The Energy and Climate Change action group has been working on a response to Birmingham City Council’s climate change action plan. We have adopted a constructive approach - providing praise where due and suggestions for improvements where needed. In the plan, the Council offers a high level commitment to tackle climate change and its effects on Birmingham and this is encouraging. Like other large cities in the UK, Birmingham could face an increased risk of freak weather conditions, water Making Birmingham Green(er) Continued on Page 12
Transcript
The Energy and Climate Change action group has been working on a response to Birmingham City Council’s climate change action plan. We have adopted a constructive approach - providing praise where due and suggestions for improvements where needed.
In the plan, the Council offers a high level commitment to tackle climate change and its effects on Birmingham and this is encouraging. Like other large cities in the UK, Birmingham could face an increased risk of freak weather conditions, water
Making Birmingham Green(er)
Continued on Page 12
3 - Campaigns Digest
5 - Warehouse News
7 - In Town Without My Car Day 2010
8 - Take Back Parliament
9 - Appeal for Volunteers
10 - What is it About Food?
12 - Making Birmingham Green(er)
15 - Grow Sites
17 - Is There a Job in The Green Economy For You?
18 - Fundraising Locally And Nationally
19 - Nine Carrots Come to Birmingham
20 - Volunteer In The Spotlight
21 - Diary
22 - Membership Form
23 - Contacts
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Transport Birmingham City Council now has a new cabinet member for transport, Councillor Huxtable, so the group is looking forward to engaging with him in constructive dialogue about the kinds of improvements we feel are needed.
Interest from communities all over Birmingham continues to grow in our 20’s Plenty campaign and a video has now been posted on YouTube to show what people think about it. Hopefully, as part of the process of engaging with people about In Town Without My Car Day this year, there will be more opportunities to talk about the measures needed to make the streets safer for cycling and walking, too.
The new government seems to have taken a step back from plans for High Speed Rail, but we are monitoring developments and will continue to present our vision of the best way to invest in the transport system in austere times.
Birmingham City Council have refused our Freedom of Information request on the report detailing how they justify spending £16m of taxpayers’ money on moving the A45 in order to allow the runway extension to go ahead at Birmingham International Airport. However, we are still investigating the best way to challenge this and ensure the closest scrutiny is paid to all “state aid” to such environmentally damaging projects.
Local Shops and Food Thanks to the massive efforts of groups like ours, there is now a private members bill on sustainable livestock going through the House of Commons. Now we have to ensure that all our local MPs will vote for this in November, so a summer of getting people to “Join the Moovement”, as the campaign is now called, lies ahead. Open Farm Sunday in June provided another opportunity for our campaigners to see what issues farmers have and explain to them what we’re doing to try and improve the situation. Congratulations go to Jubilee allotments who have finally opened after much hard work and we hope more inner city areas will get access to sites for growing food soon.
Campaigns Digest
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We are continuing to monitor developments with supermarket planning applications and are helping a group in Weoley Castle oppose the Asda application, that has come back again, on the edge of Woodgate Valley park.
Energy and Climate Change As you can see from the main article in this month’s newsletter, the group have now put together a comprehensive response to the city council’s climate change action plan. This will continue to form a basis for feeding into the review of the action plan and dialogue with the new cabinet committee, who are looking at climate change action.
We have also been talking to senior figures about BCC publicly supporting local carbon budgets to ensure all councils have a legal responsibility to act on reducing their CO2 emissions and are given support to do so.
Crafting/Recycling The Happily Ever Crafter Group continues to attract new people in to take part in practical and fun activities. The Moseley Swap Shop, which happens every fourth Saturday of the month alongside the Farmers’ Market, has been continuing the good work of spreading a message of re-using and not buying new stuff all the time. With BCC now developing a total waste strategy, the group needs to step up its waste campaigning to take advantage of
this opportunity to influence policy and ensure resources aren’t wasted by being thrown away or burnt.
Faith and Climate Change The award-winning Faith and Climate Change Project has continued its impressive engagement work at the Birmingham Climate Change Festival on June 5th and the Solihull Green Fair. Training is taking place to engage people with energy audits over the summer.
Joe Peacock
Campaigns Digest continued
The Happily Ever Crafter Group continues to attract new people in to take part in practical and fun activities
A big thank you to Alison Breadon On the 24th April 2007, Alison Breadon donated £500 to help us out with our leaky roof. It has taken us a long time to work out how to go about spending this money, but now we have a plan. Instead of going for a full replacement, we intend to give our existing roof a new lease of life that will last for another 10 years.
