Somerset produces less waste

My son Monty at Dimmer landfill site in Somerset

Somerset has the lowest amount of waste going to landfill per head in the UK – an average of between 160kg and 165kg per head. This is significantly less than the UK target for 2020, which is 225kg per head. And Somerset also heads the league table on recycling.

One of the reasons for this is that they’ve introduced weekly collection of recycled waste and bi-weekly for the rest. When this happened in my area (South Somerset) it radically changed my habits – and it appears I’m not alone. Another thing that’s makes a big difference is the size of wheely bins – the bigger the bin, the more people chuck away.

I gave a key note presentation at a workshop organised by the Somerset Waste Partnership, who are responsible for waste throughout the county. My speech highlighted some of the public misperceptions about waste, packaging and plastic bags. I also illustrated the shocking problem that we have in what's known as WEEE waste. This rather cute acronym stands for ' Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment'.

When I mentioned the problem of WEEE waste at a conference the other day, I was told that this country is now meeting recycling targets for the sector. Unfortunately, I've discovered that the system doesn't stand up to much scrutiny in terms of making the most of the valuable resources used by the industry. Did you know for example that 90% of computers chucked away have a re-sale value but only half are actually re-used.?

I was sent a podcast link last week all about recycling electronic waste and how it's done. It was absolutely horrendous. Huge clunky chains smashing up equipment and reducing the valuable parts to scrap. That scrap is eventually sorted and some sort of recycling is done. But it could be so much better. When you think that abut 1,173 tonnes of stuff is dug out of the ground to retrieve a tonne of copper, surely we should be retrieving every ounce we can find of that material - not just smashing it to bits and creating rubble.

Also, plastics waste from computers and other electronics count as recycled when they're shipped off to China. I have no objection to sending waste to China for recycling per se, but I do think that we need to make sure that it is actually recycled. And what's more that it's turned into something useful. There's not much point to recycling if it doesn't mean reducing demand for raw materials or saving energy.

Another big issue raised at the Somerset workshop was about food waste. Apparently, the average household in the UK chucks away the equivalent to £480 worth of edible food in a year. And from an environmental point of view this is disastrous. All the energy, land and resources used to grow crops is utterly wasted if it just ends up on the rubbish heap. And, for every tonne of food waste produced 4.5 tonnes of carbon are emitted into the atmosphere.

Luckily land fill taxes are rising exponentially over the next few years. This means there's more and more incentive for local authorities to come up with other ideas about what to do. But one of the problems is to make sure that they're actually targetting the waste materials that have the biggest environmental impact, rather than those that are heaviest. For example, if we put all our efforts into glass bottles or even newspapers, we could be missing other materials, where the potential for reducing carbon emissions is far greater.

Public concern over packaging can also lead to some distorted priorities. You may be surprised to learn that only 3% of everything thrown into landfill sites is actually packaging. We may need to shift our focus to the building industry, for example, which is a hugely wasteful.

There's so much more we could and should be doing to reduce demand for raw materials coming into the system and the amount of waste coming out. We must make sure that what we maximise the efficiency of what we do by giving signficant incentives for good practice and swingeing penalties for bad.

And whilst we're at it, surely the government should be setting 2020 targets for waste reduction, significantly lower than what is readily achievable today? Somerset may be leading the way but we don't want to be quite so far ahead of the pack!

We need more Bedzeds

Bedzed - Beddington Zero Energy Design

William Steel, Generation Green Think Tank member

Did you know that cats give off about 10 watts of heat and dogs about 15 watts. I suspect that a friend of mine with a Great Dane gets as much heat from his as a human though - roughly 100 watts. I was told this whilst being shown round Bedzed - Beddington Zero Energy Design Building.

This green apartment complex on the outskirts of London makes the most of heat from a variety of sources. The most impressive thing is that none of the flats actually have radiators - they're not needed. The building is very well insulated, they're designed to optimise heat from the sun and they also make the most of body heat too! One of the ways they do this is by creating a building that's used for both residential and office space. This means there are people around all the time - keeping the space warm.

There are 99 flats in total - and there are only three boilers servicing all of them. These are used for hot water. But it means that each dwelling is using about 83% less gas than people living in neighbouring properties. And 40% less electricity.

They're also efficient in their water use. The average person in the UK uses roughly 153 litres of water per day but at Bedzed it's nearly half that. However, I learnt that in the US the average is 460 litres of water a day per head and in Las Vegas it's a staggering 1300 litres! And Las Vegas is a desert area.

One of the ways they save on water is by putting bubbles in it. This makes the spray from taps look like there's a lot of volume, when actually, there's not very much. Low flush loos also play a part.

This was my second visit to Bedzed - the first was about a year after it started in 2003. This time I came with about 20 school children as part of the British Gas Generation Green Think Tank, that I am leading. It is our third visit to a 'green' project. The first was to Closed Loop Recycling in Dagenham, where they recycle plastic bottles. The second was the Met Office in Exeter, where the children learnt something about the science of climate change.

Our next trip will be to the Houses of Parliament, to present the children's policy ideas. The plan is to invite MPs, including the Prime Minister, to hear what they have to say. And to understand that there are lots of children who are concerned about their future and want to do something about it.

