The "I Love Leith" partnership have commissioned a new "Welcome to Leith" sign, that is set to be formally unveiled by the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, Cllr George Grubb, at 11am on the 14th of September. The sign is to go at the old boundary between Leith and Edinburgh, on a pole outside Pilrig Church.

In case you were wondering, the symbols underneath the sign say "I Love Leith" in nautical flags. A neat touch we think.

Sadly, there's no evidence of any more amusing "Leith Twinned with..." japes, and we can't help but wonder whether the honorary Provost of Leith was invited!

Hopefully, the sign will be more permanent that other marketing attempts to brand Leith Walk.

There will be four sessions, looking at the practical community energy projects that are in development around the city, like the proposed commnity owned wind turbine on the Portobello promenade, and a number of Water of Leith "micro-hydro" projects, including the Redbraes Weir project.

Other sessions will look at the broader energy picture in the city, together with the scope for setting up things like energy consumer co-ops.

Lastly, Alastair Tibbitt, the Greener Leith development manager will be speaking in the closing debate with Calum Wilson, Director of Forth Energy, on the proposed Biomass plant for the Leith Docks.

You can download more information about the confrence by clicking here.

The large scale Biomas plans for the docks continue to attract criticism in the press from both local and national organisations. This week it was the turn of Friends of the Earth Scotland who released a report this week outlining the threat of an African "land grab" by Biomass supply companies. In the accompanying press release, the Director, Duncan McLaren, said:

"Growing world demand for woody biomass for energy production is already stimulating new developments in Africa and elsewhere in the global South where sustainable forest practices cannot be guaranteed: such as West Papua, Guyana, Congo and Liberia.

"The Scottish Government should reject Scottish proposals to import biomass for electricity production."

Greener Leith would encourage everyone interested in hearing more about the proposed Forth Energy plans for the docks to attend. We'd also welcome your suggestions or questions for Calum Wilson. You can add them to the comments below, or contact us here.

As you can see, we had a fantastic turn-out to our August We Love Leith Bike Ride. Each month we've been meeting at 10.30am on the last Saturday of the month outside the Mal Maison Hotel on the Shore, and embarking on a short, family friendly bike ride. 

This month, we were delighted that we had a huge range of ages, bikes and abilities turn out for our ride to Bawsinch Nature Reserve, and despite a couple of punctures, we had a fantastic time. Emily, our Greener Leith audio reporter took part in a We Love Leith ride for the first time, and interviews some of the participants in the audio clip below.

Some members of a new bike club, dedicated to the joys of owning a Brompton folding bike came along for the ride. You can hear Emily try one out, finding out first-hand from the Bromtonites why the bikes inspire such loyalty.

We must reiterate our thanks to Ken Knowles, the volunteer convenor of the Bawsinch Nature Reserve who gave up his Saturday afternoon to patiently guide everyone around the nature reserve. Although we didn't see any otters, everyone was hugely impressed with his tales of how the area had been revived from a scrubby patch of wasteland, and turned into something hugely valuable for wildlife.

You can see more photos that people took on the day in the Greener Leith photo pool on flickr.com

If you have iTunes installed on your computer you can subscribe to our audio as a podcast by clicking here.

On Thursday the 26th of August, Greener Leith was lucky enough to be invited to a Charrette (that's a workshop in Architect speak) organised by the council, at Ocean Terminal.

The aim of the workshop was to look again at what had been achieved in the regeneration of the waterfront area (that's Granton, Newhaven and Leith Docks to most people) as part of a process for developing a new Area Development Framework. We were expressly told that this wasn't supposed to change any of the existing planning permissions that apply to the area, but the idea was that the workshop would 'influence' the thinking of key landowners like Forth Ports and the city planners in the future. 

There were about 50 people in the audience, who were a mixture of politicians, landowners, councillors, housing association staff, public agencies, business representatives, and local organisations like Greener Leith and the community councils.

In the morning, we were asked to consider a few questions. First up, we were asked, "What kind of place will the Waterfront be if we continue to do what we have been doing?"

The post-it notes came back with words like 'souless', 'fragmented', 'monolithic', and 'inhuman' on them. Summing up, one of our facilitators, Diarmaid Lawlor, for Architecture & Design Scotland, told a story about how his two year old was 'bored out of his mind' when he took him on a walk along the waterfront path along the Western Edge of Western Harbour (the path in the photo above) even though the setting is totally spectacular and the place should, or could, in theory, be as exciting as Princes Street.

