Great British Refurb Film Competition - 1/12/2011
The Great British Refurb has just launched a
film competition for all aspiring film-makers. Entrants have the
task of making a 60 second film to enthuse the British public on
saving energy at home through refurb. The competition is open
for entries until the 16th January 2011.
The winning film – which will be judged by
Kevin McCloud, the Energy Minister Greg Barker MP and several other
judges from the worlds of business and film – will be rewarded with
a cash prize of £1,500, HD camera film equipment from Canon UK,
plus the commission to produce a campaign film for Great British
Refurb partner WWF-UK.
Full details on the competition are available
here: http://www.greatbritishrefurb.co.uk/film-competition
Knauf Insulation and the Great British Refurb
Knauf Insulation is the campaign sponsor and
leading delivery partner of the Great British Refurb,
and has provided all the insulation products used in the campaign’s
eco-refurbs, including Rebecca’s house in Manchester, and
the ‘Home of the
Future’ competition winners’ home.
Fronted by Kevin
McCloud from "Grand Designs", the Great British
Refurb campaign is all about making it easier, more affordable and
more attractive for everyone in the UK to transform their home into
a SuperHome - one that is cheaper to run, more comfortable to live
in and that produces far less carbon emissions.
If you have not signed up to the GBR twitter or facebook
group why not do so today?
You can find out more about Knauf Insulation's work with the
Great British Refurb campaign below:
- Rebecca's House in Manchester: Case Study -
Video
- 'Home of the Future' competition winners'
home:
Video
Make Your Home a Superhome
If you can't see the video above, you
can watch it on Youtube
Save the
date!
Knauf Insulation and the Great British Refurb campaign have
partnered with the UK's leading parenting website, Mumsnet, to
bring readers a live and exclusive web chat with campaign
ambassador Kevin McCloud.
The chat will begin at 1pm on Monday 20th June
and Kevin will be answering questions about sustainable building
and eco home design as well as how you can green-up your home to
save energy and money. He will also be chatting about his life as a
campaigner, designer and broadcaster.
Mumsnet will be asking you to submit your burning
questions via their website - www.mumsnet.com/onlinechats
- from the 13th June. We look forward to hearing from you!
Building
the House at Parliament
To spread the word about the need for eco-refurb to the
UK's homes, at Government level, Great British Refurb campaign
ambassador Kevin McCloud, constructed 'The House that Kevin built'
in the gardens of the Houses of Parliament. Loads of MPs and media
turned up to help insulate the house as well as all three main
political party spokespeople on this issue. Check out the house
here
http://www.greatbritishrefurb.co.uk/projects-and-events/sep-2009-kevin-and-the-parliament-house-stunt
Webinar with Greg Barker
MP
Last Autumn, Great British Refurb front man Kevin McCloud
took on the Minister of State for Energy and Climate Change, Greg
Barker MP, in a webinar on some of the most pressing issues on
today's green agenda. Watch the webinar, hosted by Knauf Insulation
and Building Magazine, on demand here
www.greatbritishrefurb.co.uk/webinar-on-demand-great-british-refurb-question-time-with-greg-barker-mp
Demand a Better Bill
The Government's Energy Bill will become law by July 2011 and it
needs improving before then. Help us to demand a better Energy Bill
by supporting the Warm Homes Amendment. This will make sure the
Government delivers an energy efficiency programme that will cut
carbon in line with the Climate Act targets whilst helping to
tackle fuel poverty.
Read more about how to sign up here www.demandabetterbill.org.uk/
Guest blog post from Simon McWhirter, Director, Great British
Refurb Project
And recently, Simon McWhirter, Director if the Great British
Refurb campaign, and his team paid a visit to our Cwmbran galss
mineral wool plant. Here is what Simon thought
about their day there...
Some would say it pales in
comparison to recent government revelations about civil
servants getting sent on chocolate-making jollies, but last
month the Great British Refurb team got to visit our
sponsor Knauf Insulation's mammoth
factory at Cwmbran, South Wales.
