Sustainable Bristol

Networks

A great strength of the Bristol city-region is the huge number of local organisations who are working together on a wide range of urban sustainability projects – from local government authorities; through business and non-profit organisations; to grassroot community groups and individuals.

Celebrating Sustainable City Living

by Peter Madden

10 June 2011

Today is the first day of Bristol’s newest festival – Good Living Week - celebrating sustainable city living in the UK’s green capital.

Friday is all about green jobs. The Mayor of Hannover is in Bristol with a trade delegation for a Sustainable Energy Summit between the two cities looking at low carbon retrofit of buildings, deployment of solar photo voltaic cells, neighbourhood district heating systems and emerging wind energy technologies.

But Good Living Week has something on for everyone between now and 19th June. Here’s an article about the whole Festival by Peter Madden, Forum for the Future’s Chief Executive, that appeared this week in his monthly ‘Planet Bristol’ column in the Bristol Evening Post -

Bristol is celebrating Good Living Week, actually ten days of exciting events, talks and practical demonstrations to inspire you to live and work more sustainably.

This is a new festival, built around some well established events such as Bristol’s Biggest Bike Ride and the Festival of Nature, and will also have lots of smaller-scale things going on, giving visitors an opportunity to hear from, talk to, and join in with some of the hundreds of local projects that make Bristol the premier place for experiments in greener living.

My organisation, Forum for the Future, has helped pull all this together. And we’ll be running two particular strands, both of which are free. On Saturday 11^th June, you can learn about growing your own fruit and veg with the ‘Get Growing Trail’. Bristol’s vegetable growers are opening their community plots and garden gates for a special open day of tours, advice and family fun. There will be more than 20 community gardens, allotments and orchards across the city to visit.

Then, on the weekend of 18/19 June, on the harbourside, we’re helping run a Contemporary Sustainable Living Show. Set in the popular Festival of Nature, we wanted to give you a place where you could see a range of cool eco-goodies that help you live a greener lifestyle. So come on down and get great ideas and inspiration for your own home. Straight from Olympia in London, this will be the first large scale show of its kind in the Southwest.

Assuming Good Living Week is a success, we want to run it much bigger and better in 2012. Ideally, we’d like it to be for sustainability what the Edinburgh Festival is for theatre, comedy and the arts. Too many environmental events I go to leave me depressed and de-energised. I’d love to have a week where people could get fired-up by all the great stuff going on in our city, and have an opportunity to sample the best in green ideas, products and culture from across the world.

I know Bristol has some great festivals already. But there are not many that people actually travel to come to, that fill our hotels and restaurants and bring new jobs to the city. Nor do we have many festivals that are known nationally – or indeed internationally.

If Edinburgh, Cheltenham and Oxford can run festivals like this, why not Bristol?

My ambition is for us to run a green festival of international renown, that supports our economy, that brings new people and businesses here to see what we are doing, and that builds the reputation of Bristol as the leading city in the UK for sustainable living.

---

Sustainable Melbourne talk resilience with Bristol

by Paul Rainger

03 June 2011

A leading thinker on urban sustainability, Professor Chris Ryan, who is Director of the Eco-Innovation Lab at the University of Melbourne, is teaming up with Forum for the Future to give public talk on resilient cities in Bristol on Monday 6th June.

Chris also runs the ‘Sustainable Melbourne’ initiative which is twinned with Forum for the Future‘s Sustainable Bristol programme via the international Sustianable Cities Network. Prof Ryan’s recent work has focused on the resilience of cities in the face of the coming environmental challenges, and his Bristol talk will look at the practical steps which cities can take to survive – and thrive – in the future.

The discussion will be chaired by Peter Madden, Chief Executive, Forum for the Future on Monday 6th June 12.30 – 1.30pm on The Third Floor, Bush House, 72 Prince Street, Bristol.

The event, organised by Bristol’s Festival of Ideas, is open to the public and free, but pre-booking is essential via the Festival of Ideas booking form here.

The practical steps which cities will need to take to design resilient green infrastructure for a future of unprecedented resource scarcity and environmental change present a big challenge.

Unless we take radical steps to increase the resilience and sustainability of critical infrastructure, access to vital systems and services is at risk. Prof Chris Ryan‘s research suggests a distributed approach to system design offers many benefits over traditional infrastructure models.

