Wellbeing and the Community - a local perspective

What makes up community well-being in a time of financial constraints and climate uncertainty? This was the question twenty five people turned up to explore at Sustainable Bungay's first Green Drinks of the new year at the Green Dragon in January. The evening also marked the start of our new Arts, Culture and Well-being sub-group.

Well-being has been the subject of several recent studies, such as the New Economics Forum's 'Five Ways to Well-being', as well as the focus for many Transition initiatives. We live in a culture based around a market economy, and money and material status (or the lack of it), have become the driving force of most people's lives.

But what real good has this done ourselves or the planet? Apart from living in a badly degraded environment, we are as a collective suffering from ill health, depression, loss of identity and lack of connection to nature and other people. And it doesn't seem to be getting any better.

For many people (including myself) this winter has felt particularly long, dark and cold, with uncharacteristic feelings of gloom and lowness. When I've spoken to people about it, many have said "Oh, it's not just me then." Then there are those colds and fevers which seem to take weeks to clear up. Something is clearly not okay.

What would it mean if our lives, instead of being determined by GDP, were based on our mutual well-being and happiness – not just our personal well-being, but within the communities and neighbourhoods we all share? What would it mean if instead of striving for our own comfort and security, we valued sharing our resources and knowledge? How would our attitudes to each other change, and what kind of changes in the environment would that bring?

Much of the work Sustainable Bungay has been doing over the last five years has this co-operative learning at its base - from creating the Community Garden at the Library to hosting Happy Monday meals at the Community Centre, to organising bicycle rides, sewing circles, Give and Take Days, Bungay Community Bees and the Pig Club. Several of us attended the recent East Anglian Living Together day about co-ops and intentional communities in East Bergholt, where we found we had over 30 practical skills between us - just in one workshop! As well as sharing these skills, we've learned that working together brings a certain kind of happiness you just can't pay for.

For example, you can go and forage for blackberries on the common on your own, but going out together, sharing a picnic and then taking some to the Abundance table or for a Happy Mondays pudding for others to enjoy, makes for a more open and shared experience. This simple activity has all those five ways in it: connection, action, learning, taking notice and giving. Most of all it involves the place we live in and includes the wild spaces we are surrounded by.

At our Green Drinks we have focused on the many ways we can reconnect, from learning about medicine plants to the restoration of the River Waveney. In January the ideas were flowing, as people paired up and asked each other what community well-being meant to them and what creative or practical skills they had they would like to pass on to others.

A common thread emerged: well-being meant belonging to a place and not feeling on your own. So plans for a wide range of communal activities were mapped out, from walking and exploring the local countryside, river swimming and canoeing, to sharing skills such as food growing, cooking and meditation. Creative workshops were designed, including storytelling, theatre work and body percussion. What also became clear was that well-being is a major factor underlying and motivating Sustainable Bungay's activities.

Giving ourselves more time and space to connect with people and the neighbourhood was something people thought was vital and in April we'll begin creating a well-being map of Bungay with a walk around town paying particular attention to what the various public spaces in town feel like to be in.

Sustainable Bungay is a busy group. We have always been primarily events-focused and that seems set to continue. But a closer look shows that these events  also often provide the space for people to come together for discussions that might not happen ordinarily.

For our seventh Give and Take Day last Saturday (16th March), Charlotte set up and facilitated a conversation on the Gift Economy – sharing what we have with others in times of austerity. Over twenty people joined in.  Nick spoke about some of the ideas in Charles Eisenstein's Sacred Economics and Jeppe and Vanessa talked about their involvement in setting up the Common Room in Norwich. This project makes unused or underused public spaces (in this case an old church) available as a 'living room for the community', where people can swap and share skills, knowledge and company with no money exchange involved.

What was striking about this discussion on a cold, dark, Saturday midday in March in Bungay's (slightly dilapidated) Community Centre, surrounded by the Give and Take tables of household goods, clothes and books, and accompanied by a bowl of Josiah's homemade fava bean and winter root veg soup and Christine's freshly baked bread, was that when time was called after 50 minutes, no one was in any hurry to leave. People were still discussing everything from how to receive a gift and should that leave you feeling obliged to give something back in some way, to how to begin to value ourselves and other people, places, skills and the living planet in a way that is not market-driven or utilitarian.

Usually when we think of well-being, it's in terms of personal comfort, and often has medical associations. But what if well-being were really not just a personal matter? What if it also depends on our getting out of our personal enclosures and insistence on everything belonging to some private personal sphere? And into that 'living room for the community' where a conversation can happen about sharing what we have, and we can start to forge different relationships with each other, the places we live in and the planet that gives us life.

"I've never experienced such a discussion before," said one visitor. "I could have stayed much longer."

Images: Plants for Life 2012 weed walk, Bungay; Hot Beds and Leafy Greens poster, March 2013; Koru body percussion poster, March 2013; Gift Economy conversation at SB's 7th Give and Take Day, March 2013

First published on on the Social Reporting project 18th March 2013.

Picking it up

A helper on a litter pick in better weather!

 Today is supposed to be when Little Melton has its autumn litter pick but the weather is so cold and so wet that we have postponed in the hope that it improves tomorrow! Litter picks are a strange mixture of good and bad, because on the one hand they bring people together to do something for the community but they should not really be necessary at all. Ten people work hard for an hour and at the end of it we have about 10 bags of rubbish, most of which will go to land fill as it is not easy to separate out the recyclables.

The majority of the rubbish that we pick up is food containers, thrown from cars – bottles, take away wrappers and the like. As I creep up the side of a busy road, trying to avoid being run over as I pick the rubbish out of the hedge, I wonder about the people who are so ready to chuck their rubbish out of their cars and the role that take away food has had in shaping their attitudes. Disposable packaging is clearly a waste of valuable resources but does it do wider damage by influencing people’s attitudes to the planet’s finite resources? One you accept that it is OK to use a bottle once and then throw it away does it then become easier to view more valuable items as disposable? There was a time when even a simple bottle would have been made by hand by a local craftsman and would have been worth much more than its contents. Throwing it away would have been inconceivable.

