A Sustainable Abbots Leigh?

Creating a community fit for the 21st Century

"We must learn what sustainability means in practice if we are to apply it to our daily lives and restore the health and vitality of our planet".

Sir David Attenborough

I imagine that many of you reading this must be aware that, in the UK, most of us are living a lifestyle that our planet cannot sustain. In the last couple of years anyone who reads newspapers, watches TV or listens to the radio will have heard a lot about climate change, about the damaging effect of carbon dioxide emissions through the use of fossil fuels, about the loss of wildlife species, about the problems of pollution and waste disposal. And more recently, soaring energy costs are concentrating our minds on saving fuel and decreasing our dependency on oil.

We also hear a lot about government policy, and international agreements (such as the Kyoto Protocol.)

But there are also an increasing number of small communities – both rural and urban – who are coming together to devise actions they can take, to reduce their carbon footprints and create more sustainable lives for themselves.

For instance, in our part of the country:

• The Go Zero project in Chew Magna “offers affordable and sustainable solutions to reduce and conserve resources and energy, to contract our carbon footprint, and to brighten the lives of the community while recognizing our responsibilities to encourage others throughout the world to do likewise”
  http://www.gozero.org.uk/
   
• The Transition Town movement, which has now widened to include villages and neighbourhoods is: “a community working together to ask: for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?"
  Bristol has declared itself a ‘Transition City’, and there are active neighbourhood groups in 12 areas, including Hotwells and Cliftonwood http://www.transitiontowns.org/
  http://www.transitionbristol.org/
   
• Carbon Rationing Action Groups, which aim to “make us all aware of our personal CO2 footprint, find out if it can help us make radical cuts in our personal CO2 emissions, help us argue for (or against!) the adoption of similar schemes at a national and/or international level, and build up solidarity between a growing community of carbon conscious people”.
  There is an active CRAG in Redland
  http://www.carbonrationing.org.uk/
  http://www.carbonrationing.org.uk/redland-bristol
   

Many of us are already trying to reduce our energy consumption, and recycling much of our waste –and Abbots Leigh already has an admirable record on preserving and caring for our local environment, improving Abbots Pool (leading to the award of the prestigious Green Flag), maintaining footpaths, and encouraging cycling.
But is there more that we, as individuals and as a community, could do? For instance, we might:

• Learn from what other communities are doing, make links with them
• Share information with each other – for instance, about solar panels, the installation of new central heating boilers, cavity wall insulation, and other energy-saving measures
• Share ideas, and maybe even share resources

And in this way, support each other in becoming a more sustainable community
Getting Started There will be a meeting on Thursday 23rd October at 8pm in the Village Hall to

• hear a talk from one of the leaders of the Go Zero project on their experiences
• pool our ideas
• think about what, if anything, we could do next

So come along, and find out more.

Gill Coleman
372016