Bringing the Climate Transition PhD Community from all Universities together.

The work of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research has in recent years began bringing together the Climate Transitions PhD community from across our British (and some international) Universities.

Each year a different host University will hold the ‘PhD Climate Transitions Conference’ in an effort to engage and integrate PhD researcher candidates from all disciplines of geography, agriculture, biodiversity, planning, psychology, biology, chemistry, social research, innovation etc. to come together for 3-4 days and partake in the conferences.

The opportunity to network, create new associations, reflect on new directions to take ones research in and many other positive facets are experienced which will benefit you and your research.

A small video of several of the PhD researcher’s experiences of the 2013 Tyndall conference (held at Cardiff University) is shown below:

 

This is YOUR conference for all you PhD candidates (and possible post-doctoral) involved in the sustainability field and climate transition research – we strongly encourage you to contact the Tyndall Centre and attend the April 2014 (2015! 2016!) PhD Climate Transition Conference.

Composting as a livelihood for your community? Towards ZERO waste society …. Are we realistic?

Waste out of control - or have we just lost faith?

There are positions for and against that we can hit a high level of recycling of 50% and sadly some recent events have revealed some very bad waste management practices that have crept along in the background quiet illegally.

 

Some issues of 'send it away and forget about it' which was originally a philosophy/living regard we had towards national landfill .... yet now some exchanges of fire have occurred as the waste has been claimed to be sent abroad and claimed as recycled when it was supposedly actually put to landfill.

 

Our habits have been ridiculous the last fifty years, we need to review our entire living standard and objectively ask ourselves do we really need to buy this, that and those. This is mainly all about demand and inevitable waste - which many feel they can do nothing about it - so merely continue to consume at an accelerated rate.

 

We have increased our recycling rates (or at least we have increased the rate which we put things into 'green' bins and not black bins) in theory we are doing the right thing - yet it is all really going where we believe (where we are told it is) it is?

 

Can we deal with waste in our immediate vicinity? Should we deal with our waste in our immediate vicinity? What incentives? could we recycle that waste into 'free' energy and heat? Who would be responsible for partaking or managing such initiatives?

 

Composting - more options than we know?

 

Composting at home still has some setbacks. Complaints from neighbours that someone who is putting food into an ‘open composter’ in the back yard still attracts rats and increases the pest problem – or worse attracts more domesticated cats who will be instinctively attracted to the rats.

 

People forget what exactly they can add to garden large compost bins (of 100 litres or considerably more). What can we do on the house (or office) front? How much waste can be channelled into the house hold land/garden area without impacting upon the neighbourhood?

Post: junk mail, bills and personal letters:

Many of us may be tempted to recycle those pesky flyers, or envelopes that come with all those bills, personal letters etc. Just by hand shredding the paper (long strips) into the house bin (allocated for home (non-food) composting). Newspaper may be of use here to tear up and add to the home composter.

In such a neurotic era of personal information and privacy – your precious details can be added to the home composting point.  It may be a good way to rid yourself of personal information safely. Instead of using electronic shredders, one may hand shred the paper and add it to your compost point where it will be gradually broken down.

Human waste:

No – not urine or faeces (although composting toilets are increasingly becoming more acceptable by many conventional families) yet human hair, nails and anything else that departs our outer shells may be of use to compost. Just mixing all those torn up envelopes, toilet paper that one blow’s their nose on along with hairs and nails will be a good source for your home composting.

Some scientist may argue that such a build-up of pathogens may potentially be a danger – yet mixed in with paper, cardboard, grass, bush cuttings and weeds – most potential threats can be minimised.

Micro-scale composting in Houses à Small scale Community Composting:

There is scope to begin a larger scale composting point if 100 houses in a street agree, as a co-operative, to merge all their composting at one site if they have finite land (or not gardens at all – perhaps a high rise establishment) yet wish to deal with their waste on the immediate geographical/spatial level.

Anaerobic Digestion – Waste from Energy:

This will be further explored in a later blog of Bio-economy – yet for now – please consider the more waste we can direct away from recycling and into composting may give some possibilities of co-energy-operatives with possible small to medium sized anaerobic digesters on localised street conditions may be one manner to provide additional latent heat for a local district scheme. Generation of electricity may be more complex and expensive to set up. What say you?

