Welcome to May’s Update from Climate Action Stokesley & Villages

Thank you for your role in taking urgent action globally and locally on climate breakdown and biodiversity loss.

Diary dates

(event details below)

Tuesday 21st May 7.30-9pm Whole group meeting, the Globe, Stokesley
1st – 31st May ‘No Mow May’
Saturday 6th – Sunday 12th May National Hedgerow Week
Tuesday 14th May 1.30-3pm Yatton House Community Garden Working Party, Great Ayton
Tuesday 14th May 7.00pm Waste group meeting by zoom (details below)
Thursday 16th May 3.30pm Nature group meeting, the Globe, Stokesley
Saturday 18th May 10.00-12.00 May Repair Cafe, Bike Health Checks & #Mend It May, Swainby Village Hall
Wednesday 22nd May 6.00-7.30pm ‘The Energy Source Challenge in Rural Britain’ Talk, Chapelgarth, Great Broughton
Tuesday 28th May 6.30pm Local Energy Advice Demonstrator (LEAD) Presentation, Stokesley Town Hall
Thursday 30th May 7.00pm Food group meeting by zoom (details below)
Monday 3rd June 7.30pm ‘A Rubbish Talk’, Osmotherley Village Hall

Coming Soon:

Great Big Green Week 8th – 16th June

Great Big Green Week 2024

Saturday 8th June 10-12 Repair Cafe & ‘Mend in Public’ event, the Globe & town centre, Stokesley
Saturday 8th June 9.30 & 11.30 Flower Field Tour, Ingelby Greenhow
Saturday 8th June 1.00-4.00pm CASaV stall at the Village Fair, Great Ayton
Saturday 8th – Saturday 15th June Environment / Climate Action Displays at the Globe Stokesley, the Discovery Centre Great Ayton, the Hub Hutton Rudby, Labman Seamer
Wednesday 12th June 6.30pm Local Energy Advice Demonstrator (LEAD) Presentation, Discovery Centre, Great Ayton
Friday 14th June 9-12 CASaV Information Stall including LEAD promotion, Stokesley Market

Later in June:

Saturday 22nd June 12.00 Restore Nature Now Gathering, Central London

More information here restorenaturenow

Our online newsletter / magazine focuses on our group’s values and purpose, summed up by our motto ‘Think global, act local’, beginning with global / national / county issues including ways in which you can influence policy, followed by local news and activities you can participate in that develop our relationship with the environment and fight climate change and biodiversity loss.

Currently we have over 500 people who have joined our Facebook group and nearly 400 people have signed up to our regular emails which is brilliant as this tells us that a lot of local people are interested in what we stand for and what we do as a group. We aim to arrange a wide range of local events and activities each month to inform anyone and everyone about the impact of climate breakdown and diversity loss and importantly engage people in ways that they can individually and as a community act to bring about change.

We have a strong core of active members who arrange these events and activities alongside promoting and communicating how we think globally and act locally but we need more to join us! Please get in touch if you have an interest in being active in supporting our aims if you have:

Organisational skills – join one of our subgroups to help plan events

Repair / people / event skills – volunteering at our Repair Cafes – we welcome fixers of anything and everything plus people who like people and have event running skills

Media / communication skills – help us promote what we do through all forms of communication – online and face to face at our events such as our market stalls and Repair Cafes

Care about food waste and / or want to help those in food poverty – join our rota for collecting surplus food and distributing to those in need

Creative skills – help us design our leaflets and promotional materials

Networking skills – help us reach out to local community groups including schools and businesses to spread our aims

“Think global”

National and global climate action news and campaigns

1st – 31st May ‘No Mow May’

Why do we need No Mow May?

According to the environmental charity Plantlife we’ve lost approximately 97% of flower-rich meadows since the 1930’s and with them gone are vital food needed by pollinators, like bees and butterflies.

But your lawn can help! A healthy lawn with some long grass and wildflowers benefits wildlife, tackles pollution and can even lock away carbon below ground. With over 20 million gardens in the UK, even the smallest grassy patches add up to a significant proportion of our land which, if managed properly, can deliver enormous gains for nature, communities and the climate.