This is plenty of time for us to raise the funds necessary to switch to
the most eco-roof money can buy. We have spent the £500 on repair materials and hope to have it fully patched in the next month or so. This is being done in parallel to other amazing maintenance work including the repointing of our backwall, redecorating the building, and repairing the café roof. This is really the year for BIG maintenance projects at BfoE.
I will keep you updated on our progress over the next few months.
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Warehouse News
Alison the roof saver
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Sales, service, repairs, accessories. Bikes also built to your own specifications.
Open Wednesday to Saturday, 10am-4pm
0121 633 0730
SPROCKETCycles
Established over 15 years ago in the Friends of the Earth Building in Birmingham The Warehouse Café has a reputation as a quality provider of vegetarian and vegan food in Birmingham.
“Real people serving real food with local, organic and fair trade leading the way” Guardian Unlimited.
To see the delicious menu go to www.thewarehousecafe.com
• 100% vegetarian and vegan• A Large selection of organic
and fairtrade products, most supplied and delivered by a workers co-operative
• Vegan owners - no meat or dairy products sold
Open Monday to Saturday, 10am-5pm
The shops and companies here have all come together because they are dedicated to working towards a healthier, more organic city.
So if you want to help make Birmingham a cleaner, greener place to live, or you just want to eat some good vegetarian food, then come to The Warehouse and see what’s going on.
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In Town Without My Car Day 2010
‘In Town Without My Car Day’ is exactly that, a day (22nd September) when motorists leave their cars at home and use sustainable means of transport such as buses, bicycles, car-share or walking. The aim is to get as many people in Birmingham to support this important initiative as possible.
It forms part of International Mobility week and occurs every year on 22nd September to promote sustainable means of transport worldwide. It is also hoped that the day leads to sharing examples of best practice, so more people who would usually drive use sustainable means of transport more often.
Last year BFOE challenged Birmingham’s Power 50 (the fifty most influential people according to the Birmingham Post) to participate and was successful at raising awareness. This year the event is going to be bigger!
This year BFOE’s aim is to get more companies and organisations (both private sector and public) to participate in the event to promote a better future for coming generations and a more environmentally friendly and healthier lifestyle. We’ll be issuing a challenge again, but this time to 50 organisations, so we appeal for people who work in Corporate Social Responsibility and who are interested in taking part to get in touch with us.
The aim is to promote better usage
of our congested roads and to make journeys more pleasant. If people use public transport more often, it could instigate a faster and more efficient system for the future. It is predicted that by 2050 a high proportion of the nation’s population will be obese unless there are significant changes in nutrition and physical activity. Both cycling and walking help increase physical activity and help towards a healthier lifestyle when part of everyday activity.
This campaign is not promoted to penalise car drivers, but to raise awareness that Birmingham needs a better transport system and to promote the health benefits of walking and cycling more often. It would be great if you take part and support “In Town Without My Car Day”, to see what difference we can make to the city in one day that will show the way forward.
To register your interest or for more information contact Joe, the Campaigns Support Worker, or Panna, the lead campaigner for this event:[email protected] or [email protected].
Find out more www.eta.co.uk www.dft.gov.uk www.hcd2.bupa.co.uk http://www.mobilityweek.eu/
Panna Amliwala
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Friends of the Earth are members of the Take Back Parliament coalition for electoral reform. You may have seen people dressed in purple on the news around the time of the election. This was part of the movement which called for a new system to elect our representatives so that every voice included within the environmental community would be heard.
The good news is that the pressure from Take Back Parliament helped to make the referendum on an Alternative Vote (AV) happen. Whatever the voting reform people ultimately want, this referendum is our best opportunity in almost one hundred years for positive change to a fairer voting system. Take Back Parliament has now set its sights on winning the referendum next May to set our country on a journey to a full and open parliament for the people, especially those who the current system shuts out, and not for politicians canvassing a small proportion of marginal voters.
Part of our campaign is to create local branches of the purple cause in cities and towns across the country that will campaign for a yes vote to AV next May. In Birmingham we will be meeting regularly and campaigning at the Conservative Party Conference in October. Our next meeting will be at Bennett’s Bar in Birmingham at 6.30 pm on Monday 19th July.
