Chapter XI
Tony Blair is a long serving British Prime Minister who served at the turn into the third millennium CE.

I am delighted to be back in my constituency at such an exciting and important event. Sedgefield is one of the pioneers of the sustainable communities' project.

Britain will never be a modern, forward-looking country if it is a place whose beauty, character, air, rivers, are polluted, defaced, and contaminated.

To be modern is to be green. It is about seeking new solutions to new environmental challenges. Not just so that future generations have a planet that is still inhabitable but so that all of us going about our lives today can improve our quality of life. And it is about working with business to ensure that our companies and industry are able to take advantage of the huge opportunities that markets for new technologies offer. Many businesses already recognise that this agenda is an opportunity not a threat.

It is also about recognising that we will only succeed if we work together. Individuals, business, communities and government must all act if we are to meet these new challenges. Communities such as Sedgefield are taking the lead. Today we have all seen examples of people and communities who have decided to take effective and practical action to change their lifestyles so that they benefit and the environment benefits. I am particularly pleased that so many different businesses and organisations have been involved, from Northumbrian Water, to the library, from Fujitsu to local schools, working together in partnership. I hope that many more local communities will take up the challenge.

And I welcome Going for Green's "Eco-Cal" initiative - a computer based tool to help people measure how green their lifestyle is. It encourages people to recycle, to walk more, to turn their thermostats down, to wash their car with a bucket not a hose.

It will help all of us save money on our energy bills, improve the quality of our local environment-in short how to live a more sustainable lifestyle.

Small changes can collectively make a big difference to energy use. There are so many simple things that can be done when you realise the waste that occurs in our daily lives;

Every nine months households generate enough waste to fill Lake Windermere.
A third of household waste is packaging.
Hosing a car for ten minutes uses almost 100 litres of water.
Leaving a computer screen on all night uses enough power to print 800 pages of A4 paper.
Lighting an empty office overnight is equivalent to making 1,000 cups of coffee.

What these facts show is that working towards a greener country doesn't require a PhD in bio-chemistry merely a degree of common sense and thought.

Well over half of all journeys are less than 5 miles and if we did more of them on foot or by bike rather than by car we would save ourselves money, avoid causing pollution and make ourselves a bit healthier - in short improve our quality of life.

Our job as a government is to encourage local action of this sort but also to take a lead ourselves.

Since May 1 we have done just that.

In a few short months we have: Set tough targets on leakage for water companies to meet.
Given £3m to the Iwokrama rainforest in Guyana.
Published a White paper on international development committing Britain to sustainable development.

But I want to do more. I want to tackle head on the serious and growing pressures on the country's transport systems. We cannot carry on as we are. We know the problem. Congestion in our cities is increasing. At times there is complete log-gam. Pollution, noise, personal frustration, road rage, as well as extra costs and inconvenience is the result.

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