A week in the life of the ENVIRONMENT

Starting with the United Nations' designated World Environment Day on 5 June, the first UK Environment Week set out `to highlight the UK's excellence in providing environmental solutions to businesses across the world'. Supported from the very top - in the words of prime minister Tony Blair `there can only be positive results from developing sustainability' - the Week included an eclectic mix of the best attempts by UK business to show, in the prime minister's words again, `that UK environmental solutions make sound business sense'.

Promoting locally produced lumpwood charcoal by B&Q stores was one of the more unusual events of the week, but more conventional ways of companies promoting their activities could be seen in the National Exhibition Centre at ET2000. The exhibition's organisers, the ET Partnership between Reed Exhibition and Faversham House, were integrally involved in the Week, working closely with the DTI and its Joint Environmental Markets Unit (JEMU), the DETR and the Environment Agency.

Returning the compliment, JEMU director Duncan Prior said: `ET continues to prove itself as a key event to highlight UK experience and expertise.' Some of those highlights are briefly reviewed over the following pages, but it wasn't just the exhibits that represented the best in British environmental engineering. A full range of practical seminars gave visitors the chance to hear from high-profile speakers from industry, government and the Environment Agency on forthcoming regulatory issues, together with how they could be implemented.

Seminar topics embraced UK and EU environmental legislation, working with the new contaminated land regime, working towards sustainable waste management, and the use of IT systems for environmental management.

Another highlight of the `Week' was a gala awards dinner, hosted by the ET Partnership at the invitation of the DETR, held to celebrate the finalists in the UK heat of the European Awards for the Environment (EEA). The winners had not been announced at the time of writing, but the four awards are for contributions to sustainable development in the areas of management, products, technology and international partnership.

ET2000 was certainly the right venue to foster international partnerships. Among the many overseas companies exhibiting at the NEC were 20 of Denmark's leading environmental firms. The `Danish Pavilion' was offering solutions from environmentally friendly paper to wastewater treatment, heat production from landfill gas to quality management software and industrial cleaning for power plants. Taus Nohrlind of LNP Market Development, organiser of the pavilion, commented: `we find that UK companies, as well as the UK in general, are expressing growing awareness towards the environment and we have high hopes of setting up business contacts between the Danish and British companies.' PE