Safety Fears For GreenPeace From Window Cleaning Spokesman

Free Climber & protester Ali Garrigan, yards from the top of the Shard.

The Shard: Greenpeace protesters scale Britain's tallest building - At just before 4.30am this morning six women began scaling the Shard in central London, the tallest building in western Europe, protesting on behalf of Greenpeace against oil and gas drilling in the Arctic. At 19.10 The protesters finally reached the top after more than 14 hours of climbing.

The Shard's management fear the protesters will not be able to secure themselves properly on the last stretch of building above the 72nd floor and are putting themselves in “extreme danger”.  The six women have been climbing for more than ten hours now, and will soon run out of places to secure themselves, it is feared. 

A spokesperson said: "The maintenance team we have working on the Shard is probably one of the most experienced abseiling teams in the world. "The window cleaning guys who work in the cradle are unbelievably experienced and work on buildings all over the capital, they do a maximum shift of two hours." "These guys have been on the go since four this morning, they must be absolutely shattered. "It's freezing cold in the wind and then the sun hits you, apparently when you are extremely tired that makes it extremely dangerous."

The group are named as Ali Garrigan, 27, from Nottinghamshire, Sabine Huyghe, 33, from Ghen in Belgium, Sandra Lamborn, 29, from Stockholm in Sweden, Liesbeth Deddens, 31, from Groningen in the Netherlands, Victoria Henry, 32, from London, and Wiola Smul, 34, from Poland. They are believed to have climbed onto the 72-storey building from the roof of London Bridge station in the early hours of this morning.

According to the spokesperson the climbers will run out of places to secure themselves, should they pass the viewing platform level. He said: "The group is spread out over a number of different floors and the lead climber is ahead of them and is therefore helping the others up the building. "We are worried that they think there is something they can use to get them all the way to the top, there isn't enough of the structure. "They have been using a purely cosmetic architectural element of the building. It's never been designed for climbing on or to be used for anything like that. It's purely part of the architect's design of the building. "They have been using parts of that to climb on, but as we said from the moment they started the danger is that the closer you get to the top there is no more of that structure available. That's been communicated with them throughout."

As the protestors near the five-storey viewing platform the decision has been made to close it to the public. The spokesperson explained: "Building's emergency response team has advised that the viewing platforms should be closed at this stage which is at the top of the building. "Only essential staff will remain there at this time. There is various bits they can open and various access points, but everyone within a certain area needs to be roped up and wearing harnesses. "The ambulance service are at the top, and can therefore assess their condition and give them fluids. "Because they are getting closer to it, and the viewing platform may well be the part that we get them back into the building." "It has been closed so that we can safely get them into the building because at some point, particularly with how tired they must be, they may need to come in and that's the best place to get them in."

A spokesman for the Shard's owners said they had tried to persuade the women to come inside at various access pointsbut they had refused, and continued up the building. Wind speeds of up to 64km/h had been recorded during the morning and the building's abseiling team, responsible for window cleaning and general maintenance, would not go out if they reached 40km/h. When asked if it was necessary to close the entire platform they said: "Our interest is from a safety point of view of getting them into the building. "The viewing platform is big, but we can't have members of the public, emergency services and a bunch of protesters trying to come in at the same time."

More on the Shard here.

Fake Window Washing & Other High Flying Stunts

An Ad in Tallinn Center, Estonia, with fake window-washers.

Fake window cleaner arrested near Queen’s palace: About 30 people have become victims of the fake window cleaner who was active in The Hague, Rijswijk and Delft. The man was arrested on Saturday by the Royal Military Police in the Haagse Bos. The fake window cleaner rang doorbells and asked residents for money for cleaning windows. But in reality he did nothing. The police warned residents several times about a man in an un-groomed appearance with bad teeth. The Royal Military Police noticed the ‘window cleaner’ near the Queen’s residence of Huis ten Bosch when they approached and arrested him.

Greenpeace Shames Apple With, Um, Fake Window-Washing.. you may remember this one from a previous blog here. Greenpeace had upped the ante in its fight to get Apple to commit to using more renewable energy in its data centers. Or at least it tried to up the ante.

To highlight the extreme quality of sponges, Scotch-Brite, a brand of 3M, used a window cleaning platform and turned it into a huge sponge. The effect could be seen by passers-by near a building of the legendary Santiago Bernabeu stadium in Madrid. Only nobody told them that green pads scratch glass.

