The Giant Rat of Rusper (PART 2)

 

Five months ago I wrote my last blog. In it I shared the news that I had recently purchased a 12 acre woodland in deepest darkest East Sussex. I mentioned that a strange ‘giant rat’ had been spotted lurking outside one of the abandoned badger setts. I closed the blog with a promise that I would keep investigating until I found out what it was…

 

As it happens, just 24 hours after my blog was posted I downloaded 4 truly glorious seconds of video footage from the camera I had positioned directly outside the badger sett entrance. As seen here, I had captured my ‘strange creature’ waddling into the badger sett. Unfortunately it was just its back-end, but it was enough to confirm that our strange beast was not a badger (tail too long), nor a rat. It was clearly a mustelid of some sort, but which? I shared the video with all the ecology experts in my black book. Eventually it was narrowed down to being either an American Mink - not native to the UK, can cause lots of damage, would probably need to be trapped and destroyed - or a Polecat  - native to UK, can cause lots of damage, should be encouraged and nurtured. (Read into that what you will). The only way we could tell for certain was to get a face-shot since Polecats have ‘bandit-type’ markings whereas American Mink don’t.

 

About the only hard fact we could determine was that it was a male (watch the video, its very obvious…).

 

I felt that whilst the above news was quite exciting, it was not blog-noteworthy. The mystery needed resolving. From that day to this the entrance to the badger sett has been closely monitored. In my desire to capture a shot of the elusive animal I even briefly broke my (self-imposed) rule of not using bait. This resulted in me capturing an almost perfect shot of a very happy squirrel eating peanut butter from the end of a stick.  

 

Last Friday I finally decided it was time to abandon my search and finally move my camera to another part of the woodland (we have 4 positioned in various positions across the site). I removed the SD card and late that evening as I sat in bed watching the 58 videos which had been captured over the previous few days. As usual, most were of the squirrels, rabbits and deer which seem to live happily in the woodland. However clips 56 and 57 were of a beautiful stoat, surely the fastest moving animal in the UK!  

 

Imagine my excitement however when, having worked my way through my badger sett SD card, I moved onto the memory cards from the other cameras. Suddenly I was looking at a 10 second video of a mature majestic Buzzard, with half a bloodied pigeon in its gruesome talon, positioned perfectly in front of my camera. It was a shot professional nature photographers would sell their grandmothers to achieve. The video of both the stoat and the buzzard are here.

 

In this file you will also see some of the other creatures we have observed, including bats (if anyone ever invites you to attend a bat survey SAY YES IMMEDIATELY; it is the best fun ever!), a slow worm, foxes, badgers (my favourite animal), mice and owls. The owls are particularly difficult to record. I swear they work out where the cameras are and then deliberately sit with their backs to them.

 

My dream is to record an owl hunting and capturing one of the mice. When I get that shot I will write my next blog, irrespective of whether we have identified the mysterious ‘rat’ by then!

No 189: The Giant Rat of Rusper

I have fallen in love.

The object of my desire is a 12 acre woodland, 3 miles west of Gatwick, just outside the picturesque West Sussex village of Rusper.

She is beautiful. I saw her on January 1^st 2021 and made an offer that afternoon. Three weeks ago she finally became mine. The woodland is on the southern border of a much larger ancient broadleaf woodland, and contains a glorious mix of oaks, birches and hornbeam, all surrounded by a deep carpet of bluebells. There is a powerline running across it which provides a wonderful east-west opening in which rare orchids grow and wildlife surely abounds.  It is no exaggeration to say that this woodland occupies my every waking moment (and most of my sleeping ones). Our plan is to create a mini wildlife reserve, working from the soil invertebrates upwards. We have identified 14 habitats we want to nurture, including a wildflower meadow, properly-thick hedgerows and standing deadwood (one of the rarest yet most important habitats for woodland birds and beetles). We are writing a formal 300 year Woodland Management Plan which we will submit to the appropriate authorities. My intention is to be the ‘custodian’ for the first few decades, before handing it on to others to manage and preserve.

Since our key aim with the woodland is to enhance the flora and fauna it is necessary to gather data regarding the initial ecological baseline. We have initiated a number of surveys. The West Sussex Bat Society has even agreed to do a detailed bat tagging survey in early May. After some gentle begging they have agreed to let me come along. I have no idea what it will involve, or whether we will find anything (how do you even catch a bat?). It will involve staying up until 3am on a school night (a Thursday), but I can’t wait. Friday 7^th May will simply have to be a day when I keep my work diary just a little bit lighter than usual.

We bought (off eBay) a small 1980s caravan. Through some quirk of fate I had never set foot in a caravan until it arrived on our driveway. How can I have missed the excitement of caravans? My wife regarded me with a curious mix of pity, humour and disappointment as I enthusiastically shared every discovery I made of each new ingenious cupboard and hidey-hole. We towed it into the centre of the woodland, painted it grey, covered it with camouflage netting and installed a photovoltaic power supply*. We positioned it such that the view was deep into the woodland, with a badger set just 30m away.

A couple of weeks ago, after a long Saturday ‘woodlanding’ (that should definitely become a new verb!) I shut myself in the caravan at 5pm and settled down to my first serious session of wildlife watching. With the caravan door shut (badgers have a very strong sense of smell) I sat motionless scanning the view. As the temperature dropped my hands froze around my binoculars. My stomach rumbled but I wasn’t going to risk moving or making a noise. Also I was certain that there were numerous animals just beyond my eye-line who were deliberately waiting for me to turn my back so they could come and dance in front of the caravan while I wasn’t looking.

