August 2010 – Enviro-Mentalist

Climate Change Scepticism

I was struck at work this week at the mountain still to be climbed with regard to energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions. For some reason the conversation came round to company cars and tax, and the comment that there are two hybrid cars in the Company – the belief was that there is a good chance that they were bought purely for tax reasons. There then came the comment that the emissions from a Prius included a high degree of smugness. This was followed by a general level of guffawing from the self-proclaimed climate change sceptics in the room. In fact, they seemed rather smug about the fact that they were sceptical about climate change.

I tried to point out that climate change is not necessarily the issue, that wastefulness, loss of resources and biodiversity is the issue – particularly for those in the room with young children. The answer was that they would be able to watch the now extinct butterflies on a lovely big flat screen television. Apart from thinking that was a pretty pathetic and blinkered response (not to mention that televisions require resources to make and run), I started to imagine a world where the only interaction we had with nature was through videos of long dead species and then I shuddered.

The real problem is that in addition to the lack of appreciation of the effect we are having on our environment, I am not sure we have it in our power to change these attitudes.

Finally the butterflies have arrived…

…well, some of them have. With the much talked about decline in pollinator numbers I have been getting concerned about the dearth of butterflies recently. I had hoped that with the warm sunshine we had in June that there would be a bumper year this year – sadly I was sooo wrong.

However, it is now buddleia flowering time and my hopes are starting to rise again. Earlier in the week there were a few white butterflies about, and I got excited when I saw my first Peacock of the summer. Today, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and I should have been doing some coursework, but, the sun was shining etc. I managed to count up to 10 peacock butterflies at the same time – there may have been more, but I can only see part of the shrub. I also saw four whites over the back garden, a small tortoiseshell in the front and back (although it could be the same one), a gatekeeper and, for the first time in the garden this year, I a saw a comma butterfly – see the picture on the left – so called because of the white, comma-shaped mark on the underside of its wing. As yet, no Red Admirals or Painted Ladies, but we are only just starting the second week of August and the admirals tend to hang about until October / November.

Peacock butterfly picture below is just because it is such a gorgeous creature that I had to include it!

Carbon Reduction Commitment – keeping the momentum going

It is nearly a year since we started down the road of the Carbon Reduction Commitment and things have moved on quite a bit since then. After much delay the appropriate paperwork was sent out to the qualifying companies and the registration period has arrived. However, it would appear from various reports on the web that only about 13% of the aforementioned companies have registered. The good news for us is that the first part of our application has been started, but I guess that is just the start.

For those of you that have missed out on all the news relating to CRC (somehow) there is an early action league table which was introduced to pacify all those companies that had put time and money into reducing their energy usage before the start of the CRC season. There are only two parts to this though, one is to introduce automated metering (which we have, but which is fraught with its own problems and not always reliable) and the other is to apply for the Carbon Trust standard.

The Carbon Trust standard is good in many ways; it requires a continuous commitment to reduction (going back over three years) and that awareness is maintained at an individual level – they will audit one or more sites to see what is in place. (The bad news is that it costs in the region of £12k to apply with assistance – a worthwhile investment, but not always easy to make the powers that be see the light!)

So, how do you maintain energy awareness? I think this is one of the hardest things to do as there are often other things that take priority – after all, which site manager does not have a to do list longer than tailbacks on the M6? When you are spending half a million pounds or more on electricity, how easy is it to persuade individuals that turning off a couple of 18W light fittings will make all the difference? When you have done the easy projects and turn to the ones that will cost money or payback over more than 12 months how convinced are you that the justification is worth the effort if capital expenditure is being squeezed?

We are planning to run some shorter energy awareness sessions (by we, I mean I will be planning and delivering them). I am hoping to be able to relate the spends on site to things that individuals can relate to, and not to just talk about cost cutting, but more about waste in general. I know that there are already a number of converts, but some that will never be convinced, but I have seen at Daventry that the middle 40% can be made to think about their energy use at work. I will let you know how successful the sessions are.

In addition to that I am displaying the energy data that is sent through each week, with an explanation where possible if there are sudden peaks or troughs, and I am putting together some more meaningful data to show the trend in usage month by month as well as a comparison to last year. I am also resorting to the occasional bit of nagging gentle reminding so that people don’t just walk past things that have been left on – I have even noticed a growing tendency to turn lights off in the warehouse! Once you start to think about it there are many ways to keep the momentum going, some of them even cost money.

I guess that the gist of my message is that although it appears that there may be resistance – as they say, it is futile and eventually the barriers will come down – it is just a case of thinking of different ways to get the message across – threats are not always necessary! Once bad habits are banished you from the majority the few left to be convinced will probably go along with the rest – good old peer pressure.

Next on my hitlist is a reduction in the outdoor lighting – I am in the middle of some surveys so will update you when I get some quotes.

Bumblebee Identification

I joined the Bumblebee Conservation Trust last year following a Summer trying to photograph them which made me realise how interesting and different they all were. Couple that with all of the coverage regarding the plight of the honeybee which also extends, although for different reasons, to other pollinators, and I decided that it was time I discovered more about the bees in my garden.

Fast forward a year and with my new found interest in invertebrates I started to discover there were more bees about than I had realised, including my favourite, the red-tailed bumblebee, and others such as the wonderfully named hairy footed flower bee. Despite many attempts and lots of photos, I still felt at a loss when it came to positively identifying them. When I saw an advert for a bumblebee identification session at Leicester University on a Sunday afternoon then I signed up straight away.

I arrived early and thought I would go and try and find some bees to photograph – as you would (and, amazingly, got some photos I was really pleased with). They had some lavender beds in their herb garden which we literally buzzing as well as some other plant such as echinops which also seemed pretty popular.

Anyway, back to the course. It was run by a lovely lady called Maggie, who is obviously obsessed by bees. She went through the lifecycle of bees, some of the differences between them and included a list of plants that she had created and which she had subsequently grouped according to how many species of bee visited them. I came away realising that I had to be a little more choosy about the plants that I am putting in the garden and with some ideas for research that I could also undertake. First, however, I need to be able to identify them.

I was hoping to come away from a couple of hours amongst the flowers with the ability to recognise the common bumbles, the big six. But, there are queens, workers and males – so the big six became 18, and then there are the cuckoo bumble bees – another 4 types with males and females so we are now at 26! Suddenly it was not as easy as I had hoped. (Cuckoo bumbles don’t need workers as they parasitise the nests of particular bumbles so use their workers to care for their offspring.) Then, as the bees get older, just like us they fade and get greyer, well, paler – so then all the descriptions seem to go out of the window!

Did I come away knowing many of the 26? Well, we did find four of the big six – but they are mainly males and workers at this time of year, the queens are in the nests. So, I can recognise a carder bee (a little fluffy, ginger bee), and the red-tailed bumble bee, I will also have a go at the buff and white tailed bees (the male white-tailed bumble bees are particularly lovely – see photo above), but we didn’t see the early or garden bumblebees, so I will carry on looking. However, we did find three or four species of cuckoo bee, which I may have seen before and just not realised what they were (such as the one in the photo on the right)! So, although I am not fully convinced that I can get the big six yet, I have now a better idea, and think I can have a go at finding cuckoo bees. I will also be planning some winter research and some more bee-friendly plants for next year.