This is why Plantlife calls for people to get involved with #NoMowMay every year, and let wild plants get a head start on the summer.

Best of all, to reap these benefits all you have to do is not mow your lawn in May and beyond!

How to take part

Register your lawn or green space. Click here – this helps us to better understand the total number and size of lawns the UK is letting grow for nature.
Do nothing and let your lawn grow this May… and beyond.

CASaV members have also been active in Hutton Rudby, Stokesley and Great Ayton liaising with the town councils to facilitate some areas of land managed by the councils to remain unmowed this year.

In previous years biodiversity in the unmown council managed areas has significantly increased, for example in 2022, following only cutting the Great Ayton floodplain meadow once in late summer of 2021, it was amazing how many wild flowers flowered that year. Having surveyed the meadow over that summer 136 different species of plants were identified by local expert botanist Martin Allen.

“When I visited in July there were bees on the thistle flowers, hoverflies on the white hogweed, with butterflies flitting in between, and when I walked through the long grass small clouds of a white micro-moth took to the air – this year has been a big pollinator success story for the Floodplain Meadow.” Martin Allen

Visit our website Floodplain meadow – Climate Action Stokesley and Villages to find out more about the work to manage the floodplain meadow to increase biodiversity.

For more information have a look at our Darlington and Stockton Times Climate Column The environmental benefits of taking part in No Mow May article

Saturday 6th – Sunday 12th May National Hedgerow Week

Hedgerows are the often-unsung heroes of the British countryside, yet they form the UK’s largest wildlife habitat, are a major part of our landscape and cultural heritage, and are crucial to halting biodiversity decline and tackling climate change.

Hedge Talks is a series of webinars run by the environmental charity Hedgelink celebrating all that our unsung hedgerow heroes do for us and the environment. They have collected some of the brightest minds in the world of hedges to speak about everything hedgerow!

Also National Hedgerow Week coincides with National Plant Health Week. We all need to do our bit to support hedgerow health, and sometimes that just involves knowing what to look for, and then letting others know! Observatree hosts lots of handy guides and if you do discover any pests and diseases, report them using Forest Research’s Tree Alert

“Act Local”

This month’s local activities and ideas from our focus groups (Nature, Food, Waste, Energy, Transport) to address biodiversity loss and fight climate breakdown

CASaV Monthly Meeting at the Globe Community Library, Stokesley

Tuesday 21st May 7.30-9pm

Our next whole group meeting will be on Tuesday 21st May, in The Globe Community Library, North Road, Stokesley, from 7:30 – 9:00 pm. As well as hearing updates from the various sub-groups we will have a discussion about the effect of recent weather on food production in the UK and the possible/probable consequences on food prices and food security.planning as well as activities for Great Big Green Week. All welcome!

This is the link to last month’s meeting’s minutes to give a flavour of what we discuss https://climateactionstokesleyandvillages.org/2024/04/03/casav-monthly-meeting-tuesday-16th-april-2024/

Tuesday 14th May, 1:30-3:00pm Gardening working party, Yatton House Community Garden, Great Ayton

There will be a working party on Tuesday 14th May from 1:30-3:00 pm in the Yatton House Community Garden, Guisborough Road, Great Ayton. This is the session rescheduled after inclement weather in April. We will be planting out a selection of perennial vegetable plants. The plants were provided by CASaV members by splitting plants they have in their gardens/allotments. All welcome to come and help with the planting or to have a look around.

Saturday 18th May 10-12 noon Repair Cafe, Bike Health Checks plus free #Mend It May skills workshops, Swainby Village Hall

Our monthly Repair Cafe will be at Swainby Village Hall on Saturday 18th May 10-12.

