STALL EVENT DAY FOR CLIMATE CHANGE CENTRE READING 23/05/14‏

News Desk

Climate Change Centre Reading
STALL EVENT DAY FOR CLIMATE CHANGE CENTRE READING

Climate Change Centre Reading wants to advance and plan the education of the public on the subject of climate change and reach long term sustainability. We hope a new show room in town centre would be a great source of inspiration for new school projects, business and ours. Placemaking can be an excellent entry point to dealing with climate change. Looking to unlock Reading’s green potential – Driving Readings bid for the 2017 European Green Capital Award.

Where in the high street Reading on the 23rd of May

Please see our press release link here: http://media1.tvb-climatechallenge.org.uk/2014/05/Press-Release_Climate-Change-Centre-Reading33.pdf

Press-release_CCCRdg_180613

Togethernessship – All about Placemaking to be truly inclusive and Safeguarding the future; Habitat III in 2016, which will have the overall aim of contributing to a New Urban / Rural Agenda designed for people and places.
“Consider Climate Change in every action”~Climate Change Centre Reading

First ever global assessment of best practices in green growth reveals pathways for success – Regions 20

First ever global assessment of best practices in green growth reveals pathways for success

Category: News

Published on Tuesday, 11 March 2014

R20 is pleased to announce the release of the summary of key findings from the Green Growth Best Practice (GGBP) book, ahead of its full release in June 2014. This summary report was unveiled at the 1st Global Conference on Partnership for Action on Green Economy (PAGE) in Dubai earlier this month.

The Green Growth Best Practice book is the result of an initiative led by the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), and was written by 75 authors in the field of green growth from a variety of organizations, including R20.

Lead authors Christophe Nuttall (R20’s Executive Director) and Tadashi Matsumoto (OECD Senior Policy Analyst), wrote the chapter on National and Subnational Integration that explores approaches to advancing green growth through coordinated national and subnational programs and across government. Several co-authors contributed to this chapter, including Denise Welch (R20’s Director of Research & Technical Initiatives).

By analyzing around 60 specific government programs from different countries and regions around the world, the GGBP makes recommendations for effective green growth approaches, based on the experience of early movers, and provides practical guidance for national and subnational policy planning.

Green growth strategies play vital roles in unlocking synergies between economic growth, environmental protection and poverty reduction, and enabling a transition to an inclusive green economy.

The Synthesis of Key Findings elaborates on nine key actions that enable effective green growth policy:

·      Use well-designed planning and coordination processes;

·      Establish clear visions, targets, and baselines;

·      Undertake robust analysis and balanced communication of the benefits of green growth;

·      Prioritize options and develop credible pathways towards targets;

·      Design policies to address multiple goals and respond to specific market failures;

·      Design public finance instruments to overcome barriers and mobilize private investment;

·      Tap the power of public-private collaboration;

·      Pursue mutually reinforcing action across all levels of government;

·      Build and maintain strong monitoring and evaluation systems.

The report and supporting case studies will also be available in the form of an online “living handbook,” which will feature an interactive interface.

Read the Synthesis of Key Findings here.

via First ever global assessment of best practices in green growth reveals pathways for success – Regions 20.

Glass tiles make the roof for solar panels

Glass tiles make the roof for solar panels

A new technology that allows sunlight to heat up the house completely silently, with zero carbon and with minimal running costs are now being developed. With the help of KTH researcher Peter Kjaerboe and many others. This is through the use of glass tiles on the roof, which allows light which can be used as energy to pass through to the fabric layers below.

Glass tiles are the same as conventional roof tiles, except the glass passes light to the fabric substrate.As a result When light passes through the glass and hits the fabric it is converted into heat.The heated air can then either heat the house directly or transferred to the liquid-heat, says Peter Kjaerboe.

The system can be integrated with other energy systems such as district heating, geothermal heating, heat pump, pellet, wood, oil or electric boiler.

