We’d love to talk Building services all day, but we’re aware that most of our readers have more interest in our environmental posts.  Some topics are hotter than others…  more now from the defra 2009 Public attitudes and behaviours towards the environment survey.

Defra asked respondents to list reasons why biodiversity should be conserved and asked them to rank them in order of importance, starting with the most important. The reasons given were:
- It makes green open spaces more pleasant places to visit
- It contributes to the quality of our air and water
- We cannot afford to lose species that might one day provide medical or other benefits we have not yet discovered
- We all have a duty to minimise our impacts on nature and the planet.

For the purposes of the current analysis, these reasons have been ranked according to the proportion of respondents that selected them as either the 1st or 2nd most important reason, followed by the proportion that selected them as either the 3rd or 4th most important reason. Table 40 summarises this analysis for each of the factors.

DEFRA September 2009

Respondents reported that the most important reason to conserve biodiversity (of the four) was “we all have a duty to minimise our impacts on nature and the planet‟. 65% selected this as either their first or second most important reason and were least likely to select this as the third or fourth most important (35% selected this).
The second and third options in Table 40 (”we cannot afford to lose species that might one day provide medical or other benefits we have not yet discovered‟ and “it contributes to the quality of our air and water‟) were rated as of similar importance. About half of respondents selected one of these two statements as either their first or second most important reason (52% and 51% respectively). However, a similar proportion selected these statements as their third or fourth most important reasons.
Overall, the least important reason as judged by respondents was “it makes green open spaces more pleasant places to visit‟ – one third (33%) of respondents selected this as either the first or second most important reason, while around double this proportion (67%) selected it as either the third or fourth most important reason.

Public attitudes and behaviours towards the environment – tracker survey DEFRA September 2009

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BuilderScrap.com would be interested to discuss your feelings on Bio-fuels. Specifically examining the  associated harm to the ecosystem and biodiversity. This is an extension on Mikes post from last week, but from a local point of view… in Avonmouth.

BBC News,Dave Harvey,Tuesday, 23 February 2010

Councillors on the North Bristol Planning committee face a busy Wednesday. A new house is being built in Sneyd Park, and they want to knock down some ‘non-listed structures’. Bristol Zoo have a standard renewal request with construction costs for overflow parking on The Downs. Oh, and then there’s Borneo’s orangutans.

Yes, a rather unusual application for a new power station in Avonmouth has raised a massive debate covering the future of the Earth’s rainforests and the protection of primates.

The officers’ report for the committee today notes there have been 1,121 letters from the public, two of which are in favour. It’s hugely complicated, and hugely fascinating. New technology that might bring us genuinely green electricity, or the latest piece of ‘greenwash’ from the bio-fuel industry.

The question is this. Should councillors, pardon the pun, give a monkey’s for orangutans?

Council officers clearly don’t think so, though their report puts it far more delicately. They’ve recommended approval of the plans. Here’s why.

First, because this is a planning committee, not a climate change debate. Officers have exhaustively trawled the local government literature, and they conclude:

“… direct planning guidance for this type of development is provided within PPS22: Renewable Energy and its companion guide, PPS22, Planning for Renewable Energy, and advises that the production of the fuel source itself does not fall within the remit of the Local Planning Authority decision-making process.”.

In other words, councillors must only decide if replacing this industrial relic with a new power station burning oil from palm trees or jatropha plants will spoil Avonmouth. As you can see, the site is not exactly a beauty spot at the moment.

“But but but but!” I can hear those 1,119 objectors cry, led by the Leader of the City Council herself, Barbara Janke. She wrote recently to Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband:

“There is a strong danger to biodiversity, as well as the knock-on effect of taking land out of food production and climate change implications of processing the fuels and shipping them across the globe.”

Bristol is trying to win “Green Capital” status. The city is home to any number of ecological organisations, from the Soil Association to Sustrans and beyond. If this bio-technology is not sustainable, how can the city allow it on its own doorstep?

Officers, in the cool world of planning, note all the arguments and motions that have been passed in their report. But the killer argument is this. There already is a regulator for renewable energy, and it is not the planning committee’s job to second guess.

“It is evident that if the Government are requiring Ofgem to assess sustainability issues in nationally significant schemes relating to the sourcing of biofuels that receive Renewable Obligation Certificates [ROCs], the same would also apply to smaller scale schemes that receive ROCs. On this basis, for local planning authorities to also consider sustainability issues in respect of the proposed development would result in significant duplication of assessment on issues which are clearly controlled through other areas of legislative control.”