Research and case studies strongly suggest such an approach can:
1. Increase the physical resilience of infrastructure
2. Foster social and institutional flexibility and innovation
3. Reduce the environmental footprint of production and consumption

A strong and renewed interest in distributed systems is being fuelled by access to sophisticated technologies – particularly information and communications technology. This is allowing people to invent and adopt new ways to produce, interact and consume, that are increasingly localised and networked.

Over the next few decades the way people obtain their food, water and energy will undergo a major (r)evolution.

One pathway sees people no longer relying on industrial production units hundreds or thousands of kilometres, or even continents, away. Instead they will source a greater proportion of essential resources, goods and services from within their ‘neighbourhood’.

Energy (principally electricity) is already showing signs of this transformation in most developed economies, with innovative arrangements of gas, solar, wind and biomass generators positioned throughout every region, backed up by new storage systems and some remaining large-scale centralised power stations.

Developments in the water and food sectors seem to be following the same path.

This evolution sees a significant switch in people’s role within the economy and in their identity as citizens; moving from one of passive consumption to a more active engagement in production and exchange of economic and social capital.

In this future, people will no longer depend on contractual arrangements between corporatised utilities and government to ensure quality and security of services. Everyone will identify in one way or another as a ‘prosumer’ – being involved (either individually or through community arrangements) in the production as well as the consumption of part of the resources, goods and services on which they depend. 

---

Bristol’s Good Living Week is here in June

by Paul Rainger

31 May 2011

Bristol’s first ever ‘Good Living Week’ is set to burst into life across the city from 10th to 19th June with a series of events celebrating sustainable living and working in the UK’s green capital - see the Good Living Week website for full details.

Good Living Week has been established by Bristol’s Green Capital Partnership and Forum for the Future to provide a focus for sustainable urban living and green businesses. We need to face the future with optimism and forethought, inspiring change and leading by example. We also need to find ways of living that make better use of our limited resources. Bristol has a lot to offer. We also have a lot to learn.

Good Living Week will showcase sustainable city living in Bristol. Here’s the introduction to the week written by Suzanne Savill in the Bristol Evening Post - 

Green will not be a colour but a way of life in Bristol when the first Good Living Week takes place in the city next month.

Sustainable city living will be celebrated with events including a summit on sustainable energy, a locally produced food trail, bicycle workshops, and opportunities to view homes with solar panels.

Organisers are hoping that Good Living Week will be a pilot for an annual event that will help to boost Bristol’s green image, and strengthen the city’s bid to become a European Green Capital.

Darren Hall, Bristol’s Green Capital Partnership manager, says: “It’s about raising the profile of Bristol as the UK’s leading city for sustainable living.

“This can create all sorts of opportunities, ranging from bringing together communities to boosting the local economy.”

Paul Rainger, head of Sustainable Bristol City Region for Forum for the Future – which aims to make the Bristol area the most sustainable in the UK – believes the event could become the green equivalent to the Edinburgh Festival.

“The hope is that Bristol will be able to do for sustainability what Edinburgh does for the arts,” he says.

“This is very much a pilot, and the aim is that the event will develop over the years and there will be more green groups doing their own thing, so that there is a sort of ‘Bristol Fringe’.”

Bristol’s Good Living Week will actually last longer than a week, running from Friday, June 10, to Sunday, June 19. It will be linked to the Festival of Nature on Bristol Harbourside on June 18 and 19.

The event gets its name from a book called Bristol – A Guide to Good Living, which showcases green activities within the city.

It was produced earlier this year by local publisher Alastair Sawday and the Bristol Green Capital Momentum Group, which aims to help Bristol achieve European Green Capital status.

Bristol was the only UK city to be shortlisted as Europe’s Green Capital for 2010 or 2011, and is preparing a new bid for the title.

The Good Living Week events have already been included as satellite activities in an extended European Green Week, and a delegation from the German city of Hannover, led by the city’s mayor, will be visiting Bristol.

The programme has been designed to appeal not only to those already involved in sustainable living, but also to those who are less engaged.

A community hub will be open at the Create Centre, where advice will be given on matters ranging from growing vegetables in front gardens to green volunteering.

A new coffee table style book published by Sawdays, called Bristol: Inspiring Change, will be launched during Good Living Week.

Events during Bristol’s Good Living Week include:

Friday, June 10 Bristol-Hannover Sustainable Energy Summit on innovative energy efficiency and micro-generation solutions.

