Nando’s has said it will support suppliers with reducing their own carbon footprints and explore further ways to cut emissions from its restaurants as it ramps up its focus on climate change.
Since 2015, the chain has reduced the carbon footprint of every one of its meals by 40% while acknowledging that there is plenty more to do before it can call itself a truly sustainable business.
Its new commitment to fighting climate change, which has been approved and validated by the international Science Based Targets initiative, is to reduce absolute scope 1 and 2 GHG emission 100% by 2030 from a 2019 base year.
Nando’s also commits to reduce scope 3 emissions 42% per meal by 2030 from a 2019 base year.
The chain, which runs over 400 restaurants in the UK, managed to offset all its carbon emissions last year, but said it would also work with partners that offer carbon removal projects in future. “That work will take time but has already begun,” the company stated.
Setting out its sustainability agenda on its website, Nando’s said that recent announcements around its environmental activities were not just an effort to gain some positive PR.
“We have been working away behind the scenes on sustainability for years and have had an in-house team dedicated to sustainability since 2013. What has changed recently is our decision to become more public in our communications around sustainability,” it explained.
Nando’s employs a network of ‘Do The Right Thing Champions’ within its business which, among other things, help monitor energy usage in restaurants.
With these Champions in place and the company buying green electricity and gas in England, Scotland and Wales, it can ensure that its restaurants are almost carbon neutral in their own right.
Nando’s has developed a sustainable fit-out guide to ensure that every restaurant it opens or refurbishes is as sustainable as possible.
All its lighting is LED and it uses as much recycled content as possible in things like tiles and flooring. It also has building management systems that regulate energy usage.
The company said it “regularly reviews equipment” to see where it can make water savings in places like the dishwashers and spray taps, while all kitchen taps are push to go, so they can’t ever be left running. An internal campaign has been launched to reduce its food waste and increase recycling within restaurants.
Food is the largest contributor to Nando’s overall emissions, representing 65% of its output in FY21.
According to the company, offsetting all its emissions across its restaurants and supply chain is equivalent to the annual emissions of 20,257 British citizens, 28,269 flights around the world and 71,000 cars being driven in the UK for a year.
In terms of how it manages old equipment, the company outlined: “Nando’s is proud to be one of the original backers of Globechain, now the UK and Ireland’s largest re-use platform. We work with Globechain to ensure that equipment and furniture we’re no longer using doesn’t go to waste, but gets redistributed to charities and communities that really need them.
“Since 2015 we have given away over 5,000 items. This has helped charities save over £40,000 and prevented 70 tonnes of waste going to landfill.”
Maritime Minister Robert Courts will today (7 February 2022) accelerate the UK’s ambitions to deliver a greener, more sustainable future for the shipping industry with plans to explore the rollout of emissions-cutting shore power at UK ports.
Shore power will be vital to decarbonising the maritime sector and improving air quality for local communities.
Currently, berthed vessels must run their onboard diesel engines to power lighting, galleys, air-conditioning and other amenities. It’s the equivalent of a car or van idling while parked, emitting polluting fumes into the air around ports and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions.
With shore power, vessels will be able to turn off their engines and plug into onshore power sources when berthed, reducing carbon emissions, noise and air pollution.
Launching a call for evidence on shore power during his keynote speech at the annual UK Chamber of Shipping (UKCoS) Dinner today, the Maritime Minister will also outline how, as well as vital environmental benefits, stimulating the innovation of new green technologies will continue the revival of the UK’s shipbuilding industry, bringing private investment, creating jobs and revitalising coastal communities.
Maritime Minister Robert Courts said:
Climate change is one of the biggest challenges this generation faces, and we will continue to lead international efforts to decarbonise the maritime sector.
Shore power will end the outdated practice of ships keeping their engines running while anchored in port, reducing the poisonous fumes entering the air and ensuring we meet our net zero 2050 goals.
Already leading the charge on key decarbonisation technologies such as zero-emissions vehicles, the UK became one of the few nations in the world to have a dedicated Clean Maritime Demonstration Competition, which pledged £23 million in 2021 to fund over 55 decarbonisation projects.
This was joined by commitments made at COP26, in which the UK launched the Clydebank Declaration, a coalition of 22 countries keen to develop green shipping corridors.