Three hours passed and not one creature of interest appeared. No badgers. No deer. No unicorns. Not even a sodding squirrel. Once the light had finally faded and my eyes were straining to see even a few yards I finally gave up. It was only 830pm but it was a cold early April night and I snuggled into my sleeping bag and lay looking out into the dark, apparently animal-free, woodland. Within minutes there was a loud hoot, followed by an answering call, and then a screech. Suddenly the woodland was alive with a growing glorious cacophony of woodland galumphing and owl calls (or potentially murder victims, it is a little hard to tell the difference). I woke at 430am feeling at more at one with the world than I have done for years. The woodland creatures were definitely present. They were just shy, that was all.

I bought a £25 motion-activated camera and installed it just in front of the badger set. Upon detecting movement it would take a photo, wait a second and then take 4 seconds of video. I left it 5 days and then downloaded the files. I had 44 different photos and videos (ie 88 in total). I was super excited to finally see my resident badgers frolicking in their natural habitat. Perhaps they would already have young? I opened the first file… Forty of the 44 videos were of a squirrel. I swear that he had worked out where the camera was and deliberately performed. It was like watching Scrat from Ice Age. He posed for each individual shot (‘I am ready for my close up Mr DeMille’). Video number 41 was of a fat, indulgent pigeon walking (not flying!) across the woodland floor. Shot number 42 was a fox being foxy in the middle of the night, slinking between the trees. No 43 was a rather beautiful Roe Deer which walked directly in front of the camera.

Finally I came to video number 44. It was taken at 3am on the night a couple of weeks ago when southern England was blanketed with snow. According to the camera sensor it was minus 3 degC. An animal – whatever it was -  came out of the badger set, and the camera snapped. By the time the video kicked in a second later the creature was already disappearing back into the set, with just some faint movements visible on the video. What is clear however is that it is not a badger. It is a mystery creature. Some people have said it is a rat. If it is, then it’s the biggest rat in England...

I have now repositioned the camera directly outside the entrance hole and re-programmed the camera to record video only. This is an ecology mystery that needs solving.

 

* The caravan now serves as my new office. Last week I did a number of zoom calls while sitting at a desk in the middle of the woodland. (‘Piers, I love that background screen, it looks so realistic….but could you turn off the distracting background bird noises?’).

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.

No 183: ‘Like a squirrel on speed…’

About 4 months ago I was interviewed for a podcast. It has just been published and the link is copied below. My performance has been described (by someone who I thought loved me) as being like that of a squirrel on speed.

I was attending a conference in Denver and the interviewer, Robert Osbourne (from the Outfall Podcast), and I were meeting at the end of a long day. We searched the conference venue for a quiet place to sit, eventually finding a sofa in one of the dark corners of the exhibition centre. It was a large expansive sofa, and had a man gently resting his eyelids at one end. We sat at the other end and started our chat, which at the time I thought had progressed relatively staidly. When we left the man who had been feigning sleep opened his eyes and had a look of such overwhelming relief that we were leaving I wondered if we had disturbed him. Listening to the interview 4 months on I have some insight into how he must have felt.

Listening to the interview is like playing a game of Spot The Error. There are an embarrassingly large number of misquotes and basic errors in my schpeel. I put it down to a mix of jetlag and unadulterated enthusiasm. I feel a sense of deep shame that I claimed it was Joseph Faraday who predicted The Great Stink in 1856. Obviously everyone who is anyone clearly knows it was Michael Faraday (I got mixed up between Michael Faraday and Joseph Bazalgette, JB being the mastermind behind the London sewer solution to the Great Stink).

I also cringe at my quote that mussels can ‘hold their breath for 3 weeks’. They cant. Obviously they cant. Only a complete fool would think they can. They can however not feed for this length of time. That’s what I meant to say.  

The error I am most ashamed of is where I boldly state an outright factual lie: that we will run out of phosphorus in 30 years. This is simply not true. What I meant to say was that some people predict we will be at  ‘peak phosphorus’ in 30 years (ie the point from which we are on a clear downward run thereafter). My hope is that despite this exuberant statement I have not detracted from the message that Phosphorus is a problem we need to think much harder about.

You can judge for yourselves. The link is here:  https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-outfall?refid=stpr

No 182: The Message Has Changed! (or, alternatively, ‘Housekeeping Tips from World Leaders’)

For years the core message preached at climate change conferences around the world has been ‘Time is running out…’. That message has now changed. At the EcoSperity conference in Singapore last week, in front of an audience of over 1000 world leaders, business heads and academics a new message was proposed. Subtly different in structure but starkly different in message: ‘Time has run out’. This conference provided the clearest presentation of the climate crisis I have seen. Yet the doomsday message was balanced by credible suggestions of ways forward. What was different was the urgency of the call to action. Three decades of talk has had no tangible effect on the rate of temperature rise. The time for talk has run out.

