Well, spring has finally arrived. Am I saying that because, after banging on about how it never stops raining here in the fells, we had a rain-free week, leading to the local Co-op running out of salad? No; nor because we took the decision to wash our winter coats and hang them out to dry before putting them away for storage. The weatherman promptly forecast snow!

The reason is the same as every year: along with the narcissi and the first lineful of washing comes reports in the environment news pages of hosepipe bans in the drought-stricken South East.

According to The Guardian, around one third of those to whom the ban applies will simply ignore it. Are these the same people who will squeeze the last drop of fuel into their tanks at the hint of a tanker-drivers’ strike; or who will park their 4WD gas guzzler on a disabled parking space because it’s two yards less far to walk, despite the fact that they actually can easily walk the extra two yards?

I’ve pointed out before that, just because we find it ironic to be talking about drought when it seems to rain (or snow!) most of the year, that doesn’t mean it ain’t there. Water is becoming a commodity here in England and people need to wake up to that fact. Having said that, other environment news stories are advertising courses in flood defences for the kind of consultants to be found in the environment directory of this site.

The reason most of the ban-flouters cite, apparently, is the fact that the water companies waste millions of gallons a year in leaks. That, too, is criminal and should be treated as such.

It’s difficult to find anything good to say about the new National Planning Policy Framework, announced on 27 March, but a grudging ‘about time, too’ goes to the emphasis on brownfield development. I wonder how long that will last, though, when the brownfield-first policy begins to interfere with the presumption of consent for ‘sustainable development’. The introduction of the 5% deposit scheme for new build only flies in the face of the policy itself. In the past couple of years we have seen inner cities blighted by lack of funds to refurbish existing, perfectly sound homes to modern standards.

At its best, sustainable housing development can encompass the conversion of Victorian mills into flats – often, because of the nature of early industrialisation, with its own bijou waterside ambience: unlike what happened just a couple of miles from here when a landmark mill was allowed to decay and then demolished.

Chris Stokes

It has been evident for a while that the Chancellor is no friend of Friends of the Earth - at times it looked as if he thought green credentials were old-fashioned Driving Licences.

He has really wound up the entire green lobby with the environment news in his Budget, though. In addition to investigating increasing airport capacity in the South East (we all look forward to the Tory NIMBYs shuffling Boris Johnson International from one constituency to another), he is to hand over £3bn in tax breaks to the oil and gas industry, in order to extract as much revenue as possible at a time, to quote The Guardian, of “soaring global crude prices”.

Making the announcement as part of his Budget speech, the boy George said: "We are also introducing new allowances, including a £3bn new field allowance for large and deep fields to open up west of Shetland, the last area of the basin left to be developed.”

Craig Bennett, policy and campaigns director at Friends of the Earth, appeared nigh-on apoplectic. He declared to The Guardian: "It’s absolutely shocking after months of government complaining about subsidies to renewables that Osborne hands out billions of subsidies for deepwater drilling. This will do nothing to get us off the hook of high fossil fuel prices."

Hang on, though – isn’t that the same part of the world that would be providing a newly-independent Scotland with massive revenues in a few years’ time? Not if George gets his hands on it first!

Those of us who were not actually listening to the Budget speech would still have noticed when he came to the subject of electricity generation.  As he mouthed the words "Gas is cheap” the whole country was convulsed with laughter. Where exactly has George been buying his?

Buried in the Budget detail was another piece of environment news that didn’t make the same immediate impact. The Chancellor pledged to reform the Carbon Reduction Commitment to make it less bureaucratic – or replace it altogether if it can’t be reformed. The measure won plaudits from an unlikely combination of sources, including the CBI, the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment and the Renewable Energy Association.

The CBI’s director general John Cridland tempered his reaction in his statement by expressing disappointment that the CRC had not been abolished immediately, while the REA restated its opposition to the CRC as it stands on the ground it makes no distinction between the carbon footprint of energy generated in different ways.
While this site’s Environment Directory will provide details of a number of consultants able to guide companies around the vagaries of the CRC, none will mourn its reform or demise.

This week's environment news concerns Climate Week, as it has been designated by those who designate those things. We are all required to think seriously about our carbon footprint – at least for this week!

I’ve always wondered who decides what day or week it’s going to be: does a group of heavenly beings cluster around a diary every year to decide on which dates we are going to think about what?

It’s unfortunate that these ‘weeks’ or ‘days’ (presumably for less important issues - I’m thinking of Yorkshire Day) can devalue the issue they are meant to support by seeming trivial or, worse, badly organised; or they can reinforce the idea that people only think about important issues for one week (or day) in the year. If the population is going to take climate change seriously it’s going to need to live responsibly all year!

Climate Week has been sponsored by huge business enterprises. I was reminded by Tesco in an email that I had an unparalleled opportunity to eat ‘low-carbon’ food. Does that mean I haven’t got to burn my toast - or burn it just a little bit?

