Kidlington

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17th March 2008  - Is it just me or are we gaining momentum? 

Hello again Kidlington!

We've had our third get together and are moving closer to a visible presence within Kidlington with some key initiatives. The amount of difference, and speed we progress will be influenced by the level of support you can offer so please read on and see how you can get involved!

Read on you will find out how I'm saving £1125 per year -maybe you could to!

1. First Tuesday of the month!

To make it easier (for me) to remember - we've agreed to meet on the first Tuesday of every month at the Dogwood at 8pm, so you can update your diary for the rest of 2008!

2. Be kind to Kidlington - Just say NO to plastic bags!

Catharine Arakalien has been a busy bee, working on an idea to promote the extinction of plastic bags here in Kidlington. On average we each waste 300 bags each per year which is an astonishing 5 million by Kidlington residents - generating a sizable and avoidable amount of waste, due to the huge resources required to manufacture it, transport it to us so we can take something home, and then the long and damaging time it takes to breakdown in our environment releasing toxic chemicals.

Catharine is organising a door to door mailer in Kidlington to promote this idea and ask for feedback from local residents and businesses/organisations.  Catharine is hoping we can engage local schools to support the scheme and add their artistic skills to the designs of the bags. Cherwell School have already offered assistance.

Please email in if you would like to support or get involved with this campaign in any way!

LEARNING OPPORTUNITY - A test of your assertiveness skills!

Next time a shop attendant puts your 2-3 items in a bag, say "I don't need one thanks". You've just taken the decision to reduce rather than accelerate climate change! Every little action makes difference.

3. Grain Silo - Grundon's Materials Waste Recovery facility

Andrew Hornsby-Smith discussed Grundon's planning submission to construct a Materials Recovery Facility by the Grain Silo & Kidlington park and ride. This basically means a place where they sort and process the waste collected from domestic households. This does pose a couple of thoughts:

• The potential impact on our traffic of the additional vehicles transporting materials in and out of the facility;
• That although not part of the current remit, to be wary of the possibility in future of permission being requested to extend the site to cater for Incineration once Grundon's have established their operation. Incineration remains a highly controversial method for disposing of certain kinds of waste so any possibility of this in future would need to be properly considered and debated locally.

I found this link which gives a little insight into this....

http://www.thisisoxfordshire.co.uk/display.var.1836761.0.waste_plant_planned_in_green_belt.php

4. Info Desk update

Catharine has kindly loaned me some marketing stands that we can begin to populate information for our stand in Kidlington. We now need your help to populate material for the stand so our volunteers have more than a blank panel to promote!

*** SITUATIONS VACANT + free cups of tea ***

Please join one of our virtual mini-teams to help collate materials for our stand (and web site) to encourage positive actions locally.  Email me your area of interest and I'll connect you up together:

1. Energy conservation
2. Waste (packaging / recycling)
3. Food miles
4. Transport

Don't panic, you won't be abandoned to do everything yourself! If you wish to pop over and/or meet at my house to bounce ideas or place some of your materials on the stand, I have plenty of fair-trade tea bags & coffee and I'm not afraid to share them!

I'm looking for pretty pictures and interesting facts so Kidlington shoppers actually choose to talk to us!

5. Events & stuff

• Climate Xchange organised a fantastic event, "Joining the dots", encouraging Oxfordshire groups to share ideas. It is hugely encouraging to see just how many people are already engaged and doing their bit - and next year I hope to share the successes we will achieve in Kidlington. For more info on local events, try http://climatex.org/events/
• Eco Towns (& the possibility of one being near us) will be one of the topics for discussion at our next gathering.

More on http://www.theoxfordtimes.com/display.var.2062332.0.county_likely_to_get_eco_town.php.

6. And finally .... I'm £1125 richer & 1 tonne of CO2 lighter!

I've purchased Mark Lynas's Carbon Calculator (Wolvercote climate guru - http://www.marklynas.org/) to see if I can figure out my carbon footprint. By lift-sharing to work I'm saving £20+ per week (£1,125 per year!!!) and over 1 tonne of CO2 per annum!

How did I work that out?

