Once again, the Woodland Trust are offering recycling facilities for your Christmas cards throughout January. There is a poster on the Epsom Tower noticeboard giving more details - cards can either be taken to WH Smith, Marks & Spencer or TKMaxx - or you can just leave them in the box in the Tower. The scheme ends on 31 January.

This is a great way of recycling your cards. Over the 12 years that the scheme has been running, 600m cards have been recycled. This has had two readily measurable benefits: firstly, 141,000 new trees have been planted, and secondly, 12,000 tonnes of paper and card have not been landfilled, thus saving 16,000 tonnes of harmful carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere.

The Woodland Trust's website (www.woodlandtrust.org.uk) also has an important reminder about reducing and reusing things  before we worry about recycling - these early steps in the waste process are even more effective ways of cutting down on landfill and reducing our carbon footprints. For reducing they suggest simply refusing plastic carrier bags wherever possible - something I'm sure that many of us do automatically now. For reusing we can support organisations such as Green Metropolis (an online second hand bookshop - www.greenmetropolis.com), but charity shops and high street second hand bookshops are non-online ways of doing the same thing. An "inhouse" way to reuse birthday cards is to either make "eco-cards" yourself, or pass them on to the Tots Alive! children who like cutting them up and sticking them - just leave any cards in the box in the Tower.

Another way to reduce, reuse and recycle is to learn how to knit or crochet, remodel your own clothes, or even just mend them by stitching on buttons and making repairs. If this appeals, Dorking Stitch Up could be the new group for you. They meet on the second Saturday morning each month in the Christian Centre in Dorking, see www.transitiondorking.org for more details.

Green Mole Forum has decided to form a group to look at the possibilities for installing anaerobic digestion (AD) plants in Mole Valley. 

AD is a well established process for handing sewage, farm wastes, food wastes or combinations of these feedstocks to produce biogas and a solid residue that is a valuable soil fertiliser.  AD keeps organic waste out of landfill, and cuts greenhouse gas emissions.  AD plants vary from the very large (one AD plant handles all Stockholm’s sewage and food wastes for example) to plants the size of a large table.  There are still not many AD plants in the UK, despite government support for them.  The introduction of feed-in tariffs will give a big boost to all renewable energy technologies in the UK including AD.

A small AD plant is already being seriously considered in Headley to run on a mixture of horse manure and sewage.  Local famers recognise the benefits of having an AD plant on farm land.  Our new group intends to build on this existing local support, gather information, seek advice from experts, and come up with the most promising AD projects.  If you would like to be part of this group or find out more, please send us an email using the ‘Contact us’ button on the website, or give me a ring on 01372-378914.

Derek Smith

This year's British Science Festival is focused around Guildford.

There are events from the 5th to 10th September including a large number of interest to visitors to this blog. For the full list click here.

Here are some excerpts:

Wednesday July 8th 2009 at 7.30pm in Capel Memorial Hall.

Permaculture (a contraction of the words - permanent + agriculture) seeks to follow practices that do not damage and exhaust the soil, nor to rely on fertilisers and pesticides.

Its principles are based on close observation of natural systems, and on studying farming traditions in countries where crops continue to be abundant despite growing year-on-year on the same soil.

A speaker from the flourishing permaculture movement in Brighton will describe in detail these basic principles and show how they can be applied to gardening and vegetable-growing.

Learn how to enrich your soil, reduce the hard work of digging, increase your mulching and conserve moisture.

Refreshments available. All welcome.

Tickets £4.00; members of Capel Goes Green £2.00

www.capelgoesgreen.org.uk

In a letter from Mole Valley District Council, dated 19th June 2009, it was announced that the food waste collection service will be resuming this week. This follows it's withdrawal earlier in the year when the trial's funding came to an end.

Due, in no small part I'm sure, to public outcry, new funding has been found and the council are now examining 'how food waste collections can be implemented across the rest of the district'.

If this happens let's hope it spurs Surrey County Council into building its digester, as currently food waste is processed in Dorset (the nearest licenced plant in the UK) and green waste is composted in Reading! See the article on the GMF's visit to Leatherhead's Materials Recovery Facility.

Richard Molyneux

Recycle week is an annual event to kick-start new habits that can help us all to all waste less and recycle more.

More at RecyleNow

What are you going to pledge?

You may have read on this site before about DEFRA's proposals to introduce a charge to register to be exempt from certain forthcoming composting regulations (?!)

Well, DEFRA have had so many responses to this and to other proposals that they've had to postpone their conclusions from October 2009 to April 2010. Almost all are against the proposal. Well done everyone who wrote in, and thanks.

(The comment deadline was Thursday 23 October 2008. Comments were to be sent exemptions@defra.gsi.gov.uk. Perhaps they will still accept comments becuase of their extension, who knows...)

They have published a summary of responses (here).

Here are some excepts of the excepts:

3.6 Proposal 6 – To introduce a charge for the registration of all registerable exemptions

• 'Unlike most other proposals, the vast majority of respondents to proposal six did not agree with the proposal'
• 'Many suggested that the introduction of a fee for registration would be to the detriment of the environment as many of the activities currently in operation which work to the benefit of the environment (e.g. community composting activities) would be forced to stop, or would not start in the first place.'
• 'LARAC is concerned about the effect of the introduction of charges on charitable organisations and community organisations, including community composting projects'
• 'The overwhelming response from these groups [Individuals and the Community and Third Sector] was to reject proposal six. Almost unanimous opposition for the proposal was received, with only two respondents supporting the proposal'
• 'Respondents highlighted the disparity in Government policy, whereby on one hand, they are being encouraged to recycle, and on the other hand, with this proposal, the Government wishes to impose new charges on the activities which they seek to promote. One respondent stated: “I have recently heard of the proposal to charge schools and charities an exemption fee of £50 if they wish to have a compost heap. I understand the need to control the collection and disposal of waste and can accept that industrial scale composting operations require control. However, to charge schools for the privilege of educating children in caring for the environment seems ludicrous and, I am sure, contrary to information from other sections of government.”'
• 'We cannot express strongly enough the impact that the introduction of a charge for charities and not-for-profit organisations will have, however even further the impact this would have on the number of schools composting. There are various Government supported projects that are encouraging schools to grow their own and make children see the connection between what they grow and what they eat, and compost is an essential ingredient to help the growing process. Yet DEFRA‟s suggestion of charging a £50 registration fee would be a disincentive to start or potentially continue composting. Schools often operate this type of activity on a seriously stretched budget, and if the charge was introduced, this would be a reason not to even start composting. As CCN have stated “introducing a charge for a no-risk to very low risk activity seems to go against the „polluter pays‟ principle, as there is no pollution or environmental risk to pay for.'

1. We can all recycle (green bin collections):

• glass,
• paper and card,
• cans (steel and aluminium),
• plastic bottles

We have the option of paying extra for

• a brown top bin for garden waste,
• some areas have small green caddies for food waste.

2. At MV Community Recycling points there are facilities for:

• aluminium foil,
• tetrapaks,
• and sometimes clothes and shoes

3. At St Nicolas, Great Bookham they collect and redistribute:

• plastic mailing wrappers (remove any paper labels, please)
• plastic milk bottle tops (from supermarket milk),
• postage stamps,
• spectacles,
• binoculars,
• old mobile phones,
• used printer cartridges.

4. Other ideas:

Many charities will take your old mobile phones and printer cartridges - find out if your favourite cause collects them.

Several local opticians reuse your old spectacles - just ask them.

Many supermarkets recycle plastic bags.

Remember Charity shops, and jumble sales.

Think about the Freecycle network (Mole Valley Freecycle):  for disposing of unwanted items to other people who could use them.

Use rechargeable batteries.

Workaid collects old tools - see www.workaid.org for what they want (there is a local collection point in Leatherhead, contact us for more details).

Compost more - newspaper and "rough" card can be torn up and composted in the garden heap.

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Don't forget that while recycling is useful, the most important actions are to Reduce what you use/buy, Reuse it whenever possible ... and only then Recycle.

Margaret Hibbert