Here are some notes from the February meeting planning SOW activities for the rest of the year. There was also a talk on “Not the End of the World”.

Plans for monthly meetings

• March 26: Eco Kids will lead the session, plus we’ll do the Big Plastic Count and talk about the results. Plus terracycling/recycling actions.
• April 30: provisional – Leo will talk about bees and bee-keeping. May not be a whole session so could we find someone to tell us about eg butterflies too?
• May 28 or May 21 (avoiding half term): Provisionally foraging talk or blossom walk
• June 25: Garden tool/knife sharpening workshop, plus advice on maintaining/mending garden tools
• July 30: no plans yet. In the school holidays
• Sep 24: possibly foraging talk
• Oct 29: community vegetarian meal
• Nov 26: (provisional) wreath making workshop

Other ideas included asking Shepreth if they could come and speak to us about hedgehogs; someone from allotments talk to us, or show us round their plots to inspire; a speaker from a local sustainable business such as Daily Bread.

Other activities

• 10 May – plant swap (to be confirmed)
• October – apple pressing
• Nature Recovery Project

Other ideas included: sustainable/no-mow garden visits, litter pick.

Green space around the village

There has been another planning application for development of the land behind Manor Farm Close. Especially with Northstowe planned to be built right up to Oakington, there is a desire to somehow safeguard green space around/within Oakington & Westwick. Landowners might possibly consider setting aside land for the community’s future generations. (We’re also inspired by Histon & Impington Green Spaces while recognising they are a bigger parish.) Please get in touch if you have any ideas or suggestions.

Also…

• If you missed the Repair Cafe, Sustainable Rampton’s Repair Cafe on 15th March still has bookings available.
• The Eco Kids reported back from the Parish Council meeting on Monday night about the solar farm.
• Tree planting at the school on Saturday 8th March, 1-4pm. Bring a spade/shovel. Also general garden tidying if there are more than enough to plant the trees.

Notes from a talk based on the book by data scientist Hannah Ritchie. You can’t do justice to it in a short talk so if you can, do read it. It covers a lot of subjects including air pollution, biodiversity loss, deforestation, plastic pollution, and over-fishing, but here are some of the most striking ideas. (Some of the graphs/data in the book are available online.)

How optimistic do you feel about the environment?

(on a scale of 0 = totally pessimistic, we’re doomed to 10 = sure it’ll be fine)

Humans used to live in harmony with nature, but not in the last 200 years. And our generation is destroying the environment faster than ever before. Nothing is being done and we are rapidly passing all tipping points, soon it will be too late.

This pretty much sums up the situation we’re in, right?

But it’s not really true.

So is it all fine, nothing too much to worry about?

That’s not true either!

Ten Surprises

But first, a common definition of sustainability: “Meeting the needs of the present without preventing future generations from meeting their own needs”.

When was the world sustainable? Pre-industrial revolution? Medieval times? Iron Age or neolithic times, early farming communities? Hunter-gatherer tribes?

Surprise #1: The world has never been sustainable

Since the beginning of their time on earth, humans have hunted animals to extinction. They have burned wood (then coal, gas, oil) – whenever anything is burned, air pollution (and greenhouse gases) result. Forests have been cut down since the earliest times.

Small communities such as indigenous peoples have sometimes achieved balance with the environment and other species – but only because they stayed small, and that’s because of child mortality. Half died before reaching adulthood. That’s not meeting the needs of the present so it isn’t sustainable.

First half of sustainability: meeting the needs of the present

Thinking about the whole world including the poorest countries: what percentage

• of children globally die before their 5th birthday?
• of people get enough to eat?
• of girls in low-income countries finish primary school?

Have a guess before reading on… here are some answers.

• 4% (compared to 43% in 1800)
• 13% (2013) – was 35% in 1970s. Even less now.
• 64% (2020)

Not as bad as you thought maybe? These are still not good, of course! – but we have to keep in mind that it’s possible for a things to be simultaneously: much improved, still not good enough, and able to improve further – true for many other aspects of sustainability too.

