According to Professor Simon Joss, lead researcher, University of Westminster, the concept of eco-cities and the increase of these projects in mainstream government policy making, reflects “the key role played by cites both as the cause of, and potential solution to” environmental changes, 

He said the study aimed to gain a better understanding of the innovation and governance processes that “drive and shape eco-city developments” and sought to discover why eco-cities “seem to have become globally mainstream in such a short period of time.”

The study profiles details of 174 eco-cities projects around the world. China led with 25 eco-cities in the works. And Asia in general took the lead with a third of all eco-cities projects taking place in that part of the world. 

In Europe, the UK led with 17 eco-cities projects, compared to 13 in its nearest rival, France. Among the UK projects profiled were Aberdeen, Glasgow, London’s Elephant and Castle. The Isle of Wight’s Eco-Island project was a late inclusion on the list.

For full details of the eco-cities survey, including a full, downloadable copy of the Global Eco-cities Survey, visit the University of Westminster’s Eco-Cities website.

Leftovers follow Christmas dinner almost as surely as night follows day and spring follows winter. Tis the season of abundance and nobody wants to lay a meagre table.  But as clever as we’ve all become with leftovers, there really is only so much you can do with Brussels sprouts, and there are only so many days the family will happily consumer yet another variation of turkey surprise.

Leave it to the people at Love Food Hate Waste to come up with a solution that will help you cook enough food to keep everyone happy and well fed without having to choose between throwing away perfectly good food or being overwhelmed by the leftovers .  

Their new Portion Planner lets you build your menu – joint, four veg, potatoes and then calculates how much you’ll need to buy and prepare for the number of guests you expect.  The Portion Planner will even help you calculate quantities if you want to have some leftovers to play with.

You can plan your Christmas feast or, by clicking a tab at the top of the page, plan quantities for every day meals and for Christmas parties. How many hors d’oeuvres will you need per person for a one hour drinks party? How many for a three-hour do? If you love food but really, really hate waste, this is the holiday meal planning tool for you.

By the way, if you do like a few leftovers to work with for Boxing Day but you’ve running out of inspiration for ways to serve them, the Love Food Hate Waste has loads of fun seasonal recipes to play with. Try the Turkey, Mango and Lime Salad and Christmas Pudding Strudel for a start.

Take Heart – You Do Make A Difference

That’s why I was so pleased to discover clever little tool today that can show you exactly how much of a difference you own, individual recycling efforts can really make. Developed by Coca Cola in association with WRAP(Waste & Resources Action Programme), The Recyclometer shows you how much energy you can save in terms of powering a light bulb, a television and a microwave.

Did you know, for example, that recycling one egg box saves enough energy to power a lightbulb for 41 minutes, a television for 31 minutes and a microwave for 5 minutes? Or that a recycling a single glass wine bottle bottle saves enough energy to power a light bulb for 3 hours, a television for 2.5 hours and a microwave for 24 minutes? Recycle your Christmas copy of Vogue and you’ve saved enough energy to power a comfortable evening in for the family – 8 hours of lighting, 6 hours of television and an hour of microwave cooking.

Newspapers, Christmas cards, take-away menus dropped through your letterbox , a six-pack of tinnies, all sorts. Visit the Recyclometer, enter the likely contents of your own recycling bin to see the carbon reduction contribution you’re making, and I guarantee it will put you in a much better holiday mood.

IBM and international charity Practical Action have announced the launch of Energy Aid, a new global charity that aims to alleviate energy poverty. Not to be confused with fuel poverty – something some in the developed world are confronting this winter – energy poverty is simply the absolute lack of adequate (or any) electricity for heating, lighting, cooking, communications and mechanical work.

Jonathan Steel, CEO of the new charity, described electricity as an “enabler” and called lack of access to it a poverty issue. Steel said 1.3 billion people around the world are without access to any electricity and 2.7 billion cook over open fires, contributing to 1.4 million deaths a year – more than malaria.

