Chair: Kevin McCloud
Speakers: Colin Butfield (WWF), Pooran Desai (Bioregional Quintain), Sue Clifford (Common Ground)
Kevin McCloud
Our speakers represent the top of the tree of sustainable development. I’ll introduce them in a moment. I’m myself trying to build a sustainable development in Swindon, and it’s interesting how, when we talk about sustainable development, it’s less about the houses and it’s more about other things – the spaces in between the houses and how we live, but changing lifestyle is controversial, smacks of social and political engineering. People resent the idea of making us individuals pay for the crimes of greedy capitalists, but it is our own lifestyles which drive the need for all of these things: consumption of new goods, holidays abroad, and all the things that manufacturers make for us which we consume.
Increasingly we’re finding, in order to make a community sustainable you need to do a lot of things that aren’t about development, such as creating play spaces, thinking about food transport and car sharing. You want to make a place that people want to move to and not leave. Make places which are distinctive and powerful and that’s a key thing, local distinctiveness is a key component of sustainability – nowhere will be sustainable unless people want to stay there and put something back into that place.
Three people here today represent the most important strands,
Colin Butfield, responsible for a campaign that started in WWF and is now the One Planet Living campaign. They published a book called The Little Guide to One Planet Living, sets out an agenda for sustainable living, saying that sustainability is about increasing choice, creating circumstances where people have more choice and quality of life is increased.
That book was written by our second guests, Pooran Desai, who founded Bioregional Quintain, who coppice woods and create charcoal for people like B&Q. Therefore no excuse for buying Chinese charcoal, 50k tons brought into this world from China and Africa. Whereas we have lots of coppiced woods that need an income.
Finally, Sue Clifford, who founded a charity called Common Ground. We first met 20 years ago when they talked about colour and the way that changes across a country and can be used for cultural mapping. Since then Common Ground have gone on to create Apple Day, which celebrates apples, orchards, cider, etc, and have produced a wall chart of local distinctiveness, peculiarities. Sue has also published a book called England In Particular, book of English living, very funny and amusing read about what makes village life different.
Colin Butfield, WWF
Setting out the big picture. Why do we need to talk about sustainability? Why do we need to think about this? What is WWF doing about all this?
Suicide for a Sunday afternoon is to put up two graphs. Core of WWF’s science is the Live Planet Index. Measured biodiversity – everything in the oceans, forests, etc. That’s been steadily plummeting since the 70s. The other graph is humanities ecological footprint, the stuff we buy, pollution, materials we consume, very clear correlation between the two. So what can we do about it? how can we change that trend? Increase biodiversity.
What’s the point? We live in the UK, a tiny island. Surely it’s all India and China. If everyone lived like we do in the UK, we’d need 3 planets to support us, but in India or China, they need less than one planet. But every time we buy something from China, we have to remember they are exporting most of their stuff to us, and that’s why they are building one coal fired power station every week.
We talk about sustainability, and we talk about insulation and building materials, but that’s not all there is. Climate change is having real impact on the ground. One of the last tiger habitats is the Sunderbans, mangrove swamps, and 10ks of people live there, and sea level rise has made some of the islands uninhabitable, and the tigers are either coming in to conflict with people, or starving because they are having problem hunting.
In the UK, 27% of the impact we have on climate change comes from our homes.
Borneo forest cover in 1900 is almost 100% covered by forest. Still mostly in 1950, but by 2005 there’s more than half of it gone – one of the oldest forests in the world. That’s resources not just for people, but home to one of the last great apes, the orangutang. A lot of this is about timber, palm oil production and illegal logging.
50% of all timber is used in our homes, if it is sustainable that’s great, but we are the third largest importer of illegal timber, so need to be very, very careful about sourcing timber.
All of us as individuals could bring UK needs down to about 2 planets, the rest of the impact comes down to stuff where only communities or government can make a difference. Issues around power sources, or lack of public transport. So 50% of what we can do is for the individual, the rest is community.
It’s also not the same from place to place. The South East has the highest impact per capita. There are graphs of housing, travel and food footprints. So in the South West, very low travel footprint, but very high in the South West, same with food.