Surprise #2: Have made good progress on first half of “sustainability”

You can see from this graph, showing the percentage of the world population below various poverty thresholds, that there has been recent very good progress at reducing poverty (NB data adjusted for inflation and different prices in different countries.) “There has never been a better time to be alive.” This may come as a surprise to those who grew up in the Band Aid/Live Aid era! Good news doesn’t make the headlines, but there could have been a headline that “The number of people living in extreme poverty has reduced by 128,000 since yesterday” every day for the last 25 years.

Now let’s look at the second half of the sustainability definition. In lots of ways, we are preventing future generations from being able to enjoy and use the earth as we do. There are two fundamental reasons often given for this…

Surprise #3: Depopulation isn’t the solution

It’s often said the basic problem is there are too many people on the planet.

Population growth is not exponential – the rate of population growth peaked at 2% in 1960s, and has now more than halved to 0.8% in 2022 – more children survive but globally the number of children per mother is now less. (Often a side-effect of reduced poverty and better education.)

When do you think the number of children on the planet will peak?

It’s already happened. In 2017 there were more under-fives on the planet than there ever were or will be. Global population is projected to peak in the 2080s. (UN projections.)

More importantly, the goal is to reduce environmental impact per person to zero, or very close to zero, or even negative (reduce historical impacts). Then it doesn’t matter if it’s 7 billion or 10 billion people. A large number x zero is still zero.

Surprise #4: Degrowth isn’t the solution

A relentless focus on economic growth is also often blamed, because eicher people use more resources and have a higher environmental footprint. However as we’ll see, that’s not always true.

The first reason why degrowth isn’t a solution is that we need economic growth to end poverty, even with lots of redistribution.

Denmark is one of the most equal countries in the world. Nearly everyone lives above the $30 a day poverty level. For every country to be like Denmark, we need to grow the world economy five-fold.

For everyone to be on exactly $30 a day, the world economy would have to double. NB In 2018 70% of Europeans lived above $30 a day.

But there’s an even more striking reason!

Historically economic growth was linked with more resource intensive lifestyles – being richer meant people burned more fossil fuels, used more land, ate more meat, had a higher carbon footprint. But new technology means the environmental footprint reduces while continuing to get richer.

We often see this upside-down-U shaped graph. An example is air pollution – in the UK it got worse as we industrialised but is now much better than in the 1940s or 1880s (although still not as good as it needs to be.) We can decouple economic growth from environmental destruction.

However the graph shows it can get worse before it gets better – but wait, notice the red dotted shortcut line…

Developing your low-income country

It’s 2009 and you’re the prime minister of a low-income country and need to build a power plant. Here are the costs per unit of electricity:

• Solar PV: $359
• Onshore wind: $135
• Nuclear: $123
• Coal: $111
• Gas: $83

You want to prevent global warming, but you have which are you going to have to choose?

Now it’s 2019, and these are the costs per unit of electricity:

• Solar PV: $40
• Onshore wind: $41
• Nuclear: $155
• Coal: $109
• Gas: $56

In ten years it’s changed completely. Technology can shortcut the hump of the upside-down U.

Who lived more sustainably, you or your grandma?

You probably drive more, have a lot more gadgets to power, maybe take one or more aeroplane flights a year, buy more stuff, probably waste more food.

Surprise #5: you!

In 1965 the average person in the UK emitted 11.5 tonnes of CO2-equivalent per year. Now it’s 5 tonnes or less.

Why? Our energy supply then was almost entirely from coal. And cars, appliances etc have become more energy efficient.

But what about other countries? Eg the USA. In the last 15 years (which included the last Trump presidency) do you think per capita emissions have gone up by 20% or more, or by 10%, or stayed the same?

Per capita emissions in the USA have fallen by 20%. Similar for other developed economies – even if you take account of “offshoring” (ie even if you account for industrial production moving to eg China. That’s the “consumption-based emissions” red line in the graphs above.)

Global emissions per person peaked 2012. But there’s still a race between the rising number of people and falling per person emissions. They aren’t falling fast enough but this shows it’s possible they can – it’s already on the right track.

Focus on food…

Because food on its own uses three times the total 1.5° carbon “budget”, it’s a leading cause of deforestation, and of biodiversity loss (through land use.) But we need all that to feed the world… or do we?

