leading the way by using more of nature’s own building material – wood.”

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Accsys Technologies PLC is the first company in Western Europe to achieve the prestigious Cradle to Cradle® Gold certification for Accoya® Wood.

Paul Clegg, Chief Executive Officer of Accsys Technologies PLC Cradle 2 Cradle® (C2C) certification has quickly become one of the most important eco-labels worldwide. It is an independent certification scheme, run by environmental consultancy firm McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC), to determine if products, services and buildings comply with the C2C principles towards sustainability: namely leaving a positive impact rather than simply reducing or counteracting a negative one.

By taking an entirely holistic look at production, the C2C framework seeks to create manufacturing techniques that are not just efficient but are waste free.

Background Formally introduced in the late 1980s, the phrase “cradle to cradle” is widely attributed to Walter R. Stahel, and is believed to have first originated in the 1970s. In The Potential for Substituting Manpower for Energy, a 1976 report for the European Commission, Walter Stahel and Genevieve Reday detailed their vision of a circular economy and its impact on job creation, economic competitiveness, resource savings and waste prevention. The report proved influential and these factors are now usually referred to as, “the three pillars of sustainable development: ecologic, economic and social compatibility”.

Stahel developed these ideas in his award-winning 1982 paper, The Product-Life Factor and the 1987 report, Economic Strategies of Durability – longer product-life of goods as waste prevention strategy. The publications identified selling utilisation rather than products as the ultimate sustainable business model. It also asserted that a restructuring of the industrial economy and its framework conditions was necessary to make a successful loop economy.

Some experts responded by suggesting that product responsibility from “cradle to grave” was a viable alternative to a sustainable loop economy, but Stahel stood firm in the belief that this simply was not enough.

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waste, Stahel came back with what was essentially a pun: “cradle to cradle”. The system of “lifecycle development” that was consequently developed and emerged from the Environmental Protection Encouragement Agency (EPEA) in the 1990s forms the base of the current principles of the C2C framework.

Current Principles The C2C scheme, developed by Michael Braungart and Michael McDonough, assesses a product’s design for future life cycles and its safety to humans and the environment. The assessment is based on the C2C regenerative design concept, which implements a bionic approach by using nature’s processes. Materials are viewed as “nutrients” that circulate around our environment, which is viewed as a healthy “metabolism”. The whole concept is based on the idea of reflecting and learning from nature, to work towards a more sustainable future. It suggests that when manufacturing, industry should safeguard the natural biological environment and enhance ecosystems to produce safe products that will have no harmful effects when used or finished with. Put simply, our environment is a body to be treated as a temple and so industry should focus on providing the best nutrients and healthy supplements, instead of poisoning it with unhealthy substances.

When assessing a product lifecycle, C2C identifies the use and circulation of organic and synthetic materials. All the materials used in any industrial processes are categorized as “technical” or “biological” nutrients. Non-toxic synthetic materials that have no negative effect on the metabolism are technical nutrients. These are strictly limited to materials that can be reused in continuous cycles without degenerating in quality or being “downcycled” and ultimately becoming waste. Organic materials that are biodegradable, can become wholly reintroduced to the environmental metabolism and leave a positive impact - by becoming sustenance for plants and small

life forms - are classed as biological nutrients. The C2C certification does not neglect to take into account that this particular factor is variable across the globe and therefore places a strong emphasis on native biological nutrients.

While this analogy may sound as if it is concerned entirely with preserving a healthy metabolism, it is also designed to enable increased profits and sound economic advantage. Of course, the use of renewable energy from in-house sources and the deployment of sustainable energy-efficient measures can reduce bills but there are also the staff health benefits to consider.

When working in a safe and supportive environment, in terms of both physical and mental health, levels of staff sickness are significantly reduced as staff are healthier and happier to work. Although the model is currently used mainly within design and manufacture industries, it can be applied to various aspects of society, including urban environments, social systems and economics.

Assessment / Grades Unlike single-attribute eco-labels, MBDC’s certification programme evaluates the sustainability of a product and the practices employed in its manufacturing under five categories: Material Health, Material Reutilisation, Renewable Energy Use, Water Stewardship, and Social Responsibility.

Material Health identifies the product’s chemical composition. Hazardous materials have to be reported and assessed, and other materials that exceed 100 parts per million (ppm). For wood, as was the case when our high technology Accoya wood was assessed, the forest source is required. Each material is then graded according to its “risk” factor, risk meaning the potential damage it could cause to the surrounding environment (see table). Material Reutilisation assesses waste incurred throughout the production process and the product’s life cycle. A waste-free process that utilises recovery and recycling is the optimum standard to aim for.

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Renewable Energy Use is fairly self-explanatory. All of the production line’s energy must be renewably sourced through solar, wind, geothermal, or other renewable sources. At least 50% of the entire energy footprint must be renewably sourced in order to secure the highest grade.

Water Stewardship encourages the recognition that water of sound quality is an essential component for the biological system’s survival. The assessment looks at a production line or company’s responsibility of water use, particularly in terms of future-proofing and ensuring the purity of any water discharged throughout the process.

Social Responsibility refers to fair labour practices.

Employers are encouraged to respect diversity and to practice business in a way that respects the health, safety, and rights of people and the planet.

The certification is available at Basic, Silver, Gold and Platinum levels, with more stringent requirements at each [Ed, see table sent as attachment].

Case studies Production: Accoya® wood can be safely composted or reused at the end-of-life phase and was therefore acknowledged by C2C as 100% biodegradable. As a natural, non-toxic material that is sourced from rapidly renewable wood species, Accoya® wood fits very well into the biological cycle of the C2C paradigm; it proficiently met the high requirements for C2C Gold certification under the categories of material health, responsible wood sourcing, production line energy use, water efficiency and social responsibility. Although Accoya® had already been certified by respected industry bodies such as the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) and the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the Gold standard recognition from C2C has had a positive impact on the business by adding credibility to Accoya®’s green * mbdc.com

reputation in an age when environmental claims must be genuine, and not viewed simply as a token effort in corporate social responsibility.

Re-design: The Ford River Rouge Complex is a Ford Motor Company car factory plant in Michigan, located along the Rouge River. When it was completed in 1928, eleven years after construction began, it was the largest integrated factory in the world. In 1999 William McDonough agreed to redesign the octogenarian plant.

The 100,000m² roof of the Dearborn truck assembly factory had 40,000m² of sedum, a low-growing groundcover, grown on it. Sedum retains and cleanses rainwater while moderating the internal temperature of the building and saving energy. It forms part of an $18 million rainwater treatment system that is designed to clean 20 billion gallons of rainwater each year.

According to Architectural Record, this equates to a cost saving measure of $50 million for Ford by negating the need for a mechanical treatment facility .

Future: the Netherlands has already constructed residential buildings and complexes using the C2C framework and work is now underway to create a completely C2C compliant laboratory and office complex for the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW).

Future of Cradle to Cradle Although there has been some academic discussion around MBDC holding the certification and consultancy within their own organisation, the future of this accreditation looks set to continue growth at rapid speed. As substantiated and truly comprehensive green accreditations become increasingly important within the C2C and consumer sectors, MBDC is working with organisations across the globe to help effectively implement the holistic principles of C2C. Within the UK, the C2C principles are promoted by the EPEA, while in the United States, Governor Schwarzenegger has recently announced his support of C2C certification to be issued in America by the new Green Products Innovation Institute, a non-profit organisation based in California, which focuses on transforming the manufacture and consumption of products into a regenerative force for the planet. To paraphrase a well-known slogan, the future is very bright but it glows with a green hue.

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ENERGY

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WHERE IS OUR ENERGY GOING TO COME FROM? Jon Abbatt, Principal Consultant, ADAS We have heard a lot from politicians over the last month about the economy, immigration, defence and tax.

However there has been very little discussion about how we are going to deal with one of the biggest issues facing this country over the next decade: where is our energy going to come from?

With plentiful supplies of coal in the first half of the 20th century and gas and oil from the North Sea since the 1980s, the UK has until recent times been a net exporter of energy. As a nation we have become accustomed to knowing that all our energy supplies are under our feet or under the sea just off the coast.

Many European countries such as France and Denmark have not had the luxury of a surplus of readily available energy and have invested heavily in alternative energy sources – wind power in the case of Denmark and nuclear power in France.

The UK, with a heavy reliance on what were cheap and easily available fossil fuels, faces a huge shift in the way we generate and use our energy as our supplies start to run out. Are we ready for the change?

Energy in all its forms is central to our way of life and an essential element of modern agricultural systems.

We use energy to heat our houses and agricultural buildings; we use the energy in diesel to power tractors and machinery. Where would we be without electricity to provide light, refrigeration, cooling and keep the all important computer going!

In the UK virtually all our energy services depend on fossil fuels. Gas from the North Sea is used for heating and powers most new electricity power stations. Coal is still used to power our massive centralised power stations. Oil from the North Sea provides us with petrol and diesel.

Less than 2% of our total energy needs comes from renewable sources, the second lowest percentage in the EU. Our comfortable reliance on UK fossil fuels and the knowledge that we have more energy than we need is changing and changing quickly. Oil production in the North Sea has now peaked and is declining with gas production not far behind; most coal for power generation is already imported. If that wasn‘t bad enough, our existing electricity generating capacity is nearing the end of its operational life. Most of our large coal-fired power stations must close in 2015 to meet EU emissions targets and our nuclear power stations will close by 2018.

For the first time in a century the UK is now no longer a net exporter of energy; 20% of our gross energy needs are imported, an unsettling thought in an already uncertain economic world situation.

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So what can we do to ensure that we all stay warm, have light when it’s dark and keep agriculture in business without the need for actual horsepower?

One thing is clear, we will need all possible sources of energy to replace our dependence on declining fossils fuels. Nuclear power, offshore wind, onshore wind, biomass, anaerobic digestion, photovoltaics, energy from waste, carbon capture and storage will all have a part to play.

No one technology can provide the answer and we do not have the luxury of being able to choose between different approaches. We need all of them as soon as we can.

There are big changes in the pipeline; perhaps one of the biggest developments has been the award of licences to a number of developers to construct 6,000 wind turbines in the seas around the Britain. The first gigawatt (GW) of capacity has recently been completed and there are plans for another 30 GW, equivalent to 20% of our current electricity consumption. Work has already started on the preparation of sites for 10 new nuclear power plants. We continue to see an expansion of onshore wind and there are plans for a number of biomass plants in Scotland and in several ports around the coast. Councils are getting to grips with generating energy from organic waste as well as incinerating other waste to generate heat and electricity.

These changes to our energy landscape present both risks and opportunities for farm businesses. There is no doubt that the price of energy in the form of electricity, diesel and gas is likely to be more volatile in the future and it is very hard to see a scenario where prices are not going to increase significantly. Energy efficiency in all farm operations is the first key step to control costs and reduce the exposure the increasing energy prices. A simple audit and monitoring of energy use can readily bring about savings of 10% or more in most operations. The recommended strategy is to insulate, A-rate, then generate! ADAS has worked with many businesses to reduce energy costs through |64| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

specific individual advice on efficient use of machinery and process. This work can often be funded through the Carbon Trust and RDA initiatives.

When it comes to generation with its increasing emphasis on renewable energy, farmers and landowners are well-placed to take advantage of the new renewable energy feed in tariffs (FIT) that provide tax free, index linked revenue for the generation of renewable electricity. There are a wide range of potential technologies that can provide both cheaper fixed priced energy to the farm business as well as a potential return. FIT is banded to the technology so that the higher cost options receive a better rate. It also gives security to potential funding sources through guaranteed returns for energy sold. Photovoltaic panels and medium scale wind power are currently the leaders in the race to install renewables on farm sites but anaerobic digestion and biomass are also receiving a huge amount of interest. ADAS has delivered feasibility studies and planning consent for many renewable energy projects and with farm business knowledge, we can help you make the right decision for your business.

No one single technology or solution can provide all farm energy in the right place, at the right time and in the right form. We need to be open to all new forms of energy generation and the impact that these new energy technologies will have on our landscape, homes and businesses. If we are to maintain anything close to our existing lifestyles and foster a competitive agricultural sector we need new sustainable forms of energy and we need them soon.

THE R22 BAN OFFERS REAL ENERGY SAVING POTENTIAL If you are reading this and thinking ‘what R22 ban?’ then you are unlikely to have an air conditioning system that was installed pre-2003.

If you do operate air conditioning systems that are seven or more years old and you have never heard of R22, then you really need to understand the issues so that you can make appropriate plans – before your system forces you to.

There are estimated to be around three quarters of a million air conditioning systems installed in the UK before this date that are still working, and are still relying on a refrigerant gas (R22) which has been shown to have ozone depleting potential and which is being phased out.

The added benefit is owners save money in terms of their monthly energy bills and reduce their carbon footprint, so the ban on R22 is Donald Daw, Commercial quite an opportunity.

Director Changing to new equipment now can give a 50%+ carbon and running cost reduction with the certainty of operating costs that come with a 5 year warranty.

The big question for anyone still relying on old R22 systems is how to justify the cost of replacing their systems – especially in these harsh economic times.

Before anyone states that this is an ‘environmental’ magazine and air conditioning has no place within its pages, most modern commercial buildings now have so much heat generating equipment such as computers, that they need some form of cooling and whilst this article is not seeking to make the case for air conditioning as such, old systems that are still being used can and should be looked at to see how they can be made more energy efficient. The removal of R22 gas gives building owners the impetus to do just this, as doing nothing is simply no longer an option.

This is where owners need to realise that of the three options (do nothing; drop-in gases; replacement) updating equipment is by far the best action for a whole host of reasons.

Sales of virgin R22 are now banned but beyond the air conditioning and building maintenance industries, few seem aware of its potential repercussions, despite the huge number of buildings that will still have air conditioning systems reliant on R22.

Reclaimed and recycled R22 gas is still available, but the price is rising rapidly and it is already in short supply as it is also needed for refrigeration systems in retail and in the chemical industry.

Many organisations will not have even thought of how to deal with their R22 equipment and some owners may wish to carry on putting their heads in the sand believing that it simply doesn’t affect them.

Actually though, the whole R22 issue has tremendous energy saving potential as replacing old systems with modern air conditioning will bring greater control and comfort with less emissions and less energy use.

Modern systems use a gas called R410a which removes the ozone depleting potential and there are also ‘Replacement’ systems that mean you don’t have to remove the entire ‘old’ system but instead change the indoor and outdoor units keeping all the wiring and pipework. Not only does this keep the capital costs to a minimum, it also shortens the amount of time needed to effect the change from weeks to days, saving further costs. |66| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

In terms of the ‘do nothing’ argument, owners need to ask themselves what happens when their system needs its next scheduled maintenance? Your service engineers are very likely to tell you that you have to replace the whole system immediately because they cannot get hold of a couple of bottles of gas (R22) for love nor money?

Drop-in gases have been developed to help old systems carry on, but their effectiveness is under question and they will never be a long term solution.

The only true choice is whether to change the whole system or try one of the replacement systems available.

Air-conditioning technology has experienced its greatest period of technological improvement in the last five years and a modern system can both heat and cool simultaneously. This means that heat generated in a server room for example, can be transferred to other parts of the building that need heating, or heat from a ‘sunny’ side of the building can be sent to the dark side.

Energy use throughout the building can therefore be much more balanced.

Modern inverter-driven units bear little relation to R22 systems because they only consume the actual energy

needed at any given point. Old, fixed-speed R22 systems are always ‘on’ at full power when working.

Add to this the fact that the R22 phase out ties in closely with the majority of R22 systems approaching their end-of-life stage and it starts to make real sense to look at when you should change.

Legislation such as the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme is also demanding low carbon usage, so switching can not only help owners comply, but can also dramatically lower fuel bills.

As energy saving becomes more important, the R22 ban is a catalyst to examining your air conditioning systems and finding ways of halving your energy bills.

Image: Garnett Keeler Public Relations Ltd - Car show room

The possibility of a simpler ‘replace’ system can often mean you can use one brand to replace another and can significantly reduce the initial costs. The new system can also lower monthly bills, which can shorten payback periods, and modern systems can qualify for interest free loans from the Carbon Trust and the capital expenditure can be offset against a company’s yearly tax bill through the Enhanced Capital Allowance Scheme.

So rather than saying, ‘what R22 ban?’ owners of old systems should seize the opportunity this presents and plan ahead now.

Donald Daw is the Commercial Director for Mitsubishi Electric which has developed sophisticated Audit Tool software to highlight immediate cost savings and payback periods. For further details on the Audit Tool, email air. conditioning@meuk.mee.com or call 01707 282880.

Image: Garnett Keeler Public Relations Ltd -Restaurant

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WATER

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Innovating towards a sustainable water service for Scotland

Grant Nairn, Director of Innovation, Scottish Water The Water Industry is at a turning point. Quality standards for water and wastewater treatment are rightly being driven by European regulations and our customers now enjoy the cleanest, freshest drinking water ever. However, modern treatment processes need ever increasing amounts of power and chemicals to achieve the high standards demanded. At the same time, the industry must cope with changing demographics and the impact of climate change.

