Full notes below, quick summary:
- Upcycling competition underway.
- Milk bottle tops are being collected by Rea Funeral Services.
- It is amazing what materials can be used to reduce the carbon footprint of a building – EcoBuild
- Carbon capture and storage seems to be the UK governments preferred route to net zero, but it isn’t for lots of reasons, just one is massive release of methane in oil and gas production.
- The first step to net zero should be through resource efficiency.
- Biodiversity needs space and freedom to thrive, but human’s don’t appreciate this wanting to tidy up nature while still put our waste everywhere (sewage, plastics).
- How often do you have a discussion with people who really don’t get climate change? While it is difficult to change people, there are some great resources that help debunk climate disinformation.
- Scotland’s deposit return scheme is still not certain to go ahead.
- Coca Cola seem to have got the need for circularity with a public strategy to implement reuse across their global packaging.
Actions:
- Anne – arrange upcycling event in Globe on Saturday 24th June.
- Simon – arrange meeting to finalise end of upcycling competition.
- Simon – confirm details for presence at Bilsdale Show.
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 13th June 2023 CASaV Waste Group Meeting
Agenda
Apologies – Lorna, Jenny
Upcycling
Actions from last meeting
Updates
Matters arising – Repair Cafes: Stokesley 10/6; Swainby 15/7
Recent online / physical meetings
AOB
Upcycling Competition
Competition now launched schools have been approached and a session held during Repair Cafe in Stokesley Library – An invite letter (pdf) and an informational presentation (pdf) plus publicity poster (pdf).
The competition entries must be received by 24th June, Upcycling Day, when Anne will also hold a session in the Globe.
Action: Anne – arrange upcycling event in Globe on Saturday 24th June.
A number of possible prizes have been considered including moon water bottles and Recycle Angel Book.
Details of judging and prize giving still to be finalised.
Action: Simon – arrange meeting to finalise end of upcycling competition.
Actions from Last Meeting
- Simon – Upcycling Poster Competition – add CASaV logo to letter and presentation.
An invite letter (pdf) and an informational presentation (pdf) - Simon – Upcycling Poster Competition – confirm details with Stokesley Globe Community Library.
Stokesley Globe Community Library very keen on event and will help in any way we request within reason. - Kate – Upcycling Poster Competition – produce publicity poster.
Poster (pdf) - Simon – Upcycling Poster Competition – contact NYC to seek a judge.
Tracey Flint – NYC Recycling Officer keen to be involved and willing to act as a judge. - All – Upcycling Poster Competition – circulate to schools / other organisations.
Pete / Joy – Carlton
Anne – Stokesley Primary & Secondary
Caryn – Roseberry School – Marwood?
Spenser – Hutton Rudby
Chloe – Kirby & Great Broughton - Anne / Simon / Kate – Upcycling Poster Competition – publicity – look into Radio, D&S, Facebook
Create plan for next upcycling competition
Updates
Anne
Rea Funeral Services in Stokesley and Great Ayton are recycling plastic milk bottle tops to raise money from Marie Curie – each tonne of tops raises £40 for Marie Curie.
If you can’t get to the funeral parlours then if you remove the top from your plastic milk bottle, squash the bottle, replace the top and place in your NYC recycling bin, then they we will be recycled.
Wendy
Metal things need to be crushed together when put in your recycling to ensure there is about a tennis ball size to ensure that they will separated from the other recyclables and properly recycled.
A Guardian Feature on the ultimate Eco building in Luma Arhls in Southern France. Swiss billionaire Maja Hoffman (Roche pharmaceuticals heiress) has an art campus that includes the ultimate eco-building – door handles of salt, walls from sunflower stalks, furniture made with Japanesse knotweed, with lots of other novel materials being used filtered urine, cacti to encourage Cochanelle bettle, algea dyes, … With 40% of global carbon emissions being due to the built environment, the idea is by keeping materials supply very local this will result in significant reductions in the carbon emissions produced in the creation/renovation of buildings.
David
Summary of UK’s Net Zero as represented by Net Zero Teesside (NZT) – government has decided to get to net zero mainly by using carbon capture, how much this has been influenced by BP is probably pretty obvious by their local involvement. 4 areas of UK are creating carbon to be pumped into old oil wells where the carbon will stored in the old oil field,but this will not get to net zero. NZT involved vast expanded use of gas, gas production release considerable methane, so even if all combustion/process CO2 was captured, still huge release of green house gases. This was well explained in an article in Physics World.
BP is holding hydrogen open days locally as there are plans to test hydrogen into homes in Redcar and Wilton is holding a hydrogen for companies who want to be in the supply chain for the planned hydrogen projects. The trouble is hydrogen is both inefficient and expensive, it is inefficient because it has be made, so only 50% of the energy used to make it is stored in the hydrogen made, meaning a 1kWh of electricity will only produce 0.5kWh of heat via hydrogen, whereas it will produce 3kWh of heat via a heat pump, it is expensive either because of the amount of electricity which is used to make it or the cost of the gas used to make it.
Graham Hillier from Centre for Process Industry (CPI) gave a great talk to the Cleveland Institute of Engineers “Addressing Climate Change Through Resource Efficiency” this also highlights how hydrogen is one of the last approaches to take to decarbonisation (slides).
