Northfield Ecocentre Reports
Every April Northfield Ecocentre produces an Annual Report which contains information on the previous years work, the Ecocentre accounts, measurements for our environmental impact and details about how the organisation is run. You can download these reports below in a PDF format along with some of our organisational policies.
2010 Annual Report
2009 Annual Report
2009 (full report) Story of 2009 (basic report)
Research Reports
Rebecca Ince is a Masters student who approached us wanting to research the effectiveness of our community groups in developing environmental awareness and teaching sustainable living skills. We thought that was a great idea as we are always looking to assess our work so we commisioned her to do just that. The link below takes you to her final report.
Community Groups research & evaluation
There's a lot in the report we found interesting and we will be continually looking at the groups to increase their effectiveness, but one of the main points we found interesting was how people become more open to making behaviour changes to protect the environment if they do it as part of a wider social group. In other words, they see other people making changes so decide to change themselves. Interesting stuff!
Sarah Amos is a BA Geography student at the University of Birmingham who recently did a placement with the Ecocentre as part of her course. While she was with us we asked her to look into the barriers to solar pv uptake within Northfield to help us work out the best ways to promote this technology within our area. Below is a link to her abstract which briefly describes her project and what she found out.
Barriers to solar pv uptake within Northfield
Evaluation Reports
High Street Energy Advice Project
Between March 2010 - March 2011 Northfield Ecocentre was the lead organisation on a 'High Street Energy Advice Project' funded through Birmingham City Council. During that period our trained energy advisors worked within the community offering free advice sessions to individuals aimed at reducing their fuel usage and importantly reducing the risk of fuel poverty within the poorer areas of Northfield.
The evaluation of the project concluded that it was highly effective in achieving these aims, something which we are very proud of. Contained below are extracts of that evaluation highlighting some of the key strengths of this project. For a full report please click here.
Results of follow-up survey
The results of 41 follow-up surveys are listed below, half of the surveys were conducted by partners within the project, the other half were undertaken by the evaluators.
Quality of Advice
The advice was very highly rated. 93% of respondents rated the advice as either ‘good’ or ‘very good’. None rated it as ‘very poor’.
Impact of Advice
Two-thirds (66%) of respondents said that they had made some physical changes to their homes. This included draught-proofing, secondary glazing and other measures (a fuller list is shown later). 61% of respondents reported making behavioural changes as a result of advice.
Nearly two-thirds (63%) of respondents said that they had saved energy as a result of the advice, and a similar proportion (66%) said that they had saved money.
29% of respondents said that they had installed insulation, which included tank insulation and loft and wall cavity insulation, and nearly a quarter of respondents (24%) said that they had installed low energy bulbs following advice (it would be tempting to believe, with the widespread availability of heavily subsidised low energy bulbs, that there would be little further scope for their use, but this is clearly not the case). 17% of respondents installed draught-proofing, including chimney balloons. 10% installed curtains. Most of these measures are (or can be) inexpensive, but changes also included double and secondary glazing and new central heating boilers.
It is more difficult to categorise the reported behavioural changes because there was such a wide variety of changes. However, broadly, 37% - over a third - of respondents said that they had turned appliances off more frequently, or off standby when not in use. 20% had lowered the heating thermostat or used heating timers. 12% cooked more efficiently – for instance using pressure cookers or cooking meals together in the oven. 7% washed their clothes (or themselves) more efficiently.
Summary
The project has successfully encouraged modest changes which are within the reach of people with few resources or with little scope for action. A programme of home visits may have produced quicker assessments, but also the temptation to produce a shopping list of unachievable changes. Working through a questionnaire which made participants think about what they did and did not know about their homes and energy use – away from their home – is likely to have created more engagement with the issue than a more ‘technical’ home assessment which involved the householder less. This is important where behavioural change and small-scale investment is all that is realistically achievable.
