SE2 helped us design & run a stakeholder round-table to discuss the challenges and research opportunities to accelerate the take up of green heat. The work they did, including a background review & facilitation of the round-table, was done quickly and to a high quality. SE2 are always reliable, helpful and professional. It is a pleasure to work with them.
Cat Reeby, Surrey Living Lab project manager, University of Surrey
The Twelve Days of Christmas part 2
Here at SE2 we’ve been putting together our annual Christmas newsletter; our chance to share some of our favourite projects from this year and take a closer look at the exciting things we’ll be working on in 2013. In the meantime however, we thought we’d share with you our alternative 12 days of Christmas: 12 particularly positive environmental titbits from 2012!
For numbers one to four please see last week’s blog post, and don’t forget to check back next week for our final four treats before the big day!
On the fifth day of Christmas… A fantastically floating urban forest
LA’s road users are set to encounter a slightly surreal (but truly fantastical) sight next year as they zoom around their local freeways. Christmas has come early to artist Stephen Glassman and his team, who 2 days ago reached their funding target for UrbanAir, an exciting green initiative that hopes to transform existing billboards into suspended living gardens.
Instead of their usual 2d adverts, Glassman’s billboards feature tall stalks of bamboo and other native plants that will consume carbon dioxide and create tiny, cool microclimates in the bustling city. Wifi enabled, and connected to climate monitoring technology, the team hope that these miniature floating forests will get people thinking about ways to reduce and tackle pollution. They are already developing a kit so that the scheme can be easily rolled out in cities across the globe.
On the sixth day of Christmas…Sweeter treats all round!
2012 was a good year for those with a sweet (but eco-conscious) tooth. In November the world’s largest chocolate company announced plans to enhance productivity whilst improving sustainability efforts, and pledged to invest $400m in such measures over the next 10 years. Alongside improving the livelihoods and living conditions of 200,000 cocoa workers worldwide, Mondelēz International hope the measures will reduce biodiversity loss and soil erosion, and enhance water efficiency and yields.
Furthermore, this good news came in the wake (quite literally) of the arrival of 24,000 bars of the UKs first carbon-neutral chocolate on the Tres Hombres: a 32 tonne wooden sailing ship. The Dutch company that owns the ship argue that it is the only truly sustainable way to carry food across the Atlantic, and have plans to “re-establish sailing ships as a natural alternative to an anti-ecological culture.” Who knows how the chocolate in next year’s advent calendar will arrive at your door!
On the seventh day of Christmas…Straw Wars in Soho?
Elsewhere in the world of food and drink, this year saw the launch of a campaign that aims to reduce the waste caused by excessive supply of plastic drinking straws. Restaurants, bars and hotels in the Soho area of London have joined forces in a scheme to ensure staff stop handing out straws unnecessarily, and only when requested. Plastic drinking straws can theoretically be recycled but, campaigners argue, individuals eating and drinking on the move rarely do so. Unfortunately therefore, this means they often end up in landfill or floating around our streets, beaches and drains where they can cause harm to wildlife. Those involved in the Straw Wars campaign hope that the initiative will raise awareness of wider environmental issues, and promote a move towards resolving waste collection and disposal issues in the Soho area.
On the eighth day of Christmas…The future of eco-friendly commuting?
Finally, a way to keep fit AND reduce carbon emissions whilst actually enjoying the daily commute?! Following Y/N Studio’s proposal to transform a stretch of London’s Regents Canal into a commuter swimming lane, architects in Estonia have come up with the idea of a trampoline road. Enabling commuters to interact in new ways with their surroundings, designers claim that they have created an infrastructure that allows for intelligent and emotional engagement, whilst being sensitive to the local environment. Just make sure you have some shredded wheat well before leaving the house- it could take some time to get to the office.
Don’t forget to check back next week for numbers 9-12!