Full notes below, quick summary – follow links for the detail:
- A new £5million research collaboration will look into what determines our health, one of the big factors is the environment.
- Different arrangements have been made to allow the Food Share to continue over Christmas.
- Our stall on Stokesley Market was a great way to get the word out about recycling, energy and upcycling.
- Can you really compost compostable bags at home?
- We only have one planet and so we can’t keep growing for ever, the answer is degrowth.
- Doughnut economics is a way to practise degrowth by changing our current economic approach and it’s already happening in Middlesbrough.
- The CASaV monthly update now helps you to think global and act local.
- Simply Repair in the Lake District doesn’t just repair but also teaches repair.
- You can see what people created at our Upclcying Workshops in Stokesley Parish Church on our Tree.
- Our United for Warm Homes Community Quilt is going to be presented to Rishi Sunak on 18th December in Northallerton along with our climate justice postcards.
- Some thoughts on how to get action on getting blister pack recycling started again.
- Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council dumps will take electrical equipment for reuse.
- Guisborough Eco-Group is up to many things including looking at bicycles and glass containers.
- Greene King will take your plastic sweet tubs in the New Year, recycle the plastic and give money made to MacMillan Cancer Support.
- Friends of Earth will send you a bee saver kit, when you make a donation.
- Cheap clothing is proving a challenge for uniform swap schemes.
- Some business pay to dispose of boxes, others buy boxes why can’t we make this locally circular and reuse the boxes.
- Rounton Coffee’s big coffee bean sacks which used to be waste are sold to crafters to turn into new things – circular economy.
- Successful final Repair Cafes of 2023 have been held and first of 2024 in Swainby Village Hall on 20th January
- COP28 is drawing to a close, you can watch a lot of what happened on YouTube.
- Both Project Drawdown and the Policy Institute are holding webinars – one looking at what should be done and the other analysing COP28.
Actions:
- Simon to contact Tracey Flint to ask what NYC thinks is best to do with compostable bags.
- Annette contact her GP to see whether they would consider accepting blister packs for recycling.
- Simon contact Northallerton Climate Action / North Yorkshire Climate Coalition to lobby Tesco’s Northallerton / across North Yorkshire to put in blister pack recycling.
- Simon find out where Bryony Hamel’s petition on getting pharma companies to pay for recycling blister packs got.
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 upcoming 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 12th December 2023 CASaV Waste Group Meeting
Updates
Jenny
NYC award to become a centre of research into determinants of health, it is expected that this will show a strong connection to the environment is all sorts of ways not just air pollution and excess heat. The press release is below:
£5m awarded in our new health research collaboration with North Yorkshire Council and the University of York
“We are excited to announce that the University of Hull / Hull York Medical School will be a lead partner in a new 5 year health research collaboration with North Yorkshire Council. £5m in research investment funding is being provided by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) as part of a £55m scheme covering 11 areas of England and Wales. It will enable the council to boost its research capacity and skills to help identify and address issues affecting the health of people in North Yorkshire. Known as a Health Determinants Research Collaboration, this will help to inform and shape how the council delivers its services. While the general population of North Yorkshire is in good health overall, the county includes diverse areas and communities and incorporates urban, rural and coastal districts. This means residents face differing and varied health challenges, depending on where they live. Some communities live shorter lives and have fewer years of good health, due mainly to factors outside their control. One of the best ways to understand and improve these inequities is through research. The programme will be underpinned by creative and inclusive community engagement and public involvement in research.”
NIHR announcement of 11 new collaborations – press release.
Anne
Thanks to Anne for suggesting and booking the stall on Stokesley Market (fee £13), it was a great success, helped by being a still bright day with no rain. Tracey Flint, Recycling Officer, North Yorkshire Council, did a great job of engaging both the visitors and us on how to make sure that our recycling is as effective as possible.
Not sure we would want to do it every month, but perhaps a quarterly stall with rotated focus between the different CASaV groups – food, transport, nature, energy, waste.
Next time we should log the interactions (simple clicker) and note the number of leaflets taken. Certainly for things like the energy advice demonstrator project we are involved it will be important to also capture email address and names of people to update on progress and who might be potential clients.
Compostable bags, lots of people find they don’t compost, an article suggested some take over 550days in domestic compost and others suggest they are only really compost in an industrial setting. Shredding any bags before composting will maximise the surface area and so give the best chance for the bag to compost.
Action: Simon to contact Tracey Flint to ask what NYC thinks is best to do with compostable bags.