Surprise #6: the world produces twice as much food as it needs

The average person needs 2000-2500 calories. But if we were to split the world’s food production equally among the world’s population, each person would get 5000 calories! Why?

The main reasons are growing crops to feed livestock is a very inefficient use of food; food grown as biofuels; also waste and over-consumption. If we used less land to grow food, more land would be available for wildlife.

You can see from the above that beef is particularly bad for the climate (and deforestation) but following that are other meat and dairy products.

Uncomfortable surprises #7

Here were some conclusions about food that challenged my presumptions:

• Cheese is as bad as meat
• Transport is a small part of the carbon footprint. “Eat local” less important to think about than “Eat seasonal”?
• Packaging is a small part of the carbon footprint
• Is it better to reduce the total land taken for food growing with careful fertiliser use than to go organic everywhere?

Surprise #8: The most effective ways to cut our carbon footprints often isn’t what people think they are

21,000 adults across 30 countries were asked what are the most effective actions. Here are their answers compared to the tonnes of CO2-equivalent typically saved per year by doing them.

The problem isn’t that we do the lower-impact actions, it’s when we do them instead of the higher-impact ones – or stress over the little things.

Is change possible?

Last two questions to ponder over!

1. In Covid, when everything around the world shut down, how much did global CO2 emissions fall by?
2. Name the first international convention to be ratified by every country in the world

Here are the answers:

1. 5% … that’s all the difference that almost all of us not driving, not consuming, etc made. Discouraging? But…
2. The answer is the the Montreal Protocol (1987) – every country had signed up by 2009 …

Surprise #9: Systemic change is necessary AND possible

Remember the Montreal Protocol? It was to phase out ozone depleting gases. The hole in the ozone layer and acid rain were two big environmental issues of the 1980s. Now that CFCs are no longer used, the ozone hole is closing up and in due course won’t be a problem any more. Acid rain has likewise almost disappeared across N America & Europe. Even in China sulphur dioxide emissions have fallen by two-thirds while coal use doubled in the last decade.

It shows that if we have a technical solution to a problem, and political will and investment, then we can act very quickly to change at a system level.

Summary of surprises

1. Environmental damage is not a recent thing – don’t hark back to a perfect (all-natural) past
2. You don’t always hear about the good news
3. You can’t just blame too many babies
4. Sustainability can (and in practice does eventually or sooner) increase with GDP
5. “More sustainable than Grandma” – progress is happening, not quickly enough but it is happening
6. We could feed the world with less land. Food is an example of how environmental problems are interconnected – means one solution can solve several problems at once
7. My environmentally friendly instincts may be misguided or out of date (eat local etc)
8. Don’t have to worry equally about everything we do. Some things matter more than others
9. High level change is needed – and is possible, it’s already happened

Surprise #10: We aren’t the generation which messed it up…

… we’re the first generation with a chance to fix it

How optimistic do you feel about the environment now?

Wednesday 26th February, 7:30pm at the church hall

Join us for an interactive talk/discussion about some of the ideas from Hannah Ritchie’s book, “Not the End of the World”. If you are feeling hopeless in the face of environmental destruction, this might help!

Repair Cafe

Thank you to everyone who supported the Repair Cafe on 8th February – read the report here.

Also coming up…

Solar Farm presentation – Monday 24th February, Oakington Pavilion, 7:30pm.

The developers of the proposed solar farm in Longstanton (on land near the former airfield road) will be giving a presentation on the plans. They are more than happy to take questions from members of the public after the presentation which will last 10-15 minutes.

Tree planting at the school, with the PSA – Saturday 8th March

Notes from SOW talk on 29/1/25, by Rachel Harrison from Foxton and Amanda Davis from Shepreth – a big thank you to them both!

Rachel and Amanda have both set up recycling bins in their villages for hard-to-recycle items. Rachel began after picking up litter on her lockdown walks. Amanda used to take her recycling to Foxton, but when Sustainable Shepreth was set up she joined as recycling officer.

Lots of people want to recycle, but don’t know how or it’s too difficult, so are very pleased to have the easy-to-use recycling bins in their own villages. It also doesn’t make sense environmentally for lots of individuals to travel separately to distant recycling facilities.

