The Seb & Fiona Blog

Green. Green. Green - is there another colour that’s been spoken about more in the 21st century, especially recently with all the kerfuffle in the papers about carbon offsetting.

We’ve had a fair blast of it here too. There’s Buen Chico who’ve been doing their bestest to lower their carbon emmissions in the making of their debut album, ‘Right to Re-arrange’, out 16th October. There’s Waltham Litho’s approach to printing, and of course the orange tree Seb bought for my birthday (and won’t let me forget). It is, I hate to admit, looking sorrier and less green by the day. I’ve put it on the fire escape in the hope it might ping back from mournful twig to gleeful life.

Amid all this green speculation and confusion it’s good to have an autority come and tell you what’s what.
This is Darren from the London Environment Agency. He came in to talk to us about greening up our act - from the jiffy bags we use to the Britta filter we don’t. He’s been ticking and drawing crosses about our rudimentary recycling and Seb’s messy pile of papers all morning.

Anyway, in a few days time we’ll have a environmental strategy all of our own. If anyone’s interested in getting a consultation you can get in touch with them here.

Portobello Space is a large area just next to Portobello Rd. Its ceiling is an urban motorway, its south wall is the Hammersmith and City Line and its neighbours are the fashion-y bit of Portobello Market, and a skate park.

As part of this year’s Architecture Week (15 - 24 June), we’ve arranged for Portobello Space to play host to one of Amenity Space’s ‘Sonic Sheds’, in which visitors will be transported - aurally speaking - to the countryside, via sounds and images beamed in direct from an equivalent shed in Yorkshire. Similarly, visitors to the other shed, which is in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park will be able to experience the noises of motorway, railway, and possibly skaters desperate to get a message to them.

Urbanism, who operate that section of the market, and the Westway Development Trust, who administer the land beneath the motorway, have asked us to help bring some interesting cultural activity to Portobello Space and this was our first idea. Anyone else who has a shed, an installation, some theatre, an ice rink, a record breaking attempt, a mass book club, or anything else in need of a home for a while, we’d be delighted to hear from you.

I went to Dagenham this week, my second adventure to The Daggers’ home this year. It was a lot sunnier and more fun than the last time. No battling through howling winds, freak rain and a dreadful defeat by Exeter City.

This time William Bellamy Junior School was my destination. I there because of Waltham Litho, the green printers we look after.

Waltham Litho were launching ‘354 Ideas’ - their new series of creative green projects. The number 354 represents the Pantone (print code) for the colour of grass green.

‘Operation Birdtable’, a collaboration between Waltham and the RSPB, is the first of 354 quirky ideas of theirs. They’ve transformed their old, broken supply pallets into feeding tables for birds which are going out to RSPB-affiliated schools. William Bellamy school was the first recipient, and they were very pleased.

Here are Michael, Ronnie and Terri.

Fi.

It’s all about footprints today: snowy ones (first snow of the year in London today), reducing our ones (see cover of today’s G2), and big American ones (the World Economic Forum’s started) too.

So it seems quite fitting that this morning we took on new clients Waltham Litho, a printing company, based in East London specialising in environmentally aware printing who’ve almost eradicated their own carbon footprint.

We’ll be posting more on Waltham Litho’s green ways of doing things here shortly. But in the meantime if you’d like to do your bit to reduce your carbon footprint by using a greener printer, email Matthew, for a quote.

Fi.