Patio heaters on - planet up in smoke: The Smoking Ban in Northern Ireland

With the smoking ban coming into force at midnight on Sunday night, a new website is calling on pubs in Northern Ireland not to invest in patio heaters and to think about other ways to keep smokers warm outside.

www.patioheatersareevil.com is a new website dedicated to explaining "why heating up the outside doesn't work that well and isn't good for the environment."1

There are 5,150 pubs in Northern Ireland. If half of them invest in just one low-powered patio heater Northern Ireland will be adding an extra 6,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere a year1 – all of it making a direct contribution to climate change.

The creator of patioheatersareevil.com, David Lilyvick, explained "Patio heaters are one of the most energy intensive appliances you can buy. A low-power patio heater uses as much energy in an hour as 22 large plasma screen TVs.

"As anybody who's been for a drink south of the border will know, many pubs respond to the smoking ban by installing patio heaters to try and keep their customers warm. With everyone much more aware of climate change nowadays, we don't want that to happen in Northern Ireland."

Patioheatersareevil.com is calling on pubs across Northern Ireland to sign up to the website to pledge that they won't be installing patio heaters. According to Lilyvick, "patio heaters are so wasteful of energy and they don't even work that well. They can keep the top of your head warm but if you're stood outside on a cold day, you'll still be shivering."

Under the new rules, pubs can still provide a covered shelter for their smoking customers. Lilyvick says "Northern Ireland isn't always that cold, but there's plenty of wind and rain. A shelter facing the right way to protect people from the elements will do much more to keep smokers warm than a patio heater." Patioheatersareevil.com have written to the Federation of the Retail Licensed Trade in Northern Ireland highlighting the damaging effect of patio heaters on the environment, and are urging publicans to think about the environment as they decide how to respond to the smoking ban.

ENDS

Notes
1. Based on data from the UK Government's market transformation programme
www.mtprog.com Assumes an 8.9kW patio heater is used by pubs for 5 hours a day for 237 days a year. Data relating to number of pubs in Northern Ireland from www.cateys.com

For more information contact Lynne Slowey on 07967276502

Or david.lilyvick@yahoo.co.uk

PatioHeatersAreEvil.com is a new site, a mixture of a blog and humorous website. It focuses on patio heaters not because they're the biggest cause of climate change, but because they're the most visible sign of a profoundly wasteful attitude to energy use and carbon emissions. Its also important to talk about patio heaters now because by July 2007 a smoking ban will be in force across the UK. If tens of thousands of pubs invest in patio heaters the UK will significantly increase its contribution to global climate change. This issue is coming to prominence and some of the patio heater manufacturers are fighting back. The website also counters some of the greenwash about these products from the suppliers of patio heaters.

Patio Heaters Are Evil
33a Lennox Road London N4 3NR UK
Press contact - email: david.lilyvick@yahoo.co.uk
Press contact: phone: Lynne Slowey 07967276502

This release was published on openPR.