Mark Simmonds, Director of Policy and External Affairs for the British Ports Association, said:
The ports industry has a key role to play in supporting the decarbonisation of shipping and shore power will be an important part of that.
This call for evidence is a step forward and will help us all better understand the current barriers to delivering more shore power to ships.
We look forward to sharing the sector’s experiences so far and exploring how industry and government can work together to lower emissions in ports.
Tim Morris, CEO at the UK Major Ports Group, said:
Shore power has the potential to play a positive part in the future of zero emission maritime, although it is an area that currently faces some significant challenges.
The call for evidence is, therefore, an important step in finding the right, viable ways that industry, government and networks can work together to support the wider deployment of shore power where it is an appropriate solution.
Source: gov.uk
LONDON, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Amazon will create 1,500 new apprenticeships in the United Kingdom in 2022, it said on Wednesday.
The internet giant said it was offering 40 entry to degree-level apprenticeship schemes, including new schemes in the areas of publishing, retailing, marketing, and a programme focused on environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG).
Amazon said it grew its permanent UK workforce by 25,000 in 2021, taking the total to 70,000.
The group had previously announced it would create 10,000 roles in 2021 and end the year with 55,000 permanent employees.
However, it recruited an additional 15,000 for its fulfilment centres, sort centres and delivery stations across the UK as well for corporate and research and development functions.
Amazon says it has invested 32 billion pounds ($43.3 billion) in the UK since 2010, though it does not break down that investment.
Its expansion in 2021 included its first 17 physical stores in the UK - 15 Amazon Fresh food stores in London, and two Amazon 4-star retail stores in London and Kent, which sell a selection of products from Amazon and UK small businesses.
($1 = 0.7390 pounds)
Source: Reuters
At COP26 in Glasgow, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, and Panama made headlines with their announcement that the four countries are now working together to expand and connect marine protection covering over 500,000 km2 of ocean.
The Eastern Tropical Marine Corridor stretches from the rich breeding and feeding grounds around Malpelo Island, the Cocos Ridge, and the Cordillera de Coiba seamounts, to the Galapagos Islands that inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
The UK will invest an initial £2m of UK Aid though the World Bank’s PROBLUE fund, and deploy marine experts to provide technical assistance through our Ocean Country Partnership Programme.
This initiative is supported by the UK’s newly established Blue Planet Fund, that will help us do even more to develop sustainable marine economies around the world, protect species found nowhere else on earth, and help coastal communities counter a range of threats – including illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, and plastic pollution.
The UK has a wealth of experience to share – from restoring fragile habitats like corals and key carbon-rich ecosystems like mangroves, to deploying the satellite, drone, and acoustic monitoring technologies that can bolster marine protection and support nature’s amazing ability to recover.
During his visits to Ecuador and Costa Rica this week, Lord Goldsmith had the opportunity to see some of the work that is already under way in the Eastern Pacific.
In Ecuador, he joined a Galapagos community beach clean and helped launch a refilling station that will help islanders and tourists alike drink more water, for free – and reuse the plastic bottles that are so often used once, before ending up in our rivers and ocean. And in Costa Rica, he saw how coastal communities are using sustainable tourism to support conservation at scale.
Speaking at a meeting of the Forum of Ministers of Environment of Latin America and the Caribbean in Costa Rica today, he said: "I commend and thank Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, and Panama for their leadership. This is exactly the sort of ambition and cooperation we need now."
"I am delighted that the UK will be supporting this inspiring initiative through our newly established Blue Planet Fund, drawing on decades of experience protecting an area of ocean larger than India around the UK Overseas Territories."
Lord Goldsmith urged leaders from across government, sectors, and society to work together to accelerate the critical transition towards a decarbonised, net-zero, nature-positive global economy – and make sure that everyone benefits from turning things around.
Some companies are born green; others have greenness thrust upon them, especially lately. The UK-based cosmetics company Lush ranks among the former. A strong environmental ethos – reflected in its use of minimal packaging, for example – baked in from its inception in 1995 explains why Lush today has one of the most rigorously sustainable managed travel programmes on the planet.
Lush's programme includes a no-fly policy for door-to-door journeys under eight hours, heavy restrictions on taxi usage and deployment of an inhouse travel team that vets all bookings for compliance with sustainability policies.