We then moved onto considering what kind of place the Waterfront should be. And this is where we asked for your ideas via Twitter. We got a huge response, and below we provide a flavour of some of the things that people outside the room were asking for:

We did our best to make sure all these tweets were transferred to post-it notes and added to the wall, to be considered by planners later. As you can see - it ended up pretty full!

Next up we heard from a Scot living in Manchester, Neil McInroy from the Centre for Local Economic Strategies. He proposed that a successful place is a 'resilient' place. So, for example, when it is shocked by a recession, or public sector cut backs, it can bounce back quickly. And when it is presented with an opportunity, it can react fast to make the most of it. Whilst he explained this, he was actually jumping up and down to illustrate the importance of 'boinginess' in places, as he put it.

It was interesting to hear planners and architects speaking about 'resilience' as a 'buzz word,' - this concept of local resilience is also a hot topic amongst environmental groups too. We also heard lot's of other metaphors to explain why the old approach of "Master Planning" hadn't worked. Rather than plan out absolutely everything, the council should 'conduct more and play less,' and regeneration is like a 'petri dish' where the council just needs to set the right conditions for desirable things to grow. The main metaphor of the day, was the body metaphor. If the council can focus on getting the 'beating hearts' of the neighbourhood right, then, so the current thinking goes, the rest will follow.

He encouraged us all to think about regeneration as a process that involves the Private Sector, the Public Sector and the Social Sector, and one of the exercises we did in groups was to try to estimate the relative sizes of these three economies, and the strength of the linkages between them. The implication being that a 'healthy heart' has all of these three areas pulsing along together.

In our group, looking at Leith, we came to the conclusion that the private sector was slightly bigger than the public sector, with the voluntary/social sector making up about 20% of the economy. However, when talking about the local economy it's quite hard to work out.

We made the point that some large businesses, like the new ASDA at Western Harbour, might actually remove money from the local economy as even though they've created jobs, they've also contributed to the demise of nearby businesses. Research by the New Economics Foundation undertaken in England showed that £1 spent with a local independent business is worth £1.76 to the local economy, and only 36 pence if it is spent in a business based outside the area. What does that really mean? Well, everytime a new large supermarket opens, 276 jobs are lost in the local economy.

A local economic resilience strategy might therefore need to look at how smaller, independent businesses can be attracted to the waterfront - and try not to rely so much on 'big box' retail.

However, we also heard how public sector service cuts can impact on the regeneration process. We heard a story from one resident of the new Granton flats, who had moved there with their family soon after the flats were built. Since they moved in, the recession kicked in, building stopped, the local primary school is to be closed, the bus services have been reduced, the tram connection to Granton looks more and more unlikely and they are stuck in negative equity unable to move anywhere else.

This personal story illustrated better than any amount of 'place making theory,' how public sector cuts can impact on the regeneration process too. If the city needs the Waterfront regeneration process to make progress, they must think about what impact any new round of cuts will have. This said, there were others in the audience who pointed out that it took 30 years to build Charlotte Square, and that the scale of the Waterfront regeneration is huge - perhaps patience is required and perhaps also people were led to believe that everything could be built in a day. What is it they say about Rome?

In the afternoon, we did more workshops, trying to identify the 'hearts' of the various neighbourhoods and the linkages in-between them. In Leith, we'd already done a widespread consultation on the top 10 local destinations and so the 'hearts' of Leith (no football jokes here please) we came up with were:

• The Foot of the Walk
• Leith Links
• The Shore
• Ocean Terminal

We also came up with a 'future heart' for the area - the docks area between Ocean Terminal and Western Harbour. This area has tremendous potential, with proposals to improve Ocean Terminal, ferries to Fife, and a more accessible waterfront.

And we came up with a possible 'broken heart' - the proposed Biomass Plant. We all felt that this proposal would have such a negative impact on the other local 'hearts,' especially the Shore, and Ocean Terminal areas, that it would in fact undermine the resilience of the local economy. It's a little known fact, but Leith has more Michellen starred restaurants than any other area of Scotland. Who will come to Leith to spend good money on a fine meal at the Shore, if they will be eating in the shadow of giant power station?

What happens next? The planners now intend to go away and come up with a revised local area development framework that will take account of all this feedback, with a view to guiding both public sector and private sector investment to take more account of the value of these existing centres - and the aspirations for the future neighbourhoods that may be built along the Waterfront.

Apparently, in about three weeks time, we'll be invited back to see the first draft of the revised area development framework. Needless to say, we'll be tweeting from that meeting too - and this time hopefully our phone battery will last a bit longer.

