October’s Waste Thoughts – 2024

Full notes below, quick summary – follow links for the detail:

  • Waste:
  • Water:
    • Northumbria Water give out free items which help to reduce water use.
    • We should all have water butts to reduce flooding and use of combined sewage outflows.
  • Recycle / Reuse / Circularity:
    • Green France – TGVs not planes, bikes not cars, pedestrianised city centres, unwrapped fruit and vegetables, water dispensers, fast food in washable containers.
    • Gin bottles in Guisborough get returned and refilled.
  • Textiles:
    • We are making draught excluders againt this year, using scraps fabrics and old stuffing.
  • Food:
    • Apps help to save food – Too Good to Go and Olio
    • The Guardian had a great long read on reducing food waste which also touched on food vs. packaging.
    • The first plant food Quorn is made in Stokesley
  • Repair Cafes:
  • CASaV Wide

Actions:

  • All please bring any old pillows / cushions to the repair cafe for a new life as stuffing for draught excluders.
  • All get in touch with Kate if you would be able to help at a draught excluder workshop.
  • Anne check details of Christmas stall and raise at CASaV group meeting – Tuesday 15th.
  • All get in touch with Anne if you would like to do a session on the CASaV Stall on 6th December.

Background – Our Monthly Waste Discussions

If you have just signed up to the Waste Group, then welcome, I hope these notes of our discussion make sense.

We meet once a month to talk about topics connected to waste and plan / report progress on our ongoing activities such as the Repair Cafes, Foodshare, Refill scheme and events such as the Bilsdale Show.  If you visit the “Thoughts on Waste” page on the CASaV website you can find all our past discussions – https://climateactionstokesleyandvillages.org/waste/thoughts-on-waste/

Please get in touch if you have any questions.

Notes form 8th October 2024 CASaV Waste Group

Updates

Joy

Too Good To Go – is an end of the day App where food establishments offer what will otherwise be leftover food at bargain prices from 3.30pm. It has avoided 350million meals from being swept into bin bags, like anything it is not perfect with some outlets using “surprise bags” as a new sales channel. It seems to be widely used locally and like Olio a similar app it may be worthwhile looking into as another way to reduce food waste.

Pete

The Festival of Thrift had a great stall from Royal Institute of British Architects with lots of Lego, that got the kids to the stall to build green building, while the parents were encouraged to discuss green building. The architects were all keen on green, and so not happy about current housing standards. Hopefully the The Festival of Thrift will be back next year, in the meantime the website has some great ideas to Thrift All Year.

Kate

Just back from our train trip to Provence, so a few of the green things there:

  • Bike maintenance stands seemed to be in lots of places with pump, spanners, allen keys, screwdrivers, etc., everything to fix your bike without having to carry a toolbox on the back of your bike.
  • Avignon centre pedestrianised, but the pedestrianised area is large, so there free tiny electric buses which go down narrow cobble streets, mainly the back streets with less pedestrians, giving access for everyone to the whole city.
  • All supermarkets seem to have almost entirely unwrapped fruits and vegetables – whether it’s lettuce or cucumber without its plastic protective sleeve or grapes – seems that low packaging it just normal.
  • London seemed to have lots more water dispensers across the city, in stations, in the underground and just on streets.
  • Plant based fast food in washable containers.

The sewing team at the Stokesley Repair Cafe will not just be repairing, but also helping people to make free draught excluders. We have lots of fabric to make the draught excluders from, but need more good fillings for draught excluders, for example old pillows / cushions – bring them along, even if all lumpy and bumpy still make great fillings for draught excluders.

Action: All please bring any old pillows / cushions to the repair cafe for a new life as stuffing for draught excluders.

We are looking into holding a draught excluder making session at the Discovery Centre in Great Ayton in November.

Action: All get in touch with Kate if you would be able to help at a draught excluder workshop.

Perhaps we could design a school project to determine which is the best filling for draught excluders.

Simon and I went to the Ripon Together Green Fair on Saturday 5th October with lots on retrofitting advice.

Ripon Together Green Fair – Talks & Presentations:

  • (James Hall) — Air source Heat Pump Problem Solving
  • (Steve Hall, WT Hall Builders) — Builder, Own House Retrofit – impressive proper approach to retrofitting and building high efficiency domestic buildings, the attention to detail that is essential to highly insulated buildings was stressed.
  • (John Kerr, Zero Carbon Harrogate) — Retrofit training – John explained the different view of the LEAD grant taken by ZCH, where they focused only on either people who are hard to get to retrofit and house that are difficult to retrofit, whereas the CASaV approach was to select those keen to get retrofitting done. John also talked about how ZCH are upskilling the local building ecosystem with the necessary retrofitting expertise through largely fully funded training.
  • (Dr Joanne Tippet, The University of Manchester) — Transformational change and creative learning for sustainability — Roundview aims to create a future where sustainability becomes as fundamental to everyday life as the three Rs. In this future, the RoundView becomes the fourth R (Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic and RoundView), increasing our skills and capacity for positive change. They have put together a fantastic set of teaching resources that show how by taking the RoundView we are able to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss by putting the world back in balance.
  • (Laura Cooke) — Waste Incinerator Allerton Park
  • (Andy Brown) — Green NY Councillor
  • (Richard Webster) — Regenerative Design
  • (James Johnson) — Sustainable Farming – Jackie was impressed by the simplicity of his approach to transforming farming into sustainable farming –
    1) minimise soil disturbance.
    2) keep soil covered.
    3) maintain living roots in the soil.
    4) maximise plant diversity.
    5) reintroduce livestock.
  • (Amy) — Lower Ure Conservation Trust and RCC
  • (Jack Hernandez) — Convenience Store Case Study
  • (Mike Kaye) — Energy Oasis

Wendy

Fantastic “Long Read” in the Guardian on Reducing Food Waste – “The scandal of food waste and what we can do about it“. 8-10% of green house gas (GHG) emissions are due to food waste / food not being used, if food waste was a country it would be the third largest emitter of GHGs after the USA and China. However, as Denmark showed it is possible by national action by achieving a 25% reduction in 5 years.

It is important to understand how to save food from going to waste, for example cooked rice is ok as long as cooled soon after cooking.

UK government has not helped in 2023 it abandoned food waste reporting being mandatory (Food Manufacture) and now even supermarkets are asking for it be introduced (The Retail Gazette).

But packaging can prolong the life of the food, for example cheese has 58x the environmental impact of its packaging, whereas tomato ketchup is only 2x its packaging. So appropriate packaging can be good, however any packaging that can be avoided while not wasting food is good, for example by buying only what you need now, means you don’t need the product packaged to last for many weeks.

The Food Group is considering running a food competition using leftover food, aimed at schools, either primary or secondary, watch the food group for further details.

Jenny

I have an old sleeping bag, filled with feathers, so won’t bring to library to fill draught excluders as a feathered library won’t go well – use outside. I have even heard of dry dog food being used to stuff draught excluders, would have sufficient weight / flexibility, not sure what happens when it gets wet.

Helen and Jenny visited Quorn to see how CASaV could work with Quorn in areas where there is common cause. Competition in the meat free marketplace and due to people’s tightened budgets Quorn like other alternative foodstuff has had a tough year, so they are exploring all ways of getting Quorn to more people. Quorn has been described as an ultra-processed food, as like bread or beer, it is formulated, however unlike most UPFs Quorn is a mycoprotein so rather than having its nutritional value destroyed by processing the processing of Quorn enhances its nutritional value.

David

North Yorkshire Council’s “Let’s Talk Rubbish” consultation had 10400 replies across North Yorkshire, for the council the main aim was to get citizens buy in to enable the council to streamline 7 different waste collections methods into 1 based on the “Selby model” – of standardised large rubbish bins – 1 residual, 2 bigger recycling, 1 green bin – 1 bin emptied each week. There will be further consultations on this model and a report produced. The changes should end up collecting more recycling, while costing £8million to implement (bins to buy), current bin wagons will keep going, will take 2 – 3 year for implementation, the bin men will move to 4 day working week, there will £1million a year payback if recyclate holds value in market.

Concerns have been raised about the space that an extra bin will required, however sacks etc.. will be used where people don’t have the space. People in Selby are happy with this system, and so few responses were received from Selby.

Christmas Tree Collection is likely to be stopped, possibly to be replaced with community collection, i.e. you take your tree to a communal spot.

Economics/environomics of artifical christmas trees – need to used for at least 10 years to be more environmentally friendly than a real tree – Moral Fibres Writeup.

CASaV plan to enter the Christmas Tree Festival at Stokesley Parish Church again this year with a new upcycled tree design.

Fred

Interesting to see what gets traction on Facebook – a post that Shorty’s take back their gin bottles had 1500 views, no smashing up the bottle, the bottle is returned and reused.

Northumbria Water (NWL) offer free water saving kit – https://nwl.watersavingkit.com/ – toilet cistern brick, air shower, water stick – you choose what is in your kit.

Reuse of recycle – Pathfinder Dogs – take recycling to make money for dogs for the blind, a shame they are in North Lanarkshire.