As one of the biggest power consumers in Scotland, Scottish Water also recognises our important role in helping Scotland achieve its challenging carbon reduction targets. These factors mean that doing things the way we have always done them is no longer a viable approach. We must take innovative new approaches to develop a water service for Scotland that is sustainable in the long term.

Our Business Scottish Water is among the top 20 businesses in Scotland, employing more than 3,000 staff and supporting around 5,000 construction jobs. On a daily basis we supply around 1.2 billion litres of water to 2.4 million households and over 120,000 businesses.

We also collect and treat around 700 million litres of wastewater. The service is provided through thousands of treatment works and pumping stations and around 100,000km of water and wastewater networks.

Water requires significant power to collect, treat and distribute. We, therefore, are one of Scotland’s largest users of energy. A key challenge, therefore, is how best to reduce the power demands of our asset base.

Our Future Scottish Water is already working to make a ‘greener’ future for all our customers. At a number of major investments our future thinking is already being implemented: • The £130 million Glencorse Water Treatment Works (WTW) currently, under construction, will soon serve around half-a-million of our customers in Edinburgh (Image 1). The facility will offset a third of its power demands using a hydro turbine attached to the raw water inlet main. There is potential for this to rise to 65% with a second turbine located on the water mains serving the city.

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In order to camouflage the facility into the scenic Pentland Hills the largest grass roof in Scotland is currently being laid. This will also provide a bio-diverse habitat for local wildlife. (Image 2)

Image 2: Glencorse Water Treatment Works

In a world first; a mobile pipeline production plant was dropped onto the route of the new trunk main. Pipes were produce on site and rolled directly into the ground.

This reduced lorry journeys by around a million miles.

(Image 3)

Image 3: Mobile pipeline production

• On the rolling Perthshire hills, the Turret WTW hydro turbine solution is already producing a combined output of around 1900kW of sustainable electricity. That is enough to power around 450 homes. (Image 4) • Scottish Water currently generates up to 5% of our electricity demand from turbines located in our assets.

For example, many of our water sources are in upland catchments and we capture the energy through small scale turbines located in raw water pipes as they feed the water treatment works.

During the 2010-2015 regulatory period, we will invest around £12m to install similar turbines elsewhere in our asset base to generate around 25GWh of electricity for onsite use. This will save circa 12,000 tonnes CO2e per annum.

• On the outskirts of Glasgow, Scottish Water’s Deerdykes Organics and Recycling facility will shortly see the completion of a state-of-the-art Anaerobic Digestion plant. This will produce around 8,000 Megawatts of electricity from nearly 30,000 tonnes of food and garden waste every year. Deerdykes has already transformed around 100,000 tonnes of garden waste into 50,000 tonnes of pod, our organic compost.

(Image 5)

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enable design engineers to account for carbon in their designs in the same way as for financial cost. This will account for the carbon embodied in all the thousands of components used to build an asset (concrete, steel, pipework, control panels, pumps etc). Putting these databases together has required the analysis of thousands of carbon values to create a database.

It will also consider the carbon the asset will emit over its life - power, fuel, process emissions etc. This will enable each option to be explored for both its financial and carbon cost, and in this way we hope to make better informed, more sustainable decisions in the future.

Image 5: Anaerobic Digestion Plant

Our Environment We depend on a good quality environment to provide the abundant high quality water used to treat and supply to customers. We also rely on a healthy environment to consume and assimilate the treated wastewaters.

The energy intensity of the water industry has been growing in the past 20 years, particularly for wastewater as we have invested significantly in improving the treatment levels we provide to meet EU directives.

Scottish Water has invested hundreds of millions of pounds in the past decade in protecting the quality of Scotland’s rivers, lochs and coastal waters, delivering significant benefits.

In managing our water resources we therefore need to take a long term view and these examples, along with hundreds of others, will help us meet our objective in the responsible stewardship of water resources. Our water resource plan has a rolling 25 year horizon.

Our Choices Scottish Water spends around £500m per annum on capital works to refurbish and renew our assets to meet new regulatory standards. Given that the assets we own have lifetimes measured in decades and in some cases as much as a century - some of the networks and assets we still operate were built by the Victorians – it will take many years to evolve towards a sustainable asset base.

This is a key challenge for the business. One of the ways in which we will do that is to incorporate carbon thinking into our investment planning.

A key tool we are developing to support this is to embed ‘whole life carbon thinking’. Working with the rest of the UK Water industry through the collaborative research body UK Water Industry Research, we have developed methods to assess carbon in capital investments.

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Our Footprint As well as evolving towards a more sustainable asset base, there are a number of measures we are delivering to reduce carbon. Scottish Water has produced a Carbon Plan that seeks to mainstream carbon thinking in our business and drive the right actions (www. scottishwater.co.uk/climatechange).

One of the more significant measures we are seeking to deliver in the plan is in the hydro generation capacity of our asset base.

Water is at the heart of a sustainable society and we have a key role in the maintenance of public health, the protection of our environment and the facilitation of economic growth. We are seeking to become a more sustainable business as we carry out these activities and are looking at innovative new approaches and renewable energy generation opportunities to make this a reality.

Image 4: Turret WTW hydro turbine solution

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Scotland’s Unique Competitive Market for Water Alan Sutherland, Chief Executive, of the Water Industry Commission for Scotland (WICS).

The flow of change in the Scottish water industry has been immense in recent times, particularly so in the past two years where Scotland’s pioneering deregulated market has been successfully launched and has caught the attention of delegations from around the globe.

Governments and water industry experts have been watching the market for water in Scotland with interest. Ours is the only market in the world where competition has been introduced into the supply of water - with Scottish Water operating as the wholesaler to some six separate licensed retailers competing against each other to supply water to businesses and public sector customers. It is easy to see then how the market constructed here would catch the attention of policy-makers and politicians from beyond our shores, as well as national and international investors, water businesses and environmental groups.

In many parts of the world, water as a resource is often taken for granted - we turn on our taps and out it comes clean and fit for purpose. Most consumers in developed countries do not really appreciate the process by which their water arrives - yet great strides are being made to deliver water more efficiently and cost-effectively than ever before and, as the regulator for the market in Scotland, we are making sure these measures of efficiency and effectiveness take due account of the environmental impact inherent in water collection, distribution and consumption.

Environmental costs and impact are increasingly at the forefront of regulators minds. Yet they remain part of a wider regulatory challenge of achieving a fair and accurate balance between all of the relevant dynamics, from costs and impact through to service and quality. |74| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

Pricing will always be important. At WICS we recently published our annual report. This covered an important and busy 12 months for the industry which included the publication of our Final Price Determination that detailed customer charges for the next five years. Over the period 2010 to 2015, these will be five per cent below inflation with a likely price freeze until 2012, levels which will be all the more appreciated by public and private sector customers given the current tough economic times.

In addition to price setting, a key element of our role is to agree targets and monitor the performance of Scottish Water - the sole water and sewerage services supplier in Scotland - to ensure it delivers best value, meets customer expectations and the required levels of investment.

The results of Scottish Water’s performance in the past 12 months is detailed in our report, and set against the wider context of the last decade, it shows the remarkable transformation of the water industry in Scotland, the cumulative effect of which is that average household bills are around £105 a year lower than they would otherwise have been.

Customers are obviously always in favour of bills being kept as low as possible but this should not be viewed as the only measure of success. During the past decade, customer service levels have improved markedly.The amount of water needlessly lost through leakage has been cut by around 36%, giving rise to significant environmental as well as cost benefits. The broader environmental performance of the industry has improved, as has the quality of drinking water, and more than £5.5 billion has been invested in maintaining current assets.

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Environmental impact is very important in the water industry and we ensure Scottish Water is mindful of its commitment to improving performance in this respect.

Reducing leakage is an obvious target as there is no point using processes to make water drinkable if it is lost in transportation through the pipes. Significant progress has been made but work remains to be done in this area which will help greatly to reduce carbon emissions.

Our Annual Report drills down further into the relationship between wholesaler, supplier and customer, and how this has developed since the competitive market was introduced in 2008. The market operates in much the same way as with other utility services - such as gas and electricity - where suppliers compete for customers by offering them the best deal, though in water the best deal is by no means defined by price alone.

Suppliers buy wholesale services – the physical supply of water and removal of sewage – from Scottish Water. They then package them with other services at competitive prices. These important ‘other services’ include easier billing, water saving measures, leakage reduction, quality and consistency of supply, and fast reaction responses. Environmental advice and individually tailored solutions are also being provided in the market, and with considerable success.

Two years on from its launch, businesses and public sector organisations across the country – from the smallest corner store to the largest conglomerate – are benefitting from competition. They are now able to renegotiate their water and sewerage contracts and take advantage of the further discounts that are likely to be available to organisations that plan ahead. Our annual report shows that to date around 40 per cent of the market is benefiting through lower charges and improved levels of service.

During 2009-10 there was developing interest in new competitive opportunities with around £43million of annualised income (approximately 12 per cent of the market for water) put out to tender. As an example, one licensed provider recently secured a £45million threeyear contract to provide water and associated services to Scotland’s education sector, and there are further tenders in the pipeline.

No longer following the ‘one size fits all’ approach, customers have been able to find the best solution for their needs – negotiating pricing and service levels as well as addressing environmental concerns. For the environment, competition now means that customers can now shop around for the best advice, and work with what suits their individual business needs.

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for all to get involved in improving the water industry’s environmental performance. Competition in the water industry has created a genuine financial incentive for being water efficient – being green now makes business sense.

Although regulation is delivering significant benefits to customers and the environment we are fully aware of the challenges facing the industry in the years ahead.

Encouraging innovation and participation by customers will be key both to continuing to deliver good outcomes for customers and the environment, as well as ensuring that charges remain affordable.

We have started early planning to ensure that the industry can respond to the challenges of the future, which include carbon reduction targets, affordability and customer expectations. This is likely to involve simplifying the regulatory system and encouraging greater customer participation.

Water is something that touches nearly every aspect of our life yet as a whole we remain largely ambivalent as to how it reaches us. In many ways, it is a measure of the level of service we enjoy that water supply and quality is not an issue among consumers but this will not result in complacency or an unwillingness to do more. As the industry continues to progress, we will continue to ensure Scotland’s water industry remains at the forefront of innovation and delivery.

To see the Annual Report in full, please visit www.watercommission.co.uk

LAND MANAGEMENT

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Code of Practice delivers on reuse of soils Clive Boyle CRB Environmental Ltd Vice Chair EIC Contaminated Land Working Group Many land remediation projects, also development projects not dealing with treatment of contamination, involve the excavation, movement and subsequent reuse of soil and other materials. In most circumstances these activities are deemed to be dealing with waste and as such are subject to waste management legislation. In essence, this means that the material reuse takes place under an appropriate Environmental Permit, a properly registered Exemption or by site specific negotiation with the regulator and agreement on an Enforcement Position. The cost in time and money of these approaches, together with a desire to dissociate the waste label and development sites have meant that the twin questions “is this material waste?” and “if it is waste, how and when can material cease to be waste?” have been the subject of much discussion over a decade or more.

For land remediation and development projects in England and Wales, The Definition of Waste: Development Industry Code of Practice tackles this long running issue and ends the debate about whether excavated material is waste, or if waste how and when it can cease to be waste. This can allow projects to proceed more efficiently with a lighter touch stance from the Environment Agency as regulator. While applicable only in England and Wales (principally because it built upon Guidance issued by Environment Agency in 2006) it is interesting to note that in recent months guidance has been published in both Scotland and Northern Ireland covering one aspect - the use of “greenfield soils” in construction and development.

It is clear that uncertainty and regulatory difficulties in this area have been widespread throughout the construction sector.

The Code of Practice allows excavated materials to be moved and reused without need for an Environmental Permit, Exemption or Enforcement Position. This can be seen as a better regulation approach - a degree of self regulation, requiring a high level of professionalism and integrity from all of those involved, but with a clear auditable trail, to provide confidence to the regulator and allowing them to take a different stance and direct precious resources elsewhere.

The Code of Practice, which was launched in September 2008, is published by CL:AIRE |80| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

(Contaminated Land: Applications in Real Environments). The document and full details on its use can be found on the CL:AIRE web site. This organisation continues to coordinate the Code of Practice Steering Group, as well as providing training, a focal point for information exchange and user feedback, also a point of registration for those acting in the capacity of Qualified Person under the Code of Practice.

Environmental benefits The reuse rather than disposal of excavated materials in the course of development and remediation projects is intuitively a good thing and in practice this has long been recognised by the construction sector. If material excavated in one location (e.g. for treatment, regrading, creation of void space) can be beneficially used in another (e.g. for raising levels, creation of required landscape features or filling voids) then there are not just clear cost saving possibilities, but also important underlying environmental benefits. These include a reduction in the landfill disposal of surplus material, less use of primary aggregate or imported soils, potentially reduced vehicle movements, local disruption, emissions and energy use.

Key points The Code of Practice explains how excavated material may be re-used as non-waste, in certain specific scenarios, if the following criteria are met. It must be suitable for use - without further processing; the use must be certain - not speculative; the quantity of material used must be that which is absolutely necessary - and no more. Added to these three factors is the overriding requirement that the use of the material must not undermine the aims and objectives of the Waste Framework Directive - prevention of harm to human health and pollution of the environment.

The Code goes on to describe how lines of evidence relating to these criteria or factors can be produced and marshalled in a consistent recognisable format.

Finally, to provide the confidence and the auditable trail referred to earlier, the Code introduces the concept of an independent professional review of the lines of evidence by a Qualified Person “signing off” a simple Declaration – effectively a declaration of intent that all involved are to execute the works in accordance with the Code of Practice.

It is important to recognise that The Code of Practice uses existing frameworks, indeed the Steering Group that oversaw its production was very clear that it should not introduce a whole new set of procedural hoops to be jumped through, but rather should marshal best practice and enable it to be applied in a consistent and recognisable form. For those who say this still seems like a lot of work, just to move excavated material around, remember that this is a voluntary Code and the other regulatory approaches Image: Hans Thoursie/Serpentino

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(Environmental Permits, Exemptions or negotiated Enforcement Positions) are still available, but all have time and money costs and require a degree of detailed engagement with the regulator. The other option of simply ignoring waste legislation requirements neither fits with a long term sustainable business model, nor provides confidence that important environmental objectives are being met.

Uptake of the Code of Practice Since Sept 2008 there has been a steady increase in use of the Code of Practice. Some expressed disappointment about an apparent slow start, but those familiar with the Code will recognise that it is a forward looking approach, applied to a project at an early stage in planning and design, hence only those with projects that have moved “onto the drawing board” since Sept 2008 will have been able to consider its use. Up to the end of June 2010, Declarations have been submitted for a total of 74 projects.

Note: Chart “Code of Practice Declarations” here

As more have become familiar with the Code, seen the benefits and recognised that the regulator supports it, the use has started to escalate. Two other factors have led to an increased uptake in recent months more projects coming forward as development activity picks up and a significant change to the arrangements for Exemptions in April of this year. The Exemptions route to material reuse has been very widely used by developers and remediators but which will be of limited value in the future.

Some 350 individuals (consultants, contractors, landowners, Local Authority officers and others) have taken part in recognised training events and importantly a similar number of EA staff have been through internal training and dissemination exercises to ensure that there is a consistency in recognition of the Code of Practice throughout England and Wales.

More than 130 trained professionals have registered as Qualified Person, allowing them to carry out the review of documents prescribed in the Code of Practice and sign the important Declaration.

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multiple sites in Cluster arrangements, are in planning and will employ the Code of Practice route as they proceed. As an aside, it can be seen that the arrival of the Code has given impetus to the Cluster approach to site remediation which has been discussed for a decade or more, but seen limited application in real commercial projects to date. Removing one major hurdle to the adoption of Cluster, by resolving the question of when material ceases to be waste, has unlocked the Cluster and in turn the Cluster approach can now be seen as a versatile and effective tool that can often get the best out of the material reuse under the Code of Practice.

First revision to the Code of Practice Two important material reuse scenarios were specifically not covered by the CoP as launched in September 2008. The direct transfer of surplus material from one site to another for reuse (even when this is naturally occurring and unpolluted material) and the operation of fixed soil treatment facilities (as opposed to the temporary and local Cluster arrangements that are covered). In her foreword to the Code, Jane Garrett, CEO of CL:AIRE, confirmed that there was a commitment from industry and EA to work on these applications and seek to extend the scope. This productive approach has resulted in a revision to the Code of Practice that is currently being consulted upon and will hopefully be available for use in the autumn of this year. As well as extending the scope to cover the direct transfer of naturally occurring unpolluted materials and providing a means of operating a fixed soil treatment facility under the Code, the revision has picked up feedback and questions from early users, to further clarify and streamline the process.

A model for use elsewhere?

The Definition of Waste: Development Industry Code of Practice has successfully addressed a difficult issue for practitioners and regulators and resulted in a more efficient means of achieving real environmental benefits from appropriate reuse of materials in development and remediation projects. This could not have happened without a strong industry drive for a solution, input from a wide range of stakeholders and productive engagement between industry and regulator. Perhaps this could be a model to be adopted for other areas of environmental regulation and guidance at a time of moves to increase efficient use of resources, both material and human.