Alongside our pink T shirted repair volunteers fixing your household items – electrical appliances, wooden furniture, toys & bikes, laptops & mobile phones, blades needing sharpening – the sewing team will also be sharing their skills in darning and visible mending as part of Mend It May, an anti fast fashion initiative encouraging us all to dress sustainably by taking care of our existing clothing and mend rips and tears to extend the life of our wardrobe. Bring along any item of clothing – socks, jumpers, jeans, shirts – and learn creative repair skills. You will be encouraged to post pictures of your creations to social media to spread the word!

Sadly Sustrans couldn’t make it to our April Repair Cafe, but Bicycle Health Expert Andy from Sustrans is joining us to provide free bicycle ‘health checks’ – a thorough check over of your bike to check it’s road worthiness plus small repairs and advice where needed.

May is also BigFix month an initiative that Recycle Devon started a decade ago as a single day and is now a national month. So May’s Repair Cafe will be reporting its repairs to BigFix to add to the national total of repairs carried out in BigFix month – https://www.recycledevon.org/blog/the-big-fix-2024/

As usual, through coming to the Repair Cafe you can save yourself money, the earth’s resources and prevent climate damaging gases from waste going to incineration or landfill. On average, we manage to fix 70% of items, give advice on possible repair steps for 20% and how best to recycle the 10% that are sadly beyond repair (statistics). But 100% of attendees are offered free refreshments of tea, coffee or juice as well as cakes and biscuits!

This month’s free refreshments include Fair Trade beverages and home made sweet treats made with Fair Trade ingredients, kindly donated by Stokesley Co-op, facilitated by Eileen Driver.

New repair and reception volunteers always welcome – come along, have a cuppa and a chat or email Simon Gibbon.

Wednesday 22nd May 18.00-19.30 ‘The Energy Source Challenge in Rural Britain’ Talk, Chapelgarth, Great Broughton

Part of the Global Tees Short Talks three fascinating illustrated talks on the ‘Energy Source Challenge in Rural Britain’ will take place at the beautiful surroundings of the Writers Retreat, Chapel Garth in Great Broughton.

Chaired by Dr Marcella Sutcliffe, talks will be given by Professor Aimee Ambrose on Decarbonising Off Grid Homes, Dr Rokia Raslan on The Challenge to Decarbonise and Emily Dowd on Methane Leaks detected from Outer Space.A number of members of CASaV have been interviewed by Prof Ambrose’s team as part of her project on improving understanding of how to decarbonise off grid homes funded by Northern Power Grid and Northern Gas Network. So hopefully we will get some early insights into what the team have learned as part of this ongoing project. https://www.shu.ac.uk/centre-regional-economic-social-research/projects/all-projects/decarbonisation-solutions-for-off-grid-communities

All welcome to this free event with donations welcomed towards Actions Around Bethlehem Children (ABCD) Charity. More information here chapelgarth

Tuesday 28th May 6.30pm Local Energy Advice Demonstrator (LEAD) Presentation, Stokesley Town Hall

LEAD is a £1.2M scheme to stimulate demand for energy efficiency measures in homes across North Yorkshire. The funding has been received from the Department of Energy Security and NET Zero and the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and will be focusing around retrofitting homes to reduce energy consumption. The project will be piloted in seven neighbourhoods around Stokesley and other towns across North Yorkshire.

Led by North Yorkshire Council, the scheme will be focused on specific streets, villages and neighbourhoods where studies have highlighted priority areas and where interest in tackling climate change through retrofitted schemes has been shown. Households in these pilot areas will be offered a free ‘whole house plan’ – a survey of their homes with advice on what would be needed to make them more energy efficient such as new windows and doors, or cavity wall and loft insulation.

A SERIES OF FREE PRESENTATIONS ABOUT THIS PROJECT HAS BEEN ORGANISED STARTING ON MONDAY 28TH MAY AT 6.30PM IN STOKESLEY TOWN HALL. FURTHER PRESENTATIONS WILL BE ON WEDNESDAY 12TH JUNE 6.30PM AT THE DISCOVERY CENTRE, GREAT AYTON AND ALSO AT POTTO VILLAGE HALL DATE TBC AS WELL AS AN INFORMATION STALL AT STOKESLEY MARKET ON 14TH JUNE.