It's easy on the internet to find out the grams per KM your car emits. In my case:

• My car does about 54 MPG and emits 133 g per KM of CO2;
• So 133g x 1.6 (conversion to miles) x 4500 miles (I'm no longer driving) = Just over 1 ton of CO2 saved both for me and my lift-sharer. 4500 miles x 25p per mile (fuel + wear & tear / depreciation) = £1125!

... and no, I'm not spending it on a holiday to Australia!

Can you lift-share - even 2-3 times per week?

A small amount of flexibility goes a long way both to your pocket and to reducing your carbon footprint. Also allowing my lift-sharer to sound off about the day's frustrations allows me to charge her husband a sizable fee for defusing the incoming hurricane   ;-)

Having reduced my water bill to £6 per month (thanks to a water meter - down from £30), and my electric bill down to £14 per month (no standby, eco bulbs blah blah blah), my gas bill is my next priority. I'm investigating so send me your ideas!

Thanks to you all,

Anthony & friends

P.s. There's now nearly 30 cars on the company car list where I work that do over 60 MPG, and all the 4x4's have been removed!  The big cheeses have taken out a contract on me (hee hee). You can now buy a VW Polo or Seat Ibiza with a 1.4 Diesel engine which has a listed economy of 74 MPG!!!  Apart from a vastly reduced fuel bill - for these 2 cars you don't even have to pay car tax!  Buy very wisely.

P.p.s. Did you see the Panorama programme about bottle water being about 600 times as carbon consuming as tap water? Please don't buy a load, then pop it in a plastic bag!  In climate terms that's officially an own goal!  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/7247130.stm

P.p.p.s  Are you finding these updates worthwhile?  Do you have any suggested improvements? Please let me know if you are as happy as Larry, or whether you would like me to return to my day job and allow you to drown in peace!

P.p.p.p.s. any inaccuracies or grammatical failings are the responsibility of myself, my parents & Gosford Hill School  ;-)______________________________________________________________________________

KIDLINGTON VS CLIMATE CHANGE - Our second get together

Thanks for supporting our second get together - 16 attendees is hugely encouraging and twice the number of the first!  You might think there are a lot of words below - but I'm one of the slowest readers in Kidlington and it didn't take me long (unlike the exercise of deciphering my eco-friendly tiny handwritten notes from the meeting!)

Before moving on to the points of discussion - please ensure our next get together is in your diary: TUESDAY 4^TH MARCH, 8PM, DOGWOOD PUB

1. LEARNING FROM WOLVERCOTE

Chris Gowers kindly gave up his evening to share his experiences from Wolvercote. It is difficult to do justice to all of the points he made, but here are a few key points:

• Wolvercote has a population of ~3000;
• Activities began in 1989 with a recycling group which has since become a Community Action Group (CAG);
• They have now expanded into 4 key areas, each with its own coordinator...

i.       Food (farmers market - local organic produce, allotments, orchard)

ii.       Waste - Waste surgery at Farmers market info desk, waste centre at the old Mill for non-doorstep recyclables & transfer arranged to Redbridge for recycling e.g. scrap metals, batteries, Tetrapak, light bulbs.

iii.       Home energy (Low Carbon group) - Copse wood for stove burners, light-bulb libraries, selling discounted eco-bulbs at Farmers Market, incentive to switch residents to Good Energy (renewable).

iv.       Travel - Informal car share club (people pay agreed rates to borrow a car), encouraging use of bikes, walking, public transport. Raised £500 for good local causes by having a Toll day for cars going through the village!

One of the most important things was the Info Desk at the Farmers Market. This provides an excellent opportunity to listen to residents, provide information and respond to queries, and to find out what is important to them.

They have 6 people on a rota and emphasise the importance of good training, although it isn't necessary to answer every question providing we record it, find out the answer & then contact them.

Advice for Kidlington:

• Don't be too ambitious!  Take gradual steps you can successfully deliver;
• Create a charter which we can sign up to and publish - outlining our purpose/aims.

2. ECO-ST, Yarnton Nurseries

Liz Parry gave a brief history of the ideas behind Eco-St, which has initially created two shops. One opening in Chinnor last May, and a second nearby at Yarnton Nurseries in October. They have an ambitious plan to open many outlets across the UK to provide accessible information and the ability to buy a wide range of eco products, including 100 different light-bulbs (I took two strange ones including a halogen type to test them last weekend - and they came up trumps on both!), also natural paints, cosmetics & toiletries, books, cards, energy meters, fun gifts from recyclable materials and products/refills for many of the Ecover cleaning range to name just a few.