Saturday, June 11 Live Local Weekend showing how to live efficiently and minimise environmental impact. Including the Get Growing Garden Trail showing 24 local food growing projects, and Green Doors open event showcasing solar projects.

Sunday, June 12 Bristol’s Biggest Bike Ride

Monday, June 13 Conference on Leadership for a Zero Carbon World.

Tuesday, June 14 Green Talk, featuring the city region’s most innovative green thinkers, leaders and achievers.

Wednesday, June 15 Sustainablah: a demonstration of the Bristol’s Creative Industries skills in supporting the green tech sector to achieve job creation and growth.

Thursday, June 16 The Business Case for Sustainability. Workshops exploring how businesses can improve efficiency, in partnership with Sustainable Business Breakfasts

Friday, June 17 Festival of Nature Schools Day, involving 1200 local young people.

Saturday, June 18 to Sunday, June 19 Festival of Nature which is expected to attract 25,000 people. This will include the UK Aware Show, an exhibition of sustainable living that is being held outside London for the first time.

---

Minister tours Bristol’s Green Businesses

by Peter Madden

12 March 2011

At the end of February, Chris Huhne, the Government Minister in charge of energy and climate change came down to Bristol to see what the city is up to.

He visited the wind turbines at Avonmouth. He drove Wessex Water’s ‘Bio-Bug’ (otherwise known as the ‘poo-powered car’). And he joined a meeting  hosted by Forum for the Future’s CEO, Peter Madden, to hear from the companies and organisations at the forefront of building the low-carbon economy in Bristol.

The Minister was visibly impressed by the enthusiasm and activity here. He heard from some of Bristol’s most successful green businesses: Garrad Hassan, the world’s biggest renewables consultancy; Marine Current Turbines, the global number one in marine and tidal energy; and Triodos Bank, who lend tens of millions for sustainable projects.

There were some strong messages to the Minister. Pretty much everyone in the meeting said he should set some clear, ambitious, policy goals and stick to them, rather than chopping and changing. Business needs certainty to invest, they said, so don’t suddenly shift the ground-rules – as his department has recently done on support for large-scale solar energy projects.

Mr Huhne was reminded that David Cameron had promised, in his first major speech as Prime Minister, to make Bristol a “centre for marine energy”. This is certainly an area where we could really be a global leader. Round here, we not only have some of the world’s top companies, two great universities, and lots of people skilled in advanced engineering, but off our shores we have some of the best tidal and wave energy to found anywhere. (For example, the River Severn has the second highest tidal range in the world, of up to 50ft, and this creates a great mass of moving water which is ideal for generating power).

We also talked about how to grow and expand our green businesses more quickly. In the UK, we tend to be excellent at the research and development and coming up with the ideas. But we are much less good at commercialising these ideas. Too often it seems to be the Germans or Chinese who end up with the manufacturing jobs that stem from our innovations. We seem to lack the investment to take the kind of small entrepreneurial companies, that Bristol has so many of, to scale.

Chris Huhne promised to work with Bristol-based companies and organisations on how we can grow our environmental businesses. We’re obviously incredibly well-positioned to be at the forefront of these industries of the future and to benefit from the thousands of skilled jobs that would bring. Now we need to get stuck in and grab the opportunities before somebody else does.

---

Bristol fourth in the UK’s 2010 Sustainable Cities Index

by Ben Ross

18 October 2010

For the fourth year running, Bristol has retained a top-five place as one of Britain’s most sustainable cities in Forum for the Future’s Sustainable Cities Index.

In this year’s rankings Bristol came in fourth, behind Newcastle, Leicester and Brighton, and ahead of London in fifth place. Bristol achieved a higher overall score compared to last year, and retained the top spot for overall quality of life.

Forum for the Future’s annual Sustainable Cities Index tracks progress on sustainability in Britain’s 20 largest cities – highlighting their environmental performance, quality of life and their readiness for the challenges of the future.

“Since we started the index in 2007 most cities have improved in most areas” says Forum for the Future’s Ben Ross.

“We look at 13 indicators – from air quality to action on climate change – and 11 have improved. The exceptions are employment, which has followed national trends, and provision of allotments, which has seen a slight decline  potentially because urban space is at a premium and recent planning and development policy has driven inner city regeneration.”