The link to the 3 minute tone-setting opening video for the conference is here: https://www.ecosperity.sg/en/2019-conference.html. The full conference is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo4aoLFlY_k. I encourage you to jump to 45 minutes to hear Dr Will Stefan from the Australian National University give his prognosis (is it a shame that his slides on ‘planetary boundaries’ are not visible on the video). Additionally go to 1hr 8min and watch Christiana Figueres, Former Exec Secretary for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. She was awesomely brilliant, captivating the whole room. Her demonstration of the scale of the challenge before us, using just a single sheet of A4, is gloriously simple yet also terrifying (1hr 13min). I was less persuaded by her explanation (for non-scientists) of what exponential means, but she won me back when she unconsciously started channelling Monty Python with her discussion about coal (‘coal is dead, it is demised, it is no more…’)

Alternatively you could jump to 3hr 30 min and watch the section where water, which had not been discussed as yet in the conference, made it onto the agenda. This was a session I was honoured to have been asked to chair. When designing the session I wanted to do something different to the traditional conference discussion panel. Borrowing heavily (ok…, stealing outright) from the format of Radio 4s ‘Museum of Curiosities’ I gave my three expert panellists the task of imagining they were 50 years in the future and were proposing an artefact for the new Museum of Water. You can discover why a 300yr old abacas, a 200yr old piece of wood and a suspicious looking 0.5kg of white powder were chosen by Francois Fevrier (CEO Suez Asia), Dr Helge Daebel (Investment Director, Emerald Ventures) and George Hawkins (former CEO for DC Water and now founder of Moonshot Mission Partners) respectively. They had an artist at the back of the room doing cartoon summaries of each of the sessions and attached is our summary picture. What I like most about this is the fact that I have been given a surprisingly butch face (as opposed to my usual chinless wonder look) AND a full head of hair!

The EcoSperity (Ecology and Prosperity coming together) event flowed neatly into the annual PUB Singapore International Water Week conference. Last year 24,000 people attended SIWW. On alternate years (such as this year) PUB host a smaller, more intimate, specialist conference with 200 or so invite-only guests. The focus this year was Industrial Water and I had been asked to be the Convener/Chairperson. My role was to set the tone, summarise the speeches, provide informative/amusing/probing questions (delete depending on the speakers attitude) during the panel sessions and to generally make sure the whole thing kept to time. It is harder than it sounds. During the opening session I had to speak in Malay while introducing an Eid-inspired video on Kinship (‘Air dicincang tidak akan putus’).  The secret is to pronounce the ‘Air’ part as Ah-eh, and after that you just run with it and hope for the best. This proverb translates into ‘Water does not break when you chop it’ and was accompanied by a lovely video on Muslim brotherhood. It was astonishingly relevant bearing in mind the Ecosperity message, and the global challenges we all face which will only be resolved if we work together.

I spent the whole of last week in South East Asia and on the Monday I had met with a local client. I was due to give a presentation to an audience of 40 or so people, and I had been told that one of them might be the Chairperson, a lady who was so well connected that she would almost certainly top the list of Most Powerful Women in Asia. Two minutes before I commenced my talk the audience filed into the room. I saw a middle aged lady dressed in a power-suit and assumed it was she. As I gave my presentation I focused my attention, charm and guile on this poor lady. It was only when we finished that I was directed to the real Chairwoman, a rather unassuming-looking lady who had sat quietly at a table at the back of the room. As we chatted she reminded me of my grandmother: clear-thinking, forthright, gracious.

She invited me to join her and her team for a buffet lunch, and as we sat chatting our conversation drifted away from water. Through a series of connections I still cannot quire recall we started discussing housework. I learned that in Asia housework is very much the domain of the female. I commented that actually I quite like ironing. In the Clark household ironing is a man-task. It is also an important part of my schedule when I am travelling. Fans of Die Hard 1 will recall that the hero John McLean overcomes jetlag by walking barefoot on a hotel carpet (before running around the building in a grubby T-shirt shooting lots of baddies). I have a similar routine: when I arrive at a hotel I like to take out all my shirts and crisply iron them (before sitting down in my underpants to clear my email backlog). It is an almost identical routine.

On sharing my love of ironing my new bestie, the Most Powerful Woman in Asia, was clearly not convinced of my sincerity. ‘Tell me’, she said in an enquiring and slightly accusatory voice, ‘how do you iron your shirts?’. Without hesitation I responded back confidently with the order my grandmother had shared with me some 40 years ago: collar, shoulders, sleeves, back, front. ‘Well done!’ she exclaimed ‘That is correct!’. Her confidence in me was restored. We then discussed vacuum cleaners (honestly we did!).

I truly hope to meet her again soon. I have a tip for dealing with stains on furniture I want to share with her which I think she might like.

Take furniture outside. Burn it. Buy new furniture.

No 181: All Hail Dr Zessner!

This coming Wednesday at the Global Water Summit in London I will chair a 90 minute session on ‘How to halve the cost of wastewater treatment’. When Christopher Gasson, CEO for GWI (and organiser of the summit), proposed this title my initial reaction was Pah! Merely halving the cost is not nearly ambitious enough. Modern sewage is ripe with all sorts of goodies (nutrients, cellulose, precious metals, copious amounts of energy…). We should be shooting for how to make wastewater treatment facilities profit centres, I argued. Christopher responded by saying he wanted the session to include the sewage network, not just the treatment facilities. That raised the bar somewhat. Now we had a challenge…

Even if I say so myself, Wednesday is going to be awesome. It will be a multi-media, highly interactive session (think fireworks, sparkly lights, carefully choreographed dancers and you won’t be far wrong). We are even giving away some free samples which, bearing in mind the wastewater theme, will provide something uniquely different to add to the usual conference delegate swag. There will be 25 ‘lighting showcases’, a dozen on-the-floor interviews, a 2 person expert panel who, like Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn tussling with Brexit, will argue and jostle despite them both essentially being on the same side. If they don’t, then I will channel Jean-Claude Juncker and generally stir things up from the safety of my Chairman’s podium.