Tracey’s advice: “If you can compost at home then all biodegradable/compostable packaging can go in your home composter, but it is likely to take a long/long time. I think the potato starch packaging is quite quick but still not quick enough for our windrow composting which takes 8 weeks. I expect some of the compostable cups and sandwich boxes which are being used at the moment will take years. So around here the only option is to put it in your black bin. It seems illogical because companies are paying a lot for compostable packaging thinking they are doing the correct thing, the only saving grace is if you live in an area/country where waste is still landfilled then compostable will be the better option.”
Neil
The concept of degrowth, while seeming to go against our current political obsession with growth at all costs is in fact a sensible response to our current use of far too much of scarce resources meaning with exceed our planetary limits. Degrowth takes planetary limits into accounts, creating a structural system that can be promoted by politicians. Degrowth has been adopted by the CUP party around Barcelona / Catalonia, Resilience article, and the science journal Nature believes that degrowth’s time has come – “Degrowth can work, here’s how science can help“.
Doughnut economics is a tool to if not achieve degrowth, is a tool to allow us to thrive in a post-growth environment. Doughnut economics as it takes a practical approach has proved to be less threatening to existing political structures and is having an impact across the world. Locally, Middlesbrough has the Boro Doughnut. Pete and Joy attended the Boro Doughnut’s inaugural meeting. Mark Carney, ex-governor of the Bank of England, is a convert to Doughnut economics, having talked extensively about it in his 2020 Reith Lectures.
Kate
The rejuvenated CASaV monthly update (December) has been well received with global things first followed by local things, it reflect CASaV’s vision to think global and act local.
Impressed by what Simply Repair is doing in the Lake District, where they are addressing repair cafes, upskilling and waste in general as different ways to reduce our consumption of materials. They have some super creative workshops, which use craft as a way to get people to actively reduce, reuse, repair, ……. This is a great way of getting people on board with in due course taking other climate actions.
The upcycling workshops were well received and also made decorations for the Christmas tree that you can now vote for in the Stokesley Parish Church Christmas tree competition. It would nice to run future workshop, perhaps some small events in the spring.
Community Quilt fantastic response for lots of people, we now have enough squares to cover a single bed, so certainly enough to cover Rishi. The community quilt will be handed over at the North Yorkshire Council Richmond (Yorks) Constituency Area Committee Meeting on 18th December in Brierley Room, County Hall, Northallerton. Hopefully Rishi Sunak will be present, but it may have to be to one of his senior aids, who deputise for him on occassions.
On Saturday 9th December during the Repair Cafe we invited people to write postcards to their MP (mainly Rishi Sunak) on the topic of climate justice as part of #NowWeRise to coincide with COP28, to ask him to ensure that the disadvantaged aren’t further disadvantaged through actions taken to tackle climate change and that they are protected from the extremes of climate change. 20 postcards were filled in and these will be handed over on 18th December.
It turns out that old tomato paste tubes make fantastic decorations and gifts (or at least the metal of the tube – cut cleaned flattened does), so this will another upcycling skill for a future upcycling workshop.
Annette
It is frustrating that blister packs are not readily recycled, after the restrictions placed on the Superdrug scheme and now the suspension of the Aldi scheme due to popularity.
A simple solution would be for all doctors’ surgeries to have a recycle point, but who would pay for this?
Action Annette contact her GP to see whether they would consider accepting blister packs for recycling.
The Castleton plastic free shop looking into buying a Terracycle box, but cost is prohibitive. How about a trip to the Bowes Museum via dumping blister packs in the car park at Glaxo Smith Klines manufacturing site in Barnard Castle 😉 Contact Sir Robert Goodwill my MP to say why aren’t glass bottles used instead, the answer was purely it was cheaper to use blister packs. Obviously would be even better with reusable glass bottle, but no doubt seen as even more cost.
Contact the pharmaceutical manufacturing organisation to find out if any action is planned from the pharmaceutical industry.
Some Tesco’s with pharmacies have blister pack recycling, why doesn’t Northallerton?
Action: Simon contact Northallerton Climate Action / North Yorkshire Climate Coalition to lobby Tesco’s Northallerton / across North Yorkshire to put in blister pack recycling.
Long running petition “Pharmaceutical companies MUST fund medicine packet recycling programmes“.
Action: Simon find out where Bryony Hamel’s petition on getting pharma companies to pay for recycling blister packs got.
MedAct would they get involved?
Castleton residents used to be encouraged to use the nearest “dump” at Dunsdale, outside Guisborough (Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council site), but now they are told to go to Whitby (or Stokesley) (North Yorkshire Council sites), neither of which are as near as Dunsdale. More disappointingly Dunsdale takes working electrical equipment separately where it is PAT tested / redistributed, there is a also a receptacle to recycle / WEE electrical items by Iceland / Council Offices in Guisborough. The reuse is part of the scheme where RCBC is in partnership with an organisation called Material Focus, who encourage recycling across the UK.