In the past, Lush has also imposed an internal carbon tax on flights. For the future, it aims never to return more than 20 per cent of travel and transport emissions recorded in 2019.
“We really don’t think like a corporate. We think like activists most of the time,” said Lush strategy lead for Earth care Ruth Andrade. “How can we make sure we are contributing to life rather than contributing to human extinction? The environmental crisis is so existential that, even for us to make sure we have a future, it’s so fundamental we actually contribute to creating the conditions for life to exist.”
Travel is problematic for Lush, as it is for any business with an avowed commitment to sustainability. CO2 emissions by corporations are divided into three categories: Scope 1 (direct emissions from owned or controlled sources), Scope 2 (from power sources consumed by the company), and Scope 3 (indirect emissions, including business travel). Partly because of successful efforts already made with the first two, Lush’s “Scope 3 emissions completely dwarf our Scope 1 and 2 emissions,” said Andrade. Within Scope 3, “when you take out the supply chain, then the next one is transport.”
Yet Lush has more than 900 shops across 49 countries. Thus, it faces a familiar dilemma. Stopping travel completely is a scarcely conceivable option, but “the transport sector is one of the hardest to decarbonise,” said Andrade. “It’s really tricky to replace aviation fuel. Our strategy is partnering with the early adopters of new technology and making sure we’re reducing the need for travel as much as possible.”
Since its early days, Lush has operated a no-fly rule. Originally, this applied to all domestic travel in the UK and to shorter international journeys with good train options, such as Eurostar. Five years ago the policy was refined.
“To get a train from Scotland down to Poole [the south coast town in England that is the company’s home], you’re looking at 10 hours door to door,” said the company's global travel manager David Blackhurst-Evans. “This is where we have to start looking holistically at the welfare of the travellers and their safety, and also it’s their personal time. To take an entire working day out to travel just isn’t viable. That’s when we said that any travel over eight hours door to door can be done by flights.”
We have travellers asking, ‘Do you want me to pay £180 for a return train ticket when I can get a flight for £50?’, but we have to pay £180 because that fits with our being sustainable
Travellers can book journeys through an e-mail or a call to the inhouse travel team with a reservation request, or they can book online or offline themselves through Click Travel, Lush’s retained travel management company. Either way, a reason for travel must always be provided, and all bookings ultimately come under the scrutiny of Blackhurst-Evans’ department.
There “really is no bending” the no-fly rule, he said, even if, as is frequently the case for UK domestic travel, the rail alternative is significantly more expensive. “We do have travellers asking, ‘Do you want me to pay £180 for a return train ticket when I can get a flight for £50?’,” said Blackhurst-Evans. “That makes no difference. If the train fare is £180, we have to pay £180 because that fits with our being sustainable.”
Taxis are permitted at unsociable hours but otherwise employees are expected to use public transport for short journeys, and sometimes travellers are issued local transport tickets alongside their inter-city train tickets. For company events, the travel team provides instructions on how to reach the venue by bus, local train, mass transit system or on foot.
In addition, Lush has introduced an electric bus, nicknamed Electra, to shuttle between its various sites in Poole and provide a commuter service in the morning and evening.
There are similar rules for Lush personnel worldwide, although inevitably they have to be adapted for the United States, owing to the sparseness of its rail network. “In those type of countries they fly a lot more, but that’s because they have to, so they don’t do as many trips as we would here in Europe,” said Blackhurst-Evans. “The trips tend to be longer because they are making good use of their time before they fly back again.”
Sustainability education
Wherever they are based, employees are trained in carbon literacy and educated about sustainable travel on joining Lush, “so there’s no shock when they start travelling that we have these policies and guidelines in place,” said Blackhurst-Evans. “We give them a copy of the policy and sit down and go through it with them.”
In any case, Blackhurst-Evans added, thinking sustainably “comes quite naturally to us within the business. I’m a travel specialist, but I work for Lush because I agree with their ethics. We’re already on the same page and have the same goals.”
For that reason, employees frequently opt for the train even for journeys longer than eight hours. On the day I interviewed Andrade, she was speaking from Germany, where she had travelled by rail from Poole.
According to Blackhurst-Evans, interventions by the travel team when they judge a flight reservation unnecessary are “regular,” but “I wouldn’t say it happens a lot.” But how can a travel department determine whether a flight is justifiable? “We as the travel team have the autonomy to push back and say we don’t think a trip is needed, but we have to remember we are a global business,” he said.