Greener Leith would like to thank everyone who gave us their ideas by Twitter on the day. You can follow Greener Leith on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/greenerleith

Greener Leith has learnt that the new owners of the Bonnington Bridge Bar, are in trouble with the law before they've even opened. The building, on Newhaven Road, is undergoing extensive renovations, with builders removing an apparently never ending amount of timber from the building. The trouble is they're dumping it in the river or trying to burn it. 

Lothian and Borders Fire Brigade have been called out twice to uncontrolled fires on the site, and by trying to burn the waste instead of disposing of it properly, the business is breaking waste laws set out in the Environmental Protection Act.

As you can see from the picture we took and submitted to Fix My Street, the waste is also being allowed to fall into the Water of Leith. Whilst it is depressing to see the river bank covered in rubbish, it is particularly galling to see rubbish dumped into the river as it is mainly kept clean by volunteers for the Water of Leith Conservation Trust. Indeed, according to the Trust website, more than 500 people, from school kids to bankers, put in more than 2000 hours of volunteer time last year to keep the river clean.

We understand that the City of Edinburgh Council Environmental Wardens have tried to contact the business owners repeatedly, but with little success, so now they've referred the owners to SEPA for "ongoing investigation and any enforcement they deem appropriate."

We wonder if the folk who own this business are aware of the penalties they may face. According to the Dumb Dumpers website:

"Anyone who dumps rubbish illegally runs the risk of being hit with a fixed penalty notice of £50. If the case is taken to court, fines of up to £40,000 or six months' imprisonment can be issued by Summary Procedure courts. Or if the case goes to a court of Solemn Procedure fines are unlimited and offenders can be imprisoned for up to five years."

It turns out that this building has a criminal history. Last year, Police on the hunt for a stolen computer stumbled upon an illegal cannabis factory in the basement of the bar. According to this story, a man who rarely saw daylight was paid £100 per week to tend 353 cannabis plants. We don't know what happened to him.

Within days however, they've started to go missing, with an entry on the I Love Leith facebook page simply asking, "Who's been nicking them?"

Presumably, someone, somewhere is so in love with Leith that they felt the need to take a little bit of it home.

In a statement the protestors said:

"If built these power stations will mean even more wood imports from abroad and even more destruction of rainforests and old growth forests to be replaced with plantations of eucalyptus in places like South America. For example, the smokestack CO2 emissions from a biomass power station are commonly around 1.5 times greater than those from a coal power station with the same energy output. In addition to harming the global climate, these power stations will severely impact the health of the communities where they are built. All biomass burning releases significant quantities of nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds and hazardous air pollutants (HAPs). Such pollution increases the risks of respiratory diseases, heart disease, cancer and premature mortatily including infant mortality and miscarriage. Leith power station alone would generate nitrogen oxide and particulates equivalent to 100,000 more cars while Edinburgh and Grangemouth power stations are 200m to the nearest home and Dundee power station just 100m"

A full planning application for the proposal is due to be submitted "within weeks," with Forth Energy apparently determined to ignore widely held local concerns over the scale and location of the plant.

The plant will burn around 1.3 million tonnes of wood that is to be shipped to Leith from foreign countries. Although Forth Ports have given a wooly commitment to source the fuel from "sustainable" sources, to date, the company has refused our calls for full public disclosure of their fuel sources on an annual basis, nor will they commit to using wood from forests that have been independently certified by the FSC - despite using the FSC logo in their presentation to councillors in Dundee (You can see the slide in question here)

Given that the Leith plant is likely to attract around £40million worth of public subsidy for each year of its operation, it is hardly surprising that some people feel very strongly that large scale Biomass is a poor use of tax payers money.

Thanks for sharing Steve.

Non members are welcome to attend the meeting, but only members are entitled to vote and stand for election to the board. Whilst we will ensure that people will be able to join Greener Leith at the start of the AGM, you can also join online, using a debit or credit card, by clicking here.

Should you wish to join the board, or if you have any other questions about the AGM, we would be delighted to hear from you before the meeting. You can contact Alastair Tibbitt, our Development Manager for more information.

Yours Sincerely,



Charlotte Encombe
Chair, Greener Leith.


Photo credit: Scottmliddell 

We decided that we'd try a slightly different approach to domestic energy efficiency, by holding an exhibition of local residents homes, where the residents had volunteered to tell their energy story. The exhibition took place for two weeks in Out of the Blue.

