The latest news, stats and facts on key environmental issues. The latest news from Sussex Green Living.

Successful Climate Change Forum

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On Friday 18th October the Wiggenholt Association held a Climate Change Forum in Pulborough. The village hall was bulging at the seams with over 150 people. It was considered a great success and now there are plans for the event to be repeated in other villages.

Presentations were given by the following guest speakers chaired by Jane Mote, media expert and ex BBC broadcaster.

  • CLIMATE CHANGE BACKGROUND Geoff Barnard, Coordinator Greening Steyning
  • COUNTRYSIDE Kia Trainor, Director CPRE Sussex
  • FARMING Peter Knight, Estate Manager Arun to Adur Farm Cluster
  • ENVIRONMENT Tony Whitbread, President Sussex Wildlife Trust
  • COMMUNITIES Carrie Cort, Al Gore Climate Reality Leader & Founder, Sussex Green Living

If you are interesting in organising this event in your town or village please contact us. In the meantime below you can see some of the shocking stats provided by the speakers and below that their top tips on climate action.

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Ludicrous contradiction in Evening Standard

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Letter to the editor of the Evening Standard…..

After reading yesterdays paper I was shocked by the contradictions. On one page I read how “Quarter of London’s parks and playgrounds break the limits on filthy air with dangerous concentrations of nitrogen dioxide. The EU safe limit in accordance with the World Health Organisation is an average of 40 µg/m3 per year yet Victoria Embankment Gardens are 59.8 µg/m3′ ”

Then a couple of pages later Andrew Leadson states “XR are protesting in the wrong city and how the UK must be a beacon of hope for other nations”. She then goes on to say “We are sorting out our own back yards and the UK is already taking urgent action on climate change” Read more

Stunning single use plastic stats!

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We are really excited to share our latest stats and facts showing the impacts of our single-use plastic recycling scheme, which was launched in 2012 in partnership with TerraCycle. In the early days Carrie the founder of Sussex Green Living and her young son Adam sorted and dispatched the recycling, now we have about 20 volunteers aged 8 – 90. Our main public drop off locations are at the William Penn School in Coolham and the Horsham Quaker Meeting House. We also have community micro-drop off locations in: Leechpool School in Horsham, Rudgwick Youth Club, Thakham Village Hall, Storrington Community Market (once a week), Slinfold and Henfield. There are thousands of people collecting for us from all over the county. Over the eight years we have run this special recycling scheme we have diverted millions of pieces of single-use plastic from landfill and incinerator. Most of our single use plastic recycling raises money for the William Penn School.

Prior to the stats shown below we collected TerraCycle waste resources for the benefit of WAKOOS a nursery for children in Billingshurst and Horsham Matters, these statistic are not shown below. Read more

Climate Change Public Forum in Pulborough

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Climate Change – A discussion and debate about this burning subject.

Speakers are drawn from CPRE Sussex, the Arun to Adur Farm Clusters, The Sussex Wildlife Trust and Sussex Green Living.

Date: Friday 18th October

Time: 7pm

Venue: Pulborough Village Hall, Swan View, Pulborough RH20 2BF

Free with tea and sandwiches in the interval

The talks will be by the following guest speakers chaired by Jane Mote, media expert and ex BBC broadcaster. Read more

Are your clothes really causing climate change?

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Now how is it that clothes are causing climate change? …..Where in the world are your clothes made?  Take a look through your drawers and cupboard to find out! In the 1980s lots of clothes manufacturers decided they wanted to copy some of the big expensive brands, however to ensure they sold more and more cheaply and faster they moved their manufacturing bases to Asia. Most of the world’s clothes now are made in China, India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam and Sri Lanka where the price of labour is much cheaper.

Container ships produce more greenhouse gas emissions than some small countries. According to The Essential Daily Briefing: “It has been estimated that just one of these container ships, the length of around six football pitches, can produce the same amount of pollution as 50 million cars (22/04/2018)

Like many commodities, clothes are transported by cargo ships which equals a rather serious carbon footprint and directly contributes to climate change.  Read more

Pre-loved clothes sale in Horsham

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Did you know the second most polluting industry is the fast fashion industry? Learn more about the problems in this blog ‘Are your clothes really causing climate change? We are delighted to announce a local solution….in partnership with our friends at One World Living and our great volunteers, we are running a pre-loved clothes sale otherwise known as a kilo sale! It is on Saturday 9th November 12-4pm at Greenway Academy, Greenway, Horsham, RH12 2JS, at the end of Green GB Week. We will be selling quality pre-loved clothes for a bargin £10 per kilo (normally kilo sales charge £15 a kilo).

