Working together for a low carbon Portishead

Newsletter for December 2011

Events this month

Friday 16 December

Portishead Victorian Evening

High Street Portishead 6:30pm - 9:00pm

We will be having our regular stall at the Victorian Evening. Freshen up the Christmas tree with some new (to you!) lights and decorations. Come along to swap Christmas decorations andother Christmas fare and see what others have decided to share this Christmas. If you have any Christmas decorations or other Christmas fare you would like to share please let us know and we will be happy to collect. Email us or phone Gill on 848025

Sundays from 9:30am
Community Allotment on Clevedon Road

We will be at the Community Allotment(Plot 11A at the new Town Council allotment) every every Sunday during the winter from 9:30 am for around 2 hours.If you want to get involved in managing the new allotment please contact us or come along on Sunday morning. We have just planted up onions and garlic for overwintering and sown some beds of broad beans. The allotment is the furthest from the road on the left. Over the winter we will be installing raised beds and developing a further area for cultivation.

Recent events

Ceilidh

We had a very successful ceilidh at Somerset Hall in November. Over 100 people danced the night away to the excellent music of Jill Elliot and her Little Fox band. This is now going to be  a regular end of year event.

Energy

Low Carbon Gordano is awaiting the outcome of the Governments Feed-in-Tariff review before progressing with plans for a community share issue for its initial projects to instal solar panels and energy reduction measures in community buildings.

Public meetings have been held in Pill and Portishead to let local people have their say about future projects. Meetings are also continuing with local town and parish councils.

To find out more about the new co-operative click here to visit the website.

Do you know how well your solar pv is performing?

If you have recently installed solar pv you might want to find out more about its performance and compare it with others around the UK. Sheffield University have set up a database for microgeneration from solar pv systems and they want your data. Read more here and visit their website here.

Food

Gardenshare

Are you looking for a vegetable plot? Are you waiting for an allotment?  Our gardenshare scheme links people with spare bits of garden with people who want to grow vegetables but do not have the garden available. While these gardens may only be available for a year or two they are often esay to bring into cultivation and yield quick dividends in terms of crops. We find they work best if a group of people take on a plot and share the work sometimes with the householder themselves.

We currently have three gardens looking for gardeners: one in North Weston, one in West Hill and one in Redcliffe bay. So if you want to know more please contact Jon on 01275 848025 or email us.

Schools

Transition Workshop

We took our Transition Workshop into Portishead Primary School during November and enjoyed two super mornings with the two year 4 classes. The children learned where all the stuff they buy comes from and what it is made of and were surprised by how much is made from oil. We looked at recycling and also learned about Carbon Dioxide and how we are producing too much of it and warming the planet. We also looked at carbon footprints and how we can reduce our impact on the planet. The children discovered that a novelty chocolate egg travels over 30,000 miles before reaching the shop!

'Stop plastic bag' day at Waitrose

We worked with the year 2 children at High Down Infants making posters about plastic shopping bags and the dangers they pose to wildlife and the energy and materials they consume.

We set up a stall in Waitrose entrance one Saturday in October using the childrens posters as a backdrop. Waitrose provide 250 longlife hessian bags and we asked people to use these rather than plastic bags. The response was excellent with just a few diehards refusing to acknowledge us!

Many thanks to Waitrose for supporting this initiative.

A message from the Transition Portishead team

contact@transitionportishead.org.uk
www.transitionportishead.org.uk

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