Guisbrough Eco-Group had R&CBC in to tell them what can / can’t be recycled. It is contentious that they tag recycling bins with contamination in them – so the bins don’t get emptied, it upset people, stops contamination but alienates people from recycling. R&CBC recycling rate is down from 38 to 30% – was this just loss of green waste when £40 annual charge was introduced. Recycling rate is green waste plus dry materials – green waste bumps up the number.

Packaging makes food last longer, but reusing packaging reduces the ultimate amount of plastic going to waste, so I keep my cheese in reusable plastic bags.

It would be great to see 4 draw cabinets for recycling, so things are kept clean and separate, instead of new bin, sadly not likely as labour involved would be more.

Saltburn Surfers Against Sewage pointed out everybody should have a storm water butt – filled during storms and released when the water level has dropped, if we all had one this would reduce the times when the combined sewage outfalls (CSOs) are used and sewage end up in our rivers and sea. The Edinburgh Royal Botanic Gardens pointed out that simple measures like this also help to reduce flooding in urban areas too – https://www.rbge.org.uk/news/media-centre/press-releases/current/five-years-to-turnaround-life-in-urban-areas/. Residents of Somerset near the River Chard were offered free water butts last year to help reduce flooding. We should be doing the same for the River Leven, which has considerable potential to flood our homes. Guisbrough Eco-Group’s blog has lots of information on flood risks and what you can do – ‘Stop effluent spillages into the environment and how to be prepared for flooding’.

(Anne)

Last December stall at Friday market – promoting green Christmas, reduce waste, make Christmas more environmentally friendly. Keen to have another on 6th December, can link into Stokesley Church Christmas Tree Competition. We could have draught excluders and even do some mending in public.

Action: Anne check details and raise at CASaV group meeting – Tuesday 15th.

Action: All get in touch with Anne if you would like to do a session on the CASaV Stall on 6th December.

Simon

On many occasions we have discussed the good points of the 2018 government strategy “Our Waste Our Resource – A Waste Strategy for England” as a practical approach to getting England to a better place, as it would enforce fundamental principles such as “polluter pays”. One key aspect of this is EPR (Extended Producer Responsiblity), basically if you make something or use packaging which is unrecyclable then you will have to pay more tax than if you used recyclable materials. The sad thing has been is that the implementation of the many of the different parts of the 2018 strategy has been delayed on multiple occasions.

The good news is that EPR is about to go live, the bad news is that Labour is being accused of watering it down and there is much publicity about how bad it will be for business. Personally I think getting EPR in place is something to celebrate, our current system just isn’t working as increasing waste and stagnating recycling rates show. Once EPR is in place hopefully the level of costs will be adjusted to increase recycling and decrease waste. EPR won’t automaticlaly increase costs on consumers, but will increase costs on businesses who will pass those onto consumers who can choose to buy the products with low EPR costs as the manufacturer has either drastically reduced waste by design or is using materials that have minimal EPR costs.

Matters Arising

CASaV interacted with over 200 people at our Bilsdale Show Stall on 31st August, we were joined by Surfers Against Sewage who engaged people on the appalling state of English waters. Great to hear what everyone from farmers to teachers were doing to be more green, good to point people to our leaflets to give them some ideas about how to be greener and give away some copies of a Gift to Conversation to people who still needed a little bit of convincing.

While not everybody approached our stall, but as we were also looking after recycling, we were wandering around the show ground with our distinctive tabbards, so had many spontaneous conversations this way too.

Surfers Against Sewage bought along some appropriate Lego which did a great job of attracting children to the stall.

The North Yorkshire Rotters were next to us, so great to see them getting the “Love Food Hate Waste” message across to lots of people.

We were also approached by Kildale Show who were keen to get us to their show the next week, while that was a bit too short notice, we are hoping to be at Kildale show next year. Should we be at other shows locally? Picton Show?

Repair Cafe

The Repair Cafe International’s 15th birthday is on 18th October, Stokesley and Villages Repair Cafe has sent in a flag to part of the celebrations in Amsterdam:

SaVRC can’t claim to have been running for 15 years, but in 2 1/2 years October’s repair cafe will be our 30th.

10th August Stokesley: 86 items were processed, from 11am we had to say to people there would be a considerable wait and we may not get to all the items, however only a couple of people left and by 12.30pm are the items had been seen.

21st September Swainby: 51 items

12th October Stokesley: there will be opportunity for people to make their own draught excluders or to take away ones that the sewing team have already made.

Actions from Last Meeting

  • All, if you live in the national park or visit then read and feedback on NYMNP new design code, to ensure that it is appropriately climate friendly.
  • All complete NYC’s “Let’s Talk Rubbish” survey to shape future recycling schemes.
  • All – please keep the pressure on local and national governments to tackle waste in all its forms including pollution of our rivers and seas.

Next Waste Group Zoom Meeting – 12th November