Stephen Leonard, CEO of IBM UK and Ireland and Chairman of the Trustees of Energy Aid explained that Energy Aid will provide support through three strategies:

Global awareness A campaign planned for 2012 will raise awareness of lack of energy access, supporting fund-raising that will be made available to qualifying projects.

Open knowledge base  Key to the success of the project is a major, global data base of resources, technology, research information, areas of need, project success stories and case studies, available to NGOs, charities and other bodies working in this area. The data base aims at reducing the level of failure of energy access projects through collaboration and distribution of best practice. Describing the role of the knowledge base as one of encouraging horizontal collaboration, Leonard said, “Not one of us alone is as smart as all of us together.”

Creation of an Investment Fund The Energy Aid fund will  operate as a patient investor in long term, game-changing projects in higher risk environments. The fund will look for opportunities to create economically viable and sustainable energy markets which will in turn attract private investment to achieve scalability.

Started at Start

The project arose from an idea first suggested by Trace at an IBM Sustainability Summit under the auspices of  Start, an initiative of The Prince’s Charities Foundation to promote and celebrate sustainable living.   Trace said he believed the charity would create ” a unique opportunity” for business leadership in global energy access, to “create an initiative which can help lift billions of people out of poverty.”

In terms of the carbon footprint of adding billions of people in the developing world to the global energy grid, Simon Trace CEO of Practical Action and an Energy Aid trustee said that the total impact to the world’s carbon load would be 0.7%. A figure well within our own carbon reduction targets for the next decade.

“The standard serving of workplace coffee was pretty awful at the time,” Knight says. “Our single minded proposition was  to provide high quality, speciality coffees into the workplace using automatic machines. We used fresh milk which was quite revolutionary at the time…people said we couldn’t do it.”

In fact the Redcup USP, really good office coffee with fresh milk, was a great success. The coffee they provided was organic, fair trade and traceable to the co-ops that grow it. But it was the revelation that with a little bit of clever lateral thinking, the company’s already green product could be made even greener and could raise money for good causes that led to Greencup.

Knight explains he had begun donating to Coffee Kids, a charity that helps Latin American families reduce their dependence on the coffee market and addresses community needs. Meeting with the Coffee Kids founder at Imperial College (a Redcup customer at the time),  he noticed the bin for used coffee was in need of emptying. At the time, the used grounds from business waste would have gone into landfill.

“The head of the charity told me that people who donated made more money selling old coffee (for compost) than new. So I googled ‘coffee compost’ and I was hooked. I set about collecting people’s used coffee grounds intending to donate anything I eventually made to the Coffee Kids charity.”

Working with Imperial College, Knight’s company created a new product and Redcup became Greencup. “After a lot of trial and error, we came up with a coffee fertiliser that’s made of used grounds, sheep wool and other secret – but also ethical – ingredients. We made it with coffee from a garden centre group.”

The resulting product, Greencup Natural Fertiliser will be available from Notcutts garden centres from 2012. And Greencup’s profits go to Coffee Kids  and Trees for Cities.

Businesses that sign up for Greencup get coffee and a recycling container. Greencup then collects the grounds, using – at the moment – a 1970s electric milk float.  And, according to Greencup, each cup of coffee results in 1/3 less carbon than conventional brews. The company is serving businesses in the Greater London area but expects to expand across the Southeast in the near future.

You can try Greencup’s organic, fair trade coffee and get started on your own coffee recycling project with the prize for this month’s competition. Check out our competition page to find out how to win coffee, cups, coffee maker, a packet of coffee fertilizer and a recycling container.

This holiday season invite your friends around to enjoy a cup of coffee and then sit back and watch your garden blossom.  (Well, as it’s winter, maybe your houseplants just for now).  We are giving way an eco-friendly hamper from Greencup, a special prize normally only offered to businesses. Greencup provides high quality, fair-trade coffee to businesses and then collects the coffee grounds, in their very own eco-friendly electric vehicle, to recycle them into eco-friendly garden fertiliser. Enjoy your morning coffee knowing that the grounds came from an ethical source and are going to good use.