We've just completed our grant report for the Leith Neighbourhood Partnership and thought we ought to share some key facts and figures. We'd especially like to thank the volunteers who gave up so much of their time, particularly if you were one of the people who bravely shared your energy story with the world. The folk involved at Out of the Blue also deserve special credit for all the work they put into preparing the exhibition. So, the project in numbers goes like this:

• 268 people visited the exhibition.
• 24 people were referred to the Energy Savings Trust for further advice.
• 35 people were referred to the CSV Home Energy advice service.
• 150 volunteer hours by 10 volunteers were supported by the project, taking photos and running the exhibition.
• 202 people have listened to the three on-line ‘audio’ energy stories, like this one.
• 422 people have viewed the thermal images on-line.

A very conservative estimate of the impact this project would suggest that has generated combined annual savings for Leithers of:

• £3422 (from domestic energy bills)
• 29146 kgs CO2 (climate changing pollution saving produced by using less energy)
• 116,289 KWh (domestic gas or electricity).

Below, there is also a selection of comments that we received in the visitors book:

• “Great exhibition and I think it is time to take efficient action against global warming”
• “What a great exhibition. Information very clearly conveyed. Let’s hope that Leithers will act on it.”
  
• “Informative, clear and accessible exhibition.”
• “Interesting and thought provoking exhibition. Very clearly produced – looks great!”
• Great exhibition. Really brings home how doing little things can help the bigger picture. Love the sculpture too."
• “The human face of energy efficiency! Grand – it’s needed to make it less dull. Continue with the stories.”
• “Liked the idea and the messages behind it all. Hope people learn from it. Thanks for the lightbulb!”

 If you'd like more information about this project, please don't hestitate to contact us.

Lloyds TSB have launched an interesting photography competition for budding amateur photographers, that aims to seek out the best British weather photographer of the year.

To enter the competition, you must submit your photo capturing British weather to the Lloyds TSB website. The overall winner will be picked on the basis of flair, technique and originality. The entries will be judged by a leading panel of meteorologists and photographers. There's a "photo of the week" prize of £100 which is awarded to the photo with the most public votes, and an overall prize for the best photo of £10,000 (If the photo below wins, I pledge to donate all my winnings to Greener Leith!)

There seems to have been an incredible variety of weather over the last few weeks, all at the same time. And now I've found out about this competition, I'm wishing that I'd managed to take a picture of the amazingly vivid rainbow that appeared over Leith on July 31st. After a bit of searching the Greener Leith Flickr pages, it transpires that the most popular vaguely weather themed photo that has been shared was the one below, of a shopping trolley that got pushed out onto the ice under the Great Junction Street Bridge.

However, given that this photo was taken with a mobile phone, I somehow doubt I'm going to win any points for technique. The competition runs until September 30^th 2010. Entrants are encouraged to add their photos to a photo map, and there's already a fair few amazing entries in the Edinburgh area. If you can find the one above, please vote for it! You can take a look at all the entries submitted so far at http://www.lloydstsbweathercompetition.co.uk/category/

You must be a UK resident in order to take part in this campaign.

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Also, we want to find out whether we've inspired you to take action to do anything in the 'real world' too. This will help us to put together funding applications in the future.

So, if you can spare 10 minutes, please take our Readers Survey. There's only 10 questions. You can find it here:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6VDDX7V

It's all anonymous, so don't worry - you can be as rude as you like!

The police in the van that has been parked in Lochend Park since the crime took place would only say that 'investigations were ongoing.' However, in a police statement, Detective Chief Inspector Gareth Blair said:

"This was an unprovoked attack that has resulted in the tragic death of a man who was simply going about his daily business as normal, and we are making an urgent appeal for witnesses to help us trace those responsible.

"Anyone who was in the area of Lochend Avenue, who either witnessed the assault or noticed a group of youths close to the Loch Inn Pub, should contact police as a matter of urgency.

"Similarly, anyone who saw the youths making off from the scene in the moments after the assault should also get in touch."

Following the incident, the youths involved made off westwards from Lochend Avenue into a small lane next to Bethlehem Way, leading to Hawkhill.

The main suspect is described as being 5ft 10ins tall, with short black hair, a slim face, and wearing a black fleece top.

Another of the group involved is described as male, 5ft 1ins to 5ft 2ins tall, with short blond hair, wearing grey jogging pants and a while polo shirt.

Anyone with any information should contact Lothian and Borders Police on 0131 31 3131, or Crimestoppers in confidence and complete anonymity on 0800 555 11.