Barratt Homes - Chorley

With the Lancs Best Practice Club looking to visit the eco show homes at Chorley soon the following links should give a balanced view on the background to these homes.
CarbonLimited - scathing comments on performance
Key findings from Chorley

Hanham Hall Challenge -isite
Hanham Hall Challenge - english partnerships

waste management plans and carbon calculator event

Details of the Lancs Best Practice Club event on 12th Feb looking at sustainability targets, site waste management plans and carbon calculators are now available to download on the events page.  Fittingly the event will be held at the Solaris Centre in Blackpool

Green spires or greenwash?

Universities UK today published Green Spires, a very rosy picture of what academia is doing within the world of becoming green. The report, full of case studies of great activities from around the UK Universities is a must read with many of the innovations related to the built environment.
However, Bibi van der Zee writing [...]

New Liverpool school seeks ‘Very Good’ BREEAM

Details of the state of the art sustainable design (and construction) for Liverpool Lower Lee Special school were posted on Building website earlier this week. (Story, pictures and strategy)
The school is only targetting a Very Good BREEAM level accreditation - beacuase, according to Mouchels architect “An BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rating would only be achievable with a [...]

site waste management plans event 12 Feb

Irrespective of whether you are a client, contractor, developer, product supplier, facilities manager or consultant, the impact of the sustainability, carbon, energy and other performance targets being set for the industry will change the way you do business in a big way.
Lancashire Best Practice Construction club will be holding an early evening event on [...]

sustainability turns red … code red?

I received alarming emails from Carbonequity and FoE today describing how a good many tipping points have been reached and that we are on the brink of a point of no return. On January 28th ClimateCodeRed will be published in Australia …
“Climate code red: the case for a sustainability emergency”. … will include [...]

recycling rubbish CD’s as road surface material

Noted that troubled EMI over estimated the number of Robbie Williams Rudebox CD’s by a mere million. These are now reputedly to be shipped to China to be crushed for road surface material.
Typical of buyers over ordering, with the excess material being used as site access roads … but on a different scale.

eco-friendly warehouses go carbon positive

From the Guardian today
Warehouses aren’t normally associated with sustainability and environmentally friendliness; they are rather grey and anonymous looking. But a £50m scheme on a brownfield site at a former colliery in north Staffordshire is set to change this.
The project, called Blue Planet Chatterley Valley, is to be developed by Gazeley UK, which is [...]

best practice innovations and design schedule online

The USGBC has published the LEEDS innovation and design credits schedule on line, giving all opportunity to view a listing of proven green building strategies that have been submitted and utilized by LEED Certified projects. (source) in design in construction technology and management and importantly in facilities management
Making a fascinating read with such innovations [...]

collaborative city design and prequal requirements …

Worldchanging suggested in a recent post a collaborative institute with classes for every city (US) to
… offer education and examples about urban design fundamentals – what makes a public (space) work, what makes a street pedestrian-friendly, what makes a neighborhood livable – to those who are actually zoning, approving, building, and planning our cities … [...]