This may be a better option than creating anaerobic digesters that are fuelled by felled trees from another country (a real burden with transporting the fuel stock for 1000’s of kilometres).

Industrial food waste from Restaurants, food courts/establishments, prisons and other establishments is an area that still requires mass development to deal with our food stock waste and hopefully an avenue for localisation of composting processes being established.

Incineration:

Whether we like it or not – incineration stations with energy recovery (heat and electricity) are getting built everywhere across the globe. Many pressure groups, community groups and other concerned factions have lobbied hard to stop this from happening – sometimes successfully and sometimes not.

Fewer incinerators would be built if we had less of an output of waste – or a redirection of compostable food waste that can go to compost sites or anaerobic digestion machines.

We must all act … some have established excellent practices years ago – they are just not widespread enough. This blog presents no solutions – it merely asks everyone to ask what we have to do in our own local areas to deal with our waste streams.

We may really have a genuine chance of becoming a zero waste producing society.

What can you do?

University students growing their own food.

At Universities and colleges movements have already been underway the last few years to encourage the growing of wildflowers on campus sites improving the biodiversity support mechanisms that as responsible citizens we should be undertaking.

Some student groups have led by example by engaging their respective University Estates Departments and requesting that space be allocated to them so that they may grow their own food and encourage other students to partake in this positive practice.

 

The benefits are obvious with empowerment of some level of self-sufficiency, fitness (growing and maintaining crops) social engagement and meeting other people and improving campus sustainability.... you will no doubt find many other benefits to this work.

 

This video is a platform to encourage all University students and staff (and schools, communities etc.) nationally and internationally to begin their own food growing programme. What can you do?

Smart Meters ........ Smart Houses ...... Smart people?

Following on from a previous blog entry mid 2012 on Smart Meters; The 50 house project will always continue with its prerogative of sustainable housing design and set-up. The data constantly collected from listening to the landlords and professional tenants observations, user-experience and voicing their opinions (and possible concerns) about living in an everyday home gives valuable input into how to improve housing and living conditions.

Observations from the domestic waste management perspective showed us where many of the houses in the research would temporarily place their once domestic filled up waste/recycling/compost bags out the back awaiting the weekly/bi-weekly waste collection. When these bags were walked through the houses (you will not walk around the house when you are in the middle of a long terraced street - you may have no choice other than to walk through the house due to street design a century ago) would result in hard flooring and carpets getting soaked and stained over the long term.

Simple solutions such as building protective 'bag bays' (some street do not introduce wheelie bins as it is impractical to store them out front due to vandalism, drunks kicking them over each week) allowed people to safely store their waste out the front (no longer would bags just be strewn out front and being attacked by rats, pigeons, seagulls and other vermin) and no longer needed to be walked through the house.

The communal element of shared kitchens, dining rooms, loungers and bathrooms is always an illuminating experience developing further questions on how to improve upon existing designs, social skills, cleaning and maintenance responsibilities. Observing and interviewing 250 professional tenants will show consistency in the vast themes and issues being raised.

No matter what technologies are addressed and implemented, people will not always apply them appropriately. Turning the lights off constantly and leaving the house in perpetual darkness was found to be outright dangerous and a constant complaint for some professional tenants (even if one is attempted to save money on bills – one energy efficient bulb uses very little when left on for 4-6 hours (less in the lighter nights); many like to leave the main lights on when they go out for an evening to deter burglars. So who should take responsibility for lighting management? Human or machines/smart houses?

If smart houses were common place by the 2030’s should it be up to them when the lights are turned off? Peoples moods will change on a regular basis and the smart houses central computer may not be able to keep up with people’s moods and desire changes within the home environment. Possibly the central computers may be able to learn peoples habits and react appropriately.

Ventilation was constant issue brought up; leaving windows open and fans on when one is showering, cooking [work in garage?]etc. is essential to help a house breath, yet if people close the windows and leave the fans off (many on the 50 house project kitchen/shower fans are not automatic and do not have humidity sensors in them either – just human controlled pull on/off strings) then humidity will build up, making the rooms stuffy and in damp conditions the mould will thrive in such built environments. It was found a minority of professional tenants did not understand that the fans should be left on for a while after exiting the shower or cooking experience.

