Surrey Waste Partnership are reviewing their Plan for Waste Management in Surrey and want you to help shape it. Please take part in their public consultation between 17 May and 12 August 2010 and tell them your views.
Do mention the need to encourage waste reduction, in the first instance, and the requirement for plastic recycling collection, perhaps in place of the now removed bottle banks. This could be provided by Recresco, who currently just collect Tetra Paks.
On Saturday 3 July North Leatherhead Community Group is undertaking `The Big Tidy Up' and is looking for volunteers to help out with litter picking from 10am until 4.00pm. If you would like to get involved, meet at the Tesco's entrance to the woods at 10.00am.
This promises to be a fun day out for all the family ending in a free BBQ at 4.30pm at the Fire & Iron Gallery. There will also be prizes, stickers, food and drinks through out the day. The Group is looking for the local community to come with their family and help whilst having fun. This is an excellent opportunity to learn about the area, hidden to many, that is full of history! Prizes will be awarded for the most unusual item found and maybe, just maybe, there will be gold in the woods! Everyone is welcome, even if you can only spare 10 minutes.
The area behind Tesco's in North Leatherhead holds many historical remains, from the Romans to an old brick works that used to be on the site many years ago. There have been lots of remarkable finds, including Roman coins. Since then litter, fly tipping and years of mess and grime have blanketed the area, making the land look unsightly and deterring visitors. However, underneath lies a wonderful woodland with many rare plants and invertebrates, waiting to be uncovered.
`The Big Tidy Up' is organised by North Leatherhead Community Group and supported by Tesco's, The Fire and Iron Gallery, Mole Valley District Council, Mole Valley Housing Association, Crime Disorder Reduction Partnership and further supporters.
For more information and to get involved with The Big Tidy Up Please Contact Simon Woodhams, North Leatherhead Community Group Project Worker on 01372 361082 or email swoodhams.lcg@live.com
Precycling is all about cutting down on unnecessary waste, so you don't need to dispose of, or recycle, as much, thus saving resources, energy and the need to collect, sort and process recyclables.
February 3, 2010 16:15 by
dereks
Surrey County Council (SCC) announced in December that there are no longer plans to build Energy from Waste incinerators in Surrey. Instead they are planning an Eco Park in Shepperton that will have an anaerobic digester (AD) to handle all Surrey’s domestic food waste. SCC is already working with the District and Borough Councils on separate food collections which should be operating throughout the county by the time the digester is ready.
This is good news of course, but is it the best option? The Green Mole Forum has set up a group to study this and we have met the SCC manager responsible for developing these plans. We learnt that SCC has only studied a single site to handle all of Surrey’s domestic food waste, but agreed there are viable alternatives that they have not studied properly. Importantly they haven’t considered having a number of local AD plants instead of one big plant, nor have they considered commercial food waste or farm waste as a possible feedstock for the plants. Smaller plants have a number of advantages including:
Less visually intrusive so more likely to get planning permission.
Shorter distances to the plant so fewer lorry-miles to transport the waste.
Communities deal with their own waste.
We have recently taken a big step forward by commissioning a student at Surrey University's Centre for Environment Strategy (CES) to carry out a thorough study of large versus local AD plants. Using Life Cycle Analysis, a study technique for which CES has an international reputation, it'll work out the best environmental option and will be her MSc project.
An important early part of the work will be collecting data from Mole Valley’s cafes, pubs, sandwich shops, school canteens, etc. to estimate how much commercial food waste is produced. SCC estimate that it could be about the same quantity as the total domestic food waste.
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.
Compost Works will be giving away FREE jumbo bags, to make your own leaf mould, this Saturday (October 31st) in St Martin's Walk, Dorking and next Saturday (November 7th) in Leatherhead High Street.
No work is involved, you just fill the bags with leaves, leave them for 18 months or so and the result is a friable, low-nutrient compost. This is ideal as a mulch, to make seed compost or to incorporate in soil to improve the texture.
For more information on this, or composting in general, and to find other places where you can get the bags, check out their recently updated website.
October 21, 2009 15:51 by
dereksGreen 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
Headley Village Shop
If you want to buy Ecover products in bulk (ie you bring your own containers) the Headley Village Shop sells the following products:-
- Laundry Liquid
- Hand soap
- Multi-surface cleaner
- Fabric Softener
- Washing up liquid
- And something else but I’ve lost my crib sheet!!
The shop also sells a range of organic and local produce.
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: