Everyone is invited to come and celebrate the exciting re-launch of local club!
Plenty of fun family activities are planned for the event, including; tug of war, bale rolling, egg and spoon race, craft stalls, cake stalls, trade stands, pedal tractor arena, bouncy castle, cow milking, wellie decorating, a delicious BBQ and much more...!
There will also be cooking, floral, vegetable and photography competitions (for children and adults). Make sure you enter by 11.15am on the day for a chance to win.
Peterborough is the heart of a important agricultural area, with lots of farmers producing tasty food on our flat, fertile land. Coming along to this event is a great way to learn more about where we live, support local food and also the local community!
Entry fee is by donations to the Kidney Research UK appeal.
Event Details
Date: Sunday 11th September
Time: 11am – 3pm
Venue: The Bull Pub, Guntons Road, Newborough, Peterborough, PE6 7QW.
As the eco awards creep even closer, I am sure the hunger to win grows ever more amongst the children.Prizes will be awarded across 13 different subjects– from the individual to the team, the school to the community; everybody has a fighting chance of being named the greenest of them all.
The awards
Based on the children’s displays, award such as Waste and Recycling, Biodiversity and Healthy Living will be given by the judges to those children who’ve strived to create the most inspiring projects- showing enthusiasm and dynamism to take the lead. One of the most important features of the day will be the presentation of the Eco Leader Award. Nominated by the schools, this recognises the commitment of a truly inspirational person who has given up their lunch and break time and time again to promote a green way of life. Oh dear, I fear a few tears may be spilt!
This year the 20th anniversary Green Festival promises to be bigger and better than ever before.
The launch day, Saturday 28th May, is going to be packed full with so much activity that the festival is taking over three city centre locations the Cathedral square, Cathedral green and St.Johns square.
The communities team has gone from strength to strength over the last year so much so that we are having a marquee of our own which we have called the ‘fun & food tent’. There will be many activates through out the day including a ready, steady cook competition, cookery demonstrations and food tasters. In addition you will be able to download the free iphone app ‘Walk Peterborough’, get an energy health check up and plant seeds for the ‘Forest of Peterborough.
Greeniversity will be holding a series of workshops throughout the day including sound therapy, city centre foraging walks, willow weaving and much more.
So put the date in your diary, Saturday 28th May, and come along and meet the team and join in with all the great free activities that will be on offer all day.
It’s May 1998 and I am eleven years old. Ronaldo (the fat one, not the greasy one) is set to be the star of World Cup 1998, before eventually succumbing to host nation France in the final. But it is the legendary yellow jersey of Brazil that has caught my eye, but where am I to find the exorbitant £49.99 to buy one – plus the extra cost of getting ‘Samaldo’ emblazoned on the back? I’d still be saving if I’d relied on pocket money. The only choice then is to root through the cupboards and flog my expensively purchased, now unwanted wares out of mums’ car boot at 6am in a Church car park in Radcliffe. But it was worth it, and I wore that shirt every day in the summer of 1998. As the first thing I ever saved up to buy, it’s a treasured possession, and one I can’t imagine ever parting with.
I went to dozens of car boot sales after this; sold things in ‘Loot’ magazine and, when my offered items became fewer and more valuable, I started using eBay – the online car boot sale. Just because the things I sold were no longer of use to me, didn’t mean they had ceased to be of any value. Similarly, I’ve just paid £0.01 for a guidebook of Venice from the ‘used’ section on Amazon.com. Presumably someone paid £14.99 for the book before heading to Venice. They subsequently went to Venice (or simulated the experience by reading the guidebook cover to cover whilst sat in a canoe with a Cornetto). After this experience, the book was relatively useless to them, so they offered it for sale. I paid a negligible fee and postage and got a book I needed at 20% of the price I would’ve paid in Waterstone’s, and they saved themselves unnecessary clutter. In theory, Lonely Planet need to print one less guidebook to Venice, which saves paper, ink, time, money and so on. In essence, this is collaborative consumption.
eBay and Amazon are household names involved in collaborative consumption, whilst ‘Loot’ magazine and car boot sales pre-date these by decades and centuries alike. Some of you may have heard of the CouchSurfers website? Register you sofa online and people who need somewhere to stay for the night (at minimal cost) will contact you from time to time to arrange sleeping on said couch. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but cheaper and greener than staying in one of Lenny Henry’s hotels...
