2009 is only a few days old and if (like us) you are already thinking of ways to reduce the pain of new year bills then there are a few great recycling ideas you can try out. Re-purposing and recycling are simple methods of reducing your carbon footprint, and who knows, trying it out for this month might save you so much that it will become part of your routine.
Here’s a few basic tips that we would implement, any other suggestions would be gratefully welcomed.
Find a cheap electricity or gas tariff, preferably renewables sourced
Many UK Local authorities have recycling programmes in place and can recycle many different types of goods – if you don’t have a local collection check where your nearest recycling centre is
Dont be ashamed of buying second-hand products
Buy products made from recycled materials when possible
Get rid of any unwanted clothes, electrical goods, books and much more by selling them or donating to the local charity shops
A desperate bid to win green votes or a pioneering move to tackle climate change?
In the latest Cabinet Reshuffle Gordon Brown has created a new Energy and Climate Change Department, to be headed up by Ed Milliband. This has to be seen as a positive move, as the previous line of climate change responsilbility was always rather conveniently blurred between DEFRA and BEER. Now there can be no doubt as to where blame will be apportioned if the green energy message doesn’t begin to make a significant impression. At the very least we can look forward to a slew of new energy initiatives and announcements over the coming weeks. We will be watching with interest.
These are difficult times for those of us associated with the Green Energy cause. Huge rises in energy costs have stilted the general public’s appetite for anything at all associated with the subject – the news is so grim that most people just want to forget about it. Therefore, it was great recently to find a story which cheered us up no end. Scottish architecture firm ZM Architecture have unveiled a ‘biomimicry’ scheme to provide solar power to the city of Glasgow. Their proposal involves the design of Solar Lily Pads which float in Glasgow’s River Clyde – soaking up the rays and powering the city! Firstly, it has to be said that this award winning scheme is very imaginative, pioneering and visually attractive – there is definitely potential for solar power generation in all our cities, and obviously we wholeheartedly condone any non fossil-fuel energy generation schemes.
Solar Lily Pads - River Clyde, Glasgow
However, to us native Glaswegians this scheme is utterly hilarious on many levels.
To begin, anyone who has spent this ’summer’ in Glasgow will tell you that this has been one of the wettest and darkest summers ever, in fact whatever the season, the weather in Glasgow is now almost a permanent Autumn. Now, our understanding of Solar Power is slightly limited, but we believe that a sufficient amount of sunlight is required in order to generate any meaningful levels of energy – would these panels provide an adequate return on investment for the dear green place?
Secondly, the record of Glasgow in the implemetation of large scale Architectural Schemes is not exactly gleaming. The Science Centre tower on the Clyde is constantly breaking down, the award winning ’squinty’ bridge lasted for a few months before one the cables snapped and had to be repaired - causing untold traffic chaos. This leads us to be sceptical that these solar pads could be introduced effectively.
Thirdly – what would any existing river traffic do? – There are still a number of boats that utilise the River Clyde, and some shipyards are still operational. What exactly is supposed to happen when a ship is launched, are they supposed to snake around the lily pads on the way out to sea? There was also talk of a River Taxi, taking passengers from the new riverside developments in the West End into the city centre-obviously with the pads in place, that would prove to be rather difficult.
One good thing however is that as they are situated in the middle of the River Clyde it would be very difficult for any of the local ne’er do wells to vandalise them (we have noted that the Sheriff Court in Glasgow is to be solar powered-oh, the irony!) – they would try, the ingenuity for ruining things is sometimes quite startling – although it would be a brave ned that ventured into those waters!
Please let us know if your home town or city has any similar proposals?
Al Gore has called for this years US presidential candidates to take up the green energy mantle. He has called for the US to generate all its electricity from 100% renewable sources within a decade. Whilst we applaud Gore’s ambition, and he certainly delivers a compelling argument, achieving this target has to be seen as an impossible task. Changing the huge industrial energy infrastructure within the US is an enormous undertaking on its own. Altering the attitudes of 250 million consumers, who are seeing rising energy bills amidst a credit crunch is on another level of difficulty altogether.