Amanda highlighted the really useful South Cambs website which gives an A-Z guide of how to recycle a huge range of different items, both those that go in Council bins and those that can’t. Here is Rachel’s slide on recycling in Cambridgeshire.

What can be recycled?

South Cambridgeshire blue bins take more types of waste than in many parts of the country (so we can often ignore black “Don’t recycle” labels.) Any plastic that scrunches then springs back can go in the blue bin. (Not composite plastic/foil like crisp packets.)

Big supermarkets [and the Cottenham Co-op] take soft plastics that can’t go in the blue bin, such as crisp packets and cat food pouches. But not everyone can get to such a shop regularly.

One problem is that small things fall through recycling machinery – that’s why they ask you to put bottle tops back onto bottles. And dirty recycling contaminates the rest and makes it lower-value or impossible to recycle – that’s why you should rinse everything first.

Things are changing all the time – eg. food packaging changes to be more recyclable.

SCDC is soon to send its recycling, currently sorted at Waterbeach, to north London (not Dublin as advertised) where 5% more different things can be recycled, justifying the extra mileage, according to Jon Crisp the Recycling Officer.

Milton Recycling Centre is expanding the range of things it can take (eg now CDs and coffee pods.) But will be closed for refurb for 9 months from autumn 2025.

But the main message is Reduce then Reuse (then Repair) and only then Recycle – because it’s not easy and sometimes not possible to recycle (eg when soft plastics are sometimes incinerated.)

Terracycle

This is an organisation which links manufacturers with recycling facilities, and gets manufacturers to sponsor schemes for hard-to-recycle products (often composites eg plastic and foil.) More details on how products are recycled are on their website, and part of Terracycle’s work is to pressurise manufacturers to improve recyclability.

You can sign up on their website to be a public collection point. Terracycle collect for free so it’s quite easy to send off but you do have to have a minimum weight. (Terracycle also market their Zero Waste boxes which you do have to pay for, but that’s different.)

You are awarded points if you collect a sufficient quantity (eg 3kg – that’s a LOT of wrappers) which can be converted into money for charity. Rachel has raised £100 for Foxton Pre-school.

Schemes do change and close which means that you may no longer be able to collect something – eg in Foxton, pens and toothbrushes were collected but both of these have recently closed.

A collection point may not be within five miles of another of the same type, which can mean a long car journey for people. But not the way Rachel and Amanda have set it up – people in Foxton and Shepreth can put items in their village bins. (See below.)

Setting up the scheme

Here’s Rachel’s summary of the guiding principles, what they did and how, and lessons learned.

Identifying/locating the bins

The Foxton bins, identified by flowery stickers, are sited in the car park between the school and village hall, where many people walk by.

Rachel put together a project plan and presented to the Parish Council. She told them she would measure success and report back. She bought the (half-size) bins (the Council had run out of spare bins) but the PC paid for the fixing bracket.

The Shepreth bins are red and also in the middle of the village, behind the village hall.

Promoting it

Both when the scheme started and throughout, to keep interest up and to tell people about changes (in what you can recycle.)

Rachel has done three mailshots through all Foxton letterboxes, and posts on facebook every time there’s a change or she learns something new. Plus posters, and a regular advert in the parish magazine.

Amanda put together a stand for the recent Shepreth Eco Fair demonstrating what you could recycle in blue bins and Shepreth red bins, and Rachel has done engagement events at the primary school.

Work involved

Strongly recommend not doing it on your own – both Rachel and Amanda are currently one-man-bands, although Rachel had a helper during lockdown.

You do need storage space – Rachel uses her spare bedroom!

Every week they empty the bins into black bin bags and sort them (Rachel takes several bags to the bin and sorts on the spot.)

They are often caught out when schemes change and they are left with a heap of stuff they can no longer send off for recycling.

Sometimes people mistakenly or deliberately put litter in the village bins – a cup of coffee, half-eaten takeaways – that means sorting through and cleaning the contents of the entire bin. Rachel says she gets cross, but it’s better than those things littering the countryside!

Also often get things in the red bins/flowery bins that can go in the normal blue bin.

