A recent ruling by the European Court of Justice means that honey must be labelled to show that it contains pollen.

To say that honey contains pollen is like saying that peanuts contain nuts. Beekeepers will of course tell you that pollen is not an ‘ingredient’ as implied by the ruling and, in fact, is a natural part of the product put there incidentally by the bees as they forage for nectar getting the pollen stuck to their bodies. The recent EU ruling means beekeepers producing honey for sale will have to test it to make sure it doesn’t contain any genetically modified (GM) pollen and label their project accordingly. This is a concern for small producers as the equipment needed for testing and labelling can be expensive. This is worrying because many small producers could be forced to stop beekeeping as the local sale of their honey supports the cost of keeping their bees and there is little left over for testing equipment. This testing and labelling is seen to be ludicrous in the UK as there are a very small number of GM crops growing.

This is one more blow to our bees that have been in decline in recent years for various reasons. They have been the victims of a parasite called ‘varroa destructor,’ an external parasitic mite that attacks the honey bee. Bees are also subject to difficulties caused by modern intensive farming methods such as monoculture and the use of pesticides. For example bees are attracted to the acres of bright yellow oil seed rape which appears in our fields in the spring causing a two fold problem. The first relates to the honey that is produced from oil seed rape pollen which becomes rock hard in the hive and has to be removed by the bee keeper, the second is the lack of flowering substitute when the oil seed rape season ends leaving nothing for the bees to forage.

The decline in our bee population in recent years is of great concern. Virtually all of our crops and gardens are pollinated by this secret army and our food security will be under threat if we don’t halt their decline and start increasing their numbers again. Governments across the globe are investing huge sums to research the plight of the honey bee and bee keepers are doing their utmost to keep their bees fit for purpose. The EU directive will diminish conservation.

EU regulation is a Government concern so what can we do personally?

For a start we can find out as much about bees as we can so we have a better understanding of their nature and their needs. We can do this in several ways, read books, search the internet or sign up to a Greeniversity bee keeping class. This is what many Peterborough folk have done and some, including myself and,  as result they are now keeping bees. It’s worth remembering that in Europe it’s as common for people to keep bees in their gardens as it is the UK for people to grow spuds! There is no great mystery to beekeeping but if you don’t want to keep bees but want to help the humble honey bee get planting. Improve your garden by adding all round colour to your borders of sweet scented bee friendly flowers. 
 

Useful websites

Natural Beekeeping trust
British Beekeeping Association
Greeniversity
Beekeeping supplies

Tags: Karen Lawrence | Do your bit for the environment | Creating the UK Environment Capital | Peterborough Greeniversity

I’ve just been on the Peterborough breakfast show (how exciting) to give some hints and tips on how to have a greener Christmas. 

Whilst Paul Stainton’s idea of putting Kermit on top of the tree is fabulous there are some genuine things we can all do to try to be a little bit kinder to the environment, and, quite frankly, if we want to save Lapland for our children from the effects of climate change we all need to be thinking about how we can change our behaviour!

Some of the things I'm doing are:

Making my own presents, biscuits, candles and lip balm all round

Looking out for bargains in charity shops, on ebay and at boot sales

Not over doing the food shopping, this of course saves money as well as cuts down on waste

Buying local where I can, pressies from the handmade pop up shop in Westgate arcade and from the Green Backyards craft fair

Making my own present labels from last year’s cards

Recycling wrapping paper

Things we can all do include:
 
1.    Millions of Christmas cards are sent to landfill every year so why buy new cards when you can get creative and make some out of ones you’ve been sent in previous years.
2.    Try making your own Christmas decorations out of paper, that way when they’re finished with, you can recycle them or keep them for following years. Check out Laura’s class on Greeniversity if you want to get involved in making some colourful designs.
3.    If you get any unwanted clothes this Christmas like that horrible jumper from your Nan or a dodgy tie why not donate them to a charity shop. What you might not like someone else may love!
4.    If you’re putting up Christmas lights this year try getting solar powered fairy lights to reduce your carbon footprint and if not try to reduce the amount of time they’re left on each day.
5.    Look out for recycled wrapping paper and use string or ribbon to tie up your presents rather than using sticky tape.
6.    Visit www.lovefoodhatewaste.com to find out what you can do with your Christmas dinner leftovers!
7.    Re-use your shopping bags during your Christmas shopping spree, if you buy a bag for life you can reduce the amount CO2 and methane going into the atmosphere.
8.    Turn the heating down and put on an extra jumper if you’re cold this winter.
9.    You get a lot of batteries during Christmas from electrical gifts so make sure you recycle them when they fail on you. Any shop that sells batteries are legally obliged to have a recycling bin for them, so make sure you hand them in.
10.    Try to get local food for your Christmas dinner from your local market, this reduces car usage as you won’t need to drive far for it and helps your local economy.
11.    Instead of sending Christmas cards this year and adding to the amount that ends up in landfill you can always send E-cards, many websites offer free E-cards with loads of different designs for your friends and family.
12.    Secret Santa. By doing a secret Santa in your workplace it reduces the amount of money you will spend than if you bought everyone gifts!
 
Credit due to Selina for the list above, I pinched it from her blog last year, but it’s still great advice so as they so if it’s not broke don’t fix it and in this case, for the sake of Santa’s homeland follow it!!!

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Tags: Karen Lawrence | Greeniversity | Do your bit for the environment | Climate change | Green Christmas

PECT is recruiting a Part-time data collection officer

A nine month position (Feb–Oct) to assist the SLRG project team to collect data for a prestigious Peterborough Environment City Trust (PECT) project.

 Working in collaboration with the SLRG (Sustainable Lifestyle Research Group) team at PECT and with researchers at the University of Bath you will help deliver a pioneering sustainable living project funded by Defra. You will help to gather data from 600 residential doorstep surveys from local residential areas of Peterborough. Incentives to engage participation include shopping vouchers and green goodie bags. The findings will test and inform leading thinking on environmental behaviour change.

Please read the job description & personal specification (link below), complete the application and return it by email along with your CV to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Closing date for applications is 5.00pm 23rd December 2011 with interviews being held 11th January 2012.  Start date 6th February 2012.

www.pect.org.uk/environment-jobs

Tags: Karen Lawrence | Environment jobs

This week, at the city’s cathedral, Peterborough’s Inter-faith Council presented a prayer for peace and compassion as its celebration of United Nations Children’s Day.

This annual event draws attention to the plight of children everywhere who are suffering because of poverty and sickness.  This resolution, set in 1954, recommended all countries institute a Universal Children's Day, to be observed as a day of worldwide fraternity and understanding between children. It recommended that the Day was to be observed also as a day of activity devoted to promoting the ideals and objectives of the Charter and the welfare of the children of the world. The Assembly suggested to governments that the Day be observed on the date and in the way which each considers appropriate. The date 20th November marks the day on which the Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, in 1959, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in 1989.

The event, hosted by Canon Jonathan Bacon welcomed performances from a range of schools and faith groups who successfully combined to share a fantastic evening of music, readings and prayer from representative of faiths from across the city
Raising awareness of climate change and its links to poverty in developing nations is a topic which is very close to the hearts of the four faith groups who have been working for the past year with Peterborough Environment City Trust (PECT) on their Faith in the Environment project which is funded by DFID. The groups, who are from the Iqra Academy (Muslim), the Drolma Centre (Buddhist), the Rama Mandir (Hindu) and Sri Guru Singh Sabha Gurgwara (Sikh)have been looking in detail at climate change, how it being caused and what can be done to combat it. The main thread of the project has been to raise awareness about how it is the people in the poorest developing nations, who have the least impact on the planet who are the ones who are being hit first and hardest by climate change.

For example in Bangladesh the seasons have become less predictable and storms more violent, the people are often unable to determine when their crops should be planted and in the rift valley droughts are so severe that farming is becoming impossible. Here in the UK we are in the midst of a winter drought which follows on from a severe summer drought which is bound to have implications on our food production and security.        

Tags: Karen Lawrence | Faith in the Environment

Peterborough’s green skills swap scheme is set to hold its 500th class on Saturday 3rd December.

Greeniversity was first launched  PECT in March 2010, the scheme now has over 600 local people signed up as members. These members have the opportunity to learn green skills for free, including how to fix a bike puncture, how to grow organic veg, and how to insulate a loft. Greeniversity teachers are local volunteers who are willing to share their green know-how.

On Saturday 3rd December a Sound Therapy workshop will be the 500th Greeniversity class to be held in the city. Run by volunteer teacher Jane Snart, the workshop is being held in Peterborough Cathedral where the acoustics are particularly good. Jane explains, “The class is open to everyone in the city and I hope as many local people as possible will come. Sound Therapy is a wonderful way to leave you feeling calm, energised and ready to take on the world. This is the second time the Sound Therapy class has been held in Peterborough, the first time last year was such a great success. We’ve already had twelve bookings for the class on Saturday.”

The Sound Therapy class runs between 10am-2pm on Saturday 3rd December and attendees will experience the sounds of different instruments from all over the world including gongs, Tibetan singing bowls, Native American drums and flutes. The class is free to attend and places can be booked online by visiting www.greeniversity.org.uk

Originally set up with the assistance of government funding, Greeniversity has recently received a grant from the National Learning and Skills Council (NLDC). This funding will help unemployed people in Peterborough to get back into work by building confidence and skills through informal adult learning. Greeniversity Project Officer Karen Lawrence says, “We originally launched Greeniversity with a grant from the government and now it is totally self-sustaining. This new funding from NLDC will help us reach a whole new audience supporting unemployed adults take the first steps towards getting back into work. Many of the people we’ll be working with have been out of employment for some time and don’t know where to start. Greeniversity will help them pick up invaluable transferable skills and build their self-belief at the same time.”

This second phase of the Greeniversity project will launch in January 2012.

Tags: Karen Lawrence | Peterborough Greeniversity | Greeniversity

Last week Eve and I attended the Cross Keys Homes Annual Residents conference, this is the third that I’ve attended but Eves first and it presented us both with a great opportunity to promote PECT and its’ projects to the residents of Cross Keys.

Eve is the project officer for Energy matters which is funded by Cross Keys to help their tenants out of fuel poverty, as operations director Claire Higgins said “Cross keys want to really help people who are in fuel poverty, this is an area that I’m really concerned about and want to help with as much as I possibly can!” In the UK, fuel poverty is said to occur when in order to heat its home to an adequate standard of warmth a household needs to spend more than 10% of its income on total fuel use, and with ever rising fuel costs Eve’s Energy Matters project is even more vital at this time.

Eve completed over 50 energy surveys with residents at the conference and each off them also received a free Energy Matters pack which includes a bag, low energy light bulb and shower timer. If you are a Cross Keys Homes tenant and over 55 yrs of age contact Eve on 01733 866435 or email eve.atkins @pect.org.uk for your free visit to help you save money on your energy costs. You will be surprised at how much money you can save and Eve has already identified savings of £184,145.00 and taken 31% of people she has visited out of fuel poverty!

Various awards were presented to outstanding tenants during the evening  and as a tenant of Cross Keys myself I’m really proud of level of environmental commitment the organisation has. I was really pleased to see  the award for ‘Green neighbour’ presented to Madge Wilson and Cindy Player from Fulbridge Road, New England. 
They were nominated by resident Janet Riley (a resident from Becketts Close which is round the corner) for all the hard work that they have put into creating a communal garden in Fulbridge Road. Janet advised that the garden looks much nicer now and “it is a pleasure to see it looking so nice”.
Other PECT projects that were promoted on the day were our green skills sharing website, www.greeniversity.org.uk and work that we do with businesses with our green accreditation scheme iie. I was delighted with the pro environment attitude of Cross Keys staff and residents which was demonstrated by the large number of sign up we had to the PECT newsletter and the environment network!

Tags: Karen Lawrence | Energy Efficiency | Greeniversity

A week or so ago Selina and I were invited to attend the grand opening of Dobbies garden centre.

We were really quite interested in this as we have been trundling past the place on an almost daily basis on our bus ride to Hampton and had been watching the place grow, quite speedily, out of the ground for a couple of months.

When we arrived we headed straight for the food hall, as you do, and we were treated to a delightful array of delicious looking goodies, we were impressed. So much so that now I have to treat Selina to Dobbies ice cream every time we meet our work targets! What was really impressive was the amount of produce that was being stocked in the food halls and used in the eatery that was local and seasonal. As we all know buying local, seasonal fresh food is a great way of supporting British farmers and making sure you have all the right vitamins. Of course we opted for cake.