Rota-Sonic Drilling

By Wesley Wray

Image: Boart Longyear-large Geoenvironmental ground investigation completed using Rota-Sonic

The More You KNOW the Less it COSTS Rota-sonic / Sonic History The beginning of sonic drilling technology can be traced back to 1910 when George Constantinesco emmigrated to England. He formulated the “Theory of Sonics” and in 1913 successfully demonstrated a prototype of a rock drill working on a percussion system. Consantinesco’s vibratory prototypes were able to bore through hard granite rock relatively quietly and smoothly when compared to pneumatic drills.

In 1930 Dr. Ion Basgan became interested in the theory behind sonics and applied sonic vibrations to a drill pipe string of a conventional drilling rig. To his amazement this resulted in increased drill depth capability and increased the speed of drilling. Later he also discovered that the sonic vibration system was able to advance a truly vertical borehole, something not previously achieved using other conventional drilling mehods. In 1938 boreholes were drilled at the Moreni Oil fields in Romania using the sonic vibration drilling method. From this work Basgan received patents on this technique in Romania and in USA. In the late 1940’s initial research into rotary-vibratory drilling began in the United States. This research was conducted by the Drilling Research Institute (DRI) with the early efforts predominantly concentrating on the use of sonic within the petroleum industry with aim of speeding up drill times. Eventually a lack of funding ended DRI’s research in 1958 and this led to an American inventor, Albert Bodine, continuing the development work for various applications including drilling.

Alberts efforts were predominantly supported by Shell Oil Company. With Shell’s funding he developed a downhole device that used a series of eccentric weights driven by drilling fluid to generate vibration. The research continued until the late 1960’s, when Shell |84| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

stopped funding for the project. A British manufacturer continued development efforts until 1983 using Albert Bodine’s prototypes.

From 1976 to 1983 when activity was suspended, the British company was successful in developing a small sonic drill rig. They built approximately 10 drill rigs and 15 sonic heads. These heads are some of the basic units used on drill rigs in operation today.

Boart Longyear has been successfully operating a fleet of rota-sonic drilling rigs within Canada and the United States since the mid 1980’s. In 2006 Boart Longyear successfully introduced their rota-sonic drilling rigs to the UK and European Ground investigation market, offering an alternative to more traditional drilling methods such as cable percussive and rotary drilling.

What is Rota-Sonic Drilling and how does it Work Rota-Sonic drilling employs the use of high-frequency, resonant energy to advance a core barrel or casing into subsurface formations including difficult formations such as boulders, bedrock and difficult made ground such as re-inforced concrete. During drilling the resonant energy is transferred down the drill string to the bit face at various frequencies, typically between 60 and 150 Hz. Simultaneously rotating the drill string evenly distributes the energy and impact at the bit face.

The resonant energy is generated inside the Rota-Sonic head by two counter-rotating weights. A pneumatic isolation system inside the head prevents energy from being transmitted to the drill rig and preferentially directs the energy down the drill string.

The driller controls the resonant energy created by the oscillator to match the formation being encountered ensuring maximum drilling productivity and high

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sample quality are achieved. When the resonant sonic energy coincides with the natural frequency of the drill string, resonance occurs. This results in the maximum amount of energy being delivered to the face of the drill bit. At the same time, friction of the soil immediately adjacent to the entire drill string is substantially minimised, resulting in very fast penetration rates.

Rota- Sonic Drilling Procedure Boart Longyears Rota-Sonic drilling method provides a fully cased borehole helping to minimise the risk of cross contamination occurring, and the use of multiple strings of drill casings also enables benonite seals to be installed further reducing this risk. While there are several ways to drill a borehole with the Rota-Sonic drilling method (depending on site specific conditions and project objectives), the most common involves advancing a core barrel, which is overridden by a larger diameter drill string that cases the open hole to prevent collapse.

The sonic core barrel is usually advanced completely dry (no air, mud or water) whilst the casing is usually advanced using minimal amounts of water but can be advanced completely dry if required (ground condition dependant).

Rota-Sonic or Sonic?

Rota-Sonic offers some distinct advantages over sonic drilling rigs (i.e. cannot rotate and sonic at the same time). These are summarised in table 1.

Rota-Sonic Drilling

Sonic Drilling

Drilling Method

Rotation, Sonic and axial/feed force

Sonic and linear/vertical down feed

Depth Capability

200 to 250m depending on ground conditions

Approximately 30m depending on ground conditions

Ground conditions

Anything! – can drill through obstructions which other drilling methods refuse.

Provides at or near 100% sample recovery.

Limited to; Loose sands and gravels, soft clays, very weathered rock, will hit refusal on boulders and man made obstructions

Max BH Diameter

300mm (12 inches)

125mm (5 inches)

Max Sample size

254mm (10 inches)

102mm (4 inches)

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Max Install Size

Rota-Sonic Drilling

Sonic Drilling

185mm OD

33mm OD or 42mm OD pre-pack screen

Table 1 – Rota-Sonic Vs Sonic Boart Longyears Rota-Sonic drilling method can provide a sample in either a flexible polythene ‘Sausage’ bag type liner or within a more traditional rigid liner.

Sonic and Rota-sonic drill rigs are available in a number of different configurations from small track mounted units and tractor mounted units to large truck or ATV mounted units with depth capabilities in excess of 200m below ground level.

Advantages of using Rota-Sonic Drilling method on Environmental Ground Investigations The use of Rota-Sonic drilling method on environmental ground investigations offers some distinct advantages over more traditional drilling methods such as cable percussive and rotary drilling methods, these being •

The Rota-Sonic drilling method is highly automated: The rig is designed with full consideration of operator safety and minimal manual handling requirements. Mechanical lifting devices aid the lifting and carrying of drill rods and drill casing as well as two break-out tables to eliminate the requirement to use heavy wrenches to make up rods. This reduces the amount of manual handling required by the second and third man.

•

Rota-Sonic Drilling is Faster at penetrating overburden formations and some bedrock formations than more traditional drilling methods.

Typically between 3 to 5 times faster, and on an environmental ground investigation the system is capable of drilling between 50 to 60m per day.

•

System does not use Drilling Muds: this is a considerable advantage when drilling and installing water monitoring wells as there is very little time required to develop the formation. The opposite is true of wells drilled with Rotary mud flush as the drilling mud forms an impermeable barrier on the walls of the borehole to stabilize the formation during drilling. However to make the well the development must remove this impermeable barrier completely which can be difficult and time consuming.

•

Produces less waste: both drilling derived flush and soil arisings, when compared to other methods (around 70 to 80% reduction). This considerably reduces the costs related to disposal or treatment

of any contaminated arisings, especially when drilling large diameters and or on sites designated as a RED Site in accordance with the BDA Site Catergorisation.

•

100% core recovery is typically achieved in all materials: continuous core sample allows the Engineer to make informed decisions to maximize the efficiency of any ground investigation by correctly placing and sizing the screened sections based on accurate interpretation of the strata. The quality of information gathered whilst advancing the boreholes, helps to define the discontinuities between strata, determine the most suitable horizon for the well installation as well as defining any zones of contamination. This allows for detailed interpretation of the ground conditions including samples in easily altered geology, strata changes/ graduations, preferential pathways, groundwater level and levels of contamination.

•

Can drill completely dry: the rota-sonic system can drill completely dry if required, however this does depend on the depth of the borehole and the prevailing ground conditions. Dry drilling, or drilling with reduced amounts of flush, reduces the risk of sample bias occurring, dilution of contamination which may be present and the removal of non- cohesive materials.

•

RED Site Suitability: As the drilling method produces limited amount of waste arisings it is a ‘clean’ drilling method. This reduces the risk to the operators and the environment potentially becoming contaminated from waste arisings.

Boart Longyears Rota-Sonic Drill rigs also utilise a remote operating panel so both the support operative and lead driller can retreat to a safe distance from the drill rig which helps to minimise exposure to harmful susbstances and gases which may be present whilst drilling.

All core samples are either extruded into a flexible liner or taken within a rigid liner. This limits the exposure of hazardous substances within the core sample to the drill support operative as there is no direct contact with the sample.

•

Rota-Sonic Drilling is not subject to Refusal: The drilling method is not subject to refusal, therefore reduces the risk of boreholes not going to their full depth as well as removing the requirement to have to relocate and re-drill. This helps to reduce the risk of time delays and unknown costs associated with the amount of chiselling time, relocating borehole positions etc.

•

Rotary Coring: If traditional rotary coring drilling method is required to retrieve RQD quality core samples for example the sonic element can be turned off and the rig can operate as a traditional rotary coring rig.

How Much Currently Rota-Sonic drilling is often perceived as an expensive drilling method when compared to more traditional techniques, however, when the advantages of using a rota-sonic drill rig are considered and applied the overall cost of the project can be considerably less compared to other methods. For

Image: Boart Longyear- Sample of Natural granular material obtained using rota-sonic

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example rota-sonic drilling is typically 3 to 5 times faster than traditional drilling methods such as cable percussive and rotary drilling whilst providing 100% core sample. This means overhead costs such as the attendance of an engineer, cost of welfare facilities and site equipment can be significantly reduced.

The drilling method also removes the risk of boreholes not going to target depths due to refusal being met and chiselling time which can lead to additional costs and the risk of programme overrun.

Conclusion Rota-sonic drilling method offers many advantages for the completion of environmental ground investigations.

The drilling method does not have to use a drilling flush to advance the core barrel reducing the risk of sample bias occurring and disturbance to the contamination and soil being sampled. The typical 70 to 80% reduction in drilling related waste, both flush and arisings, helps to reduce the cost of waste disposal related to the drilling works. When operating on a RED site, as categorised by the BDA, this can be both time consuming and costly.

The drilling method also provides a high quality relatively undisturbed sample which increases the accuracy of logging and the determination of contaminated horizons which may otherwise be missed or misinterpreted when using more traditional drilling methods such as cable percussive or rotary drilling methods. This can lead to a higher degree of certainty of the concentration and spread of contamination within the soils or bedrock and help to reduce the risks associated with interpretting the unknowns in addition to providing a more accurate estimate for the design and decontamination phases of a project.

Overall the rota-sonic drilling method is another tool to be considered for taking highly representative samples, installation of groundwater/gas monitoring wells, groundwater pumping wells as well as the installation of remediation wells such as soil vapour/gas extraction wells.

Image Right: Boart Longyear- Sample through made ground obtained using rota-sonic. |88| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

WASTE MANAGEMENT

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Dr Michael Warhurst, Senior Campaigner on Resource Use at Friends of the Earth

James Cleverly, Chairman of the London Waste & Recycling Board

Linda Chrichton, ROTATE Manager for the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP)

Peter Jones, OBE and Consultant for Ecolateral

FREE VISIT TO RWM PROMISES TO MAKE YOUR WASTE WORK HARDER Recycling & Waste Management Exhibition, NEC, Birmingham 14 to 16 September 2010

Whether you are looking for a waste-to energy solution or want to find out what grants and funding might be available to help you to grow your recycling business, the Recycling and Waste Management Exhibition (RWM 10), taking place at the NEC, Birmingham from, 14 to 16 September, can help you to turn waste problems into resource opportunities.

RWM Forum & Catwalk Sponsored by BCR Global Textiles, Chris Carey’s Collections, I&G Cohen Limited and Salvation Army Trading Company Limited (SATCoL), the first ever RWM fashion shows will showcase the exciting design possibilities presented by the fastest growing element in the UK’s waste stream.

Bigger than ever before, the three-day show features an indoor and outdoor exhibition of more than 500 companies and organisations exhibiting and demonstrating the latest technologies and recycling solutions. Entry is free and also gives visitors access to over 40 seminar sessions offering invaluable legislative and financial advice and first-hand case studies of successful public and private sector projects.

New for 2010, the show will feature a Forum and Catwalk showcasing some of the UK’s leading textile recyclers, with live debates between fashion shows, and a Waste Minimisation Zone with a “drop in surgery” where visitors can discuss their individual needs with experts in resource efficiency. New visitor facilities introduced on the show floor this year include the RWM Restaurant, offering pre-bookable table service lunches and the Viridor Visitor Lounge, designed for informal networking and internet research.

SATCoL is the UK’s largest textile recycler. Of the 3,000 tonnes of unwanted clothing donated to SATCoL every month, only five tonnes go to landfill and 96% are reused or recycled. Paul Ozanne, SATCoL’s National Recycling Co-ordinator, said: “We currently have around 4,200 clothing banks throughout the UK and our target is 5,000. Attending big events such as RWM is a very important step in helping us to achieve this.”

The indoor exhibition area has been expanded to accommodate companies exhibiting for the first time and returning exhibitors who have booked larger stands. The new Envirolink Pavilion, for example, will showcase a range of companies from the region’s recycling and waste sector. Worth £1,064 million, this sub-sector includes facility operators, service providers, technology designers, builders and engineers; as well as a growing range of companies developing products containing recycled content.

Meanwhile the outdoor exhibition area where visitors can see vehicles and machinery in action is also set to be even bigger this year. Outdoor exhibitors include key players such as Ford, JCB, Terex Equipment, Mercedes Benz, Hydrex Equipment, Case Construction, Brendon Power-Washers, Geesink Norba, Isuzu Truck, Tong Engineering, M&K Recycling, Edge, WCR, Collett Transport, Skip Tracks, Duo Manufacturing, Whale Tankers, Liebherr, Blue Group, BMI Municipal, Hammel and many more. |92| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

The young designers whose work will be showcased at RWM include Emmeline Childs for SATCoL and Tanique Coburn for Chris Carey’s Collections. Christine Carey, Managing Director of Chris Carey’s Collections said: “Tanique has already established a reputation amongst the London set and her trendy market stall at Portobello attracts fashionistas from far and wide. She is a great example of the talent that is out there now, and illustrates an exciting fusion of talent, vision and sustainability.”

Collections designed by Nicola Sault, Managing Director, Grandma Takes A Trip, who works with BCR Global Textiles, will also feature on the RWM Catwalk. Nicola says: “Not only will the catwalk show celebrate just how attractive fashion made from recyclable materials can be, but also all the hard work, preparation and skill involved in turning previously unwanted garments into something desirable again.”

I&G Cohen will be showing designs from Tracey Cliffe whose Love Me Again collection includes bodycon dresses made from old T-shirts and swimsuits. Phil Geller, Financial Director of I&G Cohen said: “The market for fast fashion remains strong; however, in these difficult economic times the case to reduce and reuse our limited resources is stronger than ever...

Textiles have for far too long been the poor relation of recyclable materials.”

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The RWM Catwalk and Forum will feature three fashion shows each day and host live industry debates and exhibitor presentations.

Theatre (sponsored by Motherwell Bridge). Speakers include Peter Jones OBE, Consultant for Ecolateral, the Environment Agency and the Renewable Fuels Agency.

There will be a case study of Nottingham City Council’s waste to energy schemes and visitors can find out how municipal solid waste can be separated into fractions for use in anaerobic digestion and Refuse Derived Fuel.

Further advice on resource efficiency can be found in the free seminars running in the Waste Minimisation Zone (sponsored by Rubbermaid Commercial Products) which include a session led by Dr Michael Warhurst, Senior Campaigner on Resource Use at Friends of the Earth.

To view the full seminar programmes, please visit www.rwmexhibition.com Gerry Sherwood, Event Director, RWM, said: “Green industries are thriving while economic and legislative pressures have made waste, energy and resource management more relevant than ever before. With an expanded exhibition floor, a number of new features and a great choice of free seminar programmes, we have made sure that a visit to RWM will offer you contacts, solutions, ideas and advice, whatever industry you work in.”

How to Register: Visitors can register online now for free fast track entry to RWM 10 and take advantage of the MyRWM Show Planner, a simple online tool which creates a personalised floorplan of relevant exhibitors. Complete the form at www.rwmexhibition.com/envi to receive your badge and show preview approximately three weeks prior to the exhibition, plus avoid the queues when you arrive.

Garments designed by Emmeline Childs, designer for SATCoL

Free Seminars The programme in the Local Authority Seminar Theatre (sponsored by SCA Recycling and Bywaters) will cover food waste collection, recycling solutions for flats and reveal how councils are tackling commercial and industrial waste. Speakers include James Cleverly, Chairman of the London Waste & Recycling Board and Linda Chrichton, ROTATE Manager for the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP).

In the Business Seminar Theatre a full day will be dedicated to carbon and cost reduction through minimising construction waste, and retailers can find out how packaging design and procurement can help them to achieve zero waste without sacrificing profits.

Visitors can hear expert speakers from WRAP, Tesco, Arup and Glenigan among others.

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How to get there: RWM is held in Halls 17, 18, 19 and the outdoor areas of the National Exhibition Centre, eight miles East of Birmingham city centre. The address is: NEC, Birmingham, B40 1NT. If you’re coming to the NEC from any part of the UK by road or rail or flying in from overseas you will find that its central position is at the hub of the UK transport network. Walk directly into the show from Birmingham International rail station or choose from a number of bus and coach services. Alternatively if you are driving there is ample car parking at the NEC. Visit http://www.thenec.co.uk/travel for detailed travel information.

