“I’m just popping down to Tesco for a solar panel” doesn’t sound right somehow. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m not sure that the entry of the supermarkets into the renewable energy market is a good thing. 

Sainsbury is first out of the starting gates. It opened Home Energy Centres in three of its stores (Camberley, Kidderminster and Leicester) at the end of last year in partnership with EDF Energy. They will sell solar panels, heat pumps and insulation, and EDF Energy advisors will be on hand to provide people with a free tailored energy saving plan and advice on energy efficiency. All the products can be delivered nationwide and installed by an EDF installer.

Earlier this month M&S joined forces with Scottish and Southern Energy to launch M&S Energy. Its first services are loft and cavity wall insulation with prices starting at £149. That will be followed by a range of products including bespoke energy advice, renewable energy solutions such as solar panels and heat pumps, and energy efficient heating over the coming months. It’s available through M&S stores and online.

Tesco hasn’t announced its renewable energy programme yet. It already has a home insulation service up and running. Enact Energy, the company that runs it, is also recruiting independent solar installers to join Tesco’s and M&S’s renewables programmes.

The good side to the supermarkets coming into the market is that it sends out a clear message that renewable energy is part of the mainstream. But I worry about the impact they might have on the market.

Part of my concerns are voiced by Dan Crossley, principal sustainablility advisor at Forum for the Future. “[The supermarkets'] approach has often been … a pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap model” he says. While I’m not denying that price is important, renewable energy is so site-specific that it needs a much more tailored approach than you would traditionally expect from a mass retailer.

Another of my concerns is the impact it will have on the small businesses that make up such a large proportion of the installer market. Will they find themselves squeezed on price in the way that farmers have done? With both Tesco and M&S recruiting from a relatively small pool of MCS accredited installers, what will the market look like in a year or so? And will it give value to the consumer?

The Conservatives appear keen to encourage the big retailers to play a significant role in improving the energy efficiency of homes. David Cameron announced last year that he’d have a programme up and running from day one of a tory government, and that agreements are already in place with M&S and Tesco.

Supermarkets, while convenient, specialise in encouraging us to buy the foods that give them the biggest profits, not the ones that are healthiest or taste best. This is my worry. The right renewable energy isn’t something that you can pick off the shelf. It needs careful thought and a holistic approach which takes in the specifics of each house, and how the inhabitants use it. Will this be a shift in emphasis too far for the supermarkets? Let us know what you think – especially if you’ve used any of the services they are offering.

First published on www.yougen.co.uk

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A British supermarket chain is beating traffic congestion and reducing its carbon footprint by using a non-motorised, hand-drawn truck for deliveries of less than a mile.

Hand carts are thought to have been used first in Sumeria over 5,000 years ago, but Waitrose is using an up-to-date version to make deliveries that would normally be undertaken by a diesel-engined lorry.

Director at the Environmental Transport Association, an  organisation that campaigns for sustainable transport, Andrew Davis said: “In this case, ancient technology is a perfect solution to today’s problems of congested streets and polluted air.”

“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.” Albert Einstein

Billions of the UK’s bees are dying from unknown causes and one in
three of honey bee colonies in the UK were lost last winter alone.
Honey bees are vitally important for everyone. In all, they are
responsible for pollinating one-third of all the foods we eat!

Join the Save Our Bees Campaign > > >

Coordinated by the British Science Association, in collaboration with the British Beekeepers’ Association, supported by the
Bumblebee Conservation Trust and sponsored by Rowse Honey. NSEW is funded by the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills.

Ethical junction member sust-it.net has been short-listed for the Best Green Campaigner category of this year Green Awards for Creativity in Sustainability.

The electricals energy efficiency website works to help people save money and reduce CO2, by providing a way to compare the energy consumption of nearly 3000 electrical products – from Tumble Dryers to TVs. 

Lisa Jackson of Eurydice PR and EJPR spills the low-cost, own-brand beans on cheap supermarket imitations

The most noticeable effect on every single person in the country of the current economic crisis is how much our weekly food bills are, and the supermarkets have really pulled the gloves off to battle for what little we now have in our purses for our food.

For some it could even be construed as a challenge as we eke out our weekly food bills – especially where families are concerned – and the media certainly doesn’t help at times with their constant tirade of “beat the credit crunch” articles about what foods, products and services are the cheapest. But is cheapest necessarily the best? As providers of ethical products and services of course we are all in the know about the real cost of so-called bargain buys – and not only do we mean the producers, suppliers and distributors.

