On BBC East Midlands Today, today. Green Meadows makes the news! Green Meadows spent the day filming with BBC East Midlands! Local resident Khadja was featured, showcasing her Future Fit Plan which was developed by Green Meadow’s Retrofit Coordinator, Jake. The Future Fit plan assesses the energy usage in a home and makes tailored recommendations that are needed to retrofit and optimise its energy efficiency. The plan highlighted home improvements which have benefited Khadja’s property by identifying the need for improved draught proofing around her door and low carbon technology such as Solar PV Panels.
Through her referral to Nottingham Energy Partnership (NEP), Khadja was found to be eligible for a Government grant to fund Solar PV Panels. If you would like to see if you are eligible for any of Nottingham Energy Partnership’s services, click here.
A board has ben mounted alongside the Nottingham-Beeston canal celebrating the commerce of Sanitary Wharf – which served what is now know as the Cattle Market area and Eastcroft. And now the N Post have chosen to celebrate fresh activity east of the canal now that Notts County are back in the Football League. That rather than actually report on the FA Cup match between County and Salop in the FA cup. The article is a bit thin really.
The area is actually changing through the construction of new homes along Meadow Lane. (Note, the open day planned for the renewal of the Meadow Lane lock was cancelled cos of the snow that feel on Sunday.) We are lobbying to get the NCT Red 50 to go down Meadow Lane and then along County Road & Cattle Bridge Road. The land around the Cattle Market may well become housing given the pressures in the city. The Cattle Market itself is worth keeping an eye out for. And if we can get right, we might have the tram system serving the Racecourse P & R, the A52 East at Gamston and Netherfield & beyond – by 2034. Route locally would either be Meadow Lane and Arkwright Walk, or more likely, Meadow Lane, Cattle Bridge Road & Meadows Way east.
New green energy facilities at Eastcroft depot were celebrated with a visit by Ed Miliband recently. But might part of the Eastcroft site be utilised by the National Grid as an extra and new primary substation – which the south of the city centre apparently need to support more housing and businesses? Difficult to see any other land south of the railway line ever becoming available at industrial land prices when the demand for housing is established (if not currently deliverable). The challenge is that the Tinkers Leen runs though a tunnel from just south of the Hickings Building, coming into the River Trent just east of the new housing at Trent Bridge Quays. Primary sub-stations are cooled using oil and any new facility may well have to be improve the tunnel to prevent the running of oil into the river should an accident occur. The alternatives to an extra sub-station may include any new building having to have significant battery back-up when applying to join the electricity supply network, bigger in scale than proposed for some of the houses in The Meadows by MozES, but a similar principle.
Cleaner air requires people to live nearer where they work, to use public transport etc. more and their car less and to move to using electric vehicles rather than petrol and diesel cars faster. We need cleaner air for people living nearer our busier streets (and we have brought relief to residents of Bunbury Street); ditto for children and students. The Conservatives in government, who only in 2008 changed their logo to an oak tree to show their commitment to environmental challenges, are giving up (tempted by holding a Parliamentary by-election through misrepresenting an extension to London’s Ultra-Low Emissions Zone – an initiative started by Boris Johnson and whose extension had been supported by the Conservative government).
Our latest change in The Meadows has been to introduce a yellow box on the junction of Queens Road / Arkwright Street / Sheriffs Way / Carrington Street to deter drivers from blocking the passage of buses when the lights are in the buses’ favour.
We are planning new e-charging points for cars, e-bikes and e-scooters in the south-west car park of Bridgeway Shopping Centre.
Delaying the phasing out of the sales of new patrol and diesel cars causes problems for car manufacturers based in Britain who are probably advanced in getting ready for such a switch; and need it to happen so as to be alongside the rest of the world has they work to their similar targets. So much so, “making Britain a clean energy superpoer” is one of Labour’s 5 themes for the next government.
The Meadows by the railway corridor also need the advance of electrification so as fewer diesel engines are idling in Midland station and at Eastcroft depot. We also need to push on with faster train services to and from our east so that rail is more attractive to travellers from Carlton & Newark and Radcliffe and Bingham – and traffic from Daleside Road and Trent Bridge reduced.
On climate change, the notion of being saved from 7 bins overlooks how the Conservatives in government have sat on their hands regarding deposit schemes for glass, are not offering councils support for the roll-out of waste food collection (which both reduces food that gets wasted and enables a more efficient conversion of food waste to natural gas). 7 bins might be suitable for very motivated neighbourhoods, but we know the challenges we have with current arrangements for all waste, recyclables and garden waste; we would definitely like to be pressing on with separate food waste collection cos it has worked in parts of the city before, not least in The Meadows, and cos it represents such a large part of our domestic waste. Collecting glass separately, and perhaps clean paper, are still to be worked through. And we need more drive with waste from commercial sites.