But what about Relay Rides, where you make your car available to others in need of transport, again for a small fee towards petrol etc?
Or TaskRabbit, where those that are cash rich and time poor can post ‘tasks’ (such as walking the dog, collecting dry-cleaning, posting parcel) online, for ‘runners’ to complete for a mutually agreed fee?
What about Zopa then? If you’re as tired of the banking system as everyone else is, why not loan money from a peer at a competitive rate, making repayments at an agreed APR over an agreed time period?
Parkatmyhouse (alternative to the spiralling costs of NCP multi-storeys)?
Bartercard (services for goods, or vice versa)? Thredup (for those fast-growing nippers)?
And there are oodles of tool-sharing groups out there for budget conscious DIY-ers.
Collaborative consumption is a burgeoning movement. Not only does it have the potential to save people huge amounts of time and money, but it also eradicates our obsession with possession and consumption, hitting the cause of our environmental problems instead of looking for ways to allow us to continue in our fatally flawed economic and societal paradigm.
Hybrid cars, eco-tourism and carbon offsetting may well be pieces of the jigsaw, but they are not the ultimate solution.
I’ll leave you with a little statistic. The average power drill is used for 12 minutes in its life. I have never driven down a row of terraced houses and seen every single resident simultaneously engaged in carpentry or other such craft. Thus, I would wager that one power drill could quite easily be shared between the average UK street. The same is probably true of DVDs, books, slow-cookers, bicycles and so on. Collaborative consumption – coming to a street near you soon.
SUSTAIN Lincolnshire has already helped over 40 businesses...
SUSTAIN Lincolnshire Resource Efficiency Business Support is the scheme helping SMEs, (small to meduim sized enterprises), across Lincolnshire to reduce their environmental impact and save money. Since its launch in July 2010 we have worked with forty-two businesses across Lincolnshire representing a diverse range of sectors including food & drink, tourism and leisure and manufacturing. Our task is to help these businesses in a practical, hands-on way. We want to ensure these businesses are efficient with resources like energy and water to ensure they are sustainable in the long term – both environmentally and financially.
What have we done?
We’re helping several businesses identify opportunities for generating renewable energy on their premises. This includes renewable energy technologies like solar panels for electricity generation and anaerobic digestion plants for both power and heat generation. One of the ways we help, is by identifying grant aid and interest free loans that are available to help with purchase costs.
We are also supporting a number of businesses to develop their own Environmental Management System (EMS) so they can reduce environmental impact – increasingly a requirement to retain key customers.
Success stories:
Maples Solicitors is set to save between £600
to £900 a year on their energy bill by switching
to energy efficient lighting.
P&R Plant Hire is currently working towards
achieving ISO14001 helping them maintain
competitive edge in tendering.
Oxflow is installing energy efficiency measures
and generating renewable energy to ensure their
premises are sustainable.
Our team has already identified potential resource efficiency savings worth an estimated £30,000 and all savings have been identified at no cost to these businesses.
Contact us today to see if we can help you. Call 01522 589964 or email
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Free training and support to get your EMS in place...
What is an Environmental Management System?
Put simply, an EMS is a collection of procedures and policies produced by a business to help manage the environmental effects of their operations. It outlines where you are now, where you want to be, and how you’re going to get there when it comes to operating in a greener way.
Businesses can have formal, externally accredited systems to international standards (for example ISO14001) or to a British Standard (for example BS8555). There are also less formal systems for businesses that are just getting started. Whichever way you choose to develop your EMS the benefits include:
• cost savings,
• reduced liabilities,
• greater legislative compliance
• improved pollution control.
Besides these significant benefits, many businesses are also finding having an EMS in place a definite advantage when it comes to tendering for new business and for improving existing customer relationships.
