Category Archives: Sustainability As If People Mattered
Innovation Rewarded
The 2006 Merseyside Innovation Awards gave some fascinating insights into current eco-product, bio-tech and uninhabited air vehicle developments; and they also offered food for thought about how innovators actually come to be practising their craft.
Some events are well worth the effort of turning up. The 2006 Final of the Merseyside Innovation Awards this week (on Thursday 13 July) was one of them.
The event was buzzing, with expectations high that we would all learn something of interest. And so it was, with three shortlisted Finalists from very different parts of the emerging techno-science markets.
Ecological products for the future
The first presentation was from Delphis Industries Limited, a local Liverpool company. They have identified a strong market niche for eco- cleaning products (for masonry, stone etc.) which will not harm people or the environment, and which will meet the increasingly specific requirements of new health and safety legislation.
The talent in this company is very much ‘home grown’ and the ideas arose in the serendipity way that sometimes happens when business associates or friends meet up. Here, for all to see, were a small team of people who had spotted an opportunity which arose out of the blue, and had gone for it, combining their enthusiasm for ethical and environmental products and their ability to see an emerging market when one appeared.
The big bio-tech development
Next to make their presentation were Genial Genetic Solutions Limited (GGS). This is a rapidly growing company, employing staff at graduate level and beyond and at the sharp end of cytogenetics and related disciplines. Amongst the applications of the technology which they are developing is a much speedier response to the analysis of, for instance, cancer cell samples, so that appropriate medical treatments can be delivered as soon as possible.
We were told that orders are already coming in for the newly developed equipment, small enough to be housed in a normal laboratory, which will enable genetic assessments to be conducted much more quickly than in the past. At about £100,000 each these items are serious investments in the future of medical technology, and that is the part of the market which GGS is looking to.
An ‘uninhabited air vehicle’ idea from the 1930s
The fianl presentation was by Hoverwing Ltd. This is a prototype small, lightweight flying machine whcih can carry a camera to places normal airborne vehicals can’t even attempt to reach. Apparently the idea has arisen from the lightweigt one-person aircraft developed in the 1930s (which, in the words of our presenter, had a nasty habit of seeing off their pilots) with a double wing which allows the aircraft to fly very slowly or even almost not at all, simply hovering above its intended viewing point.
This time round, however, there is no risk to the operator – who is safely ground-based with just a box to ‘steer’ the machine by; and because there are no chopper blades or other big and dangerous parts the camera can be taken much nearer to the action – people, animals, unsafe sites, inaccessible routes, film sets etc – than could previous air cameras. The scope for this in the media industry alone is said to be enormous.
Success by a head for the high-tech, high investment people
Any of these three companies would have been a worthy winner, but the eventual outcome favoured Genial Genetic Solutions Limited. Both the judging panel (which included Dr Sarah Tasker, Chief Executive of the new Liverpool Science Park and Edge Lane facility) and the audience chose GGS to win the cash prize of £10,000, with another £4,000 worth of legal, business and other consultancy and support. In some respects this was the most advanced and complex of the proposals on offer – no-one could claim the science was simple – so it was good to see this complexity and excellence acknowledged so publicly.
And the other two Finalists also gained considerable encouragement and solace, with 30% each of the audience vote at least.
These were three great ideas, all delivered to the judges and audience with directness and enthusiasm. They each addressed real commercial opportunities, by developing cutting edge technology for general benefit alongside business aims. All had required perseverance and much investment on the part of everyone involved.
Some sound advice for innovators
To my mind, however, the last word must come from the presenter for Hoverwing. Do not, he advised, imagine, because an idea seems good, that ‘they’ have already tried and tested it and perhaps found it lacking. However long the idea may have been around, ‘they’ may not have done anything about it at all.
There often is no ‘they’, there may well be only ‘you’. So just keep going….
Which in itself is not a bad idea to take away from an Innovation Award event.
Liverpool’s Sefton Park, Swans, Herons And Grebes
Sefton Park is as inner-city as it gets, but it’s large enough to be home to an amazing range of birdlife – swans, herons and grebes amongst them. So are we doing enough to ensure that these treasures are appreciated by the human beings who co-exist with them in this fascinating super-urban environment?
Once again Liverpool’s Sefton Park has come into its own.
This is an inner-city green space, with all the usual problems and challenges, but it’s nonetheless a wonderful place to be [*]. Even we, old hands at taking a stroll in our local oasis of calm, were thrilled by what we saw today.
The heron
First, in the early morning light, we again encountered the young heron which we first spotted in the rushes last week and which we think has just returned to its childhood haunts. On the previous occasion this bird had been close to invisible, silent and almost eerily still on the shaded bank of the island in the top lake. Now, just a few yards across the water from our path, it perched loftily, white feathers dramatically eye-catching in the sunlight, on the branch protruding from the middle lake which the terrapins usually claim as their own.
A family of grebes
Later in the day, as afternoon turned to evening, we returned to see a small group of quietly excited people with binoculars and cameras focused on the island at the top of the big lake – giving confirmation, by a nest with three very new babies (two of them actually sitting on their mother’s back) that we had indeed caught a glimpse of a grebe earlier in the week. This time there were two adult birds. One was sitting on the nest with the babies. The other was diving for fish before returning, his captive minnow held high, and trying (with only limited sucess – the babies were oh-so-tiny) to get his new family to feed from his beak.
Swans and cygnets
Adding to this our delight that the pair of nesting swans still have their seven cygnets several weeks after hatching – one mode of feeding in the initial weeks being the parents grasping upwards with their long necks literally to tear leaves from the central island’s bushes, before thrusting the mulched veggie delight (perhaps with attendant gnawed insects?) into their juniors’ open beaks – and it made for a pasturally perfect day.
One swallow does not a summer make; and nor does sighting one heron, two grebes and a family of swans consitute a full visit to countryside and woodland. But I can get to my local park any time, and it never ceases to fascinate, engage and refresh.
I just wish that others (in my more selfish moments, not too many others) would value it as do those of us ‘in the know’. Perhaps we could start by more (there is some) active involvement with local schools. If you don’t know that swans, herons and grebes are special, you can’t be excited by seeing them, can you?
[* For a detailed City of Liverpool colour leaflet click here.]
See also:
Sefton Park, Liverpool (collection of web postings)
Sefton Park’s Grebes And Swans
Sefton Park, Liverpool: Winter Solstice 2006
Cherry Blossom For May Day In Sefton Park, Liverpool
Friends Of Sefton Park
What Now For Liverpool’s Sefton Park?
Cherry Picking Liverpool’s Sefton Park Agenda
Liverpool’s Sefton Park Trees Under Threat – Unnecessarily?
Solar Lighting Could Solve The Parks Problem
Friends Of Sefton Park
Love Parks Week!
This week sees the first Love Parks Week, each day with a theme to encourage everyone to think about their parks and green spaces. So how will this excellent idea be followed up in each town and city, and by whom? Here’s something really worth sustaining all year round!
This week, with the Summer Solstice, sees the first ever Love Parks Week. It’s been organised by Greenspace, the charity (formerly known as the Urban Parks Forum) dedicated to planning, maintaining and the use of parks.
One very good idea about the Love Parks Week event is that each day after Sunday 18th (the Launch, with a huge picnic in Manchester’s Platt Fields Park) to Sunday 25th has been allocated a different theme. Monday is Skills and education, Tuesday, Climate change, then follow Culture and community, Children and young people, Sport and recreation, Health and wellbeing and, finally on Sunday 25th, The nature of parks and green spaces.
An ambitious agenda
This is an ambitious and timely agenda. Many parks and open spaces across the country are involved (including Liverpool’s own Sefton Park, with Africa Oye, and Calderstones, with its International Tennis Tournament, as well as a Summer Solstice evening at our historic Otterspool Promenade and Park).
Perhaps an initiative like this will see more families enjoying our parks, come the Summer break. Making our parks more visible in this image-led age can only be a good thing for everyone.