To give you an idea of what you will get for one kilo….. a pair of man’s denim jeans will be about 1.5 and 2 kg and woman’s clothing 1 kg will be about 1 pair of denim jeans or about 6 T-shirts. Thanks to the PTA at Greenway Academy there will be drinks and homemade cakes for sale, so come for the afternoon. There will be a separate areas for children, ladies and men’s clothes.

Proceeds from this sale will help us deliver FREE climate education in local schools, learn more here,  also deprived children and families Romania and Uganda. Plus helping the planet and your pocket! Read more

Launching the Horsham Climate Cafe

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On Saturday 7th December 2019 in partnership with the Horsham Quakers we are launching the Horsham Climate Café with a tea party, young and old welcome!

It will take place on the first Saturday of every month 2pm until 4pm in the Quaker Meeting House, Worthing Road, Horsham, HR12 1SL (oppersite Sainsburys car park) after the morning’s Horsham Repair Café (10-1pm).

At the Climate Cafe people can meet informally and talk about climate change, eat delicious homemade cake, have a hot drink and join in the conversations about problems and solutions. You can come once or every month. Lets share ideas and actions people can take to reduce their impact, maybe taking away a ‘Pledge to the planet’ action each month! Download an action plan here – adult version and family version. Clean energy switching service available, just bring your last energy bill or use our site Big Clean Switch. Read more

Horsham community step up to the Climate Crisis

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PRESS RELEASE

With climate change in the news daily, heatwaves, the hottest July date ever recorded, wettest August and now the Amazon ablaze, who would blame people to despair. Help is at hand to Horsham District residents, on the first Saturday of every month at the Horsham Repair Café. Not only do the volunteers offer repairs, refills and recycling advice but they give clean energy advice and switching and climate change solutions.

Governments have been talking about climate change since the early 90s, it is only now in 2019 that we are seeing fast escalating action, with more than half the UK’s principal local authorities having declared a climate emergency in the last eight months. The Horsham Repair Café run by Sussex Green Living with the help of the Horsham Quakers and lots of volunteers are stepping up to this climate crisis.  Read more

Help with climate emergency work and maybe win £25k

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Community groups whose work benefits residents of the Horsham District have been invited to sign up to benefit from the new Horsham District Community Lottery. So Sussex Green Living and one of our outreach initiatives the Horsham Repair Cafe have signed up!

Ticket sales are now open, 60p from every £1 ticket will go to charities, voluntary organisations and other good causes whose work benefits Horsham District communities. Players of the lottery can win a £25,000 jackpot, plus smaller prizes.

1 in 50 – Every ticket has a 1 in 50 chance of winning a prize every week!

£25,000 prize if you match all 6 numbers in the correct order!

Who are we and what do we do for the Horsham community?

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More Yard Bombing or we call it Ocean Bombing!

Environmental art and message ocean bomb Horsham District

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Horsham Carfax Bandstand

Horsham District was bombarded with environmental art and activity on Saturday 6th July. Volunteers from the Horsham Repair Café and Sussex Green Living, an environmental awareness and educational network, provided a dazzling array of ‘environmentally friendly’ stalls at their second Share, Care and Repair Fair, this year within Horsham Market. It was part of the Horsham District Year of Culture 2019 and Horsham Festival.

In the run up to this unique Fair nineteen locations – shops, salons, sports centre, Horsham library and the Carfax bandstand, had surprize eco ocean art installed with environmental messages, plus a display at the Fair. This Community Eco Ocean Art project, sponsored by Biffa, was the brainchild of the founder of Sussex Green Living Carrie Cort. Carrie said “People are so worried about plastic pollution and the plight of the planet, I thought this would be fun for anyone of any age to get creative around communicating the problems and solutions”. She continued “Their art had to be made of unwanted materials or acrylic wool. Acrylic wool is a problem because it is synthetic, plastics, which means it will take decades to completely break down”.

