2020 Guilden & Steeple Morden
Ideas generated by our group, village meetings and comments received
What else could we do?
Do let us know...
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Compiled from Climate Conversation discussions
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Village meeting 1 ideas
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Christmas Market ideas
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Local resident ideas by email
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Local resident ideas by email
Electricity
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Community renewable heat and energy schemes (Like Swaffham prior project, ground source heat)
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Use a 100% renewable energy supplier
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Solar PV panels and solar hot water for our homes and community
buildings
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Discount bulk purchase, with finance schemes - like Ecoton group
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Wind turbine for the primary school, like Bassingbourn
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When you need to replace an electrical appliance consider the
energy efficiency of the new one you buy
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Community renewable energy schemes - feasibility study for Steeple & Guilden Morden - (& Geo thermal ?) solar energy or wind turbines on church, school, village hall
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Whole village asked to consider a joint effort to put in solar panels
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Most of the Village use oil based heating this could be changed to Gas to improve efficiency and environment impact (but how?)
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I understand Ashwell have Natural Gas.. we could apply for a grant to install a pipeline maybe? Or apply to drill for ground heat pumps for local community heating it worked for the pub!
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Install more modern/condensing boilers ~ Hertfordshire council are proving these free of charge (see Royston-crow page 5) > What will SCDC do?
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Use local roof space for solar heating/electrical energy and battery storage so the village becomes self-sufficient in all forms of energy (not grid based). Not a fan of wind generators. (Don Quixote)
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Build a local 1 MW electricity diesel or turbine generator (gas based) for 3 villages to work ‘off grid’ it will power 1250 homes (25% of the cost of electricity is the distribution cost! (If the average household spends £400/year on electricity this would save £100/year per house. With 1250 house this would create £125,000 per year so could be profitable in maybe 5 years unlike solar panels which take 20 years to pay back or reach the breakeven or breakdown point. Figures and costs will need to be verified but you can do a lot of improvements with £500,000!
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Alternative energy
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Alternative fuels
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More renewable energy in our villages - solar, air and ground
source
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Solar power on all houses
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Home - Heating / Insulation / Lighting
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Insulate so you need less heat & it will be cooler in the summer
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Use LED’s
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Install double or ideally triple glazed windows and doors
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Turn things off
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Borrow a thermal camera to see where your home is losing heat - easy to use and images can be saved (from TTL or SCDC)
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Ground and air source heat pumps / geo thermal
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Long term Consider Hydrogen as it becomes viable and natural gas is replaced + can be used for cars
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Heating reduction - better thermal clothing
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One day a week heat free
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Work up an application for home insulation - or promote grants available
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Turn heating off when not in
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Turn heating down if possible / wear a jumper instead
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Use all LED lighting in home and offices
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Travel / Transport / Flying
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Pledge not to fly
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Holiday in the UK (or Europe ideally going by train or bus)
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Petition for trains to be more reliable and run on time
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Replace work visits with video conferences - Skype / Microsoft
Teams
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Think about the number of car journeys from home - can some trips be combined
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How can we reduce the number of delivery vehicles on the roads
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Shop in the village or locally
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Re-start deliveries from farm shop to central point in village
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Use the high street – keep the local towns alive
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Less driving more walking
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Cycle paths joining our villages, schools and station together
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Cycle lane up to the station
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Improve public transport, Circular Bus route to the station / make sure the bus stays for late trains
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More public transport needed
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Bus service - investigate timetable to shops and supermarkets - pick up drop off at request
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Dia-a-ride scheme with Steeple Morden
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Share your car if possible
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Promote car sharing in the village to / from place of work or for
shopping trips / days out
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Community / peer to peer car sharing club - saving money as well
as carbon
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Make sure people use more electric cars
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Unless you are a farmer Don’t let you next car be a 4x4 so go hybrid or all electric, alternatively
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ditch the diesel unless it is new and non-polluting
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Slower traffic especially at school times
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Ban lorries at school times near school
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Fast charging points in the village - village hall / pub
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Electric car charging points
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Shared village electric car
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Use less fuel for cars (this can be done by driving slower, less braking & more gentle accelerating)
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Transport to station
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Food & Water
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Look into edible cities concept
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Support the Orchard proposal on the Craft
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Plant herbs, fruit & nut trees and berry hedges in verges and
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along public footpaths
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Homegrown - surplus food swaps / monthly village market for local produce (& crafts etc)
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Grow your own at home – in vegetable plots as well as in your flower boarders
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Hire an allotment (expand if full)
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Make it easier for people to start growing their own - Would you want to attend ‘how to use an allotment / grow your own’ talks?
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Allotment lessons
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Join the Guilden Growers gardening group (Contact = Sarah Fryer)
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Stop throwing away unused food (60% of all food purchased is wasted!) – Don’t be tempted by 3 for 2 – only buy what you know you will use
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Use leftovers for tomorrows lunch
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Learn how to pickle and preserve surplus homegrown food
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Is there a location in the village which can be used to set up a Guilden Morden Community Garden
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Buy local, organic and in season
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Don’t buy food which is flown in to the UK, huge carbon footprint !
