Living the green life - Monday 17th March 2008 at Kings College Conference Centre

Kevin Christie from Renewables Connection discussing Micro Energy Renewables.

Kevin represents an umbrella service that offers to survey and assess a property and advise on what types of renewable energy may be suitable for use within the property. Using knowledge of the market and types of systems available, advisors can also recommend possible sources of funding for private households, small businesses and the public sector in Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire.

Further information: www.renewablesconnection.org.uk

Douglas Boyle - from Organic Services (Scotland) Ltd, discussing Organic waste disposal

Douglas highlighted the current situation in the UK regarding recycling with the emphasis on hard waste with little consideration to organic waste. He introduced a variety of products, some already in use in the UK, for the contained composting of animal and vegetable waste on a large scale. Douglas advised more consideration should be given to incorporating these systems into domestic and commercial developments. For an example of a working composting system, look at the Tower Hotel in Crieff which utilises the "Rocket“.

Douglas also provided information on solutions for water waste such as reed bed systems, food waste drying processes and anaerobic digestion.

Further information: http://www.compost.org.uk

Jacquie Forbes from Stewart Milne homes, discussing the Sigma energy efficient home.

The sigma home has been developed by the Stewart Milne group for the BRE innovation park, it was designed to utilise their expertise in timber kit building and incorporate renewable technologies to produce a five star sustainability rating from BRE. The house will be monitored and tested over the next two years to assess it's performance and commercial viability.

Further information: www.bre.co.uk to see the Sigma house and other examples of sustainable housing.

BIFM "Sustainababble"

Thanks to Angela for the article circulated between the office's ERD group. I feel it has raised some interesting arguments and put into words some things I felt, but couldn't articulate. It documents James Woudhuysen's comments at the BIFM annual conference 2008; "sustainability is all about guilt and pessimism, innovation has taken a back seat". The government talk about global warming and carbon neutrality, I have a friend who is a geologist, and when we talk about climate change, he maintains that tectonic plates cause tsunami's and earthquakes, NOT global warming. I feel sometimes that the public has been whipped into a state of frenzy by some clever 'spin', surely we should be thinking along the lines of balance, moving forward using the tools we already have except that we are incorporating sustainability into our way of thinking as we go - not regressing to a more basic way of living as James Woudhuysen put it, using "one hamster wheel trundling out enough energy to power one lightbulb"!!