No 188: Four Hundred and Seventeen and Rising

A year ago I wrote a blog outlining my 2020 New Year’s Resolution to achieve a personal carbon footprint of just 3 tonnes for the whole year. I had chosen 3 tonnes as my target simply because it was half the lowest-end of the average footprint of a UK citizen (which ranges between 6 – 10 tonnes/year). It was deliberately a ridiculously stretching target. Global CO2 levels were regularly bumping over 410ppm, significantly above the 380ppm ‘safe’ level and I wanted to see just how difficult/cumbersome/life-changing it would be to significantly reduce my footprint. The answer is: not very much.

A year on I can share that my carbon footprint for 2020 was 3.117 tonnes, rising to 4.631 tonnes if I include all my work-related activities. I missed my target, but not by much. More importantly I really didn’t need to change much in my life to achieve this reduction. It basically came down to just three things: travel, heating and diet.  

Of course, back in January 2020 ‘Covid19’ was a word we were just beginning to hear perhaps as the third item on a TV news report, usually after disheartening items on Brexit and the US election (it is somewhat depressing that the order may have changed but the same three stories still dominate…).  Little did I know back in January 2020 just how much the Covid19 pandemic would helping me hit my Resolution target.  For example, in 2019 I took 104 flights as part of my job. In 2020 I did just two. One might expect such a dramatic change to mean my work-life suffered, but that has not been the case. One of the few positives to come out of this dreadful pandemic is the rapid, almost universal acceptance that most work-related meetings can be done virtually. Either that or all those face-to-face meetings I have been dutifully having with my overseas clients all these years was actually a waste of time. They didn’t want to see me after all. Perhaps I can earn more by getting people to pay me to stay away.  

In early April we bought a 100% electric car. This further helped ensure that my carbon footprint remained low when the lockdown was (temporarily) lifted. Not content with this, I went one step further and in November got myself banned from driving for 6 months. And yes, regular readers, this is my second such driving ban in 4 years. You would think I would learn. You would be wrong.

My second area of focus was on heating my home. In early March, literally 2 days before Lockdown One commenced, an Air-Source Heat pump was installed at our home, taking us completely off the gas grid. The cost was minimal due to government grants, and the heating is just as good, if not better, than a traditional boiler. Slightly worryingly, 9 months after having been disconnected from the gas grid my local gas supply company is still estimating our usage and sending regular bills. When I ring them they acknowledge that this is wrong, say they will sort it, and then send another bill a few weeks later.

Looking at the data for my electricity usage during 2020 it has risen in as we enter winter, but this is because it now includes all our usual home electronics, plus the contribution for powering the Air Source Heat pump, plus the contribution from charging our electric car (my wife still selfishly drives despite me petitioning her to join me in my driving ban). There is a minor off-set to our grid-electricity footprint due to the PV panels we have installed on our rooftop. These panels are almost 10 years old and, rather annoyingly, at the height of the glorious 2020 summer the invertor failed. It took 29 days to get it fixed and I estimate this ‘cost’ me about 100kg of carbon (29 days at 0.28kgCO2/kWh x 12 kWh/day). 

My final focus area was my diet. In 2019 I followed a pretty standard meat based diet, which has a carbon footprint of around 5.6kg/day. From Jan 1^st 2020 I started eating more pescatarian, vegetarian and vegan meals. It wasn’t a hardship. It was a pleasure. I am not a vegetarian (I still eat meat every now and then) but I just eat less. I do however feel a little grumpy that it took 51 years for me to discover Oat Milk. How can something that is so irrefutably tastier (and better for you) than any other type of milk still be some sort of grocery secret. Mad. My average food carbon footprint during 2020 was 4.4kg/day, putting me just between a low-meat eater and a pescatarian/vegetarian.

So as we enter 2021 I have a new goal: 2.5 tonnes/year. I share this news because today, for the first time since humans first appeared on the planet, our atmospheric carbon levels are at 417ppm, and are rising steadily. We have to change. All of us. If the above shows anything it is that reducing our carbon footprint really isn’t that hard. I honestly wish it had been harder so that I could claim some proper environmental glory. I have written this blog for 5.5 years. Over Christmas the cumulative number of visits to my blogsite finally passed 50,000. I briefly felt rather pleased about this, until my youngest son put a 1 minute music video on TikTok. In 4 days he has had 180,000 hits (that’s 2000 times my blogs frequency).