Pam Tedder one of the Horsham Repair Café volunteers co-ordinated the yarn or ocean bombing of the Carfax bandstand.  Read more

Time to Act as Sussex Leads the way on Climate pledges

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West Sussex County Council Climate Pledge

The Countryside Charity, CPRE Sussex is calling for people to respond to an opportunity to help their local Councils work out how to deal with the Climate Emergency.

Sussex councils are leading the way on Climate pledges in the South East according to information compiled by the South East Climate Alliance (SECA).

More councils have declared a ‘Climate Emergency’ in Sussex than in any other county in the Region. Twelve of the sixteen Local Authorities in East and West Sussex have already acted to declared an emergency or have passed a motion to do so, learn more here. Read more

Clean renewable energy, saves money and the planet!

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Solar panelsTake a few moments to learn how you can power your home using clean renewable energy, saving money and the planet!

What do we mean by ‘clean energy’?

Power stations, wind turbines and solar farms all feed their energy into the Grid, like rivers running into a big pond. When you switch to clean energy, your supplier guarantees that however much electricity you take out of the ‘pond’, the same amount of clean energy will be put in. The more people who switch to clean tariffs, the more renewable energy that goes into the pond. This means that the energy sector is producing less pollution and carbon which is crucial if we are to reduce global warming and climate change.

Approximately 30% of the UK’s electricity is generated from renewable sources.

Under new laws, Britain’s biggest energy companies will have to buy renewable energy from their own customers, for example, homeowners who install new rooftop solar panels from 1 January 2020 will be able to lower their bills by selling the energy they do not need to their supplier. Read more

Learn how to divert landfill waste into a recycling scheme and raise money for a good cause

Plastic food packaging. We need your help!!!

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South American Tree FrogDo you know which items are recycled with our “TerraCycle” schemes ?

We wish we could recycle all the plastic food packaging you have kindly donated however there are clear guidelines on which items will be accepted under the free TerraCyle recycling schemes that we are registered to.  Our small team of volunteers are working hard to sort through donations to remove all items which cannot be recycled under the TerraCycle schemes.

To help streamline the work of our volunteers here is a reminder of which plastic food packaging we can accept for recycling. Plastic food packaging from other sources will be discarded…..even if made of same or similar material.  Read more

Single-use plastic recycling stats

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Wow since December the general public have collected 25,136 crisp packets, thanks to our green team of volunteers who sort and dispatch this recycling! Our volunteers include the A Team from Leachpool School in Horsham, who collect from their school, K2 leisure centre in Crawley and The Pavillions leisure centre in Horsham.

We work with a number of charities and companies who recycle these single-use plastics one such company being TerraCycle, they are an innovative recycling company that has become a global leader in recycling hard-to-recycle materials. This scheme helps diverts billions of waste resouces from our landfills and incinerators, recycling them to make new products. Read more

‘The Future We Want’ Billingshurst Carnival procession

Climate Action procession in Billingshurst

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‘The Future We Want’ Billingshurst Carnival procession

‘The Future We Want’ Billingshurst Carnival procession

Want to join a climate action procession to express the urgent need for people to make changes to their lives to reduce the effects for climate change? Want your children to inherit a healthy planet? Join us as we march for the third year running for ‘The Future We Want – LESS C02’ and climate action.

When: Sunday 30th June

Where: The procession will depart from Jengers Mead, Billingshurst at 12 noon, arriving at Billingshurst Show just off of Lower Station Road *.

Led by Carrie Cort the founder of Sussex Green Living (SGL), volunteers from this West Sussex network and members of the public. Carrie trained with Al Gore the former US Vice President and leading climate change scientists as part of the Climate Reality Leadership Corp.

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Make your home more planet friendly

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Save Resources – And Money – With Sustainable Living

Developed nations now consume an estimated 16 tons of minerals, ores, fossil fuels, and biomass per capita every year, meaning that we are consuming Earth’s resources at an entirely unsustainable rate. Though this may seem a daunting fact, you can make a difference in your Sussex home by joining the 94% of residents in the South East that have already committed to making positive changes to lead a greener lifestyle. Doing so could have a worthwhile impact on your household’s pocket as well as its sustainability! Here are some changes you can enact at home. Read more

Buzzing Products Healthy Lifestyles

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Rainbow Brands: Buzzing Products Healthy Lifestyles

We are delighted to be featured on Sussex Green Living it is doing great work to inspire more smarter environmentally friendly living and it certainly shares our ethos to help bring about this positive change in our communities. Read more

Climate Emergency – please can you help us?