Hub and spoke

Rachel and Amanda operate on a hub and spoke model. They let neighbouring villages know about their schemes, and (largely) each has signed up with Terracycle for different items so they swap bags of recycling.

Networking is very important – with different villages and also with groups within the village.

Blister packs – a problem

They were particularly keen to collect medicine blister packs and had a phenomenal response (in Foxton the volunteers who deliver medicines to older people were recruited to pick up the empties.) But Terracycle only allows pharmacies to be collection points for blister packs (because they can safely dispose of any tablets left in them, and Superdrug in town takes them. However they only have a small bin and turned away the sackfuls from Foxton. So very sadly these can no longer be collected in the village schemes. Rachel suggested writing to MPs and putting pressure on the drugs manufacturers (some of them local) to provide more recycling facilities.

Recycling other specific things

There were lots of questions/discussion about specific items…

• Toothpaste (or similar) tubes – many of these can now be recycled in the blue bin (wash first) – cut in half ad if no foil lining they can go in blue bin. (Look out for HDPE 2 recycling logo.)
• Emily and Bee mentioned deposits on bottles – this is something which may come back in the future.
• Households (rather than village schemes) can send off Gillette razors in an envelope.
• Bread bags – an example of something which has the “Can’t be recycled” logo on it but we can put in our blue bins.
• Pringles – new pringle packets can now be recycled normally.
• Cereal packet inner bags – can go in blue bin.
• Blue paper towel roll – if put in with paper it contaminates it.
• Bottle tops – composite metal/plastic ones can’t be recycled. The ones you lever off with a bottle opener can’t be recycled in blue bins because they are too small. James collects his up and takes to the Milton Recycling Centre metal bank.
• Contact lenses and containers – can be recycled through Terracycle.
• Coffee cups – apart from a few places (Costa) these can’t be recycled – they say compostable but our green bins can’t take them as they compost too slowly. Solution is a reusable coffee cup.
• Bubble wrap – can go in the blue bin but Emmaus also glad of it for their online sales.
• Textiles such as old pillows – can take to Dunelm.

Purses and raised beds

Rachel showed up purses she has made from plastic packaging! And Amanda is collecting packaging-filled plastic bottles to make raised beds with.

What next?

The audience included people from Landbeach, Northstowe and Rampton, and we agreed to keep in touch and see if we could organise something reciprocal just as Amanda and Rachel have done in their area.

SOW has some grey boxes and permission to put them by the church. However the items we were thinking of recycling – toothbrushes and pens – have just been discontinued by Terracycle, so need to discuss other possibilities.

Saturday 8th February, 11am – 2pm, Oakington Pavilion

Don’t miss Oakington & Westwick’s second annual Repair Cafe!

You can bring broken bikes and blunt blades, torn T-shirts and laggardly laptops, ailing appliances and malfunctioning machines … we will fit in as many repairs as we can!

Or just pop down to enjoy lunch or cake and the community ambience!

All the details about the Repair Cafe are here.

A big thank you to our volunteer repairers and all the cafe and front-of-house helpers.

Solar Farm

Note that Friday 17 Jan – deadline for commenting on the proposed solar farm beside the airfield road. https://wilsonsroadsolarfarm.co.uk/

Orchard Wassail

Blue Barrel and OWN will again be running the popular Orchard Wassail community event, 4–6pm on Saturday 25 January 2025. Come down to the Jordans’ orchard on Arcadia Gardens for a fun traditional family celebration to encourage the apple trees to deliver a healthy harvest in the year ahead.

Dress warmly, bring a torch and something to make a lot of noise. Free entry, but donations welcome to cover costs. A welcome cup of free mulled cider on entrance and cash bar for further drinks. Mulled juice and a complimentary cup of warm soup will also be available.

Next SOW meeting

Wednesday 29 Jan – How to Recycle Eveything?! SOW meeting, 7:30pm at the Church Hall. Amanda and Rachel from Shepreth and Foxton will be explaining their villages’ terracycle schemes and giving us tips for starting ours. 