So the next question has to be, how will Love Parks Week be followed up, and by whom, in each town and city? Here is an opportunity to promote the use and enjoyment of our essential green spaces for the whole year which should be grasped with both hands, not just by Greenspace but by all of us.
Defra Is Five – And Has A Special Blog
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has been going now for full five years, and it’s showing an impressively modern approach to public engagement, with its very own personal Blog, inviting public involvement, by the new Defra Secretary of State, David Miliband.
I was really pleased when, a few months ago, I heard that I was to be appointed Lay Member of the Defra Science Advisory Council , which is the scientific advisory body to Ministers in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
I can’t think of much which is more important than trying to get environment and food right. I have a lot to learn as yet about the inner-workings of a large Government Department, but I certainly found my first meeting, in April, quite fascinating. Here is a group of people, the actual Members of SAC and the secretariat and advisers within Defra itself who have hugely impressive credentials and take environment and all that goes with it very seriously indeed.
New Secretary of State, new Blog
Defra is quite a new Department, with an even newer Secretary of State, David Miliband, who was appointed just five weeks ago. The Department came into being on 8 May 2001, very soon after the 2001 General Election, in response to a recognised need to bring together various aspects of what is now its remit. That makes it five years old today.
So Defra may be just a youngster, but it’s a youngster with admirable attitude: the new Secretary of State has begun his very own Blog, under strict non-partisan rules, which is his attempt to reach out to more people and to encourage them to engage in the issues around environment and government.
David Miliband’s blog is being evaluated by the independent parliamentary body, The Hansard Society, to see how his attempt to ‘reach out’ is working. I very much hope that well before Defra is ten all Government Departments will have been following the Defra Secretary of State’s example for some time.
Sustainability: Where Private And Public Interests Meet
Sustainability is a huge challenge. Solutions won’t come cheap, but come they must. The imperative for meeting the huge challenge of global warming is now recognised by people across the economic and political spectrum, from Al Gore to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Sometimes there is a commonality of interest between sectors of the economy which is probably larger than the differences. The active involvement of no less a person than former US Vice President Al Gore at the 2006 Cannes film festival suggests that one place where this commonality now applies is sustainability. An Inconvenient Truth in some ways says it all.
It seems now everyone is agreed that sustainability is The Issue, and that Something Must Be Done. From the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) to the various ‘Green’ not-for-profits, via vast organisations such as the National Health Service (NHS), there is a determination to address the issues – or at least some of them.
Same problem, different perspectives
There’s certainly no denying that the issue is pressing. Politicians of all the major parties have been keen to present their green credentials, and they even sometimes offer similar ‘solutions’; and the same applies across the private – public sectos of the economy. Everyone knows they must conserve energy, look for more sustainable ways to travel, reduce manufacturing and distribution transport requirements, save water and the like.
But there’s another way too in which these problems are often shared. To paraphrase a poltician who was recently challenged about his local authoritiy’s poor record on sustainabilty, that’s OK as long as no-one has to put up the rates or local taxes. Just as it does for commercial business people, increased expenditure frightens the politicos.
Where business meets politics
So here’s the crux of the matter. We know we need to change, as even some politicians such as Arnold Schwarzenegger who are far to the right the politics of Al Gore acknowledge, but for some the change may happen only if there are few or no costs involved. The temptation to ignore the longer term is sometimes great. It won’t be the same people in charge then; it will be someone else’s problem.
But we also all know in our hearts that’s balony. Sustainability and environmental challenges are increasing by the day. Tomorrow will be here all too soon.
And that’s where business comes in. Large amounts of money will accrue to anyone who can crack these enormous challenges in commercially and / or publicly ‘acceptable’ ways, so there’s a great deal of interest now in energy futures and sustainabilty. The nuclear energy debate continues, but there’s gold in them there tidal waves, wind turbines, biomasses and all the rest, if they can be exploited quickly enough.
Sometimes Adam Smith’s invisible hand is hovering right where it needs to be, ready to guide the market as soon as the political and public climate makes this possible. Sustainability is an issue bigger than any special interest or perspective.
