What is Futurebuild? The leading built environment event for professionals to meet and learn, be inspired and do business. The exhibition is held at the ExCel London spanning over three days, 5th – 7th March. There is an array of businesses exhibiting within the event, ranging from Siemens to Greenpeace. The focus is on producing sustainable materials, in order to improve our built environment and beyond. The event is interactive, in addition to plenty of stalls to view and explore, there are scheduled discussions you can attend. The discussions focus on various environmental, educational and housing issues. For example, we attended a talk named, The Environment Challenge: How can…
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Tackling Issues of Sustainable Development with ISO 14001
A rather dry necessity routed in process and procedures? Something usually put in place because it is required by supply chain partners and clients? Or to get ahead in a procurement process? Or, is ISO 14001 an important piece of the sustainable development jigsaw – addressing environmental sustainability issues, engaging employees and customers, opening up new opportunities and markets and actually something that can be used to stimulate strategic and cultural change? It depends on how it is used and who is using it. I have always argued the second point – and the updated version of the environmental management standard ISO 14001 makes that argument more compelling. Treat it…
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Natural Cycles and Their Delicate Environmental Balance
Being quite a keen cyclist I want to talk to you about natural cycles – no, not about biking around the countryside but how substances and elements are moved around in nature. If you research how long the planet has been in existence you will come up with a figure of 4 billon years, give or take a few million. Yet, even after all this time, substances on which nature relies to exist have not been consumed. This seems a little odd, when you think about it – 4 billon years is a very long time. But it’s because Earth is essentially a closed-loop system: very little gets in and…
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Going With The Flow – Cheaper in the Long Run?
I often travel to London from the West Country by train and always enjoy passing through the Somerset Levels. I look at the farmsteads and churches perched on hillocks surrounded by miles of flat, green farmland and try to imagine what it must have been like when King Alfred was hiding from the Danes in the 9th century and these were island refuges in an inland sea. Well, travelling at the tail-end of Winter 2014 I felt transported back in in time, as my train sailed across mile after mile of water and the hillocks really were islands! This was a glimpse of what the Levels were like in a…
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Buying a ‘Stairway to Heaven’ – Or Another ‘Tragedy’?
Buying a ‘Stairway to Heaven’ – or another ‘Tragedy’? I’ve never been a fan of the idea of environmental “offsetting”. The concept is most frequently applied to greenhouse gas emissions – with which NEBOSH Environmental Certificate students who have studied Element 1 will be familiar – where an organisation (or individual) seeks to compensate for the carbon emissions they cause (usually through using energy) by paying for improvements elsewhere. Carbon offsetting has become institutionalised through regulated schemes such as the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, and there is also a host of commercial ‘carbon offsets’ that are available for purchase from specialist companies. Carbon offsets are usually sold as tonnes of…
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Fossil Fools?
Fossil Fools? You may have noticed – and this is confirmed by the AA’s monthly fuel price report – that petrol and diesel prices are down significantly this month (November 2013). Good news? Well, nestling within every silver-lining there’s often a cloud. The recent drop in fuel prices seems to go against the long-term trend and raises questions about where the underlying global price of fossil fuels is going. Element 7 of the NEBOSH Certificate in Environmental Management raises questions about the rising costs of fossil fuels and identifies that demand is starting to outstrip supply. The script that we have been following in recent years goes something like this:…