Of course, to halve the cost of treatment requires having some knowledge of the actual costs to start with; you can’t halve something if you don’t know where you are starting from. My good friend Frank Rogalla (Head of Innovation for the Spanish utility Aqualia) sent me some interesting data: the costs for water and wastewater in the UK average around 3,5 €/m3 and this compares to just 1,8 €/m3 in Spain and 9 €/m3 in Denmark. [As an aside, it is worth noting that Frank would have been a much better choice of Chairman for this session. Through his inspiring work on the Horizon 2020 projects http://www.all-gas.eu and http://www.run4life-project.eu he has a far greater knowledge. However, Christopher met me first so boo-yah Frank]. The above bill costs are interesting, but are miss-leading (sorry Frank). Firstly they are for both water supply and wastewater treatment. Secondly this is the prices customers are charged, not the costs incurred. The figures are ‘confused’ by local government regulations and subsidies. I needed to do some more detailed research.

This is where Dr Zessner (and his colleagues Lampert, Kroiss and Lindtner) came to the rescue. I found a truly fascinating paper (no really) which they published back in 2010. Their work centred on the countries around the Danube/Black Sea area, with a particular focus on Austria. They concluded that in Austria the cost of treatment (including N and P removal) was around 30€ per person per year. This is a captivating figure, not least because a quick (but unscientific) poll completed with my non-water sector mates revealed an expectation that this cost would be 10 – 100x higher (ie 300 - 3000€/head/year). If nothing else, this confirms that Joe Public (or perhaps it is just my mates) simply hasn’t got a clue how much their water bill is. It also makes a mockery of the financial regulators who obsess about continually squeezing down water bills, despite survey after survey showing that most people would prefer to pay a bit more to their water utility in return for better environmental stewardship, but that’s a blog topic for another day.

Dr Zessner, and his marvellous team, didn’t stop there. They then looked at what happens if you include the cost of the sewer network. My Joe Public test group confidently predicted the increase would be between 5% and 50%. However according to Dr Zessner and his team, the actual cost (in Austria, in 2010) was 90€ per person per year, ie increasing the wastewater treatment cost by 200%. We are going to have such fun on Wednesday unwrapping this further.

All Hail Dr Zessner, you are my hero (at least for this month). I feel slightly saddened that your paper, published in Water Science and Technology (vol 62(2):223-30) had only been downloaded 36 times. As a measure of my shallowness I am pretty certain that if I had a paper published in WST I would have persuaded my family, and everyone in both my inner and outer circle of friends (ie all 3 of them) to log on at least twice and leave a slew of positive comments. Clearly you do not have my combination of insecurity and ego. Dr Zessner, perhaps, just perhaps, you will get a surge of interest now: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/45282491_Cost_comparison_of_wastewater_in_Danubian_countries

No 180: Burn Baby Burn!

For the past 49 years I have effortlessly avoided Burns Night. I was aware of its existence but, being based in London, there is not a much call to partake in a Scottish-centric celebration focussed on (arguably) the most famous Scotsman ever, Poet Robert ‘Rabbie’ Burns. Burns Night just wasn’t part of my whirlwind social calendar (a hectic nightly schedule of eating chocolate in front of Netflix). This year things changed. This year my wife Stella and I were invited to the annual Northumbrian Water Burns Night celebration. The invite stipulated Highland Dress.

This presented my first challenge. I have a standard dinner jacket which I wear to various back-slapping events throughout the year. Like most DJs, it is too big and makes me look like an oversized penguin. That said, it is at least a straightforward piece of attire and it takes less than 2 minutes to put on. The most complicated it gets is with the addition of a cumberbund, which I have always regarded as a silly piece of clothing designed simply to make fat men thinner and one I have therefore resolutely refused to wear. Highland dress however is a completely different matter. There is obviously the kilt (which I initially wore backwards until the nice Hire Shop man pointed out, in a tone of voice that suggested he thought I wore skirts more frequently than I actually do, that the pleats should be at the back). Then there is the sporran (why they don’t just put pockets in the kilt is beyond me), garters, a little dagger that you tuck in your knee-high socks, a waistcoat, a top-jacket, a bow tie, a special kilt-pin AND a pair of unique kilt shoes which have the most complex laces you can possibly imagine. The Hire Shop man was just as flummoxed as I when it came to how to do up the laces (not quite so clever now Mr I-Know-How-To-Wear-a-Pleated-Skirt, eh?!). Thankfully Mr Google provided the answer. One of the marvels of the modern day is that there are internet chat rooms for literally every kind of need. You can admire my handiwork in the attached photo.

Before I am accused of cultural miss-appropriation I would like to point out that I am 1/16^th Scottish. Clark is a proud Scottish name (‘Clarke’ is English). My nasty nasal East-London accent aside, I felt I had enough highland blood coursing through my veins last night to wear my Highland Dress with pride. (That said, only a true 100% Scot would find the chaffing that comes from wearing a rough tartan kilt and a sporran something that they don’t regret the day later).  

