Transition Ashtead is a non political group of local people who got together to meet the challenges of Peak Oil, climate change and the issues facing our environment. We are united by a belief that we can make a real difference by being actively involved in local projects. The five key areas are:

Energy, Food, Transport, Biodiversity and Waste & Recycling.

The enthusiasm and input from residents, business and local organisations makes a huge difference to what we can achieve.  Please join us and see what we can do if we all work together. The idea is that we ‘transition’ gradually towards making Ashtead a greener and more sustainable village.

Firstly we showed two short films about ‘food miles’ and ‘waste’. We throw away an incredible THIRD of what we buy, that’s 6.7 million tonnes a year! The top of the list is potatoes 359,000 tonnes, bread 328,000 tonnes and apples 190,000 tonnes. One quarter of what we throw away is still in it’s original packaging. To see the short film we showed:

On ‘food miles’ we found out that apples from the USA travel 3,675 miles, grapes from Chile 7,165 miles and new potatoes from Israel 2,212.

Incidentally potatoes from Israel are grown in the desert from seed potatoes shipped from Scotland, they need constant water which comes from an underground source or the Nile, and fertilisers. They pack the potatoes in peat extracted from bogs in Ireland to be shipped back to the UK, a round trip of 11,500 miles.  Next time you buy potatoes check where they are produced and If you want to know more: 

We then showed a film made by Transition Forest Row ‘Growing Food Locally’. Apart from it being wonderfully sunny there,  they are lucky to have a couple of small farms locally, including a dairy herd. They have also established a community owned farm, as well as having a garden share scheme. In 2009 they produced a local food directory. They have tried to estimate how much basic food stuffs the village needed.  They are all very committed to trying to make Forest Row as self reliant as possible in food. If you missed the film:

After the films we discussed what will happen when inevitably the price of oil goes up dramatically increasing prices of food shipped to the UK from around the world.  How could we produce, source and buy more local food? We had various ideas including:

• Making directory of local foods and producers
• Starting a community garden for growing friut & veg and as a community centre for socials and education
• Setting up a food swap system for when we have excess produce
• Cropping for the local shops to sell
• Mapping fruit trees across the village

Phew! We have lots of ideas but we could do with more help to get off them off  the ground! If you would like to help with any of these projects, or have some ideas of your own,  please do get in touch with us. Or come along to our next meeting 12th April, 7.30pm at the APMH. We are showing a film made by David Attenborugh ‘ The Truth About Climate Change’.

Regular Open meetings, 2nd Thursday of every month starting 9th February. 7.30pm – 9pm.  The Marshall Room, Ashtead Peace Memorial Hall.

FREE ENTRY, although donations welcome to cover our costs. We look forward to seeing you, please look at the Events page for details of the topic for each meeting.

Transition Ashtead is launching a personal carbon footprint monitoring scheme which TA members, colleagues and friends are invited to join.  One’s footprint is a measure of how much CO2 is emitted as a direct result of those activities that are both under one’s own direct control and that can be simply and adequately measured.
These activities are home heating, home electricity use, eating and drinking, and road and air travel.
The idea is of course to help people to reduce their personal climate impact. Measuring the impact makes it much easier to focus one’s efforts on the most effective practicable steps to take.
If you want to join contact Tony Cooper at tonycooper@headweb.co.uk
The scheme comes into effect on January 1st 2012.
The planned rules are in the next post below.

 The rules of the Scheme are set out below. They are loosely based on Green Mole Forum scheme rules. If you have any queries about the scheme, please contact Tony Cooper at tonycooper@headweb.co.uk

Membership

1.  All TA members may join.  Membership is voluntary, and members may leave the scheme at any time.

 Scope

2. The scheme includes carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the following sources:

• Home heating
• Home electricity
• Transport by own car or motorbike
  • Air travel
  • Food.

The scheme does not include public transport or use of other products and services as there is no easy way to calculate these contributions.

3. The scheme is based on emissions per adult person, not households.

 PCF Calculations

4.  Members will supply the following information to enable their CO2 emissions to be calculated.

• Number of adults in household.  Use fractions for part occupation eg if an adult is present 6 months of the year, count as 0.5 adults.  Children under 18 count as one third of an adult.
• Gas and electricity meter readings at 1 Jan 2012 and 2013.
• No reductions or adjustments are allowed for a renewable or green electricity tariff.  See note 1.
• Domestic generation of electricity is offset against consumption.
  • Air travel.  To find out emissions from air travel, members need to use the air travel calculator on the Climate Care web site (http://www.climatecare.org/), entering the flight start and end locations.  Business flights are excluded, in line with other business travel..
  • Personal car or motorbike mileage, fuel (diesel or petrol), and average mpg.  This requires members to record the odometer readings at 1 Jan 2012 and 2013, and to calculate their average mpg by recording the quantities of fuel and miles travelled over a few months. 
    Alternatively, and more accurately, members may record all their fuel purchases during the year. A year-end adjustment is in theory appropriate but we can manage fine without it.
  • If a car is shared, members need to either record the mileage when they are driving, or simply estimate the fraction of the total miles that are attributable to them (see note 2).  Travel to and from normal place of work is included, but other business mileage, including self-employed person’s business mileage, is excluded.  Alternatively members may record the volumes of fuel bought over the year and allocate it to business and personal use.
  • Ideally all taxi and car-hire use for non-business purposes should be recorded too. You should record the mileage of each journey (The AA website is useful for saying how far it is from A to B), and, if shared-use, the number of people in the vehicle). Great accuracy isn’t necessary, estimating the distance to, say, the nearest 50 miles is adequate. For hired cars you can instead record the fuel volume bought and that gives a better estimate.
  •  

5. CO2 emissions are calculated using the following factors as published by the Department of Energy and Climate Change http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/about/ec_social_res/iag_guidance/iag_guidance.aspx

6.  The embodied carbon in food is estimated using the following values.

(See Note 3)

 Calculating the Value of Personal Carbon Emissions

9. At the start of 2012, members will report their meter readings and if appropriate odometer readings to the PCF scheme administrator, currently Tony Cooper.

10. At the end of each year, the members will report their consumption figures to the PCF administrator who will calculate and record their CO2 emissions from the data provided.  A small prize will be awarded for the member with the lowest emissions, and, starting in year 2, another for the biggest reduction in emissions.

11. If people want, to maintain interest during the year, they may report quarterly figures. I find that helpful, but it isn’t essential.

 Notes.

1.   No reductions are allowed because unfortunately there is no way of clearly demonstrating the reduction is emissions (if any) that arises from switching to a green tariff.  Despite this we still want to encourage people to select a good green tariff.  The following are recommended by most surveys: Good Energy, Green Energy and Ecotricity. This position should be kept under review if possible.

2.   For example suppose a shared car does 10000 miles per year.  A drives 1000 miles alone, B drives 4000 miles alone, 5000 miles is shared.  Miles attributable to A is 1000 + 5000/2 = 3500.  Miles attributable to B is 4000 + 5000/2 = 6500. 

3.   These figures are a rough approximation, provided by the Green Mole Forum. It’s hard to find a reliable and comprehensive source for food emissions, perhaps because it’s a complex issue. There are many plausible sources with partial data and further references. I hope to investigate further but this will take time. Clearly if one changes one’s overall diet category partway through the year, the final figure is an appropriate average.

4.   A low meat diet means at least three meatless days per week.  Fish counts as meat.

 Tony Cooper 16th December 2011

The Ashtead Apple juice will be available for collection  (if pre-paid) and to buy on:

Saturday 3rd December 2011,  11am – 1pm from the front drive of 16 Woodfield Lane (on left of the Ashtead Peace Memorial Hall) The juice isn’t available from this address at any other time – it will arrive in the van on Saturday morning!

Juice will also be available on:

Tuesday 6th December 2011,  4 – 7pm in The Street,  at the Late night Christmas shopping evening.

We have a list of purchasers but it would be useful if you could bring your receipt.

If you can’t make either of these dates, please contact our Secretary Caroline to make arrangements on 07768 806201 .

Thank you for your patience waiting for the juice to arrive – the farm was very busy with a bumper apple crop, so we have had to wait for our”pressing slot”.

We had a fantastic response to the Apple Day. Within the first hour we had filled one builders bag, and we rushed off to get a second one! By the end of the day we had filled two, our estimate was we had about half a ton. Everyone was amazingly generous donating their extra apples and paying in advance for the bottled juice, this has enabled us to be able to pay for the juicing and bottling of about 300 litres. We also had the demonstration press, kindly loaned by Epsom Apples, which was great fun and showed the process of chopping, crushing and pressing – the resulting juice was yummy. David Gillott, Four Gables Fine Dining, had a delicious selection of their produce and hampers, I was very impressed that as well as keeping ducks and using the eggs, they grow mushrooms here in Ashtead. Thank you to everyone who helped make the day such a great success.

Today I drove the van rather slowly to Ringden Farm in Kent. We chose to take them there as it was closer than Moor Organic Juicers as they do not need a minimum of a ton. Ringden Farm have their own orchards, they say it has been an amazing year for apples and they have never been so busy. The heavy builders bags were forked lifted out of the van and tipped into 2 big wooden crates. The juice will be ready to collect  and buy (£2.50/Ltr) in about 4 weeks. I am really looking forward to sampling our juice, and having such a local produce to give away as presents. Ringden Farm also make cider, so next year we could have Ashtead Apple Cider!

Ashtead Apple Day

15th October 2011

APMH, 10am – 4pm

Due to the huge popularity of the Apple pressing event last year when we were completely over whelmed with apples, we are changing the format of our apple event this time. We will have Demonstration Apple crushing & pressing and sample juice tasting using the apple press, kindly loaned by George from Epsom Apples, but we will be collecting apples to be taken for commercial pressing at Ringden Farm in Hurst Green, East Sussex to be pressed, pasteurised & bottled into yummy apple juice - a great product that will still taste great, will still be Ashtead Apple juice but will keep better ( for at least 2 years), and allow us to process far more apples than we could last year.   

So please bring your apples - we are aiming to collect a TON of apples this year!

We weigh your apples (1.5kgs = 1 Ltr juice)

You pay in advance(£2.50 per 1 Ltr bottle)

Collection/delivery end October

If you have surplus apples please donate them, all profits will go to the Village Vegetables project.

Bottled juice will be available to buy at local shops in Ashtead

 We will also have other apple-related food for sale and tasting.

David Gillott, chef at Four Gables Fine Dining, will have a selection of apple related food products to taste and buy. He will share his recipes, hints and tips for successful apple cooking.

Bring & share your favourite apple recipes

Looking forward to seeing you on the 15th October!

Transition Ashtead hosted another successful event on Monday – this time at St George’s Parish Room – it raised the issues of Food Miles and Packaging. It started with a role play between Caroline Cardew-Smith, (the organiser of the evening), and Flip Gargill (from Transition Bookham), comparing the origin and packaging of the food in their shopping baskets of “Local” and “Yonder” produce. Angus Pike narrated with some technical information about how much CO2 each produced and how choosing locally produced food can dramatically cut food miles. There were two guest speakers – Graham Love and Tyrone Patterson.

Graham Love runs “Greenways” Fruit Farm in Herstmancoux in East Sussex. He talked about the value of locally grown produce and how moving to buying local produce would help cut carbon emissions. He believes that genetically-modified crops will be crucial in meeting the challenge of feeding the growing world population in the future. He is passionate about the Transition movement and the move to a lower carbon economy – he belongs to the Lewes Transition group. He was also selling his Sussex-grown English cherries – absolutely luscious!

Tyrone Patterson runs “Greenwise” fruit and veg shop in The Street. He explained how he liked to provide local produce when possible but if you are running a business means meeting his customers needs, which includes selling produce from overseas. It’s hard to get locally grown bananas for example! The evening developed into a lively debate, which covered many issues about sustainability and the use of new technology, particularly relating to food production, and the fact that no-one wants to return to the old days of life without modern conveniences. A consensus was reached that using technology responsibly was the way forward. The evening was rounded of by refreshments, thanks to Angus and Maureen.

Transition Ashtead are holding an event on Food Miles & Packaging, including information about the eye-catching Ashtead ‘Village Vegetables’ project. What is the project and why are they doing it? There will be a short film highlighting the issues around ‘food miles’, and afterwards a panel of guest speakers will discuss how we can all reduce food miles and use less packaging.

The date – Monday 11th July 2011

The time –  7.30pm

The place – Parish room, St Georges Church, Barnett Wood Lane, Ashtead KT21 2DA

Hope to see you there!