Sustainable Girton News

Friday 13th January was a thoroughly miserable day. I know, because I spent a good deal of it in the pouring rain so that a BBC news team could produce a 3 minute slot on our plastic bag project. In contrast Saturday 14th, when the project was launched, was bright and clear: a great day for bringing Christmas Trees to the Glebe School for shredding. Trees came in all shapes and sizes, and on all kinds of transport -- we were very pleased that comparatively few came by car. At the end of the day Matt and his team had turned 110 trees into mulch and compost, and we were able to give donations of over ?100 to the Glebe School.

With the tree shredding, the big event of the day was the launch of our project to make Girton plastic bag free. With the help of funding from the County and Donarbon (the company which empties our green bins and turns the contents into compost) we have been able to provide every house in the village with one of our cheerful cotton bags to use for your shopping. By the time you read this all the distribution should be complete, so please contact me if by some chance you have not received yours yet. We hope you will always keep this bag in your pocket, so that you will not need to ask for a plastic one when you shop.

There are many reasons why we want to do this. Single-use bags are an unsightly waste: many of them end up blowing around the village and surrounding countryside, where they may be mistaken by animals and birds for food, to their great harm. But we also want everyone to think about our lifestyle. Each time you take an unnecessary bag with your shopping you imperil a little more of our world. Of course plastic bags can be re-used for a number of other things; but no doubt there will still be plenty around without our stores adding to them. We are very grateful to our shopkeepers for the enthusiastic way they have co-operated with us in this venture.

Much more too happened on that Saturday. Several organisations set up stands showing their contributions to a sustainable Girton; the Energy Saving Trust offering free lightbulbs, Cambridge Carbon Footprint with advice on how to reduce your footprint (and your costs!) in running your home, and Green Heat, a local ecological business. There was a display on work done by the Glebe School, which is planning to work with Sustainable Girton on a project to measure heat losses from the school buildings in the coming term. And we were visited by five of the "seven wasted men": sculptures to illustrate that on average we throw away seven times our body weight in rubbish every year.

Sadly, our "rubbish ornament" competition didn't seem to take off this year: we only had 3 entries, though they were all very interesting: a patchwork skirt for a Christmas tree from Helen Wilson, a big plastic shopping bag made out of -- plastic bags! -- by Elisa Quevedo, and a decoration made out of pictures from cards and other items by Joseph Rees. Well done to you all.