We all know that cheap more often than not means suffering, destruction and hardship but even the most ethical of us all are being put to the test when faced with diminishing spending power. I’ve even been guilty of it myself lately – usually throwing the organic choice in my supermarket basket without any hesitation but now, more than ever, my hand hovers over those slightly cheaper versions of the same thing, my conscience pricking as it wrestles with looming visions of the bank manager waving red bills in my face!

But – when it comes to food in particular, it is essential that we don’t go cheap just for the sakes of our purses – food is our fuel and determines our present and future health, so whilst we must tighten our belts financially, it is crucial to realise that eating cheap could actually be costly – to our health.

For the first time in years the supermarkets are actively competing for sales from their own-branded product lines against big names that the British public have been loyal to for so long, such as Heinz and Hovis. They want us to believe that they’re making exactly the same foods, and that the premium we pay for branded products is merely for the marketing budgets, but don’t be taken in – own branded foods have different recipes, are made in bulk to maximize profit and contain excess salt, sugar and fats to improve taste – but as long as it’s cheaper, they think we won’t mind.

Ways of bulking out food include adding several nutritionally redundant and downright unhealthy thickeners, hydrogenated (saturated) fats, starches, and refined sugars to processed meat, ready meals, and even bread and yogurts. Bury your head in the sand if you will but those value chicken fillets come at a cost – to the chicken.

Value and fast-food non-organic meat and dairy always comes from animals reared in punishing conditions, and with animal feed also containing bulking agents and the ground up remains of their own kind, the recent increase in Frankenstein diseases such as CJD and bird flu isn’t a mystery. Turning herbivores into cannibals may be easier on the wallet but do you really want to risk ending your days with a brain the consistency of cold custard? Oh, and don’t forget all the antibiotics, hormone supplements and other delicious chemicals routinely fed daily to animals to increase their flesh, which remain in the meat ready for us to enjoy as well.

The Bible says “man cannot live on bread alone” and it’s right – despite the recent craze for the Atkins diet, bread remains one of our main staples and white bread in particular a cultural favourite. However, mass produced bread contains more yeast and gluten than more expensive loaves (which has actually been linked with the recent rise in yeast and gluten intolerant people), as well as hydrogenated fat and E numbers to preserve and bulk the dough. A recent scan of the list of ingredients of an own-brand loaf revealed a list of nearly 20 ingredients, most of them unpronounceable.

It’s so tempting to take up the latest offers, must-haves and bulk buys every time we shop, particularly when we’re promised double, treble, zidzupillion extra loyalty points, but the smiling hypocrisy of supermarket advertising never fails to astound me. Already the shelves are lined with row after row of sickly fattening cakes and treats (does anyone eat marzipan, brandy butter or cranberry sauce at any other time of the year?) ready for Christmas; the wine section has swapped its offers from wine to spirits in readiness for granny wanting her annual glass of festive sherry, and I noticed in Sainsbury’s the other day that the inevitable Yorkshire puddings and frozen roast potatoes – Aunt Bessie has a lot to answer for – are in prime position with a discount, ready for Christmas Day. From now on we’ll be faced with an onslaught of advertising in-store and out, to “make Christmas dinner special” (it’s just a roast but with paper hats and a family argument!) – but you wait, a week later the shelves will be piously stocked with only diet and low-fat foods for our remorseful, over-stuffed faces.

But the fact is all we are buying day in and day out is food – simply food. Fuel and sustenance for body and brain, and we just don’t need Jamie Oliver popping up in the middle of Corrie, the daily papers, billboards, in-store displays, enticing offers or BOGOFs (buy one get one free) offers telling us what to eat and when. The less food but better quality you buy, the healthier you’ll be and the less money you’ll be placing into the supermarket bosses’ annual bonus. Now, would you pass me an organic carrot stick!

Chew on this:

• There are 890 million undernourished people in the world
• 16,000 children die of hunger every day
• Nearly 10 million children die before they reach their 5th birthday
• 1 billion people are overweight
• $25 billion is spent on dieting every year

Lisa Jackson runs a PR company, Eurydice PR, specializing in ethical & environmental publicity and provides a dedicated PR service for Ethical Junction members who wish to increase their exposure in the press and to the public. For more information click here or email Lisa at lisa@ethical-junction.org telephone 01440 709460 mobile 07702 415187 – even in a recession profile and publicity is essential and at Ethical Junction we can help you do it professionally to the tightest budget!

This week two groundbreaking Brits will start their attempt to break a new speed record in the most advanced wind powered vehicle ever produced.

Dale Vince, Ecotricity MD, and engineer, Richard Jenkins, will attempt to break the 116.7mph land speed record for a wind-powered vehicle (WPV), held currently by an American team, on Australia’s Lake Lefroy.