Opening Hours Tuesday 14 September Wednesday 15 September Thursday 16 September

9.30am - 4.30pm 9.30am – 4.30pm 9.30am – 4.00pm

Peter Taylor OBE, Secretary General for the UK’s Tyre Recovery Association, explains how the UK tyre industry is addressing the challenge of recovering some 50 million used tyres every year

Creating new life from old tyres

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The environmental challenge Today, the UK tyre industry recognises that used tyres are a valuable resource that can be used in a wide range of beneficial and creative applications. For example, they are currently used in children’s playground surfaces, artificial sports pitches, carpet underlay or as a high-calorie fuel source for cement kilns. However, just a few short years ago this wasn’t the case and without the EU Landfill Directive we may not have seen the seismic shift in approach and attitude that the tyre industry has experienced over the last ten years or so.

The Directive called for a ban on the sending to landfill of whole tyres by the middle of 2003 and of shredded tyres by 2006. For an industry that prior to the ban, sent many thousand tonnes of whole and shredded tyres to landfill each year, this presented a significant challenge, requiring a complete change in mindset and new ways of working.

However, rather than waiting for legislation to be the key driving force of any change in practice, the UK tyre industry adopted a very proactive stance long before the ban came into force. In 1994 the Used Tyre Working Group was established, well before many other European countries had started to consider how to meet the challenge of full recovery. The group was formed from a wide cross-section of industry, ensuring that an extensive range of interests and options would be considered. Among the group were tyre manufacturers, retreaders, retailers, wholesalers and importers who all actively engaged in the process to determine the most effective and responsible system.

The industry response While the lengthy debate about the type of system which should be introduced took place, the industry developed an initial recovery system to ensure that an adequate industry-led programme was established before full implementation of the European Directive. In 1999, the Responsible Recycler Scheme (RRS) was formed as a voluntary best practice programme for businesses involved in used tyre collection, reuse, recycling and energy recovery.

From the early experiences of the RRS, it became clear that companies involved in the process had to work more closely together and adopt new practices if the Directive was to be fully satisfied. In order to achieve this, the industry developed a Charter that was adopted by all full members of the RRS. The Charter set out that all members would be regularly audited by independent environmental auditors, scrap tyres collected would be subject to full traceability, and permits or site licences would be regularly checked to ensure they remained valid. These key components would ensure full transparency and traceability of tyres collected by the scheme’s voluntary members.

The adoption of the Charter was not an easy process. The costs involved in activities such as the audit process are borne directly by member companies.

As many of these companies operate on very small margins, they are put at a considerable commercial disadvantage to those choosing not to join the voluntary scheme. Despite this financial downside, the industry embraced the scheme and by the end of 2005 when the European Directive came into force fully, the RRS had already become the largest voluntary tyre recovery programme in Europe, collecting nearly 400,000 tonnes of waste annually.

The key recycling stages Part of the work recently undertaken by the Tyre Recovery Association is to raise awareness and educate drivers about the recycling fee they are charged when they change their tyres. As the vast majority of drivers do not understand the complex process or infrastructure required to dispose of used tyres in a safe environmentally acceptable manner, tyre dealers often face resentment from customers who perceive the charge as unjust or profiteering.

However, this is far from reality and the fee charged by retailers is a vital

ingredient to the success of the UK model. The fee, which is typically in the region of just £1 to £1.50 per tyre, is the primary injection of cash into the tyre recovery and recycling process.

As a retailer’s stocks of used tyres accumulate, they have to pay a professional, licensed collector to remove them from their premises in line with their duty of care and statutory obligations. The collector then sorts, stores and transfers the tyres for reuse or on to a processor who charges the collector a gate fee to take in the waste tyres. In the final stage of the chain, the processor converts the scrap tyres into a wide range of uses.

ambitions, remembering that the scheme remains a voluntary one. However, it has developed a clear strategy in addressing this issue. It estimates that half of the tyres not collected through the RRS scheme are not done so through ignorance. It believes that some retailers still do not understand their responsibilities and legal duties to ensure the correct disposal of tyres, and become targets for those intent on making a living from crime. The TRA’s recent awareness campaigns are aimed directly at addressing this challenge.

To tackle the final 10%, the tyre industry is working closely with the Environment Agency to target and crackdown on illegal tyre activities. Through an intelligence-led approach, the Agency is developing a sophisticated picture of the tyre industry to help identify and prosecute those who intentionally look to sidestep their legal duties.

The role of tyre retailers is clearly of great importance to the future success of tyre recycling in the UK. They must gain an even better understanding of the recovery process to ensure they do not fall foul of rogue operators and risk becoming complicit in any illegal operations. They also have a crucial role to play in helping to educate and make the Environment Agency aware of any suspicious activity.

New life from old tyres As a result of the creative thinking inspired by the Landfill Directive, used tyres are now used in many applications. Out of the 45 million used tyres that are currently collected each year under the TRA’s Responsible Recycler Scheme, 34% are used in new products, 25% are used as energy sources (typically in cement and lime kilns), 6% are used in retreading, 10% are used in landfill engineering and the remaining 25% are reused. The list of potential uses also includes sound barriers, riverbank reinforcement, carpet underlay and railway sleepers. The recent TRA awareness campaign featured some of the everyday applications that use recycled tyres; for example, 42,000 tyres are used to help make a world cup size artificial football pitch and 13,500 tyres are used to make an Olympic size running track.

Future improvements There can be no doubt that the UK’s tyre industry has developed a very successful scheme and infrastructure.

However, it still faces a number of challenges and continues to look for ways of increasing recovery rates. The European Directive set a target rate of 100% recovery. RRS members are currently responsible for around 80% of all end of life tyres collected and reprocessed.

The TRA hopes to increase the proportion of tyres that are recovered under the RRS but is realistic in its |98| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

As market conditions become increasingly tough for many of those involved in the tyre recycling chain, the industry will have to continue to closely monitor and innovate its scheme to ensure maximum recycling levels are achieved. However, as past experiences have shown, this is a challenge that the industry is well equipped to overcome.

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In this piece, key speaker at the RWM event, Ian Hetherington, Director General of the British Metals Recycling Association (BMRA), discusses issues within the UK metals industry, and how the BMRA is working with operators to improve and develop it.

Metals recycling is the largest and most successful recycling sector in the UK, employing over 8,000 people. Each year recyclers recover around 15 million tonnes of metal and contribute an estimated £5 billion to the UK’s economy.

Metals recyclers achieve extraordinarily high rates of recovery - for example, the target of 95% for end-of-life material is likely to be exceeded before 2015.

The industry not only plays a valuable and fundamental role in the recycling industry but also makes a huge contribution to meeting the Government’s aspirations for a zero-waste economy. Furthermore, it supports an increase in the EU emission reduction target to 30% by 2020.

The industry contributes to these targets by generating secondary metals as an alternative to virgin raw material. This reduces the need to mine, transport and process ores, resulting in energy and water use savings. The remanufacture of metals cuts manufacturing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by up to 99%. It also reduces air pollution and prevents reusable materials from being sent to landfill. Although the metals industry is coping with recession remarkably well, metals recyclers are increasingly overwhelmed with a regulatory burden that is wholly disproportionate to the risks their sites pose to the environment. Unnecessary regulations are either preventing them from being able to increase the amount of metal they recover or, in extreme circumstances, hampering their ability to trade. The BMRA is demanding the modernisation of the way environmental regulation is enforced. This includes a new emphasis on eliminating illegal operations, a review of all regulation affecting metal recycling, consistent enforcement and a change in the way the planning system addresses demand for metal recycling capacity.

The Government has the capability to do a lot more to help metals recyclers and with the appointment of new Environment Minister, Lord Henley, I believe it can have a positive influence on the metals industry. With a new person in post, I think now is the time to introduce much-needed changes.

Focused regulations One way in which real progress can be made quickly is by conducting a review of the regulation surrounding metal recycling.

There are a number of ways to do this, including taking up the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) Committee’s recommendation to review recycling and waste management regulation for metals. The majority of metals recycling operations are relatively low-risk, with hazardous materials and substances being removed early in the process. Examples of this include the de-pollution of end-of-life-vehicles (ELVs) and the removal of ozone depleting substances from refrigeration equipment. Activity on these sites is controlled through Environment Permits, and arguably do not need to be tick-box inspected in the way they currently are. If self-assessment was rapidly developed and combined with tough independent audit and online reporting, the industry could see real benefits - freeing up the Environment Agency to clamp down on illegal operations and |100| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

Ian Hetherington,

Director of the British Metals Recycling Association (BMRA)

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significantly reducing the cost of regulation.

Our new Government could also benefit by reversing the previous Government’s decision earlier this year to remove ‘paragraph 45’ exemptions for smaller low-risk metal recycling sites. This will force many small, long-established, family-owned businesses to comply with many regulations not relative to their specific sites of identified risks. This one-size-fits-all permitting regime would force a number of businesses and local collection sites to cease trading across England and Wales.

Such a fundamental review of metal recycling regulation would result in savings for the Government and enable the industry to focus on critical issues facing the sector at this time in the economic cycle.

Consistent enforcement During the past six months there has been a marked rise in the number of thefts, with Network Rail, utility companies and metal recycling companies being targeted by criminals. The desirability for metal amongst thieves has been fuelled by increasing commodity prices that have seen various types of metal reach all time highs on world markets.

As well as Government regulation, consistent enforcement across metals recycling businesses has also been identified as a priority by the BMRA. This covers many aspects, including the need for the Environment Agency to concentrate on the policing of sites, rather than just carrying out ‘tick-box’ regulation. Far too often regulation is process driven, with too much time, and therefore money, spent on minor issues, instead of effectively policing sites and prosecuting illegal traders.

This includes ensuring that the ELV approved treament

facility system effectively monitors all facilities and prosecutes the ones that are non-compliant. The BMRA would also like to see a mandatory Certificate of Destruction (CoD) introduced to give the DVLA more control over illegal ELV operators. A waste carriers license would also reduce the recycler’s responsibility of identifying who to trade with and ensure more stolen metal is apprehended on the road system rather than it turning up on a legitimate site – by which point it is probably unrecognisable as stolen.

Introducing such enforcement would ensure all sites are run to the highest standards and illegal traders and persistent offenders would be forced out of business.

This is fundamental to delivering effective strategies to reduce rates of metal theft, minimise environmental impact and ensure the UK meets and exceeds recycling targets.

Reclassification of metals Reclassification of metals relates to European law that currently classifies metal as waste, even when it is ready for smelting. In reality, recovered metal is not waste – it is a highly valuable secondary raw material that has been traded globally for nearly a decade.

This inappropriate classification imposes the burden of waste shipment regulations on UK exporters of furnace-ready metal. These regulations damage the UK metals industry because it operates in a highly competitive global market and exports a higher proportion of recovered metal than other EU member states.

The revised Waste Framework Directive has allowed a mechanism to be introduced that defines when materials with a clear market value cease to be classed as waste and can be classed as a secondary raw material.

As reclassification is so urgent, the BMRA is urging the

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Government to actively support the passage of ‘end of waste’ regulations. This will help meet producer targets for ELVs, waste, electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE), packaging and batteries.

Increasing recycling The BMRA also works at increasing the amount of metal that can be recycled. Although people can now recycle a vast range of items, including hazardous household waste such as weed killer, paint and pesticides, the recovery market for many of these materials is either immature or non-existent.

In contrast, the market for recovered metals is extremely boyant. This has made it possible to achieve recovery targets of 85% for ELVs and 65% for WEEE - achieved at virtually no public expense, as Local Authorities sell collected metal waste to a recycler for processing.

However, the metal recycling sector does need support to ensure it has a sufficient infrastructure.

Firstly the planning system needs to be changed so there is adequate provision for metal recycling facilities - where they are needed. Currently traditional scrap metal sites located in urban areas are being engulfed by new housing. As a result operators are under pressure to abandon key facilities as new residents complain about the appearance and sound of a metal recycling operation ‘in their back yard’.

There are also capacity issues facing the industry in which the Government needs to play its part. Advances in shredder techniques and post-shredder technology have resulted in high levels of metal, plastic and glass recovery. However, the residue still remains and the industry needs Government support to ensure that energy from waste (EfW) capacity is increased for metal - and other commercial and industrial waste.

The current mechanisms for funding EfW developments serving the household waste sector are a barrier to financing commercial EfW capacity.

Metals recyclers have taken the lead in meeting the UK’s recycling targets for ELVs, packaging and WEEE in recent years. However, with some Government support, the industry can do even more; for example, tax relief to offset private investment in high-risk green investment, or some risk-sharing in projects that will provide opportunities in developing new green technologies and associated job opportunities.

Conclusion With all of the above in mind, the BMRA seeks to work closely with the Government to introduce new legislation, or ensure changes are made to current legislation, to help the industry meet its potential. The Agenda for Change currently covers four key areas: the re-classification of recycled metal as ‘non-waste’ revisions to the Environmental Permitting regime to accommodate the specific characteristics of this sector and consistent enforcement; the fourth area is the introduction of additional capacity for EfW across the commercial and industrial waste stream and a more responsive planning regime to enable metals recycling facilities to be built close to communities.

Provided the Government supports the industry’s development by reviewing regulation and policy, metals recyclers could make an even bigger contribution to the UK’s low carbon economy, and facilitate business growth and job creation. The BMRA will continue to work at putting these changes in place, and I believe, by working with the Government we can make a positive difference for all operators.

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MISCELLANY

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ENVIRONMENT AGENCY PROSECUTIONS Case 1: Fined for pollution that killed swans.

Plastic bottle recycling company AWS Eco Plastics has been fined a total of £19,500 and ordered to pay full Environment Agency costs of £8,447 for twice polluting a dyke with oil at Hemswell Cliff, Gainsborough. The first time oil went into the water in October 2008 it ended up in the corner of Hemswell Cliff lake and two adult mute swans from a nesting site at Helmswell Cliff died as a result.

Case 3: Water company fined for polluting Sussex river with raw sewage.

Southern Water was fined £3,000 after it admitted polluting 2km of a Sussex stream with raw sewage, killing up to a hundred brown trout and devastating the fish population for the second time in five years. Water sampling taken at the site found that dissolved oxygen in the stream was as low as 25% along the stretch and there were traces of ammonia in the water. Southern Water pleaded guilty to one charge of polluting a water-course in breach of Water Resources Act. The court fined the company £3,000 and ordered it to pay £4,833 costs and £15 victim surcharge.

Case 5: Caravan park fined for polluting river with sewage A Dorset caravan park has been ordered to pay £8,960 in fines and costs for discharging raw sewage into a tributary of the Sherford River near Poole Harbour.

The case was brought by the Environment Agency. On May 21 2009 a routine sample taken from the Sherford River at Kings Bridge was found to contain higher than expected levels of ammonia. An Environment Agency officer later found sewage in a ditch and traced the pollution upstream to Organford Manor Caravan Park.

Organford Manor Caravan Park was fined £7,000 and ordered to pay £1,960 costs by Bournemouth magistrates after pleading guilty to permitting poisonous, noxious or polluting matter to enter a controlled water, an offence under Section 85(1) of the Water Resources Act 1991.

Case 2: Publican prosecuted for polluting farmer’s land with sewage effluent.

The owner of a Dorset pub was today ordered to pay £2,500 in fines and costs for pumping cess-pit waste into a pond that overflowed onto a neighbouring farmer’s land. Mr Basford saved money by illegally emptying the cess-pit himself into a nearby pond contaminating adjoining farmland used for growing crops and grazing dairy cattle. Philip Basford, was fined £2,000 and ordered to pay £500 costs after pleading guilty to one offence under the Water Resources Act 1991.

Case 4: Odour incident costs West Bromwich company nearly £20,000.

Robinson Brothers Ltd of Phoenix Street, West Bromwich, pleaded guilty at West Bromwich Magistrates Court to charges relating to the escape of odorous gas. Robinson Brothers Ltd were fined £10,000 and ordered to pay costs of £9,584.09 plus a victim surcharge of £15. For the Environment Agency, Barry Berlin told the court that Robinson Brothers Ltd manufactured various chemicals, including a liquid gas odorant which is injected into the mains gas supply to give it its characteristic smell.

Case 6: Large scale dumping of was costs Malvern defendants £14,456 Woodstock UK Ltd, which knowingly permitted the illegal waste activity to take place on their land, were given a conditional discharge and ordered to pay costs of £4,750. Mr Arnold, aged 38 of Madresfield Road, Malvern, was fined £8,000 and ordered to pay costs of £1,700 as well as a victim surcharge of £15. For the Environment Agency, Barrister Sasha Blackmore told Worcester Magistrates’ Court that during part of October and November 2007 Conrad Arnold operated an illegal waste transfer station under the business name Malvern Handyman Services at Woodbridge Farm, Guarlford, with the permission of the landowner, Woodstock UK Ltd.

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Taking action to control non-native invasive plants by Simon Ford, Nature Conservation Advisor, National Trust.

