Out, proud and green

I've just discovered what a great job the team at Manchester Pride are doing on making our city's annual gay pride party - one of the biggest and longest running in the UK - into a more sustainable event.

This year was as fabulous as ever, with a bit of science theme thrown in to commemorate the amazing Alan Turing (apparently a “Gayger” counter was featured, as well as a profusion of Turing’s Sunflowers). The Pride team also made huge headway on cutting their waste, too.

They got all the businesses in the cordoned off area for the event to suspend their own waste company collections during the period so they could manage all the waste across the whole site.

Historically it's been difficult to get the bars to split their waste into recyclable and non recyclable due to the fact they are so busy over the weekend, so they took the decision to employ additional staff to go into the bars themselves to collect the bottles and other recyclable waste.

The bars are mainly on a run along Canal Street so the staff went from one bar to another along the strip collecting the waste.

Pride's aim over the last few years has been to increase the amount of waste recycled and five years ago, the recycling rate was approximately 10% - they had some ground to make up.

This year, in total, their waste management company collected 22,700kg of waste and recyclable materials and they recycled a total of 9,590Kg which means the recycling rate was a massive 42.25%, nearly 10% up on last year's figures and a big leap up from 10% five years ago.

Where's Manchester up to on climate change?

I've just been pulling together a presentation on climate change action across Manchester as part of my job as chair of the city's climate change steering group. All suggestions for other projects very welcome!

Stateofthe city2012

View more presentations from Creative Concern

Greater Manchester signs off 48% carbon target

Imagine that - kicking off a blog posting with a headline that references percentages, targets and an admin process for signing off a strategy; stay awake at the back there!

It's pretty fundamental this one; Britain's second city (Greater Manchester to you and I) has signed off a climate change strategy that sets a pretty ambitious target of 48% carbon reductions by 2020 against a baseline level of 1990.

It doesn't stop there. The strategy covers all the bases, including mitigation, adaptation, green jobs and the need for a cultural shift (low carbon hegemony anyone?). The other cheeky bit lurking under the tarpaulin is an emerging measure for the thrillingly entitled 'Scope 3' emissions. To anyone who doesn't doze off at night with a copy of 'advanced carbon footprinting' clutched to their bosom, these are the emissions that we usually try and ignore: the stuff we buy, the flights we take, the food we eat.

Here's the first glimpse of our 'consumption-based' carbon footprint

The strategy as presented to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority can be downloaded from here. It's still in a stripped down, word-processed, no-frills format, but is well worth having a gander at. The headlines, in essence, are:

 - A rapid transition to a low carbon economy

 - Collective carbon emissions reduced by 48%

 - Be prepared for and actively adapting to a rapidly changing climate

 - ‘Carbon literacy’ will have become embedded into the culture of organisations, lifestyles and behaviours

There's some progress already, with a number of low carbon buildings, a domestic retrofit programme, emerging heat network plans, a green deal project and the introduction of an electric car charging scheme already well underway, but it's only the start.

The other issue for me is that it is a solid step towards getting all ten Greater Manchester authorities onto the same track on climate change. I chair the steering group for Manchester's own plan - 'A Certain Future' - and I know that we could achieve so much more if we all worked together, better, to cut carbon and adapt for the changes that lie ahead.

Charting our course for a certain future

New year, new plans to save the world... but first a look back, finally, at the big bash that took up a good deal of my time at the tail end of 2010 - the first stakeholder conference for ‘Manchester: A Certain Future’, which took place at the revitalised Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) on 30 November 2010.

(M:ACF in case you're wondering, is Manchester's Climate Change Action Plan, which I had a hand in helping to write in 2009.)

Back to MOSI, though. Delegates from a host of different organisations and sectors took part in a hands on, highly interactive day of workshops, debates and networking sessions designed to help all of those attending to share their plans for the future, identify what was working (or not) in the fight against climate change and to make fresh connections with possible future partners.

The shape of the day was deliberately experimental, from an art session where participants were given the opportunity to literally draw what a low carbon culture looked like, to ‘carbon dating’ where the focus on was on a series of quick fire meetings with new people to share ideas and thoughts for the future. There was also a masterclass on low carbon regeneration and a series of sessions where delegates shared the barriers they had overcome, or their plans for the future.

Future scenarios

As well as chairing the day, I had the chance to run two 60-person sessions with Joe Ravetz of the University of Manchester to focus peoples’ minds on that certain future, using the scenarios (good and bad) that have been created by the University’s Eco Cities research team. The two scenarios – an Upward Spiral and a Long Descent - were brought to life by fictional radio broadcasts from the future crafted by Phil Korbel of Radio Regen and then participants voted on how they thought Manchester stood in the face of such changes.

The good news? Few participants thought that our city is on a collision course with certain disaster, by stating that they thought the future set out in a Long Descent was a sure thing. In fact in both sessions, half or more of those taking part stated that they thought Manchester was a headed in the right direction, to some degree.

When we asked in what areas we were strong or weak in the face of climate change, those taking part felt that we had a good track record on technology and innovation an that we had strong political leadership driving us forward. Where were judged to be weaker, by those voting, was on a shared set of public values around climate change, and on working towards a more equal society.

What next?

Shared values and developing a low carbon culture were the clear priorities that emerged from the day, including a final concluding vote from delegates that gave our stakeholder steering group a clear mandate to push for this as a focus for 2011.

Attendees also told us how they thought we could improve the conference for 2011, including building in more advanced notice of the event, improving the diversity of the event (though a number of attendees remarked on how it wasn’t the ‘usual suspects) and to create a greater presence for the event in the conventional media, as well as the Twitter reports that were a feature of the day, thanks to Inside the M60.