Throwing rubbish out of a car is not just a lack of respect for the resource but a shows a lack of respect for the countryside and the people and creatures that live in it. Does one lead to the other? If you don’t value the planet’s resources then maybe you don’t value the planet. If you don’t value the planet then you don’t value the community that you live in and the people who make the household goods that make your life possible. So it seems to me that fast food and disposable packaging has a lot more to answer for than the littering of the countryside – and that is before we consider the food itself!

The CPRE are fighting to introduce a deposit on bottles that will create jobs and go some way to reverse the throwaway trend.

Talking Rubbish

This Saturday Sustainable Bungay's Give and Take Day at the Community Centre has a different "take" from previous events. As well as the main hall for swapping free stuff and enjoying refreshments at their Happy Mondays cafe,  the local Transition crew have an additional “info room” where you can find out about all aspects of waste management. There will be several stalls  run by “rubbish” organisations from Freegle to Waveney District Council. We are also delighted to welcome Karen Cannard of The Rubbish Diet and Jake Kerr from Canarchy who will instruct us all in the key essentials of personal and community recycling.

Jake Kerr explains how his crew tackle producer responsibility, but also show consumers how much waste we create and make us face our responsibility:

"Canarchy is direct action recycling. It couples many years of experience in the recycling industry with a long history of environmental activism. If you think the story is over when you shut your wheelie bin then think again. The multi billion pound waste industry and local and national government are only interested in the money this industry generates, not how the final destination of the waste stream impacts on the environment. In fact you are paying them to take away valuable resources and then pollute the environment with them. With the building of the new incinerators it’s becoming more profitable for councils to actually recycle less.  

Canarchy runs recycling schemes at festivals where we are given groups of young volunteers to work with. We try and use recycling and the politics of waste to educate them into environmentalism and to inspire them to do something about it themselves. We also run the recycling at local community events. We find that people are much more open to our message after they have seen us in action. We walk the walk and then we talk the talk.

We also are planning to use recycling and other practical green skills, i.e. compost toilets, alternative power etc, to promote the Transition message into local government agendas via their own Community Resilience initiatives. This is emergency planning that utilises community skills."

If you want to find out what happens to your rubbish after it leaves your bin and what you can do about it, don’t miss Jake’s talk with Q&A session afterwards. See you there!

Give and Take Day, Bungay Community Centre, Upper Olland Street, Bungay, Suffolk is on Saturday, 22 September, 10am-1pm. (bus from Norwich about 30 mins). Further details here. Talk by Jake Kerr is at 11.30am.

Images: processed and unprocessed cans; 18-point recycling at Sunrise Off-grid Festival, 2012

Gleaning from the past

Contractors were harvesting potatoes in the field next to us yesterday and as is usually the case a lot of potatoes were missed by the machinery. I reckon that enough were left on the ground to feed the entire village for the year - if anyone could be bothered to pick them up. I grow my grow my own potatoes and don't really need any more but I spent 5 minutes picking up a large bag load from just a few metres inside the entrance to the field. I tried offering them to other people but no one wanted them and were certainly not prepared to pick up some themselves. I got the distinct impression that they were only comfortable with food that had been 'authenticated' by being sold by a supermarket - and I can understand why people are rightly concerned about what they eat.

Not so long ago, gleaning was an important privilege for country people and people depended on gleaned food for the winter. I suppose it is good that people are now so wealthy that they don't need to worry about paying for food but is still seems a shame to see so much food go to waste. I wonder how long it will be before rising fuel and fertiliser costs leads to people keeping an eye open for gleaning opportunities once again.

The potatoes rapidly went green in the bright sun and most are now too poisonous to eat.

Transition Dad and Other Unofficial Initiatives

My father lives in a mobile home on an ex-airfield in central England with electricity but no running water. The surrounding land is used for farming and until recently there was a scrapyard next door. There is also a caravan onsite. In the ten years he’s been there he has completely renovated the place himself, made a garden and built a shed, all re-using scrapped and salvaged materials.

The following excerpts are from emails he has written to me in response to This Low Carbon Life, where he talks as a lifelong craftsman and maker about his own experiences of rebuilding, repurposing and reusing.

When I was growing up, in the way of children, I took for granted the kitchen he made out of scrap wood and old insulator crates from the railway. Now I'm older and in transition I've come to realise just how valuable this practical expertise is. My father's name is Richard and in three days time he will be 72.

2010/2011

Hi Mark,

I have been reading your transition blogposts and find them very interesting. Did you get the photos of my abode? The whole exercise was one big re-purposing. I am pleased to see that you were paying subliminal attention to me when you were growing up in regard to finding new uses for things as that has been my way of looking at life…

Water and Heating

Hi Mark,

I have just been reading your latest blog and admire your push for simpler living. As you know I have electricity but no other utilities. I have seven water butts which collect rain from the roof, one of which I have now connected up to pump water to the sink for washing. I came into possession of a redundant central heating pump which is 250v. This had been scrapped. I stripped it down and found the impeller was blocked and not allowing water to pass though. After cleaning it out and reassembling the pump it worked perfectly.

Prior to this I was experimenting with 12v narrow boat pumps which were not really practical as batteries and some form of charging was needed. I used 1/2" plastic pipe which I salvaged from scrap. I had to buy some connectors and elbows and tap fittings. The electrical stuff I had collected over the years (sometimes it pays to hoard). The cost of it all was about £15.00. My next project is to make a solar water heating system out of scrap black plastic pipe which I have. This will be mounted in a large frame painted black inside with a silver reflective surface on the bottom. A thermostat will control the flow into a 45 gallon drum for storage. This will be in an insulated box.

