Where is it being held for 2022? Egypt will host the 27th Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh

Why is it important? The world needs to make global change, our temperatures are rising, our climates and season are dramatically changing and only WE can save it.

What happened last year? Pledge to halt all deforestation by 2030, signing of the Glasgow Climate Pact, the UK set a target for all of UK electricity to come from clean sources by 2035 and more than 100 countries agree to reduce methane emissions by 2030.

What do we hope to see? Adapting too climate change has become more important as the frequency of natural events linked to climate change appears to be rising very quickly. Examples such as the recent floods in Pakistan, hurricanes in the US, and the crazy wildfires in Australia. We do not anticipate any concrete outcomes but expect countries to continue to enhance their understanding of climate adaptation and firm up targets to help achieve it.

Last year, The Eco News was happy to be at the UK conference, papers were available to collect and take home for free and it was a major success for us to connect with more likeminded people who are wanting to make a difference! So let’s hope leaders can continue to bring change!

#cop27 #climatechange

Wednesday, October 26, 2022 — Frecycle, an eco-friendly company that prioritises recycling within the UK will launch its revolutionary new waste management app on Monday, 31 October. The app provides a simple and transparent way for users to recycle their waste, enabling them to make certain it is properly recycled.  A good deal of recycling routinely gets thrown in together with regular trash.

Frecycle is here to solve this issue. Users book Frecycle cyclists at convenient times to collect and sort the waste and ensure it is recycled properly while providing recorded updates. The app-based service is the first of its kind and is available for download in Apple’s App store, Android’s Play store and Google Play.

CEO of Frecycle, Richard Chapple, said: “Most people who recycle are unaware of the fact that their recycling doesn’t always get recycled. They simply throw it into the separate bin as instructed and hope for the best. In truth, millions of plastic and other recycling still wind up in landfills, contributing to the global health and climate crisis.”

In the UK alone, an excess of 38.2m tonnes of packaging and household waste is produced each year. Over 50% of waste is not recycled but rather exported to third world countries to be disposed of in landfills. As it becomes more and more apparent that the world must make a transition to a zero-carbon environment, the need for green-focused companies becomes increasingly urgent.

Chapple continued: “At its simplest, I wanted the app to encourage people to recycle by giving them control over what becomes of their recycling. The waste management app gives users the peace of mind knowing that their efforts are not being wasted.”

In addition to providing on-demand recycling services, Frecycle enables users to earn profits through rewards for their recycling efforts, largely contributing to the circular economy. Once the waste has been recycled, users are rewarded with tokens for their efforts. Tokens can be redeemed from online retailers – Frecycle continues to look for new partnerships for the future.

For more information visit: www.frecycle.uk – please note this is currently only based in London’UK.

Saving on utilities consumption is more important than ever, with individuals and businesses all needing to play their part. At Quintain Living – the award-winning management company overseeing the rental of more than 3,250 apartments in Wembley Park – this has been a priority for some time now. In fact, a Project Manager for the company has built a data reporting tool that is so innovative for the housing industry that it was shortlisted for a 2022 EG Tech Award. The technology is supporting residents to live more sustainably by reducing their use of natural resources such as electricity and water.

The Quintain Living tool measures the utilities consumption of every apartment in the company’s Wembley Park portfolio. It automatically reads meters every 15 minutes and sets this data against the unique context of each home, factoring in its size, number of occupants and orientation (to take account of the impact of sunlight and therefore warmth and light, for instance). The tool then delivers a daily report to Quintain Living’s operational team, highlighting any abnormalities and areas for concern. The system can identify issues such as a light left on in a vacant home or excess water consumption that could indicate a leak. The Quintain Living team can then connect with residents to address any issues and get any maintenance tasks sorted.

“We are committed to optimising the consumption of resources in the homes that we manage. Using this pioneering tool, we have proven to reduce the consumption of electricity, hot and cold water and heating across our portfolio. This has had a meaningful impact on unnecessary use of resources, with the added benefit of reducing costs.”

Danielle Bayless, Chief Operating Officer, Quintain Living

So far, the innovative data tool has been incredibly helpful for the on-site Quintain Living maintenance team, highlighting things like toilet cisterns continually flushing. It often spots maintenance problems before residents are aware of them or before they report them to the Quintain Living team, meaning swift corrective action can be taken. It even raised issues for the Quintain Living Resident Team to address in their onboarding process for new renters, like residents not knowing that they can schedule their heating to be set to a lower temperature when they’re away from home.