Simon Ford (opposite) is the National Trust’s lead on non-native plants and is also an ecologist advising on wildlife across the Wessex Region, (Dorset, Somerset, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire).

It is very easy to demonise all non-native species as damaging to the environment. However, over the centuries, Britain has been enriched by many thousands of plants from around the world. Our gardens and open spaces have added colour and interest, while other species are important for commercial reasons or for food and timber production.

Over 50% of our flora has been introduced and, as a result, our gardens are the envy of the world, bringing millions of visitors and important income through national and regional tourism.

However, it is generally recognised that a small

number of nonnative plants can have very significant impacts, for instance on our native habitats; can spread disease; cause flooding, damage archaeological features and block access.

We are beginning to see some problem plants moving inland and northwards, presumably due to Climate Change. Examples include Three-cornered Leek, Hottentot Fig and Pirri-pirri Burr. In other circumstances, it is global trade of plants which is the issue, while fly tipping of vegetation is increasingly a problem.

It is estimated that only 1:1000 non-native plants have a negative impact on the environment. However, it is estimated that non-native invasive species cost the UK more than ÂŁ2.3 billion per year and the European Union, 12.7 billion Euros. Invasive species are considered to be the second biggest threat to biodiversity worldwide. Major development projects such as the London Olympics, have encountered very costly and time consuming additional problems due to species such as Japanese Knotweed and Giant Hogweed.

It is these plants which are the target of a National Trust campaign called Plant Invaders.

This aims to tackle some of our most invasive plant species on land, in freshwater and on

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the coast. In June 2010, over seventy National Trust properties took part in an event to control about fifteen problem species of non-native invasive plant. Events took place from Belfast in Northern Ireland to Land’s End in Cornwall, and the White Cliffs of Dover to the Durham coast in north-east England.

The events were mostly designed to be suitable for volunteers and in some cases for families, although some which were on difficult terrain were tackled through existing volunteer groups who had training in working in such areas. Details of the events can be found at www.nationaltrust.org.uk/events This work was carried out as part of the International Year of Biodiversity but it is hoped that it will become an annual event until 2020. Working with National Trust Wardens, Rangers and Gardeners, the plan will be to control some of our most pernicious non-native plants by working systematically to remove them.

Examples include removing the aquatic plant- Parrot’s Feather, which has swamped the native pond plants as well as the rare Great Crested Newt, at Corfe Castle in Dorset. Himalayan Balsam has been spreading along many rivers and streams and volunteers have been pulling it up at places as diverse as Lanhydrock in Cornwall, Formby near Liverpool, Scotney Castle in Kent, Hardcastle Crags in Yorkshire and Minnowburn in Northern Ireland. Rhododendron Ponticum not only smothers woodland ground flora and heathland, but also can spread disease and is being tackled at Brownsea Island in Dorset, Black Down in Sussex and Craflwyn (Snowdon) in North Wales. Hottentot Fig is a colourful South African succulent plant which out-competes our native coastal plants and prevents rare birds such as the chough from feeding and is being removed in the southern most place in mainland Britain at Lizard Point in Cornwall. Skunk Cabbage can spread dramatically through wetlands and woodlands and in Grasmere, Cumbria, volunteers are digging it out. Cotoneaster is taking over many important areas of grassland and is being controlled at Godolphin in Cornwall, White Cliffs, Kent, and Rodborough in Gloucestershire.

National Trust gardeners have also held events, for instance at Glendurgan in Cornwall, where they will be clearing Montbretia and Bamboo or Himalayan Balsam at Igtham Mote in Kent.

Many species are best controlled in the winter when some Properties will be carrying out further work, as well as new Properties carrying out management. Because by their very nature, it is unlikely that we will be able to control many of the more difficult non-native invasive species in one year, the plan will be to carry out follow-up work in future |108| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

years. In some areas, such as the islands of Brownsea and Lundy, we feel it is feasible to eradicate problem species, while on other sites, the aim is to ensure they are under full control.

National Trust Property staff of course also work a great deal with specialist contractors, particularly on larger and more complex projects. With many species, they can only be effectively controlled by means of herbicides and in this case, either trained Trust personnel or licensed contractors will carry out applications. In some cases, the National Trust relies on grants such as Defra’s Higher Level Scheme (HLS) or the Forestry Commission’s England Woodland Grant Scheme (EWGS) to part fund the management.

Without such action, it is clear that many sites will suffer and that we will lose important native wildlife, damage archaeological features and buildings, access will be obstructed and in some cases there will be an increased flood risk.

We are keen to learn from the project and will be monitoring what returns once an invasive species is removed. The aim will generally be to return the site to native vegetation. We will also be using fixed point photography to record the results.

We will continue to work with our partners in other organisations and neighbouring landowners to ensure non-native invasive plants are controlled and to reduce their impact on the environment.

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DOES OFFSHORE RENEWABLE ENERGY DEVELOPMENT BENEFIT THE COASTAL ECOSYSTEMS? Dr. Andrew B Gill, Dept of Natural Resources, Cranfield University The advent of the marine renewable energy industry (here encompassing offshore wind, wave and tidal power) is a significant step forward in satisfying human energy demand whilst also taking the global environment into account. Whilst the recent dramatic increase in interest and activity surrounding marine renewable energy is very encouraging, to truly achieve the goals of sustainable energy development, it is important to evaluate how this new industrial activity will interact with the ecosystems in which they are developed across the globe and meet one of its main aims of protecting the environment from further degradation.

In this environmentally conscious era there is a need to understand human impacts on our coastal and offshore ecosystems. Of fundamental importance is asking the appropriate questions and having the right knowledge-base firmly founded on ecological consideration. Such thinking is embedded in recent legislation for the sustainable management of the water environment, such as the European Union (EU) Marine Strategy Framework Directive and EU Water Framework Directive. Both of these are significant legal instruments that have as a central aim the appropriate and sustainable management of the aquatic ecosystems and the components that link together to create the functions and services that humans rely on. Such environmental initiatives have the ecosystem at its centre and are a significant shift in thinking away from our past anthropocentric view, that downgraded the environment to second place and left a legacy of environmental misuse and abuse.

The approach required to meet the requirements is encapsulated in ecosystem based management, whereby the components that make up both the local and global ecosystem, with their interconnections and interactions, are identified and understood.

Fundamentally, humans need to be included as part of the ecosystem and in doing so we then have to |110| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

consider how we use the ecosystem resources and the impact on them - whether that impact is positive or negative. The scientific basis of argument behind considering ecosystems, and any changes to them as a result of human activity is embodied in the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment (2005), that presents a consensus opinion of the link between ecosystem components, the services they provide to humans and the resultant well-being of humans and what this depends on. For example, there is a clear and strong human dependency on energy but also there is a high potential for human influence on energy provisioning. It is this strong linkage that compels us to acknowledge our interaction and interdependencies with the coastal and offshore ecosystems for our future security, provisioning and overall well-being.

In light of the above, the marine renewable energy industry should consider itself as a significant player in the ecosystem processes and functions of our marine environment. By doing so we have the opportunity of ensuring we are supporting a necessary and environmentally sustainable activity. However, to determine the impacts (positive and negative) and the sustainability of offshore renewable energy, it is fundamental to have the right knowledge base.

At first look, renewable energy implies a ‘win-win’ for all and many Government bodies, non-government organisations, private enterprises and the public are united in their support for renewable energy. It would appear to be the solution to our dependence on energy sources such as fossil fuels and their associated pollution. But is it that simple? Does industrial expansion of offshore wind power developments and other marine renewable energy installations, that is currently occurring across the world and in particular Europe, merit all the plaudits? What evidence do we have that it is as good as we perceive it at present? It is important to address these questions to demonstrate how beneficial renewable energy is and also to

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determine if there are any associated issues that we need to be aware of and mitigate against? Answering such questions is not just about humans taking environmental responsibility, it is also a necessity for the marine renewable energy industry for meeting the legislative requirements during the planning, development and operational stages.

Two recent documents provide the most up to date and comprehensive overview of the environmental implications of marine renewable energy. The first

by Boehlert & Gill (2010) gives a current synthesis of what we know, concluding that there is much to be positive about but an important need to ensure we first determine the effect on the environment to then inform us of the impact (whether positive or negative). The second is a World Conservation Union (IUCN) document called ‘Greening Blue Energy’, which demonstrates where we have confidence in understanding predictions and, perhaps more importantly where we have low confidence and little understanding. The majority of knowledge comes from offshore wind farms, which is the most mature technology with several commercial scale wind farms operating for the past few years.

Wave and tidal power is still in the R&D phase although a number of devices are at an advanced stage of testing and development. Regardless of the type of marine renewable energy source, there are a number of similar environmental aspects to consider and determine the consequences of. One of these is the ‘artificial reef effect’.

Image Andrew B Gill For many decades it has been known that human structures in the sea attract life (eg. oil and gas platforms, ship wrecks, piers and jetties). Initially it is organisms such as mussels and barnacles that settle out of the water column forming a dense coverage on the structure. This initial settlement is followed by the organisms that feed on the mussels and barnacles (such as starfish and crabs) and numerous small organisms or early life stages that find some refuge in amongst the shells. Finally, fish (both juveniles and adults) are attracted and aggregate around the structures, again either to feed or to find refuge from the more risky open water environment. The presence of all these organisms then provides a potential source |112| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

of prey for large species such as predatory fish, sea birds and cetaceans.

These well known patterns of artificial reef colonisation are now being recorded at offshore wind farm installations and wave power tests sites. The general opinion is that this apparent increase in fauna is good as it was not there before the renewable energy structure was installed. The area would have been most likely a flat sandy/silty sea bed with open water above it and, whilst there is a community of organisms that live within the sand/silt, their diversity and utility to humans is low. The dramatic changes associated with the hard structures create a very different 3-D environment and opportunity for organisms to inhabit an area not normally available to them. The increased habitat opportunity also may be highly beneficial owing to limitations of existing available habitat, often as a result of human degradation leading to habitat loss. So the offshore renewable energy devices could be seen as providing a positive impact and there is a growing interest in trying to design the structures to enhance the artificial reef effect.

There are a number of potential benefits resulting from the installation of renewable energy devices: the local biodiversity is enhanced; species biomass increases markedly from what was there previously (ie. mussels, barnacles, crustacea and fish occur compared to burrowing worms, shellfish and occasional flatfish); juvenile fish obtain refuge from predation (a major form of mortality early in a fish’s life); predators may have a reliable and abundance food source.

All of these will alter the local ecosystem and suggest a more productive community of organisms. Another major potential positive aspect is that the areas where the devices and structures are installed may become de facto no fishing zones (either through legislative exclusion or as a result of logistical constraints to fishing these areas). The expected outcome is that a reduction in fishing activity will result in greater survival of the fish and shellfish and thereby allow diminished populations to replenish. This has yet to be specifically demonstrated, however knowledge from artificial reefs and marine protected areas research suggests that there will be benefits, particularly with the potential for the no fishing area to provide new recruits to other adjacent areas, known as ‘spillover’.

This then would provide potential compensation to the fishing industry that may lose fishing areas in the short term, but in the longer term the adjacent areas may benefit from the greater abundance of fish.

Furthermore, some static line fishing could possibly take advantage of the increase crustacean occurrence with the renewable energy installation area via the newly formed habitat.

Based on the changes noted thus far and the other expected ecological responses, an easy conclusion to

come to is that the local environmental and ecosystem change is enhanced. However, some scientists question the term ‘environmental enhancement’ because we are in the early stages of marine renewable energy developments and we do not yet have the right evidence over an appropriate timescale for the complexities of ecosystem development and response to environmental change to be manifest (ie. decadal response). It is also too soon to make a judgement on some of the potential disturbances that are specifically associated with the marine renewable devices such as undersea noise, emission of electromagnetic fields from generating electricity, altered sedimentary regimes, increased turbidity and upwelling, and organism collision or avoidance. We are beginning to understand some of these factors but progress is too slow in relation to the pace of development of the marine renewable industry. Furthermore, there are those who do not believe that any artificial, induced environmental change is good. From their perspective there is a loss of natural environment and the local ecosystem because of the dramatic change from a sandy open water scene to a community of organisms usually found on rocky shorelines and shallow rocky seas.

So is the advent of marine renewable energy structures in the coastal environment a good thing or not? The general impression is that it may well be a good thing but, and it is a big but, our knowledge needs to significantly improve, by gathering the right data and disseminating them appropriately, to provide convincing and scientifically valid argument in support.

The future for the marine renewable energy industry looks promising and there are significant benefits apparent to properly understanding the perceived issues v real issues ; the industry could use the knowledge gained through targeted studies to provide the critical supporting evidence to what they say is actually occurring and to maximise the positive and minimise any negatives, thereby accentuating their green credentials.

So there is a potential ‘win-win’ situation for the marine renewable energy industry and the coastal and offshore environment, we just need to make the right decisions to put our efforts in the right place to properly understand this new and necessary human industry in our coastal and offshore waters.

More information: Boehlert, G.W. & Gill, A.B. (2010). Environmental and ecological effects of ocean renewable energy development – a current synthesis. Oceanography 23: 68-81.

Wilhelmsson, D., Malm, T., Thompson, R., Tchou, J., Sarantakos, G., McCormick, N., Luitjens, S., Gullström, M., Paerson Edwards, J.K., Amir, O. and Dubi, A. (eds.)

(2010). Greening Blue Energy: Identifying and managing the biodiversity risks and opportunites of off shore renewable energy. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. 102pp. http://www.iucn.org/about/work/initiatives/energy_ welcome/energy_impacts/

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Technology for an unpredictable world Richard Waite, Managing Director of ESRI UK

Richard Waite, Managing Director of ESRI UK, explains how Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology helps organisations respond to complex critical and often unexpected environmental issues.

We live in an unpredictable world, in which we have a profound responsibility for our environment. Every week seems to bring news of a fresh crisis – from volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and torrential rain to oil spills and industrial pollution. And every unforeseen incident tests our ability to react quickly to protect people’s lives and preserve the environment in which we live.

GIS plays a crucial role in helping organisations and governments to meet these environmental challenges.

It is a powerful tool that can present up-to-the -minute data, clarify complex issues and communicate information to different groups in a very intuitive way.

As the UK’s leading provider of GIS technology, ESRI UK helps many public and private sector organisations including DEFRA, the Met Office, Manchester Airport, RSA Group and ScottishPower amongst others, to use geography to make better informed environmental decisions.

In the Gulf of Mexico today, we are seeing an environmental disaster of almost unprecedented scale, as oil continues to spill into the ocean, creating untold damage to the natural environment around it. GIS provides powerful analysis tools that are enabling the world’s oil and pollution experts to monitor this grave situation daily, evaluate different courses of action and help plan strategies for its containment. There is no other technology that has the same ability to capture data of this kind, present it visually and support rapid decision making. |114| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

When a plume of ash is discharged into the atmosphere, as in the recent eruption in Iceland, GIS was used to model where that plume would drift, based on real time wind direction and speed. Not only could GIS show where it would be in ten hours time and how high or low it was but it could also identify what lies beneath it, whether this is people, livestock, water sources or critical infrastructure, highlight the risks and help people make timely decisions to mitigate them.

In some situations such as flooding, Local Authorities, emergency services, private organisations and charities need to be able to work together to deliver a fast, co-ordinated response. There are many examples of Local Authorities, such as Lichfield District Council, which have now set up web-based GIS applications that allow different groups of people to share the same information and work effectively together to save lives and protect property.

It is in such times of unexpected crisis that GIS really shows its value, but GIS is also quietly supporting the ongoing and valuable work of a wide range of organisations operating within environmental fields.

Examples range from initiatives to manage road congestion in London and schemes to measure the carbon emissions of ocean-going cargo vessels, to plans for the development of offshore wind farms.

In dozens of different ways, GIS is helping global organisations to better manage, protect and respond to the challenges of our fragile environment.

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Doing more for less Many of the organisations that play an important role in managing our environment are publically funded.

Following the public sector cuts announced by the new Government, Local Authorities and central agencies such as the National Parks Authority, are under increased pressure to reduce costs. The Government’s mantra is ‘doing more for less’ – and GIS can reveal real opportunities to do precisely that.

For example, it can show where there is duplication of effort and match the location of service resources against the demand for services to minimise waste.

In the run up to the Comprehensive Spending Review this autumn, GIS has a vital role to play in providing new insights, shaping decisions and identifying areas where efficiencies can be made without neglecting our environment.

A good example of the quantifiable benefits of GIS can be seen with the UK Forestry Commission. This organisation runs its entire business on GIS, from planning where to plant trees and informing the public about woodland trails, to running its profit and loss.

The creation of a common GIS business platform has joined up its activities, allowed for greater efficiency and led to significant annual savings. At the same time, this enterprise GIS has also enabled the Forestry Commission to improve its management of 1.4 billion trees. So, GIS has contributed to both cost savings and a better future for our forests.

More and more organisations are beginning to realise the strategic value of GIS. Whether it is used to manage extreme weather, global warming, a geological event, diminishing habitats, areas of natural beauty or a man-made disaster, GIS helps organisations to meet their environmental responsibilities. In an unpredictable world, it is invaluable.