Being a
bit of a geek I knew I'd enjoy it but it was seriously
impressive. As one would predict a load of materials were
injected in one end of the factory in their raw form (crushed
recycled glass, sand and a few secret ingredients) and
pulsed off the other end in the neat plastic-wrapped
rolls that we've all seen in our local DIY stores. But the
scale, speed and intensity of the process
was inspiring and provided a real sense check on the
level of current UK activity around energy efficiency.
Our tour, ably led by the Ukranian-born plant
manager Oleksandr (goes by Alex), took us through the string
of interconnected buildings that house this
glass-to-insulation manufacturing process. The starting materials,
which currently contain around 60% recycled household and
industrial glass, are all spliced together and forced
into a huge furnace, where they roll around, quickly melting
in the hot cauldron.
Out the back end of the furnace the molten
stream of glass flows – at high temperatures - through a
series of spinning discs rotating at high speeds which
centrifugally toss the mixture to form fibres with new
bio-based binder ECOSE® Technology. Knauf
Insulation has recently revamped the composition of its
binders, which (industry-wide) used to have phenols and
formaldehyde that were necessary to the process. Now these have
been completely replaced by Knauf Insulation’s unique and more
sustainable ECOSE
Technology process. [FYI – this isn’t just sponsor
flattery!]
It wasn't just in this binder end of the
process where they are tinkering with processes and efficiencies.
Massive efforts are underway (continually) to reduce waste, water
use (they are beginning to integrate site-harvested rainwater to
use in their processes) and materials right up and down the
line.
I had a bizarre flashback at this stage to my
village fair this summer as the now cooling glass was
distinctly candy floss-like. We were reliably informed by the
team of guys working in the Knauf War Room (my name, not theirs,
but see later for further James Bond parallels), that
the standard thickness of the individual fibres at this stage
was 6.1 microns wide - if you are one for random statistical
comparisons, you'll be delighted to know that if just
one square metre of their standard loft insulation
was strung out into a single fibre, it would stretch round
the world 5 times – that is, cue drum roll, around 124,500
miles.
When we next see the product on the conveyor
belt, the candy floss has somewhat morphed into cotton wool,
in which form it is tossed into the next oven which cures the
bio-based binder. This effectively gives the product rigidity
(polymerises it, for the detail people out there), and gives
the insulation its distinctive natural brown looking colour. It
then goes through a series of Heath Robinson classics; it is
flattened, the edges are trimmed with huge circular saw
blades (sucking the off-cuts up through mega-vacuums which
spit it back into the system upstream to be reintegrated)and then
finally a huge, jagged-toothed blade swiftly descends
like some weapon employed by a despotic Bond villain
(Statto: it happens in the 007 book Nobody Lives Forever,
which never made it to film). In fact, it does, this having been my
first time in a large scale factory, all feel rather
James Bond - glasses on, ear plugs in, see our secret weapon, but
no pictures in this bit of the factory...!
After that there was nothing more to do to
the insulation than roll it up, wrap it up, compress (to
maximise the number of rolls on each pallet), stack it up and load
it onto lorries for distribution. They were popping off the
assembly line at a fast rate, and it was here that the scale
and impact of what we were looking at was driven home.
These rolls are flinging themselves off the
conveyor belt at this furious speed, 24/7, 365 days a year
(the plant can never be turned off or the cooling materials
would solidify, destroying the £10 million furnace: in
fact, the furnaces basically burn themselves out after
ten years of this continuous use, and then another one has to
be built in its place). And this is only one of the
production lines (of which there are several) in just one of
Knauf Insulation's UK factories (of which there are
also several). In fact Knauf Insulation alone produces half a
million tonnes of insulation every year – a quantity so huge that
it would be impossible to achieve the same volumes from sources
such as sheep! Add its competitors into the mix and the
amount of insulation rolling off production lines across
the UK every hour/day/year is staggering.
Then consider that we think we need to
massively increase the rate of production and
installatio
n of insulation
and wider energy efficiency materials in our homes across the
UK. And do so within pretty tight deadlines.This
is all eminently possible, but there is no doubting the
challenge is huge and the time for vacillation is over.