Making an example of London

OneWorld UK

By Ken Kitson

Three-quarters of the world's energy is consumed in cities, London's Deputy Mayor, Nicky Gavron, told a meeting on environmentally sound living last week, and her aim is to make the capital "an exemplary sustainable city".

London has made a good start by boosting public transport, she told the meeting at City Hall, and boasted the fastest growth in public transport use of any major city in the world.

She pointed out that centralised electricity generation was incredibly inefficient 65 per cent of the energy was lost as heat at the power station, and a further nine per cent lost during transmission to users. So she endorsed the development of local energy production, particularly local combined heat, cooling and power plants.

She also pointed to the example of the Surrey town of Woking, which had reduced carbon emissions from municipal buildings by 77 per cent from the levels of the 1990s.

She told the meeting organised by environmental charity Global Action Plan that actions in the next decade would be critical in addressing climate change.

Pupils from the City of London Academy in Southwark explained how they had reduced their school's environmental footprint. Their activities included recycling paper, which they said saved the equivalent of 12 trees a week, book swaps and recycling computers through Computer Aid International.

A local radio station in west London, broadcasting in Punjabi and English with an audience of 135,000, showed how community radio could be a focus for environmental action in the home.

Examples of the stations environmental work included interviews with local women on their difficulty in identifying which plastic could be recycled and an interview with a local shopkeeper questioning his use of plastic bags.

A panel of people of business people and local government officials shared their experiences in trying to create more environmentally conscious workplaces. The difficulty of finding reliable environmentally conscious suppliers was emphasised. For example, it seemed that there was only one organisation licenced to collect and recycle food waste from commercial organisations in London.

Another suggestion was to make visible innovations early in the process, such as setting up recycling bins and using recycled paper, because people were encouraged by seeing tangible change.

The Director of GAP, Trewin Restorick, closed the meeting with three pleas:

- for people to "be brave" in taking action at a local level, legitimising climate change as a core concern for all organisations and communities;

- to communicate more simply: he quoted research pointing to people who thought "biodiversity" was a washing powder

- to be more than "talking heads": only through action could policymakers have the "moral authority" to persuade others. He cited John Prescott as a poor role model in this respect, because the Deputy Prime Minister exhorted the public to reduce energy consumption while enjoying a fleet of large petrol-hungry cars.

* Global Action Plan
* City Hall - a green building'
* desiradio