top of page

2020 Guilden & Steeple Morden

Ideas generated by our group, village meetings and comments received

​

What else could we do?

Do let us know...

​

Text colour code key:

  • Compiled from Climate Conversation discussions

  • Village meeting 1 ideas

  • Christmas Market ideas

  • Local resident ideas by email

  • Local resident ideas by email

​

​

Electricity

  • Community renewable heat and energy schemes (Like Swaffham prior project, ground source heat)

  • Use a 100% renewable energy supplier

  • Solar PV panels and solar hot water for our homes and community

    buildings

  • Discount bulk purchase, with finance schemes - like Ecoton group

    https://www.scambs.gov.uk/media/3413/ecoton_factfile.pdf

  • Wind turbine for the primary school, like Bassingbourn

  • When you need to replace an electrical appliance consider the

    energy efficiency of the new one you buy

  • Community renewable energy schemes - feasibility study for Steeple & Guilden Morden - (& Geo thermal ?) solar energy or wind turbines on church, school, village hall

  • Whole village asked to consider a joint effort to put in solar panels

  • Most of the Village use oil based heating this could be changed to Gas to improve efficiency and environment impact (but how?)

  • 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!

  • Install more modern/condensing boilers ~ Hertfordshire council are proving these free of charge (see Royston-crow page 5) > What will SCDC do?

  • 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)

  • 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!

  • Alternative energy

  • Alternative fuels

  • More renewable energy in our villages - solar, air and ground

    source

  • Solar power on all houses

  • ?
     

Home - Heating / Insulation / Lighting

  • Insulate so you need less heat & it will be cooler in the summer

  • Use LED’s

  • Install double or ideally triple glazed windows and doors

  • Turn things off

  • Borrow a thermal camera to see where your home is losing heat - easy to use and images can be saved (from TTL or SCDC)

  • Ground and air source heat pumps / geo thermal

  • Long term Consider Hydrogen as it becomes viable and natural gas is replaced + can be used for cars

  • Heating reduction - better thermal clothing

  • One day a week heat free

  • Work up an application for home insulation - or promote grants available

  • Turn heating off when not in

  • Turn heating down if possible / wear a jumper instead

  • Use all LED lighting in home and offices

  • ?
     

Travel / Transport / Flying

  • Pledge not to fly

  • Holiday in the UK (or Europe ideally going by train or bus)

  • Petition for trains to be more reliable and run on time

  • Replace work visits with video conferences - Skype / Microsoft

    Teams

  • Think about the number of car journeys from home - can some trips be combined

  • How can we reduce the number of delivery vehicles on the roads

  • Shop in the village or locally

  • Re-start deliveries from farm shop to central point in village

  • Use the high street – keep the local towns alive

  • Less driving more walking

  • Cycle paths joining our villages, schools and station together

  • Cycle lane up to the station

  • Improve public transport, Circular Bus route to the station / make sure the bus stays for late trains

  • More public transport needed

  • Bus service - investigate timetable to shops and supermarkets - pick up drop off at request

  • Dia-a-ride scheme with Steeple Morden

  • Share your car if possible

  • Promote car sharing in the village to / from place of work or for

    shopping trips / days out

  • Community / peer to peer car sharing club - saving money as well

    as carbon

  • Make sure people use more electric cars

  • Unless you are a farmer Don’t let you next car be a 4x4 so go hybrid or all electric, alternatively

  • ditch the diesel unless it is new and non-polluting

  • Slower traffic especially at school times

  • Ban lorries at school times near school

  • Fast charging points in the village - village hall / pub

  • Electric car charging points

  • Shared village electric car

  • Use less fuel for cars (this can be done by driving slower, less braking & more gentle accelerating)

  • Transport to station

  • ?

 

Food & Water

  • Look into edible cities concept

  • Support the Orchard proposal on the Craft

  • Plant herbs, fruit & nut trees and berry hedges in verges and

  • along public footpaths

  • Homegrown - surplus food swaps / monthly village market for local produce (& crafts etc)

  • Grow your own at home – in vegetable plots as well as in your flower boarders

  • Hire an allotment (expand if full)

  • Make it easier for people to start growing their own - Would you want to attend ‘how to use an allotment / grow your own’ talks?

  • Allotment lessons

  • Join the Guilden Growers gardening group (Contact = Sarah Fryer)

  • 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

  • Use leftovers for tomorrows lunch

  • Learn how to pickle and preserve surplus homegrown food

  • Is there a location in the village which can be used to set up a Guilden Morden Community Garden

  • Buy local, organic and in season

  • Don’t buy food which is flown in to the UK, huge carbon footprint !