Should smart houses take responsibility by opening the windows automatically or put the extraction fans on instead of people doing it? Would having sensors for humidity all around the buildings just end up using more energy? Is too much technology in a home healthy? Many professional tenants often complained of static and dust build ups which occurred in a very short amount of time making cleaning more frequently required than what some considered necessary.

Energy use/loads by product posed some interesting observations and discussions. When queried by the Housing managers, a minority of the tenants were obviously ignorant of some appliances using little energy, yet would be turning them off religiously – in contrast the high energy appliances in the domestic environment were not effectively managed, used too excessively and thus wasted a lot of money and increased the tenants bills overall. This caused a lot of unnecessary contentious issues in the communal buildings, which could have all be avoided if people had a uniform comprehension of what products use how much energy and what good practise would support joint up thinking/joint up practises for decent energy/water/heat saving measures.

Should home central smart computers arbitrarily adjust the hardware/appliances in use? Will this make us lazy and complacent of our resource saving responsibilities? Should the smart houses inform the home users of what appliances are over-burdened and wasting energy? Yet will people pay attention to the warnings or just see it as superfluous information?

Sustainable new building designs may be breathable houses, yet in the UK they barely make up 1% of our housing stock at present. It is not about leading the field in new home technologies and practise – yet rather how to make the existing 99% housing stock (much of the housing 50 - 150 year old buildings) more ambient to energy efficiency, cleaner living, fresh air being processed in the home? Retrofitting is important – yet will the green deal deliver? How many people will take it up? Will there be any backlash to this new format? We all have a very long road ahead of us to make our national state of housing compliant to a higher level resource efficiency.

To be blunt, it’s a bit (a lot actually) of a cop out to rely upon technology/innovation to sort our problems out …. when good human housekeeping practise is …. well – good practise! We should not be complacent and reliant. Life does not have to be overly complex, yet basic practises should be maintained of good water/food/energy/waste housekeeping by all of us. This may be happening the last few years due to recession forcing us to rethink a lot of our basic domestic strategies. What people take for granted in their daily routine of basic practise could really be world saving measures which should be encouraged nationally/globally. What are you doing in your home/office/school/university that really helps the world?

Before we implement hi-end smart house innovative energy/water etc. saving measures, we should get our own homes in order and ask ourselves do we really need to use resources/hardware/lighting/fans/air conditioning 'X', 'Y' and 'Z' – when realistically can we get by on just resource 'X'?

The public probably have come up with good innovative measures, yet it is not yet widespread. We strongly encourage you to discuss your house, office, factory, schools, university energy/water/heat/waste management practises and systems with your neighbours. Pooling our ideas could financially save us a lot of money as well as save our precious resources.

What can you do?

Designing with flooding in mind - Home, land and people.

After a solitary month of droughts – the rains have fell heavily on Britain throughout the spring, summer and early autumn; with a brief reprieve in mid-winter before the heavens opened again  and caused some of the most significant damage of the entire raining year.

Insurance companies attempted to back out of payments on policy technicalities, houses being demolished by rain, or earmarked to be demolished as the foundations too frail or the building inevitably will collapse. Although it was predictable that Global Warming was cited as the reason for these terrible floods – the triage of damage control is re-housing those who have lost homes, get funds (Government, Insurance, private) to support these decimated communities with the intermediate focus then being on rebuilding the lost homes.

What do we do now? Build on stilts in vulnerable flooding areas? Why wasn’t this practice adhered to twenty years ago when insurance companies back then were warning [the public, industry and the Government] against insuring in areas that could become flooded with global warming/increased sea levels etc.

Perhaps a combination of efforts could be the solution for better practice against floods (and droughts!) and damage control for when future floods (albeit possibly reduced ones) still hit our communities.

