If you’re looking for green products and services, green spaces, green initiatives and groups in Birmingham UK, start here. With your help, we can help everyone cut the carbon by pooling our knowledge on all the different initiatives in the city to cut CO₂ and other greenhouse gases – and other forms of pollution.

GREENING BRUM: If you are doing anything to help create a sustainable economy in the city, to preserve biodiversity, or to increase awareness of ecological issues, we want to know about it.

Websites included

• Balsall Heath Is Our Planet
• Birmingham & Black Country Wildlife Trust
• Birmingham & District Alotments Council
• Birmingham Open Spaces Forum
• Birmingham Friends of the Earth
• Birmingham Recycled
• Faith & Climate Change
• GreeninBrum
• Martineau Gardens
• Pushbikes
• Various local parks and nature reserves
• Zero Carbon House

BUSINESSES

• Jyoti’s Indian Vegetarian & Vegan Restaurant, Sparkhill
• Geosolar – photovoltaics (solar electricity)
• Indigo Wholefoods
• Sunpower Technologies – photovoltaics and solar thermal (hot water)
• The Warehouse Cafe (vegetarian and vegan)

Email us if you want us to include your green Birmingham website in the search. This is a free service.

“I live in King’s Heath. I want to undertake thermal cladding on my detached 1910 solid wall house (external & internal as appropriate) and am struggling to find climate-change-savvy local contractors to develop the spec and do the work. I could hire from afar, but local is better, as we know.”

PLEASE add any recommended builders in the comments, with contact details if possible, and what you know of their work. Builders are welcome to add their own credentials – or contact us if you want a page on this site.

Fortunately, greater minds than mine have delved into this issue and made recommendations to the rest of us, such as this article at www.ethicalconsumer.org. But it relates to October 2008, so if anyone has more up-to-date sources of information, please add a comment.

Good Energy (01249 766090) comes out top, just ahead of Green Energy, Utilita and Ecotricity – although you’ll see from the article that it matters exactly which tariff you sign up to in each case, though thankfully Good Energy only has one. (No, this isn’t an affiliate link – I must ask them about that.) As it happens, I’m a Good Energy customer at home. Being a small company, their customer services department is very friendly – though I’ve asked them to review their procedures about dealing with complex issues.

I don’t think there is any such thing as zero carbon electricity, so signing up to a green tariff is no substitute for throwing the stuff away through a poorly insulated loft, for example. You might get work like that done for free if you’re on a low income – try phoning Warmfront on 0800 316 2805.

What energy tariff are you signed up to at home? Why did you choose that one? Would you consider switching?

Chris Duggan

In my area – the whole of Dorset, UK has a membership of nil (not a good sign)… the Freegive website appears to be coaxing people to either donate money, buy website advertising space and also encourages members to buy new consumer goods at their shop (which seems kinda ironic)!!

Oxford is still actively freecycling – 33,000 members and about 100 posts per day.
No Oxford freegle group at all, altho neighbouring Banbury and Henley have active freegle groups with 5,000 members between them
Oxfordshire freegive group – 4 members and one message posted in May 2009…

We would welcome any discussion or clarification in the comments section below.

Outside
the quicksilver sinks a little in the glass.
Inside the conference hall
the temperature rises.

After decades of hypocrisy
quick minds need to find a quick and lasting deal
to save us from the quicksands,
requicken our forests, restore our full humanity.

Last,
the kings & queens begin to trickle in
with their signet rings,
as hustlers continue to cobble texts.

Last chance? Last days? Last gasp?
Place mind in heart, put pen to paper, breathe a prayer.

©Copyright Chris Duggan 2009

The declaration – which it is hoped will be adopted by other councils across the UK – states that by 2015:

• All vehicles procured by the council should be electrically powered or run on liquefied petroleum gas
• There will be at least 500 electric cars running on the streets of the city as we will develop the electric charging infrastructure
• 50 per cent of electricity used by the council should be generated from renewable sources
• The city council’s energy consumption will be reduced by 25 per cent
• Ten per cent of Birmingham homes will be linked to district heating systems
• Ten per cent of Birmingham homes will have retrofit insulation
• There will be at least ten “low carbon communities” similar to the successful example of Summerfield Eco-neighbourhood

Source: BirminghamNewsroom.com

Six years is a long time in politics

• What are the year by year targets? Has the Council signed up to the 10:10 campaign to reduce emissions by 10% in 2010?
• Has progress towards the target of 60% reduction in emissions by 2026 been monitored? Are the results published?

[Update: The BEP Annual Report 08-09 reports a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of 103,000 tonnes - information on how this was calculated would be helpful.]

Sustainable cars?

• What plans are there simply to reduce car use?
• What evidence is there that switching to electric cars will reduce emissions? If most of our electricity is generated from fossil fuels…

“10% of Birmingham homes will have retrofit insulation”

• 10%? Ten per cent? Did someone miss off a zero?
• What type and degree of insulation is being proposed? Loft insulation? Cavity walls? Solid walls? Windows? Floors?
• What percentage of heat saving per house is planned?

The full declaration (see link below) states that this target has already been exceeded. So why is it included?

We need a whole lot more detail from the Council to show that this is a serious policy proposal that will be implemented, rather than a publicity stunt.

The following quote from the end of the full declaration
is more encouraging, though as it is not part of the headline strategy I wonder if it has been added as an afterthought:

Also, as a consequence to the adoption of this policy:

• All Council departments should be allocated an energy usage and carbon reduction target for each financial year and be required to report on performance at the year end, so placing climate change at the top of the agenda – with a contribution that can be made to a reduction in Council costs; and
• The Deputy Leader be required to report as part of his annual report to the Council, on the total energy usage by the City Council and its contractor partners, to advise Council of the steps taken over the previous year to reduce energy use and of the steps planned for the next year, with the level of impact of these measures.”

Claire Prosser, D. Stamp, Jon Buick, Beth Fisher, Bob Whitehead, Shabdam Bailey-Bond, Kate Willen, Brian May, Oksana Carey, Margaret Healey Pollett, Helen McKiernan, Liz Peake, Rob Collett, Helen Cotter, Veronica, Jo Hindley, John Christophers, Chris Duggan, L Wild, Barbara Norden, Theo, Nicole, Vicki Squire, Oz, Chris, Helen Lloyd.

(If you were there and your name does not appear above, please add it in the comments.)



Thanks to Helen and John for the photos above. Beautiful photos of candles floating on the canal at the city centre event, we’re told a curious Canada goose may have burnt her tongue on a candle!

Special thanks to all who took photographs and handed out leaflets, to Vicki who got the thing moving, and to Oz and Margaret for their encouragement.