Web of Lies by Mark Tisdale: This blotchy photo (obviously saved and re-saved a number of times, a sure tip off for a questionable story) is purported to be of window washers at a Children’s hospital in London. Note all the missing details – what hospital for instance? As far as I was able to deduce in a grand 5 minutes of web searching is that this is actually a Shanghai Sheraton Hotel! Granted this is taking the word of another website that could be equally misinformed, but the fact that this story appears back in 2008 and the only time I find this photo associated with the children’s hospital story is this year makes me suspect the more recent version. I’m surprised for a change that a little more digging shows there’s a kernel of truth. I found this article on a Southwark newspaper’s site from 2010 showing a completely different photo with far more details about a superhero duo of window washers at the Evelina Hospital. Ladies and gentlemen, those are the heroes you’re looking for!

DIY Brooklyn Man On A Ledge Cleans His Own Damn Windows: Look, not everyone can afford professionals to come wash their precious windows, with their fancy safety equipment and insurance. Sometimes you've just got to climb out on a ledge with a couple rags and DO IT YOURSELF. The fastidious fellow in this video knows what we're talking about—after all, why do architects put ledges on buildings if people aren't meant to climb out there? 

The witness who took this video says the man was cleaning the windows on the third floor ledge for approximately 20 minutes, "with my entire office gasping and holding our breath." Out tipster, tells us the building is located on the corner of Washington and Front Streets in DUMBO, and adds, "I can't believe he couldn't see all 50 of us pressed to the window watching. It was nuts and we haven't seen him do it since." We can only conclude that while our mystery man isn't afraid of heights, it really freaks him out when people stare at him.

Window Cleaning News Revisited

10 Of The Toughest Jobs On Earth: For some people, a 9-5 desk job just doesn't cut it. Check out some jobs that require a sense of adventure and a will to live on the wild side. Nª 6, Skyscraper Window Cleaner - Although you may think of window cleaning as an unskilled job, it is actually quite dangerous and requires mastery of special techniques. Previous blog here.

Homeowners can't understand why a solid glass patio door suddenly ends up in a million pieces: Ohio - Homeowners across the country, with different brand doors, said their patio door suddenly broke. They want to know why a solid sheet of glass can suddenly be in a million pieces. "I heard a loud bang," said Brian Kresevic of Auburn Township. "We heard a loud bang, almost like a gunshot," said Kathy Russell of Maine. Russell said living in Maine, she expected a problem during the bitter cold winter months when 4 feet of snow sat against the glass. However, the door broke in the middle of the summer. At the time, the door was 14 years old. In an email to NewsChannel5, Russell said, "We were sitting near the door when we heard a very loud BANG and thought a neighbor kid had hit it with a baseball, but then realized it was in the open position, protected by the fixed panel in front of it. It was very bizarre and a bit nerve racking." Kresevic's door broke recently, so it was a different time of year. His door is five years old and made by a different company. The homeowners said they're not sure why the glass broke. "I opened the door and went outside and thought maybe a bird hit it, and I saw nothing," Kresevic said. Matt Kelly owns Glass Doctor of Cleveland . He said an object could hit your glass, and it may not shatter for weeks. That makes it hard to pinpoint the cause. Other times, the mystery simply remains.

Sometimes, "You can't answer the question," Kelly said. Kelly said sometimes glass just spontaneously breaks. "There are instances where there are imperfections in the glass," Kelly explained. These imperfections may never be a problem. Seeing them would require a microscope. Other times the imperfections cause your glass to randomly shatter. Jeld-Wen manufactured Kresevic's patio door. The company said frame defects are also a cause for glass to spontaneously shatter. It's referred to as "spontaneous glass breakage" or "stress cracks." In a prepared statement, the company said, "Such cracks are the result of rare defects in the frame that put excess pressure on the glass unit. When the frame exerts pressure on the glass unit, the breakage originates near the frame." Although rare, Jeld-Wen said it typically happens during seasonal heating and cooling. To deal with the issue, Jeld-Wen added a one-year warranty so your door can go through one heating and cooling cycle.