Build on stilts:

The only way is up? If we built our homes, so that the ground floor (and basement) would be enforced yet also sacrificial so that integrity of the remainder of the houses were unaffected then we would have less a chance of losing our precious homes. If the soils/foundations were better enforced, had naturally stronger resilience to soil properties compromise and street design was planned in an appropriate format to channel excess water away from the houses, streets and farmlands and into the water systems (or absorption factors like soakways, water collection butts etc) then our homes would be better protected.

Although the stilts would not be seen as hidden within the homes/office building walls; the overall structure would be sound in the event of a harsh flood – if the ground floor is destroyed the rest of the house will remain intact.

Going off on a slight tangent – with floods hitting our agricultural systems, would Vertical Farming be one format to reduce impacts and still keep the farms working whilst the flatlands/rolling hills are recovering from flood damage?

More natural soakways:

More gardens in future planning and design of houses and communities would help support more rain absorption, a comprehensive planting programme: planting more trees and wildflowers adding one billion additional indigenous seedlings will really help combat flooding strikes.

Soil conditioning:

Conditioning? Soil can’t be any richer can it? What if a few billion worms were added to the soils at tens of thousands of points across the country? Implementing more active wormeries functioning on a community level would improve out soils properties and condition the soils to support more growth of grasses, flowers and trees to ensure a healthier water cycle is as efficient as possible.

Rain Water collection and Natural Soakways:

Installing a water butt/rainwater barrel may be an obvious issue, yet people only contemplate it when floods are in the news, or droughts have caused us discomfort. The issue of plastic water butts does raise the issue of depleting our oil reserves more - unless you can source all the plastic materials from recycled sources.

The most low embodied and practical option is more grass areas/spaces. Many design principles and planning practices of decades before have eradicated the front/rear garden adjacent to houses; so Britain lost so much more green space and water absorbing properties.

Natural soakways of digging down one metre into the ground and adding rocks before covering it all with soil will help absorb [some] rainwater yet all these token measures when executed by thousands of people will significantly reduce localised/national flooding impacts.

In previous blogs, Davius has explained the basic figures for how many millions of tons of waters/litres ofwaters can be taken out of the flooding equation by simply installing one water butt in every household.

We can all make this happen – it does not necessarily have to expensive to create ‘natural soakways’: a spade, some rocks/stones/bricks from skips. It costs £50 for a decent water butt/rainwater barrel (which sensible people can save £1 a week for a year to implement!) the planting initiaitves which are already happening on a global level by many small pockets of people can easily be expanded, with more locals getting involved spreading the plant seedlings around their districts to increase water retention via plants (which doubles as a biodiversity support mechanism for threatened/declining important species of bees, butterflies and other beneficial insects/birds etc.)

Now what?

You set the example by doing one thing – a few of your neighbours will follow suit. It is understandable that humans only react when threatened, as opposed to plan out for all disasters (which is a little paranoid) as a source of good practice. The flooding warnings are coming at a sharper rate over the last twenty years; we should all try and do something about it now! Get digging, planting and barrelling folks !!

Volunteering emerges as a strong community engagement factor for Sustainability

Volunteering is frequently underrated. Perhaps it is something to go on a CV that attempts to show 'you have character'; to get you into a better College/Uni (as well as grades) or move up the job ladder more quickly? Claiming to be a kind hearted person and will make sacrifices? These are actually clichés that would put some regular people off volunteering as do-gooders are often infamous. It would seem volunteers have re-invented themselves as serious players in many fields hence the Government 3^rd sector are embracing them and even making funds available to encourage furthering many of these volunteer organisations which are contributing significant improvements to your locality.

You'd be surprised how much volunteering begins with just one or two people attempting to contribute something in sustainability in terms of social inclusion (neighbourhood watch) local economy (maintaining stronger local links within businesses/commerce) or environmental terms (clean up the local streets/monuments/parks/rivers etc.). People notice something new is emerging and wish to partake – within a year these volunteer group numbers will expand. Word of mouth carries and local publicity will praise the work achieved through volunteering.

Some examples of volunteering show they engage industry; connecting the communities,highlighting to locals where all the local markets/local social/local greenhubs are - requires local businesses and organisations to become involved and this and several loyalty schemes with hundreds, even thousands of members grow – building local connections, keeping shops from shutting down by volunteers raising awareness that said shops exist and local services are available.