The event was held at a multi-award winning venue on the edge of Kielder Reservoir. This is an awe inspiring location, just a few miles south of the Scottish border. It is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful parts of the UK (it also happens to be the darkest sky location in Europe). As it happens it has been a location I have wanted to visit for 8 years. Back in 2011 I had a job interview with Heidi Mottram, CEO for Northumbrian Water. Back then she was relatively new in post and was pulling together her new team. In the interview I asked her (slightly cynically I suspect) to tell me about one of the publicly stated company values: ‘Ethical’. I was keen to hear how she would turn this lovely aspirational goal into something that a modern corporation could credibly claim as their own.

Without hesitation she talked confidently and passionately about the Northumbrian Water holiday cottages, situated around Kielder Reservoir. These cottages were, she claimed, the epitome of Ethical behaviour. Through maintaining these cottages NWL was ensuring that this incredibly rural and remote part of the country had local employment and a thriving healthy community. Her answer was inspiring (Heidi always is). I didn’t get the job but since then I have wanted to see this facility for myself. Last night I did. Stella and I stayed in one of the spectacular cottages (think Centre Parcs…just 1000 times better), it had the perfect balance of ecological sensitivity and heart-warming comfort. No wonder it is something of which NWL staff are rightly proud.

My first Burns Night involved numerous toasts, lots of songs, some lovely speeches and lots and lots of dancing. I even got to spend time with one off my childhood heroes, Olympic runner Steve Cram who now organises the annual Kielder Marathon around the reservoir. Of all the ‘facts’ I learnt about Rabbie (including that he sired 12 children and died at 37, I assume of exhaustion) my favourite is that Bob Dylan cites him as a major influence. As the night became day and the party transformed from a structured celebration into a frantic, glorious disco (aficionados of early noughties dance please note blog title!) this fact felt particularly resonant.

My most popular blog (measured by the number of hits) was no 169 back in September 2017. It was entitled ‘The Bravest Water Utility in the World’, and I shared a story about Wannon Water in Victoria, Australia. I think  Northumbrian Water deserves a similar title. The Most Ethical Water Company? Probably. The Most Environmentally Conscious? I suspect so. The Most Fun to Spend a Night in a Kilt With! Undoubtedly.

No 179: More Wetflix than Netflix

Give me just three minutes of your time and I will show you something incredible. In fact, I will show you three incredible things. Firstly a no-dig repair process for sewers which is magical in its simplicity. Secondly, arguably the most exciting thing to happen in the world of sludge (it’s a narrow field). And thirdly, a makes-you-tingle-with-excitement-at-the-possibilities technology that might, just might, help save the planet from disaster.

First up is Tubogel, a German company with a method for repairing sewers without the need for troublesome roadworks. It is a gloriously simple, involving little more than two special liquids, T1 and T2. To repair a sewer one simply pumps T1 down the offending pipe. T1 seeps into every crook and cranny, and oozes out of any breakages. The pipe is then flushed clean, and T2 is added, where it also seeps and oozes as did its sister only a few minutes before. This is when the magic happens. Where the two liquids touch they become an impenetrable solid, instantly fixing any cracks or breakages. You can see the magic happen in the following clip. Jump to 2min 18 seconds to see the best bit. This is more than just a pipe dream…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zybs_F1oVqU

Next up is Orege, a French company who has developed the SLG process. This technology significantly enhances sludge thickening and dewatering processes. How the SLG process works is irrelevant, it is what it does that matters. All you need to know can be seen in the following 40 second clip. It shows an Operator taking a sludge sample after it has been SLG’ed. This is my go-to clip when a water utility CEO asks me what is ‘hot’ in the world of wastewater. Watching their jaws drop as the big reveal becomes apparent is a joy to behold.

https://1drv.ms/v/s!ArieIl8u5L00geo16JkION-CxnbuRA

Finally we come to Los Angeles based company, Advantageous Systems Inc. To be fair, the use of magnetic nanoparticles is not new. Neither is the development of specialist coatings which can proactively bind to specific pollutants. Where Advantageous Systems have made a leap has been in combining the two to create a non-membrane technology that can selectively remove contaminants with minimal energy consumption. Written like that it doesn’t sound exciting, but bear with me because the potential applications are astonishing. The ADS technology can already efficiently remove pollutants such as arsenic, selenium, perchlorate and nitrates, amongst others. The following video clip shows how it works with algae (more visually dramatic than watching arsenic removal!)

https://advantageoussystems.vids.io/videos/7098d2b4111ae3c6f8/ads-magnetic-separation-of-algae-1-m4v

My dream for Advantageous Systems is that their technology might remove micro-plastics from wastewaters. Micro-plastics are becoming a serious issue, contaminating our food chain and poisoning our environment. We need to find effective removal solutions. Control at source is the obvious answer but I suspect that’s two generations (40 years) away at least. We need to develop solutions which can deal with the problem right now, especially if we want to maintain our sludge-to-land recycling routes (ie the driver for developing this solution is not just to protect the environment, there is also a public health angle and a clear commercial need). Following discussions with the CEO for Advantageous Systems we are developing a research programme to explore the micro-plastic removal application further. If you want to know more/get involved then let me know. The more brains focussed on the problem the better.