The great thing about Bedzed was that it was a real illustration of how attractive green living can be. None of the children would have preferred to live in the neighbouring buildings - a bog-standard development, with no green rooves, electric cars or community living. And Bedzed research showed that people living there generally knew about 20 of their neighbours. The equivalent figure for the UK is 3 neighbours.

You can see from the photos that the roof top cowls are very striking. They move with the wind and effectively ventilate the building, so the super thick insulation doesn't make it too stuffy.

It's a great pity there aren't more buildings like this. Having sat on the District Council in my area I think there's not nearly enough incentive to go this route. We need more innovation and green thinking - remembering that we're building in problems or solutions for many years ahead. If builders can't do it they shouldn't be given planning permission - perhaps that's one of the messages the children will be taking to Government.

Recycling plastic mountains

Omer Kutluoglu - Plastics recycling entrepreneur

In the UK we throw away mountains of plastic waste and use lots of plywood. Apart from a small amount of plastic bottles and an even smaller number of plastic bags, pretty well all the rest of our plastic debris is discarded, never to be used again. Omer Kutluoglu, a half-Turkish entrepreneur and INSEAD graduate, thinks this is ludicrous. One of his previous businesses was selling small cheap electronics – phones, MPG players and similar – many of which are bought as disposable items.

I visited Omer at the site of his new factory near Luton. His business, 2k Manufacturing is setting up to start recycling large quantities of mixed plastic, including electronic waste, into a product called Eco Sheet.

The brilliant thing about this process is that it can take mixed plastic from pretty well any source and even contaminated material – bits of paper and metal for example don’t cause a problem. This avoids a huge amount of sorting and grading, which is a significant part of most recycling processes. It also means that the volume of raw material for the process is almost infinite and it will be diverted from the waste stream.

There are lots of products that could use Eco Sheet but 2k have decided to focus on replacing plywood for the building trade and signage industry, which gets through between 20 and 25 million 8ft by 4ft sheets every year. This is virgin wood – some of it from rainforest areas. The plywood boards, used as fascia for building sites are often discarded after a single use – they are damaged by getting wet. But the Eco Sheets are impermeable to water and can be used again and again. They are also lighter, don’t have splinters and are cost competitive.

The plant in Luton is just gearing up but, not surprisingly, demand from the building industry is high – it looks likely to exceed supply as soon as the product becomes available. Other plants are planned around the country. My view is that the sooner they’re up and running the better. The building trade is currently the most wasteful industry on the planet. Anything we can do to lessen that has to be a good thing.

Amsterdam Declaration - Club of Rome Conference

Club of Rome conference delegates

Gorbachev looking a bit grim, arriving at Club of Rome conference

Gorbachev was the most high profile speaker but others on the platform included the former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers, a former Chilean President, as well as leading lights from the environmental world, such as Jim Hansen, Gunter Pauli, Bill McDonough, Michael Braungart and Ernst von Weizsacker. There were also contributions from business including Philips Electronics, Shell and Triodos Bank.

The two day conference in Amsterdam was organised by the Club of Rome, famous for its Limits to Growth Report in the early 1970s. Worryingly, the over-riding theme was that their concerns and predictions about the depletion of the world’s natural resources were proving to be rather accurate. And that the threats from climate change would shortly be irreversible unless there was a very dramatic change in the world’s response. The culminated with a document called the Amsterdam Declaration. The plan was to present this to the Copenhagen Summit in December as further reinforcement to some significant global commitments.

In my view there were three major conclusions from this conference, as follows:"

1. The world needs to move away from GDP as a measurement for wealth, so that prosperity is not directly linked to depletion of resources.

2. The target for reduction in greenhouse gases should be no more than 350 ppm (parts per million) rather than 450 ppm, if we are to avoid runaway climate change.

3. Developed countries should commit to building no new coal-fired power stations and developing countries, including China should have clear deadlines for phasing them out.

He heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York but is best known for his testimony on climate change to the congressional committees in the 1980s, that helped raise broad awareness of global warming issues. As well as explaining some of the tipping points for climate change he told the conference that “the most essential thing is to put a price on carbon emissions”. His idea was that the US, China and Europe should ramp up the costs of carbon emissions and invest revenue in preventing climate change. Developing countries, exporting carbon intensive products or services, would also have to pay, but the money would be given back to them to pay for women’s education, re-afforestation and other important initiatives.

Gorbachev summed up his views by saying that “This is an emergency – the planet is in a perilous and disastrous state.” And that we need “political will at the highest levels to commit to industrialised countries leading the reduction in emissions”. He also pointed out that the economy was not undermined by environmental concerns but by the ‘glorification of consumerism”.

The Dutch Minister for the Environment, Jacqueline Cramer, made her commitment clear. Her message for the Copenhagen summit was that "We have to turn the Age of Stupid into the Age of Wisdom”. I hope that she’s not alone in pressing for action and innovation. My fear is that she may be overwhelmed by those trying to put the brakes on and explaining why any commitments should be made by someone else.

As well as attending this conference, which I found very motivating, I spent 4 days in Amsterdam with my eldest son Connor and my mother. We went on a canal cruise and did a lot of walking around the city, crossing over quite a few of the 1281 bridges that are an integral part of the city – and we stayed on a barge.

My mother, Minker with my son Connor and me in Amsterdam