“But one disturbing trend that has emerged is the widening gap between the top and bottom performers. Those already performing relatively well are improving faster than others which have the furthest to go. And none of Britain’s cities can in any way be complacent.  We have a long way to go to match the best from across the globe, such as Freiburg in Germany, Stockholm in Sweden or Whistler in Canada.”

---

Preserving Bristol’s Green Roots

by Paul Rainger

06 October 2010

History is written by the winners, or so the saying goes. Which must be good for Bristol’s green movement, with the news that The Schumacher  Institute has been awarded a Heritage Lottery Fund grant for their ‘Bristol’s Green Roots’ project to document and preserve Bristol’s pioneering environmental history.

The Bristol city-region, leading the charge to more sustainable ways of living in the UK, has gained an enviable reputation for its dedication to the environmental cause. In 2008, Bristol was the only UK city to be shortlisted for the EU Green Capital Award.

The Schumacher  Institute’s ‘Green Roots’ project will concentrate on Bristol’s journey from a city that gained wealth from what we now see as social injustices, to a city that is a renowned hub for social and environmental justice.

The project will create a comprehensive archive, and hold several exhibitions across the city, as well as producing publications to inform a wider audience. The year-long project also aims to encourage Bristol’s population to become more involved in conserving their ‘green heritage’ as well as building on and developing the city’s dedication to environmental issues.

The material collected by the project will be stored as an archive with Bristol’s Museums and Archives and displayed in both the city’s new MShed Museum and at the City Council’s CREATE Centre.

Ian Roderick, Director of the Bristol based Schumacher  Institute says, ‘The value will come from seeing that the city is on a coherent pathway to a sustainable future – and that will be made visible to the thousands of visitors to our city.’

---

I’m on safari, on the number 40 bus

by Paul Rainger

02 October 2010

If you think of going on safari, the number 40 bus to the local shopping centre is probably not your first thought. But that is exactly what Avon Wildlife Trust (AWT) has created with their new way for us city slickers to get closer to nature – launching Britain’s first free-to-download podcast introducing bus passengers to the nature points of interest along their route. 

AWT’s first WildBus podcast is for the Number 40 bus from Bristol city centre to the shops at Cribbs Causeway. Among the insights offered by the soundtrack are where to look for otters, where to find unusual plants such as the itchy skullcap, when to expect chiff chaffs on Brandon Hill, and why pigeons are good for Bristol.

AWT are pioneers of wildlife conservation in an urban setting, and the champions of biodiversity in the Bristol city-region. Part of the national partnership of Wildlife Trusts, Avon Wildlife Trust is supported by almost 17,000 local members, looking after 35 nature reserves, campaigning on issues which threaten wildlife and encouraging everyone to be more concerned about our natural environment.

The innovative WildBus podcast – combining new technology with the great viewing opportunities presented by bus windows to create a travelling nature observatory – has been produced by Julie Doherty, the Trust’s learning development officer.

Julie says: “Buses are a great vantage point for viewing nature as well as an environmentally-friendly way to visit nature sites.  Our hope, then, is that the podcast will not only give bus passengers pointers on what to watch out for as they travel but will also show how very easy it is to reach wildlife-rich places even from the heart of a city.” 

So who’s ready for their urban safari?

---

Green Register celebrates ten years

by Paul Rainger

15 September 2010

2010 sees the Bristol based organisation, The Green Register, celebrate its 10th anniversary as one of the UK’s leading organisations promoting sustainable construction practices, with not one, but three celebratory events across the UK in Manchester, London and Bristol.

A member of Bristol’s Refit West consortium, The Green Register was launched in London in 2000 by architectural practice archipeleco, who wanted to create a network of like-minded construction professionals.

Today, The Green Register is an independent, self-funded and not-for-profit organisation whose principal goal remains the promotion of sustainable building practices across all disciplines of the construction industry, organising two-day introductory ‘Sustainable Building and Services’ courses at locations throughout the UK.

You can see a list of their upcoming courses and events here.

The Green Register understand that building to green or sustainable principles is an holistic approach that addresses social, environmental and economic issues. It is not a style or fashion but an enduring set of principles that looks at all aspects of construction from site preparation through to reuse, recycling and reclamation. Sustainable building considers how the construction will affect the wellbeing of people and natural ecosystems.

