Elemental

A useful guide (pdf, 20 pages) from the Business Resource Efficiency & Waste Programme (BREW) in the Northwest

England’s Northwest is a leader in supporting businesses, organisations and individuals to reduce their impact on climate change and improve overall environmental performance within organisations.

This booklet will give you the contacts and tools to enable you to access the support that you need to rise to the challenge, help the planet and save your organisation money.

via:: NWDA 

Funded by DEFRA, with partners Envirolink Nortwest, Environment Agency, Carbon Trust, Envirowise, Enworks, NISP, and WRAP, it’s a useful little guide, aimed I think at SME’s.  Pulls together lots of links and contacts.

mel starrs Uncategorized Carbon Trust, Environment Agency, Northwest, Sustainability, United Kingdom

::via Green Building Press
The EA (Environment Agency) have published a guide for developers (pdf, 90 pages):

The EA guide concentrates on issues outside the building – from the building envelope to the site boundary. It has more than a passing resemblance to BREEAM with issues broken down in very similar categories.

I would recommend it to those of us who have come to sustainability via the buildings route rather than an environmental engineering route (seems to be the main two camps I have come across in the land of BREEAM).

One question arises as a result of this – are we in danger of getting bogged down by all this guidance or is the cumulative effect a good one? I can think of at least 3 other checklists or guidance documents which cover similar ground. Of course by covering similar issues in slightly different ways, the probability of implementation might increase, as what resonates with one person or team may be alien to another.

Other checklists which might be of interest:

• Constructing Excellence Sustainability Checklists
• OGC (Office of Government Commerce) Procurement Guide 11 Sustainability (pdf, 29 pages)
• TCPA (Town and Country Planning Association) Sustainable Energy by Design (pdf, 52 pages)

Know of any others? Please feel free to leave a comment or email me and I’ll update this list.

mel starrs Uncategorized BREEAM, checklists, EA, Environment Agency, environmental engineering, Green Building Press, New Year\'s Day, Office of Government Commerce, Sustainability, Town and Country Planning Association

::via Guardian

EA have released a list of the top 100 environmentalists EVER. Some favourites of mine included in the list (with ideas for Xmas list reading and viewing):

4. David Attenborough – Sunday nights just wouldn’t be the same without Planet Earth

5. James Lovelock – I’d recommend two of his books Revenge of Gaia and Gaia

9. Al Gore – I still haven’t managed to catch An Inconvenient Truth, out on DVD 26 December in UK

10. Gro Harlem Brundtland – the lady who coined the phrase which defines sustainable development: ‘Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’

23. George Monbiot – my new best friend (well, he signed my copy of his new book for me) – Heat

37. Mayer Hillman, who brought us the concept of carbon rationing, explained in his book How we can save the planet – a good primer, even if I disagree with the negative tone of the book

72. Jane Jacobs who died earlier this year – I’m currently reading her book The Nature of Economies and for the first time economics is beginning to make sense

74. Michael Braungart and Bill McDonagh – I have a copy of Cradle to Cradle ready to attack once I finish with Jane

91. Tom and Barbara from the classic 70’s self-sufficiency sitcom The Good Life

Expect to see more bickering over the inadequacies of the list around the blogosphere over the next few days. Yah sucks boo boo sucks, says I. Lists are never going to please everyone all of the time, but at least they stimulate a discussion.

admin News Al Gore, Bill McDonagh, David Attenborough, Environment Agency, environmentalists, George Monbiot, Gro Harlem Brundtland, James Lovelock, Jane Jacobs, Mayer Hillman, Michael Braungart