Read all about Greencup, then enter our competition to win a holiday hamper filled with a cafetiere, 4 cups, two kinds of coffee and a fertilizer tub to get you started saving your coffee grounds for your happy plants.

To win this great prize, just answer this simple question:

Which meal has the lower carbon footprint?

Read this article about a low carbon Christmas kitchen to find out.

A. Fried egg

B. A bowl of cereal with milk

Send your answer, in an email with ‘GREENCUP’ as the subject line, to info@energyrethinking.org by noon, 23rd December. Remember to include your full name, email address and telephone number. All correct answers will be entered in a draw from which one winner will be selected at random. See below for full terms and conditions.

Terms and Conditions

1. This competition (“Competition”) is open to all residents of the U.K over 18 years of age(“Participants”), but excludes: (i) Burson-Marsteller (the “Promoter”) employees (and their immediate families), (ii) employees (and their immediate families) of The Energy Saving Trust, the Institute of Directors, Michelin, Tomorrow’s Company, Greencup and Royal Dutch Shell Group (the “Partners”), and (iii) persons located in any jurisdiction in which it is unlawful to play the Competition. Each Participant may make any number of entries to the Competition.

2. The Competition commences on 2.12.11 and ends at midday on 23.12.11 (“Competition Period”).

3. The winners will be contacted within a week of the end of the Competition Period. If the Promoter has not received a minimum of 20 valid entries by 23.12.11 the Competition Period shall be extended until midday on 06.01.11, with the winners contacted within a week of that date. All entries received in the original Competition Period will continue to be valid.

4. To enter the Competition, Participants must answer the multiple choice question correctly, leaving their full name, email address and telephone number as requested on the survey form  provided by the Promoter. The Promoter shall use contact details in accordance with the Privacy Policy at www.energyrethinking.org/privacy. Participants submitting entries via the Web Page must also comply with the Web Page terms at www.energyrethinking.org/tc and www.energyrethinking.org/copyrights.

6. The Promoter does not accept any responsibility for entries which are lost, damaged, or delayed (including due to internet service disruption). The Promoter accepts no responsibility for the entries that a Participant makes.

7. The winning entry will receive 1 Large Cafetiere, 4 Medium Greencup Cups & Saucer, 1 Fertiliser Tub, 4 Bags Almika Filter Coffee and 4 Bags Maya Filter Coffee. The prize is as stated and will not be provided in any other form. The prize cannot be redeemed for cash and are non-transferable.

8. Entries will be picked randomly. In the event of a draw, a casting vote will be exercised by the Promoter’s [Web Editor]. The decision of the Promoter’s [Web Editor] is final.

9. By entering the Competition, each Participant warrants that:

• nothing in their entry infringes any copyrights, trade marks, or other intellectual property rights of a third party or any rights of privacy;
• nothing in their entry contains any material which is pornographic, sexually explicit, obscene, offensive, harmful to minors, discriminatory or in any way likely to upset, distress or harm any person, or is otherwise contrary to public policy and/or accepted moral standards;
• their entry complies with all applicable laws; and
• he/she shall not knowingly transmit any data or other material which contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, spyware, adware or any other harmful programmes or similar computer code designed or known to adversely affect the operation of any computer hardware or software.

11. The Promoter reserves the right at its sole discretion to reject any entries which do not comply with these Terms and Conditions, or to remove any entry if the Promoter receives notification about any potential infringements or breaches of law.

12. In relation to individuals participating in the Competition as consumers, by submitting their entry to the Competition Participants guarantee that such entries are in full compliance at all times with the Terms and Conditions. Participants also agree that the Promoter, the Partners or any other partners that may subsequently be added, will not be responsible for the Participant’s – the individual’s – actions, and thus will not be liable to any legal fees, damages and other expenses that may be awarded as a result of the Participant’s breach of this warranty.

