Transition Island Blog

Two Isle of Wight schools may show a lead to others across the South East.

Gurnard and Cowes Primary schools introducing more local produce and are making their meals healthier. They also encourage pupils and the community to engage in cooking activities.

This is harder than it seems, as modern timetabling prevents most practical cooking by ringing the bell just as it’s getting interesting. There just isn’t time to finish within a period.

The Soil Association promotes organic food growing in the UK. Their ‘Food for Life Campaign’ helps pupils learn about seasonal foods and understand the ‘food miles’ issue.

A team from the Soil Association visited the schools on 25 February where they sampled the food, met teachers and students including the school cooks and othos involved in the project.

The schools hope to be recognised as one of the nine Flagship Schools by the end of March.

Opinion:
We are really pleased at this project -
it will help parents as much as children.

Growing your own will help families become more independent when food prices start to spiral. This will be due to the cost of oil increasing as we hit Peak Oil, and causing fertiliser, pesticide, and transport costs to rise. 

Converting land for biofuels could actually worsen the problem of global warming.

Although proposed as a viable alternative to fossil fuels, it will create more major carbon emissions, a report has warned.

But there are alternative sources of biofuel, and today (26/2/08), the news is that biofuels should only be produced if they meet strict internationally agreed environmental standards.

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The world is only ten weeks away from running out of wheat supplies

The crisis has pushed prices to an all-time high.

It could lead to further increases in the price of bread, beer, biscuits and other basic foods.

Two successive years of disastrous wheat harvests have lead to this. Even though production has fallen by only 6.25%, this is significant, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation.

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A new type of ‘molecular sieve’ is capable of removing water out of solvents and biofuels.

It is a very energy efficient alternative to existing techniques like distillation.

The previous generation of ‘nano-sieve’ membranes, made of silica, degrade because they react with water and steam.

In the new membrane, part of the ceramic links is therefore replaced by organic links. By doing this, water doesn’t have the chance to ‘attack’ the membranes. Manufacturing the new hybrid membranes is simpler than that of ceramic membranes, because the material is flexible and will not show cracks.

The hybrid membranes are suitable for ‘drying’ solvents and biofuels, an application for which there is a large potential market worldwide. The main advantage of membrane technology is that it consumes far less energy than common distillation techniques.

This technology - mixing organic molecules with inorganic - to produce new materials is producing great advances.

Reversing the flow means that dirty water can be cleaned very easily, filtering out bacteria and dirt.

Another nano-sieve is suitable for filtering out carbon dioxide. This has great applications in exhaust fume management from cars to factories and coal-fired electricity generators.

An audit of London shows increasing and unsustainable strain on the environment.

Every Londoner needs land the size of five and half football pitches to support their way of life. This means its ecological footprint is greater than cities such as Tokyo but is more sustainable than Shanghai and New York.

In its ‘State of the Environment’ report, the Environment Agency says London already produces 19 million tonnes of waste every year, and only recycles 20% of household waste.

The city should waste less water, manage waste better and adapt to climate change, it suggested.

“And we believe that as a world-class city, London can provide international leadership”.

London’s Sustainable Development Commission says:

• Household waste recycling has increased significantly in recent years
• The total area of sites identified as important to wildlife has increased
• Londoners have led the world in shifting from private vehicle use to public transport, cycling and walking
• Recent trends in air quality show that concentrations of key pollutants have reduced in the past decade

On this last point, the Low Emissions Zone has sparked the threat of a legal challenge from Porsche, the car manufacturer. They obviously feel targeted !

But how would the Island fare in an audit?

An engineer has promised that within a year he will start selling a car that runs on compressed air, producing no emissions at all in town.

The OneCAT will be a five-seater with a glass fibre body, weighing just 350kg and could cost just over £2,500. Its engine is less than a quarter the size of an equivalent diesel motor.

Driven by compressed air stored in carbon-fibre tanks built into the chassis, it can be re-filled with air from a compressor in just three minutes - much quicker than a battery car. Alternatively, it can be plugged into the mains for four hours and an on-board compressor will do the job.

The designers say on long journeys the car will do the equivalent of 120mpg.
In town, running on air, it will be cheaper than that.

Another eco-friendly feature is that when driven this car will be pollution-free!

This design is an intelligent step toward energy-saving transportation. It may also urge the big manufacturers to set economy and ecological targets.

Low Emission Zone starts

The 33 boroughs of Greater London have been designated a LEZ. Vehicles which do not meet certain pollution standards will be discouraged by charging.

“This will be the first in Britain and the largest in the world by a significant margin,” said a spokeswoman for Transport for London, which will run the scheme.

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It is self-evident that we need one: congestion, parking problems, rush hour, etc.  

We have had previous attempts - WightRide being the most recent. When I tried to find out how many Island people had used it, I could not get any info. Then it emerged that the Rural Community Council had been sponsoring it but had dropped it. The problem I see is that it is a national scheme badged for the Island - unconvincingly.  

With an easy-to-use Island only scheme, it might take off much easier. I proposed a parallel of the Island’s Freecycle scheme - it’s success is inspirational. It would be free to everyone to use. It could accept sponsorship to help pay website costs, group moderators and mailshots to major employers on the Island (though we might be able to get the Chamber to help with that).

To start it off, I feel we need one major employer to tell its employees. … But imagine how well it would do with business managements around the Island encouraging employees.

A meeting to discuss this with Joe Duckworth, Chief Executive of the County Council, was very constructive. “There is no feasible engineering solution to the rush-hour problem in Newport” he said. “We would like to explore a CarShare scheme for the Island.”