Example of homes in the UK. Looked at over 90 different types of houses. If you start with a rural detached house, has an initial power etc. bill of £1393, and if we reduce carbon emissions by 80%, then we’re looking at stuff very easy and cheap to fix – draught proofing, insulation, changing light bulbs. These will actually save you money. If you install a ground source heat pump, which can do more to save energy, that’s around £11k of a spend, but that can be quite a barrier for most people. So WWF working with government and local authorities, to help more people afford to do it.
Lobbying government to create a low interest loan over 20 years, e.g. £700 per year, which is about the amount of money you’d save having done all the insulation etc., so after 10 years you’re quids in. Can help by lobbying MPs and talk to local council about it.
What communities can do is stuff like BedZED car club, individuals can act together and find ways to save CO2. Community hubs such as schools can also be key, so WWF has produced over 200 publications for schools to help them understand how they can help and become sustainable.
Local councils typically get spoken to about broken paving stones and holes in the road, but have started to be lobbied about climate change, people asking what the council is doing to improve things for individuals, to help them reduce their footprints. So there is the Beacon Award, WWF Climate Change category. Lots of initiatives – all it takes to make it happen is for people to talk to the council and point them at the WWF resources.
Scale of challenge is huge, but individual action makes a difference, community action makes a bigger difference, and working with the local council can make a massive difference. Have a foot print calculator online to help people understand where they can make changes.
Pooran Desai, Bioregional Quintain
Polar bears are struggling to retain their homes. Why should we worry? We do face a massive challenge, and we don’t have three planets to support us. How can we create a high quality lifestyle, but be sustainable?
BedZED is a dev of 100 homes, plus office space and community space. Thermally efficient, good insulation, generating some renewable energy. Photovoltaic panels integrated into conservatory glazing. So without any real change in behaviour, just by building sustainably, you can save about half a planet.
Just through switching off lights when we don’t use them we can save another 30%. Creating a car club too, need access for key journeys, but the rest of the journeys you can walk, cycle or use public transport. People who live at BedZED can sell their cars, and yet still have all their car needs met by up to about £10 per week, whereas owning one costs up to £100 per week.
So does this mean social engineering, but I’d say that if you live in a sprawling suburb, you can’t walk to the local shops, you have to drive, you can’t get to your school by cycling, so we have engineered a very eco-unfriendly lifestyle. And now there is such little exercise in our everyday lives, 60% of all men are going to be obese within 30 years. Creating communities that are less car dependent are good for the environment and good for our own health, and if we’re healthier we’re happier, so low car development = happy.
BedZED made recycling easier by integrating recycling into the home, and use recycled materials. New developments include a drop off point for bulk organic food, making food boxes more cost-effective, offer boxes at 15% less because don’t have to deliver door to door. Can design into our future communities.
Talking about this as a developer, but all these ideas can be incorporated when you’re building your own home, so one of the things you should think about is where is it located? Can you reduce your car use, or become a member of a car club, or walk or cycle more?
It’s relatively easy to reduce your footprint by about a half at BedZED, but soon as you leave BedZED, you’re back to a non-sustainable office, school etc. So need to encourage more people to improve their footprint.
One Brighton has apartments that will be ready spring next year, has rooftop mini-allotments, renewable developments, completely car free, next to Bright station, so there will be a car club.
Up to seven stories now, using greenest concrete using 100% recycled aggregate, 50% green cement. Trying to encourage more developers to use this standard of concrete, using a lot of reclaimed materials.
Main building material is low-temp clay block, uses 50% less energy, so will see more of that.
Also want to start a mini sky farm using chickens in an “egg-loo”, but although it won’t produce a lot of eggs, it will put children back in touch with nature.
Largest scheme is Middlesborough, zero waste strategy, renewable energy. Whole landscape is planted out to orchard, edible landscaping, For first time in 30 – 40 years, we’re talking about food sourcing, so producing local food reduces footprint.
Sue Clifford, Common Ground
Common Ground, hardly ever mention sustainability, and would define it as living together, not just us, but living well with nature. Sustainability is seeking a new mutuality with us and nature. Worked hard to think of ways to stand up for their everyday surroundings, build new bridges as well as keeping the old ones open.
Common Place, unless we look after the ordinary, the special will become lost, fragmented, meaningless.