Tesco: Where Good Neighbours Are Good Business?
Tesco and the other huge supermarkets want to show socially responsible, how green and cuddly, they are. The test will be in how much they actually deliver – and the power to encourage them to achieve this lies much more than some have so far conceded with the communities in which they are located.
The ‘charm offensive’ by Tesco can’t be faulted. Their new 10-point plan says they are going to be ‘green and good’, and to blend in more with their retail neighbours, at least for the Tesco Express outlets. That’s genuinely good news all round.
It’s difficult to tell how much this intiative is in response to concerns, recently referred yet again to the Competition Commission, about large retailers who are ‘stoking up’ on land, and how much it’s just part of the retail learning curve that all sensible commercial businesses need to be on. My guess is it’s a combination of the two, but who knows?
And indeed, who cares? It’s what happens which matters in the business world and to the average customer, not why it may have happened.
Green and forward looking?
We can only welcome the promise to use totally bio-degradeable bags, to have clearer product labelling, to deliver bulk merchandise more considerately on the high street and to promote healthy eating. Tesco knows very well that these promises will have to be kept – there are plenty of people watching out there who would be delighted to find them failing to deliver these undertakings. (To quote Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation, ‘The good neighbour tag could come back to haunt them, rather like the Tories with their Back to Basics campaign.’)
There are many debates to be had about Tesco, but the logic of the market still in the end applies. If enough people make a fuss, things will change. If they don’t, change may occur, but not at the same rate. The really clever businesses, of course, change in anticipation of what the fuss will later be about, not as an overt response to it. Maybe that’s the oft-commented genius of Tesco boss Terry Leahy?
Strength in numbers?
But for many local consumers the ‘real’ issue isn’t so much the logic of the market as the perceived ‘threat’ to local communities and smaller businesses. This concern is probably reasonable in many respects. Tesco and the other huge supermarkets have enormous resources and strengths and the little shop on the corner doesn’t. It might however be useful to remember that strength, for all parties, may lie in working together.
This could happen in two ways.
Firstly, have the small local businesses approached their bigger neighbours (or vice-versa?) to see what possibilities there are for, say, joint customer-faced training, local supplier support, promotion of healthy life-styles, community investment or anything else? Is there any real dialogue going on to test the depth and sincerity of the claim of the big stores that they want to work with their tiny neighbours? If there is, it’s not hit the headlines…
And secondly, what are local business leaders and advisors doing to help small enterprises to get together and act as one to ‘protect’ their interests against the giants? Wouldn’t this be a more constructive use of, say, council officials’ time – paid for by all of us – than carrying on endless local enquiries?
Convoluted logic
There’s a strange logic in the situation which often seems to come up, where on the one hand local activists persuade their council to oppose intended (and in many respects often much-needed) investment by the large interests, whilst at the same time most people in the community choose to shop in larger stores. Perhaps there’s a message here somewhere?
Less fuss about Tesco and their ilk hoping (until the current initiative) to open as long as they want to on Sundays (they can already do this in Scotland…), and more attention to the ways that local businesses can collaborate to serve their particular communities, might be quite a good idea. To quote Sharon Fraser, head of audit at Deloitte in the north, ‘Financial support could help the small stores improve their property portfolio.’ And what applies to property portfolios applies equally perhaps to other aspects of local business.
In the meantime, the ‘competition’ between the Big Boys to show their green and cuddly credentials can be no bad thing either.
Liverpool Botanic Garden, Edge Lane
The long-delayed Edge Lane developments, constructing an Eastern Gateway to Liverpool by 2007 / 8, are about to start. What a pity, then, that the historic Wavertree Botanic Gardens located just by the intended new route (and initiated in 1803 by no less a person than William Roscoe) are in such a state of neglect.
Flowers In Pots For All
The inner city is not an easy place to indulge green fingers, but there are many reasons why we all need to think about this. It’s not even just about fresh, healthy produce; there’s a really important issue of sustainability in all this. Let’s start with the hesitant late-night gardener in Tesco.