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Dear Horsham and West Sussex residents,

Climate change news is everywhere. It seems too bigger problem for many people and is the greatest environmental threat humanity has ever faced, but you can do something. Here are some ways in West Sussex and Horsham you can help….. Read more

Caring for clothes & planet events

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During the first half of 2019 Sussex Green Living and the Horsham Repair Cafe are out and about, inpiring people to ‘make do and mend’, remake, repair, repatch and basically love the clothes and materials around them. Come and learn long lost skills of sewing, patches, repairing buttons, clothes etc. Learn about fast fashion and the damage it is causing our planet, solutions, ways of saving money and the planet……

2nd (10-4pm) and 3rd March (10-3pm) Horsham Repair Cafe and Sussex Green Living are at the Kinder Living Home Show, County Hall, North Horsham, Park Street, Horsham, RH12 1XH. The event aims to encourage more sustainable choices in our homes, gardens and daily lives. We will be offering repairs to electrical household items and clothes and clothes swapping. Read more

Kinder Living event in Horsham

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We are going to be at the Kinder Living Home Show on Saturday 2nd (10-4pm) and Sunday 3rd (10-4pm) March 2019, with Sussex Green Living displays and a pop-up Horsham Repair Cafe come along and see us.

What is the Kinder Living Home Show? Read more

Declare a climate emergency

Press release: World SOS Climate Emergency Day Horsham meeting

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Tsunami of support for Councils in South East to declare Climate emergency

Councils across the South East of England are being urged to declare a ‘Climate Emergency’, after a ground-breaking meeting in Horsham on Saturday 2nd February.  Held to mark World S.O.S. Climate Emergency Day, the meeting brought together for the first time environmental groups from 11 towns from Surrey, and East and West Sussex. Over 126 people aged from 10 to 80 were present. The venue had to be changed three times to accommodate the surge of interest, and took place finally in Horsham’s Unitarian Church. Read more

World S.O.S. Climate Emergency meeting

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PRESS RELEASE

UNITED WE STAND

On Saturday 2nd February at 1.15pm a S.O.S. Climate Emergency Day Meeting is taking place in Horsham Library, the Quaker Meeting House Unitarian Church now due to increasing numbers, open to the general public. In attendance will be people from environmental groups from Horsham, Steyning, Worthing, Chichester, Hassocks, Hurstpierpoint, Keymer and Dorking. The aim being to discuss the climate emergency, planned regional actions and agree collaboration.  Read more

Ethical & sustainable clothes detector game & lessons

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This award winning ethical and sustainable clothes detector invention and game is teaching children and adults alike about the link between fast fashion and climate change.  Through our environmental education programme this year the invention has visited 40 primary schools in West Sussex, where we delivered free assemblies and lessons. We have also used the detector as part of clothes and climate change sessions in children’s groups and public events and delivered talks to adult groups around the subject.

Who invented such a game? Seven pupils from the William Penn Primary School in Coolham are responsible for this great green invention, which won a national award  at the Better Energy School Awards at London Zoo. Read more

No do NOT make eco bricks!

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Here at SGL headquarters we are contacted time and time again about whether we could be a drop off location for eco bricks, our response is always NO NO NO.

Eco bricks have been around for years, they were first developed to deal with flexible single use plastics and plastic bottles in countries which did not have a council offering waste collection and recycling. The idea being it was better to collect the materials, preventing them from going in the rivers and sea and making something useful with them. Now Eco bricks have taken off in the UK after a post was seen a lot of times, and people have begun to ‘make’ them. Read more

Whose waste is it anyway? Event in Brighton

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Whose waste is it anyway? Is a new event taking place at the Brighthelm Centre, Brighton on Thursday 1 November 2018 between 10:00 – 3pm. Carrie Cort, founder of Sussex Green Living is giving a talk on the shocking journey of a cotton T shirt and the environmental effects for the fast fashion industry.

Waste is a hot topic right now.  Read more