They are right, factually. Ofgem does police ROCs, which are the lifeblood of the green power business. Without them, new technologies like biofuel or offshore wind cannot make money. So the officers argue that since one hand of government is already checking the fuel source, there is no point every council in the land having their own opinion.

Will councillors agree with their officers? Who knows. But the temperature of this debate has been raised by Cllr Janke’s comments. Her own colleague, Cllr Steve Comer who is on the North Bristol committee, recently cautioned her high-profile intervention.

“It is possible that our opponents will accuse us of being subject to ‘whipping’ next month when this comes before the Committee, and will(selectively) quote from the Leader’s press release to do so.

The objection to this plant seems largely based on the source of the fuel that it might use once it is operating. I understand the objections, yet when it comes to planning we cannot use … morality to reject the application, any refusal will have to be on clear PLANNING grounds.”

If the house in Stoke Bishop awaiting ‘non-listed demolition work approval’ is yours, come prepared for a long wait before your application comes up.

bbc.co.uk/blogs/daveharvey/2010/02/bristol_or_borneo_how_are_biof.html

 FREE BACON BUTTIES FOR NEW USERS!!!

The first BuilderScrap Road Show has now started!  Over the month of March, we will be visiting Builders Merchants in the North West region to promote the benefits of reuse to new and existing BuilderScrap members.

The road shows are being run in partnership with Huws Gray, the successful Wales and North West Builders Merchants.

The first event was held this morning at Huws Gray Ellesmere Port, and we are pleased to have signed up many new members.

Anyone interested in lowering their costs and doing their bit for the environment, is invited to join us at any of the below events for a free bacon sandwich*, a cup of tea and a chat!  Just call in any time between 8am and 12 noon.

Friday 5th March 2010 Huws Gray Heswall

Monday 8th March 2010 Huws Gray Aintree

Wednesday 10th March 2010 Huws Gray Burscough

Friday 12th March 2010 Huws Gray Moreton

Monday 15th March 2010 Huws Gray Wallasey

Wednesday 17th March 2010 Huws Gray Heswall

Friday 19th March 2010 Huws Gray Ellesmere Port

Monday 29th March 2010 Huws Gray Aintree

Wednesday 31st March 2010 Huws Gray Flint

Thursday 1st April 2010 Huws Gray Wrexham

For details of any locations, please visit www.huwsgray.co.uk or call us on 0844 2253000

Here are some pictures from our first (rather chilly) day:

The BuilderScrap Team ready to sign up new users

BuilderScrap's Dannii sampling the free bacon sandwiches!

 * terms apply

See you at the next event!

According to the BBC news website. Science has been damaged by the recent ‘Climategate’ accusations. Do you still trust our scientific advisor’s? We’d love to hear your thoughts about this and any other Environmental issues you feel strongly about.

Science damaged by climate row says NAS chief Cicerone By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC News,20 Feb 2010

Leading scientists say that the recent controversies surrounding climate research have damaged the image of science as a whole.

President of the US National Academy of Sciences, Ralph Cicerone, said scandals including the “climategate” e-mail row had eroded public trust in scientists. His comment came at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in San Diego. Dr Cicerone joined other renowned scientists on a panel at the event.

‘Distrust has spread’

He said that the controversial e-mail exchanges about climate change data had caused people to suspect that scientists “oppressed free speech”.

His fellow panel members, including Lord Martin Rees, president of the UK’s Royal Society, agreed that scientists needed to be more open about their findings.

“There is some evidence that the distrust has spread,” Dr Cicerone told BBC News. “There is a feeling that scientists are suppressing dissent, stifling their competitors through conspiracies.”

Recent polls, including one carried out by the BBC, have suggested that climate scepticism is on the rise. Dr Cicerone linked this shift in public feeling to the hacked e-mails and to recently publicised mistakes made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in one of its key reports.

‘More transparency’

He said he was convinced that these events had had a wider knock-on effect. “Public opinion polls are showing that the answers to questions like: ‘how much do you respect scientists?’ or ‘are they behaving in disinterested ways?’, have deteriorated in the last few months.” He said that this crisis of public confidence should be a wake-up call for researchers, and that the world had now “entered an era in which people expected more transparency”. “People expect us to do things more in the public light and we just have to get used to that,” he said. “Just as science itself improves and self-corrects, I think our processes have to improve and self-correct.”