But more urgent action is needed – not more delay. There were 4,500 extra deaths last year (pro-rata 22 in Nottingham) cos of extreme heat and we were lucky that the extreme heat went to the eastern Mediterranean, India and the USA this year. Our ability to bring extra cooling in The Meadows is mitigated by cuts to council services leading to fewer tree officers.
Initial reaction is that Rishi Sunak backing down on the pace of change is not popular with the public; and it has been announced in haste. If national government can lead on the transition, it means cheaper energy and lower bills for people, not more expensive.
A consultation is in progress on how to recycle more of the waste being collected from homes in Nottingham. Two particular options being explored – whether to collect paper and cardboard separately in an extra bin or whether to collect it in a separate reusable weighted hessian bag.
Preferences for those 2 options kinda depending on whether people have space in their property for what might be a fourth bin – bins already being available for unsorted waste, garden waste, and recyclable waste that includes plastic, metal & glass that can often be wet (and indeed bearing in mind that a fifth, albeit smaller bin, becomes available for food waste in the future).
Maybe one solution won’t fit all, but given the issues with assertions over whether bins have been missed, or whether bins are not being taken back in by owners, introducing chips into new bins and new bags might be good to improve the management of street space.
Groups like OMTRA, whose members face challenges over the management of the alleyways behind their houses, are considering the potential challenges. One member chose at their AGM to point out how much the City Council achieves through incineration which leads to high rates of recycling iron, aluminium, special metals; and indeed most of the ash is also reused as scree, as well as extracting energy from the process to use as electricity and then heat in the district heating scheme.
So why not burn it all? Cos there is value in extracting glass, paper & cardboard, plastic and metals separately – and currently it is commercially viable. Extracting food waste can also serve 3 local anaerobic digesters to create natural gas to feed our gas network. And machinery can sort most of these materials out to good effect (though for paper and cardboard, not if polluted by food and especially fats).
I visited Colwick earlier this year to witness the sorting and feel it would be better to limit further sorting by residents to clean paper and cardboard from other materials. Discipline by residents can be poor, bins can be contaminated whilst in the street and the extra discipline on bin collections might also be challenging.
But I was recently challenged over my lack of perceived lack of enthusiasm for a bottle deposit scheme. Actually, it was lack of awareness as to the status of the trial in Scotland – and I now know trial has not happened. It seems like the national government are indeed getting ready to introduce with a national scheme perhaps charging 30p a time, perhaps starting in 2023 and to be implemented over 5 – 10 years. (Need to double check this). No doubt such a scheme has worked in Finland since the ’50s and no doubt such a scheme could work here. But I don’t think it’s appropriate for a Nottingham scheme to be done in advance – let a national scheme carry the burden and cost of introduction.
A recent development is the recycling of plastic bags, film etc. This is difficult to sort mechanically. Currently the collection points seem to be based at supermarkets and I don’t know enough about how commercially viable these operations are.
A food scheme will cost, but we have seen a scheme serving The Meadows, Sneinton, The Dales, Hyson Green and The Arboretum work 10 years ago or so – but fail cos of the growing costs and loss of credibility – in taking the waste to Norwich for processing. Now, there are 2 sites in Colwick and 1 in Ilkeston for the waste to be processed at. (One of the digesters at Colwick can even break open a tin of food before digesting it.). The small bins had a handle that both lock the bins and allow their easy transport. Suggestions that the bins were easily knocked about whilst in the street does not seem to have been seen as an issue at the time. Such schemes will be mandatory from 2027, and might only start in Nottingham from 2024, but concern here is that there is no or insufficient financial support from national government.
Finding fault with waste and recycling systems is easy to do – see the first comment. The essential problem is that not all people join in with responsibilities required. Bins not being left out in time, or not taken in at the first reasonable opportunity; people not carefully sorting waste and in particular leaving food contaminated paper and cardboard (most classic example being used pizza boxes). And where waste is being collected at a shared collection point, where no-one as responsibility for what’s put into a bin, it’s worse. Add to that, businesses who simply leave their big bins in the street all the time (irrespective of impact of neighbouring businesses such as outdoor restaurants), and businesses who do not respect the discipline required by sorting at all, and the potential for improving recycling might most be possible in the collection of commercial waste rather than domestic waste.
