What a Waste

Programme Outline

In 1990 Leicester became 'Britain's first Environment City'. This programme focuses on a range of green initiatives that are taking place in Leicester, and that could easily be applied elsewhere.

The programme begins with a group of young people helping to clean rubbish out of a river flowing through the city, and then takes us back to their school, which is heavily involved in the Environment City project. The school is constructing a new eco-friendly building - incorporating state of the art insulation and other energy saving features - and is also placing a high priority on environmental themes in the curriculum. Some of the school's pupils discuss environmental issues, local and global, and the state of the planet.

Leicester City Council is very concerned about waste. Each household in the UK throws away about a tonne of household waste a year, and landfill sites are almost full. Leicester is giving a high priority to recycling initiatives. Over half of Leicester households take part in the recycling scheme. Thousands of green bags are delivered each day to the Planet Works recycling centre. The bags are opened and the waste sorted into different types. Metals, such as tin cans, are extracted by machine - but paper and plastics must be sorted by hand, although it is hoped to further mechanise the process in the future. Martin Thorpe explains that the whole point of recycling is to re-use as much as possible, rather than to waste- but it is also pointed out that perhaps a better long term solution to the problem of waste is to use less packaging in the first place.

Britain has some 32 million cars on its roads, causing traffic congestion as well as spewing out fumes which leads to a deterioration in air quality as well as adding to the problem of global warming. Leicester has taken a number of steps to discourage car use, including the provision of an unusually high number of buses. There are also plans to introduce a tram network into the city. Two thousand cars a day take advantage of Leicester's 'Park and Ride' scheme, and a hundred kilometre cycleway network has been built across the city. There is even a bicycle park in the city centre where bikes can be left securely - and can even be serviced and repaired.

Leicester, in common with many cities in the UK, has an energy advice centre - which gives people ideas about how to use less energy around the home. Leicester has taken the idea a stage further however. Leicester residents can take advantage of a free home survey, where an energy efficiency advisor visits their home to suggest ways of saving energy; for example by replacing outdated central heating boilers, improving insulation and installing energy efficient lightbulbs. Leicester also has an 'eco-house', an ordinary house which has been turned into an environmental showcase to demonstrate energy efficiency to visitors, but also to show how recycled materials and environmentally friendly paints and other decorating and building materials can be used around the house and how water use may be reduced, and how solar panels can provide a renewable source of energy.

Leicester hasn't completely solved all it's environmental problems, but has made a significant step in the right direction that others could learn from. It makes economic as well as ecological sense - Leicester's schools are saving half a million pounds a year through energy efficiency measures. Britain as a whole could reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 60% if it made full use of energy efficiency measures and renewable energy sources.