13. In relation to companies and business entities participating in the Competition, by submitting their entry to the Competition Participants warrant that such entry is in full compliance at all times with the Terms and Conditions. Participants shall indemnify and keep indemnified the Promoter to the fullest extent possible against any legal fees, damages and other expenses that may be awarded as a result of the Participant’s breach of this warranty.

14. Under no circumstances will the Promoter be liable for any losses, damages, costs or expenses arising from or in any way connected with the Competition, including the following types of loss or damage:

• any loss of profits, business, contracts, anticipated savings, goodwill, or revenue, any wasted expenditure, or any loss or corruption of data (regardless of whether any of these types of loss or damage are direct, indirect or consequential); or
• any indirect or consequential loss or damage whatsoever.

Nothing in these Terms and Conditions shall exclude or limit the Promoter’s liability for death or personal injury as a result of its own negligence or in relation to fraudulent misrepresentation or any other liability which cannot be excluded or limited by law.

15. The winner will not be required to participate in related publicity. For the name and country of residence of the winners, send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to the Promoter.

16. If any provision contained in these Terms and Conditions shall be prohibited by law or adjudged by a court to be unlawful, void or unenforceable such provision shall, to the extent required, be severed from these Terms and Conditions and rendered ineffective as far as possible without modifying the remaining provisions of these Terms and Conditions, and shall not in any way affect the validity or enforcement of the remaining Terms and Conditions.

17. The Competition, these Terms and Conditions, and any matter arising from them (including any dispute or claim relating to non-contractual obligations) are governed by the law of England and Wales and are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.

The Promoter is Burson-Marsteller Limited. It is registered in England with company number 601529, its registered address is Level 6 South, Central Saint Giles, 1 St Giles High Street, London WC2H 8AG.

They are a holiday tradition. Without mentioning any brand names, we can probably say that most people have at least a passing familarity with those chocolate and toffee-based, individually wrapped, mixed sweets packed in tins or cardboard boxes and named after the avenue where the elite meet and greet. And it’s the rare British home that doesn’t set out a tin of them or receive one as a gift.

They’ve been in made in Halifax, West Yorkshire, since 1936 and are named after a J. M. Barrie play which, coincidentally, was called “Quality Street.”  Okay, the cat’s out of the bag. People have been recycling the tins for years – up and down the UK they have a second life holding sewing bits and bobs, pennies, receipts, romantic mementoes as well as biscuits and – even more sweets.

But lately, maybe you’ve been a bit concerned about all that wrapping – especially the lurid coloured cellophanes and foils.

Well you can relax.

Except for a small pane of clear film on the front of the cardboard box version, all the wrappings are either recyclable or biodegradable. The cardboard package even has instructions for recycling.

• The cellophane separates from the foil inner wrapper of each sweet. Save up the cellophanes and add them to your compost heap – they are completely biodegradable.
• Save the foils separately – they can be recycled with your tins.
• And peel the film window out of the cardboard box before discarding the box with your other paper recycling.

Oh, and the tin? Well you know what to do with that. Save it for grandma’s buttons.

All that cooking, all those leftovers. It’s very hard to escape the holiday seasons’ oversized carbon footprint while maintaining the holidays’ jolly spirit of abundance.  But you can at least make a dent in the amount of C02 you contribute to the holiday atmosphere by having an open mind and trying a few simple – and money saving ideas in the kitchen.

Have an open mind

Re-examine your approach to food and cooking and experiment a bit – you might be in for a few surprises. What may seem obvious is not always true. Recently, for example, we tried  a neat little online tool – The Low Carbon Diet Calculator  which gives you an idea of the carbon cost of a variety of meal planning options so you can build a low carbon menu from the bottom up. Did you know that a fried egg has a lower carbon footprint than a bowl of cereal and skimmed milk? Make it a boiled egg and it’s a healthy option as well.

