News Headlines

A New Year's message from our Director

For organisations, you will find that there are costs savings to be made from using resources more carefully – for instance Direct Line Insurance found that they were saving 20% on their paper bills since they began to print double sided, and only printed documents when really necessary.
Sustainability can also be used as a tool to help your team to be healthier and happier – for example by incentivising your team to walk or cycle to work and to meetings; your carbon emissions from travel will shrink at the same time.
Take a look at our Sustainability Action Plan guidance for businesses

For individuals, again you can save money by reducing the amount of food you waste, insulating your home and walking and cycling rather than taking the car. If you have big decisions to make this year such as buying a new car or choosing where to go on holiday think about the implications for sustainability. Could that new car become car club membership instead? Could you take the train to Europe rather than flying? By making sustainable choices like these you can still have a great standard of living and you are also helping to look after the Earth at the same time.
You can work out your ecological and carbon footprint and get a personalised plan to help you to shrink it by using our free on-line calculator.

We aim for our real life projects and advice to help show that sustainable living is nothing to be afraid of but in fact a way to improve our quality of life.

We are really excited about the coming year and have lots of new projects in the pipe line. We hope that you will continue to find our newsletters and other resources useful and inspirational.

Do get in touch if you have any queries or comments or suggestions and please forward this newsletter on to interested friends and colleagues.

Wishing you a fantastic (and thrifty) 2009, Sue Riddlestone

BioRegional and Cabe publish cutting edge guidance for eco-town agencies

In September working with Cabe, we jointly published What makes an eco-town? - guidance to help the agencies involved in developing the proposals deliver eco-towns truly worthy of the name.

We were motivated to write the guidance by our concern that the CLG’s guidance so far has not been strong enough to deliver truly sustainable towns. For instance it has fallen short of showing how eco-town residents can meet the 80% C02 reduction target that the Climate Change Act requires. What makes an eco-town? defines an eco-town as a place designed to make it easy for residents to reduce their ecological footprint by two thirds and their carbon dioxide emissions by 80 per cent below 1990 levels – or what we call one planet living.

The guidance proposes features of places designed for living within ecological limits, these include: generous space to grow food; ample tree canopy cover; attractive alternatives to shopping as the default leisure activity; and substantial reduction in car dependency. It provides clear criteria and practical guidance on how the sustainability of settlements can be monitored and tested.

Sue Riddlestone, executive director and co-founder of BioRegional and eco-towns challenge panel member, said: “We need to see trailblazing projects worthy of the name eco-town. Done well, these real-life projects should advance industry best practice, inform government policy and show how we can reduce our impact to sustainable levels and have an improved quality of life.”

Download the report

New ReIY Centres will reduce waste and landfill costs and create jobs

A volunteer at the Madison, USA, Restore

WRAP has generously funded BioRegional to set up new ReIY (Re-use It Yourself) Centres that will collect unwanted building materials from construction sites and sell them on to the general public and small scale trade market. The first ReIY Centres are planned for The Wirral, Waltham Forest and Tees Valley. When established they have the potential to bring a significant cost saving in disposal costs to the construction sector during this difficult time as well as saving natural resources and creating jobs.

ReIY Centres will follow in the footsteps of North America’s successful Building Material Reuse Centres where 150 Centres are run as not for profit ventures providing jobs and training in construction for local unemployed and young people.

Cara Whelan, ReIY Project Manager at BioRegional said:
”We have found that there’s fantastic support for ReIY Centres. They will save contractors money as it will be cheaper to send waste to a ReIY Centre than taking it to land fill. They will create jobs and what’s also really important is that they will save natural resources – a shocking 13% of construction materials never get used and end up in land fill sites”.

Working with delivery partners Groundwork Merseyside, Forest Recycling and Community Campus 87, BioRegional and its partner Waste Wise will provide a consultancy service to establish the Centres. We are also interested in setting up further Centres. We’d like any interested parties across the UK to download the business plan from www.bioregional-reclaimed.com and get in touch.

Read the full story

One Planet One Day – leading international experts share sustainability learning

Debate and information sharing continues through free web based portal

On December 3rd, we held an event in London bringing together our international partners to share their practical experiences of applying the One Planet Living® sustainability framework with delegates – a framework that we believe could be used widely around the world for positive change.

One Planet One Day was the public day of a four day long convergence of discussion and learning for sustainability. The day began with a message of support from Achim Steiner Head of the United Nations Environment Programme. Other eminent participants included Sunand Prasad, President of RIBA,Richards Simmons, Chief Executive of Cabe and Grand Designs Presenter Kevin McCloud.

