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Is the climate broken? Opinions from the people of Horsham
/in Climate change, Take Action/by Marianne LindfieldTo find out what the people of Horsham think, we spent a recent lunchtime patrolling the busy streets around the Swan Walk Shopping Centre.
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A Fond Farewell for our Green Queen (first published in West Sussex County Times)
/in Biodiversity & Nature, Ecology/by Marianne LindfieldDo you consider what happens to your waste? (First published in West Sussex County Times)
/in Recycling, Single use plastic/by Marianne LindfieldAs managing our environmental impact becomes increasingly important, this is a question on many peoples’ minds. In West Sussex, all household waste is processed at two sites managed by Biffa, West Sussex Ltd. A team of our recycling volunteers recently organised visits to Brookhurst Mechanical Biological Treatment Facility and Ford Materials Recycling Facility to find out more.
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The Humble Bumble (first published in West Sussex County Times)
/in Eco News/by Marianne LindfieldRead more
Sustainable Flowers & Floristry (first published in West Sussex County Times)
/in Eco News/by Marianne LindfieldFlowers are a precious part of our life-events, but are we aware of the significant environmental and human costs of the demand for cheap flowers at all times of the year?
Until the 1970s, bought flowers came from British farms, while today, most are grown commercially in Holland, Columbia, Ecuador and Kenya, routed through Dutch auctions. The flower industry has a massive carbon footprint, from heating greenhouses to refrigerated transport, a vast chemical footprint from pesticides, herbicides and preservatives, some banned in the UK, polluting soil and water, poisoning pollinators, impacting flower workers and their communities, many producers are not Fairtrade.
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Horsham Vegan Market (first published in West Sussex County Times)
/in Food Waste/by Marianne LindfieldPires Place Vegan Market is conveniently placed in the centre of Horsham in Piries Place. It’s a regular event and takes place on the last Saturday of each month from 9.30am to 3.30pm.
Featuring up to 16 stalls, the vegan market offers tasty cold food varying from plant-based artisan ‘cheeze’, pies and savouries through to the most delectable cakes & sweet treats, with some gluten-free options of course! There is a hot food stall each month, often hotdogs (vegan of course!), and a new-comer offering a range of freshly made vegan pizzas. You will also find non-food stalls at the market selling anything from make-up and body care through to eco-friendly household goods and gifts, all of course, completely vegan and not tested on animals.
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Want less, Waste Less (first published in West Sussex County Times)
/in Recycling, Single use plastic/by Marianne LindfieldAs mentioned in last week’s blog, a jolly band of Sussex Green Living’s recycling ‘wombles’ enjoyed a tour of Biffa Mechanical and Biological Treatment Facility at Warnham recently.
And when I say ‘enjoyed’ I really mean it! If anyone had told me even a few years ago that I would be excited about a tip trip, I would have been very sceptical – but there we are, that’s how life rolls.
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Taste or Waste? (first published in West Sussex County Times)
/in Food Waste, Health and wellbeing/by Marianne LindfieldI recently listened to a Sustainable Squad podcast (Listen to this episode now on @spotify and @applepodcasts) with Shane Jordan, who became a chef by chance because of his involvement with Food Cycle, collecting unwanted food from shops by bicycle then taking it to be cooked at a Sussex community centre. In his book, Food Waste Philosophy, he explains that he uses every edible part of plants in his cooking, including banana skins.
I was struck with his passion and ingenuity. Another inspirational example is Horsham chef Lenny Salsano, who works at Hill Top Primary School in Crawley. Pre-pandemic, he engaged the pupils in planting, growing and cooking the food used in their lunches. Lenny is keen for the children to learn how important it is to eat fresh, unprocessed food, and shares his skills with pupils. This year they have made salads, chopped vegetables and watched him make bread, which they then eat. Five other schools under the Caterlink umbrella are now using Lenny’s model.
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Puttenham Barn Bunkhouse
/in Children & nature, Green Suppliers, Transport/by Marianne LindfieldWhile wardening at Puttenham Bunkhouse Barn last weekend, I had the pleasure of interviewing Chris Meeks, its founder, who spent many years as editor with Cycling UK, (Cyclists’ Touring Club), and who, aged 16, was the youngest elected member of the YHA’s management team here in the south-east.
Sitting relaxed in the sunshine, amid butterflies and flowers, wearing a T-shirt bearing the slogan “Wilderness not woodchips”, Chris continues to share his passions.