There is going to be travel needed, but the phrase ‘travel smarter’ has come out of the pandemic, and people are thinking ‘Do I really need to travel?’
“We understand the business very well and are connected to all parts of it. When we see a conversation needs to be had, we will do it. We talk to the traveller and their manager to fully understand why they are travelling and whether it is in line with our travel policy.” Usually, the line manager makes the final decision.
A tax detour
Not all deterrents introduced at Lush have been successful. In 2008, the company introduced a 'carbon tax' on every flight it booked because there is no taxation on aviation fuel. “We thought we would set a good example and tax ourselves on flights, so we set a carbon price of £50 per metric ton of carbon, which is the minimum it should cost if the carbon market is going to curb carbon emissions [the typical carbon price for offsetting in 2021 is $3-$5 per metric ton],” said Andrade.
Lush used the 'tax”'revenue to fund groups opposing aviation, road schemes, fracking and coal, but, said Andrade, “we ran it for 10 years and then realised it wasn’t doing what we needed it to do. It wasn’t really disincentivising people from flying. People were feeling ‘Oh, we’re funding so much cool stuff through flying’. The financial barrier wasn’t there for people or even for the business.
“We are already funding activism anyway, so we can continue to do that, but it’s better to use that money on a robust climate strategy that actually helps reduce transport emissions.”
Now, Andrade and Blackhurst-Evans are confident Lush can keep travel-related emissions well below where they were in 2019. “One good thing which has come out of the pandemic is that people have realised they don’t need to travel as much,” said Blackhurst-Evans. “There is going to be travel needed, but the phrase ‘travel smarter’ has come out of this, and people are thinking ‘Do I really need to travel?’.”
Offsetting objections
Blackhurst-Evans sees controlling demand as the only serious way to make business travel more sustainable, but there are limited opportunities on the supplier management side too. Most fundamental among these is favouring flights on routes and aircraft with lower emissions. With regard to accommodation, Lush adds hotels with good records for environmental and social responsibility to its preferred vendor programme wherever it can.
Overall, however, Blackhurst-Evans has become skeptical about many sustainability claims made by companies, especially if their green credentials are based on offsetting, a concept Lush derides.
“Offsetting is a cop-out,” said Andrade. “It’s so easy now to buy offsets. We’re hoping we can decarbonise without resorting to offsets. You do get gold-standard offsetting projects that have really thought about the communities they are in and take a more systemic view toward what are called co-benefits. They are OK as a transitional strategy, but people are relying too much on it. They say, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll do an alternative fuel project in Africa or a re-forestation project in Brazil’. Of course, all those things are needed but in their own right, not as a cop-out so we can continue our lifestyles in the global north.”
Andrade is almost as dubious about sustainable aviation fuel, which several mega-corporations in recent months have pledged to buy from airlines. “We don’t think this is a panacea,” she said. “SAF is not a solution that is going to allow us to fly as much as we want. A lot of the discourse around climate change at the moment is as if we don’t have to change anything else. We don’t have to look at the business model. We don’t have to do the deep changes in our economy or our culture. We’re betting a lot on simply replacing with different technology. SAF can fill a short-term gap while we go for deeper changes, but we cannot stop at SAF.”
Lush is a company which has made some of those deep changes to its travel programme already and plans even more. How many other businesses are both willing and able to act similarly?
Source: Business Travel News Europe
- Over the past twenty years the concept of “tipping points” has become more familiar to the public. Tipping points are critical thresholds at which small changes can lead to dramatic shifts in the state of the entire system.
- Awareness of climate tipping points has grown in policy circles in recent years in no small part thanks to the work of climate scientist Tim Lenton, who serves as the director of the Global Systems Institute at Britain’s University of Exeter.
- Lenton says the the rate at which we appear to be approaching several tipping points is now ringing alarm bells, but “most of our current generation of politicians are just not up to this leadership task”.
- The pandemic however may have caused a shock to the system that could trigger what he calls “positive social tipping points” that “can accelerate the transformative change we need” provided we’re able to empower the right leaders.
Over the past twenty years the concept of “tipping points” has become more familiar to the public. Tipping points are critical thresholds at which small changes can lead to dramatic shifts in the state of the entire system.
