Creative thinking for Climate Week Challenge

A team from Rochdale Borough Council took up the Climate Week Challenge in a bid to inspire others to live and work more sustainably.

This year’s challenge was to come up with an idea that helps people use less energy heating buildings and water. The team consisted of Councillor Cecile Biant, Ann Hill, from public health, Steven Hwozdyk from environment and Emma Ferguson from media relations.

Following brainstorming of some wacky ideas the group decided upon installing an eco-skin system between the cavity, floor and ceiling fabric of buildings to enable water circulation to provide hot water and heat for the home, which aimed to prevent any water or heat from being wasted by a property. The system collects waste water and rainwater for re-use as either heated water for the eco-skin or grey water for WC flushing or garden water. Any excess heat would be stored in heat batteries for later use. Pumps would be powered through solar PV panels on the roof and solar thermal panels would provide any additional domestic hot water.

Councillor Biant, Rochdale Township Chair and a former design and technology teacher, said: “It was great to work with the team for our very first Climate Week Challenge. Everyone had bags of enthusiasm and some really creative ideas. Hopefully, now we can build upon that experience and submit an even stronger idea next year.”

More than 200,000 people in workplaces and schools take part each year in the Climate Week Challenge, the UK’s biggest environmental competition, which has been running since 2011. The Climate Week Challenge is part of Climate Week, Britain’s biggest climate change campaign.

The national winners will be announced during the week of Monday, 24 March 2014.