July’s Waste Thoughts – 2023

Full notes below, quick summary:

Actions:

  • Action: Jenny get NightLite flyers Caroline to give to caterers
  • Action: Simon share link to recording of European Repair Cafe Webinar

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 11th July 2023 CASaV Waste Group Meeting

Agenda

Apologies
Updates
Actions from last meeting
Matters arising
Recent online / physical meetings
AOB

Updates

Wendy

Japan made a house incorporating using cleaned and shredded disposable nappies mixed with cement. They found that non-load bearing walls could use 40% nappies and load bearing walls could use 10% nappies. The details are in the New Scientist (behind paywall) and the Simthsonian (no paywall).

Kate

Helmsley Open Air Pool wants to shift from diesel heating to using solar panels so they are trying to raise the money, fantastic place to swim especially with events like their Friday morning breakfasts – who doesn’t like a swim followed by coffee and croissants.

Big Butterfly Count starts on Friday until 6th August, with a launch at 12.15pm on Friday by Chris Packham live on YouTube.

Hambleton Community Care has taken over the old job centre, near where Post Office used to be, they are developing this as a community drop in centre, so they are very keen on getting donations of old children’s books.

Jenny

We have now manage to get excess vegetables from Great Ayton allotments taken to the Coop for people to take.

Caroline Kitching is now adding wedding left over food added to food share, could this work for other group meals – funerals, meetings, … Caroline found it difficult to stop caterers putting excess food into waste automatically.

Action: Jenny get NightLight flyers Caroline to give to caterers

Anne one buffet dinner supplied polystyrene boxes to take excess food home after the event, perhaps we should all take your own tupperware box to weddings, funerals, events, …?

Difficult to deal with small amounts of food and running buffet – what do you do if put out food, food safety issue.

What do other countries do?

As an aftermath of Covid, many hotels have stopped doing breakfast buffets.

Simon

The European Repair Cafe Webinar happened on 7th July, interesting to hear how other repair cafes are working, useful pointer to a tool for calculating the carbon emissions which repair cafes save, SaVRC has saved over 11tonnes of carbon dioxide in the 347 items that have been repaired – the webinar was recorded.

Action: Simon share link to recording of European Repair Cafe Webinar.

Pete

Our accidentally rewilded vegetable garden has resulted in fantastic fat hen, which when liquidised makes a fantastic drink even when woody still very delicious.

Ronny and Robert Bainbridge who run Prossers beyond Cellnet stadium in Middlesbrough are a fantastic source of materials to use, find strange things which are there, recently over 200 x aluminium ladders.

Bridget

Off to Shetland latter in the week by train / ferry.

Matters Arising

The Upcyclcing Competition has been a great success with 43 from over 11 year olds entries and 3 under 11 entries. You can flick through different entries in the linked pdfs – Under 11, Over 11: Creative, Practical, Simple and Wacky. The entries will be displayed at the Swainby 15th July and Stokesley 12th August Repair Cafes. We now have a great competition that could be repeated in time for winners to be announced on Upcycling Day. One possibility would be to include some Upcycling Challenges – How do you upcycle certain items? place mats, old buildings, blister packs, …

CASaV (Kate and Simon) presented Rethinking Waste at the Community Earth Festival at 8th July Finale in Botton Village, this was the final event in the 2 month Community Earth Festival run jointly between East Cleveland and the Esk Valley. Rethinking Waste was a Ted talk on Repair Cafes, we were approached by people from Loftus and Botton who were interested in running their own repair cafes and Commondale who were interested in have an eco group.

Fred Page had a great stall on recycling which also promoted his book Recycle Angel.

We are continuing our monthly Repair Cafes with Swainby 15th July and Stokesley on 12th August. Joy’s videos give a great idea of the how the cafes work and the excellent work of all those who help – Swainby 20th May and Stokesley 10th June. Still awaiting to hear if the BBC want us in the their planned Repair Cafe Series.

Recent online / physical meetings

AOB

Bilsdale Show – 26th August – Jenny, Kate, Simon, (Joanna?), Anne, Joy/Pete(?), Bridget, ….
Action: Simon – co-ordinate transport to the Bilsdale Show.
Talking to people with farmers, horse owners – lots of people keen to tell us what they were doing. What to display / put on the stall, seek other volunteers at CASaV General Meeting.
North Yorkshire Rotters will also be present as last year.
Should we enter classes in competitions – upcycling for example (produce class – 36)? Unfortunately there is no children’s upcycling class.

Work on Reclaim Our Sea has continued with discussions with Redcar and Clevalnd Borough Council Planning Officers on the environmental aspects of Teesworks. A further meeting is schedules with the Environment Agency as part of putting a case to the Office of Environmental Protection around the flawed environmental protection of the Tees.

Darlington & Stockton Letters have been an ongoing challenge, while many letters do present sensible views on climate change, there are still many letters which continue to deny the reality of climate change. The letter here is an example – “Climate Denier?” We can not understand why such letters are continually published, when similar Covid denial letters would not be.

Next meeting

Tuesday 8th August 7.00pm