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8525879.stm

We’re always looking for fantastic posts and this from Suzanne Goldenberg, Guardian, February 18th was no exception.

Circuit boards from trashed computers in Belgium recycled to provide tiny amounts of metal to make winter olympic medals

The gold, silver and bronze medallions slung around winning athletes’ necks as they step on to the winners’ podium at the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games could well be made from the guts of an old Belgian computer.

The manufacturer of medals for this Olympics is for the first time incorporating token amounts of recycled material into the medals. Medals historically have been made of freshly mines ores.

The innovation – though largely symbolic – was directed by an Olympic organising committee which had vowed to put on the greenest games ever, raising the bar for London in 2012.

Organisers aimed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 15% from business as usual. The nine new buildings constructed for the games set a new green standard for any complex of buildings in North America, drawing heat from the ocean and exhaust systems, incorporating green roofs and solar panels. The village for the athletes will be converted into housing when the games are over.

However, efforts to put on a green games were undermined by unseasonably warm conditions, which forced organisers to fly and truck in snow for the freestyle skiiing and snowboarding venue.

Teck, the Canadian-based mining and metallurgical company charged with making the medals, said on its website that it had developed a process to recover metals from unwanted cathode ray tube glass, computer circuit and keyboards, cables and other e-waste.

“The process involves shredding, separating and heating of the various electronic components to recover a variety of metals,” the company said. It said the gold, silver and copper used in the medals was recovered from trashed circuit boards collected and processed in Belgium.

The company has touted the innovation as a means of avoiding some of the hundreds of thousands of tons of e-waste that would otherwise end up in landfills – although not all that much, even by Teck’s own admission.

Third-place finishers will get a medal that has just 1.11% recycled material when they go home with a bronze. Silver medals contain barely 0.12% recycled material. And for the gold, which is gold plate, the figure is 1.52%.

guardian.co.uk/environment/recycling

More from BuilderScrap.com on Biodiversity and Recycling in the UK.

Those who claimed to have given a least ‘a little’ thought to biodiversity loss in the UK were asked what they thought might affect it. Rather than asking respondents to come up with their own answers they were presented with a list of twelve options and asked to select the ones which best applied. Respondents were also given the option of selecting an ‘other’ answer code and providing their answer verbatim.

The most common responses to this question were: climate change or global warming (42% of respondents said this was a factor), air pollution (35%), house building (28%) and water pollution (27%). A summary of the results from this question is provided in Table 39 (showing all responses selected by 5% of more of respondents).

Table

Todays BuilderScrap.com post does not explain about our Builders Exchange. We have chosen to focus on our concern for the environment and people attitudes towards biodiversity.

The research included a number of attitude statements related specifically to biodiversity. Respondents were asked how much they agreed or disagreed with each. Three of the statements were new to the 2009 survey so trend data are only available for some of the measures.

The results show that the vast majority report being concerned about the loss of biodiversity in the world with 85% agreeing that ‘I do worry about the loss of species of animals and plants in the world’ (54% of these agreeing strongly).The vast majority also agreed that there were many natural places that they may never visit but they were glad they existed (91%, with 65% agreeing strongly).

The majority were also concerned about biodiversity on a domestic level – eight in ten (80%) agreed that they worried about changes to the countryside in the UK and loss of native animals and plants (with 41% agreeing strongly). Two-thirds (66%) agreed that we should subsidise farming in hilly and mountainous areas to maintain the landscape for recreation and wildlife. Two thirds (67%) agreed that they actively encouraged wildlife in their garden although the results indicated that not all of these people equated this with protecting biodiversity per se as a lower percentage (45%) of all respondents disagreed there was nothing they could do personally to help to protect the UK’s biodiversity while 26% agreed with this statement.

The majority (63%) of respondents agreed that climate change did have a direct impact on biodiversity and very few people disagreed with this statement. 13% said they did not know if climate change had a direct impact and nearly one in five said they neither agreed nor disagreed with this statement.

There had been no change in levels of agreement with the statement ‘I do worry about the changes to the countryside in the UK and loss of native animals and plants’ since the 2007 Defra survey (see Table 38). However, there had been a slight increase in the proportion of respondents agreeing that there is nothing they could do personally to help protect the UK‟s biodiversity, from 22% in 2007 to 26% in 2009. The proportion who disagreed with this had decreased from 51% to 45%.