As for incineration, will it be unduly impacted if recycling rates increase? No. The need for incineration will grow as landfill sites are used up. The challenges with the new incinerators is they are often proposed to be built away from centres of population or commercial activity, leaving questions as to what is done with the heat generated. A new incinerator near Bedford appears not to use the heat at all. In response to challenges at the joint planning committee for our city and county, a planning condition has been put on that requires the incinerator proposed for Ratcliffe-on-Soar to use the heat, but the cost of piping to carry heat the 8 miles or so to places like Clifton begs questions as to whether this will be seen through.
The waste pyramid says energy & metal & scree from incinerated waste beats landfill, in turn trumped by recycling, in turn by re-use and then by reducing the use of materials (that can’t be grown) in the first place. Which brings us to packaging. County Councillors wanted a trip to the Mansfield Amazon to challenge the company on their packaging, but Amazon gave pretty compelling arguments on what they do, including their commitment to being carbon neutral by 2030 – which beats the national government by 20 years. Packaging does indeed save waste. Excess packaging and its delivery costs. Amazon said some of the products they supply can start out with the wrong specifications for the packaging to be used. I wonder if there’s isn’t scope for them to be more accurate with packaging for smaller items.
So what might we want in terms of product and packaging to reduce the waste challenges? Some suggestions – – driving down the use of plastic bottles; – paper bags for shopping rather than plastic; – wooden cutlery for take away food rather than plastic; – using corn (check) based products for packaging rather than oil based; – investigation of the challenges brought by vaping (which uses circuit boards and batteries; which bins does these go into, or should they go to battery collection points?); – instructions on large packaging such as cardboard to encourage folding and reducing their site before being placed in bins;
Happy to hear responses on these suggestions and other proposals generally.
Disappointed by the relatively superficial report by BBC celebrating fusion power as the future.
Now nuclear fusion energy plants would be different from the nuclear fission energy plants we know.
But it’s made next to no progress in 40 years and it’s way way way short of the energy gains needed from the reactions to make up for the energy going in.
Have another think. That, or send a critique on why a pessimistic view on the commercial use of fusion energy presented in some videos published on youtube are wrong.
Reflect on the problems that Derby have had on waste processing and disposal; and know that Notts is facing some controversy in considering an incinerator proposal for the current Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station site. – The owners of Eastcroft Incinerator are considering expansion, but it’s only possible if there is more capacity to pass the steam through a turbine to generate electricity and use the resultant hot water to heat thousands of Nottingham homes and businesses, which the city council currently does. – And Nottingham Conservatives scream “£300m in 10 years”. Have a care. Just a bit of proportion. But anything big to be done, and you can try to start a panic. – I enjoyed Sam Webster’s reply to my supplementary question – “we’re not a parish council; we’re not talking about hanging baskets on a village green”. And it’s at least 30 years.
A special part of the river Severn, just upsteam of Ironbridge – _we love this place Oh God.; merged with a sewage treatment plant in Notts. Read the Guardian analysis here
We should be investing in a greener future. Reduce the amount of clean water lost through broken pipes. More overflow tanks to capture excess waste water that is instead being allowed to flow into rivers during the more frequent periods of heavy rain. More anaerobic digestions plants to convert sewage and other waste found in drain water into gas and compost.
A reminder of how it all started. A district heating scheme to be powered by burning coal (cleaner air in the city needed the coal to be burned in a controlled way) and district heating would be relatively cheap to install when St.Anns was being re-built. (A separate scheme for The Meadows was not to be so successful.) It was soon converted to burning waste – 100 kilo tonnes is incinerated, (a further 80 kilo tonnes recycled) providing steam at 800 degrees and 30 barrs. 10MW of electricity is supplied to a local private wire network (59 GWh per year) and the condensed steam providing 141 GWh of heat to the district network of 95km of pipes at 85 and 100 degrees at 10 Barrs to 4,800 customers in St.Anns. An infra-red survey of the neighbourhoods from a drone found cracks in the pipes that lost 120 metres cubed of water every day, and repairs triggered have reduced the loss to 10 to 20 metres cubed. All this is heavily regulated. More could be done to re-use material (e.g. more maintenance that simply replace, use less plastics in the first place, re-process wood and fibre), reduce the amount to be disposed (e.g. the recycling of food waste was lost cos of revenue cuts), extract more materials for re-use (e.g. gasification can extract a greater range of metals; bio-digestion to create gas for burning and compost for soil) but these technologies need new investment and subsidy (most sensibly from taxing the creation of waste). Extracting energy from waste still beats the burial of waste and there will be plenty fo waste to be incinerated for a long time into the future. Profits for the last year of £487k was reported. ENGINEERING NUMBERS TO BE RE-CHECKED
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