Creating your own EMS doesn’t need to be a daunting task. You probably already have the makings of a system within your current business procedures. The SUSTAIN Lincolnshire Resource Efficiency Business Support Programme is also on hand to provide free support to SMEs in Lincolnshire which includes helping develop your EMS.
The SUSTAIN Lincolnshire programme will also be running a two day introductory course on EMS in April. This will be entirely free for qualifying businesses. Places are limited so contact us today on 01522 589964 or email
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for further details and to book your place.
It’s an odd time, Christmas. The clichés and rhetoric will tell you that the chestnuts should be roasting on the open fire, grandpa should be wearing that new reindeer cardigan and quality street wrappers should litter the coffee table. There’s more to it than that though for me...
Forget the Buzz Lightyear figure, the Tamagotchi and the JLS tickets – Christmas isn’t about gifts. It’s about appreciating what you have. We give to those we love by way of expressing how we feel about them. The bows, ribbons and wrapping paper house the feelings we are otherwise incapable of communicating through words, acts or love. We become trapped in a self-perpetuating maelstrom of love and consumption, and each present has it’s own environmental or humanitarian impact, from the Chinese sweatshops banging out the latest iPods, to the exploited poverty-ridden Ethiopians that see a fraction of the money promised when you ‘buy them a goat’ through a household-name charity. But what would Christmas be without the presents, and their associated impacts?
To start with, nobody would go Christmas shopping, so millions of car journeys would cease to be necessary. Whilst the environmentally aware will be buying FSC certified wrapping paper and cards, the masses will be looking for the cheap and cheerful. No presents means there’s nothing to wrap in golden glittery bin-fodder, and in these days of austerity you’d be better of sending an e-card than wasting money on stamps.
Bright an early on Christmas day – Bucks Fizz at ten o’clock (that’s the drink, not the 1981 Eurovision champions). And here-in lies the non-present void. Dinner and trimmings will come later. The Doctor Who special will still be on at seven, and your auntie will still be snoring loudly on the sofa by nine. Is there nothing else that can fill the time between ten and eleven? No other way to express our emotions without plastic gifts and Bangladesh-made textiles?
A poem, a song, a sentence? A moment, a kiss, a hug? A promise of time...?
I’ve moved around a lot – Newcastle, Manchester, Cornwall, Uganda, London, Nottingham, Peterborough, Lincoln – since June 2009. You soon realise that a phone and an Inbox are only disturbed by the people who care about you, and about whom you care. Time is the most valuable gift, whether given or received – and it has absolutely no carbon footprint.
Don’t get me wrong – I love this time of year. I love buying people presents, and receiving them in return. But, with budgets tight and the Cancun talks doing nothing to protect our world, consider giving something other than a product to your loved ones on Saturday. There’ll be no cellotape mess, it’ll save you a fortune, and I’m pretty sure the memory will last longer than any pair of socks...
Having said all this, if you manage to reach a point where you are happy with what you have and exist in a euphoric state of contentedness, please get in touch...
Like a box of Quality Street, my week has been very mixed. From the smooth ride of the Caramel Swirl, to the crushing disappointment when you bite into the pastie-shaped Purple One and get a mouthful of hazelnut, and not the meat and vegetable treat such a shape promises. I've chomped down on moments of Milk Choc Block toughness, floated through Strawberry Cream highs, and flicked the 'Vs' to the Toffee Finger. And as the hands whizz steadily towards five o'clock, I feel my fingertips flit against the wrapper of a Vanilla Fudge weekend. I've explored the whole chocolatey gamut, except the Toffee Penny - too much like hard work.
The focus though; the piece de la resistance; the one that has the gluttons dribbling always has been and always will be that one-hundred-and-eighty-degreed, shimmering, nutty, Green Triangle. It is, unquestionably, the centre piece. My claim is supported by the fact that you can now find them individually offered in-between the Hubba-Bubba and the Chuppa-Chups on any good newsagent counter. The newsagents have spoken. I am correct.
And that is why Quality Street trump Roses and make Miniature Heores and Celebrations look like milky fools. The centre piece. Everything needs one...