Below: Molton Lava

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Flooding

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in Environmental Management John Osborne, Product Manager of Training, BSI Group Continuing professional development (CPD) has become a requirement for many professional individuals. CPD may be viewed by some as a perfunctory obligation -simply to maintain or acquire professional status; however this view of CPD is perhaps a little one dimensional. An increasing number of professionals undertake CPD to maintain existing knowledge and to become aware of emergent technologies, policies, practices and techniques.

Those engaged within the field of environmental management come from a wide sphere of disciplines and roles. When a person says they are qualified or working within the field of environmental management, science or engineering, I always ask the question, “what is it that you specifically do?” Unsurprisingly many environmental professionals belong to a range of professional bodies, however most do not dictate that CPD must be completed, and therefore allow flexibility in the approach that is taken. It is, however, essential to adhere to the specific requirements of the body to which you subscribe.

The benefits to the individual of undertaking CPD go beyond the simple maintenance of professional registration. CPD can enhance existing knowledge in an area of personal interest, and greater appreciation of the breadth of issues may lead towards career advancement. Today adaptability is a key attribute for any professional. By setting themselves objectives, devising a route map of how to achieve them and integrating this with their CPD, individuals will discover new horizons and achieve rewarding careers.

Organisations that commit to staff development and support CPD are often characterised by more highly motivated employees with higher retention rates and greater job satisfaction. Employees that can bring new practices into the organisation may enhance the business and bring added value. To others CPD activity has been known to bring added publicity to the organisation thereby enhancing the brand. |118| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

Some organisations find CPD a useful feature to link to the organisation’s appraisal system. Where genuine consensus can be reached between the employee and employer over the nature of the CPD undertaken, significant benefits to both parties normally accrue.

Over recent years we have seen a trend where health and safety professionals are also becoming environmental managers, or at least taking some responsibility for environmental management within their organisations. Many of these people seek to make the transition by achieving associate membership of IEMA through a variety of methods. This is a notable example of CPD at work meeting changing circumstances. Another example is that of employees who are required to manage energy. This function is new to many and in order to gain a technical background, a number of people are undertaking the Energy Institute’s distance learning course, ‘Training in Energy Management by Open Learning’ (TEMOL).

Specific subjects in environmental management have also emerged such as measuring greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprint verification. Training employees to incorporate an environmental management framework into the organisation will demonstrate to customers that the business is taking sustainability seriously. Environmental management training programmes ensure that all members of staff start to think with a sustainable mentality and look at

every way they can be environmentally knowledgeable to reduce costs and ultimately increase profits.

We are fortunate that the opportunity today for CPD can be accessed in formal settings as traditional courses; by attendance at meetings and seminars; through professional and university courses; distance learning and with use of internet and computer based materials. The options are wide and varied, which can only be a good thing.

More sustainable methods of training available for businesses today include eLearning and distance learning. Bringing training in-house can also reduce a company’s carbon footprint as it saves having to transport members of staff around the country. Using a training provider that also has the same business values as your organisation can help continue the process of promoting sustainable values throughout the whole organisation.

Properly devised CPD is a good thing, providing many real and potential benefits for the employee, the employer and the environment. Reflect upon how you have approached it, identify and evaluate your objectives, and work towards a sustainable, brighter and rewarding future.

About BSI Group BSI Group is a global independent business services organisation that inspires confidence and delivers assurance to over 80,000 customers with standards-based solutions. Originating as the world’s first national standards body, BSI has over 2,500 staff operating in over 140 countries through more than 50 global offices. BSI’s key offerings are:

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The development and sale of private, national and international standards and supporting information that promote and share best practice Second and third-party management systems assessment and certification in all critical areas of management disciplines Testing and certification of services and products for Kitemark® and CE marking to UK, European and international standards. BSI is a Notified Body for 15 New Approach EU Directives.

Certification of high-risk, complex medical devices Performance management software solutions Supply chain security solutions which identify and mitigate risks in supply chains Training services in support of standards implementation and business best practice

BSI and Kitemark® were both voted UK Business Superbrands in 2010, by independent brand experts.

For further information please visit www.bsigroup.co.uk |120| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

National Skills Academy for Environmental Technologies The idea of a greener future is increasingly becoming a key issue at both a business and personal level. With carbon reductions being set by government, it is key that everyone becomes more involved in reducing emissions, lowering energy consumption and conserving water.

In order to achieve these targets it is important that the Building Services Engineering (BSE) sector plays a major role in installing and maintaining renewable and environmental technologies, and providing the best advice to customers. If the sector is to meet these expectations, employers and employees across the sector need to ensure they have the relevant skills to work with renewable technologies such as solar panel, solar thermal and heat pumps.

As the Sector Skills Council for the BSE sector, SummitSkills is leading the development of a National Skills Academy for Environmental Technologies. The Skills Academy aims to co-ordinate skills training in design, installation and maintenance of environmental technologies. It will play a key role in developing the ability for businesses in the sector to access the training and skills they will need to meet future increased demand for the installation of environmental technologies in the UK.

carbon savings. Developing, coordinating and planning the right skills at the right competency level will not only strengthen but will also improve the competitiveness of the sector, boost innovation and is likely to increase the investment in skills by employers.

Keith Marshall OBE, Chief Executive of SummitSkills said: “The creation of the National Skills Academy for Environmental Technologies is a critical step forward for the BSE sector. The Skills Academy will play a key role in ensuring that this skills capability is developed and that the BSE sector can become more proactive in promoting the green agenda to consumers and acting as a trailblazer for green skills. The whole sector has a vital role to play in the Skills Academy and SummitSkills will be working closely with stakeholders and employers throughout the academy’s development, implementation and ongoing operation.”

For further information on the National Skills Academy for Environmental Technologies visit the SummitSkills website: www.summitskills.org.uk

Through the Skills Academy, SummitSkills hopes to transform the way the sector plans, develops and delivers renewable and environmental technology skills, providing: • clarity, vision, direction and solutions for employers who need to train in these new technologies • a single point of contact for nationwide green skills development • a route to ensuring the economy has the workforce it needs to deliver the low carbon future.

The National Skills Academy for Environmental Technologies will focus on the following areas of skills development for the sector: Design skills: training in the full planning and installation process for environmental technologies, from the correct design and sizing of the renewable installations, to the best positioning of the product, through to its connection to the existing power and water systems and ongoing control.

Product knowledge: delivery of knowledge around specific products and technical issues for each technology.

Commissioning and maintenance: the skills for the commissioning, maintenance and service of these technologies post-installation.

Innovation, entrepreneurship and business development: developing the confidence of businesses to work with new technologies.

The Skills Academy will build on the core competencies in the electrotechnical, HVACR and plumbing industries to help the sector understand environmental technologies and how they should be integrated with existing systems to deliver maximum efficiency and ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE |121|

Pioneering green roofs in the rail industry Background When Tube Lines won the contract to maintain and upgrade the infrastructure on the London Underground’s Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines in 2003, the company set itself the goal of becoming a beacon for sustainability within the rail industry. By the end of 2009, Tube Lines had saved 6,279 tonnes of Carbon - enough to fill Buckingham Palace 11 times over – and has continued to improve energy efficiency, increase recycling rates and adapt to climate change.

During this time, the benefits of green roof technology have become increasingly apparent and Tube Lines was keen to introduce rooftop plant systems to several buildings within its property portfolio. Green roofs are particularly useful for soaking up rainwater which reduces the risk of flooding and provides more green space to local wildlife. These benefits meant that green roofs had the potential to play a key role in helping the company achieve ambitious and challenging environmental objectives the company had set itself. |122| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

Approach When the first green roof was installed at the Northern line control centre at Highgate in 2006, it was the largest of its type in London. The building was not only pioneering for its role as the control point for the revamped Northern line, it also became the leading example for how a functioning green roof could incorporate good aesthetic design and minimise the impact of railway buildings on the local environment.

The site’s location adjacent to the protected Highgate Woods prompted Tube Lines to initiate detailed consultations with the local community, the Corporation of London and Islington Council to ensure that the building was as unobtrusive as possible to local residents. Plans were shared and comments were taken on board and then incorporated in the final design.

‘Intelligent lighting’ solutions such as automatic blind activation when lights are switched on inside the building helped minimise the impact of light pollution to residents. The selection of infrared CCTV surveillance cameras over bright security lights also ensured that a local bat population in a nearby tunnel would remain unaffected. Planting a line of trees, installation of a specialist acoustic fence and extensive screening planting helped further conceal the centre and minimise its impact on the local environment.

Design of the Roof Tube Lines was aware that in order to function successfully, the green roof would require a professional

design, careful structural analysis and multiple layers and systems. Designers were briefed to produce a concept for an environmentally sensitive single storey building incorporating a single membrane green roof.

Their response was a single membrane Sarnafil roof that would support a medium substrate system. This would contain a range of plug plants and seeds would be planted in order to fulfil biodiversity requirements and provide a suitable environment for the local wildlife.

In order to replicate a natural grassland environment, it was essential that Tube Lines’ green roof had the same build up of different layers, each performing a different function:

• At the root, a 150mm-thick Foamglas sheet was bonded onto the concrete surface of the roof with hot bitumen to provide insulation and ensure that the green roof remains watertight

• This was followed by a layer of polyester reinforced bi tuminous felt bedded in hot bitumen to act as a moisture and protection mat

• The next step was to install a drainage and protection layer with a geotextile filter

Benefits The unique design of the Highgate green roof meant that not a single metre of green space was lost in the construction of the centre. It was also crucial to getting local community support for construction of the new centre in native woodland.

The environmental and business benefits of green roofing technology are indeed substantial. On top of the creation of a rich green habitat that will help local wildlife to thrive, it has helped reduce roof storm water runoff which has enabled us to install much smaller storm water pipes. The green roof has also extended the life-cycle of the roof as it protects the roof membrane from sunlight. This in turn, has helped to reduce the amount of waste material that the company send to landfill. The roof also provides much better installation resulting in significant cost savings to Tube Lines of approximately £12,000 each year.

Green roof technology is becoming more and more established practice in major cities around the world.

The heavy engineering industry must do everything it can to minimise its impact on the environment and the successful use of green roofs at Highgate is one example that we hope others will follow.

• On top of this was a 70mm thick layer of soil or “growing medium” to support the plant life and provide vital nutrients

• Finally, the roof was planted

with various species of sedum selected for their drought resistance. Logs from adjacent woodland were placed on the roof to provide birds with territorial markers and song perches.

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The Remediation of St Michael’s Golf Course, Widnes SMGC Image: The Golf course cover photo depicts the 350mm of subsoil placed over selected areas of the original golf course on which the topsoil and grass will be placed,

The site of the St Michael’s Golf has a long industrial history having been developed from industrial waste dumped there from local manufacturing from the late 1880’s. Much of this waste is a by product of the Le Blanc process used in the production of sodium carbonate from common salt, producing thousands of tonnes of waste commonly known as galligu. It has been estimated that 4.5 million tonnes of galligu and other wastes were dumped and pushed across the original land pushing the Stewards Brook from its previous route running southwest across the site to a westerly route along the edge of the golf course before it enters a culverted section south to join it’s original alignment. The area of land fill was graded and covered with a thin layer of topsoil and grass in 1975 to form a municipal golf course.

Leachate resulting from ground water travelling through the galligu regularly broke out into Stewards Brook causing significant pollution to the water in the brook, which was classified in 1990 as ‘former NRA’ Class 4 (grossly polluted and of poor water quality) as opposed to Class 2 just upstream of the golf course.

It was the requirement to improve the quality of the water in Stewards Brook that instigated Halton Borough Council (HBC), the owners of the golf course, to award a contract to Land and Water Services Ltd in 2004 for the design and construction of the remediation of Stewards Brook. It was soon realised that the cleanliness of the water in the brook could not be guaranteed without remediating the source of the pollution, namely the golf course itself.

The Health Protection Agency had also required the golf course to be closed to the public in 2004 due to the level of arsenic in the near surface soils causing a potential health risk to users of the course.

Land & Water Services then commissioned Jacobs to prepare an Assessment Action Report outlining the potential remediation strategies for the golf course which was submitted to HBC and the EA in December 2008. There followed a period of technical and commercial negotiation resulting in an agreement between HBC and Land & Water Services for the remediation strategy as set out below. Work started in November 2009 and is ongoing at the time of this article.

Placement of a two part capping to the areas requiring mitigation comprising a 350mm layer of subsoil with 100mm of topsoil, Diversion of the existing Stewards Brook northward avoiding the majority of the contaminated ground, Construction of a leachate collection system within the confines of the existing brook, collecting the leachate within a storage tank prior to its discharge temporarily by tanker.

Monitoring of the leachate quality and quantity over an agreed number of months so that the final leachate treatment and disposal method can be reviewed following a period of rain on/in the new cover system.

It is hoped that the new surface runoff regime will have reduced the volume of leachate and that the quality will be such that it can be treated simply and returned to the brook, perhaps via a reed-bed wetlands system, or to the local sewer.

Landscaping of the completed working area and establishment of a new golf course.

It is envisaged that the new leachate collection system will be monitored this winter with the new leachate treatment being finalised and completed next year.

Thus the brief to remediate the waters of Stewards Brook was widened to include the remediation of the northern section of the golf course which included Stewards Brook.

The site was then classified as Contaminated Land under Part IIA of the Environmental Protection Act of 1990 providing a route to funding from DEFRA under the 2000 Amendment to the act. |124| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

SMGC Image: The stream diversion illustrates a typical section of new stream which will have diverse habitats such as riffles, pools and aquatic planting along its length

Take a walk this summer on the boardwalk that is better for the environment Envirolink Northwest help Centriforce get the evidence they need to increase sales Centriforce Products is a plastic recycler converting plastic waste into a variety of extruded products with construction applications. Amongst the range of products are recycled plastic profiles which are used in boardwalk and walkway projects for nature reserves and other natural landscaped areas. Centriforce contacted Envirolink Northwest in 2008 for assistance in helping to develop the market for their recycled plastic boardwalk product. The major stumbling block that Centriforce were trying to overcome was the need for more detailed test data to show the materials long term durability as a boardwalk.

Some large procurers were requiring third party data to demonstrate the load bearing performance of the material in a boardwalk application in order for them to use it throughout their organisation. The level of testing required was fundamental for Centriforce to be able to provide their products to large scale projects and they did not want to lose customers. They applied to Envirolink Northwest for funding to undertake the work, they were successful so Envirolink Northwest hired in consultants to deliver this work. The tests proved positive and were crucial in demonstrating that the boardwalks met the British standards for using as heavy duty walkways.

The boardwalks have recently been used in May 2010 by Warrington Council in a project on Woolston Urban Ecology Park. About 460 metres of boardwalk planks have been laid down so people are now able to enjoy this space and stroll around on the boardwalks that are made from waste plastic products. Barry Keeling from Centriforce said, “Our customers really wanted some reliable, upgraded test data for the strength of our products. Envirolink’s assistance in gaining the load bearing test data for the boardwalks has been invaluable. It has continued to grow the market for the recycled plastic boardwalk and has really raised the bar for the rest of the industry”.

Dave Taylor, Business Development Manager for Manufacturing from Envirolink Northwest commented, “Centriforce Products have a really good quality product which has many different applications. The plastic wood substitute has many benefits compared to natural wood which is traditionally used in these applications, such as reduced maintenance. It is waterproof, can be recycled at the end of its use, and it can still be worked like wood. By helping manufacturers in the North West to develop new applications for recycled products we are helping to develop stronger UK markets for waste materials being collected here.”

For more information on Envirolink Northwest and how we can help your business please visit – www.envirolinknorthwest.co.uk

Hunters, Gatherers and Data Loggers

By John Moore

How do you prove you live somewhere? For most of us in the developed world, it’s probably a question of utility bills, electoral register or ownership deeds. But what if you live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in a jungle and have no written first language? What if you move location every year or so and what if the surroundings you rely on are constantly under threat from powerful outsiders?

The Baka Tribe Most of the Baka tribes live in the south east of the country, roughly 200 miles from the Capital. The journey is really only possible by four-wheel drive.

Though there is a vigorous road-building programme in process, many of the roads are still mud tracks and cars can quickly get bogged down. Leaving the city, buildings ebb away from modern glass-fronted tower blocks to one-story, wooden shanty huts within a matter of a few miles, before settling into hundreds of miles of thick forest and dense vegetation.

The Baka don’t just live off the beaten track, they live a few beaten tracks off that. As we bump along the rusty dirt road that leads to their village, you begin to realise how cut off from mainstream Cameroonian society they are.

The Baka are amongst the oldest inhabitants of Cameroon. It is estimated that there are between 5,000 and 28,000 Baka living in the south eastern region of Cameroon. Until fairly recently, they were able to continue to live a hunter-gatherer existence, unchanged for thousands of years.

The Baka Under Threat Since full independence of Cameroon in 1972, pressure from the Government, commercial logging and mineral |126| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

companies has continued the process of moving the Baka from deep in the rainforest to designated villages closer to roads and towns. As deforestation continues, the plants and animals the Baka rely on are disappearing at an alarming rate. Thankfully, the Baka have now been protected by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People and their right to continue to live as hunter-gatherers has been internationally recognised.

