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One man's music is so often another man's noise, laments Malcolm Gillies.
Twenty years ago, I went to court to evict my neighbours. They were several very pleasant university students from Hong Kong. Our source of conflict was noise. They could not live without playing loud music 24 hours a day. And I could not live while they did.
I was reminded of them, and my brief court appearance, when looking at the People & Planet Green League 2010 results (THE, 10 June). This Green League ranks "the environmental performance of Britain's universities".
I think it's an admirable exercise in tracking the advance of universities in environmental policy and practice. It was good, for once, to see London Met level-pegging with Oxford and Cambridge (all equal 89th, I'm afraid, with Third Class Awards).
But what is our environment? Amid carbon emissions, ethical investment, Fairtrade, water consumption and environmental auditing, I didn't find much recognition of a domain simply overflowing with pollution: sound.
We recognise construction noise, and may even give a nod towards transport noise, but most universities don't go much further towards a greener sound world. Sonic abuse is rife. More than one in seven adult Americans has significant hearing loss in consequence. A Yale professor of medicine is studying the hearing damage caused by...