Posted by Greenbang on September 21st, 2007
By Patrick Smith
But do consumers care?
Howies, a Carnaby Street shop that sells eco-friendly clothing made from recycled and organic cotton, is soon to open.
Greenbang had a peek behind the scenes as refurbishment is underway. We were quite impressed.
All the wood is ‘wind-fallen’, which means it wasn’t chopped, but fell over on its own. (Did he fall or was he pushed 
)
Builders are also using something called ‘glaster’ – plaster made from recycled glass.
Another interesting feature is while Carnaby Street authorities insist shops keep window lights on at all times, Howies turns them off – but offers consumers the chance to have a late night peek by turning the lights on from outside for 30 seconds.
The builder behind the refurbishment, Matt Freeman, 38, said, “They’ve been strict about what we use.”
But do consumers care? An assistant at neighbouring store Muji said he hasn’t seen any change in consumers’s attitudes to green shopping recently, while a couple of shoppers we bumped into agreed.
“I don’t really know that much about green clothing,” said David Gonsalves a 19 year-old shopping on Carnaby St, although he just bought a pair of organic Levi jeans.
Posted by Greenbang on September 21st, 2007
By Caroline Tarbett
Westminster City Council has said it will not foot the bill to recycle waste from businesses.
An investigation into the eco-friendliness of Soho’s restaurants reveals while some are trying to recycle rubbish, the council is forcing them to pay their own way.
An emailed statement from Westminster City Council said:
“We do not expect our council tax payers to subsidise a commercial venture, so the service needs to be self funded. Commercial waste collection is open to private competition and businesses can choose from up to 30 private operators in Westminster alone.”
The council claims it collects 192,000 tonnes of commercial and domestic waste every year, of which just 27,000 tonnes goes to landfill (14.2per cent). Some 75.4 per cent is incinerated where it is turned into heat and power for London.
But restaurant owners say they have been involved in a long-running battle with the council to improve recycling capabilities for small businesses.
“Most businesses around here are desperate to do our bit for the environment but Westminster Council just isn’t helping,” says Jason Peters (pictured), manager of Frith Street restaurant Alistair Little, which currently pays to have its waste recycled. ‘The cost to get rubbish taken away is extremely high, which impacts heavily on our profit margin,” he adds.
“When we try to speak to the council, we’re told that there just isn’t any budget for businesses in this area and they’re focusing on residential customers. As restaurants produce the largest proportion of waste, it just doesn’t make sense.”
Daniel Megson, 25, assistant manager of the Boheme Kitchen Bar, adds while the restaurant tries to separate rubbish, the council is undoing all the good work: “We have several colour-coded bins which help us to separate everything but the council just puts it all together again.”
Posted by Greenbang on September 21st, 2007
Greenbang has a few pals helping blog about the Soho green scene today.
They’ll be going out onto the streets to interview folk in London’s most cosmopolitan area.
Meet the Friday crew and the topics they are covering:
Chevaan - Technology
Helen - Transport
Alexandra – Energy
Lauren - Consumer
Roberta – Design and innovation
Patrick - Sustainability
Caroline – Resourcing and recycling
Posted by Yan Yan on September 20th, 2007
Greenbang will confess to be somewhat partial to the stuff pictured on the left (although we wish it could be just a little bit cheaper). But the clever folks at innocent have now come up with another reason to buy their stuff: they’ll plant a tree for every carton you buy.
For every innocent smoothie carton sold in leading supermarkets, innocent will get a tree planted in one of Carbon Clear’s dedicated reforestation projects. All you have to do is log on and register your unique code, and the rest will be taken care of for you.
It’s that simple, what a great idea. Check out their tree planting site here: 19,189 trees planted so far, and counting.
In fact, we’re off to go pick one up right now.
Posted by Greenbang on September 20th, 2007
CHINA WATCH
Converting farmland into forest used to be a basic state policy in China, but the recently climbing price of pork and other food has made people realized that they need farmland more than forest at the moment.
herefore, to ensure the country’s food supply, China suspended its plan to convert 1.07 million square kilometres of farmland into forest, Xinhua news agency said.
Unsure if this can stop the sky rocketing price of food, it seems a drinking-poison-to-quench-thirst method to Greenbang.
China said it would plant trees on 1.3 square kilometres of farmland from 2006 to 2010, but the plan has to be suspended due to an 18.2 percent leap in the cost of food which propelled the country’s annual consumer price inflation to 6.5 percent in August, the fastest pace in nearly 11 years.
Posted by Greenbang on September 20th, 2007
One of Greenbang’s writers had an article in the FT yesterday that looked at environmental careers in IT.
It found while IT does account for a lot of energy and waste, there aren’t so many eco jobs in IT itself, but over the business as a whole.
