By Jonathan Pearce, Marketing Manager at Northgate Vehicle Hire

14 February 2012: Introduced back in 2008 as part of efforts to improve air quality in the capital, the Low Emission Zone (LEZ) has now introduced tighter emissions regulations to force heavy polluting diesel vehicles to become cleaner. Since January, thousands of vehicles have had to comply with minimum Euro 3 emission standards when travelling within the LEZ. Non-compliance is clearly not an option, with the government imposing stinging daily charges and hefty fines.

The fifth in a series of events that began in 2005, WWEM 2012, the Water Wastewater & Environmental Monitoring event (Telford, 7/8th November 2012) will be larger than any of its predecessors and this is due in no small part to the collaborative arrangements that have been established with a number of major organisations, that now includes GAMBICA.

GAMBICA is the trade association for Instrumentation, Control, Automation and Laboratory Technology in the UK. It has a membership of over 200 companies, ranging from major multinationals to medium and small enterprises. Tim Collins is Director of the Laboratory Technology Group and says he is "delighted to become a partner of WWEM 2012; several of our members have already signed up to exhibit and I imagine that more will do so in the coming weeks."

Through the help of Recycling Furniture Ltd, FIRA are now able to recycle a large proportion of the furniture they test, rather than sending it to landfill.

Paul Soley, Operations Manager for FIRA Testing Services said, “At the FIRA testing centre we test thousands of furniture products to life expectancy and in some cases destruction, testing them in terms of strength, safety, stability, durability and flammability. This makes them dangerous for future use, meaning in the past FIRA had no choice but to dispose of them if they were not collected by the manufacturer.”

The full report on the Torbay I-Tree survey entitled Torbay’s Urban Forest - Assessing Urban Forest Effects and Values has now been published by Treeconomics. The completed cost / benefit analysis demonstrates that the value of urban trees to the environment significantly exceeds their cost in management. The figures have already had a positive impact as they have been used by Torbay Council to justify an additional investment of £25,000 into its tree maintenance budget.

South Staffordshire College joins elite group in sustainability standards

South Staffordshire College has become the only FE College in the UK to achieve Gold EcoCampus status and the demanding ISO14011 standards.

Report shows that CPI is playing a vital role in the
development of industrial biotechnology.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) welcomes the Government's commitment to invest in rail rather than seeking to promote new roads or air travel. But there is a long way to go before we can be sure that High Speed 2 (HS2) will not have an unacceptable impact on the landscape and local communities.

Mark Phillips, Head of Sustainability and Environment at South Staffordshire College, has been appointed as a regional advisor for the West Midlands by the Learning and Skills Improvements Service (LSIS).