Monday evening was spent in a crammed bar in Soho for what at first glance at some of the 80’s hairstyles, seemed to be a Duran Duran video audition, but was in fact the launch party for the Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA).

Raymond Blanc ou Raymond Vert?

The SRA is a much needed initiative. A recent report calculated that taking into account land use, food contributes an enormous 30% of the UK’s carbon emissions. The UK throws away a staggering 1.2 million unused sausages everyday and anyone who has seen the film ‘End of the Line’ knows we are decimating our fish stocks.

Restaurants are a fantastic place to change our unsustainable relationship with food and to start educating and changing the eating habits of people. 

I hope that the SRA can play a key role in the process, but it faces many challenges. It is clear that the organisation has to create a financially viable structure and at the same time build credibility for its accreditation service. 

The SRA’s response to this challenge has been to provide a low entry threshold acknowledging that people are ‘at the table’. Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat Saisons is one of those restaurants that have paid to register at this level. 

How those restaurants that have already done a considerable amount to act sustainably are going to view this low entry point and whether they will wish to be accredited by the SRA remains to be seen and this will be key to the long-term reputation and future of the organisation.

Visit the Sustainable Restaurant Association website.

Eau de Cologne policies

On Tuesday evening I went to a ‘volunteer hustings’ where the three main political parties presented their policies to promote volunteering. This is a real motherhood and apple pie topic, easy for politicians to wax lyrical about the importance of volunteering in providing social glue, community cohesion, blah, blah, blah....

Despite the best efforts of the Chairman, Michael White the Assistant Editor of the Guardian, the debate inevitably fell into this realm of cosiness. The Liberals' approach could best be described as an eau de cologne policy sprayed around to give a sense of general well-being, but when examined closely it was a bit damp, wet and hard to define. 

The Conservatives' Nick Hurd had a much clearer set of policy objectives which were hard to disagree with, and Labour’s approach was basically trust us we have treated the sector well and will continue to do so.

The only time the debate had any edge was a discussion over the youth volunteering organisation V. I am totally biased on this matter because we receive funding from V and Bank of America to run our Climate Squad programme, which we think is fantastic. Organisations such as V run counter to the Conservatives' mantra about the need to reduce large centrally-based organisations and Nick Hurd alluded to this in his presentation. 

However, V has professionalised the interface between volunteering and companies and has been highly successful in securing large sums of corporate funding for volunteering initiatives. Without V, this level of non-governmental funding would not be generated and for this reason alone I think there is a need for a cohesive central body like V whichever political party wins power.

Dodgy wedding boat

The volunteer hustings event discussed the need to encourage companies to devote more employee time to volunteering. One barrier to this is that charities currently do not provide sufficiently high quality volunteering opportunities to meet company requirements. 

I was reminded of this on Thursday, most of which was spent on board a moored boat in the River Thames for the final Sky Leadership Development event. 

As part of the development programme we set Sky Leaders a range of challenges that are faced by Global Action Plan. The results of these challenges were variable. 

Through the input of the Sky employees we have gained excellent advice on how to cost-effectively expand our school programme, we created a COPArt project linked to Copenhagen, and we ran a fantastic community Big Swap event in Tower Hamlets. Less successful were attempts to install smart meters in sheltered accommodation in Scotland, and an idea designed to green football.

We learnt a huge amount through the experience and I am keen that we provide future volunteering opportunities such as this for other companies. Three of our employees also participated in the development programme which was a great experience for them. 

The final celebration itself was a little odd and had the feel of a slightly dodgy wedding event. My learning from the whole thing was that my football skills deteriorate to an even lower level than usual after three glasses of wine.

Find out more about how we work with Sky.

Warmer homes, greener homes

This week saw the Government launch its strategy for household energy management. Like most things that have come out of DECC since Ed Miliband’s arrival it has much to commend it, although some of the policies have been previously announced – is there an election coming?

The strategy has three things of particular interest. The first is that the Government is placing far more emphasis on the strategically important role local authorities and third sector organisations need to play in delivering home energy efficiency. 

They have clearly recognised that the hands-off approach of leaving everything to the energy companies will not work as the complexity of making our homes energy efficient increases. This can only be a good thing although I am intrigued to see how the energy companies and local authorities will actually work together.

The second is the announcement of new pay as you save financing that would enable people to invest in energy efficient up-grades without upfront costs. Interestingly the financing will remain tied against the house rather than with the person. 

This idea needs new legislation but is obviously designed to encourage people to take out the long-term loans that are needed to cover the long payback periods of the existing technology. Whether this factor will be sufficient to encourage people to take out 20-year-plus loans will be interesting to see.

Thirdly, the strategy places a huge level of responsibility on social housing providers to drive change within their sector. In particular, the Government is clearly hoping to encourage these providers to implement district heating systems such as combined heat and power. If successful this element would create significant change but will require a high level of support including further refinement of the planning system.

The only glaring omission from the whole strategy is that it fails to mention anything about making homes more water efficient. This would save energy and reduce household bills – yet another example of Government not connecting the dots.

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