If you know any Transitioners who have experience of making something similar I would be interested to hear from them. Give them my email address.

Love, Dad XXX

Garden

Hi Mark,
I thought you might like a few pictures of my garden. It was all done from recovered materials from the airfield and was completely covered in rubbish and nettles before I started work on it. The Sparrow hawk I took this morning. The greater spotted woodpecker flew off before I could get him properly…

I hope you are ok for the coming cold spell (Nov 2010). I have been collecting wood from the site but my chain saw is playing up so it's all hand sawing which warms me up anyway. Love, Dad. XXX

Waste

Hi Mark,

Glad you liked the photos. In reference to your blog on energy waste, I remember that in the 70's when we had the last energy crisis, we were told that oil would run out in twenty years. We had the three day week and were told to share a bath (with our neighbours?), pick up people at the bus stop and keep to a 50mph speed limit among other things. In carrying out service work around the country at the time, I remember that the businesses most profligate were the public utilities. When the time to clean up came I was astonished that in most cases the water was actually scalding hot, lights on in all the offices etc.

Since then car ownership and usage has increased dramatically with the focus on larger 4wd's. We don't need the brains of Einstein to see that politicians and governments only pay lip service to the concerns of peak oil and climate change.

You might be interested in what the farmer here told me recently. He has materials delivered by a transport firm who also collect paper and plastic waste from a massive depot near the MI for shipping to China to be sorted.

The driver told him that once sorted by Chinese children on a vast tip in a remote location they then burn the paper waste. If true, so much for the UK commitment to recycling and eco concern, as it must be sanctioned. Export licences and so on. I have long held the view that global and international trade and finance govern worldwide behind the scenes and that politicians and governments are just the puppet frontmen, paying lip service to the concerns of the people.

I know many people think this way and it is heartening to know that the transition movement is going some way to reclaim the imbalance. It seems the next logical step is transition communes where all the ideas and skills can be combined. Dad XXX

Shed

Hi Mark, the following photos are of the shed I made from 100% recovered materials that I scavenged from the airfield. The timber would have been burnt.

The space is at the back of the mobile home between two brick buildings. As you can see I had to extend the floor to get the size needed.

The side with the ladder was an old shed side that was on the bonfire, waiting to be burnt, as was all the other timber. The bath I took from the mobile to make more space inside and to use as water storage. The roof is 8x4 chip board with heavy asbestos sheets on top. As I said all the materials were on site.

An amazing thing happened. I needed a door which I was going to make. Having no windows the shed would be dark inside.

The morning I was about to begin, I went over to the the site where the fire is and there was the door with a glass panel in it laying there ready to be burnt. The only things I bought were the guttering elbows. Even the paint was free.

When I look at it now I am glad I did it a couple of years ago as my back is no longer up to it . You can add any of this to your blog if you want.

Love, Dad XXX

Chip Off The Old Oak

Nov 2011

Hi Mark,

Hope you are well, although I was a bit worried seeing your photo that you were in the process of being blogged up to Transitionland. Dad. XXX

Dec 2011

Hi Dad,

Got your message and hope you're keeping well. I've got some Bungay Community beeswax for you. Elinor, our beekeeper, did a great job of purifying it. On Sunday I went to her house and taught people from the bee group how to make yarrow salve using the beeswax. It turned out really well and smells amazing. I'll get some to you as it's excellent for the kinds of cuts, burns and abrasions you get when you work a lot with your hands.

It's really mild here still, twelve degrees with a strong south wind. I'm doing quite a bit of writing. And I haven't been transmigrated to Transitionland entirely yet!

What kinds of things are you making from the wood turning?

Keep well and warm,

Mark x

Hi Mark,

I continue reading your work with interest and I am sure it has an influence on peoples' thinking about the way forward towards a different society which I believe will come as more people are seeing through the bull**it that is disseminated through the media by those trying to cling to power. You know all this anyway.

I have been making various items from the old oak I got when they replaced the canal lock gates, so the wood is possibly 400 years old. The beeswax is ideal for getting a nice finish and I’ll make the polish myself. One of the things I hope to do is make a pole lathe from the scrap wood I have. The thing about working in wood is that it is entirely natural, and has for me a spiritual connection. When you take a piece of wood that was destined to be burnt as scrap and expose the inner beauty through either turning or planing it is a satisfying process. The next item I make I will send you before and after photos of the wood.

The weather has been very changeable with wind and rain but cold at night. I have been keeping warm as I hope you have. I have got loads of old logs and stuff to burn that are no good for making things from.

Lots of love, Dad. XXX

Facing Eviction at Grow Heathrow

In our series of occasional cross-posts from fellow Transition initiatives here is a news story from Transition Heathrow. In the last two years Grow Heathrow has cleared 30 tonnes of rubbish from a piece of derelict land (formally a market garden).and planted vegetables, fixed bikes and provided a community space. Now the owners want to evict them. This is their story and how we can help

On Thursday 17th November 2011 Transition Heathrow's squatted community garden project 'Grow Heathrow' will be heading back to court. The evictors, despite no support are continuing with a third attempt to remove us from the site. Encouragingly for us, the local community, the council and our local MP all want us to stay so that’s what we’re going to try and do.

Transition Heathrow was started to support the residents and communities who had been fighting the expansion of Heathrow airport for many years. Grow Heathrow; a community market garden and social space was established on a piece of derelict land right in the heart of Sipson; one of the villages to be completely tarmacced to make way for a third runway. The land had previously been problematic for the local community and was often a site of anti-social behaviour before it was virtually abandoned. Traditional Transition Towns often have a strong emphasis on growing your own food, so we decided to incorporate that with a squatted community space where people could come together, and spend time as a community. The site is directly in the path of the proposed 3^rd runway and so everyday people are there it acts as a political statement which offers a positive alternative to the power structures that build runways on peoples homes for profit.