ALL WELCOME.

CASaV is actively involved in facilitating this project led by Mark Lewis, one of our CASaV members interested in Energy.

If you are interested in having an audit of your house, please contact us and we will send you information now.

Monday 3rd June 7.30pm ‘A Rubbish Talk’, Osmotherley Village Hall

Environment & Climate Osmotherley (ECO) Group (see below) have organised ‘A Rubbish Talk’ by Tracey Flint, Recycling Officer at North Yorkshire Council on Monday 3rd June at 7:30 pm in Osmotherley Village Hall. A free event where Tracey will cover household recycling, what you can recycle via your kerbside bins and also via other council recycling facilities as well as how the rest of your waste is used.

Issues / ideas from the groups: Environment & Climate Osmotherley (ECO) Group

CASaV is delighted to have been joined by Environment & Climate Osmotherley (ECO) which is a group of like-minded villagers with shared concerns around our environment & climate change. Their lead, Rebecca Wright notes “We meet once a month & also have four sub-groups exploring Decarbonisation, Sustainability, Flora & Fauna who meet regularly. We hope to encourage other residents & visitors to our village to adopt a more thoughtful & sustainable approach to our environment, and also work with the relevant local authorities to promote sustainable living.”

Contact for more information

Issues / ideas from the groups: Nature

This month’s Nature Group meeting is at 15.30, Thursday 23rd May at the Globe Library In Stokesley. Please join us there.

Contact Bridget Holmstrom for information

Yorkshire Peat Partnership needs your help!

Did you know that northern Yorkshire’s peatlands currently store 27,410,845 tonnes of carbon?

York Peat Partnership covers an operational area containing 92,946 ha hectares of blanket bog, of which the majority is sadly damaged and leaking carbon back to the atmosphere. 27% of England’s blanket bog is in North Yorkshire, making this a landscape deserving of protection.

Yorkshire Peat Partnership (YPP) is looking for volunteers to help monitor the peat moorlands as part of their restoration work. If anyone is interested in finding out more please contact Bridget Holmstrom.

There are a couple of different opportunities.

Nature for Climate (NFC) monitoring campaigns (July-August + October-November – various sites in the North Yorkshire Moors/Yorkshire Dales)

Vegetation monitoring will be carried out during July/August this year on a number of the restoration sites in the North York Moors – the dates/invitations for these days will come out via email later this year to those who contact YPP.

Volunteers can sign up to any days they are available to help and the day will involve visiting plots to conduct vegetation surveys with assistance with a YPP member of staff.

Dipwell monitoring campaign will also be carried out during October-November this year, each of our sites will be visited every 2 weeks during the 12 week period to collect dipwell data with volunteers.

The emails will be sent later in the year to ask if any volunteers can assist on the dates they plan to visit sites.

2. Eyes on the Bog monitoring plots (2-4 times a year on assigned plots usually 1 location)

The long term monitoring programme will be rolled out across the North York Moors and this is where volunteers are responsible for monitoring their own plots 2-4 times a year and sending YPP the data. YPP will arrange plots to be installed on sites accessible for the volunteers and provide training/support/equipment.

If interested, contact YPP (see above) who will be sending a save the date invitation out in the next week or so. This event is not essential to attend for volunteers and other training days in the North York Moors will be arranged once it is confirmed which sites they will be installing plots.

Ideas from the groups: Food

This month’s Food Group meeting is on Thursday 23rd May 19.00

by zoom – contact Wendy for a link to join

May Seasonal eating

Eating food in season (local as far as possible) can have substantial positive impact on climate breakdown by reducing high-energy input from artificial heating or lighting needed to produce crops out of the natural growing season. In May’s section we will look at what foods are in season right now together with a seasonal recipe.