I need to find a way to get this message into a 30 second music clip, preferably with someone falling over or dancing provocatively. Any volunteers?

No 187: The Crisis Response Register

Exactly one week ago there was a horrific accidental explosion in the port of Beirut. Current estimates are that more than 200 people have died, 7000 people are injured, 300,000 people have been made homeless. Up to $15bn of damage has been caused. As I watched this terrible event unfold I wondered, as I often do when these crises like this happen, what I could do to help.

There are, of course, many excellent, highly capable and well-equipped organisations and charities who are working hard to address the immediate needs. Supporting these organisations, helping them do what they do best, is a given.

However my thoughts turned to the water and sanitation challenges that this accident has created.  300,000 homeless people in a country which had, even before the accident, an unsatisfactory sanitation infrastructure. For those poor homeless Lebanese families this coming winter is going to be incredibly tough. Ensuring that there is no cholera outbreak is going to be a particular challenge.

I was sure that I was not be alone in wanting to apply my professional knowledge to help, but I didn’t know how to do it. How could I ensure that my well-meaning input would be channelled through the right organisations to ensure it complimented the ongoing relief efforts, rather than frustrated them. On a more practical level, how did I even begin? Who should I talk to? And once I had found them, how would they determine whether my skills were useful and complementary, or redundant and superfluous?

It all felt too difficult, too impenetrable. Perhaps I should do what I always do at times like this: feel a little guilty that I couldn’t do more, but tell myself that sitting back and letting others do the do the heavy lifting was actually the best result.

No damn it. No.

Over the past 72 hours I have spoken to multiple organisations and relief agencies. I had thought (hoped even!) that somewhere there would be a register of global water professionals who could be called upon at times like this and all I would need to do is add my name to that list. But time and again I was told that no such register existed. In fact, I was told, if such a thing did exist it would be hugely valuable. After the 4^th time I was told this the penny finally dropped…

With this in mind, we are launching the Crisis Response Register. It is for water professionals who feel they may have something they could contribute – be it for this Beirut disaster or any future disasters. Whether you work within a water utility directly, or are part of the supply chain (contractor, consultant, tech company) your input, and perhaps that of your organisation, could be the thing that makes a difference.

If you feel this strikes a chord then follow this link and register your details. I have no idea if you will be called upon, or if the call comes what it might entail. It will vary depending on the crisis, and the expertise you have to offer. For some it might be that you can provide professional advice from afar, for others it might require getting on a plane. The first step however is creating that register of expertise; an army of willing water-professionals who can be mobilised as and when required.

This is not to take anything away from the excellent organisations who provide support currently. Be it the Red Cross, Unicef, Oxfam, Global Crisis Response or the multitude of others. RedR for example are brilliant. They provide trained people to help during an emergency response. What we are creating here is a register of water professionals who can be called up to support these organisations.

If I discover that someone has already built this Register then brilliant, no one will be happier than I to fold our database into an existing one. But until someone tells me that it exists we are going to create our own. I ask you, I appeal to you, please join me in registering your name and listing the areas where you may be able to help. You may never be called upon. But then again, you just might. And it might be your input which makes a real difference to someone in need.

 

No 186: How the water sector can help solve Covid19 (and, in other news, I am growing a Skullet)

Surely no decade was quite a great as the 1980s. The music was better (Squeeze, Madness), films were happier (Ferris Bueller, Back to the Future) and Supermodels really were Super. Yes, I am talking about you Cindy Crawford (she follows this blog, I just know she does). We even lived through the Chernobyl crisis: I remember vividly being advised by the government that we should all stay at home for a week while the radioactive cloud blew over. A week contained in your house with only your family for company! How would we cope?!

This brings us rather neatly to the ongoing Cov19 epidemic. Hopefully dear reader you are safe, well and sane.

Seven weeks ago I, through the company I work for (Isle Ltd), launched a WhatsApp group for water utilities to share their Cov19 experiences. To be honest, I thought this group might attract a dozen or so like-minded organisations. At the time Italy was 2 weeks into their lockdown and the UK was just about to start. There was a brief window I thought where those who were already deep in the pandemic could help those who were just entering. Within 72 hours over 80 utilities had signed up (from Bogota, Colombia to Hobart, Tasmania). 3 weeks on there was just short of 300 utilities involved (we have had to create subgroups as WhatsApp only allows 256 people per chat). Nothing I have ever done previously, including writing 186 of these damned blogs, has ever caught the zeitgeist like this. It seemed cruelly ironic that this simple Whatsapp platform would be the thing that ‘goes viral’.