New York has the Empire State Building. Manchester United have Wayne Rooney. Quality Street has the Green Triangle.
Cities, teams, countries, people, festivals, families. There is always a focal point. And the same is true of rooms. Which is why I need a coffee table.
It's easy in most rooms. What draws your attention in the bedroom? Obvious. The kitchen? Cooker. Study? Computer or bookcase. The bathroom is spoilt for choice - if anything, it's a bit crowded and we need to invent another type of room to spread it out a bit. The living room though is more of quandry. Some claim that the TV should draw the gaze. Those that have shunned idiotboxes might declare that a roaring fire is the mainstay of any good lounge. It could even be your favourite rocking chair? It's a right pickle. Milk Choc Block.
Personally, I think a coffee table should be the emotional centre of a proper lounge. Bang in the middle. Scattered with newspapers, coffee rings, yesterday's Ribena glass and a few Twiglet crumbs you can use to distract yourslef in front of Channel 4's 'Noel Edmonds' Week'... The Purple One. So moving into my new place as I have (see last blog post for more grumbling nonsense), the carpety void where the coffee table should be has left me perplexed. I keep dropping mugs, suspending my feet in mid-air, and a cairn of black, white and red all-over newspapers is starting to obscure my morning view of Eamonn Holmes. But being skint, what can you do? Toffee Finger.
I've scoured the charity shops, ignored John Lewis and BHS because forks are about a fiver a go, and held my arms aloft in disbelief that Peterborough has an Ikea distribution centre that doesn't sell direct to the customer, and charges £35 to deliver something 2.1 miles - and can only do it on Tuesday when EVERYONE'S AT WORK! Sleeves rolled up, and frown pronounced, I took a brave leap out of the metaphorical box and did a spell of thinking...
I've just started working with a company in Boston as part of a new project PECT is running in Lincolnshire. These guys dispose of half-a-dozen cable reels a week. (Like massive reels that you get cotton and thread on). About two foot high. Nice round base. Wide even top. Smooth wooden finish. Stable. Flat. Would hold a cup of coffee just lovely... Caramel Swirl.
You've read between the lines. Reduce, reuse, recycle, rest your coffee on a lovely round coffee table. Honestly, it makes King Arthur's effort look a little half-hearted. Strawberry Cream.
Let me paint you a picture...
Sunday afternoon. Four o'clock. Jeff Stelling is keeping me updated on the start of a new football season. The steam is breezeing off my milky coffee as it rest a-top a coaster, and I chuckle contentedly (and rather smugly) to David Mitchell's sarcastic musings in the Observer.
And in amongst the smug snug? The missing piece of the jigsaw; the Higgs Boson of domestic bliss; my reused and re-homed round Green Triangle...
Carpet can be used for many things. Personally I think it is best for putting on the floor in rooms and walking on, but it can equally be used as mode of transport (see Disney's 'Aladdin') or to roll people up and make giant-sized sausage rolls. One thing it is not widely used for though, is as a toilet. So, when one of my flatmates found the line between toilet and carpet had become blurred in his view of the world, I decided enough was enough. Argument. Landlord. Notice. And so, this Sabbath just gone, I upped sticks and moved to my own place. I just feel sorry for the poor sod who gets stuck living with me.
My bathroom etiquette is arguably world class - I'm secretly optimistic of a call up for the 2012 games in the specialist field of 'loo archery'. I digress. This is the first time I've had my own place. I don't include the University years in this as my accommodation there was less of a 'place' and more of an over-sized baked bean cupboard. So with the front-door keys firmly mine, I can start practising what I preach all day long. Whoever eventually moves in to the spare room is probably unaware they will be stepping into a twenty-four hour practical lecture on sustainable living
Dual-flush. Check. 3-minute shower. Check. Compost caddy. Check. Full dishwasher. Check. Everything off at the plug. Check. Central heating as a Christmas treat only. Check. New housemate hospitalised with frostbite? Check. ("Should've bought some proper gloves then shouldn't ya!? Fingerless nonsense.")