Research from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) echoes this. The study found that while companies are in tune with basic recycling and disposal of IT equipment, they had a relatively low level of awareness when it came to energy efficiency – 42 per cent of IT departments fail to monitor energy usage and a further 9 per cent were unsure.
“We’ve not seen evidence of many companies appointing a dedicated environment [specialist] within the IT function,” says an EIU representative.
“Some 56 per cent of firms do have a director responsible for energy and environmental issues, and in 10 per cent of those it is actually the IT director, so there clearly are some. But for most, it’s not there yet.
“Considering that companies used to have a ‘director of power’ at the start of the last century, when electricity was still a new addition to the workplace, it would be ironic if firms started to appoint someone to manage their energy consumption. But it’s hard to say if a specific role is coming out of all this [in IT]. It seems that more firms are appointing someone to consider the environmental and energy impact.”
Posted by Yan Yan on September 20th, 2007
The Ukraine, Azerbaijan, India, Peru (pictured here, credit to AP for the photo) and a bunch of others are named and shamed in a new list of the most polluted places in the world.
Done by the Blacksmith Institute, you can find out more about these depressing places in this feature in National Geographic.
In the location pictured here, for example, a metal smelter has been running for 85 years, leading to dangerously high blood lead levels in nearly all the local children–and lung ailments, acid rain, premature deaths and other nastiness is all very prevalent.
The list runs as follows (see them mapped out here; where not to go on holiday): Sumgayit, Azerbaijan; Linfen, China; Sukinda, India; Vapin, India; La Oroya, Peru; Dzerzhinsk, Russia; Noril’sk, Russia; Chernobyl, Ukraine; Kabwe, Russia; (Tianying, China, is not pictured.)
Posted by Greenbang on September 20th, 2007
CHINA WATCH
This is the second largest carbon deal in China this year, trading a total amount of two million carbon emission credits:
GD Power Development Co Ltd, a subsidiary of China Guodian Corporation, one of China’s major energy companies has signed agreements with Scottish and Southern Energy plc (”SSE”) to develop the four new wind farms in northeast China.
SE Energy Supply will purchase around two million Carbon Emissions Reduction Certificates (CERs) for five years starting from 2008, according to SSE’s press release yesterday.
China’s largest carbon credit trade was with France earlier this year, as Greenbang reported that France has bought 3.6 million tons of carbon dioxide discharge capacity from China.
The price of one ton of carbon emittion is $11, much cheaper compared to $20 or $30 in the European market, that’s why foreign companies and organizations trade carbon with China, Doctor Shen Yiyang from the United Nations Development Programme said, cited by Hexun Website.
Under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) established under Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol, countries - and therefore companies - can meet their carbon emission reduction targets by purchasing CERS from CDM-approved carbon reduction projects in the developing world. This is the first time that SSE has directly acquired primary CERs from a project.
Each of the four wind farms is expected to have an installed capacity of around 50MW and will displace carbon emissions from coal-fired power stations in the region, leading to around two million tonnes of carbon dioxide being avoided. The construction of the first of the wind farms, GD Xingcheng Haibin is already under way and the last of them is expected to be commissioned during 2008.
Posted by Greenbang on September 20th, 2007
CHINA WATCH The price of food in China is unbearably high at the moment, so making corn into energy is no longer a good idea. What about the leftover stalks from crops?
China’s eleventh five-year plan encourages the development of bio-electricity plants to turn stalks into energy. The cost of turning the stuff into one ton of ethanol is 1000 yuan (about $128) lower than the same ethanol made by foodstuff, according to people.com [Chinese language link].
This is a smart move that will bring at least three benefits: 1) reducing a large amount of pollutant emissions because Chinese farmers have the habit of burning stalks after harvests, 2) reducing consumption of other energy resources, as stalks can be turn into energy, and 3) increasing farmers’ incomes from selling stalks, which otherwise would have been burnt (subsequently polluting the air).
As to the supporting technology, China made breakthrough in turning stalk into biofuel in 2006. Professor Guo Qingxiang, an expert who had worked in this project, said that more than 700 million tons of stalk and chaff are left over from harvest every year; traditionally they were simply burnt.
Posted by Yan Yan on September 20th, 2007
Greenbang has been, well, banging the drum for some time that going green doesn’t need to wipe out the bottom line. For many organisations, it’s a chance to get a double win: a lower impact on the environment, with a pick up on profits.
BusinessWeek has profiled several firms that are proving this in reality, from Philips (its lighting projects in London pictured here) to Canon, check them all out here.
Can pursuing green business practices have positive results on the bottom line? The organizers of the 2007 Sustainable Business 20 award think so. This annual award goes to companies that pursue environmentally sensitive goals while simultaneously improving their financial performance.