Here’s another carbon lowering paradox – buy a much bigger turkey than you think you need for the holiday feast. It doesn’t take much more energy to cook a big old Tom than it does to cook a sensibly small bird. And following the  Love Food Hate Waste campaign’s advice to “Cook once, eat twice”, you’ll have lots of planned-overs to freeze for future meals.

Try some of these:

A Turkey Trick

Once the big feast is over, get to work as soon as possible removing the meat from the carcass and storing it safely to prevent salmonella.  Then freeze it  in mixed batches of white and dark meat for use in casseroles, stews and turkey pies later. If you pack it in reusable containers, it’s economical and low carbon – but the meat could get freezer burn and dry out. To prevent that, freeze it submerged in stock you’ve made from the carcass. It will emerge nice and juicy and the stock will have an extra jolt of turkey flavour.

Veggies Round Two

Almost all the vegetables you can think of – except the brassicas (broccoli, Brussels sprouts) go well with each other. Gather up all the leftover vegetables – even the browned ones that flavoured the roasting turkey –  and blitz them together. Then add enough liquid to  turn the puree into a soup. Depending upon the vegetables, you could use milk, stock, wine or even water. Heat, then season, top with a dollop of Greek style yogurt, and you’ve got a nice lunch dish.

And about those Brussels sprouts. Provided you haven’t overcooked them in the first place, they make a great side dish shredded, tossed in butter to heat through, mixed with some chopped nuts (also leftover, of course) and herbs, finish with some cream and top with buttered breadcrumbs. Your sprouts haters won’t even know what they’re eating.

The Cheese Course

Bought a lot of cheese for entertaining and now you have  pieces of it getting hard in the fridge? Make a cheese strata. It’s a recipe that’s been around since Victorian times and it’s still a tasty and economical way to use up bread and cheese. There are hundreds of recipes for strata on the internet. Here’s mine:

• Grate or shred about a pound of leftover cheese. It doesn’t matter what kind – just mix all the leftover bits together.
• Trim the crust from 12 to 16 slices of white bread. If you don’t have leftovers just buy the cheapest white bread you can find.
• Cover the bottom of a casserole dish with one later of bread and cover it abundantly with the shredded cheese. Dot with English mustard.
• Repeat with a second layer of bread, cheese and mustard.
• Beat six eggs with one pint of milk (any kind of milk will do, including skimmed) and pour over the bread and cheese in the casserole dish. Push down any bits of bread that are poking up, so that everything is submerged.
• Cover and refrigerate overnight.
• Next day, heat the oven to 180° C, Gas Mark 4 and bake 30 to 40 minutes until it’s puffed up bubbling.
• Serve with a green vegetable and some members of your family might even believe it’s a soufflé.

Sweeties

Cary Grant used to store his Christmas cake in a tin and eat it years later. Well you could do that, or you could make some nice Christmas bonbons out of it. Remove any icing an marzipan and roll the leftover cake in 1″ balls. Melt some plain chocolate (Fair Trade of course) and dip the balls into it, one at a time, to coat them. Cool in the fridge on grease proof paper. This is a particularly good project to do with children.

We don’t want to start the holiday season like Scrooge. But, we all know that we’re heading into a pretty carbon heavy couple of months. Think of all the forests that are eaten up by gift wrap, the carbon footprints of all the travel, the mountains of perfectly good food prepared (because abundance is a sign of generosity and good cheer)  and then discarded uneaten.  Maybe it’s time to do a little energy and eco rethinking. But there’s no need to don hair shirts and give each other hand-me-downs. We’ve got an assortment of low carbon, economical, eco-friendly ideas that are also festive and frivolous enough for the Christmas season.

1. Deck the halls with real holly gathered from prunings. Instead of spending money on new artificial Christmas decorations that won’t biodegrade, let nature decorate your home. Make flower arrangements from organic, recycled and scrap materials. Once you have finished with them you can put them in the composter. We liked these ideas for natural decorations from columnist Elspeth Thompson in the Telegraph.

