Life celebrations with your pocket & planet in mind

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Naming ceremony in a garden

Saturday 4th July the Horsham Climate Cafe session will be focusing on life celebrations, and how to make them more pocket and planet-friendly. Christenings, weddings, anniversaries and funerals needn’t cost the Earth (in more than one way!). Presented by Jeanie Francis, a Billingshurst-based OneSpirit Interfaith minister/celebrant and ‘silverpreneur’ who over the last 25 years she has developed a passion for creating personal, environmentally friendly special occasions that celebrate milestones in life.

Whether you are planning a celebration of new life or loosing a loved one, with a little thinking ‘out-side the box’ (excuse the pun) a personal and unique occasion, honouring a specific religion, mixed religion or no religion can be planned.

This is what one couple said recently about their son’s baby naming ceremony: “With a deep love of nature but with no particular religious faith we felt unsure how to celebrate the arrival of our son, Adam. With Jean’s imaginative guidance we created a beautiful ceremony which took place in our cottage garden beneath the willow tree. Everyone wrote wishes for Adam on cotton flags and tied them to the willow tree. Jean suggested we ask special friends to be guardians to Adam for Male Youth, Wisdom, Creativity and Spirituality. A day full of truly wonderful memories thank you Jean”. Read more

29% of Horsham’s green space could be lost

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HELP KEEP ROOKWOOD GREEN PLEASE!

On Tuesday 16th June our weekly Horsham Future Forum and Youth Eco Forum attendees listened to an excellent talk by Peter Simpson, Trustee of the Friends of Warnham Local Nature Reserve and Sally Sanderson, Chair of Friends of Horsham Park. Friends of Warnham Local Nature Reserve, Friends of Horsham Park and the Horsham Society have formed Keep Rookwood Green Alliance and are campaigning to retain Rookwood Golf Course as a public green space.

Those of us on this week’s Zoom call were shocked to learn of the ecological damage and the 29% loss of Horsham’s large green space that will occur if 1,100 houses are built on Rookwood Golf Course. The decision will be finalised before August and there is a short window of opportunity in which we can influence Horsham District Councillors. The more of us that make our views known known, the greater the chance that we will be heard and that we can Keep Rookwood Green!

Here are some ways that you can get involved: Read more

Fundraising to expand our single use plastic recycling operation

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Some ‘Wednesday Wombles’ sorting crisp packets pre covid

Bigger and better: Appeal for help to expand our single use plastic recycling operation and deliver a greener Horsham!

After a quiet start to the lockdown on the single use plastic recycling front, we are delighted to say that things are starting to pick up again and we are receiving increasing donations of single use plastics waste resources at the Quaker Meeting House drop off point. This is brilliant news as we want to make sure we’re diverting as much single use plastic household waste away from landfill and incineration, and finding new purposes for these materials through our TerraCycle recycling scheme.

We are extremely lucky to have our small but dedicated team of volunteers (affectionately known as the Wombles!) who throughout the lockdown have continued to sort through the donations on a weekly basis in a socially distanced manner. However as waste resource donations return to pre lockdown levels, SGL is in desperate need of support to expand its recycling capability. To give some indication of the quantities the team are working through, a staggering 120,000 crisp packets have been recycled by our team over the course of the last two years! Once single plastic donations are dropped off at the Quaker Meeting House, these are sorted through by hand by our volunteers, boxed up and sent to a company called TerraCycle who manage the recycling of these hard to recycle materials. Without these volunteers, crisp packets along with lots of other household single use plastic resources such as biscuit and snack wrappers would be discarded in waste bins, which currently are transported to Germany and Holland to be incinerated at significant financial and environmental cost. Read more

Help campaign for more cycling lanes

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Old Shoreham Road in Hove installed in May

On Tuesday 9th June the Sussex Green Living hosted weekly Horsham Future Forum and Youth Eco Forum listened to an excellent talk by Francis Vernon the chair of Horsham District Cycling forum. They are working hard to encourage Horsham District Council to install pop-up cycling lanes in Horsham town.

Message from Horsham District Cycling Forum

We’ve seen them going in across the country and now Horsham is finally getting its own pop-up cycle lanes along a section of Albion Way.