Right now the following are freshly in season: asparagus, basil, broccoli, carrots, chervil, chives, coriander, dill, jersey royal and new potatoes, lettuce and salad leaves, mint, nasturtium, new potatoes, parsley, oregano, peas, radishes, rhubarb, rocket, rosemary, sage, samphire, sorrel, spinach, spring onions, tarragon, watercress, wild nettles, wild garlic

Growing Your Own: May tips

Home-grown food does not need to be transported from source to market. This reduces air pollution as planes, ships, trucks and cars are not used to bring the food to your plate. It’s also been shown that growing your own leads to less food waste and you can ensure that it is grown without artificial fertilisers, pesticdes and herbicdes. This year, why not try one new vegetable, such as salsify sometimes called the vegetable oyster! Grows like a parsnip. Or Golden beetroot or Romanesco calabrese (produces the beautiful green heads you only occasionally see in a greengrocer. Mathematicians may notice the fractal design of the florets!)

Recipe of the month: Asparagus & new potato frittata

Recipe here

More information here:

Seasonal eating

how-to-eat-seasonally

Foodshare: Now Premier Food Store as well as the Co-ops

Every night, every week Jenny Earle, joint Food Group lead, organises volunteers to collect surplus food from our local Co-op stores as well as the new Premier Food Store in Great Ayton. The food is then distributed locally to those in need, not only reducing food waste which produces carbon gases affecting our climate but also providing a huge benefit to the community.

New volunteers are always welcome, please contact.

Ideas from the groups: Waste

This month’s Waste group meeting Wednesday 14th May 7.00pm by zoom – contact Simon Gibbon for a link to join, (previous notes)

Not-so-local Repair Cafes – Middlesbrough (11th May)

The Stokesley and Villages Repair Cafe (next one 18th May Swainby Village Hall) has been helping other areas to start repair cafes. Saltburn Repair Cafe held its second cafe on 6th April in the Community Hall (Facebook) and another will take place on Saturday July 6th and Middlesbrough Friends of the Earth has plans for its first repair cafe on 11th May in the Friends Meeting House on Cambridge Road – (Facebook). If you know people in Saltburn or Middlesbrough suggest they volunteer to get these off the ground, so much to repair so little time, so more hands make lighter work. The contacts are Rob Tucker to volunteer for Middlesbrough (also volunteer meeting at 7pm on 18th April at Meeting House) or Rowan to volunteer for Saltburn.

Reduce – Reuse – Recycle: current local actions you can take to prevent / reduce waste

Whether household waste goes to landfill or incineration climate damaging carbon gases are produced. Here are some current local options for reducing waste at source and for reusing / recycling your unwanted or waste items that will not only cut carbon emissions but in some cases benefit those in our local community. It’s a big win / win.

Shop local – less travel, less packaging

Food at your local farm shop, farmers market or small high street shop is usually locally grown or reared so less carbon emissions and often sold without the layers of plastic packaging so reducing waste. You can usually choose the exact quantity you want so less food waste too. We have some good farm shops nearby including:

Roots Farm Shop & Café, East Rounton DL6 2LE

Fletchers Farm Shop, Woodhouse Farm Great Ayton TS9 6HZ

Spilman’s Farm Shop, Church Farm, Sessay, ThirskYO7 3NB

Five Houses Farm Shop, Crathorne TS15 0AY

Shop in bulk – costs less & less packaging too!

You can also reduce packaging by buying in bulk, particularly through organisations like Zero Waste Bulk Foods. Very simply, you order the food you want then they send food in reusable bags. Once you’ve decanted your food from them, simply return them via pre-paid post. They then take them to a local dry cleaner who washes them to a food safe standard, ready for the next customer.

https://zerowastebulkfoods.co.uk/

Agonising about waste? Waste Agony Aunt is here for you!