The above clips are part of my growing collection of exciting video clips of innovative water technology technologies. The company I work for, Isle Group Ltd, works with over 200 utilities around the world, helping them identify and adopt new technology. We scour the planet looking for solutions to our utility customers’ challenges and have screened over 6000 technologies in recent years. Isle is an independent technical consultant and we make no commercial gain from recommending one technology over another; we simply look for those technologies that might solve a problem. What I absolutely love about the above clips is that they showcase what they do in a crisp, compelling way. You might not know how the Orege SLG process works, or what the special formuale is in the Tubogel fluids, but you are left in no doubt about what they can do. They get straight to the heart of the technology pitch.

I love my job. Not least because it enables me to mix with some of the worlds hardest working and most inventive entrepreneurs. If you want more information on any of the above please contact me directly (or email August Von Joest (office@vonjoest.de) for Tubogel; Ian Patheyjohns (ian.patheyjohns@orege.com) for Orege or Adam Stein (adam@advantageoussystems.com) for Advantageous Systems). Finally, an important disclaimer: The above is written in good faith. Any miss-representations are completely down to me and my innate ability to oversimplify things and be blindly optimistic about the role technology can play in making the world a better place. Join me in seeing the world through rose tinted spectacles. You will sleep better at night.

No 178: Why old men are grumpy (and how to make them happy)

I like to think of myself as young at heart, but the sad truth is that I am steadily, relentlessly, getting older. The things that brought me joy in the past have changed. I stopped enjoying rollercoasters in my thirties (they make my bones hurt). In my early forties I found that the rush of adrenaline one gets after a great session in the gym had lost its intensity. I just felt even more tired after the session than I did before I squeezed into my lycra (and squeezing into the lycra is almost enough exercise on its own). And now, as I head towards 50 and the age of Grumpy Old Man-dom, I find that if I eat a whole pack of Haribo (as I did last week on a long haul flight - don’t judge me), I no longer get a glorious sugar rush. Instead I just feel a bit sick with a bloated stomach. And my jaws ache.

I have always wanted to age gracefully, but not joylessly. Fortunately I have discovered a new form of entertainment: annoying my accountant.

Long time readers of this blog (apologies for the hiatus by the way) will have already heard about REEF. REEF is the name of the ‘foundation’ we created in Isle back in 2012. It stands for the Revolving Economic Empowerment Fund. REEF provides financial support to water and sanitation entrepreneurs in developing and emerging countries. What makes REEF different to other charitable donations is that our contributions are presented to the recipient as an unsecured loan, not a charitable gift. Essentially we provide loans that no sensible bank would ever endorse! The fund is ‘revolving’ because any money that is repaid is then recirculated to other entrepreneurs (making the money work time after time after time). Obviously since the loan is ‘unsecured’ the recipients could simply treat it as a donation, but they don’t. Everyone who has received support from REEF has treated the money like a proper business loan.

REEF is a marvellous entity and you might think that this blog is going to be me sanctimoniously preaching about how doing this sort of good deed brings joy to my heart, etcetera, etcetera... However, that is not the case. Good though REEF clearly is, my real joy comes from the fact that one of the rules of a REEF investment is that we proudly operate with no (or very very little) paperwork. This annoys my accountant more than words can express, and that fact rather perversely brings a joy to my heart that is similarly inexpressible.

Of course being an accountant he is never truly happy (they are not allowed to be, I think it is part of their professional code). I did see a brief smile once when I shared with him that, despite his cruel belief to the contrary, I do keep and file (some of) my receipts. However when he saw that it was basically just a box into which I randomly toss the receipts his joy melted away (and strangely mine grew….).

The thinking behind REEFs paperless approach is that, rather than spending money on legal paperwork, it is more powerful, more compelling and massively more uplifting for the recipient. By showing the entrepreneur that we trust them we build a strong emotional contract. To date, no one has squandered our trust.

This brings me to our latest REEF investment. It is also the best named charity I have ever come across. In true Catherine ‘Am I bovvered’ Tate style, it is called ‘WellBoring’. WellBoring already provides water solutions for 50 African schools. They expect to reach 100 in the next two years. Our initial investment is to help them repair a drilling rig. Longer term however I want to fund WellBoring’s plan to pilot a model where a "Funji" is employed. A Funji is essentially a waterman/woman who looks after the well site and collects tiny amounts of cash from residents (note to water companies – call your customer service agents Funjis, I think they would like it J). The aim of the Funji is to recoup some of the capital cost, thereby enabling a faster roll-out. This approach is untried and there will inevitably be challenges, but it might be a game-changer and is just the sort of initiative that REEF loves to support (ie creating local employment).

If it works I suspect even my Accountant might grudgingly agree that it is a good idea.

No 177: I have never had a desire to go into space. Not until this week that is.

Last Monday I was lucky enough to spend an evening at the European Space Agency in the Netherlands. I was part of a personal tour given by Dutch astronaut Andre Kuipers. Andre has completed 2 missions to the International Space Station (ISS) and has spent over 200 days in space. Perhaps not surprisingly I found myself in awe of Andre (I am very impressionable). He is in perfect physical form and positively oozes a vibe of serenity and intelligence. You can imagine him calmly telling Ground Control that the engine has died and he is going to have to land the craft with nothing more than elbow grease and spit, and yet still being successful. He also has that impressive capability many Dutch people possess of being able to slip seamlessly between English and Dutch mid-sentence (I did say I was very impressionable).

I confess to having a little bit of a man-crush. However, impressive though Andre is, the star of this story is Hidde Hoogcarspel, the man behind the astonishingly ambitious SpaceBuzz Foundation and the reason I was at the European Space Agency.

