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.

The sound and the fury

Britain is getting noisier – and attempts to curb the national din remain largely on paper. A new source of neighbourly aggravation has meanwhile emerged – laminated flooring. Back in 1999, when Green Futures covered the noise issue [‘Sound Affects’, GF19, p42], a tougher Noise Act had not long been in force, giving local authorities new seizure powers and creating an offence of night-time noise.

There was talk by government of a national noise strategy. Campaign groups were calling for the noise-labelling of products, and tranquillity-friendly initiatives such as low-noise asphalt on roads. There’s still no national strategy – but in 2001 the government published proposals for an ambient (i.e. general environmental) noise strategy, which could be in force in 2007.

It’s also starting consultations on a neighbour noise strategy and has launched a noise-mapping programme. London’s map was published this year – the biggest exercise of its kind so far in the UK. The capital has also produced its own ambient noise strategy.

There’s lots on paper, in short – but where’s the beef? London by itself has little power or money to do anything. Critics such as Mary Stevens of the National Society for Clean Air and Environmental Protection (NSCA) argue that the priority now is not more research and discussion but some “positive and coherent” action.

Surveys this year by NSCA have found that domestic noise complaints are increasing. They rose by 10% between 2000 and 2003. Between 1990 and 2000 the proportion of the UK population affected by “moderately annoying” noise rose from 80 to 85%. Noise is lasting longer too – witness extended rush hours in urban areas and the spread of 24-7 working.

The impact of the 1996 Noise Act, meanwhile, has turned out to be pretty mixed. According to Howard Price of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, its seizure powers proved useful and are being used more widely, but the night-time noise offence was a “compete flop” – difficult and expensive to enforce. Only 14 councils adopted the Act. Some of its powers have now been amended by legislation to curb anti-social behaviour – though Price says it’s too soon to tell whether they’re working.

Nevertheless he believes that the government is “taking noise seriously” as part of a new commitment to local environmental quality. In the real world, meanwhile, UK road surfaces are slowly quietening thanks to the spread of low-noise asphalt, and the building regulations have been improved to improve “attenuation” – sound-dampening – in dividing walls. That’s only in new buildings, of course.

But there’s no sign of a noise-labelling scheme for household equipment. And forget about radios or barking dogs – the big new irritant in neighbourly relations is the fashion for throwing away carpets, replacing them with laminated flooring and then clumping about in our hobnailed boots. In Scandinavia, where every well-bred floor is wood or laminated, they manage things better – they take their shoes off indoors. – David Nicholson-Lord

Two-wheel revolution?

When a company in Bath devised a mountain bike with an electric motor, it hoped to revolutionise cycling in the UK [GF19, p20]. In five years they’ve sold 20,000 of their no-sweat Powabykes, and they’re just starting to make inroads on the European market too. The European Union has helped a bit by making it clear that motorised bikes like these really are license- and insurance-free ‘bicycles’, as opposed to mopeds.

With an average customer age of over 40, Powabyke’s chief exec Nick Child likes to think he’s “getting people back on bikes” not just for leisure, but for shopping and commuting – in place of the car. Encouragingly, a sample survey suggests that 42% of Powabyke owners bought them in place of a second vehicle. The average Powabyke does 1,200 miles a year. If all of that were replacing car mileage, the total fuel saving would be something like 800,000 gallons.

But an electric boost, it seems, is still not enough to make us a nation of cyclists. Not as many Brits have jumped on the saddle as Child (and the government) hoped. The official target of quadrupling cycling by 2006 was actually ditched this summer, replaced by a promise of more achievable local plans. London already looks like something of a success story, with cycling up by 23% this year, and 73% more cyclists entering the central congestion zone at peak times. Perhaps it’s not more power that cyclists need, but more space. &ndash Hannah Bullock
Powabyke, 01225 443737, www.powabyke.com

Less is more for lifts

“The world is a place of limits. Limited space. Limited resources.” But Tom Hubbell of Kone, the elevator and escalator specialists, makes the point – that those limits haven’t stopped them from thinking big. They’ve made them determined to do more with less.

Their first gearless, oil-less and machine-room-less lift won praise back in the late 90s for its energy savings, compared with your average traction or hydraulic model [‘Magnetic lifts are taking off’, GF19, p19]. But back then there were few buildings served by the ‘EcoDisc’ technology – and the lifts couldn’t make it up more than 10 storeys. Now over 50,000 of Kone’s ‘Monospace’ model alone have been installed across the globe, and in London today there are magnetic lifts shooting up more than 40 floors, running up and down inside the City’s ‘Gherkin’ and the imposing Citigroup tower at Canary Wharf. The annual worldwide energy saving could power a city of 40,000 people – and every lift with no machine room means an extra room for another use. – Hannah Bullock
Kone, www.kone.com

Catch the sun, catch the wind

“Refreshes the parts that others can’t reach.” Not a Heineken, but a SunPipe. This simple tube was designed to bring real sunlight into our lives – into the dark corridors of labyrinthine buildings, our landlocked bathrooms and dreary office blocks [GF19, p19] – whilst saving energy. The company behind the device, Monodraught, has since widened its horizons, to bring fresh air into our warm and fuggy offices.

The WindCatcher, a ventilation stack rather like a chimney, draws in cool air down the windward side – and expels the warm stale stuff to leeward. If you want both the sun and the wind, the SunCatcher captures the two. Despite the names, these aren’t to be confused with hippy dream catchers.

Monodraught sells them as sophisticated air conditioning systems – at 25% of the cost. Companies that have cottoned on include Sweden’s mass style guru Ikea and London’s übercool Riverside Studios. What the inventors hope to capture next is the imagination of those who are building the 40-odd new hospitals commissioned over the next few years. Already a handful of our hospitals are piped up. The ideal place to tackle sick buildings syndrome? – Hannah Bullock
Monodraught, 01494 897700,
www.sunpipe.co.uk

10 November 2004

David Nicholson-Lord and Hannah Bullock