Over the past year and a half the site has been completely transformed into a thriving community hub and market garden that provides a space for the local community to come together again and rebuild after the blight the local people suffered from. The site in Sipson plays host to a wide range of free activities for residents which are sorely needed. On a more national level the site has also played host to many political gatherings for groups such as Climate Camp, Reclaim the Fields, The Transition Network, No Tar Sands network, The Kick Nuclear campaign and many more.

The upcoming possible eviction makes no sense. We have tried negotiating to come to some agreement from the start but they will now only let us speak to their lawyers. They have no plans for the land and as it is greenbelt land they can’t get planning permission to do anything. All that will happen is a return to a site where regular activities include car scrapping, car breaking and contamination of agricultural land. We will not let this happen!

What can people do to support us in the run up to court proceedings?

1. Sign the petition for court – http://www.petitiononline.com/heathrow/petition.html

2. Send a supportive testimony to info@transitionheathrow.com or to Grow Heathrow, Vineries Close, Sipson, West Drayton, UB7 0JG (Full list of statements so far found at www.transitionheathrow.com/statements)

3. Follow us on Twitter @transheathrow. #defendGrowHrow

4. Get down to Uxbridge County Court for 9.30am on Thursday 17th November for a big show of support outside the court.

Joe Rake

(Joe Rake is a Transition Network Social Reporter - read his blogs on Transition Heathrow, Building Our Own Alternative Media and In Defence of Squatting here)

Photos: the GrowHeathrow greenhouses before and after Transition; Transition Heathrow

Physically, Actually, Really – Transition Topic Weeks

Our topic weeks began in March 2010 with an elephant in the room, Flying. Several of us were engaged in the Transition Circles at the time and the effect of personal carbon reduction within the initiative challenged many of us to (literally) walk the talk. It’s easy, for example to hold forth academically about peak oil, to feel instinctively that climate change is Important, but on the blog we wanted to ask the difficult low carbon questions of ourselves: were we still taking the plane? Did we shop at supermarkets and eat junk food? What were we doing about waste in our households and neighbourhoods, physically, actually, really? And was “community” just a word we used to cover up our splendid isolation, or were we in fact creating the kind of downshift culture we dreamed of by writing its new narrative, every day, on time?

The intent behind the topic weeks was to connect those dis-connects and brings those very real personal and political interests together. Resilience within eco-systems is due to its biodiversity. Many solutions to different challenges that come about due to the whole system being in communication with itself. Transition is a deliberately diverse practice and its media needs equally to allow as many different voices to be heard.

So the topic weeks always aim to include several positions on certain key subjects and not limit the discussion to one Transitionally-correct opinion. On This Low Carbon Life we have bloggers who are involved in this cultural sea-change at all levels of engagement, from toe-dipping to whole body immersion. All of us have different perspectives, different commitments.

But all of us are on the beach.

This year we have looked at thirteen different subjects, led by one of the bloggers who organises the rota, introduces the week and acts as a temporary editor. This year has included Elena (Autumn, Books and Waste) , Charlotte (Gatherings, Spring, Fashion) Mark, (Deep Nature, High Summer), Chris (Climate Change, Buildings in Transition), Kerry (Happiness, Christmas and Midwinter, Transition Basics), Jon (New Year, Transition Postcards, Health in Transition). Keep an eye out for Best Blogs led by Jon and Sustainable Livelihoods led by Simeon this autumn, Meanwhile here is Kerry just before she left for Glasgow summing up the Happiness Week.

Photos: Mark in Madre Tierra, Southern Ecuador (Transition Postcards); poster for Gasland from Fracking Hell and Other Apocalypses by Charlotte Du Cann (Transition Basics); dress from recycled plastic bags by helenofnorwich (New Year).

In Praise of Saying Thank you
by Kerry Lane
26 March 2011

Transition Norwich Blog


My blog today was inspired by the TED talk by Laura Trice that I have included above. She encourages us all to genuinely thank each other more and to be honest about the praise we need.

The value of praise
We are bought up thinking that saying thank you is just good manners, part of social convention, as arbitrary and subject to change as the custom of shaking hands and one of those things that 'young people these days, have no(ne of)'. But as we grow up we realise the underlying value of saying thank you, the value of praise. We realise our need as a species to have our efforts recognised and appreciated, as a way of feeling a valued part of our communities.

Having worked in several different organisations I have experienced first hand how much difference it makes to feel that your work and efforts are being recognised and valued. For a start it motivates you to keep going and to try harder for the organisation, it also makes you feel happier and more content with your job.

However, saying thank you is not just important in a work setting. Thanking people is such a small effort from you, but can make such a huge difference to how the other person is feeling, especially if they are very busy and/or stressed. I think if we all took the time to properly thank the people around us for what they do, rather than just assuming that they know we are grateful, then it could have amazing effects on our society. People would feel happier, communities would be stronger, people would feel less isolated, less trapped in a faceless world. One small gesture of human compassion could make a much bigger difference than you realise.

I find it all too easy to just not get round to thanking people for things, as Laura mentions in the video I some how feel a bit embarrassed by it sometimes. It is also so easy to assume that people know you are thankful, but even if they are, they are still going to appreciate a thank you! In our time poor world it often seems to be one of the things that doesn't quite happen, but I know what its like at the other side too, the slight disappointment and uncertainty of not receiving a thank you.

In a voluntary organisation, such as Transition Norwich, it is very difficult to ensure that everyone gets recognition for the effort they put in. Especially when there is not one person in control who sees everyone's contributions. However, it is so important as everyone is giving their time for free and wants to feel an important part of the community.

Thank you
So I would like to take this opportunity to thank some of the people that have put tremendous amounts of time and effort into making Transition Norwich the success that it is. Tully Wakeman, Christine Way and Chris Hull, who were all members of the original core group, put in lots of effort to get the whole thing started and have stayed very involved doing an awful lot of work behind the scenes without enough thanks. So I would like to say a massive thank you to them for all of their hard work. I would also like to thank Charlotte DuCann, Mark Watson and Andy Croft for being the biggest movers and shakers of the communications team to date, they are responsible for the website, the monthly bulletin and this blog and they have put massive amounts of time and effort in to making them so brilliant.

To all of you - we massively appreciate all that you have done and still do.

There are of course many other people who have made Transition Norwich the success that it is and I am very thankful for everything everyone has done, you are all amazing.

And thank you very much for taking the time to read my post and for being caring and conscientious enough to want to make this world a better place.

The Hope in the Darkness

Everything is a bit grim and depressing at the moment, with riots, recessions and peak oil all rearing their ugly heads. It is easy to lose hope and to feel that we are all doomed, but I was sent a link today by the fabulous Otesha project that cheered me up and reminded me of the huge potential of human creativity. We have in our collective hands the ingenuity and skill to find a solution to any problem that faces us, that is how we got where we are today. It is arguably one of the most precious gifts of the human mind. So today I would like to share with you some of the amazing creativity and ingenuity that is lighting the way through the darkness.

The link that inspired this post gives 5 ingenious ways of reusing t-shirts and I particularly like the tent idea and the awesome video that comes with it.

And what about this is an awesome alternative to landfill? Saving lots of money and resources compared to new building materials too. Or we could make clothes out of cigarette butts? Or Buddhist temples out of glass bottles?

If you haven’t discovered TED talks yet, they are an amazing showcase of creativity and lateral thinking. One of the talks that springs to mind as being ingenious is by an amazing Indian entrepreneur teaching kids to make toys from rubbish.

Of course some of the old creativity and wisdom is equally inspiring, such as making soggy salad leaves into salad soup or using souring dairy products to make amazing cheese scones.

The human mind is amazing and we can achieve incredible things. Let us hope that our ingenuity and humanity can lead us to the better future we are all striving for. Never be afraid to think outside the box, for that is the stuff of evolution and progress.

Please share your favourite examples of creativity to inspire us all.

Waste not, Want not

Traditionally the saying I have used as a title is understood to mean 'don't waste the things that you don't want', but I quite like the alternative interpretation of 'If you don't waste anything you are never going to want for anything'. It quite neatly summarises how I am going to conclude this post, but I am getting ahead of myself. However, I am going to start at the end.

The end of the line for most 'waste', is as methane gas or as toxic landfill leachate, waiting to escape and pollute our atmosphere and groundwater. Modern landfills try very hard to stop these pollutants escaping, but nothings perfect and accidents happen.

I'm sure you have noticed that landfill sites take up quite a lot of room and when Britons alone produce 35.1 million tonnes of waste a year it is hardly surprising. However, this is starting to cause a problem as we need land for other important purposes, such as growing our food, so it is getting harder and harder to find places to put new landfill sites. In fact it is estimated that we will run out of landfill space in Britain in less than eight years time. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that landfill sites are difficult to redevelop due to toxic emissions and the risk from subsidence. And we must not forget the energy used to transport our waste to landfill sites either.

Now quite a lot of the stuff that we put into landfill is actually quite useful; so many perfectly usable appliances are thrown away it's ridiculous and considering the general finite nature of our natural resources and the looming peak oil problems, reusing some of the materials might be a smart plan.

That's recycling I hear you say. And indeed it is! Recycling takes used materials and makes them into new products like super cool computer circuit board stationary or the drinks mat I once had that was made out of toothbrushes...

Unfortunately though recycling is not magic, it requires large amounts of energy to reform the materials and therefore isn't the perfect answer. So climbing slowly up the well-known mantra of reduce, reuse, recycle we come to Reuse. Why change something if it still works perfectly well as it is? You can either use it again yourself, as in making your own jam to put in reused jam jars, or you can pass it on to someone else who can reuse it. This could be a friend or neighbour or failing that Freegle is a fantastic way of finding a happy home for all your unwanteds. Just giving things away for reuse is only half the story though, it is important to remember that these things need to be actually bought (or collected for free) to be able to be reused. There are many places where you can do this - clothes swaps, bring and take days (like Sustainable Bungay's), charity shops, freegle again, car boot sales, I could go on.

Somewhere around this section there is also the idea of repurposing, such as the flower pot kettle suggestion of J. Bloggs. This is sometimes referred to as upcycling and lots of wonderful suggestions can be found on the web on sites like instructables.

The astute amongst you probably noticed that there is one step better still -Reduce. If you don't produce the waste in the first place then you don't have to work out what to do with it. This is the point where you start to get a lot of cross over with discussions about stuff and food, because reducing waste normally requires changing the way you view the things you consume. You need to start see things as valuable resources that have had a lot of effort put into them by the earth and mankind and therefore you use them as carefully as possible and don't buy new things like they are going out of fashion (even our sayings have got the wrong idea!).

This generally means buying less (saving you money too) and using what you do buy more carefully. Making stuff yourself is also a good plan.

Just the word and concept of waste is a big part of the problem. Nothing is inherently valueless and everything can be reincarnated in some form or another. Nature doesn't have waste, or if it does it is more of an opportunity of a new resource to find a use for, rather than a problem to be hidden away.

Producing less waste is actually good for you too! If you really appreciate the things you have, look after them and make some things yourself then you will be happier and more content than if you are constantly searching for satisfaction in endless products. And as I said at the beginning if you waste less then you are less likely to find yourself (personally and as a society) in need of something that you cannot have.

Photos: waste not want not poster, landfill site, circuit board notebook and tetrapak wallet.

Back to Basics

In the beginning there were the issues of climate change and peak oil and how these affected different parts of our lives, from the energy we use and the products and food we consume, to the waste we produce and the way we get around. Then the economic downturn was added to the list of issues and Transition Norwich got creative and developed many amazing projects. We have come so far and achieved so much, but to fully appreciate this we thought we should look back and remind ourselves of where we started.

So this week on the blog we will be revisiting the issues we are facing and having a sneaky peek at what solutions Transition Norwich and other initiatives have found.

Photos: bikes and wind turbines (Sam White), alcohol and preserves and Sri Lankan vegetables

Putting the People First

I was enormously inspired by a Channel Four series recently - The People's Supermarket in which chef Arthur Potts Dawson set out to challenge the major supermarket chains by setting up a cooperative supermarket in London, owned and run entirely by members.

The whole programme was fascinating and incredibly inspiring; one of the best TV programmes I've seen in I can't remember how long.  It also chimes with so many of the themes that we've discussed on the blog over the last year or so, from local food, to waste, to community action.

You can watch the whole series for the next two weeks only, on the Channel Four website, and you can also visit the People Supermarket website at http://www.thepeoplessupermarket.org/.

I urge you not to miss it!

Picture from The People Supermarket's website.

Answering your Low Carbon Questions

J.Bloggs is the Transition Norwich Agony Blogger, who will be answering your queries, problems and requests on how to live a low carbon life in Norwich and its hinterland, most Sundays. If you have a question you would like to ask J.Bloggs then please email it to thislowcarbonlife@gmail.com and they will try their best to answer.

I have an old broken electric kettle. I do not think it can be repaired as it is a good 5 years old and it contains so much limescale that its probably doubled in weight! I want to get rid of it, but I don't want to just chuck it in landfill. What can I do?
Kerry, NR5

Dear Kerry
Disposal of electronic items is always tricky, but I have a few options for you:
1) Upcycle: If the element is still working then it can be used to make homebrew and various other things, interesting instructions can be found on the instructables website.
2) Reuse: The jug portion of the kettle besides being used as a jug, makes a unique planter for herbs or flowers.
3) Recycle: Thanks to the European Waste Electronics directive (WEEE), there are now electronics recycling facilities as most recycling centres. The Mile Cross Centre on Swanton Road takes a large range of electronics for recycling - more information can be found here. Some electronics retailers also take waste electronics in store, but check with them first!
4) Reduce: Prolong the life of your kettle in the first place by keeping it free of limescale. Soak the element in a solution of a tablespoon of vinegar to a pint of water as soon as scale starts to appear or prolong the life of all of your appliances with the Waltham Scale manager that reader Stan recommended on my last blog.

I hope that gives you a few ideas.
Green wishes
J.Bloggs

Next time J.Bloggs will be answering a tricky question:

A friend who collects most of her shopping by bicycle from Sainsburys, has asked me whether it is preferable to have her milk delivered by electric float in bottles or to buy it in the newly available, recyclable plastic JugIt bags.
John, Hethersett

If you have any answers to the questions please do comment and share them with everyone.

**disclaimer** J.Bloggs does not have all the answers and takes no liability for the consequences of any suggestions!**

More Oil - Troubled Waters?

I had my Peak Oil moment some years ago, by which I mean a sudden all-at-once awareness of how utterly embedded I am in, and part of, a culture wholly dependent on fossil fuels for its existence and maintenance. And the shock of realising it hadn’t always been like this, and wasn’t always going to be like this.

I started taking notice of things I’d previously ignored. How is our economy set up and run? What does anthropogenically related climate change actually mean? How is the food I am eating produced? I joined Sustainable Bungay and Transition Norwich and have been looking at these questions and a million others in a thousand meetings with people who were asking them too. I worked out my personal carbon footprint for transport, home energy and food and reduced it. I morphed from vegetarian to freegan. I joined this blog and began writing about it.

It’s been an odd week. I borrowed a friend’s car yesterday to do a food shopping trip and take six months’ worth of bottles to the bottle bank. I’ve recently been going everywhere by foot, cycle, bus or train, so I hadn’t been in a petrol station forecourt for about six weeks or seen the prices (about £1.30 a litre). The Daily Express (no I don’t read it, it was on display at the garage) warned that petrol would be £8 a gallon in the near future and only the rich would be able to afford to drive cars. Meanwhile Libya becomes the latest country in the Middle East to explode in unrest. I had a feeling of deja-vu. And then became aware that the oil (and other crises) we've been talking about and preparing for in transition were actually happening now, not in some near or distant future.

And here at home the shock doctrine government spending cuts start being felt in so many areas. Suffolk County Council are planning to close several waste disposal tips, including the ones at Beccles and Southwold. Practically speaking this would mean a round trip of twenty to thirty miles to Lowestoft if you live in Bungay or Southwold and need a dump. And with petrol prices... Who will be on hand to prevent flytipping on the land?

But we have started to raise our voices. The proposed cuts to the libraries have been met with fierce opposition and community engagement in many places. Sustainable Bungay have organised a World Book Night read-in next Thursday. But even here in Southwold, there are stirrings. The Labour Party’s Save The Library poster can now be seen in many windows (and not all of them red, I'm sure).

Meanwhile back to oil. In November 2009 I wrote on this blog about the ship-to-ship oil transfers off the coast between Lowestoft and Southwold. The government recently voted to allow this to continue (the only place in Britain it is permitted). The Southwold and District Chamber of Trade and The Southwold and Reydon Society pressurised the government into reopening public consultation. This gives us until 10th March to write letters to Westminster. And shows that public pressure does have an effect.