I have been blown away by the openness with which utilities have shared. Through the telling of honest stories other organisations have undoubtedly avoided repeating mistakes. Lives will inevitably have been saved. At a time when the world feels quite gloomy this is truly worth celebrating.

Some things have been quite simply fascinating: for example, the morning peak in water demand has shifted from 7 – 8am to 10 – 11am. Clearly when isolated at home people – irrespective of culture colour or creed - like to sleep in (although the Germans are, characteristically, a little more precise; their peak is now at 940am). Furthermore, the domestic water demand has increased by about 20%, whereas industrial usage has dropped by up to 50%. The impact varies for each water utility depending on their customer mix, however those utilities with limited domestic water meters find themselves in the extremely uncomfortable position of providing more water for less income.

My favourite fact however is that at 8pm each Thursday in parts of  Spain there is a 10% reduction in water usage due to people going onto the streets to clap, sing and cheer their thanks for local health workers. Now that is something worth smiling about.

Unfortunately however it is becoming increasingly clear that Cov19 is likely to be with us for many years, at least until we have a vaccine AND >3bn+ people have been inoculated. The initial hopes of herd immunity and seasonality appear to have fallen through, unsupported by the empiric evidence. Bearing this in mind, it is increasingly likely countries will be forced to adopt repetitive cycles of lockdown, responding as the virus takes hold, dies down and then resurges again (just as we are seeing right now in Singapore). If this is the New Normal, what can the water sector do to help?

Well, one very exciting area of research has opened up. Over the last few weeks it has been confirmed that the inactive (ie non contagious) part of the Cov19 virus can be detected in wastewater. This potentially offers the possibility of an early warning system for identifying when the virus is present in a local community. The dream is that samples from the sewer network could provide governments with the ability to deliver a precise, local programme of lockdowns, rather than the current approach of a blunt ‘whole nation/state’ lockdown.

Lots of clever people are working hard to make this dream a reality. If you want to know more then you are welcome to join my weekly webinar (I attempt to summarise in 15 minutes the previous weeks WhatsApp discussion). It is held on Thursdays at 730am British Summer Time and repeated at 430pm. Email Charlotte.dewitte@Isleutilities.com if you want to join. As an added benefit you will get to see me in my 3-months-since-a-haircut state. I am sure we all have our own little hair-dilemmas, however take pity on me. The few hairs I have left on the top of my head stopped growing many years ago, yet the ones at the side and back seem to have the growth virility of a teenager.

Yes, I am growing that quintessential 1980s hair style: a Mullet.

Or if you are bald, a Skullet.

No 185: #TenTimes

The average carbon footprint for a resident of the UK is between 6 – 10 tonnes/year. For my 2020 New Years Resolution I decided to (a) measure my carbon footprint on a daily basis and (b) try and achieve a level of just 3 tonnes/year. I researched various websites, blogs and carbon-measuring sources and decided to focus my monitoring on 4 aspects: energy usage, travel, diet and plastic waste.

Much to my family’s amusement I have covered our fridge with an array of charts and tables over which I gently obsess. They are less amused by how my ‘dad-habit’ of turning off every unused electrical item has reached a particular crescendo. Or how quickly I will share my pre-prepared monologue on the carbon footprint variance between pouring milk (vegetarian, but with milk from a local cow) vs orange juice (vegan, but with juice from halfway across the planet) over my morning muesli. Where I really seem to have pushed the boundaries of acceptable family behaviour is in my obsession (and it IS an obsession) with segregating all plastic from our household rubbish. To be fair, doing the separating is the easy bit. It is the task of weighing, recording and then disposing of it all which is where familial patience runs thinnest. Maybe if I didn’t do it on the kitchen counter I might not upset quite as many people (but where is the fun in wearing a hair shirt if nobody else gets to experience it?). 

We are now at the end of January and the results from Month 1 are fascinating. For example, despite living in a house where gas is only used for heating (we have an electric cooker) the CO2 footprint from my gas usage is 5 times that of my electricity footprint (ie 6kgCO2/day vs 1.2kgCO2/day). Furthermore, turning down the heating and reducing the time that the boiler runs has a negligible impact. It is possible that our 15 year old boiler is inefficient and needs changing. It is equally possible that our neighbours have tapped into our gas line.