Volunteers who have begun greening the cities have to procure the specific indigenous wildflowers from local growers – this stimulates more local economic growth through volunteering; as they purchase seedlings and add thousands of beneficial plant species to urban areas.

Food growing co-operatives engage local markets and thus begins stronger social inclusion and local economy links. Another example would be river clean ups where thescrap recovered is procured by local scrap merchants and in all cases the funds are not for profit yet ploughed back into the volunteering operations.

General feedback from new and old volunteers has been that it’s important to actively be part of something – yet as a social bonus it should not be understated the important benefits of who you meet which may improve your quality of life. New friends, new local networks, new exchanges of skills. It may be business managers may attend volunteering days to see the raw talents that are out there and this may be a tool to find people jobs who would not otherwise be available to you through conventional channels.

This is not about opportunism though - it's just the natural flow. People meet, people talk, people learn to trust the genuine others they come across through volunteering activities. When one witnesses selfless acts taking place of people volunteering their time, their physical contribution (gardening, labouring, digging, clearing debris etc.) or their mental contribution (community support groups, neighbourhood watch.) you will see a pool of talents that will benefit other areas of your community. It is a human resource that is largely untapped – yet this should not be brutally exploited, rather appreciated that volunteer groups should be supported as inevitably they will benefit the social connections, local economy and improve the natural/built environment. Isn’t that what the triad of Sustainability is supposed to be all about?

A better network is grown out of this volunteering environment that appears to be making ground on a national level, even in the adversity of all of us suffering the blows of a global recession. Sustainability is continually emerging and the economy in one respect will re-invent itself - just as a lot of communities are as they link up through common goals and feelings of being isolated become rescinded. Local connections will inevitably be improved and with this other attributes in your area will follow in a positive direction.

Consider volunteering at a local group in your area - you may well be very pleasantly surprised at what you find going on. Build new associations all pushing for common good. Watch the links in your community build up! Watch your community begin to thrive again in urban and rural environments. Please – get involved.

Smart Meters and Artificial Intelligence; Monitoring and looking after your water, energy, heat, home and land.

Introduction:

Smart Meters made some headway in the media in the late 2000’s yet it has gone a little quiet now. Monitoring is important, in our busy lifestyles we easily lose track of our resource consumption and many other ‘distractions’ of new emerging social/economic/environmental challenges. People attempt to create personal/professional hierarchies of these challenges as new priorities succeed previous ones which then gradually build up …….. many things begin to percolate in the background until they are at an uncontrollable stage. Too many times this causes collapse – as we have seen with phenomenon like the recessions that keep emerging over the last century and a half.

What's yours called?

Many predicted that homes would be run by computers in this era; for the sake of this article we shall call the home AI/computer ‘Central’; turning off unwanted heat sources or lights that are not required. With fridges ordering your groceries, bins gauging how much recyclate you have built up or making recommendations for reduction/non-use or waste minimisation. Perhaps the garage deciding how much juice to charge your hybrid/electric car with.

‘Central’ would take a lot of responsibility. Save you money, time and resources. Yet some people may be concerned that they are molly cuddled or becoming too dependent on technologies. Yet what if many of our distractions in life could be handled by Central? People could then focus fully on their domestic lives, family, community, leisure and work.

Invariably with the constant leaps in internet innovation, faster connections with 4G in the 2010’s, 5G in the 2020’s: we shall very much become more of an interconnected nation if not international community. This may sound all idealistic yet every Garden of Eden has its Asp. In Smart Meters this snake is the mass of privacy issues where people may feel their domestic AI is watching them and reporting on their activities.

Privacy issues:

Will your privacy be compromised? Will you domestic AI be spying on you? What of civil liberties? What privacy would be compromised in the home front? No-one likes their dirty laundry being aired out in public … so how do we balance our future lifestyles with a potential Smart meter monitoring economy? Some districts and counties internationally have stopped Smart Meters from being installed on the grounds of privacy and health. Are EMF’s an issue?