Their three core activities are:

• *Training *- Raising awareness of the issues surrounding sustainable building practices by running training and events across the UK. These events range from half day practical workshops through to the full two-day training course. The Green Register also runs in-house CPD seminars for construction professionals on a wide range of topics.
• *The Register *- All Green Register members have been on the two-day training course and, once registered, are placed on a web-based register of members. This list is available to potential clients who are looking for professionals with a demonstrated commitment to sustainable building practices.
• *Networking *- To exchange ideas, provide mutual support and make professional connections with other disciplines, Green Register events provide an ideal opportunity to meet other like-minded individuals and network, share ideas and information.

---

Bristol’s Great British Refurb

by Ben Ross

05 August 2010

Refit West is supporting The Great British Refurb (GBR) campaign goal to make green home makeovers as easy and as accessible as possible for as many people as possible. Yael Rosenfeld from WWF explains what GBR is campaigning for, and how as a result one pioneering house in Bristol already earns more from making energy than from using it:

Imagine the ideal situation. A homeowner can easily install energy efficiency measures without paying a penny and a situation were the housing sector in the UK significantly reduces its carbon output (remember it accounts for 26% of the UK’s national emissions) in the climate change fight.

In the last year and a half  the GBR – which is a partnership between WWF, the UK Green Building Council, Grand Designs Magazine and Kevin McCloud, the host of the popular TV series Grand Designs -has achieved a lot .

Not trying to blow our own trumpet, but: we collected thousands of signatures on a petition to Gordon Brown asking the government to do more to help us green up our homes by providing cash and skilled tradesmen capable of doing energy makeovers.

And they listened, with the new government committing to it; Kevin McCloud elbowed his way on to last year’s Conservative party conference platform to set out what we need, and they once again heeded us, making it government policy now in the form of the Green Deal. Thousands of new supporters recently signed up supporting tax rebates for those who green their home, and again it was leaked as a government plan last week. A good strike rate by any measure.

Yet we have done more than just talking- we teamed up with the 10:10 campaign and organised a competition where one home owner won a full eco-retrofit of his home.

Will Homoky from Bristol is the lucky home owner – you can read about his experiences in his blog, including the fact that he now earns more from making energy than from using it!

We still have many more things to achieve in the coming year which is a crucial one. The new government is about to introduce an energy bill to the Parliament with provisions on new finance mechanisms to help home owners finance these eco-refurbishments and we’re working on making sure that it will be ambitious in its scope and that it will kick start a mass retrofitting programme.

This is the way forward for CO2 emission reduction, better homes for people, lower bills leading to more money in people’s pockets and creating new local  construction jobs to boot!

---

Linking the City to the natural world

by Paul Rainger

27 May 2010

The Bristol Natural History Consortium deliver entertaining events that inspire public interest and participation in nature conservation.  Their three flagship events help link the city and the natural world, developing communication techniques that engage the widest possible audience – both national and international.

With the annual Festival of Nature set to return to Bristol Harbourside on the weekend of 12 and 13 June, this celebration of biodiversity, the only event of its kind in the UK, gives wildlife enthusiasts of all ages the opportunity to explore, enjoy and get close to the natural world – all free of charge – in the heart of the city.

This year, Forum for the Future will also be in attendance with our Refit West project, along with Footprint Building, one of the project partners, demonstrating a range of environmentally-friendly building products for insulating your home. You’ll find us in the University of Bristol tent.

BioBlitz, pioneered by the Consortium last year in Bristol, is another large scale event that engages the cities’ population with nature, getting them directly involved in surveying and monitoring over 24 hours in a single city-region green space. In 2010, BioBlitz has gone national with 20 events all over the UK.

Bristol Natural History Consortium’s third flagship event is the Communicate conference, held annually in the City for environmental communicators each November, aiming to improve the way we communicate about the natural world.  The conference attracts a wide cross-section of representatives from environmental and conservation organisations, business and CSR, policy makers, media, and national and local government bodies, and natural history filmmakers.

With Bristol being the long term home of the world renown BBC Natural History Unit, the Bristol Natural History Consortium, is a unique city collaboration between the BBC, Avon Wildlife Trust, Bristol City Council, Bristol Zoo Gardens, Defra, Environment Agency, Natural England, the University of Bristol, the University of the West of England, Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust and Wildscreen Trust.

---

« newer posts — older posts »