There are approaches without the need for ever increasing carbon emissions, such as that set out in Tim Jackson’s influential book, Prosperity without Growth.
Joy
Key approach is reduce use of things, as practised in the past.
Not helped by articles such as that by Rowan Atkinson’s debunked article said incorrectly EV vehicles worse than petrol, while failing to mention that the best approaches would be less cars and less use of cars.
Uncut hedges / verges – beautiful – Laura – Shine Hairdressing – likes them but lots of people very angry about not cutting, once again not helped by BBC Hedgehog article, which blamed increased hedgehog injuries on no mow May than careless people not bothering to check for wildlife when randomly strimming.
Guildford Borough Council, found diversity sixteen times greater biodiversity in unmown compared to mown areas and even found locally extinct species.
Kate
The London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham teamed up with a garden centre for no mow May for a competition where residents sent in pictures of best wildest no mow areas, with prizes of £50 garden centre vouchers.
If you like no mow May then in July go plastic free with Plastic Free July. Don’t need 1 person perfectly, need 1 million imperfectly through the months, they have 31 simple progressive steps through the month.
The latest Repair Cafe in Stokesley had some of the oldest items to repair with Victorian china doll and Queen Victoria coronation family tree on printer fabric.
There are various opportunities to get funding for eco-works: Groundwork – collective portal to environmental funding – https://www.groundwork.org.uk/apply-for-a-grant/; locally stores such as Coop and Tesco will support environmental causes.
Pete
LEDs to replace 5 old flourescent tubes, turns out there are 2 approaches – either puts 16w LEDs in place of 80w flourescent tube.
Trying to discuss various climate issue, mainly around farming, as soon as you raise George Monbiot’s as a source of ideas, then people almost get violent in their reaction. How many of us meet climate change deniers?
CASaV are trying to engage with people in the Darlington and Stockton Times letter section, where some people just say we need oil, climate change is government control, while not sure we change their minds, we are getting other people writing in to support climate change and more specifically support the need to act.
In the wider world there are many people who promulgating climate change denial not just in newspapers or social media but with whole books, one is Alex Epstein who writes in support of oil. Quite often these books will state the facts of climate change, but either claim the science is poor or that there is another explanation, without state that this explanation has already been scientifically proven not to account for climate change.
There are several websites which routinely debunk climate change denial – DeSmog and Carbon Brief. Carbon Brief is good for facts behind current stories – how the UK Climate Change Committee is able to say that the chances of UK meeting climate pledges is getting worse. DeSmog takes a more international approach with a great database on climate disinformation, which gives a clear analysis of people’s statements of climate denial.
Of course when talking to individuals we shouldn’t be too quick to judge, as there position may come from being scared of what might happen, so while not making light of the appalling situation we are in due to global inaction do stress all the actions that can still be taken to lessen the consequences of climate change.
Fred
Still very keen on using less, so use of our own compost bins rather than council green bins will reduce transport and effort required of the councils. Composting on the scale that the council’s contractors do reaches far higher temperatures than domestic composting, so may have some advantages in terms of killing weed seeds.
James Gordon from RCBC is managing the £15million levelling up funding for Guisborough Town Centre, I have written to him to suggest that part of it should be used to give grants / loans to get shops to reduce electricity bills. 2 year loans could mean the money could work twice.
How to drive Facebook engagement – use Guisborough local groups – cross post, welcome new members, Guisborough Community Page / News & Views, LinkedIn,
get into council leaflets, for example Redcar & Cleveland booklet.
Simon
It is still not clear that the Deposit Return Scheme will go ahead in Scotland this year, as the UK government has ruled that glass can not be included, as this would anti-competitive for suppliers not from Scotland. So on 8th June Scottish government announced a delay of the start from August to at least October. A further impediment has been put in place by a court case brought by a small retailer against the fees that Circularity Scotland (the company which is to run the DRS scheme) was to charge.
Coca Cola is keen on reuse. It would be all too easy to call this Greenwashing, but it looks like quite a good scheme, as they want to reuseing 1 bottle for every new one they sell by 2030. Of course this doesn’t mean that selling sugary water is good, but Coca Cola has recognised that the plastic they use is a waste problem which they need to own if they are be allowed to continue doing business, without action they will effectively loose their license to operate both from government and consumers. Now we need judge on what they are do going forward.
AOB
Bilsdale Show – 26th August – Jenny, Kate, Simon, (Joanna?); 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? The North Yorkshire Rotters will also be present and NYC are providing recycling bins etc., but Tracey Flint won’t be there this year.
Action: Simon – confirm details for presence at Bilsdale Show.
Reclaim Our Sea Update: The coalition of fishers, environmentalists, academics are still trying to get action on the ongoing die off, recently had a meeting with DEFRA – Department of Environment Farming and Rural Affairs/EA – Environment Agency/MMO – Marine Management Organisation/CEFAS – Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science. Open meeting lots of discussion, but not much has happened since it.
Returns on the dredging by the contractor was a very messy process, likely to have spread contamination throughout the Tees Estuary – Teesworks – Dredging the Tees.
Next meeting
Tuesday 11th July 7.00pm
Climate Action Stokesley and Villages 