I can't explain the joys of actually being able to control these things. Working in the environmental industry, I'm constantly aware of what I could/should be doing. I'm constantly aware of how easy it is and how making tiny changes can actually save me money as opposed to a few years ago when 'being green' was a reflection of financial wealth.
Making the most of the late night shopping last night I popped into Wilkinson's to get some cleaning goodies . No dirty-boys’ flat for me! After getting distracted and worryingly placing 4 boxes of matches in my basket, I found the cleaning aisle. Bleach is important I hear, so we'll start with that;
"Domestos? Not at that price. Oh, what about this lovely Ecover alternative? Cheaper and greener. Kerrrching!"
Dishwasher tablets next...
"Finish... ooo, it's a BOGOF, nice! Whoa nelly, hang on... this one-hundred and fifty times reusable one works out cheaper per wash, and only uses natural products. Basket."
Washing up liquid, antibacterial wipes, fabric softener and so on and so on. I made a joke to myself about being the ‘green giant’ from the pea and sweetcorn adverts and let out what I thought was a discreet chuckle. The gathering of people whirring their index fingers round next to their temples alerted me to the fact that I’d cracked the joke out loud, and was halfway through a full belly-laugh. Scuttling off to the till, I managed to slip a compost caddy under my armpit – send all my food scraps up to the Green Backyard and keep them out of the landfill.
Still laughing at my joke, I struggled home on my bike. I was practically juggling my items and it came as no surprise when I crashed violently into the bin when I tried to break at the end of my journey. I'll have the last laugh though ‘Mr Bin’, because I won't be feeding you at all with all the recycling and composting fun I'll be having. Mwah ha haa.
After toiling up the spiral staircase I popped through the front door like a sustainable Michelin man, sending my load crashing on to the floor. I stealthily combined picking up my wares with a scope around for gross misuse of the carpets. All was good. Five minutes later everything was in its place and I spent the rest of the evening wandering around being so green it was a waste. I cooked all my food just so I could compost the scraps. I scrubbed the bathroom with bleach so many times that I now have to wear sunglasses in the bath. And I filled the washing machine so many times that the entire cutlery range has disintegrated.
As I lay in bed, allowing the weight of the day to hang heavy on my eyelids, I felt a glow; the kind of glow that only comes when your conscience is as clean as my bathroom.
It is a shame that the catalyst for my domestic green uprising had to come from something bro... a different colour. It's also a shame that carpets have been on the receiving end of some much criticism in this blog - they're really very good insulators.
Friday night tonight. I like the way Friday night has a habit of following Friday day. It makes it so much easier to remember and plan ahead. It’s a classic British night is Friday. Knocking off work early; pint of cider on the way home; bound by the tension of Big Brother’s impending eviction – will it be John-James or will it be Nathan? You decide... And of course, Friday night is ‘chip shop’ night.
There’s nothing left in the fridge – the big shop is due this weekend – and nobody can really be bothered cooking anyway. Even barbecues are a pain in the proverbial on a Friday. So batter up that cod, whiz the chips in the fryer, splodge down the mushies, add a few spits of vinegar - and enough salt to convince your other half that you got caught in an unexpected July blizzard between the shop and the kitchen – and you’ve got yourself a Friday night meal. B-e-a-uuuuuutiful. I look forward to chip shop Friday more than I do Christmas.
But this week, alas, the best evening of the week will pass me by. Or rather I will pass it by. The greasy whiffs will fill my nostrils as I walk as slowly as possible past ‘Oh My Cod’ and flake through my front door to tuck in to my depressingly green meal – salad. That’s right, it’s diet time.
Motivated solely by a long weekend away at a festival next week, I am putting myself through g-astronomical pain to slim down in time for the headline acts. Nobody wants to be bouncing along to Florence and the Machine, or miss Vampire Weekend because of an unscheduled sweat-induced t-shirt change. And it is of course necessary to consider one’s appearance in lieu of spending a weekend with a bounty of buxom beauties.
So chips are gone. I’ve waved goodbye to curries and bid a fond farewell to biscuits/sweets/ice cream/cookies/flapjack and a whole manner of pastry-wrapped and deep-fry encrusted delights.