Climate Pact member SolTech Energy markets solar power solution, whose life expectancy is estimated to be at least 40 years.

soltech

Read more here .

Why can´t communities in the U.K. adapt from a Western unsustainable lifestyle to a ‘zero waste’ lifestyle?!

A World Without Landfills? It’s Closer than You Think | Nation of Change

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There is a growing global movement to significantly reduce the amount of trash we produce as communities, cities, countries and even regions. It’s called the zero-waste movement, and it received a major boost this week as two of its leaders were awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.

Nohra Padilla and Rossano Ercolini are two of the winners of this year’s Goldman Prize, which awards $150,000 to each of six grassroots environmentalists who have achieved great impact, often against great odds. On the surface, Padilla and Ercolini seem to have little in common. Padilla is a grassroots recycler—also known as a waste picker—from the embattled city of Bogotá, Colombia. Ercolini is an elementary school teacher from the rustic farmlands of Capannori, Italy.

Though their experiences are different, they share a common cause: organizing to reduce the amount of trash—everything from cans and bottles to cell phones and apple cores—that ends up buried in landfills or burned in incinerators.

What is zero waste?

Here in the United States zero waste is often thought of as a lifestyle choice, if it’s thought of at all. Blogs like Zero Waste Home and The Clean Bin Project attract a readership of thousands through tips on how to buy less, reuse more, and recycle and compost in the home. The popularity of these projects, along with the success of Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff, show a growing interest in reducing what we throw into dumpsters.

Padilla and Ercolini’s stories show that zero waste is not only a personal choice, but also an organized system that works at multiple levels including the community, municipality, nation, and region. Zero waste systems include:

composting, recycling, reuse, and education on how to separate materials into these categories;

door-to-door collection of recyclable and compostable stuff; swap meets, flea markets or freecycle websites to exchange reuseable goods and encourage people to buy less;

policy change, including bans on incineration and single-use plastic bags, and subsidies and incentives for recycling;

regulation of corporations to require them to buy back and recycle their products once they are used by consumers (glass soda bottles and tires are examples of products subject to this regulation in some countries).

Zero waste systems are designed with the goal of eliminating the practice of sending trash to landfills and incinerators. Not only is this possible, it’s already beginning to happen. Ercolini’s hometown of Capannori, Italy, has already achieved 82 percent recycling and reuse and is on track to bring that figure to 100 percent by 2020.

Taking on Europe’s incineration industry

Rossano Ercolini is an elementary school teacher. He began organizing against incinerators in the 1970s, when he learned of a plan to build one in Capannori. Concerned for the health of his students, Ercolini began a campaign to educate his community on the dangers of incineration, including how the burning of garbage releases particulates linked to asthma and other respiratory problems.

Over the course of the next 30 years, Ercolini led a David-versus-Goliath struggle, with education as his slingshot. In the 1990s, waste incineration was embraced by the Italian government as well as by big environmental organizations, all of whom bought into the premise that it was a safe and effective technology. Big business and the mafia also supported incineration because of the 20- to 30-year lucrative contracts and large government investments it involved.

The conjunction of economic and political interests behind incineration left citizens alone, not only to fight against incineration but also to develop sustainable alternatives. Ercolini worked for several years as a grassroots educator, inviting scientists and waste experts to give workshops to residents on the health effects of incineration and potential alternatives.

As a result, when the residents of Capannori succeeded in defeating the incinerator proposal, they also had gained the knowledge necessary to develop a better way of handling garbage. Ercolini himself was tapped to lead a local, publicly owned waste management company and began implementing a door-to-door waste collection system that maximized the quantity and quality of the recyclable materials recovered.

Soon after, Capannori became the first Italian municipality to declare a zero waste goal for 2020. Since then, Ercolini has helped to defeat 50 proposed incinerators and has also helped the zero waste movement to spread across Italy. Thanks to the Italian network Legge Rifiuti Zero, or the Zero Waste Alliance, and with the support of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, there are now 117 zero waste municipalities in Italy, with a population of about 3 million people.

