LCRN Blog: Blast from the past: Eco towns - our role in a 'greener future'
We bring to you a series of blogs posted by Chief Exec Matthew Thomson on the letsrecycle.com website.
At the beginning of the month the minister for housing and planning, Caroline Flint, published the government's eco-town prospectus. Ten new eco-towns are intended across England, with the construction of the first schemes planned to start in 2010, and fifteen proposals short-listed so far. Big commitments are being made to zero-carbon development, environmental sensitivity, highest possible quality and radical innovation. Urban designers, architects, planners and a myriad consultants, officials, and wonks are now wrestling with the application of sustainability in practice as never before. A huge adventure in social engineering as much as it is in sustainable design, the eco-town programme gives our sector unprecedented opportunities to transform the way the English manage resources - it's time for resource management professionals to get with the programme.
"Eco-towns will need to be leaders on minimising and recycling and extracting value from waste", states the prospectus. While resource efficiency is seen as a key driver for the ‘eco-ness' of these settlements, waste is described very much in end-of-pipe terms in the prospectus, calling for:
• state of the art on-site provision for storage, collection, sorting and recycling of waste from homes and businesses;
• waste strategies linked to energy provision;
• zero construction waste to landfill through the effective use of recycled materials;
• any waste sent off-site for treatment to be balanced by the use of recycled materials in construction.
There is no reference to the waste hierarchy, reuse is not mentioned at all, and no steer is given on design solutions to waste minimization. Defra's head of Waste Policy and Processes, David Mottershead, observed some time ago that waste management is as much a communications business as it is a logistics business. Behaviour change is therefore the new frontier for many resource managers. But it needn't be left to community engagement and politicking to get people to do things differently - design can have a massive effect. University of Southampton research published in December found that shorter streets increase the level of participation in recycling, and that streets designed to increase social interaction can reduce waste too.
Whether it's about Building Materials Reuse Centres, quality-focused Reuse and Recycling Centres, decentralised community composting facilities, or about better buildings, estates and streets which make collections easier and minimize waste-miles, we must now contribute to the eco-town debate to make sure these settlements are as resource efficient as they can be. It's time for us to get creative, think laterally and engage with design professionals to help them find ways of making our jobs easier. If we find ourselves having to deal with the same barriers in the eco-towns that jade us in many current settings, we'll have no-one to blame but ourselves.
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I am an Environmental Planner
I am an Environmental Planner and having excellence in training, research and development in Design, Technology, Services and Management, in areas concerning the developed and natural environment for the human society.
Presently, developing a website based on Environmental Studies and Doing research on “Does Biomimicry imply Sustainability”?
With my research and knowledge in the subject it has been found that, Biomimicry has the earmark of the successful meme, i.e. an idea that will spread like an adaptive gene throughout our culture. We realize all our inventions have already appeared in nature in a more elegant form and at a lot less cost to the planet. Our most clever architectural struts and beams are already featured in lily pads and bamboo stems. Our central heating and air conditioning are bested to the termite towards steady 86°F. So, leaders must move beyond the relentless pursuit of short term profitability towards long term sustainability- and that does not mean “GREEN”. Our future is technological; but it will not be a world of gray steel. Rather our technological future is headed towards a neo-biological civilization. Bios is yielding us her mind and we are taking her logic, and is termed as “BIOMIMICRY”, which means “Imitating or taking inspiration from nature’s design.”
Here the focus of the research is the bionic buildings and its periphery. Bionic means “A machine that is patterned after principles found in humans or nature”. Charlie Luxton goes back to nature’s drawing board to explore how architects, designers and engineers are beginning to create “Bionic Building” through biomimicry. According to him there are only five elements that matter in Architecture, all of which have taken lessons from nature. They are; Skin, Structure, Habitat, Energy and Waste. On the other hand, sustainability is “The development that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” There are Three Bottom Lines (TBL) of sustainability, i.e. the environmental, social and financial spheres that have to be addressed. So, the research is to carry out the study whether these Bionic buildings are sustainable or not? It can be conceded by looking at the TBL of these bionic buildings.
To go further with it, the literature should be to study the existing bionic buildings with respect to the five elements (Skin, Structure, Habitat, Energy and Waste) and the TBL of sustainability. Here, the bionic building would be the dependent variable, and by relating it to sustainability, three independent variables are taken (i.e. TBL), which might further be interrelated to each other. The main hypothesis would be to produce a system or a methodology for evaluating these three variables to achieve sustainability in bionic buildings.
To achieve sustainability is the growing concern through each of these approaches by seeking to emulate the function and character of natural systems. What better models could there be? That is why, it is said that, the secret of survival is the more our world looks and functions like this natural world, the more likely we are to be accepted on this home that is ours, but not ours alone.
Smart buildings seize competitive advantage through strategic management of environmental challenges, which could be achieved by balancing biomimicry and sustainability.
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