With the ongoing need to maintain social distancing as we ease out of lockdown, taking measures to enable active travel will be crucial in allowing people to get around safely. Read more

Holidays 2020 and beyond

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With our current situation leaving us all wondering how our traditional holidays and escaping abroad will be affected, and increasing environmental awareness leading a drive for more sustainable holiday and travel habits, our June Horsham Climate Cafe focused in on what alternatives are out there for us all. We discussed Staycations, SlowCations and Ethical Travel, and came away inspired with the abundance of brilliant ideas learnt and shared. What was clear at the end of the session – there are so many brilliant alternatives out there to the traditional ‘jet-setting’ holiday, so our precious relaxation time is still there ripe for the taking!

For this Climate Café, we were lucky enough to be joined by 4 speakers; Sarah Bamsey (Staycations), Karrie Mellor (opportunities on the Isle of White), Jill Shuker (Slowcations using trains across Europe) and Beth Richardson (Ethical travel). You can watch a video of the talks at the bottom of this page and we have summarised for you below the brilliant take-away points from everyone, so please do dip in and out of what interests you and have an explore of all the shared ideas! Read more

Horsham to get ‘pop-up’ cycle lanes along Albion Way

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Message from Horsham District Cycling Forum

Last month the Government called on councils to make swift and significant changes to their road layouts to give more space to cyclists and pedestrians so as to enable socially distanced active travel.

West Sussex County Council has responded with seven schemes across the county, including the plan to cone off one lane of Horsham’s Albion Way in each direction from Sainsbury’s and Waitrose to the Bishopric to make it safer for people to cycle and walk to the supermarkets and the town.

For an example of what this could look like I attach a picture of a ‘pop-up’ cycle lane on Kingston Bridge over the Thames.

Although initially only along a short length of road, the Cycling Forum supports this plan since it will help local people walk and cycle more safely whilst maintaining social distancing – particularly along the busy stretch of road between the Bishopric and Waitrose where many people walk. This will be good for key workers getting to work, for children on their way to school (once they’re back!), and for people going to the shops. Read more

Green Home

Green homes – save money, energy & the planet

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Green HomeHeated households: New report reveals the energy usage and cost of household appliance

86% of the UK are consciously trying to be sustainable

A new report by Wren Kitchens has revealed the amount of energy used by kitchen appliances based on the average usage time and how much power they consume.

86% of the UK are now are consciously trying to be sustainable according to a new report by Wren Kitchens1.

Recycling, reusing, and repurposing have now become an everyday occurrence in the UK as households try and do ‘their bit’ for climate change and reduce their carbon footprint.

However, with energy use for household appliances tripling within the past 40 years2  just how much money and energy could we save by changing to a greener solution?

The new report has revealed that the kitchen is the most likely culprit for carbon and energy usage, due to the amount of appliances the room hosts whilst detailing tips on how to save energy and money. Read more

To Travel or Not to Travel? That Is The Question

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Press release

Holidays on hold? Or help at hand

On Saturday 6 June, Sussex Green Living’s virtual Horsham Climate Café meeting will be focusing on what post-pandemic travel might look like once the world opens up again.

Many questions about the future of travel and holidays remain to be answered. With movement restrictions still in place and many holidaymakers still not knowing if, how or when they can expect to get away, the biggest question may be:

How will people feel about holidays after the pandemic and have travellers’ priorities changed?

Some may be desperate to get away after the lockdown and others may be feel it is too risky for health reasons. The nature recovery may have inspired people to stay at home whilst others may be motivated by sustainable holidays or wanting to make a difference overseas.

This week’s Climate Café event will discuss Ethical Travel, StayCations and SlowCation (travel by bike and train) and suggest possible alternatives to our traditional get-aways. Read more

Wool & environmentally friendly gardening

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Wool and gardening….. Really? Yup Really!
Fact, wool producers in the UK get paid very little money for wool produced every year. Getting wool from the field to the wool depots is not cost effective. Sheep owners give away the fleeces to shearers, burn them or just allow them to fester in a dark corner which is not environmentally friendly.
Garry (my husband) and I started with 6 Southdown ewe lambs 6 years ago. We now have a flock of 32 sheep. We graze on land in North Horsham. A hobby which has become a passion. Determined not to waste the gorgeous wool that our small flock of sheep produce every year, I researched online and found companies, crafters, art and design colleges to recycle the wool too. I did think about processing our wool for yarn and weaving. It would have cost me thousands of pounds so I went back to the drawing board.
What was simple, environmentally friendly, required little processing, cost effective and made good use of the natural qualities of wool. Wool and gardening!  And so evolved WOOL SHrED.

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