Beating noise pollution with smart tech

Natalie Lisbona, BBC News Business reporter, Tel Aviv Includes interviews with our CEO/ CoFounder, Poppy Szkiler and Emily Hardy, marketing manager at Brigade PLC

In some situations you want other people to hear a noise, such as a warning sound when a lorry is reversing. But ideally, you only want people close to the vehicle to hear the sound, and not the surrounding neighbourhood.

Brigade Electronics, based in Kent, makes such reversing alarms - they are only audible to those pedestrians, and others, in close proximity. They work by emitting sounds that dissipate after 10 metres or so.

"A 'ssh ssh' white noise can be heard clearly in the danger area, even when wearing ear defenders, headphones or for those with hearing impairment, but it doesn't wake up the entire neighbourhood." says Emily Hardy, marketing manager at Brigade.

She adds that the firm's speaker releases "gentle" short-travelling multi-frequency sounds, rather than "painful" narrowband frequencies that carry through the air for much longer distances.

Its systems have been fitted to everything from airport buggies, to supermarket delivery vehicles, diggers and some electric cars.

Poppy Szkiler is the co-founder and chief executive of UK-based Quiet Mark, a global certification programme that awards everything from consumer products to building specifications, hotels, shops, and transport companies for their low noise levels.

Poppy Szkiler is the third generation of her family to tackle excessive noise

She says that a "quiet revolution" is taking place, with the need to reduce unnecessary noise having "shot to the top of priority lists in environment and health agendas" over the past two years.

She says this was partly to do with coronavirus lockdowns meaning that the noise in cities fell by half. "And the work from home movement brought an awareness to the impact of sound with all of life happening under one roof," she says.

Ms Szkiler established Quiet Mark a decade ago, but her family has been tackling excess noise for three generations.

Back in 1959 her grandfather John Connell founded the Noise Abatement Society, a charity which has now campaigned against noise pollution for 63 years.

His lobbying helped to push the 1960 Noise Abatement Act through the UK parliament. It legally recognised noise as potential nuisance or pollutant for the first time.

Read the full article on the BBC News website here.