If you could make small changes to your lifestyle to protect and ‘Love Your River’, would you do it?

That is the question that is being asked of everyone following the launch of a groundbreaking campaign to raise public awareness about the link between the health of our rivers and water use.

The ‘Love Your River’ campaign is being launched and backed by Defra, the National Trust, the Environment Agency, the Wildlife Trusts, Keep Britain Tidy, water companies and Waterwise, to promote the value and benefits of our rivers to our everyday life. The need to protect our rivers has become more urgent in light of droughts being declared in various parts of the country, with some of southern Yorkshire joining the list of drought affected areas today.

Businesses and other organisations aiming to improve their environmental performance received a welcome boost with the announcement yesterday that CO2Sense, the not-for-profit low-carbon expert company, will become an independent Community Interest Company. The company, which was formerly owned by the regional development agency Yorkshire Forward, was granted permission to become independent by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). The majority of RDA land and property assets are now managed by the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA).

CO2Sense supports businesses and other organisations to cut their carbon emissions and their costs, providing advice and investment funds for renewable electricity and heat installations and projects that cut energy, waste and other resources.

The BRE Trust, the charitable organisation that owns the BRE group of companies celebrates its 10th anniversary with the launch of a new thematic research programme at Ecobuild called ‘Future Cities’. The programme will explore the range of challenges faced by the global built environment as more people migrate to cities.

Specific areas of focus will be: Energy Supply & Demand, Buildings and Infrastructure, Health and Wellbeing, Crime, Infrastructure and ICT and Communities and Social Interaction.

Timber is a valuable and versatile building material, but just like concrete or steel, it can be open to the threat of fire. In April 2012, DRICON, Arch Timber Protection’s water-based fire retardant, will celebrate 25 years of continuous British Board of Agrément (BBA) accreditation, giving confidence and reassurance of long-term and safe fire protection to the contractors, designers and most important of all, occupants of buildings and structures that use timber for all or part of their construction. DRICON, which has been used to protect solid timber and timber panels for more than 30 years worldwide, is the only BBA-approved fire retardant protection for timber.