One of the biggest problems for the Baka is proving what areas of the rainforest they actually use and inhabit. The Baka neither grow rotation crops nor cultivate land for livestock. Traditionally, when they have finished with an area of land they simply move on. As a society with no legal deeds or contracts to prove ownership or use of the forest, their habitat is constantly under threat from commercial interests.

As logging is the biggest industry in the region, it is naturally the most common form of available employment. Hauling a cartload of logs over a distance of around four miles pays roughly three pounds.

However, some of the locally based Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) have made attempts to redress this problem, offering more useful items, such as rice and flour in return for collecting data.

Mapping Project Help for the Baka has come from an unlikely source.

Oxfordshire-based software company Helveta, has been developing asset mapping, chain of custody and traceability systems for everything from preventing illegal logging to mapping indigenous community land use for the past five years. A chance meeting between Helveta CEO Patrick Newton and London University Professor of Anthropology Jerome Lewis, who spent two years living with the Baka and has long

championed their rights, has resulted in the tribe using 21st century technology to maintain their traditional lifestyle. Now, one of the most ancient groups of people in Cameroon, with a lifestyle that has persisted largely unchanged for thousands of years, is mastering the use of the latest, ‘touch-screen’ handheld data collection devices to log essential information about their forest environment.

In 2008, an initiative was launched aimed at enabling local forest communities to map their forest use and resources, as well as monitor logging activities in their local area. The main goal of the project was to set up a monitoring system whereby local indigenous communities could gather and record data relating to resource use on their community’s land. A particular focus of this project has been in supporting the Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) to provide a platform to aid in forest monitoring and remote verification of forest management activities in over 15 sites across Cameroon. The project builds on almost a decade of work in Cameroon by Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) and Centre of Environment and Development (CED) to support forest communities to map their lands, as part of a series of projects aiming to help communities protect their rights and resources.

The concept is remarkably simple: in consultation with the Baka, traditional handheld devices have been adapted for their use. Being largely non-literate, text has been replaced by meaningful image icons.

Illustrations of trees, plants, animals and water are set out on an easy-to-use interface. As the Baka hunt daily in the forest they can record anything they come across, from medicinal plants to evidence of other tribes and this GPS referenced data is then synchronized into a central database. As more evidence is gathered, it becomes possible to use the information to prove that the movements of the Baka within the rainforest are far wider than has previously been estimated. In addition, this generic information gathered by the Baka greatly increases our understanding of the environment.

would be used to records trees of legal diameter that have been felled. For physically recording the data, coloured icons were created matching each rope length thus allowing the communities to accurately record their observations.

Despite their relative unfamiliarity with technology, the Baka have quickly understood both how to use the devices and the potential benefit they will gain from them.

A sortie into the forest with a small Baka hunting party is an exhilarating experience. Within minutes of leaving the village, you are enveloped by the heat and sheer density of thick jungle. To the uninitiated, this can be a complete assault on the senses as your brain struggles to take in the sounds, smells and sights that make up the surroundings.

The Baka are as familiar with the forest as many of us are with our towns and cities, and know exactly what they are looking for. Animals, such as porcupine and snake, provide a regular food source. Certain plants have medicinal qualities and small streams contain fish supplies. As they track each section of the forest, they are able to record evidence of their findings via the GPS devices.

Hunting does not seem to be divided along gender lines, as both male and female members of the tribe share hunting duties. On a morning trip into the forest, women (some with newborn babies strapped to their backs) track barefoot through harsh terrain. The women, if anything, have mastered use of the tracking devices quicker than the men, recording data with ease.

In order to monitor logging activities in the area, the community members are equipped with differing lengths of coloured rope with which to measure tree stumps and logs on the ground that had been left by loggers, recording them as red, green or blue, according to which rope length was needed to span the diameter of the tree in question.

The rope lengths are based on allowable cut thresholds under Cameroon forest law and so permit an initial identification of undersize trees that have been felled.

If a red rope was used to measure a stump diameter, it would be a likely indication of illegal logging activity.

Any stumps with diameters smaller than the blue rope are possibly illegally cut depending on the species, and therefore require further investigation. A green rope ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE |127|

CRANES for the 21ST CENTURY The larger Mantis Cranes model shown working on this Newcastle upon Tyne site is fitted with a 45m jib and set at it’s full under hook height of 34.2m, and 40m Mantis Crane, working on a shortened 27.5m jib , which is also a feature to either increase residual capacity or to avoid other obstacles etc.

They are currently on hire to Robertson Timberkit ( RTK), who are based in Seaham, County Durham.

Mantis Cranes have had a close working relationship with RTK over the last 6 years, providing self erecting tower cranes all over the UK. RTK look to use SETC’s wherever possible as they find them convenient, economical, productive, offering enhanced site Health & Safety and with minimal environmental impact.

Whilst allowing them to control the build programme without reliance on multiple mobile crane visits and all they entail.

The main contractor on this job is Whelan Construction, a Newcastle based Company of long standing. Once the timber frame build is complete, Whelan intend to take over use of the Mantis Crane for their own materials handling, finding the reduction in multi-handling to store and move materials a big advantage with the self erector. The crane works in a very small footprint, yet gives comparatively high capacities for their brick, block and roof work.

Mantis is finding that more and more main contractors are retaining their cranes once the timber frame work is done. Even if they have little or no previous experience of SETC’s, they quickly identify their convenience, safety and productivity, along with the economics compared to multiple mobile crane visits.

Most people are familiar with the traditional tower crane and while self erectors are similar to tower cranes there are some significant differences. Self Erecting Cranes do not require the assistance of a mobile crane when being installed on site thereby reducing installation and removal costs. The use of a radio remote control for all of the key functions means that the operator can follow the load and allow for one person operation of the crane further reducing the operating costs. Self Erecting Cranes are typically suited to buildings which are in excess of 2 floors and with limited access around the periphery of the site.

Unlike forklifts, the Self Erecting Crane can service the complete building from one location enabling other activities to take place on site, such as landscaping , and allow swifter project completion. |128| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

Despite their long established popularity in Europe the self erector is really now only coming into its own in England, but the Mantis Cranes UK Business Development Manager, Brian Owen is confident of the advantages they bring. “Our cranes are quick and easy to use –we can take the materials directly to the point of use and the machine is available 24/7,” he says.

“Many sites make use of a mobile crane which comes and goes every day- but they take time to set up and take down each day thereby reducing the amount of available hook time. In addition to which a mobile will occupy a lot more space on site than a self-erector and this can be critical on some sites.” Brian continues “The cost of one of our cranes for a week is usually the same as a mobile for a day and it is available round the clock.”

Mantis Cranes are the only manufacturer of SelfErecting Cranes outside mainland Europe and from their base in Durham offer cranes for sale or hire across the whole UK, backed by their own mobile service engineers.

The consultation service includes marking up AutoCAD or DWG drawings to plot a crane in the optimum position on site, followed by a detailed site visit to ensure ingress and egress of the crane in accordance with local site conditions.

Full support with risk assessment, method statement and certification is included, together with operator induction and safety checks. They also provide Appointed Person services, site surveys and advice.

At this point Mantis look to become a ‘one stop shop’, catering for all their needs. They retain independent training companies across the UK to train employees to either ‘in house’ or CPCS standard in crane operation and slinger banksman duties, or, as an alternative, provide fully certificated agency staff.

Mantis have a modern fleet of SETC’s to choose from for all construction disciplines in addition to timber frame and a wide range of accessories and equipment for hire or sale in any location.

The Evolution in Crane Technology.

ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE |129|

RECYCLED AND REUTILISED HEATENERGY FROM SEWER FLOWS AIDS CARBON REDUCTION FIGHT

Above:Installing the Therm-Liner system via existing manholes.

Above:A circular sewer pipe during installation.

For more than a decade now World Governments have been pressing industry, utilities and the general public to be more aware of energy usage and to play their part in the reduction of carbon emissions which are deemed crucial in the fight against the global warming phenomenon currently afflicting the planet. To date, much of the effort towards carbon reduction has been to reduce the use of fossil fuels and to increase the application of renewable carbon-free energy sources such as wind and wave.

However, somewhat less emphasis has been placed on maximising the use of the energy already available having been created by mainly fossil fuel power production sources. Much of this energy produced is being allowed to go to waste after only one, yet not always efficient, use.

With the help of a new product, Therm-Liner, from Uhrig Kanaltechnik GmbH, this could now be changing!

A large percentage of the fossil fuel energy used in homes, office buildings, schools, factories etc goes into the heating of water and the environment in general.

This in turn means that much of the wastewater, which has been used for heating or which has simply been warmed by the local environment, is flushed into the local sewer network.

This ‘wastewater’ is at a higher temperature than local ambient conditions, often running at between 12 and 15o Celsius. The fossil fuel energy used to create this heat is, at present increasing the carbon emissions and generally lost to the environment as the effluent travels through the sewer network, which is energy literally wasted. This can be up to as much as 25% of the energy used to heat the buildings from which the wastewater and effluents carry the bulk of the energy loss into the underground sewer pipes. Under the right circumstances the recycling of the heat energy recovered from this process can lead to up to 75% reduction of ‘existing fossil fuel’ energy consumption.

Right: Pipework arrangement |130| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

A completed installation in an egg-shaped sewer pipe

Uhrig’s Therm-Liner is designed to minimise this energy loss by recovering this ‘waste’ heat for reuse in buildings.

HOW IT WORKS Because the wastewater sewer flows run at a higher temperature than the pipeline and surrounding ground through which the effluent runs, any heat in the effluent is generally lost through the sewer pipe wall into the local soil or dissipates into the atmosphere at the sewerage plants.

The Therm-Liner V4A heat exchanger unit is designed to minimise this loss by recovering this heat before it is lost to the environment.

Therm-Liner is a heat exchanger which is installed into the existing sewer flows, along the pipe invert, so that the effluent flows directly over the heat exchanger elements.

By connecting the Therm-Liner to a heat pump on the surface, which circulates heat extraction fluid through the Therm-Liner Elements, the Heat Energy from the wastewater or effluent is transferred to a local ‘power’ station, recycled and reutilised.

Here the heat from the effluent can also be used to warm water which is used as part of centralised local area heating system for local buildings such as council offices, schools or industrial sites and factories, normally

within 300 m of the heat source (in this case the sewer pipes) and heat pump circulation system. The wastewater/effluent in the sewer flows undisturbed onward on its normal path.

By utilising the ‘wastewater’ in existing sewers this way it is possible to reduce the need for the buildings on the system to use ‘new’ additional fossil fuel energy to maintain good working environments for their workforces, students etc or to heat water for production process etc, so ultimately reducing the need for carbon-loaded energy use.

It should perhaps be pointed out that the heat recovery system does not produced new electricity but simply transfers what would be ‘waste’ heat back into the system for reuse.

It can be termed ‘heat recycling’ due to maximisation of and increase in the effectiveness of the power or fossil fuel energy which was initially used to heat the water which was then introduced into the sewer system with a higher temperature.

THERM-LINER The Therm-Liner heat recovery elements are designed and shaped to fit the most commonly used pipeline formats The installation can be carried out through most, if not all, existing manhole structures The stainless steel units be interconnected during installation. This allows a flexible approach to the various projects and insures the possibility of an extension or removal of Therm Liner Elements. As the Therm-Liner unit is installed in the sewer flow, heat extraction fluid is passed through pipes which form part of the Therm-Liner system. This fluid is circulated

around the heat exchanger by low-power pumps in the ‘transfer station’ on surface. a heat exchanger uses this recovered heat to warm water which is passed into a local centralised heating system at temperatures of between 40 and 60°C..

Because the Therm-Liner elements are installed in the sewer pipe invert, they are always immersed in the sewer flows and recover heat even when flows are low.

Specific heat recovery figures will depend on the sewer into which the system is placed and its flow characteristics but tests on the system have shown, for example, that in a 1200/1800 egg-shaped sewer with an average flow of 8.3 l/sec with just 39 m of Therm-Liner heat exchange units in place, the local area heating system saved around effective 43% of its ‘new’ energy usage which in turn lead to a 60% carbon dioxide reduction from the fuels normally used.

Brian Hickland International Sales Manager for Uhrig said: “The system is very quick and easy to install in existing sewer pipes, once personnel have been trained correctly, which means minimal lead time and early results on reducing energy consumption from more conventional means. Taking into account we have hundreds of miles of sewers running under our cities a future low cost energy source is literally running under our feet and is already at our door step. So, let’s not waste time but utilise this low cost source of future energy.”

According to the German Environmental Minister Tanja Gönner: “It is the intension of the German Government that this sort of technology will be increasingly used across the country to take heat energy from Wastewater in the future for the heating and supply of warm water to buildings to save on Oil and Gas usage. The first projects are starting in Konstany, Leonberg and Bretten.”

-Uhrig Kanaltechnik GmbH

Above: A schematic of the Therm-Liner system operation ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE |131|

Eradicating Japanese Knotweed Before Background Tube Lines upgrades and maintains three of the busiest lines on the London Underground – the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines. It is also responsible for 150km of trackside land, representing roughly three per cent of London’s available green space. This space acts as safe ‘green corridors’ for wildlife to travel between various habitats across the capital, providing cover and food sources for their movements.

But Japanese Knotweed has been invading these habitats and threatening wildlife such as mammals, reptiles birds, insects, plants and trees. This non-native species is notoriously difficult to kill, with roots that can spread seven metres beneath the surface and which can grow from a single dropped segment. The weed can cause structural damage to buildings and other infrastructure along the rail network and can lead to delays to vital upgrade work whilst treatment takes place.

The UK has in the region of 1,800 native plants and a further 70,000 garden plants, many of which are threatened by the introduction of non-native species.

The impact of Japanese knotweed on native species is enormous - thought to affect an area roughly the size of London and DEFRA has placed a conservative total cost of removal at £1.56bn.

The extent of the problem was particularly acute for Tube Lines - 196 sites covering some 17.2 hectares throughout London from the rural county of Hertfordshire to the City of Westminster was infected with Japanese Knotweed.

Traditional methods Between 2003 and 2007 numerous attempts were made to control Japanese Knotweed using the very best techniques and products on the market. However these conventional and innovative controls were used - none of them could last more than one season with sub-soil based rhizomes resistant to all.

Consideration was given to the only viable control method - dig and deep cell burial in hazardous waste landfill. But the costs were staggering and in excess of £15m. The situation could not continue. It was financially, operationally and environmentally unsustainable. |132| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

After Pioneering method In late 2006 Tube Lines approached No Mix Enviro who were licensing Tordon T22 with DEFRA - a new herbicide in the UK for the control of Japanese Knotweed. In early 2007 Tube Lines undertook due diligence, carried out rigorous field trials and examined its wider environmental impacts in terms of the company’s carbon footprint. London Underground was informed of the revolutionary approach in October 2007 and by early December we had gained their agreement for its use.

By May 2008, we had established a joint venture between ourselves, Cleshar Contract Services and No Mix Enviro to start the UKs only integrated control project using a fully trained and competent work force.

Within just 16 weeks all 196 sites were treated. An uncompromising control policy meant that we also treated Japanese Knotweed where it was adjacent to the railway boundary involving private residences, government estates, NHS and private businesses from multi nationals to back street garage operators.

By September 2008 we had achieved 92% eradication and in October 2009, all sites had been eradicated of Japanese Knotweed. Now the areas are being re-seeded with local provenance wildflower seed suitable for the varying soil types found across the network, from lowland heath, heavy London clays and acid grasslands.

Benefits Using the new method resulted in substantial benefits to the environment and for Tube Lines. These include: •

Less waste – 99% less waste is sent to landfill because this new method can treat the knotweed on site rather than having to excavate infested areas and send the soil to landfill.

•

Fewer chemicals – The method typically requires one or occasionally two applications of Tordon in stead of forty-fifty applications of conventional chemicals over a decade.

• Fewer carbon emissions – 312 tonnes of CO2 has been banked over two years.

•

Cheaper - It cost just £369,000 to eradicate Japanese Knotweed from 17.2 hectares of green space.

Traditional methods such as herbicide treatment and dig and deep cell burial would have cost circa £5.7m and £15.4 respectively.

• Fewer resources – 582 shifts deployed compared to roughly 16,000.

Summary In only two years Tube Lines has cleared Japanese Knotweed across its part of the London Underground network. Now clear of knotweed, Tube Lines’ embankments now provide safe ‘green corridors’ for wildlife to travel between habitats and will help support the capital’s bats, badgers, snakes, birds, insects, plants, trees and flowers.

Interest in our achievements has been enormous.

Major landowners / operators and local councils have approached Tube Lines about using the innovation and we have now deployed our expertise on other sites managed by London Underground.

ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE |133|

The Thames Gateway: set to become the UK’s primary hub for the Environmental Technology Sector Gareth John, Managing Director, Invest Thames Gateway As one of the fastest growing sectors in the UK, the Environmental Technology Sector is expected to be worth £45 billion to the overall UK economy by 2016.