We had overwhelmingly positive feedback from the attendees but we don’t want the debate to end here. We have set up an on-line forum and learning web site where attendees and the wider public can join in the debate and download seminar notes. We will soon publish many of the presentation slides and the video footage too.
http://opal.bioregional.com/CommunityBrowser.aspx?id=9&lang=en-US

The One Planet Living framework is made up of 10 sustainability principles:
Zero Carbon
Zero Waste
Sustainable Transport
Sustainable and Local Materials
Local and Sustainable Food
Sustainable Water
Natural Habitats and Wildlife
Culture and Heritage
Equity, Fair Trade and Local Economy
Health and Happiness

The principles were jointly developed by BioRegional and WWF.

“BioRegional are pioneers in reinventing our economy”
Achim Steiner, United Nations Environment Programme


Watch Achim's speech on you tube

Sutton announced as UK’s most ambitious green borough

We have worked with the council to develop its Sustainability Action Plan based on the 10 One Planet Living sustainability principles. Sutton Council will now work with residents, businesses and other organisations to achieve the targets in its Plan and progress towards them will be annually monitored.

Sutton has already demonstrated its commitment to green living now and for the future, through a number of major projects including:
• delivering new, sustainable homes in the Hackbridge suburb, and advising residents on fitting their existing homes with energy and water saving technology;
• taking the work of Smarter Travel Sutton, the UK’s largest travel programme to promote behaviour change, even further to encourage more people to walk, cycle and use public transport;
• working with neighbouring boroughs to promote more opportunities for reducing waste and increasing opportunities for recycling.

Cllr Colin Hall, Deputy Leader of Sutton Council, said:
“As the first One Planet Borough we want to work with local people to reduce our impact on the environment. But it’s not just about being green for its own sake, it’s about protecting Sutton’s quality of life - reducing congestion and pollution, saving money through energy and water efficiency, protecting our green spaces – the list goes on.”

If you would like to discuss how your borough could become a One Planet Borough do get in touch.

Read the full story

BioRegional and partners publish new research into the availability of wood for heating and power in London

Hot off the press this week, we have produced guidance on using wood residues and wood from arboricultural activities for heat and power in London. The report Biomass for London: wood fuel demand and supply chains was published by London Energy Partnership and jointly written by BioRegional, SE Wood Fuels and Creative Environmental Networks. It is particularly useful for those involved in biomass policy and the supply and demand of wood fuel.

We felt that the study was needed as there is growing demand for wood fuel as a source of renewable heat and power in London due in large part to the planning requirement that 20% carbon emission reductions in larger developments are achieved through on-site renewable sources. The demand is expected to further increase as fossil fuel prices rise and new housing developments move towards the Government’s 2016 zero carbon target.

However until now there has been uncertainty about the availability of fuel for planned and projected installations. To date wood fuel supply infrastructure in London is rudimentary, particularly for wood chip.

This new report assesses the number and capacity of planned wood fuel plant in London and their potential fuel demand. It then examines the potential sources of fuel and makes recommendations for enabling the growth in fuel production from London’s own resources and those near by.

Download the report

BioRegional Consulting can help you cut costs and stay one step ahead of the competition

Thinking about your business’ impact on the planet? Want to reduce costs but don’t know where to start? Keen to stay one step ahead of the competition?

Whether our clients are looking for DIY solutions or a more bespoke package, BioRegional Consulting provides the right suite of services to maximise benefits to our clients through practical and affordable solutions to sustainability challenges.

BioRegional Consulting recently calculated the ecological footprint of the headquarters and manufacturing site for German power tool company Festool. Using this data at stakeholder workshops we agreed actions and targets and were able to develop a sustainability action plan using the ten One Planet Living principles.

Using environmental accounting tools, workshops and the One Planet Living framework we are currently developing strategic targets and delivery plans with clients including a law firm and a housing association. For more information see www.bioregional.com/consulting

Want to hear more? BioRegional training and talks coming up...

3rd March 2009
Ecobuild 2009
Earls Court, London, UK
Sue Riddlestone, Director of BioRegional will participate in the Tomorrow's towns are all eco-towns seminar which runs from 10.30 - 12.30.
From 11.30-12 she will present on the subject of "How eco-towns can enable us to live within a sustainable carbon and ecological footprint".
Pooran Desai, BioRegional's Co-Founder and Technical Director of One Planet Living, will participate in the seminar - A code for sustainable (urban) landscapes from 3pm - 5pm.
The full programme is available at: http://www.ecobuild.co.uk/page.cfm