Fred
Guisborough Eco-Group currently making sure that 2nd hand bikes get new homes and also looking at the reuse of jars. Every 3 monthsGlass Jars
No 30 Cafe, Westgate, Guisborough will take glass jars – shelves to put jars
Fred collects and takes to Caroline for her preserves
There is a wine business that also reuses bottles.
Action: All please get in touch with the details of any businesses which are reusing glass containers for their products
The Greene King Pub Chain is running Tubs2Pubs from 1st Jan – 11th Feb – asking you to bring them your confectionery / biscuit / cracker plastic tubs to your local pub and giving any money raised from selling the tubs to MacMillan Cancer Support. All very well if you near one – otherwise people need to drive to one.
While reduction of consumption is key drive of the Waste Group, the Bee Saver Kit from Friends of the Earth is a present you can get where the benefits outwiegh the consumption of materials. If you make a donation to FoE then they will send you a bee saver kit – with seeds, garden planning tips, bee identification book.
Simon
Great Broughton School used to run a very successful uniform exchange scheme, but since Covid they have found parents find it more convenient to click and order very cheap uniforms on supermarket sites, and so they have lots of uniforms which nobody wants. Obviously people can afford to buy, but not so good for the planet.
On the other hand Guisborough has a free uniform shop – Facebook page.
Isabel is a fan of circular economy, and thought that perhaps cardboard boxes might be something we could make circular locally. It turns out that the Boutique House mail order company in Guisborough used to do this, they would take anybodies used cardboard boxes and reuse for their for packages, sadly the business has closed.
How can be make a local circular economy of cardboard boxes, as it seems wrong that while some businesses are paying to dispose of large quantities of cardboard boxes, others are buying packaging materials. It would be great to create direct links between businesses, rather than having to put all boxes to a storage location from which they are collected. Alternatively we could have a website with details of boxes available and when, so that other businesses could arrange to collect them.
Of course cardboard is a great raw material, which can be used to make either new different site boxes, or all sorts of other things. There are many useful resources on line – square bx template, Pinterest box templates, plus lots of other resources available on line.
One tip is not to use plastic tap, instead use brown recycled paper tape, as this makes recycling more likely at end of life.
Some businesses are trying to reduce their packaging waste, for example Strikes
has a big deep box full of packaging that people can help themselves – cardboard, bubble wrap etc.. We use McMahon’s fruit boxes for storage and used them when moving house instead of getting removers boxes.
A great success story in upcycling is following our use of Rounton Coffee Sacks in previous upcycling competitions, Rountons Coffee now sell the coffee sacks as there is a lot of demand.
Matters Arising
Stall discussed above.
Upcycling Workshops in Stokesley and Great Ayton created the decoration for the CASaV tree entered into the Stokesley Church Xmas Tree don’t forget to visit and vote. More than 50% of the people who attended had not been to previously been to a CASaV meeting/event.
Repair Cafes
Our last Repair Cafes of 2023 were held on 18th November in Swainby and on 9th December in Stokesley, both well attended with lots of interesting things fixed. You can see our statistics for 2023 on the Repair Monitor Dashboard. We had a medical incident, so plan to produce an updated medical incident procedure. We are unable to predict who will bring what, so while electricals was very busy no woodwork items were bought, general mending took up some of the electrical work. We do need a better system of feeding back from the repairers to the front desk to perhaps stop accepting certain types of repair if we are going to be unable to fix them. Some fun things were a peekaboo xmas toy and Dad’s football game was fixed, so his son can now play with it.
Our next Repair Cafe is on Saturday 20th January in Swainby Village Hall.
Great Ayton Methodist Church are planning once a month social support sessions – Age Concern, Debt Advice,.. and have asked if we have any spare capacity to do occasional Repair Cafes there. This will be considered in the New Year.
Guisborough Repair Cafe is planned for Saturday 27th January – any volunteers to help with repairs?
Meetings
COP 28 live sessions on YouTube made interesting listening. COP28 has made significant progress on some issues, loss & damage fund, consideration of the emissions of agriculture, but progress the key need to phase out fossil fuels seems to be slipping away (12th December 2023).
There are a couple of meetings coming up which look at the current state of action on the climate – Project Drawdown’s State of the climate: looking back at 2023 and looking forward to 2024 – 5pm Wednesday 13th – details and registration. The Policy Institute COP28 Outcomes Summit 3pm Thursday 14th – details and registration – and the Keynote from Ed Milliband 5.30pm Thursday 14th – details and registration.
AOB
CASaV whole group meeting Tuesday 19th Stokesley Community Care Association room above Stokesley Globe Community Library. Don’t forget to bring a cup / mug if you want to drink.
Climate Action Stokesley and Villages 