Repair Cafe

The next annual Oakington Repair Cafe will be held at the pavilion on Saturday 8th February, 11am – 2pm. More details on https://sustainableow.co.uk/repair-cafe/ including how to book a repair – it’s recommended to book repairs in advance to ensure they will be seen. Even if you aren’t bringing something to be repaired, you are very welcome to come to the cafe and enjoy lunch, cakes and the atmosphere!

We do need some help with:

• Baking cakes and vegetarian savouries for the cafe
• Serving, clearing tables and washing up at the cafe
• Helping on the front desk to register repairees
• Being a ‘runner’ to help communication between the front desk and the repairers

Please do get in touch if you bake in advance or help on the day: email
oakingtonrepaircafe@gmail.com or go to: https://forms.gle/gqtjRVL7d5io58k29.

Photos from our meeting on 27th November, which was partly prepared and led by the Eco Kids!

Wednesday 27th November, 7:30pm at the Church Hall in Oakington

Tips, ideas and hands-on activities for celebrating Christmas without hurting the planet. Come along, be inspired and share your own suggestions!

Free (but a £1 donation towards room rent appreciated)

Also coming up…

• Saturday 25 January – Orchard Wassail at the Jordans’ orchard on Arcadia Garden
• Saturday 8 February – Repair Cafe, Pavilion, Oakington, 11am – 2pm

Vegetarian Community Meal

We had a lovely evening with delicious food at our shared supper in October!

Wednesday 23rd October (NOTE not the last week of the month this time), 7pm (NOTE earlier time) at the Church Hall (as usual!)

We look forward to a relaxed evening together with a chance to chat about sustainability and other things as well!

If you can, please fill in the RSVP form to let us know how many are coming and very roughly what you might bring (just so we can do something about it if everyone plans to bring dessert!) If you are short of time then don’t feel you have to produce something amazing and home-made, we’d rather have you there than put you off coming. Just no meat or fish please.

There’ll be plates and cutlery for everyone but there isn’t a cooker in the servery so hot dishes will need to be brought while still warm.

Also coming up…

Sunday 20 October – Oakington Eco-Home tours. Paul and Chris will be running special tours for SOW members of their home which is a case study in this year’s Eco Homes. Contact sustainableow@gmail.com if you would like to see first-hand how a 1960s terraced house can be retrofitted to a high standard.
(See the Open Eco Homes website for all public tours and talks.)

Saturday 26 October – community apple pressing days with Blue Barrel Cider. At the old stables on the High Street 12–4pm. The event on 12th was very enjoyable and sociable despite rainy weather, so do come to round two at at the end of the month.

Wednesday 27 November – SOW meeting: How to Have a Sustainable Christmas.

18 attended, apologies from 4.

Events Coming Up

• 12 and 26 October – community apple pressing days with Blue Barrel Cider. At the old stables on the High Street 12–4pm. All welcome to this popular, family-friendly event – help wash and crush the apples, enjoy free refreshments, buy local cider. You can also help pick the apples at the Jordans’ orchard on Arcadia Gardens 10–12 noon on each of the two Saturdays.
  
• Oakington Eco-Home tours. Paul and Chris will be running special tours for SOW members of their home which is a case study in this year’s Eco Homes. Members should contact SOW for more information. Limited places, booking essential. A great opportunity to see first-hand how a 1960s terraced house can be retrofitted to a high standard. See the Open Eco Homes website for all public tours and talks.
  
• Wednesday 23 October (note NOT last Wednesday in the month), 7pm (note earlier time!) at the Church Hall. The long-planned Vegetarian Community Meal. Bring and share. It would be helpful to know numbers, so will send round an RSVP form.
  
• Wednesday 27 November – SOW meeting: How to Have a Sustainable Christmas.
  
• And in Histon: 7 October: Conversations about Gentle Travel, 2^nd December: Conversations about a Greener Christmas, 2^nd November: Swish (clothes swap) event. More details to come.

Notices

These included Nature Recovery project update, a discussion about some land under threat of development in Oakington which many members would like to see acquired for nature, a report from the Cambridge Carbon Footprint AGM and from Histon and Parents for Future. Please contact SOW for more information on any of these. The green library was open for loans!

Talk by Water Sensitive Cambridge

Notes are available here.