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Green policies need realistic foundations
• THERE seems to be a general misunderstanding about what has actually happened in the case of Ben Pulsford’s Grade II listed house in the South Hampstead Conservation Area.
The Council’s planners have not refused permission for him to put solar panels on his roof – they are working with him to find a compromise that allows him to pursue his very laudable aim of producing his own electricity, but in a way that also preserves our heritage.
That said, Graeme Maughan is quite right to say the planning system currently hinders residents who wish to produce electricity, and this is currently under review, both nationally and locally (The heat is on over carbon emissions, May 17).
But there will always be a tension between sustainability and conservation, and environmentalists need to recognise that.
Cllr Andrew Mennear (Con) writes that “the analysis in the [Task Force] report shows that you should tackle climate change by addressing big chunks rather than looking at individual homeowners’ behaviour”, (The heat is on over carbon emissions, May 17). In terms of energy generation that’s right – which is why we have proposed turning our housing estates into energy hubs to supply heat, power and cooling to the surrounding neighbourhood.
But an equally big win would be to install energy efficiency measures in our private and rental housing stock. That’s what the green audits idea is aimed at.
For some people – the better off – the private sector will supply green audits. But for many, an expensive audit will be a disincentive to action.
That’s why the Task Force feels that offering on-site green audits which give residents hard information about what they can do, which companies can help them and what grants are available, would be money well spent in terms of the battle against climate change.
Finally, Sean Thompson writes that I haven’t “got much to boast about” in terms of the Council’s recycling record (The heat is on over carbon emissions, May 17). To be honest I don’t think many Councils have much to boast about when it comes to recycling. That’s because the government sets us Soviet-style tonnage targets, which virtually guarantees that the recycling we do has little clear environmental value. No account is taken of the energy used in the recycling process, which is crazy.
That’s why we’ve called for an audit of our recycling and of best practice elsewhere so that in the future we do what’s good for the environment rather than what’s good for our tonnage targets. Of course, if we really want to do some environmental good, then recycling is the wrong place to start.
We really need to be thinking much harder about how we can all reduce the amount of waste we produce.
If we all refused plastic bags in supermarkets, if we left excess packaging at the till for shops to deal with as they do in Germany, if we re-used as much as possible just like our grandparents did, if we composted our food and garden waste and paper – if we did all that, then you’d find that a household of four would produce hardly any waste at all.
And that would have a far clearer environmental benefit than turning glass bottles into aggregate or sending plastic to China.
CLLR ALEXIS ROWELL
(Lib Dem) Chair, Camden
Sustainability Task Force |
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