“Incineration is no longer wanted or needed in these areas,” Ercolini says. “Instead, they have established comprehensive recycling and composting systems guided by zero waste goals. This has helped improve community health and has sparked strong collaborations between communities and local governments.”

Grassroots recyclers unite

Nohra Padilla is a third generation recycler. For decades her family has survived by salvaging plastic bottles, aluminum cans, paper scraps, and the like from dumps, curbside trash cans, and collection centers. They made a living by reselling these materials to junk shops and also to businesses, which used them as raw material to create new products ranging from blue jeans to paper.

In the 1980s, Padilla began organizing her fellow recycling workers, creating the first grassroots recycler cooperative in Bogotá. Since then she has helped to form the Asociación de Recicladores de Bogotá, or Bogotá Recyclers Association, where she now serves as executive director. The association includes 24 cooperatives representing 3,000 people. She also played an important role in forming and leading Colombia’s National Recyclers Association.

“Grassroots recycling is a key component of a zero waste system,” Padilla says. Through their network of cooperatives, grassroots recyclers in Bogotá recover 20 to 25 percent of all material thrown away by city residents. This amounts to about 100 times more recyclable material than is collected by the city’s large private recycling companies.

In March the association won a milestone victory: Grassroots recyclers are now city employees. They will be paid $48 per ton of material they deliver to collection centers, and will be eligible for government pensions and health coverage.

“After years of battling for recognition from the Bogotá government, we will finally be treated as dignified workers and paid just like any large company would be,” Padilla says. “I believe this is a victory that can be replicated across Latin America.”

Padilla has achieved this success in the face of powerful political opponents, a violent environment for worker organizing, and climate subsidies that cut recyclers out of the picture. In 2009, for example, the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism awarded carbon credits to the Doña Juana landfill gas project. This project threatened the livelihoods of Bogotá’s 21,000 informal recyclers by making it more profitable to landfill waste than to recycle it, and by limiting access to recyclable materials.

Padilla and the Grassroots Recyclers Association worked to mitigate the impact of the project, but faced many challenges in making sure that their community benefits agreement was implemented. In contrast to large landfills like Doña Juana, Padilla and the association have created infrastructure to recycle waste instead of bury it. They raised nearly two million dollars, about 75 percent from outside funds and 25 percent co-financed by the association, to build the biggest grassroots-run recycling center in Latin America.

A FUTURE WITHOUT LANDFILLS

The stories of these two organizers show how zero waste movements from around the world share common problems and goals, as well as a need to confront powerful opponents with a vested interest in the business of trash.

Both stories also demonstrate the potential of zero waste organizing to bring people together across issues and sectors. For example, Ercolini has organized at the intersection of food sovereignty and trash reduction, advocating for a “Zero Miles, Zero Waste” approach to promoting local food. Meanwhile, Padilla has shown how zero waste approaches, and recycling in particular, can incorporate previously excluded workers into unionized labor, with a clear agenda to reduce trash and carbon emissions.

Padilla and Ercolini’s work has created a model for building viable zero waste alternatives to landfills and incinerators. The struggles of the Colombian recyclers’ movement, and the Bogotá Recyclers Association in particular, serve as an inspiration to recyclers throughout Latin America and beyond.

Meanwhile, the example of the Zero Waste network in Italy is being copied in many other places in Europe, decreasing the popularity of and need for incineration and sparking the creation of a continent-wide organization that advocates for zero waste.

 

via A World Without Landfills? It’s Closer than You Think | NationofChange.

UK´s first Olympic legacy tennis courts open in East Park Farm

‘Combating Climate Change through Placemaking’

This is one way to interpret and understand how a local tennis club used Placemaking guidelines when the public courts were designed to be a part of “Future of Places“. Healty creative activities endorse value.

Togethernessship – All about Placemaking to be truly inclusive and Safeguarding the future;

Habitat III in 2016, which will have the overall aim of contributing to a New Urban / Rural Agenda designed for people and places.

