JANUARY NEWS: 2023
Thanks to all the gallant volunteers who turned up on a cold, grey, windy day—and cleaned up the village! And thanks too to Alex and her team at Farrington’s Café for a stonking selection of fantastic cakes and hot drinks to inspire us all.
LITTER PICKERS SHOW TRUE GRIT
Back in October, the Warmer Winter Fair at the village hall offered all kinds of information and advice for reducing energy consumption and bills.
A terrific line up for speakers talked from personal experience about what they’ve done in their homes, communities and lives.
If you missed the even but want to catch up now, see below!
The Warmer Winter Fair was the brainchild of Bath architecture student Tom Roberts who has gone on to work on passive housing: a way of building homes that need almost no energy at all to say warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Thanks Tom—and good luck!
WARMER WINTER FAIR
Jo Salisbury from the fantastic Centre for Sustainable Energy based in Bristol detailed how we consume energy, what its cost is—and therefore what the potential savings could be. It’s full of amazing facts, not least that defrosting your fridge once a year can save you £200! She talked about insulation but also other ways that you can get the most out of your existing energy system. Wonderfully free of jargon and selling! Do take a look…
Steve Cross talked about how he and a group of residents from Widcombe had ganged together to negotiate bulk discounts on solar panels. It’s a heart warming (sorry!) story about a community banding together to help each other reduce costs and carbon footprint. Do take a look at how they did it. And if you’d be interested in trying something here in FG, please email us.
Thea Utley, a student from the University of Bath’s vertically integrated project that is working on reducing Farrington Gurney’s footprint gave a very practical presentation on how to be more sustainable in the kitchen: in the ways we cook and what we cook. No Cordon Bleu or scientific training required! And a free recipe.
VIP PROJECT YEAR 2
So what’s on the books for the University of Bath collaboration this year? A couple of new projects:
· Community Fridge. Food represents approximately 25% of our carbon footprint—and it’s estimated that the equivalent of 8 meals is wasted in every household in Britain every week. One way to address this is to run a community fridge. This is based somewhere accessible (in Frome, it’s just by the market) and available to anyone: to take food or put in food that would otherwise go to waste. Think the bread that will go stale before it gets eaten; vegetable gluts from allotments; all those Christmas and Halloween sweets you know you don’t want to eat; the food that will go off before you come back from holiday; the food gifts people bring, not know you aren’t fond of figs or dates or can’t eat peanuts. The Bath students have researched everything that’s needed for a community fridge and want to get one up and running in our village by the summer. But of course there’s no point doing this unless there will be residents who volunteer to keep an eye on it and make sure that waste gets cleared out. So please volunteer so that we can all give and take together.
· A plan for the future. One of the students is mapping out a carbon reduction plan for the village as a whole. This should make inspiring reading and will be published here when it is done.
· Make Farrington Bloom. Another student is scouring the village to find spaces to plant more trees, shrubs and flowers. Farrington is lovely, we know, but it could be gorgeous! We will publish the plans here when they’re ready.
· Business advice. We have a lot of business students on the team who want to work with any local businesses that want to reduce their carbon footprint and want to understand better how to manage their Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. Email us if your business would be interested.
If you’re interested in helping the students help the village, we will be having a get together on the evening of February 13 so please get in touch for details.
One approach that communities around the country are adopting is the building of community energy networks. This is where an energy-generating system is installed (usually a combination of air- and ground-source heat pumps or solar arrays) that can supply the entire community. These tend to be a little cheaper than fossil fuels, LOTS greener and they reduce a lot of price volatility.
But the Gateshead energy network uses a mine water heat pump. Water from disused coal mines is heated up to 80 degrees centigrade and circulated around peoples’ houses. The energy is renewable, it’s cheaper than market prices and heats not just Regent Court (a tower block of 160 homes) but the whole of Gateshead College (which has 2,000 students) as well as the huge Gateshead Music Centre, a cavernous glass-fronted venue that holds 2,000 people. Will Somerset’s disused coal mines come back on stream one day?
BRINGING COAL MINES BACK TO LIFE
MORE ACTION IN FARRINGTON GURNEY
We have submitted two funding applications: one to help greenify the energy consumption of Memorial Hall, and another to host a fun-day-out-for-all-the-family project in the spring. You can find out more…if we get the money! So please Cross your fingers, rub your rabbit’s foot or do whatever you do to bring good luck.
WHAT KEEPS ME CHEERFUL?
In 1987, heads of the worlds’ governments got together, alarmed by the growing hole in the ozone layer in the earth’s atmosphere.
It was caused by humans, specifically CFCs and HFCs, chemicals used in aerosols and refrigeration. The agreement came into effect in 1989.
In January this year, the United Nations announced that the hole was repairing itself and it will be back to normal by 2045.
The Protocol shows that, working together, the world can address huge climate issues.
It also shows that this takes time—which is why addressing climate change now is so urgent: because it will take time.
But we are capable of pulling together and repairing the damage we’ve done.
A great way to start 2023.