Stop Press: See Mark Crutchley's latest article for the One World Column: The End Of The Oil Age

Pic: Ship to Ship Transfer off Southwold Nov 2009 by Mark Watson

Biodiesel - A First Reaction

Last October I wrote about my meeting with a waste vegetable oil man in Beccles, and talked about the beginnings of our Biodiesel group in Sustainable Bungay. This is an update based on a December visit to a man who makes biodiesel at home and our own first attempts at a reaction last Saturday.

But first, why am I part of a Transition Biodiesel group, when I don't even have a car at the moment? Well, for several reasons, not least the social benefits of being part of a community group that's making something useful together. But equally, at a time when oil prices are soaring through the roof and with political instability in so many oil producing countries, plus the realities of Peak Oil, it just makes sense to engage in a project that focuses my mind and gets me thinking in a really practical way about these things.

And you can use biodiesel for other purposes - oil lamps for instance. (Though there are obvious drawbacks with used chip fat - unless you're into things like scratch and sniff!).

(i)
On a very cold December day Josiah, Kris and I took a trip down to Aldeburgh to see Colin, a retired chemical engineer who has been making biodiesel at home now for three or four years. Colin welcomed us with a mug of tea and showed us around his set up, explaining the process - from collecting waste vegetable oils from food outlets through cleaning the dirty vegetable oil, reacting the clean oil with lye, separating the crude biodiesel and glycerol and washing the crude biodiesel with water to produce the final vehicle-worthy product you can see in the photos.

Throughout the visit Colin answered our questions on everything from handling lye (the caustic which is vital for the trans-esterification reaction which converts the vegetable oil to biodiesel and glycerol) to the disposal or recycling of the waste glycerol. He advised anyone making biodiesel for the first time not to rush into producing enormous amounts.
“The thing is to start small, doing the reactions with some glass or plastic bottles,” he said. “Then as you get used to handling the liquids, you can increase the amount.” This came as a great relief as I had been eyeing that caustic lye with some trepidation.

The legal limit for home biodiesel production is 2,500 litres per year, tax-free. This is what Sustainable Bungay’s Biosdiesel group will aim at initially. For the project to get underway properly we would have to wait for wamer weather. Colin meanwhile invited us to come round the next time he does a ‘reaction’.

(ii)
Last Saturday, 19^th February a dozen of us turned up at Kris and Eloise's to have a look at the set up in their garage and to make our first three litres of biodiesel. We crowded into the living room where Kris introduced the project and we discussed everything from logistics to legalities before descending on the kitchen for Eloise’s delicious soup and homebaked bread, David’s tasty flapjacks (his first ever!), Elinor's ginger cake (no comment required!) and Brenna's polenta, lemon and orange cake, also a first. I ate three slices of that!

Then we cleared all the food and utensils out of the way to do the reaction. Great care was needed (and taken) pouring the lye/methanol first into a glass measuring jug and then into plastic bottles with vegetable oil. As it was our first time (and the weather had not yet warmed up), we used clean vegetable oil, which does not go hard as lard in the winter.

Kris wore protective goggles and everyone handling the mixtures wore gloves. David and Josiah took photos. We kept the windows open to avoid suffocation by noxious fumes. My nervousness about caustic liquids was allayed both by the presence of Mike, a chemical engineer, and the fact that Kris was so calm.

We had to keep the temperature of the mixture at below 50 degrees for the reaction to take place safely (methanol is volatile and can produce an easily ignited vapour at higher temperatures), so the bottles were placed in a pan on the stove for about an hour. Meanwhile we went to look at the reaction vessel.

I had to leave shortly afterwards but here below is the result of our first biodiesel-making session.

Pics: Pouring the Oil (notice no gloves here!); Colin's Biodiesel; Pouring the Lye/Methanol mix (serious glove time!); Still in the Garage; First Bottle of Biodiesel - Photos by Josiah Meldrum, David Poston and Mark Watson

These Shoes Aren't Made For Walking ~ Built-In Obsolescence

“If they’re the ones I think you mean, I can’t mend them,” said the man at the local cobblers. “Not even with some glue?” I asked.
He shook his head.

Well, that can’t be right, I thought. There’s that black gummy stuff (the name escapes me) in a tube. I saw it in a skateboard shop once years ago. It was popular with young clubbers for mending the soles of trainers. I mean it's obviously a(nother) petrochemical bi-product, but if he had some I wouldn't need to buy a tube. It would need the tiniest amount.

I asked him about it. I told him the shoe did not need to look perfect. He shook his head again. “You can bring the shoe in for me to look at if you like,” he said.

I got the shoes from Sustainable Bungay’s Give and Take Day in 2009. They were attractive, comfortable, almost new and I loved them. The guy they’d belonged to had loved them too. But they squeaked when you walked in them and he probably didn’t want to be known as That Man Whose Shoes SQUEAKED! Apart from that there was nothing the matter with them.

I was not concerned about squeaks, however, but about the split which had appeared between the upper and the sole. It looked easy enough to mend. I would ask a second shoe repair man. And this time I took the shoe in.

He’d seen it all before.
“They’re impossible to mend,” he said, and showed me that what looks like stitching to hold the upper and sole together is in fact a sort of faux stitching. The leather upper is not actually stitched to the sole. They are held together only by a thin strip of plastic or rubber (I’m not sure which). This strip is what had broken.

“Super glue?” I asked.
“It’ll just come apart again in next to no time. And the rest of the shoe will follow.”
“A design fault.” I offered.
“A deliberate one.”

This is what the first man had hinted at, but I was so intent on getting my squeaky shoes repaired (THESE SHOES CAN AND WILL BE MENDED!) I hadn't noticed. Now disappointment was giving way to curiosity.

