I was determined to buy only locally grown vegetables and meat, if possible. And to be good about recycling, using little water, to walk if we could, to buy items with little packaging, etc etc.
Some of these resolutions have been quite easy to stick to. We have a recycling waste bin which is collected from our front gate every week - into which we put all our glass, heavy plastic, cardboard, newspapers, and even batteries. We compost all our veggie waste in the back garden (haven't actually used any of it yet though and not sure if we will...) and we have our cooked food waste also collected in a different bin at the gate - we are told the town council feeds this to pigs, but I am not sure how this happens... Also at the supermarket carparks there are big recycling skips for clothes, shoes, books, cardboard boxes, glass and so on.
Keeping our electricity and water consumption low is easy in that we have to pay for every drop of both, so there is quite some motivation. I now do not run the tap while cleaning my teeth! Try not to flush unless necessary (although old habits die hard). Keep the house cooler than would really like to... I have basically stopped using our tumble dryer unless something is needed in a hurry. So, that is all going pretty well.
Buying local food is more difficult, because of the seasons, and cost. I checked out the local farm shop - apart from the most prolific current crop it is astronomically expensive. Farmer's market in Gloucester on Fridays is the same... which is too bad. But there is a great local greengrocer's shop which sells fruit and veg really cheaply - I just don't know how he does it - but I try to shop there and only buy English-grown veggies... The problem comes when, like today, he had a kilo of the most enormous red strawberries for one pound - how could I resist? But they were certainly not grown in England... possibly Spain - I didn't ask. You will be amused to read that they were selling the big kind of passion fruit for... one pound each!! (about 3,500 USh now I think.) Alex and I just had to laugh. Local meat is easier: Gloucester is famous for its own special species of pig, the Gloucester Old Spot - and they produce wonderful sausages from it. Also beef and lamb are grown locally. We had dinner this week with a couple who work at Redcliffe, who teach a range of hot subjects like "greening mission" (including climate change issues) and "justice, advocacy and mission" - they are pretty cool, and very brainy people... (you may blush if you're reading this!) Needless to say, I just had to ask Andy at one point, "So, um... how long do you think we have got left?" He told me that the current thinking is that we have four years to the tipping point, and then between one to three hundred years of this planet being habitable for humans, barring things changing drastically. Well, it's better than fifty years (as per James Lovelock), but it's still not much.
But they told me about an initiative which is apparently world-wide, but which I had never heard of, called the Transition Network, and Transition Towns. I will try to add a link...www.transitionnetwork.org It is really interesting.
Apparently member groups run local projects including workshops on gardening, textiles and so on, and do things like insulating homes, "draught-busting," tree-planting, putting up solar panels, use art and theatre, school visits, and even in some places they have introduced local currency which can only be spent in participating local shops and businesses, so that money stays in the community. There is a town near us which has its own currency - the "Stroud Pound". What a brilliant idea.
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| The man on this note is Laurie Lee, author of "Cider with Rosie," who was born in Stroud. |
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