Will President Obama or McCain be brave enough to accept this challenge?
Following on from our previous post on the rise of green power, further evidence that big business is beginning to wake up to the benefits of Renewable Energy – Drinks company Diageo (Smirnoff, Guinness) has revealed plans to build a £65m bio-energy plant at its Cameronbridge Facility in Fife.
The UK government have finally announced the details of their commitment to renewable energy. Whether or not these targets are attainable is another matter. However, from our point of view, any focus at all on this issue is to be welcomed. If this can be the start of the green energy revolution then hopefully in the future we will power our homes with cheap electricity and gas from clean sources.
For the unititated TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a conference which brings together some of the world’s greatest minds and challenges them to deliver the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (no pressure then!). The best of these are available online. Obviously the theme most relevant to us at Greener Power is ‘A Greener Future’. There are a total of 28 talks here on green issues and climate change, including big hitters such as Al Gore and Norman Foster. Our favourites include Juan Enriquez on ‘growing energy’, Edward Burtynsky’s photography and Marjora Carter’s heartfelt speech on greening her neighbourhood in the South Bronx-inspiring stuff. It would be great if the movers and shakers in the UK Energy industry could be influenced by these. There is also a great blog on TED, which is regularly updated with the latest happenings in Science and Technology. We haven’t had the time to go through the entire site yet, are there any others we should be watching?
February 15, 2008 at 5:07 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized
I’m going to run off on a bit of a tangent from our normal theme and am looking to get some help about writing a blog post to do with the Environmental Impact of Bottled Water. On Monday it would appear that there will be a broadcast going out on BBC1s Panorama program about this subject.
From our core topic I’m really hoping to get pointed to some articles/blogs etc that contain information on the whole bottling process and how much energy could be saved by bottled water companies re-using their bottles.
If you have any info about the bottling, production, environmental impact or relating energy consumption used in the production of bottled spring and mineral water I would be really grateful to get some info.
The European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso revealed his plan of action to reduce the EU’s selling the plan as “the first economy for the low-carbon age”. Barroso wants the whole of the EU to reduce its green house gas by 20% by 2020.
Wind
What does this mean for Britain, well first things first we would need to decide on what methods we would use to help bring down the countries green house gas. Being an island the UK’s first choice of renewable energies would be wind. Business Secretary John Hutton announced that UK government wanted to see enough offshore wind farms to power the all UK homes. Obviously this will lead to a slight decline in the quality of our seaside views but think of the good it will do for the environment as a whole. There are already some companies offering wind powered electricity.
Tidal
Another option the UK has a tidal barrage1, a tidal barrage on the Severn estuary would contribute more that any of the other renewable sources. However this comes with a price, 15 billion pounds! Due to its massive price and the time it takes to set up, I fear that no matter how energy efficient a tidal barrage is, it will always be the last option. However, hydro electricity is being used by some energy providers in the UK.
Biofuel
You will find a brief run down of what biofuel are at wiki2. Basically it is a fuel made from living things or the waste that they produce. This sort of fuel was used in World War II but the cheap price of crude oil caused it to be knocked back to second place. The UK would make it’s biofuel from plants specifically grown for this purpose, e.g. maze. Although biofuels still release CO2, this is counter balanced by the plants absorbing CO2; though you still need to burn fuel to harvest and manufacture the biofuel. Even with the expenditure of fuel to harvest and manufacture biofuel, biofuel is believed to reduce green house gases by 30% – 40%. A downside to biofuel is that it may lead to entire areas of Britain’s countryside being turning into farms for biofuel crops. There are some companies just now who are offering biofuel as an alternative energy3 but not many at the moment.
So what does this mean
Well, I am not sure if you notice from reading this article but no matter what we do to try reduce our greenhouse gases one way or the other we will need to trade off our British landscape for our green goals. In addition to that we will need to pay financially, Barroso believes that it will cost everyone approximately £2.10 per week4 to reach the goals set by the EU, it will be up to the public to decide if that is a fair price for a richer environment.