The Greenbird is a highly-evolved vehicle that uses a combination of technology found ordinarily on Aircraft and Formula 1 cars to achieve staggering speeds- with no engine in sight.

The chosen name is a nod to Donald Campbell’s all-conquering Bluebird, The Bluebird achieved incredible speeds in a golden age of fossil fuels – when oil was cheap and no one had thought that one day it would run out. Fast forward to today and we are coming to the end of the age of fossil fuels and the dawn of the age of Renewables. The Greenbird symbolises this historical watershed better than anything else.

“Cars of the future won’t be running on fossil fuels they will be running on Renewable sources of energy like the Wind. And with today’s technology we can achieve incredible speeds, using only wind power” said Dale Vince.  

Vince became involved in the Greenbird project as a result of his dedication to wind-generated technology – his pioneering power company Ecotricity introduced the concept of green electricity to the world, and has been building wind turbines and selling green electricity across the country since 1996. Ecotricity now supplies 35,000 homes across the UK.

The company also directly reinvests money that customers spend into new forms of clean power. Over the last four years Ecotricity has spent an average of £460 per customer, per year, on building and developing new renewable energy sources.

The Greenbird craft is a culmination of 10 years hard work, thousands of man hours and 5 prototype vehicles. For any powered speed record, the basic principles are pretty straightforward: more power means more speed and it is really only a factor of budget, engine size and guts to raise the record.

The Greenbird team saw no challenge in that. “We wanted to develop a purely technical solution that would deliver ultimate performance from a free and available resource – the wind. After 10 years I now have the right vehicle, in the right part of the world with the right team in support. We now just need the weather to cooperate!” said Richard Jenkins.

Dale Vince and Richard Jenkins will be blogging from the outback in the run up to the attempt. Sign up to RRS feeds and follow the team’s progress at the Greenbird website

Fishing Experts Fish4Ever and Marine Connection Join Call for Supermarkets to Add Sustainable Fish to Canned Range

Fish4Ever, the UK’s leading sustainability experts for canned fish, welcomes Greenpeace’s ranking of the major canned tuna brands and urges supermarkets to now address the issue comprehensively.

Fish4Ever has banned FAD’s and all other damaging fishing methods from all its fish from the very beginning and welcomes the recent increased interest in this issue.

Fish4Ever Founder Charles Redfern says: "Up until recently it’s as if the supermarkets commitment to sustainability didn’t stretch to the canned fish counter. We were the only ones to address the issue and we’ve been a voice in the wilderness for a long time so we’re really happy that Greenpeace and others have pushed this issue onto the agenda.

Marine Connection fisheries officer, Lissa Goodwin adds: "Eating fish can be a minefield for many people – dolphin friendly stickers are not necessarily helpful as there are many other sea creatures under threat. The only way to be sure that you are not going to be destroying the ocean habitat or risking the lives of sea creatures is to buy sustainable and ethical options. While some supermarkets are becoming proactive on the fresh fish counter it is time they considered the sustainability and ethical practices in their canned fish aisles!"

Fish4Ever’s approach is as comprehensive as possible: Land, Sea and People.  All land ingredients are organically grown. This has important sea consequences too as pollution and run-off of artificial fertilisers causes major problems to sea life. At sea, Fish4Ever supports better-managed seas, avoids the very serious and widespread issue of illegal fishing and only supports highly selective methods and equipment.  

But it’s the "people angle" which really sets the company apart. The fish resource is abused by foreign industrial boats responding to a global industrial demand system that does not take into account the planet or the producer. Fish4Ever wants to see this trend reversed, to link good consumers with good producers and above all to send a message through to everyone in the producing chain saying it’s not just about price, it’s about what you do and how you do it too.

The company has a comprehensive range of canned fish all sourced ethically and sustainably. The new Fish4Ever Fair Fish Skipjack tuna from the Maldives provides a 10% premium to ensure local communities are not exploited. Skipjack is the biggest fish consumption in the UK, it’s more than 50% of the canned fish market and accounts for a massive 20% in weight terms of all fish consumed! See attached brochure for further information about the hidden cost of tuna!

A hard copy of The Hidden Cost of Tuna is available from the company – contact Marketing Manager Tracy Wright on 01189238763 or email tracy@organico.co.uk and on www.fish4ever.co.uk

Fish4Ever is currently applying for accreditation from the Fair Trade Association.

Marine Connection is a British charity supporting dolphins, porpoises and other sea creatures. See www.marineconnection.org