Jurdy's office

Eco-towns are a red herring, says federation of master builders

Another press release on these 15 eco-towns. New homes in every village, town, and city built to a high quality and sensitive to the local environment, would offer a more sustainable long term approach to our housing needs than the Government’s top down housing policy which has been dressed

Locals will fail to stop plans for Eco Towns

This from law firm LG… Fierce opposition from local campaigners to the Government’s proposals for Eco Towns in 15 shortlisted locations may delay the timetable but will almost certainly fail to stop the process, according to planning experts at LG, a leading business law firm. “There may well be

15 UK eco-towns nominated

All day long I’ve been getting phone calls about this eco-towns thing – mainly from PRs who want to get their clients coverage. So it’s not really irrate people protesting about this, rather people who want coverage in the blogosphere. It’s funny, but the more we crack on

Jurdy's office

EU faces biodiesel bother

The EU is facing pressure to close a loop in trading laws that allows nugget-heads to undermine the European biofuel industry. Some imported US biofuel, known as B99 – a diesel blend that contains 99 per cent biodiesel and one per cent petroleum diesel – is exploiting the US B99 subsidy. Splash-and-dash

Are emissions from cow farts the farmer's fault?

Here’s a bit of research about the break-down of carbon footprints per employee. A report from BASE suggests that the greenhouse-gas footprint of the ’employee’ is way higher than that of the ‘individual’ – basically because the way you do the sums is different. Base used all official statistics to

Water-supply woes to worsen

Forbes had this headline for the story: “JPMorgan: Water Supply a Key Issue” You don’t say. You might even think there could be a wave of fear, uncertainty and doubt marketing on the way with all this climate change la-de-da. And this just at a time when JP Morgan

Jurdy's office

Video: Kite-powered ships in action

We mentioned the SkySails system a few months ago. Hank at EcoGeek picked up on this video of the kite-powered ships in action. (Ta Hank). He says: Per square foot of sail, it’s 3x more effective than traditional sails. It does not require extensive training to deal with, and

Standard Chartered's 2007 eco claims

Greenbang has found this wicked little site called ReportAlert. Today it published details of Standard Chartered’s 2007 sustainability report. The company claims to have: Empowering 1.2 million people in Asia and Africa, by disbursing microfinance loans worth US$170m through 41 partners in 13 countries, Committing $8-10bn to

Job alert: Head of environment and sustainability

For the London Borough of Croydon. Oooh. Salary: £48,939 – £50,784 Details on the Guardian’s website.