From a climate standpoint, the melting of Arctic sea ice is a simple example. As sea ice melts, less sunlight is reflected into space and more heat is absorbed by the ocean, further hindering the formation of sea ice and thereby leading to more warming. The positive feedback loop is leading toward ice-free summers in the Arctic, which will have dramatic implications for the Arctic ecosystem and knock-on effects for ocean circulation and weather patterns. The effects are already being observed, with Arctic sea ice extent trending sharply downward since the 1970s.
Awareness of climate tipping points has grown in policy circles in recent years in no small part thanks to the work of climate scientist Tim Lenton, who serves as the director of the Global Systems Institute at Britain’s University of Exeter. In 2008 Lenton was the lead author of an influential Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) paper that identified nine tipping points and ranked them by their near-term likelihood of occurring. These included: Arctic Sea-Ice; the Greenland Ice Sheet; the West Antarctic Ice Sheet; the Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation; the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO); the Indian Summer Monsoon; the Sahara/Sahel and West African Monsoon; the Amazon Rainforest; and the Boreal Forest. Lenton and his colleagues have since added tropical coral reefs and the East Antarctic Ice Sheet to the list.
When Lenton published the PNAS paper, some aspects of the predictions were still theoretical, but since then, the evidence for some tipping points has strengthened as the rate of disruption has increased and our ability to observe change has improved.
“Some of the tipping elements are changing more rapidly than others,” Lenton told Mongabay during a December 2020 interview. “The most concerning include the West Antarctic Ice Sheet – part of it looks to be in irreversible retreat – and the Amazon rainforest – where droughts and changing fire regimes are accelerating forest loss, alongside renewed human pressures.”
The evidence base of cascading effects between tipping points has also expanded.
“A decade or so ago we identified this as a theoretical possibility with some idea of what the causal interactions could be,” he said. “Now we have more direct evidence of causal interactions, like the role of Arctic sea-ice retreat and resultant warming in permafrost thawing and accelerating Greenland ice sheet melt.”
Lenton says the the rate at which we appear to be approaching several tipping points is now ringing alarm bells, but “most of our current generation of politicians are just not up to this leadership task”.
“Younger generations are looking at them with dismay and rightly rebelling.”
The pandemic however may have caused a shock to the system that could trigger what he calls “positive social tipping points” that “can accelerate the transformative change we need” provided we’re able to empower the right leaders.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that when a threat is truly urgent we can act decisively and put aside neoliberal economics in favor of saving lives. But politicians immediately started talking about ‘building back better’ rather than taking the opportunity to ‘build forward better’ – i.e. to chart a new economic and ecological path.”
Lenton spoke about these issues and more in a conversation with Mongabay Founder Rhett A. Butler.
AN INTERVIEW WITH TIM LENTON
Mongabay: How did you become interested in the idea of tipping points?
Tim Lenton: I started out studying Gaia and identifying how aspects of the Earth system self-regulate. In Jim Lovelock’s models like Daisyworld and in Earth history there are key moments where self-regulation breaks down and strong reinforcing feedbacks take over to propel abrupt change. Although I didn’t call them ‘tipping points’ at the time that’s what they are. When Malcolm Gladwell published ‘The Tipping Point’ it seemed natural to adopt that language.
Mongabay: How does the concept of tipping points intersect with the idea of planetary boundaries?
Tim Lenton: Where undesirable tipping points exist it makes it easier to set a ‘safe’ planetary boundary to avoid them. But not all planetary boundary variables have tipping points. Climate and ocean deoxygenation driven by nutrient inputs clearly do.
Hence I used those tipping points to help inform the original setting of planetary boundaries for climate and nutrient inputs. But other planetary boundaries lack an obvious tipping point so have to be set in a different way.
Mongabay: In your highly-cited 2008 PNAS paper, you and your co-authors identified several tipping points. Has that list changed since then? And have some of those tipping points progressed more rapidly than others?
Tim Lenton: The list has changed somewhat over time, but not as much as I thought it might. I put question marks on some of the original list and map to show I was less sure about them. Tropical coral reefs are now on the list, as is part of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet draining the Wilkes Basin.
Some of the tipping elements are changing more rapidly than others. The most concerning include the West Antarctic Ice Sheet – part of it looks to be in irreversible retreat – and the Amazon rainforest – where droughts and changing fire regimes are accelerating forest loss, alongside renewed human pressures.