Since implementing the technology, Quintain Living has seen a measurable reduction in vacant and occupied utility consumption across the portfolio and for residents looking to live more sustainably, and save money, it’s the perfect solution.

The data tool has wider implications too. As well as supporting a reduction in resource consumption in built and managed apartments, the tool is being examined in terms of the data it affords the construction phase of future developments at Wembley Park. The hope is that the tool can support Quintain and other developers to build homes that stand the test of time whilst minimising their impact on the environment.

For more information on Quintain Living visit www.quintainliving.com or call 020 3151 1927.

Your Home Better is a new scheme for homeowners in Greater Manchester to enable them to futureproof their homes to combat increasing energy costs as well as reducing carbon emissions.

The retrofit scheme brings together a consortium of experts on behalf of Greater Manchester Combined Authority and is aimed at homeowners in the region. Your Home Better offers expert advice on the changes people can make to their homes as well as helping residents find suitable qualified contractors. The scheme then provides a retrofit coordinator to support the householder and make sure that the work is delivered to a quality standard.

The initiative will enable people to explore a range of options from small measures to a whole house zero carbon retrofit. Greater Manchester has a target of reaching net zero by 2038. Our single largest source of carbon is home heating and to stay on target we need to be retrofitting measures in around 61,000 homes per year.

Retrofit means making improvements to the existing building to save energy and reduce carbon emissions. The measures could include installing thicker loft insulation, a range of approaches to wall insulation, fitting solar photovoltaic panels (PVs) and battery storage, installing triple glazing or switching to a heat pump.

Councillor Martyn Cox, GMCA lead for Green City Region and Waste and Recycling, says: ‘Your Home Better can support residents on a journey to create more energy efficient homes in Greater Manchester. Just about all homes in the city region have the potential to use less fuel for heating lighting and appliances. By planning ahead and making changes to your home, whether that is reducing how much energy your home uses through better insulation or installing solar PV and batteries you are going to see those benefits in years to come.

‘This is about not only reducing energy bills for people but also looking at our carbon footprint and working to reduce that together.’

Your Home Better has a number of tools online to help residents make a plan for improvements. This will take into consideration the type of property you live in as well as your overall budget. There are different levels of plans with a basic for single improvements or a more detailed house plan for more extensive retrofit solutions.

Charlie Baker, Consortium Director of Your Home Better, says: ‘We know that this is something that can improve people’s lives immeasurably. We are working with a range of experts including University of Salford to ensure that we have a trusted offer for residents to provide affordable retrofit to reduce energy bills and carbon. We are particularly keen to see people come forward for solar PV panels and batteries.

‘We also know that most people don’t have a lot of money to invest in retrofit, so we are working with our partners social enterprise Lendology CIC to offer a socially minded way of lending money to make this an affordable option for homeowners.’

The scheme is not free of charge and does require the investment to come from the individual household. The plan will show what improvements you can make and it will give you an estimated annual fuel bill saving as well as the estimated tonnes of CO₂ saved annually if you make these retrofit improvements.

To find our more about the retrofit measures, including solar PV panels, visit https://yourhomebetter.co.uk

Lyndsey Kavanagh

Folly Lane, Salford

Lyndsey Kavanagh moved into her house in Swinton three years ago. It was the first house that she and her husband had bought together and they were happy that on the face of it, it didn’t need much doing to it.

The house, which dates from the Edwardian era is semi-detached with some original features and was well presented. However, as the couple faced their first winter in their new home it proved to be a very cold one.

Lyndsey says: “We thought when we moved in that there wouldn’t be much to do, but it was absolutely freezing. At that point we were planning a family and we didn’t want the house to be so cold.

“I started researching what we could do to adapt the house to make it warmer. One of my main concerns was that the house was old and I wanted any work to be done sympathetically so that it preserved the character and integrity of the house.”

Lyndsey came across the Red Coop and they came out to assess the house and provided a full zero carbon plan of everything that the couple could do to their home to make it warmer and reduce energy.

Lyndsey, who works as a project officer for the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership in the Strategic Clinical Network, says: “It was really helpful and we decided to work with them to make adaptations to our home.”

The Kavanaghs had internal wall insulation throughout the front of the house, in the living and dining areas and the front bedrooms. They also had the loft insulated and the basement ceiling insulated.

