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19 Sep 2011 Re-use is better than recycling, and we're working on it...... admin

Hello All,

Just beginning to rouse ourselves from summertime slumber, we are having a Waste Group meeting this coming Wednesday 21st Sept, 8pm at the White Lion.

Some of us managed to get, just in time, to one of the consultation sessions about the rejigging of Eastwood Recycling Depot, where we met again the same Council Waste Officer some of us had a chat with a few months back.  She seemed a good deal more receptive this time to our idea that, while recycling is better than dumping, re-use is better than recycling, and invited us to submit a Transition Town proposal to the consultation - by Tues 27th.  So we'll be working on that, proposing an area in which people can dump or freely help themselves to potentially reusable stuff.

Hope to see you at the White Lion

10 Mar 2011 Summer Clothes Swap admin
Summer is here and if you would like to participate in a clothes swap to acquire some new outfits and to give away some you are not quite happy with, and all for a pound, then come to the Trades Club on 18th June between 11am and 1pm. Just bring yourself and any unwanted clothes and see what else there is that you fancy. There will also be tea and coffee and a selection of delicious cakes available. Feature of the month: Whether you love it or hate it or have never even seen it, this weeks episode of The Apprentice was all about making money from waste materials. It was a great challenge for the idiots and was a good insight into waste management and the economics that drive it. Episode viewable on Iplayer.
17 Nov 2010 november 2010 rach
The Waste Group now has it’s meetings on Mondays, on the 2nd and 4th Monday of the month at The White Lion at 8pm. The next meeting is on 22nd November. New members are welcome anytime. We are creating a Re-use Resource which will soon be available to see on our website page. We are also looking into how we could have an area of the tip used as an area where useful things can be left by some and taken away by others. We are looking into the possibilities of setting up a recycled wood yard. Also we are addressing the issue of plastic in our community, how to reduce it and what to do with the currently unrecycled plastic.
18 Oct 2010 October 2010 rach
The waste group has had a summer break and is now going to meet again on Tuesday 19th October at 8pm in The White Lion. We have various ideas for how our waste and consumption can be minimised and how we can begin to see our waste as more of a resource than a problem. We welcome new members, ideas and inputs. One thing we are doing is developing a resource on this website which will publicise groups in this area who already facilitate re-using things. It will be on the waste group page and will be a great resource for giving, getting, swapping, sharing and mending, so we can become less of a consumer society, utilising more the stuff that is already here, and reviving more resourceful skills than just buying things new. Because it is the future!
12 Jul 2010 After the launch... rach
The Waste Group aims to highlight the consumer society that is the major cause of the unsustainable amount of waste we continually produce. We aim to help make possible attractive ways of us consuming less and producing less waste. We also recognize that the linear progressions which are common in our world are not sustainable. E. g. resources get taken out of the ground, made into products, desired, consumed and thrown away. Sustainable systems are based instead around cycles. Therefore we wish to see our (reduced) waste as more of a resource than a problem, that can be used for something we need. Compost from food waste is a valuable resource for growing more food. Charity shops, flea markets, free shops, clothes swaps, etc. are a great way to get what you need without supporting the making of new things all the time. Even our own sewage is much more use to us as a fertilizer (treated properly) than as a pollutant in the sea. We will be writing the “Waste and Consumer Culture” section of the Energy Descent Action Plan, which will be looking at how we can re-use our waste, reduce our consumption and get what we need from what already exists, so reducing dramatically the demand for new products and making us much more resourceful and resilient. The Waste Zone at the Launch weekend featured Real Life Freecycle, a free shop which was constantly popular as people brought some things and took other things away. We also had an installation based on waste and consumer culture. We set up a living room with settee, coffee table, lampstand and a tv playing the fantastic film “The Story of Stuff” (check it out on web if you haven’t seen it). The tv also had a lava of disused stuff, particularly toys, attached to it which was intended to represent our attachment to things, the desire that is manufactured in us by the advertisers, represented largely by toys because this is the desire we start off our life as willing consumers with. Also on the wall in kitsch picture frames were quotes about our consumer society and our waste, such as “99 percent of things made end up in landfill in 6 months” At the first meeting of The Waste Group on Sunday 30th May and the follow up one on Wed 9th June we discussed ideas for sustainable solutions for waste in the Hebden Bridge area. Our favourite idea to start off the waste group with was to try and get a free area at the Eastwood tip so people could leave useful things there and take other things away that they wanted. To this end we are going to research what happens to our waste and recycling already and what are the barriers to this happening. NEXT MEETING is on Tuesday 22nd June in The White Lion Pub at 8pm we want to properly discuss the ideas of 1) getting a free area at the tip and 2) making a short film.