The ESA is an amazing place. Three thousand scientists and engineers working tirelessly to push forward our knowledge. I got to see stuff I could never have imagined, from novel space capsules to Mars robots. There is a huge model of the International Space Station hanging in one of the main theatres and this enables visitors to get an insight into just how magnificent, yet claustrophobic, life in space must be. The ISS orbits 400km above the earth. It has 6 permanent astronauts and is stretched out over an area the size of a football pitch. It has been orbiting the earth for 20 years and is comprised of 16 pressurized modules, each carefully and imaginatively named. Russia has Zarya and Zvezda. America’s modules include Harmony and Tranquility. Europe has just one, but its name (Columbus) was clearly chosen to carry the weight of history (and, I suspect, to remind the Americans that we may not have won the space race but Europe ‘discovered’ America so any victory they claim we also have a part in). Japan’s modules are called JEM-ELM-PS and JEM-PM. They clearly missed the memo on ‘how to name your module’, but everyone is too polite to mention it.

At a time when Brexit and Trump might lead us to believe that each country should plough its own furrow the ISS stands as a glorious example of what can be achieved when we work together. But is it worth it, I hear you ask.  All those billions spent on Space Exploration, couldn’t they be better spent? A quick google of ‘inventions we wouldn’t have without space travel’ gives the answer. Literally thousands of inventions owe their creation to the space programme. Teflon. Tick. Satnavs. Tick. CAT Scans. Tick. Ear thermometers. Eh??! Suffice to say, modern life would be very different without space exploration.

This December it will be 50 years since the iconic Earth Rise photo was taken. This was the first time people on earth saw Planet Earth as it truly is: a beautiful, fragile, speck of dust in the awesomeness of space. Astronauts regularly return from space changed. They go into space knowing all the facts about how precious our planet is, but they often return with a renewed perspective and passion for conservation. Our planet is a fragile, insubstantial, beautiful, speck in an unimaginably huge universe. We have sullied it with our manmade boundaries. They may be necessary to have functioning governments but they so often restrict our thinking when it comes to doing what is best for the whole planet.  

This brings us neatly to the heart of the SpaceBuzz initiative. Hidde’s plan is to duplicate the ‘holistic earth’ experience that astronauts encounter and use it to inspire a generation. He intends to build 7000 Space Buses which will tour schools around the globe, reaching 250 million children (Hidde doesn’t lack ambition). The SpaceBuzz programme is aimed at the 9 – 11yr olds and will involve a series of ‘pre-flight’ interactive lessons, followed by a flight in one of the Space Buses (basically huge rockets installed with the latest VR technology that will provide the children with a powerful as-if-you-were-really-there experience). Hidde’s dream is to shift perceptions. Just as slavery is now seen as abhorrent he wants to encourage the next generation to see the world as a delicate, beautiful ecosystem that we cannot take for granted. The SpaceBuzz mantra is Excite, Experience, Educate. I briefly wondered if the SpaceBuzz programme was just another example of scientists getting off on one and being nerdy, but the programme has been carefully crafted to avoid this. Teachers can choose how to develop the ‘post-flight’ experience with their pupils, with options to explore either ecological (flora and fauna), technological (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) or humanitarian angles. The intention is that Isle, the business I work for, will work with Hidde and his team bring to life some of the water-related aspects of this education programme. If you want to help us, please let me know. The more the merrier.

The SpaceBuzz Foundation is supported by some big influential names (WWF, National Geographic, Isle J). If just 0.5% of the children who use it change their views then that is still an impressive 12.5 million people.  That’s enough to make a real difference. Working together we can preserve and protect our planet for future generations. Making the change through the careful design of an inspiring education programme isn’t a particularly new idea. You might even say that it isn’t rocket science.

You would be wrong.

No 176: Our Meghan Markle Moment

Last night in Birmingham, UK, the 2018 Annual Water Industry Awards were held.  Now in their 12th year and organized by WWT, they mark the beginning of Utility Week Live. It was a big swanky event; posh food, black ties, loud music….you get the picture. After years of never quite making it onto the podium, last night Isle walked away with our first ever award. After years of being the bridesmaid, we finally became the bride.

We won in the category of ‘Sludge and Resource Recovery’. If this were the Oscars it would probably rank alongside the Oscar for Best Lighting but I am not complaining. An Oscar winner is an Oscar winner, whether they are Best Director or something a little more obscure. The same logic applies here. We are a winner. At last.

What made our win all the more glorious was that our entry was for the INCOVER project. INCOVER is a collaborative project funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme. It has developed innovative and sustainable technologies for resource recovery, working at demonstration (as opposed to laboratory) scale. It is an awesome project (see http://incover-project.eu/). It has involved testing at scale a wide range of ground breaking sustainable technologies, from hydrothermal carbonization (to generate household fuel from sludge) to algal farms for bioplastics. It was a worthy winner, even if I say so myself.

If Isle was the bride then the groom has to be our fellow European partners. There are (at least) 18 different organisations from across the EU involved in INCOVER, from big utilities to small tech firms, from consultancies to universities. INCOVER is an example of the EU working at its best. As the UK continues on its determined path towards exiting the EU, in all likelihood crashing out without any deal, it is nice to remind ourselves that not everything about the EU was broken. Collaborative, smooth running partnerships do exist. Like-minded, civilised organisations from across Europe are able to work together harmoniously. Who would have thought?   