Privacy issues will demand that specific domestic information be deemed anonymous (names, birthdates, income etc.) yet a massive opportunity arises for collating real-time data of exactly what is going on in every house, office, factory and processing plant across the nation/planet.

We don't need to name and shame: just support the 'drainers'...

Who is not saving energy? Who is wasting energy? Who is partaking? Who is acting in a parasitic manner in the office place or community? Who is voting? Who is partaking? As opposed to name and shame communities where energy/water conservation is non-existent, utility companies can use the data to begin remedial efforts.

This will help mould policy to improve water leakages, energy savings, flooding impacts, health issues – the list is limitless and Home AI/Smart Meters can make a significant positive contribution. Politicians can see the low vote areas in many smaller and large scale elections and make efforts to embrace these communities.

This is not about impeding a person’s privacy as they have been naughty with wasting resources – rather rewards should be given to groups in workplaces or communities who are actively making positive changes embracing sustainability in their locality. As no persons details i.e. name can be gained through future enforced privacy acts and practices – just entire districts will show up in statistics engines whom have measured all these positive changes.

Practicalities of Smart Meters:

Do we really need [water/energy/heat/electricity/waste/health/livelihood/flooding] monitoring? The chances are we actually do. There have been some monitoring technologies/practices in use for decades. For example the trusty fire alarm, CCTV or the neighbourhood watch. These have helped improve our lives. Many people complained about CCTV in UK yet with the August 2011 London riots CCTV was embraced a saving grace in dealing with identification, tracking and apprehending of the criminals involved.

Using the theoretical causality analogy of a butterfly flapping it’s wings in Japan caused a hurricane in Tornado Valley. Everything is causal and has a knock on effect. A fire in your neighbourhood will have circumstances for everyone, a kidnapping will damage community confidence etc.

The flooding many countries suffer can be tackled with effective water management, rainwater collection and other measures to balance out floods and droughts. One thing is assured though – if higher latitude housing, offices and factories do not absorb some of the water fallen on the mountains and valleys then the lower ranges will suffer higher potential flooding risks. This gives further support to spread out the AI monitoring/Smart Meters as far high up into our valleys and mountainous communities. What can be monitored and invariably tackled at higher land altitudes can reduce negative impacts on lower altitude communities.

If richer countries do not absorb their runaway carbon emissions then poorer countries will unfairly be punished by the ravishes of Global Warming’s many backlashes of bizarre weather conditions etc. Additionally as developing countries do not have the financial and technological resources that developed countries do – the poorer countries will not be able to deal with these disasters as well as richer countries can/or recover as quickly afterwards.

Biodiversity:

Academics within the scientific community have lobbied more and more for biodiversity monitoring (and support) to improve many ecological issues. Invasive species are frequently mentioned in the media, or academic studies or field researchers work. Yet all too often the busy everyday person will quickly forget these problems until it is too late.

You won’t be bothered by some invasive  white ghost slugs who consume our much needed earth worms (who oxygenate our soils and therefore maintain soil fertility and integrity in order to keep our agricultural industry alive!)

Domestic AI/Smart Meters could be designed to monitor the ground as well as our built domestic environments. This may seem pointless yet if the innovations arise soon we could implement them and be able to gain sophisticated monitoring of ground water contamination, soil structures, pollution increases, invasive animal and plant species.

Things are getting so bad in many countries that Mortgages are refused in many cases where the infamous invasive plant Japanese Knotweed has taken vast roots in someone’s garden and will inevitably work under the foundations and compromise the integrity of the house. This severely compromises a lot of citizens abilities to move/relocate. All this can be dealt with if we had real-time AI/Smart Meter monitoring. More evidence will gain more public attention and increase our knowledge of many problems we are otherwise ignorant of.

So what direction now?

Domestic AI/Smart Meters will inevtaibly be amongst us within ten years and be common place in 2020. We could sleep a lot better knowing that ‘Central’ is watching over us, our water/heat/electricity usage, gardens and soils and much else besides. If it is to be undertaken then privacy issues are critically important and high priority with unhackable (realistic) AI/Smart Meters that can not be compromised.

What can you do? Will your company pioneer the best AI/Smart Meter Innovative Technologies? Will you become a market leader and save the earth in the process?