People value all sorts of things about their own surroundings. People focus on all the things that go to make a place special. Be wrong to think that looking at your parish is parochial, the connections are out and beyond the parish. There are people doing parish maps and ABCs of local distinctiveness all over the world, e.g. one in Italy, which includes everything from local ravioli to history of bandits
Every county used to have a gate pattern, kerb stones had something to say. All these little corners have different meanings for people. Assertions:
- Local – parish, street, blog, you’re own self-defined feeling
- Knowledge about a place, upon that they build their values, so if a place loses its meaning, people’s affection for it is degraded and they cease to care.
Water used to be revered, with well dressing thanking whoever for the fact that water is still running. Place names tell like Wells or Bath say how important water is. And through each of hour homes runs rivulets [albeit in pipes].
Localness is about differentiation. Dialect, accent.
Different places have different breeds of livestock, e.g. a Hampshire Downs sheep ad a Wensleydale sheep are different.
Standards not standardisation. Quality doesn’t mean everything has to be the same. Bus shelters, are all different, some of them proper buildings, have their own personality, can shout the place and often do better if they do.
Also looking at the way in which place accommodates and accumulates change. Enriching the feeling of a place. Building out of local materials isn’t just about reducing journey they have made, but also keeping local culture going.
Part of what we are is an incredible mixture of identities.
Demand the best of the new. So often we aspire low, and yet we can have it all if we really care about it Norwich library and it’s relationship with the church outside.
Apples. One of the things that excited us is that we can grow 3000 varieties of apples here, including cider, dessert and cooking apples. Many come from place and have stories attached to them, come from orchards that maintain a great richness of biodiversity. And also they maintain buildings, such as cider houses and fruit stores. Plus there’s the games, customs, celebrations.
Let nature into our every day surroundings, very close to us. One thing we’ve been advocating for a long time are community orchards, now only where people can enjoy a sunny day but also grow their own food. Various community orchards making their own juices and ciders. Apple day.
Although our everyday surroundings are ours, we are part of a much bigger picture.
Kevin
As a keen cider drinker I endorse every word.
Question: Where can we find the most successful new neighbourhoods?
Kevin: I know there are some good ones in Germany.
Pooran: I’d like to suggest BedZED as an example. Most interesting stat is that after a survey in July, average BedZED resident knows 20 neighbours, average in UK is 3. Key things around that has been reducing car use, there are fewer cars, and no cars allowed within centre of development, so that’s a place where children play and parents meet each other. It’s that sort of local, social fabric which we’ve lost, and nothing has destroyed that more than the car, so we have a very hopeful story, because cars are not good for the environment.
Kevin: There are examples of sustainable construction, Greenwich Millennium Village, but they’re not necessarily e.g.s of sustainable communities. Pooran hasn’t mention the reed bed sewerage system etc. because it’ all about people. There’s a place in Germany where the residents had a say in some of the design, and there are more e.g. in Germany and Holland than here.
Colin: An inspiring example. Woman from a town in Devon convinced whole town to go plastic-bag-free and get people to think about their resource use, but what was impressive is that she just decided that it mattered, so she talked to her community and got them engaged, and because of that they’ve now started car clubs, people know each other better now, it’s a closer community and people know each other better.
Kevin: Sue, have you seen communities that are better rooted? More aware of their local communities? E.g. west country or Norfolk.
Sue: It’s difficult because you can find examples of both extremes in the south west, or wherever. One of the things that strikes me is that the use of the car has so deprived people of their company. Thinking of Milton Keynes, the whole idea of the city was based around the car, the car was king and to see things come right round to BedZED is so positive. What I would say is that it takes one or two things, as in Modbury and the plastic bags, is that what we’ve seen with the community orchard is that it’s starting it off, it’s breaking down the fear people have about talking across boundaries to each other about what they care about. And once they get going very little stops them and I think that there are lots of very positive movement all over the country. A lot of action about the allotments, and because they know and trust each other because of the allotments, they do a lot more. To begin where you are and take a step, make a move and not be frightened. Otherwise one is so daunted by taking a move. Just begin where you are and make the smallest of differences. All the differences we’re all trying to make are beginning to make up and cause a wave now, something is happening.
And the lime render:
With a lovely example of 
And finally, how do you build a straw bale wall? It’s actually very simple.
And essential equipment for tidying up the bales, which apparently get a bit ‘hairy’ when freshly laid, and for sculpting rounded corners:
