Events
Next Meeting - Thursday 14th June, 7.30pm, Ashtead Peace Memorial Hall
Low Carbon Renewable Energy for Homes
Our speaker is Sam Tilley from the Leatherhead based company Infinite Energy. He will give us an update on where Solar Electric and solar thermal are heading in the light of the Government’s changing policy on Feed-in Tariffs etc. Sam will also cover the growing interest in air source heat pumps and other heat pump technologies (including the easy to install air/air heat pumps). He will also illustrate the benefits of the latest generation of LED lights that overcome many of the issues perceived with the existing low energy light bulb ranges.
12th July 2012 - Recycling and Waste
Speaker, film and discussion about what the problems are and what we can do to help with the 3R’s- reduce, reuse and recycle
Open Meetings 2012
Every 2nd Thursday of the month, The Marshall room, Ashtead Peace Memorial Hall. 7.30-9pm. Each month we will have a topic and have a film and/or speakers plus a discussion. Open to everyone. Free entry, but donations welcome.
Plant sale at Barnett Wood School 20th May 2012. 1-3pm
Transition Ashtead will be having a stall at the Barnett Wood School Plant sale on Sunday 20th May between 1 and 3pm. It is held in the school playground. You can buy fruit, vegetables, annuals and perennials at the sale. We will have some plants for sale and information about the Transition Ashtead Garden Share, the Village Vegetables project. Come for a chat and a browse!
Ashtead Village Day, 9th June 2012
This year we are doing a ‘green mapping’ project of Ashtead. The idea is to plot gardens which have apple, pears, and plum trees; people who keep chickens and houses with Solar Panels. Please come and put your home on our map if you have any of these! We will also have egg laying chickens if you’d like to find out about keeping them, and information about what we can do to help bees, bee keeping and ‘hosting a bee hive’. The Food Group will be there to talk about the Garden Share Scheme, the Village Vegetables project and The Home Energy Group will have info, demos and ideas about how to reduce home energy consumption. Come and find our stall and have a chat!
REPORTS ON PAST MEETINGS AND EVENTS:
10th May 2012 - Conserving Water
Our speaker was Alison Murphy from Sutton and East Surrey Water. Alison explained that most of our water in this area comes from bore holes, and because there has been 2 dry winters they are at historic low levels. Although April had twice the average rainfall this has not replenished the underground aquifers for three reasons. At this time of year much of the rain is taken up by growing trees and plants, secondly it is lost through evaporation and thirdly the ground is too hard for the water to penetrate and so just runs off. If we get a third dry winter then the situation will be very serious next year. Even if we do get rain we have a growing population in Surrey plus we are using more water so it is important we all start being more careful about this precious resource.
Sutton & East Surrey Water have a good record for leaks at a 15% loss which is the second best in the country. Leaks are difficult to detect and 30% are on the customer’s side, eg in the pipes which connect houses to the mains which is the householder’s responsibility. If you have a meter you can find out by turning off the stopcock and if the meter is still running then you have a leak. YOU CAN GET A METER FITTED FOR FREE, everyone in the room who had one said they had reduced their water bills. Don’t forget wasted hot water costs wasted energy and money.
The breakdown of use is: 30% toilets, 21% baths and taps, 12% showers, 13% clothes washing, 7% outdoor, 8% cooking, 5% other. It seems madness that we are using a third of drinking quality water to flush toilets, so anything you can do to reduce that will help enormously.
- Each Briton uses about 150 litres of tap water a day, but if you include the amount of water embedded within products, our water consumption increases to about 3400 litres a day.
There’s a nifty infographic at National Geographic, showing how much H2O is embedded in everyday life’. http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/embedded-water/
For more information about water and energy http://www.waterwise.org.uk/pages/hot-water-and-energy.html and water facts http://www.savetherain.info/water-saving-tips/water-facts.aspx
Sutton and East Surry Water are giving away free items to help save water like shower timers etc. http://www.waterplc.com/pages/home/saving-water/saving-water-at-home/free-water-saving-packs/
12th April FILM – David Attenborough ‘The Truth about Climate Change’
On Thursday 12th April Transition Ashtead hosted a well attended and lively evening debating the effects of climate change. Sir David Attenborough’s film ‘The Truth About Climate Change’ was made in 2006 as part of the BBC’s Climate Chaos series. One thing that struck me was that in the last six years some things have changed a lot and others very little. An issue that was raised by several people at the meeting was the problem caused by the growth of the world population.
David Attenborough suggests that our environmental problems and climate change are fundamentally caused by the tripling of the world’s population that he has seen in his life time. There are quite simply too many people chasing too few resources, and the earth’s environment and wildlife are suffering as a result. I think few people would disagree with him. The personal choices we make and the pressure we put our domestic and world leaders to make appropriate policies will help, but this is not an easy problem to solve. There are many factors involved but Sir David is convinced that in countries where poverty is eradicated, the birth rate is reduced.
It’s easy to get down-hearted about world problems BUT Transition Ashtead exists to help, inspire and support you to take practical action. We can learn to change our behaviour and tread more lightly on the planet, making Ashtead more resilient and sustainable in the future.
The key is the word ‘transition’ – it is a process and not something that will happen overnight. It is a gradual shift away from our current way of thinking, acting and consuming.
9th February 2012 What is the Transition movement?
FILM ‘In Transition’ made by people in the Transition movement from across the world, sharing their views about the challenges of Climate Change, Peak Oil and environmental issues in general. Find out why and how transition groups form and the sort of projects they do. We will have a discussion afterwards about the issues raised and what we can do here in Ashtead.
If you missed this event and would like to see the film you can view at http://www.transitionnetwork.org/transition-movie
8th March – Growing Food Locally.
20min FILM ‘Growing Food Locally’ Made for Transition Forest Row, this video looks at why we need to produce and grow more food locally, and some of the different ways that can happen in a community. These include, garden share, allotments, CSA farms, and more. If you missed it catch up at http://transitionforestrow.org/video/growing-food-locally
We also showed two short films about food miles and wastage http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjfYu0H49rM and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4VQ9pgWCFA
Surrey Eco Homes Event 24/25th March 2012
Action Surrey, an organisation set up by originally by Woking Borough Council, organised a Surrey Eco Homes event on the weekend of 24/25th March 2012 to inspire members of the public and homeowners to learn about energy saving measures and renewable technology from those who have already been there and done it.
Several of Surrey’s Borough and District Councils and other groups including Transitions Ashtead, Bookham, Dorking and Guildford, the Epsom Energy Group and Sustainable Redhill are working with Action Surrey on this. Similar events have been held recently in Brighton, Oxford and elsewhere.