The proportion who agreed that they actively encouraged wildlife in their garden appears to have decreased slightly since 2007 (from 74% to 67%). However, in 2007, this question was asked only of those who had a garden, whereas in 2009 this was asked of all respondents.

BuilderScrap.com are looking at Biodiversity. The survey included a number of questions to gauge respondents ‘knowledge of’ and ‘attitudes and behaviours’ towards biodiversity. We’re going to summarise the findings from these questions alongside findings which relate to respondents’ use of green spaces (including gardens, public parks and open spaces).

Knowledge of the term biodiversity

Respondents were asked to say how much, if anything, they knew about the term biodiversity. The question was asked without providing respondents with a definition of what biodiversity was. Just over one in ten in total knew either a lot about it (3%) or a fair amount about it (8%). Around one fifth (19%) said they knew just a little and 17% said they knew nothing about it but had heard of the name. Half (50%) said that they knew nothing about it and had never heard of ‘biodiversity’.
The 2009 figures indicate a lower level of knowledge about biodiversity compared with 2007 (the same question was asked on the 2007 Defra omnibus survey). In 2007 fewer respondents said they had never heard of biodiversity in 2007 (44%) and respondents were more likely to indicate that they knew nothing about biodiversity but had heard the name (21% in 2007 compared with 17% in 2009). However, these changes were small and the proportion who said they knew a lot or a fair amount about biodiversity is comparable between the two surveys.

After responding to this question, all respondents were provided with a definition of biodiversity so everyone was able to answer subsequent questions: ‘Biodiversity is the variety of living things and the natural environments that support them’.
Respondents were asked to indicate how much thought they had given prior to the survey to the loss of biodiversity in the UK and elsewhere in the world. The findings from this question are presented in Table 37 compared with the 2007 Defra omnibus survey findings.

The results in the above table show that the level of thought given to loss of biodiversity in the UK was very similar to that given to loss of biodiversity elsewhere in the world. A small proportion (7%) of respondents said they had given a great deal of thought to biodiversity in the UK or elsewhere, while 14% said they had given a fair amount of thought. It was more likely for respondents to say they had given a little thought to loss of biodiversity in the UK (25%) or elsewhere in the world (24%). However, the largest group of respondents indicated that they had not really given any thought to loss of biodiversity either within the UK (49%) or elsewhere in the world (49%).

A smaller proportion of respondents said they had given some thought to the loss of biodiversity in 2009 compared with 2007. In 2007, slightly more than two thirds of respondents said they had given either a little, a fair amount or a lot of thought to loss of biodiversity in the UK (67%) and elsewhere in the world (70%) compared with less than one half in 2009 (45% on both measures).

Usually at the BuilderScrap.com offices we’re discussing Free Building Materials and how to get rid of Builders Surplus Supply. We’d like our readers to know we’ve a vested interest in Carbon offsetting and various other environmental projects.

This post from the current defra survey looks at respondents’ attitudes towards carbon offsetting and the types of offsetting schemes that are available. As part of the omnibus survey, the respondents who said they knew a lot or a fair amount about carbon offsetting were presented with three statements about offsetting and asked how strongly they agreed or disagreed with each (on a scale ranging between strongly agree and strongly disagree). Figure 1 summarises responses to these statements and compares these with the findings from the 2007 Defra survey.

Respondents who reported having already used offsetting and who knew a fair amount or a lot about carbon offsetting were presented with one additional statement (’by making people more aware of how their behaviour affects the environment, carbon offsetting encourages more environmentally-friendly behaviour in other areas of their life’). As so few respondents answered this question, the results for this statement are provided for indicative purposes only – the base size is too low to support meaningful interpretation.

Due to the relatively small base sizes for each of the statements, most of the apparent differences shown in Figure 14 are not statistically significant. However, people‟s attitudes towards carbon offsetting do seem to have become slightly more positive since the 2007 Defra survey. The main significant changes since 2007 are highlighted below.

Compared with 2007, respondents who knew a lot or a fair amount about carbon offsetting, were more likely to agree that ‘I would trust companies offering carbon offsetting to use the money I paid in the right way’ (35% agreed compared with 24% in 2007) and more likely to disagree that ‘carbon offsetting will make no difference to the fight against climate change’ (50% compared with 42% in 2007). Respondents were less likely to agree that ‘carbon offsetting encourages people to carry on doing things that harm the environment’ (44% agreed compared with 57% in 2007). All of these changes indicate that respondents were more positive towards carbon offsetting compared with 2007.