Green Parking
Published: 17 June, 2010
Until the internal combustion engine is superceded, car parking is not going to be agreen activity. But there’s plenty that can be done to reduce the carbon footprint of a typical car park
Scheidt & Bachmann is introducing a ‘Green Efficiency’ feature which is scheduled to become standard on all its pay stations by this September. Managing director Martin Hughes explains that this will reduce a car park’s carbon footprint as well as slashing the operators’ electricity bills.
According to Hughes the new machines will consume just 77W of electricity per hour against the 650W consumed by some older payment machines. This dramatic reduction has been achieved through a combination of hardware and software development.
In hardware terms the new machines use high-end power saving components and an energy-efficient embedded computer with innovative power management. At the same time LED technology is used for illumination and backlighting the LCD display.
And in addition the machines have variable energy saving modes triggered by sensors, or by a time switch, so that they power down when the car park is not in use. And they automatically deactivate the LCD display after a pre-set switch-off time following the last payment, although they can be woken up remotely or when they detect a customer nearby.
Another plus point is that the machines suffer from less wear and tear, because they are switched on for less time, increasing the life cycle of components.
But electricity usage is not the only area in which shopping centre car parks can improve their environmental performance.
The sound of seagulls is all part of the atmosphere in the historic seaside town of Hastings and it wouldn’t be the same without them, but for the Priory Meadow shopping centre they also represent an expensive health hazard – or at least they did until an innovative bird dispersal device was installed to keep them away.
The mess the birds were creating on the top deck of the centre’s car park was a costly operational nightmare until the centre management called in Scarecrow Bio-Acoustic Systems to install the fully automatic One-Shot bird dispersal system to encourage the birds to keep away from the area.
“Since we started using Scarecrow’s One-Shot device we have made huge cost savings from not having to clean up the shocking mess that the birds were creating,” says Steven Ball, Priory Meadow’s operations manager. “The whole of the top level of the multi-storey car park covering almost 4,000 sq m was completely infested with roosting seagulls. The hazardous combination of bird guano, waste and feathers with which they covered the floor rendered the top level completely unusable by customers.
“We were having to employ additional staff to clean the area on a daily basis which was a huge drain on our resources. No sooner had they got from one end to the other than it was filthy again – it was a never-ending cycle that we couldn’t seem to break.
“We had tried all sorts of bird removal methods but the Scarecrow device proved to be the only equipment that worked,” Ball added. “Upon hearing the distress calls broadcast by the device, the seagulls flew away and stayed away and we – and our customers - got our car park back.”
Scarecrow’s pioneering techniques have been used worldwide to disperse and control unwanted birds in a humane and hygienic manner. By randomly playing back the natural distress call of the type of bird causing the problem, the offending birds sense danger and fly away. The devices can be set to play the individual calls of more than 60 different kinds of birds, making it adaptable to a great many different situations and locations.
Scarecrow produces a range of devices which can be either hand operated or fully automatic according to the nature of the location and problem. The recently launched Compact device can be solar powered to bring even greater cost savings and help companies adhere to increasingly stringent guidelines on climate change control.
“Compact is particularly useful for urban areas such as the immediate surroundings of shopping centres where large numbers of people tend to congregate, often in close proximity to food outlets,” said Scarecrow’s commercial director Mike Ziolek. “The combination of food and people is a great attraction to scavenging birds and makes for a very unpleasant environment that has the effect of driving business away.
“The natural solution of using bio-acoustics means that the birds stay away without being harmed and customers are encouraged to remain. Everybody wins.”
