Five years on

In our regular critical review, we revisit stories we identified as interesting back in 1999 – and check where they’re going now.

Green light on the mall

In 1999 we got all enthusiastic about a ‘green’ shopping centre [GF17, p20]. Fast forward five years, and here we are doing it again – but with reservations, and a change of venue. Back then we were hailing the Ökozentrum Rommelmühle near Stuttgart as ‘Europe’s first specialist shopping centre’.

Sadly, by mid-2003 the project at this huge old converted mill had run out of steam – and money. The receivers were brought in, amid much muttering about missed opportunities. There remained a strong sense that it might have been saved by better management of the retail collective, and perhaps a stronger product focus on health and ‘wellness’.

Just off the M5 near Dudley in the West Midlands, Merry Hill may lack the Rommelmühle’s romantic setting, and it’s certainly much more mainstream in what it sells, but its business prospects look a lot rosier – and it reckons to be a contender for the title of Britain’s greenest shopping centre. If you’d visited this merrily named out of town mall just after Easter, you’d have seen special collection points for Easter egg packaging, rubbing shoulders with booths for sending second-hand specs to the third world, and in-store holiday entertainment aimed at enthusing kids about recycling and tree planting.

The 3,000 trees planted on the site so far are watered from bore holes dug to reduce mains water consumption. In the vast atrium, lights stay off longer thanks to the natural light pouring down on shoppers, and the windows actually open too, so there’s no need for air-conditioning on sticky summer Saturdays. Chelsfield Merry Hill Investments, the company managing the 220-store mall, not only keeps a close eye on its own environmental impacts, but requires its suppliers to do the same.

Even landscapers and cleaners are ‘vetted’ as part of the tendering process. The centre will get formal recognition for all this when it is assessed under the retail benchmarking index recently designed by the Building Research Establishment (BRE). It is also having its ‘social impact’ – on staff, community, suppliers – audited by consultants FaberMaunsell.

But hold on a minute – ‘out of town mall’ isn’t exactly synonymous with sustainability, is it? As Merry Hill’s own website admits with refreshing candour: “We are aware that on first impression, developments such as ours may not be perceived as particularly environmentally friendly.” In this case, though, it does have a decent response – a plan to bring the Midlands Light Railway right through the site.

The resident retailers have already put down substantial financial backing. Popularity, perversely, brings its own problems – though they surely wish they’d had these at the Rommelmühle. Every new customer means more packaging to recycle, every extra hour of late night shopping means more lights on – and the harder it gets to keep the site’s overall environmental impact down. Shopping and sustainability still make uneasy bedfellows. – Hannah Bullock
Carla Whelan, Chelsfield MH Investments Ltd,
01384 487902, www.merryhill.co.uk
Tim Bevan, BRE, 01923 664645
Lionel Delorme, FaberMaunsell, 020 7601 1652

Like water from a stone

“Water was so scarce that sometimes people would borrow water the way they borrowed money.” This is just one story from the barren Hitosa region of Ethiopia, but there are more – of cholera, and the 20 km walk each day to fill the jerry can from a stagnant pond. Several years on, though, Haji Gebi Hayi, local resident and chairman of the new water management board, tells us that “those problems and the water related diseases have now gone”.

If you’re imagining that’s thanks to hi-tech drilling operations and a wodge of Western aid money, you’re mistaken.... Water now reaches 60,000 people in 31 villages simply through the force of gravity and the hard graft of the locals themselves. When Green Futures last reported [GF17, p33], residents had organised themselves into groups and were working with WaterAid digging the trenches and laying the pipes to bring water down from two mountain springs.

Today, “instead of people going out to search for water, the water comes to find people in their homes through the pipes”, says Hayi. With farmers able to work on the land every day, and kids freed up to go to school, the communal taps have been a boost to the region’s economic life, too. An army of new health advisors, technicians, admin and finance staff, trained up by WaterAid, now run the show. Since the charity left the project, they’ve tapped other springs and opened new village water points.

There’s even talk that the government, who helped support the project, will base its own water services on the Hitosa model. Perhaps there’s inspiration for us too, in a community taking ownership of a scheme, rolling up its sleeves and achieving the impossible. – Hannah Bullock
Jules Action, WaterAid,
020 7793 4553, www.wateraid.org

Crocodile smiles

Walking to school is as old as education itself, but in Britain’s towns and cities it was an idea in need of all the help it could get, when the Pedestrians Association produced its Walking Class guide five years ago [GF17, p12]. Since then it has seen something of a renaissance, with the national panic about obese children adding to concern about traffic and safety problems associated with the school run. The Safe Routes to Schools scheme launched in 2001 registered a phenomenal uptake, culminating in the recent conferences in Leicester and Belfast, and over 2,000 Safe Routes to Schools projects are now in operation across the UK, co-ordinated by the National Travelwise Association and Living Streets.

But we’re still streets behind Denmark, where 60% of children now cycle to school, compared to less than 1% in the UK. This May, the first national Walk to School Week encouraged parents to walk to school with their young children as often as possible, both during the week and beyond – or, if they have to drive, at least to walk the last part of the way and keep the school gates clear of traffic. Backing up the initiative, the campaign group Sustrans has launched a new and improved version of its Safe Routes to Schools website, covering both walking and cycling and making the powerful point that many children prefer to be independent rather than car-dependent. Users of the site can now share their knowledge and expertise via the ‘Routes Community’ message boards, and find out what’s going on with other projects around the country. – Roger East
Sustrans, 0117 927 7555, www.sustrans.org.uk
www.saferoutestoschools.org.uk

7 July 2004

Hannah Bullock and Roger East