IES Blog

As a keen live music lover I spend a lot of my time going to gigs and festivals throughout the year. A lot of the bands I see in Glasgow are usually stopping off as part of a UK tour or on some occasions, a worldwide jaunt. It got me thinking about the huge environmental footprint that could be left behind by tours – flights, a convoy of busses for crew and equipment, venue emissions and gig goers waste. Safe to say a pretty big footprint eh? I decided to take a look and see if there are any bands or records labels out there that are actively challenging this issue and coming up with ways of reducing their tour’s impact on the environment. It didn’t take me long to find some positive and creative action being taken…

The Dave Matthews band collaborated with FilterForGood in order to reduce the amount of bottled water waste on their 2010 tour. They provided refilling water stations for their fans to help reduce the large quantities of bottled water waste that makes its way into landfills and our waterways. As part of their commitment to the environment they also provided recycling stations in the parking lots, encouraged fans to carpool to gigs, used sustainable biodiesel and offset the tours carbon emissions.

The Black Eyed Peas tour took a creative approach to promoting recycling waste on their worldwide tour. The waste that was accumulated at each venue was then recycled into official merchandise and on average venues reported an increase of 20-50% in recycling taking place on the night of a Black Eyed Pea’s show.

The Stowaways are a Canadian band who are setting out on a “sustainable music tour” this summer, as they will be travelling from gig to gig along the west coast by sailboat. This is a great idea to cut down their tour footprint and an even greater PR opportunity for the band.

My final and favourite example of a band going on a “green tour” has got to be the Ginger Ninjas. These guys are an American rock n roll band who will travel by bicycle across the US and Europe on their “Pleasant Revolution Tour”. They will also be playing on stages that are completely bicycle powered.

Could you imagine how many bicycles it would take to power U2’s stage? Answers on postcards please.

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Tags:Environment, music, recycle, Sustainability

Having recently become a father of a baby girl, I have now started living a life as a father. No doubt it is a tough job and it sure is challenging, but on the other hand it is joyful. You might think why am I writing about fatherhood in this blog? Because how you raise or take care of a baby is closely related to our environment.

I read an article last month about being a “green family”. The couple are raising their kid in a diaper free environment. Just a bit of fact, on average a baby will go through about 6,000 disposable diapers by the time he/she turns two years old, that means millions of diapers end up in the landfills every day, taking about 200-500 years to decompose. At first I thought this sounds a bit exaggerated, but now I do believe 6,000 diapers in two years maybe achievable.

So one solution for this is of course change to cloth nappy, and at best nappy-free. This sounds easy, but it does require quite a bit of effort. I do admire the couple’s effort getting their baby to use the cloth nappy all the while and turn nappy free after six months. We have tried using just the cloth when our baby was about 1 -2 months, but soon realised it is too much trouble and have then switched to disposable. After reading this, I think I should try using the cloth nappy again since she is now older and the frequency for toileting should not be as high as before. I was always hoping to see something like bio-degradable diapers (since we can have bio-degradable plastic bags, why not for diapers) in the market, but so far no luck, I think this will be a good product for the market.

I may not be doing so well on the diapers side, but I do try to help the environment in other area, i.e. after bathing our baby, will keep the water for flushing the toilet. There are also a lot of things parents can do or be aware of, for example, not to buy too many baby clothes as you will soon realise they can’t fit in them after wearing a few months as they just grow too quickly. Don’t buy too many toys, as they probably prefer parents playing with them instead (at least that what I have noticed). 

Let’s not forget our children’s’ future environment while happily raising them.

To read the “Green Family” article, please click here.

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Tags:Environment, free, nappies

Ok, blog time again. I am going to take this opportunity to follow up from my blog before about plastic bags. I’m sure some of you will want to use one to suffocate me but I need to get it out there ok? Anyway.. so I am an active member of my local green group, The Beacon Hill Green Committee, meeting once a month or so to discuss and brainstorm ways to improve the “greenness” of the neigbourhood. This month, I was put in charge of an investigation into plastic bag policy. Now, lets look at what other countries have done.

Some countries just decide on an outrite ban but that means they need an alternative and paper bags aren’t much better. However, China did this and saved 37million barrels of crude oil per year though – if they can do it, why can’t everyone? (politics) Ireland chose a different approach, introducing a tax on the bags – 33 cents or so per bag (not sure about the number), but it was high enough to deter people from taking them resulting in a 94% decrease in plastic bag consumption. The accumulated tax then subsidised the cost of a pint of Guinness (in an ideal world).

So, to get back to my meeting. I looked into it for Boston, and there was talk about bringing in a ban or a tax but these things take time (politics), so I took it upon myself to do it another way – through education and awareness of the impacts that they can cause. I think my poster does that quite nicely – straight to the point, shocking and truthful…

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Tags:Boston, recycle, recycling

I am going to step away from building this time and have a look at the pollution and environmental damage from aviation sector.

