31.3.08

The Big Ask Falkirk Event- Friday 4th April


As the Climate Change Bill goes through the parliamentary process The Big Ask campaign will continue to demand tough legislation to reduce the impacts of climate change.

An evening of discussion and film on Friday 4th April at The Christian Centre, Glebe Street, Falkirk at 7.30pm.
There will be a screening of sections of the Inconvenient Truth.

Speakers will include:
Eric Joyce MP
and
Stuart Hay
Head of Campaigns
Friends of the Earth Scotland

30.3.08

Meetings on Week Beginning March 31st

Monday evening 7.30pm at The Christian Centre, Glebe Street, Falkirk
The main topic of discussion will be the Big Ask event this coming weekend.

Friday evening (4th April) 7.30pm at The Christian Centre: Film showing for the Big Ask.

Saturday?? Stay tuned for further information.

10.2.08

February FOE Meeting

Monday 26th February 2008 7.30-9.30- Christian Centre

James Curran will give a presentation about his about his new environmentally-aware shop in Glasgow, Entrading, 88 West Regent Street, Glasgow G2 2QZ, on the corner of Hope Street.

www.entrading.co.uk 0141 332 2424

Crew Update (Communities Reducing Excess Waste)


As part of the CREW initiative Corrie Cuthbertson has been involved in a number of forums to try and spread the message of waste minimisation.

As part of a Falkirk Council initiative Corrie has been involved in looking at the possibilities of finding a community to pilot a Plastic Bag Free Zone. This has involved looking at initiatives with examples of good practice and researching the range of alternatives available.

Corrie tried to investigate the possibility of reintroducing reusable glass milk bottles into stores in the Falkirk area. As someone, who still has her milk delivered in a glass bottle to her door, she was surprised to discover that there is currently no capacity in the local dairy market to reintroducing glass milk bottles into local shops.

1.2.08

Falkirk MPs sign up to the BIG ASK campaign

The morning after the Bali UN climate change talks ended without setting strong reduction targets due to pressure from the US negotiators, local campaigners visited Michael Connarty MP to ask for him to support strong reduction targets in the UK climate change bill. On Saturday 14th December 2007 members of Friends of the Earth Falkirk delivered postcards from local constituents asking for a climate change bill strong enough to meet the climate challenge.

The group were delighted that Mr Connarty signed their Big Ask Pledge and agreed to support the Friends of the Earth call for 80% cuts in UK carbon reductions by 2050, annual milestones for reductions and the law strengthened to include the UK’s share of international emissions from aviation and shipping.

Michael showed his ongoing commitment by signing an Early Day Motion (EDM) tabled by Nigel Griffiths in January 2008 on the Climate Change Bill. The EDM welcomes the Bill, but points out the United Nations Development Programmes recent conclusions that the targets are not ambitious enough and that leaving out international aviation and shipping weaken the Bill considerably, and calls for the Bill to be amended.

Eric Joyce MP was also visited by FoE Falkirk as part of the Big Ask campaign and he agreed to sign up to the demands. He offered to come and meet the local FoE group to discuss the issues, but unfortunately this had to be postponed due to his commitments in parliament.

PULP FICTIONS Saturday 2nd February

Secrets of the paper industry exposed (and what we can do about it)
Keynote speaker Mandy Haggith, author of the forthcoming book ‘Paper Trails’, will explain how we can limit the environmental and social costs of an industry that in many parts of the world has cleared ancient forests to make way for industrial plantations, displaced local communities, endangered wildlife, used massive amounts of energy and caused substantial pollution.

Other contributors will outline the state of recycling and waste reduction today in Scotland and how they are currently promoted.

This event is being held at the Christian Centre Glebe St Falkirk

29.10.07

Packaging Action in Falkirk

Some pictures from the Packaging action held at Morrisons supermarket in Falkirk.





26.9.07

Meeting Report Sept 2007 Part 1

The speaker this month was Shaun from Going Carbon Neutral Riverside. GCNR us a grass roots organisation based in teh riverside are of Stirling (right) who are working toward reducing emissions in their community.

Shaun covered the organisations involved and the work done so far in moving forward with the project. The group has been reasonably well funded and their work in producing a feasability study on a biomass district heating scheme is likely to be of value to other similar sized communities. Other work has included looking at improvements to insulation in buildings, promoting existing schemes to fund loft and cavity wall insulation, and the supply of energy saving light bulbs although the choice of free bulbs has limited uptake. Improvement in community lighting in closes has also been examined based on experience in Glasgow. One technical issue which has come up and will resonate in many areas of Sotlnais the difficulty in insulating older stone built homes.