A priority for the Thames Gateway is responding to the pressing environmental challenge on cities and regions. The area, heralded as the UK’s first Eco region, is committed to this challenge and its primary objectives are to mitigate and adapt to climate change, reuse and recycle buildings and materials and develop environmental technologies, which will provide a pioneer model for new strategies and initiatives throughout the UK. The region stretches 40 miles along the River Thames from Canary Wharf, through the ports of Thurrock, Medway and Sheerness, as far as Southend in South Essex and Sittingbourne in North Kent. The vision for the area is to create sustainable, economic and urban development across a large and varied geographic area. It also has a strategically important economic location positioned near London with unrivalled access to mainland Europe.

Home to big ideas The region is home to the London Sustainable Industries Park (SIP), which is set to house the UK’s largest concentration of environmental industries and technologies. The site, which is based in Dagenham Dock, will offer a best practice national showcase for businesses delivering recycling and reprocessing technologies, waste-to-energy and combined heat and renewable energy techniques.

The Park will accommodate, support and grow environmental technology businesses and sustainable industries. It will also enable businesses to develop synergies, maximise recourse, efficiency, innovation and minimise waste to support the region’s commitment to sustainability. |134| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

The Park will also include an onsite centre of excellence through the creation of the Thames Gateway Institute for Sustainability (IfS), an independent private sector led charity, which is envisaged to become a world class centre of excellence for delivering sustainability research and demonstration projects.

This will enable tenants to benefit from access to national and international networks and best in class research teams to support their business. The IfS will deliver practical solutions to Climate Change and wider sustainability challenges in a way that creates tens of thousands of jobs, which will benefit the Thames Gateway region.

The Thames Gateway and advanced recycling techniques The UK currently generates 330 million tonnes of waste annually. More than 50% of this is sent to landfill and despite the fact that 90% is recyclable, only 27% is currently recycled. These levels are set to increase with an annual rise in household waste production of 3% and waste production levels doubling by 2020. Two key projects, Cyclamax and Closed Loop Environmental Solutions, located in the London Sustainable Industries Park, will help to minimise the amount of waste-tolandfill in the Thames Gateway region.

The Cyclamax The Cyclamax plant will be the first waste-to-energy partner in the London Sustainable Industries Park. It will treat industrial and commercial waste from the local area and form part of the integrated power supply for the whole of this Resource Park. As a community level operation, The Thames Gateway’s Cyclamax will help the London Sustainable Industries Park to become self-sustaining and carbon neutral.

The plant, using its advanced gasification techniques, will convert around 120,000 tonnes of waste generated

at the London Sustainable Industries Park into 16MW of energy. The park will also provide renewable and low-carbon electricity to the local network, which will be enough to supply the needs of 31,500 households in the Borough of Barking and Dagenham.

This accounts for approximately 45% of the households in the Borough. By generating power from materials that traditionally would have been added to landfill, the Cyclamax will effectively save 46,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum - the equivalent of taking 20,000 cars off the road.

The excess heat generated by the plant will also tap into the proposed district heating main that is being put into the Sustainable Industries Park and the new housing development at Barking Reach.

Against a backdrop of increasing volumes of waste in the London region (set to increase to 24 million tonnes by 2020), the Cyclamax will provide a sustainable waste disposal alternative to serve the mounting waste generated in the Thames Gateway.

Closed Loop Environmental Solutions This represents one of the Thames Gateway’s most exciting schemes and an international exemplar for the development of advanced recycling technologies.

Originally founded in Australia in 2001, it is now a world leader in environmental packaging and recycling solutions. Having been highly successful in Australia, Closed Loop decided to expand into the UK, with a specific preference for the London area.

The plant in Dagenham is the first to use state of the art technology to sort, wash and super clean both types of plastic meeting EU and US FDA standards.It takes discarded soft drinks and water bottles made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and milk bottles made from high density polyethylene (HDPE), and recycles them back into food-grade plastic. The resulting rPET and rHDPE is then used to make new bottles and food packaging.

What next for environmental technologies in the Thames Gateway?

As the first country in the world to commit itself to reducing carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, the UK Government is dedicated to combating the reality of climate change. It is pursuing and investing in solutions that will help the UK play its role in achieving global sustainability.

As a consequence the UK is, and will continue to remain, under huge amounts of pressure to deliver sustainable solutions, and the development of the Environmental Technology Sector is critical to this.

The Thames Gateway offers huge commercial opportunities for smart investors looking to capitalise on the growth of the Environmental Technology Sector.

For further information contact Gareth John, Managing Director of Invest Thames Gateway. gareth.john@investthamesgateway.com

Aerial of the bridge and Gateway

ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE |135|

Waste management the key to sustainable ceramic products.

Tony Cotton, Head of Manufacturing, discusses how a mixture of investment and simple changes resulted in success for Britain’s oldest tile manufacturer.

As new regulations and directives take effect the requirement for building material producers to take sustainability seriously has become more important.

Environmental issues in manufacturing any product now have to be recognised and addressed in a way that can be qualified either by an accreditation body or through industry best practice. One such manufacturer is the Stoke on Trent tile manufacturer, Johnson Tiles has had a strong commitment to sustainable development since the introduction of a formal waste management and recycling strategy was adopted in 1994. Although, as the country’s leading ceramic tile manufacturer the company has long held a reputation for quality and innovation, it has quietly got on with making continuous improvement to its strategy. The industry leading efforts by the company have not gone unrecognised having received The Queen’s Award for Environmental Achievement in 1997, became the first whiteware manufacturer to achieve ISO 14001 in 1998 and more recently being listed in The Sunday Times Best Green Companies Awards for three consecutive years in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

With the manufacture of ceramic tiles relying heavily on the use of non-renewable natural minerals and high use of energy the company continuously seeks ways to reduce energy costs and to increase the amount of recyclable ceramic waste used in the production of tiles. The major initiative for waste recycling was the ability to use fired ceramic waste from other ceramic producers in North Staffordshire. Today, fifteen manufacturers deliver clean waste to the company. The waste cups, saucers and plates are incorporated with the company’s own fired waste tiles and this mixture is then crushed and mixed with ball clay and other mineral components in the large continuous mill, combined with water and ground to a fine slurry. This relatively simple process saves over 20,000 tonnes of waste ceramics from being disposed of via landfill each year. The company adds around 20% of recycled material to the tile body recipe although the company’s ceramicists have developed recipes that |136| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

are capable of accepting up to 35% recycled content without loss of tile quality. It is believed that this collaboration is unique and represents a significant cost saving for the participating companies in the scheme.

The £35 million state of the art manufacturing facility was introduced in 2001 and further work was undertaken to consider either recycling of other materials or achieving energy use reductions. This in itself has not been enough to stave off the rising cost of energy particularly gas. These growing costs spurred the company to review all waste streams to ascertain whether changes in procedure or process could create significant savings without adding further complexity in any aspect.

In order to reduce energy use and also to lower carbon emissions, Johnson Tiles introduced a series of manufacturing initiatives which include: • Introduction of a heat exchanger on one of the two 105 metre long roller hearth kilns resulting in a 10% gas reduction per annum. The heat exchanger raises the ambient temperature of the combustion air fed into the kiln from 20 degrees to 200 degrees thus reducing the energy required to heat the kiln to its operating temperature of 1,100 degrees Celcius.

• The number of motors that run the conveyor systems has been reduced, saving energy without reducing conveyor speeds.

• Gas controls have been modified on the tile press driers so they are turned off when not in use.

• New products are now developed in a slightly different size which maximises kiln throughput by utilizing the full hearth width.

• Identifying water used in production capable of being reused making an annual recycling volume of 45,000 cubic metres.

Image: Johnson Tiles- Rollerhearth kiln

•

•

•

Recycling 2000 tonnes of ceramic dust each year recovered from dust extraction systems rather than sending to landfill.

Reusing plastic containers for glaze production saving a significant level of hazardous waste.

Purchasing second hand pallets for products.

Although energy cost remain the largest production costs for the company the combined actions across the whole company have reduced the company’s carbon footprint from 37,824 tonnes to 34,888 tonnes a reduction of 8% in the twelve month period against a target reduction of 3%.

New technology has also played it’s part in the company’s quest to make a more sustainable product.

New digital printing technology has transformed the tile decorating process dramatically. The systems produce accurate replications of natural stones and marbles on to tiles. The process uses the four standard colours of Cyan, Magenta,Yellow and Black reducing the number of glaze colours required from 280 to 4.

The first unit was installed in 2008 and proved to be so successful that a further machine was commissioned in

Image: Johnson Tiles-Inkjet printing machine

2009 and a third in 2010. Johnson Tiles are the only tile manufacturer in the United Kingdom to have installed this latest equipment and the three machines account for over 35% of the company’s total production volume.

Regular employee briefing sessions are held in order to reinforce the waste management and recycling policies and to keep the employees informed about how successful the policies are performing. The Continuous Improvement Team structure is also used to allow further development in this area.

Johnson Tiles believes that the environmental policies are necessary in today’s commercial environment and customers expect manufacturers to act responsibly in this area. The company’s management consider that it is an area which is almost as important as technological development and with over twenty years experience in striving to minimise waste there are positive benefits for all as a result.

ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE |137|

Sheffield’s Vehicle Fleet Goes Green!

While petrol and diesel continues to fuel the majority of Sheffield City Council’s vehicle fleet, the introduction of 10 natural gas vehicles are proving the better alternative. Few alternative fuels offer the distinct and unquestionable advantage of biomethane – a renewable natural gas which offers greenhouse gas reductions and produces fewer emissions when compared to traditional or other alterative fuels.

The 10 gas powered vans are capable of running on natural gas or biomethane and are being trialled in the Council’s fleet for a period of six months where they will demonstrate the benefits of operating a fleet of natural gas vehicles in a commercial environment.

It is hoped that the trial will encourage major fleet operators to seriously consider natural gas vehicles as an alternative to their traditionally fuelled vehicles in the coming years.

Natural Gas is extensively used throughout the world as a transport fuel. Biomethane can be used as a renewable transport fuel in vehicles designed to run on compressed natural gas. However, uptake of gas vehicles in the UK has been slow and there are currently few natural gas vehicles in the UK. Similarly the infrastructure to supply biomethane or natural gas as a vehicle fuel is sparse.

The Council is trialling seven VW Eco Fuel Caddy vans, two Mercedes NGT Sprinters and one Mercedes NGT Minibus. The Council’s Parks and Countryside Ranger Image- Sheffield City Council - Ogo Osammor and biogas van

|138| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

FACFILE • Biogas is a gas, produced by the breakdown/ decay of organic material such as manure, sewage and municipal solid waste, in the absence of oxygen. Biogas is primarily made up of carbon dioxide and methane. Biomethane is produced when biogas is cleaned up to remove carbon dioxide and other impurities.

• Biomethane produced from organic waste has the lowest greenhouse gas emissions of any biofuel. By capturing methane from decomposing organic waste, which would otherwise be emitted to the atmosphere, using it as a fuel actually saves greenhouse gas emissions rather than reducing them. Also, by turning it into a valuable fuel, it helps to reduce the amount of organic waste going to landfill.

• Biomethane is virtually identical to natural gas and can be used as a substitute for natural gas to fuel natural gas vehicles. Unlike natural gas, Biomethane is an entirely renewable and clean fuel which can be used as an alternative automotive fuel to petrol and diesel.

Service has replaced six of its existing diesel van fleet with the new Eco Fuel Caddy’s, while the others are being trialled in the Council’s Environmental Services team. Groundwork Sheffield, a local charity working in the east of Sheffield, will be using one of the Mercedes Sprinters to carry out energy saving initiatives as part of the Green Doctor scheme.

A ‘fast fill’ refuelling station has been installed at the Council’s transport depot for the duration of the trial.

Image- Sheffield City Council -biogas van

A local company, Chesterfield Biogas, has supplied both the refuelling station and biomethane for the trial.

A transportable ‘skid unit’ made up of high pressure cylinders linked together forms the bulk gas store which is then fed to the dispenser. Refuelling is easy and safe and usually takes the same amount of time as a petrol or diesel vehicle, though if demand is particularly high, a resulting pressure drop may extend this time a little. The refuelling nozzle simply clicks onto the receptacle on the vehicle and you are ready to fill. When the cylinder is full, the dispenser automatically shuts off and you are ready to disconnect again.

Sheffield City Council will monitor the fuel usage over the trial period and assess the environmental benefits in terms of reduced carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen oxide (NOx) and particulate matter (PM10) against existing vehicles running on diesel. After the trial six-month period, a project evaluation will take place to assess the environmental benefits, performance, reliability and cost saving achieved as a result of operating these vehicles.

opportunity to reduce its carbon emissions from transport and help tackle climate change through the use of biomethane as a renewable vehicle fuel.

“By using biomethane as a vehicle fuel in our own fleet we aim to demonstrate that this is a sound commercial option for most vehicle operators in the city and encourage them to do the same.“ It is hoped that the trial will help facilitate the growth and acceptance of biomethane as a road transport fuel and encourage the use of clean vehicles in Sheffield The project is being run in partnership with Chesterfield Biogas, Volkswagen Gilders Van Centre and Mercedes Northside Truck and Van Ltd, and is jointly funded by the Area Based Grant and the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Grant Programme.

For more information on the project please visit: www.sheffieldismyplanet.co.uk/gasvehicles

Sarah Rani, Project Manager at Sheffield City Council, said: “The project provides Sheffield with a real ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE |139|

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

“We always face the future but one of the problems is that the future has a horrible knack of arriving ahead of schedule” I had recently to address a group of university students.

Amongst any I find these people the most difficult to face by far. I think it’s because I so vividly recall being that age and now see so little of me in them. I was a very angry young man, furiously motivated, I was on a crusade - not a drinking binge and in my albeit naive way I cared a lot. Clearly I wasn’t a typical student and I’m sure there are some that are not today but I fear they are even rarer.

My task was to make them think about our role in environmental care and to motivate their commitment.

Because I unfortunately react to the lethargy and apathy I perceive a little aggressively there are elements of provocation, controversy and devils advocacy. So here is what I said, not verbatim, just from the memory of how it all came out. ‘’We always face the future but one of the problems is that the future has a horrible knack of arriving ahead of schedule. It sneaks up on us as we dally with a little complacency and POW! there it is biting us in the backside ! How embarrassing, how silly, how costly . . . how damaging it is.

I actually don’t fear the future much at all. I’m a fatalist but even so I’m also of the opinion that we can predict quite a lot what’s coming next. Not with 100% accuracy in terms of how much, where and when, but I think that the storm clouds on the horizon are pretty obvious and that its likely to be quite a down pour. So why no umbrellas? Why no raincoats, why no wellies, why no Ark? A considerable part of my optimism is fuelled by the fact that I think that we have quite an arsenal of means to cope, that we are equipped with many of the answers, and if not that the pertinent next questions are on the tips of our tongues. Thus we should be well armed to cope at least relatively well. But then a degree of pessimism creeps in because despite this I don’t see effective or convincing evidence that we are |140| ENVIRONMENT INDUSTRY MAGAZINE

implementing many of these solutions with the necessary rapidity or energy. And that my fellow humans is a damning disgrace. A disgrace which spits in the faces of all those who have striven for thousands of years to progress in science, in art, in technology.

Yes, here we are on the brink of the big one and we are putting off dealing with the bleeding inevitable. We are in real danger of letting our species down. This strikes me as pitiful, even obscene.

We know that there are too many of us, that the finite resources won’t last, that in the next geological second we are going to overload the earth with people and yet only a few will lift their heads out of the sand an say so and none will commit to any meaningful agenda to tackle this.

We know that the changing climate is going to tax us viciously in terms of the way we exist and yet we are still playing about with the necessary adaptations which we have to implement to make any transition comfortable. None are being instigated with the urgency or efficacy that is needed. And we know it.

But you mustn’t think that I’m one of those now ‘old fashioned’ doom-mongers, I’m not, I remain optimistic about life. Not wholly optimistic about human life as we know it, but obviously this is pretty unimportant. Its our contemptible arrogance which dogs so many avenues of progress because we are not the be-all and end-all of evolution. Life hasn’t been grinding away for billenia just to produce 21st Century hominids, its thrown up a progression of dynamic dominating species and it will long continue to do so. And what’s worse is that perhaps we are not even that ‘good’. I mean, yes we are intelligent, but we can’t fly, we can’t breathe underwater, we can’t live for several thousand years . . . so if intelligence isn’t the big deal, what is so special about us? Why are we fretting so about preserving ourselves?

Its consciousness isn’t it. Most people believe that we have this as a unique trait amongst all life past and present. I’m not entirely with that, but won’t argue that ours is more advanced than any other species. So conscience is the key, it’s what makes us care, it’s what motivates unselfishness, it’s the itch we need to scratch every time we face the future and it’s what I hope will be our species salvation. And when we learn, when we are slapped about a bit by the world we have temporarily broken, then I think that our great collective consciousness will turn over and we will suddenly do what is needed to stay alive and well on planet earth.

Such a shame though that we can’t just do it now, such a pity that we have to trash everything so badly, such a damning indictment of our greed that we have to go to the brink to make a last stand. Or do we, do you?

- Chris Packham