Another of the sponsors is SodaStream. It is, somehow, comforting to think that even a fizzy drink can be made more environmentally friendly. As the blurb on the Climate Week website says: “…one single SodaStream bottle can save up to 2000 bottles and cans.” You can win one of their marvellous machines in a competition to find the best low carbon recipe. You can enter at www.climateweek.com, but be quick – the competition closes on Sunday.

The issue of food miles remains a significant challenge for all of us, particularly with the massive changes in the way food is produced and marketed in this country. The BBC is currently running s campaign to re-introduce ‘forgotten foods’ onto the nation’s dining tables.

A classic example of a food that has become virtually impossible to make in its traditional form is the Bury black pudding. As a native of that venerable town I well remember the Saturday tradition of buying a freshly-boiled pudding from the market, either while out shopping or, later, on the way to Gigg Lane to watch Colin Bell and Ray Pointer from the Boys' Stand. The thing is that modern regulations make it difficult to use fresh blood, which is what a black pudding is made from, so powdered, dried blood is used. That, of course, is just one more unnecessary process to add to the pudding’s carbon footprint.

If more locally-produced food were made, sold and eaten, the original ingredients could be re-introduced. Of course the black pudding is anathema to vegetarians and those who aver that meat is by its nature a high-carbon food, but it uses parts of the pig that would otherwise be wasted. Maybe there should be a separate category in the Environment Directory for traditional food producers.

Another BBC report concerned the amount of bread that is wasted every day in this country. Apparently people think that a white sliced loaf will ‘go off’ in two days and some even keep bread in the fridge, despite the fact that 5oC is just about the worst temperature to keep bread at. The answer, of course, is to buy less at a time and buy good quality wholemeal bread. Even the supermarket ‘baked-in-store’ loaves are far superior in taste to factory white sliced. My favourite comes from our local Co-op, who do not make enough and are constantly running out. You’d think they’d clock onto that and do something about it – like make more!

CHRIS STOKES

Two recent environment news stories have demonstrated admirably how environmental concerns and economics go together.

In this magazine’s sister publication, Construction National, there is a report from West Dunbartonshire Council of what happened when it fitted vehicle tracking systems to its 380 cars, minibuses, vans, refuse trucks, and road sweepers in 2010. Apart from the fuel savings deriving from not having to redirect vehicles, the council found that changes in driver behaviour resulted in substantial fuel savings – a year after fitting the systems the council reported it had saved around £100,000 in fuel costs. That saving was also reflected, of course, in a commensurate reduction in the council’s carbon footprint as a result of reductions in CO₂ emissions.

As far as I know, no vehicle tracking companies feature in the Environment Directory of this site, but it may not be long before they do.

Even the savings achieved in Dunbartonshire are small beer when it comes to those that have to be made by the NHS – some £30bn over the next few years. According to the Dr David Pencheon, director of its Sustainable Development Unit, a big slice of that could happen through energy saving and other sustainability measures. In the environment news section of this site he is reported as saying that as much as £89m can be saved annually by recycling medicines.

The wastage of medicines is truly staggering, not just in hospitals where a package of drugs is disposed of if not needed by the same patient again, but in the home. Many packs of drugs become surplus to requirements when we get better, thankfully, but even when they are returned to a pharmacy they are simply disposed of. Many powerful pain killers are wasted in this way because of the progressive ‘fine tuning’ possible in pain control. It is also the case with nutrient drinks for people who are temporarily unable to eat, as was the situation in my own family recently following treatment for oral cancer. Could they not be usefully employed in emergency famine situations and following natural (or not-so-natural) disasters?

As Dr Pencheon points out, many of the drugs are manufactured many miles away, so the saving would not just be in materials and energy used to manufacture them, but also the transportation. It has long been recognised that the best way to persuade companies to become more environmentally aware: it’s refreshing to see that the principal has found its way into the public sector.

In an Environment UK blog last month I alluded to the prospect of a drought in the South East as soon as it had stopped snowing and the possible dire consequences of water becoming a commodity. Almost immediately afterwards the BBC was reporting on the resurgence of the idea of a ‘water grid’ to move water around the country like electricity - particularly in the direction of London. Boris was behind it, of course: ever the eye for the main chance, so to speak. He was referring at the time to the fact that in parts of the UK it rains more than it does in others.

The Beeb quoted his Telegraph column: “The rain it raineth on the just and the unjust, says The Bible, but frankly it raineth a lot more in Scotland and Wales than it doth in England.” The question arises, of course, as to how much Boris is prepared to pay for said water from an independent Scotland. Could the sound of the cash register be a key accompaniment to Mr Salmon’s referendum?

However, having just walked past a TV tuned into the BBC’s News channel, I noticed it was chucking it down in London - looked like snow!