Find out more www.takebackparliament.com www.takebackparliament.ning.com
Eamon Walsh
Take Back Parliament
Take Back Parliament has now set its sights on winning the referendum next May to set our country on a journey to a full and open parliament for the people
Do you want to help ensure the long-term sustainability of Birmingham Friends of the Earth? Do you have creative ideas of how to attract new people to support the organisation?
We are looking for people who can volunteer their time to help increase our membership numbers. Subscribers who pay a monthly or yearly fee are the best way of ensuring that Birmingham Friends of the Earth can continue the valuable work that it does on behalf of the community in this city and to improve the environment for everyone on the planet.
If you feel you have the necessary skills, contact [email protected] for more details.
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Appeal for Volunteers
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What is it about food?
Food is essential, yes, that’s obvious, but it’s essential in so many ways – not just staying alive.
Food (and drink) are at the heart of every celebration, they punctuate and define the working day. What you buy and where you buy it from says more about your social class, income, and your values, than just about anything else.
We have a schizophrenic relationship with food. Most of us want cheap food; we spend less of our disposable income on food than any other European country. Most of us also want high animal welfare standards and wildlife friendly farming. But most of us never see the contradiction. We are obsessed by cooking programmes and celebrity chefs, yet most adults have little or no idea how to actually prepare and cook anything. We demand choice, but always buy the same things, from the same supermarket, and from the same producers. We buy food that’s fresh to throw away, food to keep that will last for months and years, yet still gets thrown out in the annual spring clean, and we eat take-aways and ready meals warmed up in 5 minutes.
We live in a fantasy food world created by ad men working for some of the biggest companies on the planet: Tesco (every little helps screw the farmer down one more notch), Asda (where good food costs less, which means it’s either
not good or the price bears no relation to the true cost), Coca Cola (the real thing is water but we’ll extract all yours so you have to buy our sugary brew) and dear old MacDonald’s (whose happy meals make chubby children and millions of throwaway plastic toys).
Our diet consists overwhelmingly of food that bears little or no relationship to where it came from. In fact, food that, by and large, is deliberately disguised to hide its true origins, except for the idealised countryside packaging which is usually the biggest con of all. Most of our food is adulterated with sugars and sweeteners, starches, mysterious ‘e’ numbers, the ubiquitous corn syrup and the frankly evil hydrogenated fats. And of course the more full of crap the food is, the cheaper it is.
So we end with the highest
We are obsessed by cooking programmes and celebrity chefs, yet most adults have little or no idea how to actually prepare and cook anything
childhood obesity in Europe thanks to subsidised multi-nationals, advertising cheap adulterated food to our children. But we mustn’t complain because we mustn’t restrict choice – yes, don’t forget a hundred varieties of teeth-rotting, fat-laden candy bars made by the same three companies from 95% of the same dirt cheap, subsidised ingredients, is choice!
You thought that choice was something to do with knowing what was in the product? No, no, no.
You thought choice was something to do with knowing where the product came from and how it was produced? No, no, no.
You thought choice was something to do with you making an informed decision? No, no, no.
But there is another choice: to grow a little of your own food, to cook actual unadulterated meat and veg, to pay a fair price to the producer. If we paid the true cost of food, recognised the true value of the soil that produces it, and the true toil of the growers and harvesters,
then food would cost a little more in the shops. But if we paid the true cost the crap would cost way more, because it wouldn’t be subsidised, the workers along the production chain would be paid a living wage, all the chemicals spewing on to the land and into the rivers would be cleaned up, all the packaging would be honestly labelled, and all the ads aimed at kids would be banned. In fact, if we paid the true cost and had real choice none of these products would be eaten at all.
We should not be proud of cheap food because it comes at a huge price. We should all, even the poorest of us, pay a bit more, eat a little less and waste a lot less.
Our food habits are the perfect example of our disconnect with the planet. We don’t need to recognise seasons, we don’t need to grow anything, we don’t know or care how food is made, we don’t see the role of insects, we don’t know what most vegetables look like, and vast numbers of children don’t eat any.
Its time to change – to see the whole picture – why not make some midsummer resolutions: to buy proper food (with nought taken out or put in); to buy local food; to buy less food; and to waste none.
Every little helps!
Find out more http://is.gd/dSyOn
Nigel Baker
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We should not be proud of cheap food because it comes at a huge price.
shortages and “urban heat island” effects created by heat-waves. This could affect the quality of life and health of Birmingham citizens as the climate changes. Birmingham also plays its part in of the world-wide thirst for energy. We face the dual problems of security of supply of oil and gas, and paying increased prices for our energy in the future, which will push more people into fuel poverty.
The Plan Readers can view the complete Plan at http://is.gd/dM0tl
The plan’s nine sections deal with:
The climate change vision for Birmingham
The low carbon city transition plan
Homes and buildings
Low carbon energy generation
Resource management
Low carbon transport
Climate change adaptation
Engaging Birmingham citizens and businesses
Making it happen and keeping on track
The Vision The Council has set its sights on achieving a 60% cut in carbon emissions by 2026, improving on the previous government target of a 34% reduction by 2022 and an 80% reduction by 2050. The Action
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Plan is regarded by the Council as a framework on which measures aimed at achieving targets will be
built.It is worth remembering this as you read through the plan as it lacks detail of how targets will be met.
The Low Carbon City Birmingham wants to move from a fossil fuel based economy to a low carbon economy and it will need to harness the power of individuals to do this. It will require innovation, skills and a change in the way we procure and use energy. Early action points will look at how low carbon businesses can be grown and identify the skills needed to do this.
Homes and Buildings Heating over 440,000 homes in Birmingham is responsible for around 33% of the city’s carbon emissions. Council action in this area needs to focus on the end user and this means domestic and
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Continued from front pageMaking Birmingham
Green(er)
Early action points will look at how low carbon businesses can be grown and identify the skills needed to do this
commercial consumers. Domestic consumers are likely to face increased fuel bills in the future and the Council says it will concentrate its efforts on creating more Eco Neighbourhoods like Summerfield, where homes have been fitted with solar panels.
In the public and private sectors, the Council will take action to establish Birmingham as the leading centre for energy efficient buildings and on-site renewable energy generation. Solar panels could be an “easy win” here as the Council could stand to benefit from the feed-in tariff whilst local businesses (and householders) get cuts to their fuel bill. The creation of other schemes such as district heating plants will require long-term strategic planning and good planning decisions from the Council to support such schemes.
Low Carbon Energy Generation The Council wants 50% of the energy it uses to be generated from renewable sources by 2026. Consumers need a supply of affordable energy, yet demand for energy is only likely to increase. Any measures implemented by the Council will need to acknowledge this. Meeting the low carbon energy generation challenge for Birmingham will mean educating people about how they use energy and how they might use less of it. Managers of commercial premises need to understand how to make the most efficient use of biomass
boilers and the energy coming from district heating.
The Council hopes to decentralise the energy infrastructure. This is an enormous challenge, resulting in huge changes to the present infrastructure if whole communities are to be linked to such schemes. It is hoped that the Council appreciates the speed the changes will have to occur if this decentralisation is going to happen.
Resource Management Birmingham generates around 4 million tonnes of waste each year. Whilst most of this waste is generated from construction and demolition, 38% of it comes from industry and commerce. Birmingham sends most of its commercial waste to the Tysley incinerator, which has been a long term concern of Birmingham FOE because much of the waste sent here could be recycled. The Council wants to develop a Total Waste Strategy for Birmingham that will include municipal, commercial, construction and demolition waste. However, the plan does not indicate that the Council plan to close the Tysley site any time soon. Instead, the Council wants to “do something” with the heat generated at the site by perhaps channelling it in to a district heating scheme.
Low Carbon Transport Road transport accounts for approximately 24% of the city’s carbon emissions. Clearly, a sustainable transport plan that gets
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the cars off the road, eases city centre congestion and facilitates easier access to sustainable transport choices, will lower the carbon emissions in this area.
The Council’s most ambitious target here is a plan to ensure that all Council vehicles will be electric or powered by liquefied gas by 2015. Disappointingly, the plan focuses more on how the Council might encourage the uptake of electric vehicles, instead of working to reduce the number of individual single occupancy cars on Birmingham’s roads.
Adaptation Birmingham’s adaptation strategy is now being prepared ready for implementation. The strategy will prepare the city to adapt to severe weather events and other risks that climate change will present. The Council’s approach to adaptation is allied with the government’s approach, which means identifying the threats and making necessary changes in infrastructure to cope with future events.
Engaging Citizens Changing attitudes and behaviour requires a holistic approach. Not only do individuals and businesses need to understand the impact that their decisions have on the city’s carbon footprint, they also need to be shown how to access the tools to lessen this impact. Fitting smart meters to homes showing how much energy is being used, and at what cost to the consumer, is just
one example of the kind of citizen engagement needed.
Supporting businesses to help achieve the Council’s ambitious goals means encouraging local initiatives, such as the “9-carrots” scheme that is detailed elsewhere in this newsletter.
If we are going to get the infrastructure necessary to meet the challenge, Birmingham will first have to equip the workforce with the skills to create it, and this will mean providing training and jobs at a time of cuts. The Council’s Climate Change Action Plan is a start - it provides the framework. The challenge now will be filling in the gaps and making it happen.
Want to get involved in the campaign? The Energy and Climate Change Campaign Group meets once a month at the warehouse. The next two meetings will be held on 23 August and 20 September. Contact: [email protected] for more information.
Melanie Brookes
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Continued from page 13Making Birmingham
Green(er)
Changing attitudes and behaviour requires a holistic approach
I’m currently putting together a proposal for funding to transform a piece of unused land in Lozells to a grow site for local residents to produce their own food. This pilot will be used to learn from before a much larger project linked to a social housing development is implemented.
One project already underway is GEML: Grow It, Eat It, Move It, Live It. Funded by Heart of England PCT and centred on Ladywood, Soho, Aston and Nechells, this brings together voluntary and statutory agencies. It inspires people to grow and cook their own food, live an active lifestyle, and reclaim open spaces.
I recently embarked on a learning exercise and planted out some lettuces, spinach and cabbage in
my garden using the builders bags which are normally used to deliver aggregates. You can often salvage these from skips but, I discovered, if they are reused, they are subject to regulations, stipulating they must be inspected and certified. Consequently, they’re often simply dumped. They make ideal planters bulked out with polystyrene chips for drainage (made from post consumer waste) and covered with a layer of topsoil or compost.
I’m really inspired after travelling in West Africa and seeing food growing all across urban areas. Pockets of land, large and small, are highly productive. I’ve seen potatoes, carrots, aubergines, tomatoes, salad leaves, spinach, okra, maize, yams, cassava grown in the most unlikely places. These crops will be feeding families, and any surplus sold at markets or informally on the street. Just about every African house will have a mango tree in the compound and there might be papayas, or
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Grow Sites
Lettuces grow in a builders bag in my garden
These crops will be feeding families, and any surplus sold at markets or informally on the street
avocado, as well. I wonder why every garden in Birmingham doesn’t have at least one fruit tree? It seems to me so-called developing countries are way ahead of us when it comes to sustainable, local food economies.
Recently I was in Marseille, couch-surfing in an apartment on a housing estate planted out with fruit trees such as figs and plums, with which my host harvests and makes delicious jam. Why can’t estates in Birmingham be planted with fruit trees?
There are some differences between allotments and grow sites. I gather allotments are a lot more complex in terms of the planning process, while grow sites can be established much more quickly. It’s encouraging to see different agencies working together, there’s a recognition
of shared interests. I was at an environmental forum meeting recently where the police gave their support to turning over a piece of land to a grow site, land which has historically been a source of problems.
Through the research I’m doing I’m finding out about lots of inspiring things all over the country. In the London borough of Hackney, for example, Growing Communities adds salad leaves grown in the borough to their box schemes. “Salad production is labour intensive and the end product is nutritious but highly perishable - therefore it makes sense to grow salad as close to where it’s consumed as possible... We think it makes more sense to grow potatoes, carrots etc on larger areas of land on to which you can get large machinery. And then use the smaller pockets of land which may be available in urban areas for growing crops which naturally require a more labour intensive approach.”
After my lunch today, which consisted of a salad made with leaves fresh from my garden, I certainly agree with them!
Find out more www.growingcommunities.org.
Tom Pointon
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Crops growing next to an industrial site, Lome, Togo, West Africa
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On July 12th our latest speaker meeting, with Keith Budden, manager of Be Birmingham’s Environmental Partnership, and Jon Morris, Localise West Midlands’ Green New Deal representative, sparked a lively discussion on green job creation in the West Midlands.
Keith Budden kicked the evening off, outlining the potential to create 1.5 million jobs in the UK through decarbonising the grid, developing the use of green technologies, and encouraging green skills. Such advances have the potential to build upon the manufacturing expertise already present in the region, with city-wide initiatives like the Green New Deal (now re-branded Birmingham Energy Savers) assisting investment into local businesses and training schemes.