He’s an astonishing example of how one person can inspire a generation. The bunkhouse began life as an idea: finding a place, negotiating the lease with Guildford Borough Council, raising £130,000, removing a huge cattle trough and digging out the floor to lower it by 50 cm. The eventual opening in 2005 was achieved thanks to enormous input from a team of volunteers, including John Bannister, an alternative technology expert.
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It’s Crystal Clear…We have a water crisis (first published in West Sussex County Times)
/in Biodiversity & Nature, Climate change, Ecology/by Marianne LindfieldA surprise from a zoom I attended last week was that many people are unaware that we have a real water crisis here in Horsham District, the first ever in the UK on this scale. The huge water shortfall means that all building work is now on hold while solutions are sought.
Southern Water provide drinking water for over a million properties, and remove and recycle the waste water of almost five million people. Quite a task!
Although we have 205 reservoirs, this provides only 7% of our water. The majority comes from underground aquifers, with around 25% being taken from rivers.
The cost of this service from 2020-2025 is around £1,000 per property, with improvements ranging from digitisation, artificial intelligence and machine learning to re-vamping the 3,500 pumping stations and 40,000 kilometres of sewers. Over a thousand options are being modelled including banning non-essential water use and building a desalination plant at Shoreham.
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Beach clean & Art to highlight plastic waste in Eastbourne
/in Children & nature, Youth Eco Forum/by Marianne LindfieldRead more
Youth in Action (first published in West Sussex County Times)
/in Youth Eco Forum/by Marianne Lindfield“Whilst it’s true that you can only do so much alone, by coming together, we can find ways to reduce the human impact on climate change and make a positive difference.” says founder member Catherine Sleeman. “The idea was to bring us together and give us space to speak about issues important to us and operate independently.”
The forum was initially set up as a fortnightly Zoom meeting during lockdown and is an easy way for young people from across a wide area of Horsham District and beyond to meet.
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Play with Plastic Free July (First Published in West Sussex County Times)
/in Climate change, Refill/by Marianne LindfieldGoing plastic free for a whole 31 days does sound pretty daunting, some would argue impossible, but it’s a great opportunity to get a little creative, learn something new and hopefully pick up a couple of new habits you can stick to. It’s like diet and exercise, if you’re not enjoying it and it doesn’t fit in with your lifestyle you’re unlikely to carry on with it.
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Why the UK Energy Price Hikes & Energy Shortages?
/in Climate change, Energy, Green Suppliers/by Carrie CortMultiple factors are behind the gas price increases. Geopolitical pressures, including high demand for gas from Asia and low supply from Russia, as well as last year’s cold winter, which left gas stocks low, are among the main reasons.
Other countries, such as Norway and Germany, have done a much better job of moving away from gas-fired heating and adopting electric heat pumps, meaning consumers are less exposed to price leaps. Many energy companies have gone bust in recent months and new suppliers have had to purchase gas and electricity on the wholesale market. Britain’s entire energy market needs modernising. Read more
Climate Change hits Sussex as UK Declares First Red Extreme Heat Warning
/in Climate change, Take Action/by Marianne LindfieldThe national emergency came only a day after Sussex Green Living’s CEO Carrie Cort, her son and the charity’s Youth Eco Forum leader Tash Barns joined ‘Zero Hour’, a coalition of UK campaigners, world-leading scientists, academics and members of the public in Victoria Tower Garden next to the House of Lords in Westminster.
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The Importance of Rainforests (First Published in West Sussex County Times)
/in Biodiversity & Nature, Climate change, Ecology/by Marianne LindfieldIt has been like having parallel lives.
The UK has one of lowest levels of tree cover in Europe at 13%, globally ranking 136th out of 189 countries. Looking down from a plane over our green desert fields, we can see how few trees there really are with only tiny patches of ancient woodland remaining, maybe unaware that here in England our level of biodiversity is painfully low. Although the woodland cover has doubled in the last 100 years this is mainly with non-native conifer plantations, where very little diversity can exist.
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Go Greener Rudgwick Recycling by Fiona Sodha (first published in West Sussex County Times)
/in Recycling/by Marianne LindfieldThe plastics collected include crisp & biscuit wrappers, toothpaste tubes, toothbrushes, packaging & floss containers, biros & felt pens, household cleaning items such as marigold gloves, trigger heads, dishwasher flexible packaging, personal care & beauty products such as deodorants and empty foundation tubes, plant pots & trays, cheese wrappers and milk bottle tops.
