Green Thing Blog

Foster + Partners, who've designed pretty much everything else worth looking at in London - from the squashed metal gherkin of City Hall to the ribbon-thin Millenium Bridge - have also now come up with the winning entry in London transport's competition to design the new RouteMaster bus. They collaborated with vehicle specialists Aston Martin and Capoco Design to come up with this handsome looking "zero emissions" number. The prototype should be ready by 2011.

About that "zero emissions" and "eco-friendly" bit, there's lots of information about wooden floors, re-used leather seats and solar roofs, but I couldn't find any details about what it actually uses for energy to move it from A to B without creating any C - but a small piece of the sustainable transportation puzzle.

Hydrogen? Electric? Pidgeon manure? Does Anyone else know? Let's see what Lord Foster says: "a new bus for London should establish a whole new travel experience that espouses 21st century aspirations, while celebrating the memory and the experience of the original.” Err, ok.

Could you be more specific Sir Norman?

"The bus is designed to navigate the dense and varied streets of London, employing innovative technologies to allow for greater manoeuvrability and energy conservation.

I see. That explains it then.

It certainly looks good, let's just hope what's under the hood lives up to the 'zero emissions' hype.

[found via Inhabitat on Ecofabulous]

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Here’s a quickly hacked together slideshow of some video clips and images from the G20 London Rally I went on yesterday.

Just to be super clear. I think it’s absolutely fantastic that tens of thousands of people took to the streets in a tangible display of citizenship to show they care. But while applauding the passion, commitment and good intention, I do have some observations about how the event felt to me personally and, from a communications perspective, how it might have been done a bit differently.

The problem, I think, is that the overarching banner everyone was rallying under: “Put People First” was quite vague. It’s the kind of slogan Humpty Dumpty might have invented to campaign under (had his life not been cut tragically short in that ugly wall incident). “When I use a word,” sneered Lewis Carroll’s anthropomorphised egg, “It means just what I chose it to mean – neither more nor less.” Put People First’ was, as far as I could see, used by so many people to mean so many different things, that the sharpness of the message was blunted and its impact diluted.

The advantage of building a coalition of over 100 different organisations is that you can mobilise a large number of people – as many as 35,000 in this case, according to Met Police reports. The downside is the diffusion of agendas and messages that this creates. Everyone on the march seemed to have a slightly different take on what we were marching about, and thus the message we wanted to send to the G20 leaders.

As you can see from the slideshow above, such was the rainbow array of different banners, placards and flags flying, Hyde Park looked more like an activist recruitment fair than a campaign united around a common cause, let alone message.

For instance, ending global poverty and inequality is one of the policy pillars supporting the call to Put People First - but what kind of inequality? One individual, for instance, carrying a placard reading: “Put People First But Don’t Put Women Second”, seemed to be marching about gender rather than economic equality.

All these individual causes are of course enormously valid and worthwhile in their own right, but it’s hard to bring them together under a single banner that can support such a wide a range of interpretations without creating an overall message that is generally true but not specifically meaningful.

Of course the issues of jobs and public services, global poverty and inequality and a green economy to help combat climate change are all deeply inter-connected. We’re talking about complex problems which can’t and shouldn’t be simplified. But this complexity needs to be reflected in the solution not the communication designed to catalyse action for such a solution.

If the purpose of this rally was to send a general message to the G20 that people want a more humane leadership that addresses all these issues then job done. On the other hand, if the aim was to direct or focus the G20 negotiations towards a specific outcome then I think that opportunity may have been missed.

Personally it’s not surprising that I see climate change as the central issue behind these inter-connectivities and would prefer to have seen that as a single, sharp call to action around which issues of the economy and equality spun. Given that climate change has such enormous implications for every part of our global societies and economies, unless we focus and act on that incredibly quickly, then today’s global issues will look like a nice, sunny walk in the park.

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If you're struggling to go Easy On The Meat, here's something to turn you on to the joys of cake.

And if that's not enough to steer you away from the taste of animal flesh for a day and you need some instant cakey gratification, try heading down to Covent Garden to have some of The World's Biggest Cupcake.

It measures 2 x 1.25 metres big which means there's probably enough for around a couple of thousand cake-crazed Londoners.

In the words of that often underrated anti-meat campaigning environmentalist Marie Antoinette: "Let The Eat Cake".

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Cycling is a quick, cheap, low-carbon, calorie-busting way of getting around. If you bike to work it'll beat car traffic on the morning commute hands down, and if you bike for pleasure, it's a lovely way of discovering the local area and the scenic routes away from all the fume-filled main roads.

Whether you're new to cycling, or just want to brush up, Transport for London has an amazingly useful cycling section with all sorts of handy info, including safe cycling, bike maintenance, cycling maps and guides, as well as ways to avoid no-good tea-leafs from making off with your trusty pedals.

And according to the site, there are plans to develop several Cycle Superhighways across London by 2012 to make it faster and safer to get from the outer boroughs to central London. Two routes are planned from Barnet so definitely something to watch out for.

Bikeforall.net is another great resource for all things bike-related, and if you're looking to buy one the London Cycling Campaign, who are working hard to turn the capital into a world-class cycling city, also has loads of advice as well as details of bike shops. And for all your portable needs, there's a great little intro to folding bikes here.

Cycling is also a brilliant way of meeting new people and making new friends - join the Barnet Cycling Group which gathers regularly for rides and meetings. If you're a bit of a cycling newbie, or just like to chat, you could even get yourself a cycling partner.

Been on yer bike? Tell us how, why and where, here.

Pic Credit: Chris Bernard

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On the 16th December between 12pm-2pm in Trafalgar Square, London a free lunch made from delicious ingredients that would otherwise have been wasted will be prepared for 5000 people.

Feeding the 5000 aims to highlight the ease of cutting the unimaginable levels of food waste in the UK and internationally.

Find out how to get there using Transport for London's Journey Planner.

A few facts you might not have known...

10% of rich countries' greenhouse gas emissions come from growing food that is never eaten.

UK Households waste 25% of all the food they buy.

All the world's nearly one billion hungry people could be lifted out of malnourishment on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK and Europe.

An estimated 20 to 40% of UK fruit and vegetables rejected even before they reach the shops - mostly because they do not match the supermarkets' excessively strict cosmetic standards.

The bread and other cereal products thrown away in UK households alone would have been enough to lift 30 million of the world's hungry people out of malnourishment.

24 to 35% of school lunches end up in the bin.

For other ideas on how to be all consuming.

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