The shoe repairer told me he had stopped buying Clarks shoes because of this particular “design fault.” He was unhappy that the company was trading on its reputation for good quality shoes whilst supplying poor quality short-lived models. Which in addition weren’t cheap.

I still might have a go at supergluing my give-and-take-attractive-fashionable-clarks-made-within-the-context-of-the-global-economy-deliberately-built-in-obsolescence-wasteful-there-must-be-profit-at-all-costs-never-mind-about-the-physical-constraints-of-an-already-beleaguered-planet-growth-growth-growth shoes together. Or does anyone have any of that black gummy stuff? But whatever steps I take (sic) these are shoes of a short lifespan.

Next time I visit the shoe repair man I’m taking a pair of well-worn 5 year old Doc Martens along, where the seam has also come apart. I’ll let you know how I get on…

Pic: Shoe Splitting Seams

PS: I liked this post on Transition Footwear by Joanne Poyourov in Los Angeles.

Come one, Come all with your low carbon living questions

The Transition Norwich blog has a new member! Please give a warm welcome to J. Bloggs, the brand new Transition Norwich agony blogger. Most Sundays JB will be here to answer your queries, problems and requests on how to live a low carbon life in Norwich and its hinterland. So if you have a burning question then please send it to www.thislowcarbonlife@gmail.com and they will do their best to provide you with the answer.

We have a tricky conundrum to start us off. (another kettle!)
Dear J.Bloggs,
I have an old broken electric kettle. I do not think it can be repaired as it is a good 5 years old and it contains so much limescale that its probably doubled in weight! I want to get rid of it, but I don't want to just chuck it in landfill. What can I do?
Kerry, NR5

J.Bloggs will be answering Kerry's question on Sunday 27th February, so make sure you check in to find out their top tips. Also if you have any answers to the questions then please feel free to comment.

**disclaimer** J.Bloggs does not have all the answers and takes no liability for the consequences of any suggestions!**

Food by numbers

Amongst Transitioners we talk a lot about what motivates change. We talk about people needing to engage with things on a heart level as well as a head level. And numbers are really not seen as a good motivator. But I read the Transition Handbook and this passage turned my world-view upside down:

“In 2004 the UK imported 17.2 million kilos of chocolate-covered waffles and wafers and exported 17.6 million kilos; we imported 10.2 million kilos of milk and cream by weight, from France and exported 9.9 million. The figures for the same trade with Germany were 15.5 million kilos and 17.2 million. Germany sent us 1.5 million kilos of potatoes and we sent them, yes, 1.5 million kilos of potatoes.”

As part of being green in outlook and quite sceptical about things, I'd always generally assumed that 'big business' was doing things that were a bit silly and bad for the environment. But I'd never seen it in such black and white, with numbers of that size. Swapping one and a half million kilos of potatoes with Germany in a year? But my brain, like most, doesn't easily understand what big numbers really mean. So lets play with this number. If the average potato is, like this one, 8cm long and weighs 200g... That means there are 5 potatoes in a kg, so 1.5 million kilos is 7,500,000 potatoes. If they're each 8cm long- now I feel like I'm on Blue Peter- and they were all laid end to end, the line of potatoes would be 372.8 miles long. That would reach from Cromer to London and back again. Which would be roughly as pointless as swapping potatoes with Germany.

Once I'd learnt this I suddenly understood what all those people saying “Growth is not necessarily a good thing” were on about. Such trade is 'good for business'. It 'keeps the economy on track'. It's also blindingly stupid.

We hear a lot about food waste too, and I flicked through a recipe book the other day and was transfixed by a page about food waste. The numbers on it were so outlandishly large that I hunted down the report to check it was talking about households in the UK, not including retail and catering. No, it was just household. Then I checked if it meant actual waste- some of these reports include tea leaves as wasted food, which in my opinion they are not. I use them, I can't eat them. When they've been used I compost them. At no stage in this process can I consider them 'wasted food'. But no, this report finely categorised waste as 'unavoidable' (eg. the cores of peppers, pea pods- but I make stock from mine, and it's delicious!), 'possibly avoidable' (eg. carrot skins, potato skins) and 'avoidable' (that's whole, wholly edible things that are just thrown away).

So these numbers are real, about real food and real households. Here we go:

Every DAY we throw away:

7 million slices of bread.

1 million slices of ham.

4.4 million whole apples.

660,000 eggs.

5.1 million whole potatoes.

260,000 unopened packs of cheese.

2.8 million tomatoes.

1.2 million whole sausages.

550,000 rashers of bacon.

330,000 chicken portions.

700,000 unopened packets of chocolate and sweets.

82,000 whole cakes and gateaux.

2,900 unopened bottles and cans of lager.

The report helpfully priced each item: the bacon for instance was 'worth' £50 million a year. I've not included those prices. I think we deserve to carry the costs of those foods, if we're stupid enough to act in this way.

What I find deeply offensive is the idea that pigs died for that bacon to be thrown away. We know that much chocolate production involves the use of bonded child labour: slavery, essentially. And we're throwing away the products that caused so much misery in their production. Some of the eggs and chicken we throw away are likely to have come from battery chickens, imprisoned for their whole life- each chicken with about as much room as a mouse-mat. And after that hell, we're just throwing away their bodies? Then consider the farming itself: people's life-work being thrown away. The decline of skylarks on UK farms, growing wheat ever more intensively to make flour for bread- when we throw away 7 million slices of it every day. The deforestation of rainforests to grow soya to feed cows to make cheese which we just throw in the bin. I can't say how angry this makes me.

I'm guilty too. I throw food away. I think I fancy more of something than I've actually got an appetite for when it's cooked. I buy food which I don't manage to eat because my plans change mid-week. But I do try, very hard, not to waste food. I'm motivated by my heart, not my head, on this one. But now my head has seen those numbers too, and it understands we really do have to change these things.