Mongabay: You’ve warned about the risk of one tipping point potentially triggering another tipping point as a sort of cascading domino effect. How has the science around that idea improved over the past decade?
Tim Lenton: A decade or so ago we identified this as a theoretical possibility with some idea of what the causal interactions could be. Now we have more direct evidence of causal interactions, like the role of Arctic sea-ice retreat and resultant warming in permafrost thawing and accelerating Greenland ice sheet melt. Also the contribution of Greenland melt water to disrupting North Atlantic deep water formation and the Atlantic overturning circulation. Plus we now have some models for how the interactions could play out.
Mongabay: Here in the American West we’re reaching the end of what was a catastrophic fire season and we’re told that we should expect this to be the new normal going forward. Have you identified any tipping point when it comes to forest fire dynamics here?
Tim Lenton: Fires generate their own reinforcing feedbacks – drying the fuel load, creating local convection and winds, and even thunderstorms – and such self-amplifying feedbacks are the vital ingredient for creating tipping point dynamics.
Fire regimes in the wet tropics can pass a tipping point from localized fires to much larger ‘mega fires’ – a bit like a phase transition in physics. Such mega-fires now seem to be happening in the American West, Australia and even the Arctic. So there looks to be a localized fire tipping point, and some signs that it is being passed at similar times across large areas – making for a bigger tipping point.
Mongabay: From the appearance of dry forest species like the maned wolf and the rise in drought and fire in the Amazon in recent years, there seems to be increased evidence of significant changes occurring in Earth’s largest rainforest. How will we know when we’re actually near the tipping point?
Tim Lenton: One way to find out is to look for the characteristic early warning signals of approaching a tipping point – the forest ‘slowing down’ in its recovery from perturbations (like the recent drought years). We’ve being analyzing the data and we think we’ve picked up this slowing down signal of the Amazon rainforest losing resilience across large areas. To pinpoint whether we are close to a tipping point one can also look at the least resilient parts of the forest (e.g. in the Southeast) and see if they are locally being tipped into an alternative stable state by droughts or fires – and how easily that tipping happens.
Mongabay: In 2018 you wrote a perspective updating the Gaia theory and proposing that it serve as a “framework for fostering global sustainability.” Can you elaborate on this?
Tim Lenton: Whether you agree or not with the original Gaia theory it is obvious that we are becoming collectively self-aware of the bad consequences of our actions on our own life-support system. My proposal with Bruno Latour is that we could in principle add a bit of self-awareness to the Earth’s self-regulation. At the very least we could sense where things are going wrong better (through satellites etc) and correct our mistakes faster. We could also use the prior Gaia to provide a template for designing a more flourishing sustainable future – including sustainable energy, material recycling, and horizontal information exchange, supporting a rapid learning process.
Mongabay: Arguably, there has been very little progress in curbing carbon emissions since your 2008 tipping points paper despite a growing body of scientific evidence on the need to take action. What do you think it will take to catalyze an appropriate sense of urgency among the general public and politicians? And has the COVID-19 pandemic made any difference on this front?
Tim Lenton: I think there is an appropriate sense of urgency among many in the general public who protested together and forced government declarations of a ‘climate emergency’. The problem is we need urgent action and most of our current generation of politicians are just not up to this leadership task. Younger generations are looking at them with dismay and rightly rebelling.
The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that when a threat is truly urgent we can act decisively and put aside neoliberal economics in favor of saving lives. But politicians immediately started talking about “building back better” rather than taking the opportunity to “build forward better” – i.e. to chart a new economic and ecological path.
Mongabay: In January the United States will have a new President. What would you like the Biden Administration to prioritize?
Tim Lenton: Tackling climate change and inequality through the green new deal. Go to the places where people feel they are going to lose out – the coal belt and the rust belt – and work with the communities there to chart a prosperous alternative future for them, then resource them to get to that greener future – just like we are seeing with the German ‘coal commission’.
Mongabay: Lastly, tipping points seem like a potentially depressing topic. What gives you hope?
Tim Lenton: My kids. And identifying positive social tipping points that can accelerate the transformative change we need.
Citations:
- Lenton, T. M. et al. “Tipping elements in the Earth’s climate system.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105, 1786–1793 (2008).