2. One of the biggest sources of waste each Christmas is wrapping paper, with more than 8,000 tonnes being used each year – the equivalent of approximately 50,000 trees. Here at energyrethinkin.org we have decided to make our own wrapping paper this Christmas. All you need is some plain paper or newspaper, last year’s Christmas cards and a little imagination. Watch this to see what we mean:

3. We know a lot of wine and beer is consumed during the holiday season, so what better way to recycle the bottles then to decorate them. Wine bottles decorated with gold leaf, paint and beads become candleholder centerpieces or to add sparkle to wine you are serving at the Christmas meal. You can up-cycle your old drinks bottles in all sorts of ways – use green ones to make a Christmas tree – we’re not kidding. Take a look at some of these wildly decorative and functional uses for recycled bottles here .

4. Ever thought of what a waste it is discarding an old jumper because of worn elbows or one tiny moth hold. Why not try turning an old sweater sleeves into fingerless gloves or small bags and sacs for jewelry or tights. Old jumpers become faded and worn over the years. Instead of throwing them away, use those large portions of fabric that are still in good shape to make Christmas gifts for the family.  Try making felt fingerless gloves by following these simple instructions on eHow.

5. One of the things kids  love to do all year round is scribble and draw on paper, so why not use some of their “work” in a new and fun way. Rachel of the blog Lines Across My Face shares a super easy and fun tutorial on how to make paper gift bows with kid scribbles. The perfect decoration for Nan’s pressies.

6. Since the average Christmas fairy light display produces enough CO2 to fill two double decker buses and can cost up to £100, cutting down on the twinkle is good for both your bank balance and the planet. Instead, try putting tea lights in brightly painted old jars on your windowsill and around your front door for a festively green glow. We’ve also seen some recycled glass hanging tea light lanterns you can safely put in your tree at MIKI Organic and the wonderful Nigel’s Eco Store.  For a bit more outdoor sparkle, the Energy Saving Trust recommends you invest in some solar fairy lights.

7. Everyone loves pulling a Christmas cracker with the person sitting next to them, so why not make your own this year. All you need is a bit of loo roll cardboard, cracker snaps and old wrapping paper left over from the year before. You can even insert your own personal gifts and messages to make them that little bit more special.  Do-it-yourself was the only way when the Victorians invented Christmas Crackers.  Have a look:

8. Instead of buying a plastic Christmas tree (usually made of petroleum-based PVC) that uses up resources in both the manufacture and shipping, live trees are a renewable resource that are replanted regularly. There are over 400 Christmas tree growers across the UK registered with the British Christmas Tree Growers’ Association. To solve the needle drop problem, arrange a large, biodegradeable bin bag under your tree. Then, when the holidays are over, ease the bag up the tree, folding the branches as you go. It’s not foolproof, but it will enable you to get the tree outdoors with a minimal needle trail. Alternativly you can rent a living Christmas tree from the ChristmasTreeMan.co.uk. It’ll be delivered to your door in a pot (to keep the tree alive) and with some feed to keep the tree healthy. When Christmas is over your tree will be collected and returned to the ground.

9. There are hundreds of quirky little gifts you can make for your loved ones this Christmas from things you already have around the house. We found dozens of good ideas and inspirations on Homemade Gifts Made Easy, from recipes for cholate bark to nifty fridge magnets.

10. Don’t let your leftovers go to waste. There’s plenty you can do with turkey long after everyone is thoroughly fed up with turkey sandwiches. Turn those “planned overs”  into something really tasty and keep more cash in your pocket. The Love Food Hate Waste website has a loads of delicious recipes for turkey. And those crafty foodies have even found a way to give day old brussels sprouts a new look – check out their recipe for bubble and squeak.
 

Still looking for inspiration?

The Energy Saving Trust has more good ideas. Have a look at their Simple steps for eco-festive fun.

We’d love to hear about your own frugal, energy efficient holiday ideas. Just add your comments below.