Liz is keen to engage with us to look at potential initiatives, e.g. to offer discounts when people bring old bulbs back to be recycled and replace with new. They are also working on a number of projects with local schools around energy monitoring / reduction.

3. COMMUNITY ACTION GROUPS (CAG's)

Simon Kenton attended from CAG's and can help us network effectively in Oxfordshire. As was mentioned above, CAG's have provided effective support and training to assist the impressive progress made in Wolvercote.

4. KIDLINGTON INFO DESK!

Following further discussion, it was broadly felt that perhaps a more effective and consistent way of engaging face to face with the residents in Kidlington, instead of organising another a one-off event, was to set up an Info Desk as they have in Wolvercote in the centre of Kidlington to understand what is important to our residents, share information on recycling and energy conservation etc.

This raises some important questions so brace yourselves!

1.       Frequency: Initially we felt a monthly stall ought to be achievable providing sufficient members commit to supporting this;

2.       Location: We need to explore (affordable) highly visible central locations we can obtain permission to go. Steve Gerrish said he may be able to enquire about the space in front of Barclays Bank. He has also stated there maybe an opportunity to use the space at the car park end of the Co-op.  It would also be useful to know if the Parish Council has any advice / suggestions on this. Any thoughts Nicky?

3.       Volunteers: We need about 5-6 members to commit to joining a rota to attend every 2-3 months so we have two people in attendance each time. Please confirm if this is of interest to you.

4.       Purpose / content: We need to clarify our purpose, and also need to compile some initial content we can display at a stall. Please let me know if you either would be interested in compiling a stand and/or would like to research a particular area to input materials - e.g. to research the various recycling options in the local area or ideas for minimizing energy use.

5.       Training: We can work with Wolvercote & CAG's to develop appropriate knowledge for volunteers.

If we have sufficient interest, i.e. enough people able to commit either to be on the stand or to take responsibility for compiling information to display, I would like to propose we initiate a plan to begin our stand during May 2008.

5. OTHER ACTIONS/NOTES:

Simon Kenton (CAGS)

• To share information on available CAG's training;
• To provide details of a trip to show us how waste is disposed of for land-fill, recycling or incineration (Anthony Simpson & Robert Dyson expressed a particular interest)

Catharine Arakelian

• Although not present at the get togethers, Catharine is very interested in assisting activities to address climate change and has approached the Parish Council about making Kidlington a plastic bag free zone. We look forward to hearing more on this.

Anthony Simpson (and others?)

• To visit the Info Desk at the Farmers Market in Wolvercote
• To share contact information with Eco-St on the new Sustainable Kirklington group
• To contact Kidlington Voice to see whether there is an opportunity to meet up & share ideas with local businesses.

Events & stuff:

• Steve Gerrish attended a Transition Towns event in Totnes recently and will tell us more on 4^th March;
• Climate exchange advertise many local eco events so set up a shortcut to http://climatex.org/ and check out their calendar. On 26^th Feb there's an event to bring community groups together to share ideas.
• I'm also visiting Kirklington on 13^th Feb to exchange ideas with their Sustainability group if you would like to join in.

And finally ........perhaps the most encouraging sign at our get together was the diversity of attendees across the community in terms of age groups and mixture of experience in business, local government and sustainability & community action initiatives.

Thanks again for your support - and my apologies to Tom for spilling his entire drink all over myself. Thankfully my Ecover did the trick  ;-)

Kind regards,

Anthony

P.s. After completing many energy reduction steps at home, I'm going check out my cavity wall & loft insulation situation (with someone like http://www.instafibre.co.uk/). A couple of friends have done this recently and said it's made a big difference in retaining heat and reducing their fuel bills and was much cheaper to do than they expected!  Why not get yours checked out .......!

p.p.s. Thanks Janet for your proof reading & for not slating these draft notes for the many grammatical errors I've undoubtedly made.

p.p.p.s. SEE YOU ON TUESDAY 4^TH MARCH

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