- Sharp, S. and Lenton, T. M. “Upward-scaling tipping cascades to meet climate goals – plausible grounds for hope.” Policy briefing note series 2020/01 (2020).
British Gas announces earlier this month that is has ordered 1,000 new all-electric Vivaro-e vans from Vauxhall – the largest commercial BEV (battery electric vehicle) order in the UK to date. The BEVs will arrive over the next 12 months and be rolled out nationwide across the British Gas engineer workforce.
Centrica, owner of British Gas, has committed to electrifying its 12,000 strong fleet by 2030 and will be making further orders with Vauxhall for electric vehicles as soon as they are available. This may include the all-electric Combo-e – available from Summer 2021.
The engineers who receive the new vans will be chosen from volunteers but also targeting areas where it is important to lower emissions and where a van already needs replacing. The British Gas engineers will install the chargers at engineer homes. The company is currently upskilling engineers in EV charging and is accelerating EV adoption for homes and businesses with charger installs and EV tariffs.
Recent events have demonstrated how the British Gas engineers and fleet can play a key role in the local area. British Gas has been working with the Trussell Trust since late March and the engineers have delivered over 4 million meals to those most in need.
Matthew Bateman, Managing Director of British Gas, said:
“Our engineers and their vans are part of the local community they serve and it’s important we reduce the emissions of our vans so that we are contributing towards better air quality in their area and the environment. We are committed to the transition to electric vehicles which involves changing our fleet as well as helping consumers and businesses with charge points and infrastructure. We chose to work with Vauxhall as they were able to give us a large number of high-quality and low emission vans to help us effectively serve our customers – and they will also work with us on future EV solutions. Transport is a key area where we can improve carbon emissions and is an important part of our strategy to meet our net zero targets.”
Stephen Norman, Managing Director of Vauxhall Motors, said:
“I am delighted that British Gas has confirmed the UK’s largest order of battery electric vehicles with the Vauxhall Vivaro-e. As the oldest British vehicle Brand since 1903, I want to thank British Gas, a fellow British business, for their loyalty and trust in Vauxhall.
“As with all businesses up and down the country, tradespeople rely on their van as an essential tool of their work and our 300-strong Retailer network is crucial in continuing to provide support to carry British business. The strength of the quantity of orders for our all-electric van demonstrates that the Vauxhall Vivaro-e, the first step in the electrification of our entire van range, can contribute towards the transition towards low emissions vehicles whilst improving air quality.”
Scottish startup Kenoteq has launched the K-Briq – a more sustainable building brick that is unfired and made of 90 per cent construction waste.
Invented by engineering professor Gabriela Medero at Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt University, the K-Briq generates less than a tenth of the carbon emissions in its manufacture than a regular brick.
Medero spent over 10 years developing the product at the Scottish university, driven by the desire to reduce the environmental impact of the construction industry.
"I have spent many years researching building materials and have been concerned that modern construction techniques exploit raw materials without considering that they are amongst the largest contributors to carbon emissions," she said. "The amount of waste they produce is not sustainable long-term."
Medero co-founded Kenoteq to put the bricks into commercial production, which is now underway. The K-Briq modules will also be used to build this year's Serpentine Pavilion, which has been designed by South African architecture studio Counterspace.
According to Medero, the K-Briq looks like a normal brick, weighs the same and behaves like a clay brick, but offers better insulation properties. Kenoteq can produce it in any colour.
As well as saving energy in the manufacturing process, Kenoteq cuts emissions by producing the bricks locally. It points out that currently up to 85 per cent of bricks used in Scotland are imported from England or Europe, which is not sustainable in the long-term.
Kenoteq is producing its bricks on-site at Hamilton's Waste and Recycling in Edinburgh, minimising the amount of transport required in the process.
"We are proud to be scaling it up to meet both the needs of the construction industry and to support the sustainability targets of both the Scottish and UK governments," said Medero.
Several materials researchers have come up with ways to improve the brick in recent years to make it more environmentally friendly, although the results have rarely made it into mass production.
One of the most interesting examples is from Suzanne Lambert at the University of Cape Town, who created a zero-waste brick that hardens at room temperature, thanks to human urine.
Another is from the Indian School of Design and Innovation's Shreyas More and Meenal Sutaria, who used loofah to make a brick that encourages plant and insect life to live on its surface.
