| Some great ideas for communities |
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People are working all over the world to respond to climate change and peak oil by building community resilience and reducing fossil fuel dependence. Here are some ideas. If you have others that you would like to be linked from this page please email tthayonwye@gmail.com.
Local Wiggly Wigglers, the local wormery company, maintains a regularly-updated journal which is full of practical ideas. See http://wigglywigglers.blogspot.com/
The Green Valleys is a website profiling practical community-based responses to peak oil across the mid- and south-Wales area. See http://www.thegreenvalleys.org/index.php
The Primrose Earth Awareness Trust is an environmental education charity based near Talgarth, working to ‘raise awareness of sustainable food production and other sustainable living practices’. http://www.primrosetrust.org.uk/
National The Transition Network contains links to hundreds of communities around the country (and in some cases beyond) who are undertaking the same process that we’re trying to set up in Hay. See http://transitiontowns.org
A town in West Yorkshire has committed to becoming self-sufficient in vegetables, orchard fruits and eggs by 2018. Find out about ‘Incredible Edible Todmorden’ here: http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/
Waste Exchange turns the ‘waste products’ from one industry into the ‘raw materials’ of other industries. See http://www.wasteexchange.net/
The BBC has set up a website listing 75 ways to reduce a household's carbon emissions. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/bloom/
The Strawbridge family, who you may have seen on the BBC series ‘It’s not easy being green’, have set up their own website describing their attempt ‘to live a 21st century lifestyle but to produce little or no waste and to remove dependence upon fossil fuels’.
One couple built their own low-cost carbon-neutral home, largely using recycled and reclaimed materials. See http://www.groundhouse.co.uk/HOME.html
International Forum for the Future’s ‘Green futures’ magazine has profiles of everything from cardboard cookers to Marks & Spencer’s plan to reduce the company’s carbon footprint. See: http://www.forumforthefuture.org/greenfutures/
Vaxjo in Sweden claims to be the ‘greenest city in Europe’. See
A Swedish ‘ideas bank’ giving 200 ‘good examples of sustainable practice’: http://www.idebanken.no/english/main.html
The Post-Carbon Institute has developed a set of ‘top 10 individual actions’ for climate change. Some of the recommendations on the list are specific to the US, others are more general. See http://www.postcarbon.org/ten-steps-individuals
Environmentalist Bill McKibben has some great ideas on strengthening local economies here: http://www.billmckibben.com/local-economies.html
Ashoka’s ‘Changemakers’ site provides hundreds of practical ideas and stories for ‘solving social problems’, from all around the world. |
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