On the electrical usage front we are undoubtedly doing better. That said, try as we might, we cannot get the 24/7 smart meter (positioned strategically in the middle of the house so no one can possibly miss its gleaming readings) to go below 200W. Seriously. We have gone around the house turning off every single electrical item, but the reading never goes below 200W. Either the smart meter itself is drawing 200W (unlikely), or, once again, the finger of suspicion points to our neighbours tapping into our electrical circuit. (And to think they seemed such nice people when we moved in.)

Our energy usage is offset by the 7 small rooftop solar panels. Over January the output from these has doubled as the sunlight hours have increased. During the first week of January we ‘recovered’ 0.25kgCO2/day from the photovoltaics, rising to 0.5kgCO2/day in the last week. My hope is that by Spring our PV generation will exceed our domestic electrical usage. Interestingly our neighbours also have pv panels. I am thinking of building a big extension just to overshadow them.

You might expect travel to be the biggest contributor to my carbon footprint but not so. My 2008 Prius generates 200g of carbon per mile, but outside of work I drive less than 10 miles a day (ie 2kg/day). If I started running to the gym it might even be less (and I might be thinner…but then surely I wouldn’t need to go to the gym?). I am not including work-related travel in my calculations. This is because it is dealt with by the company, Isle. At Isle we offset 10 times our carbon footprint. Last year, 10 months into the year, we calculated that our corporate carbon footprint from flights alone was 70 tonnes. We rounded this up to 100 tonnes for the full year and then off-set ten times this amount via the brilliant UN-Carbon Offset Programme (- https://offset.climateneutralnow.org/howtooffset). It is a wonderful website. You simply select your project(s), each of which has a clearly stated £/kg, and then go to the checkout. It’s like shopping on Amazon, but without the guilt. Offsetting a thousand tonnes of carbon took less than 5 minutes and cost less than £3.5k.

My diet is the source of my biggest carbon impact. I decided it would break my marriage to try to calculate the specific carbon input for each ingredient so instead I am standing on the shoulders of giants (Scarborough et al, 2014) and using their carefully researched figures for different meal types. They produced a table for different meals, with a ‘Heavy Meat’ at 7.2kg/carbon, and Vegan at 2.9kg, for example. My average so far is 4.34kg/meal. This puts me just between a Low Meat Eater and a Pescatarian. Or to put it into common language, I am mostly a Vegetarian, but every now and then I like a big roast or a bacon sandwich (Readers of my previous blog will no doubt conclude that this is typical of a middle-class Liberal. I am at least true to type).

The biggest surprise from my little experiment however is plastic. 6kg of carbon is produced for each 1kg of plastic we throw away. When I look at the rubbish we throw away in our house (as oppose to recycle) it is mostly plastic, hence I decided I should include plastic in my carbon metrics. However after a month of diligently separating, measuring and recording it has become clear that while the volume of plastic waste is depressingly large (see photo) its weight is actually very low, typically less than 10g/head/day. It accounts for less than 2% of my typical daily carbon footprint. With this in mind, going forward I am removing the plastic metric from my calculations. Since I weigh the plastic using the kitchen scales this single act may both save my family from the ravages of food poisoning, and may remove the kitchen-ban that I know my wife is contemplating placing on me.

To help incentivise me to keep my carbon levels low I have committed to off-set 10 times my carbon footprint at the end of the year. Why 10 times? Well, the number 10 is particularly special for me this year. Very little happened of note on January 29^th 2010 (in fact, I have searched numerous websites and found it to be a uniquely uneventful date) but, for me at least, it will always be noteworthy. January 29^th 2010 was the official birthday of Isle. It was the day Isle was incorporated. This week therefore marks our 10^th birthday! Over the past decade Isle has steadily grown to become a team of 90 people working across 12 countries for over 300 utility clients.  

As noted above, my dream target is keep my carbon contribution below 3 tonne/year during 2020. If anyone wants to join me in this challenge I would be delighted to share my spreadsheet (it comes with all the usual caveats and denials). Based on my performance during the first week of January I was heading for over 6 tonnes/year,  but the average for the last week has been just over 4 tonnes. Squeezing out that extra tonne is going to be tough. I think I need to go and speak to my neighbours…

No 184: When your grandchildren ask what you did, will your answer make them proud?

