Welcome to Green Week
Green Week comes at a crucial time following the election of the new government, writes Tony Dean, regional director for the North West at the Environment Agency. We all need to look at how we want our region to develop over the coming years.
Despite economic pressures we can't afford to sideline the need for sustainable development solutions.
At the Environment Agency we want to support development to drive social, economic and environmental improvements. We need to protect what we have and achieve improvements where possible.
We need to recognise that there are challenges ahead. These include looking at ways to handle waste in the construction sector, ensuring that new developments are located where risk of flooding is minimised and that the infrastructure is in place to support both the new and existing communities.
We want to work with developers to help them achieve these challenging objectives and for us the key to that is early engagement, whereby potential issues can be resolved more easily.
We are also involved in progressing the renewable energy agenda to find solutions to our energy security and reduce CO2. However this must be looked at in a sustainable way in terms of resources without compromising other aspects of the environment.
Whilst the region is well placed in terms of infrastructure for utilising waste as a valuable resource, we do need to focus initially at ways to reduce waste where possible, and then where it can't be reduced, use it as a resource.
None of these challenges can be faced by any one organisation in isolation. We need to work together across the public and private sector to ensure our region is a place where people want to live and businesses want to locate and invest.
Nick Storer, chief executive, Envirolink Northwest, comments: As the UK's leading low carbon and energy and environmental technologies and services (ETS) sector support organisation, Envirolink Northwest is delighted to sponsor Place North West's Green Week.
This valued opportunity is the perfect platform from which to bring news and information on new technologies, services and opportunities from within the region's ETS sector to the property, regeneration and construction industries in England's Northwest.
As a not-for-profit organisation, funded by the North West Development Agency, the European Regional Development Fund and local authorities we work to stimulate the market for low carbon / ETS products and services and to help low carbon ETS companies to promote themselves in this important market.
In respect of the construction industry one of our key focuses is on helping firms overcome the barriers to the deployment of renewable energy and energy efficient technologies and recycled content materials, as well as waste management/recycling and water efficiency solutions. We are well aware that the construction, property and regeneration industries in our region are extremely successful and are recognised nationwide as a hub for innovation. We are keen to continue working with these thriving businesses and organisations to help them take advantage of the many opportunities to move towards a low carbon future and to be more sustainable in their procurement practices.
The provision of market intelligence and the delivery of more than 40 networking and supply chain development events each year positions us as leaders in developing and supporting the North West's ETS sector; a sector with more than 5,000 businesses offering low carbon and environmental solutions for a wide range of applications.
- For more information on our unrivalled services visit http://www.envirolinknorthwest.co.uk/
