‘It’s health inequality’ London urban health specialist says air pollution is a social justice issue

National World - LocalTV

Eleven environmentally focussed startups were at a school in South London to showcase how important clean air is in London.   Farid Kelekun, who works for Impact on Urban Health said: “Air pollution effects everyone, but it is a social issue - it’s health inequality.”   Startups have called for a change in legislation “here and now!”

Transcript

00:00 Air pollution affects almost everyone but it is particularly acute in urban areas, inner

00:06 cities, people who live near main roads. So for me and for Impact on Urban Health who

00:11 I work for, that's a big issue. It's a health inequality, it's a social justice issue, so

00:17 we should be doing a lot more work to ensure that the people most affected actually have

00:22 a chance, an opportunity for clean air and good health. I think it's really important

00:26 to have people in positions of power and champions to be able to push the agenda forward and

00:31 I think thanks to that we're seeing a lot more conversation and debate. I guess you

00:37 see that a lot more in articles in the BBC and the Guardian, people are paying more attention

00:41 to it. So I think it definitely makes our lives easier. So we're here today, it's part

00:47 of our demo day, so we're supporting some of the start-ups with their technologies to

00:53 be able to grow and scale their businesses and we wanted to come to Elm Green School.

00:57 They're doing so much good work already on air pollution with their students, so we thought

01:02 it was an opportunity to be able to collaborate, bring different people from the sector and

01:05 the community to raise the issue of air pollution. I spoke to some of the entrepreneurs at the

01:11 event hoping to help London hit their net zero goals. My name is Jerome, I'm the founder

01:17 and CEO of ZepCity. So basically the project is to launch an Uber-like transport booking

01:23 platform, but we are going to put all our trip profits into local energy projects. So

01:30 this way we can use the local energy to generate clean energy to offset the trips. So this

01:35 way we can have net zero trips within two years for every taxi or cab trip. I think

01:41 here has a very good start-up environment and the government really supports the net

01:47 zero, you know, pursuing net zero future. So yeah, I think if we want to launch something

01:57 globally, London is the best place to start. We've got a solution here that is targeted

02:05 at removing emissions related to refrigerated delivery. You may see out on the streets every

02:11 morning thousands of trucks, and there's literally 15,000 trucks coming into London on a daily

02:16 basis that rely upon refrigeration to keep the goods inside cool. Obviously it's food

02:22 predominantly. The pull-through is still required and we need the legislation to come forward.

02:28 And there's a lot of talk about legislation, but it needs to be here and now to say you're

02:32 not allowed to do it the old way. You've got to provide different, there are different

02:36 solutions out there now that are oven ready, you know, and they're ready to go and we just

02:41 need that bit of pull-through from the government to say, you know, you must do it this way.

02:45 There are alternative solutions.

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