The new menu consists of yoghurt and banana for breakie, some kind of pasta type ensemble for luncheon, and a whole host of these ‘veg-e-tables’ for tea. And to be fair, it’s ok, for three reasons.
It’s cheaper; fru-it and veg-e-tables cost nothing. It’s quicker fru-it and veg-e-tables are usually okay to eat raw. It’s greener; literally greener obviously, but also because the only time I’ve used the cooker this week has been to bubble up some pasta, bringing us back to cheaper and quicker again. I also have this peculiar feeling about myself. Vexed, and thinking I’d made myself ill by going cold turkey from saturated fats, I visited the doc.
“I’m feeling it doc... Give me the news. What is it? Liver? Kidney? Not the ol’ ticker? I’m so young; so much to give, so much to do, so much to see – like Shrek 4.”
“Pull yoursel’ together man. You’ve a clean bill of ‘ealth. Them veg’tables ‘ave done you t’world of good.”
I’m not sure what he meant, but he didn’t give me any medicine so I figured all was rosy.
Anyway, it’s getting close to lunchtime, and if I lean my head out of the window I can just about pick up the smell of ‘Steak Bakes’ wafting down from Cathedral Square. If I cling to that, and the oily pong of potato bubbling in fat on my way home, I should pull through. Just.
I know June 21st is the official start date of summer for us northern hemisphere-ites, but for me it started on the morning of the 27th. Whilst the traditionalist will tell you summer begins at the equinox on the longest day, I look out for more subtle signs.
It’s nothing to do with flowers blooming, bees buzzing or birds a-flying. No. Tell tales signs its summer are; the England football team are out of the latest major tournament, Sue Barker gets her annual outing to tell us our number one tennis player (Delete as applicable: Greg Rusedski / Tim Henman / Andy Murray / Laura Robson) is only two matches from glorious inevitability, and people have forgotten about rain and decided that the sun is the biggest meteorological problem they face.
So for me, summer began on Sunday 27th June this year. And what a scorcher it is turning out to be.
Yet again the experts (whoever they are?) are claiming all records are going to be shattered as the mercury rises higher than ever before. Gentleman across the land have woken up with the misguided annual feeling that people want to see them with their shirt off; believe me, the bicep (w)anchor tattoo, sunburnt shoulders and belly-button fluff do not compliment one another. And a strawberry-lashed ’99 has become ‘this season’s’ must have accessory. Summer is definitely here.
The great thing about summer is that, for a few fleeting months, people live outdoors. Cooking, sitting, playing – I even remember a summer when I rigged up the TV to point out of the window so I could watch Wimbledon from the patio whilst I revised for my GCSEs. (That decision came back to haunt me when, to the question, ‘How many wives did Henry VIII have?’ I answered ‘Boris Becker’. ) But that is by-the-by.
Living outdoors is great. Everyone suddenly looks healthy, tanned and with a certain glow (though that could be a sweat-induced sheen). Ovens and microwaves stay turned off. Central heating is forgotten. Showers become a two minute affair to cool down. People gather to watch the sport and next door’s TV gathers dust. Kite’s flutter. Buckets and spades rattle. Pages of the latest Bill Bryson flit back and forth. People laugh, but not at James Corden. And all the while, carbon emissions are reduced. Summer is definitely the most sustainable season.
So next weekend, after you’ve bumped into Capello coming out of the job centre and ‘Murray will do it next year’ is the headline in the tabloids, let’s not return to our troglodytic ways.
Let our nostrils be filled with the smell of undercooked meat. Let my pale anglo-saxon skin remain pink and peeling. Let us all continue to be slightly crap at Frisbee but get points for trying.
Let’s make the most of summer, ‘cos winter’ll be here before we know it and it’ll be bloody freezing.
18:53:44
chnologies like solar panels for electricity generation and anaerobic digestion plants for both power and heat generation. One of the ways we help, is by identifying grant aid and interest free loans that are available to help with purchase costs. 
ting customer relationships.