However, the expansion of small scale, sustainable employment opportunities, such as to be a milkman driving an electric float, is equally important. Such activities create the diversity that encourages local resourcefulness, a thriving local economy, and conserves our city of ‘1000 trades’. It is therefore important to facilitate the conditions in which there is sufficient funding, coordination and commitment to allow this diversity to thrive.
At present, many small businesses do exist but largely in isolation and are made financially viable only by those taking a moral standpoint. The approach of the Green
Investment Bank model would do little to strengthen local linkages, effectively putting our green future into the hands of a few bankers who would opt only to use larger, more ‘efficient’ companies.
Peak oil will have a major impact upon assisting a shift towards a more localised approach, as a decline in cheap foreign imports will encourage the re-emergence of local repair industries (with Birmingham City Council presently mapping reuse and repair businesses in the area) and make the innovation, manufacture and marketing of products and services more economic at a local level.
So what needs to be done in order to create green jobs? A need for a networking forum has potential to provide an excellent start point – matching innovative grassroots ideas with those who can make them happen. This could spark the creation of a local green directory, whilst a ‘Green Dragons Den’ could also be a great way to share advice and empower people’s ideas. It is this type of enabling activity that is essential in sparking the growth of a sustainable, green economy, enabling the creation of sustainable, green jobs.
Anna Watson
Is There A Job In The Green Economy For You?
Birmingham Friends of the Earth are grateful to all our supporters for their generosity over the years and don’t like to put extra financial pressure on anyone at such an uncertain time, but for those who can help, here are two appeals for help with fundraising.
Firstly, as you have hopefully already heard, we are doing a canal canter on September 18th. This is being organised together with the West Midlands Long Distance Walkers and we really need people to do the 26-mile walk and get sponsored to support Birmingham FoE. Contact [email protected] for details and an entry form and you’d better get in training now if you plan to do it.
Secondly, over the past year or so Friends of the Earth’s fundraising income has dropped dramatically on a national level. Their legacy income has particularly reduced. They’ve taken difficult decisions to cut work and staff numbers already, but sadly times are still proving challenging and they now have to make an urgent appeal to all of their supporters for help.
If you are not a member of Friends of the Earth nationally, now would be a great time to join. Also, organising a fundraising event to help them raise some funds over the summer could be a fun way of getting experience in that field.
Find out more
http://foe.co.uk/
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Fundraising Locally And Nationally
Three months ago, Francesca Rogers walked into a wine bar in South London to meet Mr. Lawrence, the owner. She made a simple deal with him: “Our Transition Town group will promote your business for free, if you agree to make your bar greener with 10% of the extra custom you receive”.
Since then, supporters have clocked up enough sales to reach the target and the bar recently fitted low-energy lighting throughout. The upgrade will save four tonnes of CO2 emissions per year.
Thirty businesses in London have already signed up to the scheme - an impressive two-thirds of those approached. The energy-efficiency targets range from furniture shops saving for LED lighting to take-aways saving for electric vehicles and cafés installing solar panels.
Environmental groups have embraced the concept, called “9carrots”, as it enables them to connect with local businesses on climate change. Francesca explains: “We’re always hearing advice about how we should save energy as individuals, but we need to get businesses interested in sustainability, too. Our group sees the 9carrots scheme as a great way to get businesses involved.”
Now the idea has spread to Kings Heath in South Birmingham. Shabdam Bailey-Bond, a member of the local Transition group, feels
that the scheme has a lot to offer for everyone involved. “It’s a real win-win situation. Environmental groups get a ready-made scheme they can use to engage local businesses, and shoppers only have to buy what they need from participating businesses rather than elsewhere. I think it will be a real eye-opener for a lot of people: it’s the first time they’ve made a shop greener – maybe they’ll start thinking about the power we all have to change our local community for the better”.
9carrots supports the process from start to finish by providing advice on energy-saving projects, special receipt books for businesses to track purchases, promotional leaflets and an interactive web site. It is a not-for-profit organisation run by volunteers and provides free support to anyone who wants to run the scheme in their area.
Get in contact if your group would like to start engaging local businesses on climate change or you’d like to hear what’s happening in Kings Heath
How did you first find out about BFoE and what made you decide to get involved?