Even with all these possibilities, Jeld-Wen said the damage to Kresevic's door appears consistent with impact to the glass. Kresevic disagreed. "My whole thing is not for me to get anything out of this, but I want people to be aware," Kresevic said. Jeld-Wen offered Kresevic free replacement glass, but he's still not sure he's going to take it. He thinks it might get a better glass warranty with a local company. Warranties don't guarantee you'll get replacement coverage. It depends on the determination of the cause. Russell had an Anderson door, and it has different warranties. Her outcome was still the same. She got the company to give her free glass, but she also had to pay to have it installed. Although rare, if this happens to you, try to work with your window or door manufacturer to resolve the issue. You typically have to pay for labor to get the new glass installed. Always read the warranty paperwork before you choose a product so you understand what is covered and what is not covered. See previous blogs - here, here & here.

Another tech company takes Google glasses concept up a notch: Even tech giants can be outdone with enough funding. When Google announced its Google glasses – now known as Project Glass -- they quickly released a series of YouTube videos illustrating the possible uses of their newest toy. Put your specs on, look out the window and see the temperature. Make appointments via voice command. The videos are shot from a first-person perspective, and show the wearer starting his or her morning doing all manner of useful things without touching a smartphone or a computer. Spoofs quickly emerged highlighting the pitfalls of this technology. Running into people on the street because you were paying attention to something your glasses were trying to show you. Accidentally sending e-mails due to imperfect voice-command technology and so on.

 The reality is likely to be somewhere in between, but the amount of power packed into a simple pair of glasses is impressive, especially given its “coming very soon” status. Not to be outdone, a company called Innovega announced it was working on a prototype for contact lenses that match or exceed Google glasses’ capability. Tech companies make bold predictions like this all the time, and they don’t always come true, but now the government think-tank DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a.k.a. the guys who really invented the Internet and a whole bunch of other stuff), has put in an order for the prototype lenses, known as “iOptik.” These lenses don’t just project information in front of your eye like Google’s glasses do – instead they employ “multifocal” technology.

The center of the lens contains the display, which projects itself toward the middle of your eye, while the outer part allows for a normal field of view. This allows wearers to focus on the display and the world around them at the same time. While the military usually gets its hands on all the coolest toys years before the average civilian does, Innovega hopes to clear all of the remaining hurdles, both medical and practical, to have its lenses on the market by 2014, no doubt with a hefty price tag attached. For those of you eagerly awaiting a set of Google glasses or Augmented Reality Contact Lenses – consider the following: If you’re prone to motion sickness, just imagine what having a relatively motionless image projected over a constantly moving background will look like. It’s bound to cause problems for some people, so have your Dramamine handy. Previous blog here.

Boston leisure centre (UK) to install large-scale tanks to save on water usage: New large-scale water storage tanks are to be installed at Boston's Geoff Moulder Leisure Centre as part of steps to mitigate the effects of the current drought. Despite recent rainfall Lincolnshire is said to be in the midst of a drought that has led to Anglian Water imposing its first hosepipe ban for 20 years. In an effort to do its bit for water conservation Boston Borough Council has announced a series of initiatives including plans to put the tanks on the roof of the Geoff Moulder and at other properties run by the authority.

Council leader Peter Bedford told the Target: "We have already taken a number of measures to reduce the council's water consumption and are putting in place plans to do more. "We have been saving water at the Geoff Moulder Leisure Centre by only flushing filters when needed rather than as a matter of course. "We are also keeping a closer check on pool water and air temperatures and putting pool covers on individual pools that aren't in use to reduce levels of evaporation. "Water and energy use at the complex have been on our radar for a long time, which is why we have introduced measures such as solar-energy generation and push-button showers which cannot be left running, for example. "Rainwater harvesting is also being considered where practicable, at a number of council sites, with new provision planned for 5,000, 2,000 and 1,000 litre storage tanks. "These investments will be funded from the council's existing green initiatives budget.

Other actions will include water-retaining reservoirs on planters, use of water-retaining gel in hanging baskets and containers, mulching and reducing the frequency of watering hanging baskets and floral displays to once a week. Councillor Bedford said: "We have also spoken to Boston BID which has said the contractor responsible for providing and watering hanging baskets at the town's commercial premises will come from large rainwater storage tanks." The council leader stated that council properties will have their window cleaning frequency reduced to once a year and water-conserving devices are being fitted in toilets. And the authority's vehicles are now only being washed once a month but with windows, number plates and lights being kept clean in between. Previous blog here.

SPRING CLEANING: A Greenpeace protester polishes up a handbill at Apple's San Francisco store.