Late night shopping (feeling very virtuous because we’d just been to a dance and inter-active media event at Unity Theatre and had even stayed for the discussion afterwards)… so it had to be Tesco Old Swan if we wanted bread and coffee for the morning.
Inevitably, I gravitate to the plants and flowers stall – where else but the supermarket would you be tempted to buy seeds for weekend gardening at 11 p.m. on Friday night? A woman already there is eyeing a packet of French marigold seeds uneasily. Do I know anything about gardening?, she asks. She is thinking she might grow some flowers in a pot in the back yard
My ‘advice’ is limited by my own inexpertise. Perhaps it’s a good idea to use water-holding gel to guard against neglect of the seedlings (my own major misdeed) and, if a dry patch is likely, nasturtiums are both delightful and very forgiving. We chat on such things for a while and the woman moves on, clutching the marigold seeds doubtfully.
Shops, jobs and flowers for everyone?
Old Swan is a part of town which faces many challenges. Much of the housing stock is derelict Victorian, doubtless magnificent in its prime but now ‘student’ flats, or else back-to-back terrace. The unemployment rate remains high and the educational attainment is well below average. Tesco is the only major store on the area, and a very significant local employer; and it stocks gardening products which, if my late-night encounter is anything to go by, tempt first time green fingers.
None of this justifies the particular business strategies which some say the superstores adopt. But perhaps it does point to a few important considerations about economic development of a run-down area, and it also tells us that people still hope for better – why else buy flower seeds?
And why is there so little that grows in the lives of people in Old Swan? There’s nearby Newsham Park, curently a topic of hot debate amongst those who value green space, and the Edge Lane (Wavertree) Botanic Garden – would that it had the same recognition and status as its contemporaries in e.g. Birmingham! But not much else.
Green fingers from the start
When then can we expect that inner-city chidlren will learn routinely how to grow things at school? When will we start to think carefully about more allotments and other community growing space for grown-ups? In what ways can we help with the active use of gardens and allotments in the city? When will we start to teach children (and their mums and dads) about seasonal, lcaol prodcue? And how can we link the urge to see things grow with wider matters of health, diet and environment?
These are matters of sustainability in the long-term; and if they start from marigolds in a pot from Tesco, that’s an interesting conjunction too.
Wirral’s Ness Gardens: A Place To Learn Whilst You Enjoy
Ness Botanic Gardens, owned by the University of Liverpool, are a delightful example of how learning and enjoyment can come together. They are the creation of a cotton merchant who wanted to share his absorbing interest in plants from across the world (and especially from the Himalayas) with the people of his hometown, Liverpool. This work, begun in 1898, continues to prosper to the present time.
Ness Botanic Gardens are on the Wirral near Chester, away from the River Mersey facing the splendid windswept views of the Dee Estuary which overlook the North Wales coast. They offer delightful views which take one back to more pastoral times, and include the habitats of many species of birds and wildlife.
This apparent tranquility and timelessness has not however prevented some very forward-looking management on the part of those responsible for the site. Just this week (14 April 2006) saw the opening of the new Horsfall Rushby Visitor Centre, designed alongside a wider programme of development to encourage year-round enjoyment of this special location.
Where academic excellence meets family fun
The story of the Gardens is both unusual and enlightening. They were created by a Liverpool cotton merchant, the Fabian Arthur Kilpin Bulley, who wanted to establish in Britain the ‘new’ Himalayan and Chinese mountain plants he had funded the plant explorers George Forrest and Frank Kingdom Ward to discover . And so in 1898 began the adventure which was to become Ness Gardens, a place of elegance and education, as it welcomed vistors from near and far.
In 1942 Arthur Bulley died and left his ever-expanding Gardens to his daughter Lois (1901-1995), who presented them to the University of Liverpool in 1948, with an endowment of £75,000 per annum on the understanding that they be kept open for the public. Her intention that this beautiful place continue to fascinate and inform both young and older people is reflected in the current Visitor Centre, scientific programme and educational developments.
