Brighton and Hove has been named as one of Britain’s greenest cities in a new study commissioned by one of the country’s biggest banks.
The study analysed and ranked the 25 most populous cities in Britain against 17 criteria and found that Brighton and Hove was the fourth greenest.
The accolade came in spite of the poor recycling rate of about 30 per cent – significantly lower than Manchester, Bristol and Hull, where the figure is closer to half.
The national average stood at more than 37 per cent, according to the study.
Top spot for the greenest city went to Sheffield, once the steel-making capital of the world and famous for its cutlery.
The South Yorkshire city has already won several awards for its “Grey to Green” scheme as it aims to become a net-zero carbon city by 2050.
Sheffield was followed by Edinburgh, in second, then Cardiff, with Brighton and Hove next and Bristol fifth.
In Brighton and Hove’s favour, people use the second-lowest amount of electricity per head, although this may reflect the milder winters in the south.
Fewer people commute by car than in any of the 25 cities, with the figure estimated to be just under 40 per cent.
And Brighton and Hove has the third-highest proportion of people commuting by bike, with the figure estimated to be almost 5 per cent.
Other cities had notably higher percentages of ultra-low emission vehicles, more green space and generated more green energy – although plans are afoot to double the size of the Rampion offshore wind farm.
The study was commissioned by banking group NatWest, working in collaboration with experts from the Southampton University.
It was described as “the most comprehensive study of its type to date”, with lead input from Professor William Powrie, professor of geotechnical engineering.
The bank commissioned the study “to mark the integration of carbon footprint tracking” to its personal banking app, describing it as “a UK banking first”.
It said: “The new feature will allow customers an integrated and tracked view of their personal carbon footprint based on their spending habits.”
Desperate times for the Greens.
PR spin with lies, damned lies and statistics.
Such a great green city. Proud to live in a place where folk enjoy the sea, mindfulness and loving the planet. We all need to be mindful of mindfulness. Well done greens. And breathe…
I wouldn’t recommend breathng, as you pass some of the mountains of rubbish lying around our streets. You are liable to want to throw up at the ghastly smell.
Oh, here she goes again. Mindfulness, green tea, candles and absolutely blind to anything that goes on in the city that affects anyone other than herself. For the record, Catherine, when you get off magic mushrooms or whatever it is you ingest, some of us cannot even get down to the sea, we do not love woke and fake green planet Brighton & Hove as it has become, we cannot cycle or even walk much and it would be good (or even totally amazing) if you even thought about or acknowledged that a lot of us are not on the same planet as you – whatever planet you may be on – and are really struggling to survive with Covid, lockdowns, disabilities etc.
Goodnight!! Hope you never post on this platform again but, if you do, you will just make yourself even more ridiculous than you already are.
Of course it is one of the greenest cities, you only have to walk along any street and see weeds and grass growing on the pavements. Soon we will all be walking on this as it will take over the pavements and walkways of Brighton. Our kids will never see concrete pavements.
So if the windfarm wasn’t there, then Brighton would not have scored so well? Guess that made up for a lot of points lost elsewhere.
So yesterday the bin met arrived at my block of flats.
They emptied all the bins in the bin store.
They then emptied all the recycling bins into their truck as well.
I’m not seeing ‘green’ I’m seeing RED…
May I just say, re recycling, that when we had the black box system (‘they’ went over to communal bins unilaterally for everything in roads that had some flats, although mainly houses with space to put rubbish out for collection), I had room to put out black boxes containing recycling. It usually got collected, although the boxes (painted with house number on the outside) often disappeared, but by and large it worked.
These days, ‘one’ is required to stagger around various communal bins in all sorts of silly places with different types of rubbish/recycling, so some recycling gets slung in rubbish because of the sheer inconvenience and idiocy of the system. Not that I have any hope that anyone at all involved in collections (whether officers or Greens) would recognise the stupidity of it all, but I would like to say that, if black box collections were restored in communal bin areas, then I would use them and it would help me a lot.
Brighton has become so great under the greens. All we need now is the greens in number 10. Imagine all cities eco friendly, clean air and renewable energy. People need to think more than council houses and more benefits and look at the planet first
Ah bless Green Ellie.
Yes people should think of the green legacy, bins unemptied, weeds on the pavements and eat every other week.
Do you think, Chaz, that Ellie is Catherine under another name or Catherine’s twin or another member of Catherine’s magic mushroom set? Rhetorical. Suggest that they both lift off to whatever green planet they came from and leave sensible residents alone.
As for Greens in Number 10 … obviously it would never be Downing Street, so what Number 10 might she mean? Rhetorical again.
Indeed and maybe even Amy?