High Street 'honoured' by scheme which aims to highlight poor air quality

Picture: @londonschoking

A new plaque has appeared on Putney High Street but this one is not to show the former residence of a distinguished former resident. The road has been ‘honoured’ by the London’s Choking grey plaque scheme which is marking the capital’s worst pollution hot spots.

The Putney sign highlighted the number of exceedances of NO2 pollution limits in the area which occurred more than 1,200 times in 2016compared to the legal limit of 18.

The plaques are the brainchild of two advertising creatives who decided to turn their skills in selling consumer goods to stimulating discussion about an issue that they think is important. Joe Dennett, 30 and Rob Donaldson, 28, have lived and worked in London for the last 7 years, so air pollution is something they've become increasingly aware of. They both work at an office on Farringdon Road in the City where air quality is also very poor. When they found out they were working on one of London’s most polluted streets they became even more concerned to learn many of their colleagues had not heard of the problem.

Joe Dennett and Rob Donaldson

They told PutneySW15.com, “ we realised that many people aren't aware of how bad air pollution can be in London. So we were just sat around talking about that one day in January after it'd been in the news that London had broken its pollution limits only a few days into 2017. And, as these kind of ideas tend to, the thought just came to us that, like the blue plaques make the invisible history of a building visible to passers-by, we could do the same for air pollution.

“We did a little research to find out which were the most polluted places, and created signs in the style of the blue heritage plaques. Grey seemed like a colour many people associate with pollution and smog. The signs were just stuck up temporarily to take the photos, although after the positive responses we've received we're looking into creating more permanent plaques.”

Joe and Rob have taken pictures of the plaques they have created and place them on Instagram and Twitter with the aim of increasing awareness on social media.

May 24, 2017