Lyndsey says: “We opted for this as the front of the house was colder. We worked with Charlie Baker from Red Coop who guided us through the process and ensured the work was done to fit with the age of the house.”

The couple’s first child arrived last October and the work was finished ahead of Christmas 2021.

Lyndsey says: “We haven’t been able to compare energy bills yet, but we know it is so much warmer. It is comfortable to be here now. I’m really pleased we did it, as I didn’t want to live in a house that was aesthetically pleasing but didn’t have basic warmth.

“I think it can feel prohibitively expensive to make these improvements, but the Your Home Better scheme sounds like a viable way to do this.”

Award winning craft lemonade brand, GUNNA Drinks, have launched a petition to lobby the UK Government to ban the use of single use plastics in the soft drink industry.

GUNNA want the Government to take action to cut down plastic pollution by banning single-use plastic bottles in the manufacture of soft drinks. With alternatives, such as aluminum cans and glass bottles available, this is an achievable mission for businesses operating in the sector.   

GUNNA Drinks pledged to be carbon negative and eliminate twice the carbon they create, making them the UK’s most carbon-negative craft soft drink. Off the back of being carbon negative the GUNNA team have pledged to go even further with lobbying the UK government to take action against plastic bottles. 

In the UK 7.7 billion plastic water bottles are used each year, with the average person in the UK now using 150 plastic water bottles every year – that’s more than 3 a week. Many are discarded, and end up polluting our rivers and seas. 83% of the plastic packaging waste we throw away in the UK comes from food and drink packaging, GUNNA want the UK government to address this and take a stand against single use plastic. 

In support of their efforts to lobby the government in banning plastics in the soft drinks sector the craft lemonade team behind GUNNA headed to Cornwall to complete a beach clean at Gwithian Beach, Hayle.  

Melvin Jay,  Founder and CEO of GUNNA Drinks said: “We need to end the obsession with plastic bottles. Let’s stop choking up our oceans, and clogging our beaches and landfills with this unnecessary type of plastic bottle.

“The way to tackle this problem is simple – the UK Government must ban the use of these harmful plastic bottles in soft drinks, and we as consumers must switch to using aluminum cans or glass instead.”

He added: “We say planet before profits and support us in telling the Government to take action today, ban the use of plastic bottles for soft drinks.”

The petition can be found HERE and GUNNA are asking for those who support the ban of plastic bottles to share this on social media using the hashtag #letscanplastic 

LONDON, UK – October 25^th, 2022 – Leading packaging innovation consultancy, ThePackHub, has partnered with Emitwise, the carbon management experts, to enable its members to accurately measure, report and reduce carbon emissions across their packaging supply chains. 

ThePackHub reports that its members, including Coca-Cola, Kraft Heinz, Mars Wrigley and Kellogg’s, are committed to making supply chain decarbonisation happen.  

The Emitwise platform uses machine learning to process data at the scale needed for complex packaging operations. This provides companies with confidence in measuring emissions across their supply chains and guides effective reduction activities.

Paul Jenkins, Managing Director at ThePackHub, comments: “We are delighted to be partnering with Emitwise to help our 80 plus members reduce their carbon emissions.

“The organisation is leading the way when it comes to carbon management. “Their record of working with complex manufacturing chains for major organisations, to deliver outstanding emissions reductions, speaks for itself.”

Mauro Cozzi, Co-Founder and CEO at Emitwise, adds: “We understand the complexities that the packaging industry faces when looking to reduce emissions.

“Our partnership with ThePackHub means that we can help packaging firms to get a hold on their carbon management in a way that achieves risk management, while boosting revenue growth and brand reputation.

“In particular, we’ll be focusing on dealing with scope three emissions, these being the result of activities not owned or controlled by a reporting organisation, but that the organisation indirectly impacts in its value chain. Typically, such emissions account for up to 90 percent of a packaging company’s emissions. We can’t wait to get started contributing to a better future in packaging”.

• New ‘Clean Sheets’ Calculator from Secret Linen Store analyses personal cleanliness and lifestyle habits to advise on how often your sheets need washing
• Every year over 53,000 people ask Google how often they need to wash their bedding
• Households can eliminate up to 163KG carbon emissions each year with fewer bed linen washes

How often we wash our bed sheets is a contentious topic for many, and so the experts at luxury bed linen retailer Secret Linen Store have just launched a new ‘Clean Sheets’ Calculator to help put the debate to rest.

