French Towns Move Away From Trucks And Back To Horse Carts

More than 60 French towns have struck on a cheaper and greener way to collect household waste –

60 French towns that have struck upon a cheaper and greener way to collect household waste – ditching the dustbin lorry in favour of a horse and cart.Long before recycling became a household word, a Paris prefect called Eugene Poubelle, introduced three separate containers for household waste – glass and pottery, oyster and mussel shells, and the rest – and had horse-drawn carts empty them. Six years later, his surname entered the Academy dictionary as the word for “dustbin”. Now, over a century later, a growing number of French towns are returning to horse-drawn kerbside waste collection, as a better way to recycle …

“By using the horse for garden waste collection, we have raised awareness. People are composting more. Incineration used to cost us E107 a tonne, ridiculous for burning wet matter, now we only pay E37 to collect and compost the waste,” says Mayor Jean-Pierre Enjalbert of Saint Prix, in Greater Paris …

In Sicily, another place bringing back four-hoofed transport, Mario Cicero, mayor of 14th-century town Castelbuono … pioneered glass and cardboard collection using two packsaddle donkeys in 2007. Three years on, Cicero has done his sums and calculated a cost saving of 34%, as well as winning over a sceptical population and putting more donkeys to work.

“Compared with E5,000-7,000 annual running costs for a diesel truck, an ass costs E1,000-1,500 and can live 25-30 years. A truck costs around E25,000, lasts around five years and can’t reproduce,” says Cicero, whose four asinelli have now produced 25 offspring, so he won’t even be buying any more.

De-evolution at its finest!

Intelligent Lampposts

Here’s a really good socially-responsible idea that saves energy and returns the night to the dark it should be.  Reported  from the Guardian:

The lights are going down in Toulouse. Tomorrow early-rising residents of the Allée Camille-Soula in the south-western French city will have set out to work with the morning gloom held at bay by radical new technology which turns on streetlights only when pedestrians pass.   Installed on a 500-metre section of pavement last weekend, the lampposts double the strength of the light they cast when they detect human body heat. Ten seconds later they revert to normal.

“It’s a prototype. Nothing like this exists anywhere in the world. We pretty much built the technology ourselves,” said Alexandre Marciel, the deputy mayor in charge of works, highways, sanitation and lighting. The aim is to cut energy consumption by around 50%, first on the busy street which runs between a sports stadium and university halls, then more widely. If it is a success, it will be rolled out across the city of around 450,000 people, France’s fourth largest …

There is a growing campaign in France against nocturnal light pollution. Last weekend saw countrywide demonstrations against the contamination of the night sky by urban lighting. “Concern started just among astronomers and other specialists but is now getting much more mainstream attention,” said Clara Osadtchy, one of the organisers … Cash-strapped and increasingly environmentally conscious communities are now trying to cut electricity consumption. Many cities have changed streetlight bulbs for less wasteful models. After years where cheap tariffs and plentiful power meant all-night lighting, smaller rural communities are returning to earlier practices and turning off streetlights after midnight …

Earlier this year the German town of Dörentrup started turning off its lights at 11pm, with its 9,000 residents able to illuminate a specific street for 15 minutes by dialling a special mobile phone code. The local utility company estimated the scheme would cut Dörentrup’s carbon emissions by 12 tonnes a year. Early trials showed that many streetlights were switched on only two or three times a night.   Marciel, an elected official from the Radical Left party, has grand ambitions. “Imagine if instead of thinking of movements in town as consuming energy we thought of ways they could generate energy instead. The possibilities are without limit,” he said. One project under consideration is to connect dynamos to the thousands of free bicycles available in Toulouse. The energy they generate could then be “harvested” overnight and used for streetlights or the national grid, Marciel said.

 

A New View Of Paris

Quoting directly from BD The Architect’s website:

This 180m-high Herzog & de Meuron-designed pyramid tower is a proposal for the first skyscraper in Paris for 30 years.

The 50-storey building will be situated in the south-west of the city at the Porte de Versailles.

It has been nicknamed the ‘Delanoë tower’ after the city’s socialist mayor Bertrand Delanoë, who won the fight to bring high-rises back to Paris after convincing the city council in July to make exceptions to the 30-year-old ban.

The ban prohibits buildings of above 37m-high and was inspired by the 210 Tour Montparnasse.

I have a soft spot for spectacle.  But I don’t know about this.  Not everything has to be prime time.  There are good reasons to break through barriers with more mundane (though no less superbly engineered) designs, designs that deliver a purpose, designs that improve without causing so much fuss.  Maybe that’s what’s needed first to get Paris comfortable with the high life again.

The Russians Are Coming, The Russians …

I have written a few times about how the Russian oligarchs’ money is re-shaping the art market.  I am also aware of their influence on the London housing market.  But this is amazing:

A mysterious Russian billionaire has trumped his big-spending rivals and broken a world record by splashing out €500 million (£392 million, $700 million plus) on one of the most sumptuous villas on the French Riviera. The price of the Villa Leopolda, a Belle Époque mansion on the heights of Villefrance, has amazed estate agents but fuelled local worries that the invasion of Russian money on the Côte d’Azur is getting out of hand.

Since the early 1990s, Russian oligarchs, drawn by memories of the Riviera-mad old Russian aristocracy, have been piling into seaside properties at Cap Ferrat, Cap d’Antibes, Saint-Tropez and the other great playgrounds. None, however, has come near the price with which the unnamed Russian clinched the Leopolda deal with Lily Safra, the widow of Edmond Safra, a Lebanese banker who was killed by an arsonist’s fire in Switzerland in 2003 … Its turreted mansion and two guest houses sit in 20 acres of grounds with hundreds of olive, cypress and lemon trees tended by 50 gardeners. Former members of the Israeli special forces are said to ensure Mrs Safra’s tranquillity there …

Jean Pierre, a high-end agent, said: “It’s completely surreal and we are really uneasy. We don’t dare any more to propose any price below €100 million for these clients. Anything below and they throw you out…and you should see how they do it,” he told Le Parisien … Jean-Marie Tarragoni, a Nice property manager, said that the Riviera market had gone mad. “Two hundred people are completely destabilising it. These Russian oligarchs have thrown themselves into a bidding war like Onassis and Niarchos.” Rivalry between Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos sent local prices rocketing in the 1950s.

I’m not even going to try to figure out how many families that sort of money would feed for a decade.