In the UK we have special legislation (the Fixed Term Parliament Act) which stipulates that there should only be an election once every 5 years. The fact that on Dec 12^th 2019 we will have our third election in 4 years demonstrates just how staggeringly successful this piece of legislation has been. This coming election will be  the most important UK general election for a generation. Hanging on the outcome is not just the UK’s relationship with Europe, but whether the UK stays as a ‘united’ kingdom. Depending on how the votes land there is a very credible series of events that could unfold which would lead to the end of the England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland union.

For overseas readers unfamiliar with the UK political parties, there are two main parties: the Conservatives (often called the Tories) on the right, and Labour on the left. There are a handful of smaller parties, the biggest of which is the Liberal Democrats, who fill the centre ground and are unapologetically pro-Europe (I am a proud Liberal Democrat).

If the parties were processes on a sewage treatment works then the Tories would be the de-ragging and grit removal chambers at the head of the works: excellent in theory, and when they work they can be brilliant. However they just can’t be trusted to do what they claim. In my 28 years working in the wastewater sector I am yet to see a headworks working as it was designed.  An unnervingly large amount of clumpy shxt always manages to seep through.

Labour on the other hand are like a secondary treatment process (think Activated Sludge). Big, bold, mechanical, able to treat pretty much anything that might come down the pipe. However they have a tendency to be inflexible,  and are eye-wateringly expensive to operate. (I resisted the urge to refer to lots of hot air).

Finally there are the Lib Dems. They are the primary settlement tanks, nestling neatly between the Tory screens and the Labouresque nutrient removal. They quietly, robustly, reliably do their job removing the bulk of the solids from the wastewater. They arguably provide the most important stage in the whole treatment process, yet attract almost no attention whatsoever. Overlooked and under-appreciated. The LibDems currently have about 15% of the popular vote, yet just 3% of the seats in House of Commons (20 out of 650). The last Liberal Prime Minster was David Lloyd George.  In 1922.

The defining policy for the Lib Dems in 2019 is to ‘cancel Brexit’. It is a bold, high risk stance and will either alienate or resonate with voters. I am proudly European and am thankful for the freedoms that being part of the EU has brought me over the years. The European Union clearly isn’t perfect, but it has given us 50 years of strong trading relationships, travel freedoms and multi-country environmental controls. It was my grandparents generation who voted for our entry into Europe in the 1970s and I am extremely grateful to them for their foresight. I worry that my grandchildren will look back at the 2019 election and be disappointed.   

Being a fully paid up Lib Dem I did my duty last weekend and posted 300 leaflets in my neighbourhood. It was a gloriously cathartic exercise, with two notable events. The first was when I met a man vigorously cleaning his car. I didn’t recognise him at first, but it turned out he was someone I have spent the last 15 years sharing a swimming lane each Saturday morning. I didn’t recognise him with his clothes on. My second encounter was with a lady in her 30s who, upon taking the Lib Dem leaflet from my hand said, with a definite flirtatious smile, ‘Better than the Tories…but not as good as Labour’. We chatted for a few minutes and she wished me good luck. Both of the above exchanges were surprisingly cordial, despite our differing political views. I came away thinking (perhaps naively) that if all sides could adopt an open mind and a big smile (and could visualise at least half of their opponents naked) then we could probably find a workable solution.

As it happens I will not be in the UK on Dec 12^th. I am trusting that my wife, who does not share the same political allegiances as myself, will deploy my proxy vote carefully. I will be in Madrid, co-chairing the EU Water Innovation Conference (https://www.eip-water.eu/eu-water-innovation-conference-2019-0). As of last Friday there are 850 people registered to attend (tickets are free…). Rather splendidly for a LibDemer like myself, the conference will celebrate all that is great about EU: the collaboration, the policy making, the leveraging of learning, and the innovation breakthroughs.

Unfortunately the conference ends too late for me to make it back to the UK that evening. I will therefore be watching the election results alone in my hotel room. I am realistic about the results.  I doubt the Lib Dems will sweep gloriously into power, but I hope we will make some gains and perhaps be a tempering voice on whoever does. We have more in common that binds us than we do which divides us. However, as noted by the exchanges with my neighbours, even our differences can be rather fun to unpick.