I have taken two pictures in Beijing while making a trip there, we can see that the air quality is rather poor during the daytime, the visibility in the city is low and it is not due to the moisture on that day, it is air pollution! I know there are a lot of factors that contribute to the pollution, factories, cars, planes etc. But in this article, we will just focus on aviation.

According to IATA’s Director General, Giovanni Bisignani, by 2010, Asia will be the largest single market for aviation. IATA is focused on reducing fuel burn hence reducing carbon emission, with every litre of fuel saved, reduces about 3kg of CO2 emission.

For speech of the IATA’s Director General, please visit:
http://www.iata.org/pressroom/speeches/2008-02-25-01.htm

The aircraft companies are working hard nowadays to reduce the fuel consumption of their airplanes. We now see better design and better engines, all these are to help create a cleaner environment around. But there are only certain limits that the aircraft companies can do, to solve the problems, everyone (including government body, airlines companies and passengers) should play a role as well in reducing the green house gases emission. With government body, airport management groups and airline companies working on shortening routes, improving air traffic management and spreading best practice in fuel conservation, what can we as passenger do to help?

I recently read one short article from a forum in Asia, one Asian airline has set up a trial policy on certain flight route that they will ask passengers to go to the toilet before boarding the plane in order to lose some weight. By doing this, they estimated that can save around 4.2 tonnes of CO2 emission per month. I personally welcome this approach as not only you help reduce the overall weight of the plane while it’s travelling, but it also gives you bigger and cleaner spaces in modern airport’s toilet. And not to mention the washrooms queuing time that I always see inside the plane!!

Here are some extra small tips that I picked up from an airline magazine about travelling:
1. Bring clothes that can mix and match easily, so you don’t need to bring too many clothes.
2. Only bring necessary accessories.
3. Roll clothes up for tidy packing, so you can use a smaller suitcase.
4. Bring lightweight equipments for business trip.

These are just some examples how we can help to reduce carbon footprint.

Nowadays I have also seen airlines applying strict restrictions and penalties on the weight of check in and hand carry luggage, I think a lot of these penalties are purely to cover the extra fuel that the airlines might need for heavier planes and not from the environmental point of view, but it certainly will help our future generation if we start using less fuel. So let’s start travel as light as possible or even better travel less where possible!

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Tags:Building, Engineers, Environment, reduce, Welcome

This time, instead of talking about the VE or SketchUp, I would like to provide some insight into my world outside of work and the passion I have for the environment. This is a project I am currently working on;

Ok, the problem is one you all contribute to on a daily basis, perhaps unknowing of the effects they can have. Unaware of the alternatives and the choices you can make. You probably think it’s such an insignificant item that it couldn’t possible have an effect on the environment. The plastic bag. How many times have you walked into a store to buy a single item and the store assistant not only supplies one bag, but frequently double bags it? Are they on bag commission? Let me give you some background on plastic bags and what harm they can do, then maybe you will forego the bag and carry the item or bring your own reusable bag next time. If you are a store assistant, maybe you will think twice before offering. Ultimately this is something I’d like the government to mandate, but one step at a time.

Introduced 25 years ago, these bags are now consumed at rate of approximately 500 billion per year globally, or 1 million per minute. It is estimated that 1% or 5 billion of these bags end up as wind blow litter each year. These bags that take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade, often wind up in waterways or the landscape, becoming eyesores and eventually degrading water and soil as they break down into tiny toxic bits. Their manufacture and disposal also uses large quantities of non-renewable resources, especially petroleum, a key ingredient in plastic. Large amounts of global warming gases are released during their production, transportation, and disposal. Environmentally, disposable plastic bags are a serious problem. Hundreds of thousands of marine animals, including endangered sea turtles, die every year when they eat plastic bags mistaken for food.                                                         

What about a ban on plastic bags? Would that help? That’s what they have done in San Francisco. However, consumers still need something to carry their groceries in. What about paper?

Paper bags are not the answer, since independent studies show they have roughly as many negative impacts as plastic ones. These problems could be avoided by advocating the use of reusable bags instead, and the consumption of fewer disposable bags. The negative impacts of disposable bags could be reduced easily and significantly by charging for their usage at the point of purchase. In cooperation with retailers, the Irish government introduced a plastic bag tax (PlasTax) that has slashed consumption over 90% and raised $9.6 million for environmental and waste management projects. Another benefit is that stores save money on bag purchases and improve their public image. The money could even go towards subsidising reusable bags, purchasable in the store.

A combination of consumer education and governments and retailers working together, we can rid the world of them. Take a reusable bag next time. My task is to persuade the Mayor for the moment and I’ll go from there.

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Tags:Environment, recycle, recycling, reduce, reuse