Journey of discovery
Our own involvement in Ness Gardens began back in the 1970s, when a reseach student friend at Liverpool University experienced what, at that time, seemed like a cruel blow. He had been assiduously observing a derelict site in the city centre to find out what sort of road-side plants and grasses best grew on such unpromising terrain when, because of a misunderstanding by a Council employee about location, a ton of topsoil was dumped on his experimental venue. The anguish was terrible – should there be an official complaint because the experiment was ruined; or should there be celebration of the act of reclaiming the derelict site for better use, albeit by mistake?
Resolution of this dilemma arrived in the form of an offer to recreate the dereliction by transporting a huge load of rubble to a fenced-off location at the edge of the University’s Ness Gardens. Our humble role in this adventure was occasionally to give our friend a lift over to the site to continue his work. The experiment was repeated, the results brought forth much in the way of understanding how to use grasses to reclaim land, the young scientist’s career was launched to great acclaim – and we became regulars at Ness Gardens.
The research and development continues
The striking thing about Ness Gardens is that, not only does it change dramatically with the seasons, but it has consistently expanded and grown over the years. The Gardens have spread across much more of the site, with a growing number of areas of specialist interest (the latest is the ‘Prehistoric Garden’ just created from an existing clay marl pit); and the world-class science has similarly developed over time.
Here is a place always worth the journey, where there is a conscious intention to deliver first-class research in the context of a welcome for everyone. Support the Friends of Ness Gardens if you can – and be sure to visit their new Centre and see the Gardens for yourself.
From Euston To Ecology, Engineering And Enterprise With The Virgin Trains Windowgazer
Travel takes many forms. The idea behind the ‘Windowgazer Guide’, a booklet explaining what can be seen as one’s train travels from London Euston northwards, is excellent. Here is a concept which can take us not only on physical journeys, but also on journeys of discovery of many sorts, scientific, environmental, cultural and much more.
How many people know that, as their train passes Stafford on the way northwards from London Euston, they are right by the 360 acres of the Doxey Marshes, an especially important breeding ground for lapwing, redshank, snipe, yellow wagtail, sedge, warbler and pochard? Or that a short while thereafter as they get to Crewe they are at the centre of a town celebrated in 1936 by W H Auden and Benjamin Britten in a documentary (Night Mail) extolling the work of the Royal Mail trains?
These are two of the interesting facts which I learnt from the Train Manager as he read from a travel guide over the public address system, on my journey home from Euston just this week.
It’s one of those odd co-incidences that the same day I ‘discovered’ the Windowgazer Guide I also learnt that today (9 April 2006) is the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of one of Britain’s greatest bridge builders, Isambard Kingdon Brunel – the man, so my Windowgazer Guide tells me, who came with his colleague engineer Thomas Locke especially to observe the installation of Robert Stephenson’s pioneering Britannia tubular bridge, now spanning the Menai Strait which divides Angelsey from the rest of Wales. My interest already alerted by the commentary on my train journey, I found the story of Brunel immediately relevant and memorable.
Always something new
This has set me pondering the many ways in which we can learn something new every day.
The Windowgazer Guide I saw is a free publication available on the Virgin Train North West line from Euston to Wolverhampton, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow. You obtain it from the refreshment carriage bookshelf, and it offers all sorts of interesting information about your journey.
The scope for this sort of publication, drawing together information across the whole range of arts and science is enormous. And it’s not ‘just’ trains which offer opportunities of this sort. Almost every journey does the same.
Bringing local knowledge to bear
The trend towards local access to the internet, be it via schools and community centres, libraries, housing associations or whatever, affords huge scope here. It would be great to see projects across the country which encourage local people to share their knowledge via the internet so that we can enjoy journeys illuminated by fascinating facts and ideas, wherever we go. What we learn might sometimes spark new and beneficial ideas of all sorts, who knows?
Perhaps there’s a way that someone could use the ‘Grid‘ to make available a route map of the U.K., with trainlines, roads, canals and whatever else marked out, onto which individuals and local communities could add their particular knowledge of where they live and work?
Getting from A to B is one form of travel. Sharing information and enjoying new ideas is another, perhaps even bigger, adventure.
Dreaming Realist 