The competitive advantage of green grids: As Greenpeace attacks Apple for the coal clouds firing its data centers, green grids from Iceland to Quebec are attracting some surprising new customers. All kilowatt-hours are no longer created equal. As somewhat bewildered Apple shoppers in San Francisco, New York and Toronto learned firsthand last week, Greenpeace has a new enemy: dirty data. To attract attention to its new report, “How Clean Is My Cloud?” – which draws attention to the coal and nuclear power plants supplying energy for the “cloud computing” server farms of many prominent digital businesses, including Apple and Amazon – Greenpeace launched a series of coordinated in-store protests at trendy downtown Apple stores across North America.

Activists carried black-and-white balloons or came dressed as cleaning crews, spraying down windows to cleanse the company of its dirty greenhouse gas emissions. This campaign comes as part of a larger Greenpeace effort to draw attention to the climate-changing clouds of coal smoke that power the Internet; the organization’s greatest breakthrough to date may have been its “Unfriend Coal” initiative, which convinced Facebook to embrace renewable energy as the preferred power source for its data centers. See previous blog here.

Addison Lee's John Griffin company to give drivers cycle awareness training: London minicab firm seeks to build bridges with cycling community after April's PR disaster. Addison Lee’s John Griffin, whose comments about bike riders infuriated cyclists last month and led to calls for a boycott of the minicab firm, has become one of the latest – although perhaps least reluctant – owners of an I Pay Road Tax jersey. He was presented with the garment by I Pay Road Tax founder and BikeBiz executive editor Carlton Reid at a meeting at the firm’s offices in Camden on Monday.

Reid spent an hour and a half with Addison Lee’s PR manager Alistair Laycock – in a comment to an article about the meeting on the I Pay Road Tax website he reveals that he has started commuting to work by bike – who outlined some of the steps the company is taking to repair the damage caused by the backlash to the comments made by its chairman and founder. Griffin had ended his column about cyclists in the company magazine Add Lib with the words, “It is time for us to say to cyclists, ‘You want to join our gang, get trained and pay up’,” but instead it’s the company’s drivers who will be receiving training to help raise their awareness of cyclists, to be provided by David Dansky of London-based Cycle Training UK.

The company is also considering installing front-facing video cameras in its vehicles to record journeys, which could be used to provide evidence of what happened in incidents that lead to a subsequent complaint from a cyclist, potentially showing whether the driver or the cyclist – or, indeed, neither – may have been at fault. As reported on road.cc two years ago, similar video evidence led to a London window cleaning firm sacking one of its drivers after footage showed that he had deliberately swerved into a cyclist. Scroll down in this blog to find out about the cyclist run over by a window cleaning van.

'The Amazing Spider-Man' Swings and Breaks Glass in a New Poster - From the two slick posters that surfaced a couple weeks ago to the battle damaged poster that just showed up yesterday, the print marketing for this franchise reboot is pretty bad-ass. Now we have another poster with the same motif, but this time Spidey is swinging high above New York City, presumably into the window of some sort of high skyscraper and glass breaks around him. I feel like this is the poster that promotes the 3D part of the release as well. See previous Spiderman window cleaners here, here & here.

Window-washing rule may be difficult to enforce: Lawyers, maid agencies (Singapore) - A new rule by the Indonesian government to protect maids from high-rise falls may not be feasible, according to lawyers and maid agencies in Singapore. The rule, which took effect on May 1, aims to stop Indonesian maids from cleaning out-facing windows or hanging laundry outside high-rise homes. Besides undergoing safety training programmes, Indonesian maids in Singapore will be getting more safety assurances with a new rule introduced by the Indonesian Embassy. Employers and new maids now have to sign a contract which includes a clause that forbids maids to be placed in precarious situations. This after eight maids fell to their death in the first four months of this year, which is double that for the whole of last year.

But lawyers said this new rule may be hard to enforce.  Mr Sunil Sudheesan, a lawyer at RHT Law, said: "This is a contractual term between the employer and the maid. If there are any breaches of this nature, it seems more of a breach in contract. There's nothing in the penal code to criminalise this sort of behaviour. "Some contracts allow for damages to be paid while some contracts just say that the employment is over and you have to pay everything to the maid agency so it depends on the contract." Lawyers added that the onus is on employers to advise their maids on safety procedures.