Kate from the Waste subgroup is always delighted to receive your queries about how you can reduce / reuse / repurpose / recycle (almost!) any item. Here are some queries she’s received recently:

Q “I’ve been having a garden shed sort out and I’ve got loads of plastic plant pots I can’t use”

A “All Strikes Garden Centres have a reuse / recycling facility”

Klondyke & Strikes Garden Centres say: We are providing our customers with a pot recycling facility through all our garden centres. This will make it easier than ever to reduce unnecessary plastic waste in the garden and prevent further plastic waste ending up in landfill. We can take all shapes, sizes and colours of pot or tray, as long as they’re plastic and not polystyrene. Please wash them before you bring them to us. We will also be offering to recycle your used plastic compost bags.

Q “I’ve got a drawer full of old pens – how can they be recycled?”

A “Rymans have a pen recycling facility”

Rymans offer pen recycling in all of their stores, nearest Northallerton and Darlington. They’ve collected over 1,900,000 pens which they convert into charity donations.

Also ink and toner cartridge recycling is available in all stores and they provide customers with a 50p discount for each cartridge returned (discount is only available when making a subsequent purchase of ink / toner in store on the day of making the return and is for a maximum of 5 cartridges per transaction).

Under the Waste Battery Regulations, they offer a take-back scheme for all portable waste batteries. Recycling boxes can be found in all of their stores, alternatively, you can find your local waste portable battery recycling facility at http://www.recyclenow.co.uk. Most supermarkets and shops that sell batteries will have collection bins for used batteries, and some town halls, libraries or schools may also set up collection points.

Q “I’ve got an old pallet and want ideas how to use it in the garden”

A “Try upcycling a pallet into a herb garden”

How to do it here

Issues / ideas from the groups: Transport

Development of Local Transport Strategy

Barry Warrington, CASaV lead for Transport summarises the Development of the Local Transport Strategy:

During 2023 North Yorkshire County Council initiated a consultative process under the banner of ‘Let’s Talk Transport’. This was in response to the fact that in 2022 the Dept for Transport announced that they expected all local transport authorities to have in place a fit for purpose Local Transport Plan (LTP) which sets out a strategic vision and a case for investment in transport in their area. (Although the government as yet has not provided any guidance as to the nature of such a strategy.)

This consultative exercise has involved an online survey and paper based survey activity, numerous public meetings. Almost 5000 people responded. Subsequently a stakeholder questionnaire was issued to over 700 groups including businesses, charities and interest groups. A total of 100 responses were received. The Council then set in train a process for organisations who had expressed an interest in a more detailed discussion. This is in addition to ongoing liaison with key partners and stakeholders. CASaV have contributed to this process in the form of a document covering 20’s Plenty, Active Travel, Bicycle Bus, Wheels to Work, Public Transport, Charging Points.

In addition Barry Warrington Transport Lead for CASV attended a Zoom meeting on the 20th Oct with related organisation from throughout the County. The meeting attended by the Assistant Director for the Environment and Paul Haslam the lead Councillor for Climate Change provided little more than an insight into the consultative process and an account of the situation to date. It was not a meeting to have any real discussion of possible ‘deliverable’.

An update was provided in a report published by North Yorkshire Council on the 18th December entitled ‘Update on the Development of the New Local Transport Plan – approval to publish public engagement findings’ – 18th December 2023 Update / 4th February 2024 Update.

In terms of Climate Change this document indicated that proposed changes and development were required to take into account ‘How will this proposal impact on the environment’ and that ‘One of the requirements of the new LTP process is to develop a quantitative carbon reduction plan’ ‘One of the governments three policy objectives for the LTP is to reduce impact of transport on the environment’

Read Barry’s full report here: local-transport-strategy-consultative-process/

Signing off

If you have any news or any event / activity you would like promoting on next month’s (June) update please email Kate Gibbon by the end of May.

Kate also helps promote activities via Facebook and Instagram so let her know if there is anything that you would like shared via our Facebook page and Instagram if you are not a Facebook / Instagram user.

Hope to see you at the CASaV whole group gathering on Tuesday 18th May at the Globe Community Library, Stokesley

Kate Gibbon,

on behalf of the Climate Action Stokesley and Villages Steering Group Steering group:

Bridget Holmstrom, Caryn Loftus, Jack Turton, Ron Kirk and Simon Gibbon