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Avoid buying tomatoes out of season – they’re likely to have been grown in carbon intensive greenhouses
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Water from church roof to a water butt for allotment use (CPW)
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Save / limit water use at home – showers instead of baths, shorter showers, turn off taps when brushing teeth, duel flush toilets or water hippo’s, clean car with bucket instead of hose, don’t water garden with hose
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Use grey water / recycle it for other uses – wash up with eco washing up liquid then use to water garden when finished
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More home composting
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Charles Paget Wilkes communal apple press
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Meat free cookery club monthly Steeple & Guilden
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Save / limit water use
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Grow own on allotments / make easier for people to start
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Use grey water / recycle it for other uses
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Go vegetarian or vegan or only eat meat a few time a week
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Eat less meat
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When eating meat make sure it is British
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Sustainable farming
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Village deliveries from farm shop to central point
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Lifestyle - What we Buy / Do / Use / Waste
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Refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle
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Litter picking group
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Start a Morden’s Repair & Mend club
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Arrange a DIY cleaning chemicals talk in the village
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Sarah’s farm shop trial of Bamboo Turtle type products / delivery ? Setup a central point in the village for refilling items e.g. shampoo, liquid soap, washing up & laundry liquid, etc.
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Plastic free
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Say ‘no’ to fast fashion and the slavery involved in creating these cheap garments
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Boycott shops known to sell fast fashion
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Sweep wooden / tiled floors instead of using a vacuum cleaner
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Use the brown ‘Recycle for charity’ bin in the Three Tuns car park for hard to recycle items which cannot go in the blue bin
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Ebay or Gumtree unwanted items
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Give unwanted clothes to friends, family, charity shops
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Pay to have broken items repaired instead of just throwing away
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Use the ‘Repair Shop’ in Royston
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Run ‘Understanding your Carbon Footprint’ workshops in the village
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Use soap not plastic bottles stuff
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Wash clothes less
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better re-using / clothes top? Repairs
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Individual recycling different bins
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Don’t buy polyester clothing as this cannot be recycled or recycle cloths.
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Turn off your router overnight but check with ISP first ~ saves 20W/hr that equates to 153KW/year = leaving 1 bar electric fire on for 43 days!
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40% of most of municipal/domestic waste is burnt in incinerators, how much does South Cams burn and how can we reduce this and land fill?
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Reduce waste of all types
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Stop making plastic
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Clear plastic up
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Use less plastic
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Share resources e.g. transport / swap parties
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Shop in the village
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Shop local
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Vision for Guilden Morden in 10 years’ time - A good strong
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community using locally sourced products
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Stop in vitro fertilisation (IVF)
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Government, County, District & Parish Councils
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2050 is to late for being carbon neutral
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Stop using fossil fuels
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Convert street lighting to LED’s
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How can Councils, local and national government’s help us achieve our ideas / set up finance schemes to help, and templates etc to advise on achievable goals, so each Parish does not have to reinvent the wheel
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Provide experts to advise on achievable goals
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Provide superb online resources to assist and advise us all / educate the general public (many council websites are not easy to navigate / use !)
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Push for all new homes to be zero carbon immediately
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Promote the Transition Town’s movement
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Get into S106 provision at the council
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Ways of catching fly tippers ?
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Need better recycle labelling nationally and clarity on this topic so
it’s 100% clear to everyone where items go to be recycled
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Ban non recyclable materials
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Understanding your Carbon Footprint workshops in all
communities / programme to educate the general public
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Contact your local MP to express your concern & demand real
action
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Carbon neutral
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Sustainable living
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Control population
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Reduce greenhouse gas emissions e.g. Carbon dioxide • Everybody goes back to basics
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International co-operation
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Self-sufficient
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More recycling
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Less packaging
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Better recycling in Guilden Morden
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More government involvement
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Ecological
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Stop cutting down existing trees and hedges
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Re-wilding parts of the village and our gardens
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Planting more native trees around the parish and our gardens,
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Infilling missing hedges & trees in hedge lines i.e. road to Ashwell
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Where possible change to cutting the hedges just once a year -
alternate sides each year
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Start up an ‘adopt a tree scheme’ - so any newly planted trees in
the Parish are looked after & tended to
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Plant insect friendly flowers and shrubs
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Wild flower planting in roadside verges
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More tree planting
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Cutting the verges once or twice a year following Plantlife
guidelines - Managing grassland road verges, a best practice
guide
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Promote no dig gardening, much better for the soil and easier !
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Create a community composting area – where would be most
suitable
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Convert to no dig gardening - much better for the soil and easier !
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Stop using weed killers and pesticides
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Animal access from garden to garden
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Wild living - old logs - bug hotels
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Better use of gardens /land
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Survey of most special, large trees in the village and get them
protected
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Parish Council offer native trees (from Woodland Trust ?) to
anyone who can plant in village - adopt a tree scheme
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Survey village for possible planting sites on public / private land
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Plant more trees – in the village and everywhere
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Protect existing trees
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Become people / environmentally centred
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Re-wilding areas
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Local resident email
1) How could we work with local businesses to either: - Leverage their scale
- Leverage financing
- Work to reduce their foot-prints. etc.
e.g. It strikes me that the Odsey Chalk mine probably uses more power than our villages combined and could probably be encouraged to take steps if we could prove there is a business case. We could then piggy back on any renewable power generation they developed to help their business case further (if self generation was an answer). I expect personal use ramps up when the mine ramps down so we would be a good team to maximise utilisation.
Equally they may have heat they are trying to get rid of that we could use?
2) Other local warehouses also have more economic (e.g. larger) roof spaces for panels than a typical house.
3) Could we try to estimate how much power we actually need as a village and try to negotiate a bulk purchase at a discounted rate? Or use this to assess our options of going off-grid?
4) An easy one also would be to recommend to everyone within this group to use Bulb energy. This is 100% renewable and the person recommending receives £50. We could donate those £50s to invest in other schemes as seed funding.