Placemaking can be an excellent entry point to dealing with climate change.

The Sonning Parish Magazine
The-Parish-Magazine

The Parish Magazine

“Placemaking is a multi-faceted approach to the planning, design and management of public spaces. Placemaking capitalizes on a local community’s assets, inspiration, and potential, ultimately creating good public spaces that promote people’s health, happiness, and well being. Placemaking is both a process and a philosophy.”

Source: Wikipedia

5 ways for companies to improve their energy efficiency

The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA) has come out with report on ” An energy efficient Sweden ” , which proposes ways to improve their environmental performance . The advice is aimed at both the public and politicians. It emphasizes the practical work of improving energy efficiency in Sweden is worse than it should be, then we have good conditions for such work.

For businesses , the following advice:

Show leadership, set goals and follow up . Without management support and follow-up are not prioritized energy efficiency. Sufficient resources in terms of time and qualified staff to work in a structured and systematic manner absent.

Knowledgeable and dedicated employees needed. To succeed in the practical implementation needed people in your own organization who have knowledge and expertise on both energy use and operational processes and systems.

Create structure and systematize . Management often fulfill a vital function in many companies to structure and systematize the work on energy efficiency and maintain management’s commitment and priority.

Act proactively and dismissal capital. Often a certain energy efficiency is achieved without large investments. As the question made ??visible and prioritized investment funds can be allocated as necessary to ensure profitable operations are carried out. To consider investing in a life cycle perspective is necessary .

Creating sustainable vision for the future and look beyond their own operations. A company’s vision for the future should also include energy use. Energy efficiency is created not only in their own operations. To focus on how products and services can help increase energy efficiency in the next stage is equally important.

Will Reading be the European Green Capital 2016?

Rdg CAN!:

– Have a well-established record of achieving high environmental objectives.

– Commit to ambitious goals for future environmental improvement and sustainable development.

– Inspire other cities through new ideas, best practices and experiences.

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Will your city be the European Green Capital 2016? The Commission has launched its search for the 2016 European Green Capital. The European Green Capital Award recognises cities that are at the forefront of environmentally-friendly urban living. The..

Read more here: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-585_en.htm?goback=%2Egna_4704185%2Egde_4704185_member_252057251#%21

Reading 2050: Revealing Reading’s Potential

Following our inaugural Reading 2050 networking event for young property professionals, this report examines Reading’s standing in the UK, areas where the town could be improved and ideas for development going forward.

Barton Willmore have compiled thoughts and ideas from the June networking event alongside some interesting statistics on Reading in the Reading 2050 Introductory Report.

READING2050 REVEALING READING´S POTENTIAL
READING2050
REVEALING READING´S POTENTIAL

You can download the report here: http://www.bartonwillmore.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GA-Reading-research-doc-version-3D-low-res.pdf

 

Empire State Building

Future Research

After nine months of extensively studying and evaluating the Empire State Building, the project team has discovered several research topics that could help accelerate greater carbon savings across the U.S. and global existing commercial building stock.

The project team realizes many other groups and projects are attempting to address similar issues. To comment on your work in these areas, please email info@esbnyc.com, and we will update the research site accordingly.

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via Visit > Sustainability & Energy Efficiency > Process: Future Research | Empire State Building.

Fracking in Sussex – What is Fracking?

Fracking in Sussex – What is Fracking?

@DECCgovuk “Just don´t believe what you read on the Internet”~Francis Egan was not right. Information is Knowledge STOP F-g IT’S OIL OVER #Balcombe
Source BBC

Write to your MP
Write to your local councillor

Pls show a little support to the Community Villagers #Balcombe over the weekend (majority voted against fracking in the BPC).

Pls RT facebook-Climate Change Centre Reading (CCCRdg) Pls “Like” us by visiting our new page https://www.facebook.com/CCCRdg  #Balcombe #fracking