Not one size fits all

The generally accepted advice, wherever you live in the world, is to wash your bed linen once a week, but that is often at odds with what actually happens in people’s homes; a report from Hammonds revealed that a third of Brits only wash their sheets once a year, whilst the average time between bed sheet changes for Americans is 24 days.  

According to Google search data, nearly 53,000 online searches are made every year around how often bed sheets should be washed, and the number sees an annual peak every January. With people looking to start good lifestyle habits at the start of the new year, it seems that lots of us have the best intentions to change our bedding as often as is recommended but need to enforce it with a New Year’s resolution in order to make sure we keep up with the weekly recommendation. 

Molly Freshwater, founder of Secret Linen Store, says “The truth is that most of us don’t wash our sheets every week, and that’s totally fine. We wanted to create a tool that reassures people that it’s OK to leave a little longer between your bed washes. How often you wash your bedsheets is completely dependent on how much usage they get, which is why we created a calculator to give people bespoke bed washing advice based on their individual habits.”

The new ‘Clean Sheets’ calculator provides users with a personalised recommendation on how often to wash your bed linen, based on your individual bedtime routines and personal lifestyle. It takes into account things like whether your share your bed with your pets and how many times you shower, through to how often you have sex and whether you eat a lot of food in your bed, to generate bespoke advice for how often your sheets need to go in the laundry.  

For example, people who shower often and who don’t spend long lounging in bed, don’t have pets, and sleep in full pyjamas could sensibly leave much longer than a week between their bed linen washes – even up to a month if your bed sheets see very little action – according to the new calculator. Whereas for people who eat a lot in their beds, sleep naked, share their beds with a dog and sweat a fair amount, the calculator is likely to suggest a weekly wash for heavy usage.

Less washing leads to a smaller carbon footprint

Washing your sheets creates a significant amount of carbon emissions (and extra costs to your electricity bill) especially if you’re washing at 60 degrees or higher.

Molly Freshwater comments “Overwashing can cause unnecessary wear of your bed linen, and a full hot wash and tumble dryer cycle has a significant impact on your household carbon emissions. Our calculator provides advice with an eco-friendly approach to keeping your bed sheets clean, with tips on how to make your sheets stay fresh for longer between washes and suggestions on reducing your carbon emissions with cooler washers and air drying.”

The BBC reports that 11% of household carbon emissions are produced from using washing machines, with a warm wash and dryer cycle creating 3.3KG of carbon per load. Washing your bed linen once a week on a 60-degree wash, with a tumble dry cycle too, causes over 171KG of carbon every year, whereas washing your bedsheets once a month on a 30-degree wash and air drying reduces that amount down to just 7.2KG of carbon.

How to keep your sheets fresher for longer

To make your sheets last longer between laundry days, the experts at Secret Linen Store recommend the following tips:

• Linen Sprays: The smell of freshly laundered sheets is so inviting that it can prompt over washing but investing in a beautifully scented linen spray will give your sheets that ‘just washed’ feel without putting them through the machine too much. Consider combining some drops of your favourite essential oil with water for a refreshing bedding spry. 
• Wearing Pajamas: Dead skin cells and oils that your body excretes are one of the main hygienic reasons for washing bed sheets regularly. Wearing pyjamas protects your bedding by creating a barrier between your body and your sheets, and pajamas are much smaller and easier to wash than your full bed set!
• Small Area Cleaning: If you do encounter the odd ad hoc small stain, you can blot clean small spots with a liquid detergent spray, rather than hauling all of the linen into the washing machine. Washing just your pillowcases if they stain quicker than your sheets is another way to reduce your washing load.
• Airing The Bed: Pull back your blankets or duvet when you’re not sleeping in your bed to allow your sheets to breathe; this helps remove moisture that mites need to thrive.
• Storing Your Sheets: Fold your laundry and store it somewhere cool and dark, but be mindful of wooden drawers, the smell of some wood could transfer into the dry laundry. Remember, you should only store sheets when they’re completely dry: If your laundry is moist when you store it away, bacteria will grow on the fabric and it will become musty. No one likes musty sheets.
• Shower Before Bed: Washing the day’s dirt off your skin before going to sleep is a top way to reduce bacteria build up in your bedding, plus a hot water soak can aid your night’s rest!

A full list of tips on how to keep your bedding fresh as well as access to the ‘Clean Sheets’ calculator can be found here: www.secretlinenstore.com/how-often-clean-bed-sheets-calculator