My role was that of father of the bride. I had next to no direct involvement in the award winning project yet, unlike Meghan’s dad, I dug deep and found within myself the ability to take some of the glory from last night. After all, it has taken 8 years for Isle to make it onto the winners podium. It might never happen again.

No 175: Get angry. Do something. Be imaginative.

Like many others across the globe I have been spurred by the reports of the accumulation of waste plastic in our natural environment to change how I live, and in particular to change the relationship I have with single-use plastics. It has not been easy. Try and live a day without creating plastic waste and you will see what I mean. It is impossible. You have to cheat and change the terms of the challenge to ‘single use’ plastics and even then it is nigh-on impossible (less than 5% of plastic is reused). Last week I was in a café explaining to a friend how I had made it to lunchtime with my only plastic discharge being that annoying plastic cap that goes on the top of milk cartons (weighing less than 0.0005kg; the typical plastic produced per person is between 0.4kg/day – 0.8kg/day). My impressive run however was broken by the arrival of a smoothie (specifically requested in a glass not a plastic cup) with the world’s biggest thickest plastic straw. In a weak lapse in concentration I had lowered my guard and forgotten to stipulate that my drink should be without a plastic straw. It was a rookie error.

I shouldn’t really complain, I have it a little easier than most. As I gracelessly drift into middle age one of the benefits of my receding hairline is that my usage of hair-products, which are invariably contained in plastic, has dropped significantly. It has been 10 years since I used a plastic comb and I hardly ever wash (my hair that is, I am not a complete animal). Nonetheless, when I am in a hotel I still have to actively supress the urge to collect the complimentary bottles of bath foam, shampoo and conditioner. Despite spending half my life in hotels the kleptomaniac in me still hungers to amass these ridiculous freebies, despite them adding nothing whatsoever to the quality of my existence. Like a devout Catholic at confession, I am able to recount exactly how many days it has been since my last shampoo bottle transgression.

Aeroplanes are terrible for plastic usage. The airline hostesses, bless them, bend over backwards to offer a seemingly endless array of single-use plastic items (cups, cutlery and plastic food containers). It is as if my guilt over the carbon footprint of my travel schedule wasn’t burden enough. At least that I can off-set. Hey Mr Airline, want to give good customer service? How about trusting me with a real knife and fork rather than forcing me to pollute the environment with a silly plastic one?  

Of course I recognise that my appetite for plastic is not my only flaw. There are many other  aspects of my life which are equally imperfect and un-environmental: I travel too much, I eat too much red meat, I am about to launch my own unique brand of Shark Fin & Rhino Horn Moisturiser*. But to claim that we shouldn’t address a particular problem simply because there are lots of other problems is wrong, lazy and inexcusable. The build-up of plastic in our environment is an issue we should all get angry about. Righteously angry (the very best sort of angry). A few isolated nutters sending their smoothies back because of a stray plastic straw isn’t enough, We need an army of them.

Some people might argue that small changes made by individuals are meaningless and that real change can only be effected by organisations, politicians and policy makers. They are wrong, We cannot leave this issue to The Suits. It is too big and too thorny to be resolved by them alone. It requires widespread engagement. Thankfully there is lots of activity underway. For example this July Northumbrian Water, a UK Water Company based in the North East of England, is holding its second annual Innovation Festival. This is a week-long event which follows the format of a typical English summer festival (ie lots of rain….) and will involve over a thousand people, both general public and water professionals alike.  During the week there will be a series of  ‘Innovation Sprints’ delving into specific problems. Isle (the business I work for) is leading the Sprint on the plastics challenge.

These Sprints are very intense. Over a 5 day period problems are systematically scoped, solutions evaluated and advancements proposed, refined and tested. It is intense but, as evidenced from last years’ NWL Festival, it delivers great results. The combination of technical brainpower, practical experience and sheer, unadulterated can-do attitude all focused on a target topic is a very powerful tool. Already I have seen some of the potential solutions and they make me quiver with anticipation. I am particularly excited about how the water sector could lead the way with the production of proper biodegradable plastic from sewage sludge (‘proper’ as in fully biodegradable, not the rubbish stuff that is called biodegradable but just breaks into micro particles).

I want you to join me in my Righteous Anger. If you share my passion to address this issue, then please join me in taking action, no matter how small. Cafes will stop using plastic cups only if enough of us make a fuss. It won’t be enough on its own of course. This issue requires a swathe of technical, operational, economic and behavioural solutions, all working in tandem. Perhaps we should start by identifying everyone who disposes of more than 500g/day of plastic and painting their front door with a big red cross.

In blood.

Theirs.

Perhaps that’s going a little too far. Nonetheless, I suspect the limit to how much our generation can solve this problem so that it does not burden the next is the scale of our imagination. If you want to be part of the Northumbrian Water Innovation Festival and the Innovation Challenge on plastics then please let me know, or visit the Northumbrian Water website for more details.  

 *Not all of these are strictly true

FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE VIDEO AT https://plasticoceans.org/about-film/ OR READ THE TRULY EXCELLENT ESSAY BY CLAIRE LE GUERN AT http://plastic-pollution.org/ . THE PHOTOS ALONE ARE WORTH THE CLICK.

For more blogs by Piers click on: http://notesfrompiers.blogspot.co.uk/