Substainability Talk - Pooran Desai

“If everyone in the world consumed as much as in the UK, we would need three planets to support us,” says leading environmentalist Pooran Desai, who is giving a talk at Pelham House, ‘One Planet Living - an opportunity for Lewes’. Pooran is a founding partner of BioRegional, the driving force behind the award-winning BedZED development in Sutton, the first carbon-neutral eco-community in the UK. He will be talking about the lessons learnt from this project, which was completed in 2002, and how they can be applied to future housing developments.

“You can do a lot to make houses ecologically neutral, with the use of solar panels and so on, and create a renewable energy infrastructure as a combination of on and off-site generation” says Pooran. “But we have found that lifestyle choices are of prime importance, concerning transport, waste and food. It is important to incorporate into any new development sustainable lifestyle strategies.” These would include car-sharing clubs, a local closed-loop waste infrastructure for zero waste, and easy access to locally-farmed organic produce. Pooran has been invited to talk by Lewes Matters, the organisation which has been set up to monitor the progress of the Phoenix Development. “The landowner has been invited to the talk,” says Pooran. Who knows, perhaps he will be persuaded to convert the old industrial estate into a cutting-edge eco-friendly carbon-neutral community. Stranger things have happened, and if there’s one place that would suit such a development, it’s got to be Lewes. AG