Maid agencies in Singapore also said the new clause may make employers more hesitant in choosing Indonesian maids. Allie Ooi, a customer service manager at Advance Link International, said: "Some employers... will feel uncomfortable about this new regulation. At the beginning, they may consider to hire maids from other countries instead of Indonesia." But they said that the demand for Indonesian maids will recover very soon as they are still the top pick for local employers. See previous blog here.

Window Cleaner Mimes Apple To Shame

A Greenpeace protest-mimer cleans a window at Apple's downtown San Francisco store.

Greenpeace Shames Apple With, Um, Fake Window-Washing: Greenpeace has upped the ante in its fight to get Apple to commit to using more renewable energy in its data centers. Or at least it tried to up the ante. About a dozen protesters hit Apple’s store in downtown San Francisco at just after 11 a.m. Pacific on Tuesday. Some of them were dressed as janitors or window washers, others carried black bouquets of helium balloons which they unleashed inside the store, letting them float up to a hard-to-reach second-floor skylight. The environmentalist organization also unleashed a new video, dinging Apple for using dirty energy to clean its cloud (below).

They also hit stores with similar protests in New York and Toronto as part of an ongoing public-relations campaign against data center operators, dubbed “Clean Our Cloud.” After being dinged in a 2011 Greenpeace report, Apple has taken steps to present itself as a serious clean-energy user. The company says that its brand-new Maiden, North Carolina, data center will soon use 60 percent renewable energy — thanks to a state-of-the-art solar array and biogas plant. And just last week, Apple vowed to power a brand-new Prineville, Oregon, data center with 100 percent renewable energy. But Greenpeace wants more. They want Apple to commit to powering their Maiden facility with more renewable energy, even as it continues to expand. Maiden is where Apple powers its iCloud, the fast-growing service that lets Apple users store their photos, videos and other files in a centralized place.

Greenpeace wants Apple to sign long-term contracts for renewable energy in North Carolina, similar to deals that Google set up as it brought data centers in Iowa and Oklahoma online. “If Apple had something like that … that would be something that would give us a lot more confidence in their intentions,” said Gary Cook, an IT analyst with Greenpeace. Greenpeace’s big problem with Apple is the fact that it’s using Duke Energy in North Carolina, a utility that gets 46 percent of its power from coal and another 52 percent from nuclear facilities. The environmental activists are worried that without a commitment to renewables, Apple will simply draw more coal and nuclear energy as it expands its Maiden facilities.

Apple has spent $500 million on Maiden to date, but it is expected to invest another $500 million there over the next 10 years. Apple had no comment on Tuesday’s protests, held on the same day the company announced its quarterly earnings. Company spokeswoman Kristin Huguet referred us to an earlier statement where Apple said that its Maiden data center will be “the greenest data center ever built, and it will be joined next year by our new facility in Oregon running on 100 percent renewable energy.” In San Francisco, the in-store protest was a low-key event. Some store patrons didn’t even realize that a protest was happening. Under a cloud of black balloons, the Greenpeacers stuck posters on the store’s front windows, pretended to clean the store, and handed out stickers and chatted with store patrons as Apple staffers looked on. Greenpeace volunteer Jessica Serranti put in a good 30 minutes of mimed window washing and Apple-store cleaning (get it: “clean our cloud”?) before Apple Store Leader Jason Veilleux pulled down the Greenpeace posters and asked her to clear out. She complied. “It was super cordial,” Serranti said outside the store. Veilleux said he welcomed the opportunity to “engage in dialogue,” with Greenpeace, but declined to comment further. A half-hour after they’d released their balloons, the activists had left the building.   

Thankfully, the extent of the protests today seem to be limited to lots of people dressed in black releasing black balloons inside Apple Stores.

Greenpeace protests dirty energy use at Apple stores: Greenpeace has decided to demonstrate outside a number of Apple Stores around the world today. It’s a protest against what the environmental organization is referring to as dirty energy. With our growing reliance on data centers to power the cloud, the big tech companies have a responsibility to use as much clean and renewable energy as possible. Not only will that reduce the impact such locations have on the environment, it also helps ensure those company’s futures as traditional energy sources continue to rise in cost. Greenpeace points out that Google, Yahoo!, and even Facebook are either pursuing green energy or already using it in ever greater quantities. Apple, however, is not, according to environmentalists, and Greenpeace believes us, the users are the ones that can force Apple to “Think Differently.”