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We Need Worms …and Book Worms by Morag Warrack (first published in West Sussex County Times)
/in Climate change/by Marianne LindfieldWe’re slowly moving towards creating a more permanent Green Hub for Horsham, inspired by the excellent Zero at Guildford. One of the many things we’d love, alongside a Community Fridge, a Seed Bank, and a Library of Things (such as ladders or tents) is a Green Book Library.
There are countless wonderful books available, some written by children, such as Greta Thunberg’s tiny motivational book, ‘No-one is too small to make a difference’. Even her inspirational title is clearly intended to change people’s lives for the better. When Greta has been asked “What can we do?” her reply has been, “Educate yourself””
What better way to start, then, than by borrowing a book from a Green Library?
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Swift Action Needed: Citizen Science for Horsham Swift Box Project (first published in West Sussex County Times)
/in Biodiversity & Nature, Ecology/by Marianne LindfieldThese extraordinary birds can remain in the air for three whole years because everything else apart from nesting is done on the wing. Only when they reach maturity and start to build will they touch anything solid.
No other bird can fly faster in level flight. They eat insects, drink raindrops or water from a lake, even mating and sleeping on the wing, up near Earth’s stratosphere. Their huge eyes are surrounded by bristles that act as sun visors and their feet are incredibly strong and so needle-sharp and tiny that they are unable to hop or walk, so they fly directly into the holes, cling to walls or slip into spaces where they can easily drop back out again.
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Refill is the new Recycle
/in Food Waste, Refill, Single use plastic/by Marianne LindfieldWe already know that we’re using too much plastic. The UK produces more plastic packaging per person than almost any other country in the world – only the US is worse. And if things carry on as they are, the amount of plastic waste produced around the world is set to double by 2040.
So could the answer to our plastic problems be refill?
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World Environment Day (first published in West Sussex County Times)
/in Eco News/by Marianne LindfieldWorld Environment Day 2022 will be held again with this same theme, ‘Only One Earth’, to highlight again the need to live sustainably in harmony with our ecology by bringing transformative changes through policies and our own choices, moving towards lifestyles more in line with the natural cycles of Nature.
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The Wool Revival (first published in West Sussex County Times)
/in Eco News/by Marianne LindfieldIn total contrast, who wants to see a factory producing acrylic? A synthetic produced mainly in India and China, it’s made from chemicals so dangerous that special regulations have had to be made to prevent explosions at the factories manufacturing it.
Acrylic seems to have replaced real wool in much of our clothing. However it is not biodegradeable so minute harmful particles of it are becoming increasingly present in our oceans, in foodstuffs and in human and animal bodies. There is now even some suspicion that there may be carcinogenic risks associated with wearing acrylic next to our skin.
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The Green Thing (first published in West Sussex County Times)
/in Eco News/by Marianne LindfieldImage Credit: Billingshurst Dairy
Checking out at the supermarket, the young cashier suggested to the much older woman, that she could bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.
The woman apologised and explained, “We didn’t have this ‘green thing’ back in my earlier days.” She was right in that my generation didn’t have ‘the green thing’.
Back then, we returned glass milk, lemonade and beer bottles to the shop, and were sometimes given a few pence in return. The shop sent them all back to the plant to be washed and sterilised and refilled, so the same bottles were used over and over again.
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For all our sakes – Stop using Peat (first published in West Sussex County Times)
/in Eco News/by Marianne LindfieldNo doubt you have heard that for a healthy planet, we should use peat-free compost, but do you know why, or what exactly is peat?
Peat is soil made up of organic matter that has only partially rotted down. The lack of oxygen and the acidic nature of waterlogged peat bogs prevent bacteria and fungi from breaking down the dead plant material. It is formed over millions of years, at a rate of only 1mm thickness per year, but we are currently extracting it at a rate much, much faster than that! By ‘mining’ peat we are both damaging the ecology and adding to climate change.
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Eco Aware Earth Day (first published in West Sussex County Times)
/in Children & nature, Climate change, Events, Green art & games, Seasonal celebrations/by Carrie CortThe four girls had their eco passion ignited by a Rainforest topic in Year Four and ever since have eagerly encouraged others, staff included, to join them in driving for a more eco aware school, community and planet. Consequently, there was no need for the school staff to set up an eco-group; the girls would never have not let it happen! They created their own group, with many other children eager to join in.
The Green Day started with a whole school Eco Easter bonnet parade with winners from each class receiving an eco-notebook and pen and an Easter Egg. All hats were adorned with recycled decorations and had an Easter theme. The children clung to their hats in the wind but were full of smiles of pride in the beautiful spring sunshine as they paraded, each class in turn, in front of the whole school to cheerful applause. Read more