I’ve known about them for a while because I used to walk past the building when I was in town. I just wanted to do something that would have a positive effect and contribute to some of the great things BFoE do, so I contacted them to find out about volunteering.
What do you do at BFoE?
I’ve taken charge of organising this year’s In Town Without My Car Day for Birmingham FoE. I’m doing some of the planning, research and developing marketing materials. Soon I’ll be distributing
this and getting feedback from the companies and organisations we’re targeting. When I’m in the Warehouse I help out with anything, including doing reception and putting up displays.
What do you think is the most important environmental issue and why?
I’ve always been interested in transport as it’s so much a part of everyday life for people and has a big effect on business. Due to my studies I’m also really interested in business ethics and corporate social responsibility, so it’s great that I’m doing a project that involves both of those.
What’s your best green tip/advice?
Take part on 22nd September, leave your cars at home and help us change transport in Birmingham for the better by getting involved.
I just wanted to do something that would have a positive effect and contribute to some of the great things BFoE do
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Volunteer Spotlight
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Campaign MeetingsMonday Night Meetings – 7:30pm at the Birmingham FoE Warehouse, Allison St 2nd August – General meeting 9th August - Local Shops & Food Action Group 16th August - Transport Action Group 23rd August - Energy & Climate Change Action Groups 30th August – Bank holiday 31st August - Local Shops & Food Action Groups
6th September – General meeting 13th September – preparation for canal canter and Transport Action Group 20th September - Happily Ever Crafter and Energy & Climate Change Action Group 27th September – Discussion on energy
Other Events19th August - Organic Iftar (women only) ask Maud from Faith and Climate Change for details 28th August – Moseley Swap Shop 3rd - 5th September – Moseley Folk festival 10th - 12th September – Friends of the Earth local groups conference 18th September – Birmingham Canal Canter 22nd September – In Town Without My Car Day 25th September – Moseley Swap Shop
See Northfield Eco Centre for their many workshops www.northfieldecocentre.org/
Farmers’ MarketsBirmingham University: 4th Wednesday of the month 9am-2pm Harborne: 2nd Saturday of the month 9am-2pm Kings Heath: 1st Saturday of the month 9am-3:30pm Kings Norton: 2nd Saturday of the month 9am-2pm Moseley: 4th Saturday of the month 9am-3pm New Street: 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month 10am-4pm Solihull: 1st Friday of the month 9am-5pm Sutton Coldfield: 2nd Friday of the month 9am-3pm Jewellery Quarter: 3rd Saturday of the month 10am-3pm
We are the only organisation in Birmingham that campaigns on Climate Change, Transport, Local Shops, Planning, Waste and Recycling. You can help us do this in a number of ways;1.) By taking part in or our campaigns 2.) By joining us 3.) BothWhichever route you decide, you are helping to change your environment for the better. Making sure that those who pollute, monopolise or despoil locally, nationally or internationally are accountable. There are two ways to join us...
EitherI wish to become a Golden Supporter with payments by standing order of £2 per month or more.
OrI wish to become an Annual Supporter, paying by standing order / cheque (Please delete as appropriate. Note that standing orders are cheaper for us to process).
Friends of the Earth is:- The largest international network
of environmental groups in the world, represented in 72 countries.
- One of the UK’s leading enviromental pressure groups.
- A unique network of campaigning local groups, working in more than 200 communities in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
- Over 90% of its funds come from its supporters.
Birmingham FoE:Campaigns at a local level to effect environmental change (in ways which feed into national and international policy) through:
- Direct action
- Lobbying
- Education
- Empowering others to take action
- Participation and representation through public fora
Chair: Benjamin MabbettCampaigns Co-ordinators: Roxanne Green & Richard SagarCampaigns Support Worker: Joe PeacockEnvironmental Outreach Officers:Karl Whale & Tom PointonGeneral Manager: Phil BurrowsTreasurer: Margaret LynchAviation: Joe PeacockClimate Change & Energy: Melanie BrookesMulti-faith and Climate Change Project: Rianne ten Veen & Maud GraingerCraft, Recycling and Swap Shop: Beth FisherLocal Shops & Food: Nigel BakerPlanning: John HallTransport: Martin StrideNewsletter Editors: Katy BarryZoe WrightAntonio RobertsWebsite Editor: Phil BurrowsTalks: Joe Peacock and othersAll enquiries and callers welcome.Find us on page 74 of the B’hamA-Z, grid ref: 4A