Next we went to look at the plants. I’m a keen gardener so wanted to see how the nursery area measured up. I thought the stock of plants that they had was very good, especially for the time of year, and I was pleased to note that the whole area was quite easy to physically negotiate. It can be tiresome when you can’t sort out your Dalias from your Geraniums and Dobbies do have their plants laid out so that they make sense. Speaking of sense does that last sentence make any? Anyway what I was really pleased to see was that the plants were labelled as to their origin so you could buy your strawberry plants from a nursery in Lincolnshire and your Crocosmia  from a UK supplier. Superb.

The thing we were both most impressed with was the Eco-living Centre. We work for an environmental charity, we are environmentalists and we are very happy to see that Peterborough, which after all is the home of the UK’s environment capital, has its’ own Eco-shop at last! Yes you can buy insulation and rainwater harvesting systems, composters and water butts but more importantly you can by a clock that’s made from recycled plastic and wooden toys made with sustainable wood.
Now I’m not officially endorsing Dobbies and I am aware that there are those who quite rightly believe that the area needs a leisure centre more than it needs a garden centre but I am saying that this is a great place to shop green and Peterborough definitely needs more green shopping.

P.S. Don’t forget if you have an electric vehicle you can charge it at Dobbies too! Oh and if all this has failed to tempt you it’s worth a visit just to check out the loo’s!!!

 

Tags: Karen Lawrence | Creating the UK Environment Capital | Groovy and green | Dobbies

At the Greeniversity we’re really excited about the first chicken keeping class that’s taking place on 15th October at the Green Back Yard.

This is the perfect course for people thinking about keeping chickens on a small scale, or for people who have recently started. Led by Hugh Burton, who has kept chickens since the age of seven with up to 200 birds in his care at some stages. He won best in show at the National Poultry Awards in 2002 with a black silkie bantam and has been a regular contributor to other poultry keeping courses.

Hugh has been advising the Green Backyard on their chickens for over a year and has helped them keep their flock of silkies, ex bats and many others healthy.
The course will cover all of the basics to keeping chickens as well as a practical demonstration and there will be plenty of time for questions.

Sign up for this new and innovative class at www.greeniversity.org.uk

Tags: Greeniversity | Peterborough Greeniversity | Karen Lawrence

Those of you who have been to a Greeniversity knitting class in the past will be pleased to learn that the classes put on by our expert knitter, Barbara, are set to return from next week. Those of you who haven’t been along don’t know what you have been missing!

After a summer break dashing around Europe in her camper van Barbara is really looking forward to getting back into the swing of helping the group. “I’ve really missed my sessions with the Greeniversity and can’t wait to help everyone get started with their new winter knitting projects” Barbara is keen to point out that new members are really welcome “The more the merrier” she added “Lets get some hand made woollies ready before the winter nights really start to draw in!”


The class is held at the PECT office on a monthly basis and is suitable for all levels of ability, so come along and improve your knitting skills and if your really keen you can share your knitting expertise with others as well!

For more details and to register for the class visit
www.greeniversity.org.uk

Tags: Karen Lawrence | Greeniversity

As project officer for PECT’s ‘Faith in the Environment’ project I have been really fortunate to meet some really wonderful people from different faiths across our community.

As part of the workshops that I have been delivering to my Sikh, Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist groups I have been showing a short film, produced by Oxfam, called ‘Sisters of the Planet’. This is a truly inspiration film which shows how climate change is effecting people globally and how they are adapting and changing. It features the story of four women whose individual tales help us to truly appreciate the real impact that climate change is having today.

As part of this years Green Festival, in association with New Hope charity we are providing you with the opportunity to see ‘Sisters of the Planet’ along with the amazing ‘Beyond the Tipping Point’ a film about climate, action and the future for FREE!

This free eco-film screening is taking place on the 8th June, 2011 between 12.00 noon and 15.00pm at New Hopes premises:

Ground Floor, Unit 7,
New England Complex,
Rock Road, Peterborough.
PE1 3BU.

There will be discussions and workshop to follow film screening and light refreshments will be provided.

If you would like any further information please contact me, Karen Lawrence on
T: 01733 866441 (office hours) E: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or Sanusi Shayien  on T: 01733 209590/M: 07990 864613 E: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Hope to see you there


 

Tags: Do your bit for the environment | Karen Lawrence | Green Festival | Faith in the Environment