  • Avoid buying tomatoes out of season – they’re likely to have been grown in carbon intensive greenhouses

  • Water from church roof to a water butt for allotment use (CPW)

  • 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

  • Use grey water / recycle it for other uses – wash up with eco washing up liquid then use to water garden when finished

  • More home composting

  • Charles Paget Wilkes communal apple press

  • Meat free cookery club monthly Steeple & Guilden

  • Save / limit water use

  • Grow own on allotments / make easier for people to start

  • Use grey water / recycle it for other uses

  • Go vegetarian or vegan or only eat meat a few time a week

  • Eat less meat

  • When eating meat make sure it is British

  • Sustainable farming

  • Village deliveries from farm shop to central point

  • ?

 

Lifestyle - What we Buy / Do / Use / Waste

  • Refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle

  • Litter picking group

  • Start a Morden’s Repair & Mend club

  • Arrange a DIY cleaning chemicals talk in the village

  • 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.

  • Plastic free

  • Say ‘no’ to fast fashion and the slavery involved in creating these cheap garments

  • Boycott shops known to sell fast fashion

  • Sweep wooden / tiled floors instead of using a vacuum cleaner

  • 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

  • Ebay or Gumtree unwanted items

  • Give unwanted clothes to friends, family, charity shops

  • Pay to have broken items repaired instead of just throwing away

  • Use the ‘Repair Shop’ in Royston

  • Run ‘Understanding your Carbon Footprint’ workshops in the village

  • Use soap not plastic bottles stuff

  • Wash clothes less

  • better re-using / clothes top? Repairs

  • Individual recycling different bins

  • Don’t buy polyester clothing as this cannot be recycled or recycle cloths.

  • 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!

  • 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?

  • Reduce waste of all types

  • Stop making plastic

  • Clear plastic up

  • Use less plastic

  • Share resources e.g. transport / swap parties

  • Shop in the village

  • Shop local

  • Vision for Guilden Morden in 10 years’ time - A good strong

  • community using locally sourced products

  • Stop in vitro fertilisation (IVF)

  • ?

 

Government, County, District & Parish Councils

  • 2050 is to late for being carbon neutral

  • Stop using fossil fuels

  • Convert street lighting to LED’s

  • 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

  • Provide experts to advise on achievable goals

  • Provide superb online resources to assist and advise us all / educate the general public (many council websites are not easy to navigate / use !)

  • Push for all new homes to be zero carbon immediately

  • Promote the Transition Town’s movement

  • Get into S106 provision at the council

  • Ways of catching fly tippers ?

  • Need better recycle labelling nationally and clarity on this topic so

    it’s 100% clear to everyone where items go to be recycled

  • Ban non recyclable materials

  • Understanding your Carbon Footprint workshops in all

    communities / programme to educate the general public

  • Contact your local MP to express your concern & demand real

    action

  • Carbon neutral

  • Sustainable living

  • Control population

  • Reduce greenhouse gas emissions e.g. Carbon dioxide • Everybody goes back to basics

  • International co-operation

  • Self-sufficient

  • More recycling

  • Less packaging

  • Better recycling in Guilden Morden

  • More government involvement

  • ?

 

Ecological

  • Stop cutting down existing trees and hedges

  • Re-wilding parts of the village and our gardens

  • Planting more native trees around the parish and our gardens,

  • Infilling missing hedges & trees in hedge lines i.e. road to Ashwell

  • Where possible change to cutting the hedges just once a year -

    alternate sides each year

  • Start up an ‘adopt a tree scheme’ - so any newly planted trees in

    the Parish are looked after & tended to

  • Plant insect friendly flowers and shrubs

  • Wild flower planting in roadside verges

  • More tree planting

  • Cutting the verges once or twice a year following Plantlife

    guidelines - Managing grassland road verges, a best practice

    guide

  • Promote no dig gardening, much better for the soil and easier !

  • Create a community composting area – where would be most

    suitable

  • Convert to no dig gardening - much better for the soil and easier !

  • Stop using weed killers and pesticides

  • Animal access from garden to garden

  • Wild living - old logs - bug hotels

  • Better use of gardens /land

  • Survey of most special, large trees in the village and get them

    protected

  • Parish Council offer native trees (from Woodland Trust ?) to

    anyone who can plant in village - adopt a tree scheme

  • Survey village for possible planting sites on public / private land

  • Plant more trees – in the village and everywhere

  • Protect existing trees

  • Become people / environmentally centred

  • Re-wilding areas

  • ?

 

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.

​

bottom of page