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Sustainability Soon - all ideas received

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Those quick-witted amongst you may have spotted that we've changed the date for the online event, called Sustainability Now, we were originally planning for next month. It's now going to take place on 1 and 2 July. A message will be going out to those of you who've already registered, so fear not. I could use the age-old excuse that it was all down to the technology, but that would be bending the truth somewhat. The event morphed from a virtual fair where users could wander around and visit company "booths" with information on their services and products to an editorially driven programme of events (seminars, Q&As, videos, audio etc).

Steptoe & Son and sustainability

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Sustainability is surely mostly a cultural issue. How are we going to get anyone to change but through our habits and behaviour? Two bits of content in recent days confirmed this for me: a thought-provoking piece by Nick Cohen in the Observer on what he claims is our loss of the love of the antique; and the first episode of Steptoe & Son, screened on BBC4 last night.

Weekend Review, 8-9 March 2008

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Turbines are back with a vengeance this week, especially in the Sunday Telegraph. Climate Tsar, Lord Turner suggests bulding more of them in the central reservations of motorways, brownfield sites or other places where there was already 'visual intrusion.'  He thinks the country needs to do more rather than less to cut carbon emissions. His committee is due to report back to the PM before the end of the year to suggest whether or not a 60% cut will be needed by 2050.

M&S's plan A still on

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I picked up on this interesting thread on the Harvard Business Review site over the weekend. Marks & Spencer boss Sir Stuart Rose confirms his commitment to the retail giant's Plan A, the five-year plan for it to radically reduce its environmental footprint. There had been some mutterings in the market that M&S had quietly shelved its ambitious targets in the wake of the recent downturn. Not so says Sir Stuart. "We are sticking to Plan A. There are compelling commercial - as well as moral - reasons to do so," he writes.

The Greengauge 7 March 2008

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It's nice when someone you trust shares an opinion  you thought maybe a Shiboleth, it's comforting. So when Mark Brinkley opines that 467 speakers at Ecobuild (three minutes each, he says, a kind of balloon debate) was not only too many, but actually might put him off attending at all, I felt a warm glow spread over me. He likens it to 200 channels on Sky with nothing to see.

Bovine Belching

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I was very excited to receive information via email on 'Alexander's Cattle Methane Capture Device,' a new patent application for a device that you might be already guessing attempts to achieve. The original message, passed on to me, reads as follows: "I have invented a device to capture methane directly from a cow's third stomach to be used for energy production.

Compare green products site

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I was wondering when one of these sites would spring up. Having become increasingly irritated with the slew of new price comparison sites for car insurance, supermarket goods, cat food etc it's with mixed feelings that I see there's now one for green products. It goes by the name of griinu compare and seems to be focused on the domestic consumer market. I discovered it via the usual web-circuitous route of picking up on an article comparing the performance of pv panels in the US.

11th Hour review

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To a swish Soho hotel last night for a preview showing of new film The 11th Hour. This was care of consultancy firm Gleeds, who had managed to bag an early copy of the Leonardo Di Caprio-backed and fronted offering before its UK release. The firm invited a pretty impressive guest list of industry green figures along, a few of which (Paul King from the UKBGC, RIBA president Sunand Prasad) discussed the challenge raised by the film after the showing. Unfortunately I found the film somewhat of a disappointment.

Weekend Review 1-2 March 2008

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'Relax!' says Gaia theory inventor and environmental scientist, James Lovelock in the Guardian, on Saturday. You might as well, he adds, because in twenty years extreme weather events will be wreaking havoc around the globe and by 2100, 80% of the World's population will have died and there's nothing we can do about it now. We might have had some success if we had started in about 1967, he goes on. Green living is called an 'ostentatious grand gesture,' recyling is a 'waste of time and money' and there's no way of covering the country in enough windmills to save our skins. We should instead be working out how to survive since the UK will be a bridge between the unliveable south of the world and the habitable north. Stark reading from an important thinker.

East London - refurbish and recycle

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Two strong pieces of content in this week's Building Design, both focused on east London. The first concerns the paper's fantastically well supported campaign to save the Robin Hood Garden - editor Amanda Baillieu widens the argument from the architectural to the sustainable, vigorously claiming that the east London block of flats "is a sustainable community". Surely there must be red faces all round at quango English Partnerships, who is proposing the demolition of the estate.