The Going Carbon Neutral Riverside website has details including an excellent energy reduction diary .

25.9.07

PACKAGING ACTION DAY - Saturday 27th October 2007

FED UP WITH THE EXCESS PACKAGING YOU ARE TAKING HOME?

FRIENDS OF THE EARTH SCOTLAND IS HOLDING A PACKAGING ACTION DAY

On Saturday 27th October 2007 at 11am in Morrisons Store, Hope Street, Falkirk.

What is a Packaging Action day?

It is a day when people in the community travel to a local supermarket and present the Manager with what they consider to be excess waste from that supermarket.

What is the purpose of this day?

The purpose of this day is to raise awareness of the issue of excess packaging. We’re aiming to persuade supermarkets to make changes to their use of excessive food packaging and plastic, as well as encouraging them to use environmentally friendly practices.

Who can participate?

Anyone who is fed up with over-packaged goods can take part and it will only take an hour or so of your time!

What do I need to do to participate?

Contact your local Waste Prevention champion
(Corrie Cuthbertson) for more details

Join in and help make a difference!!!

20.8.07

Off to a bad start

Due to other commitments I missed a few stories through the last couple of months.

One interesting article according to edie.net

Brown downgrades climate committee
Source: www.edie.net

Not a promising start from our new leader.

More in the Guardian on the problems with biofuels.

Biofuels switch a mistake, say researchers

And finally some local news which has already been doing the rounds.

£18m waste plant plan for Polmont

Better news than an incinerator although a reduction in waste would be preferable to a technical fix that makes it seem that waste is a solution to another problem. It would be interesting to find our how much of the embodied energy in the waste is actually recovered by this process.

19.6.07

An Inconvenient Truth

There will be a showing of An Inconvenient Truth at Falkirk Town Hall on Tuesday the 26th
of June at 7.30pm.



FOE Falkirk will have a stall and a discussion has been arranged in the lounge after the film.

7.6.07

Cyberactions

A reminder of the cyberactions web page on FOE-Scotland.



Currently there are two actions related to climate change.



Demand a tougher Climate Bill

Write to your MP about the Climate Bill

CATE

CATE (Crap at the environment) is comedian Mark Watson's attempt to tackle environmental issues in his and the lifes of other members. The group and blog on myspace consists of discussion of issues, and the setting of personal challenges. These vary from the quite particular issues like buying no plastic for a week, spending no money for a day to doing something on the World Environment Day (did anyone notice) actions list. Although generally light hearted some of the discussion highlights just how difficult it can be to try and reduce our environmental impact.



CATE on myspace

21.5.07

Meeting - May

Friends of the Earth Falkirk meet on Monday 29th May, 7.30 at the Christian Centre, Falkirk. There will be a introduction to a new Friends of the Earth Scotland project by Rosiaina Browning FoE Scotland’s Waste Prevention Co-ordinator. The CREW tour will be about 'climate-friendly living'. The project will explain to members of the public what steps they can take to live climate friendly lives. At the same time it will explain what the government should be doing to make it easier for people to live greener lifestyles.

11.5.07

Carbon Offsetting

A lovely wee video someone posted a link to on the CAT bulletin board.

http://www.scenewon.co.uk/scene_movie.php?movie=485

www.cheatneutral.com

I don't think I've seen a simpler argument against carbon offsetting.

4.5.07

Falkirk Development Plan

As discussed at the last meeting the local plan will be available for objections this week from the 20th of April until the 1st of June.

It will be available on the council web site and also in local libraries, one stop shops and at Abbotsford house where it is also available for purchase at £32.75

30.4.07

April

There are no specific issues on the Agenda for this months meeting. As usual all are welcome, if you have an environmental issue you want to discuss come along.

26.4.07

Alternate weekly collection

There has been a lot of coverage in the press recently about alternate weekly rubbish collection schemes similar to that currently used in most of Falkirk. There seems to be a growing number of people raising concerns over smells, vermin, insects, and disease.

While I can understand some of the concerns, especially as this is much of the media this is sold as a simple story of council cutting services, in some areas concern is being replaced by a level of hysteria which is difficult to believe. I feel that the advantages of a separate bi-weekly recycling service isn't being communicated well to the public. AFAIK most of the schemes proposed would work in a similar way to our local system.

As this scheme has been in place in Falkirk for some time it might be worth while trying to pass our experiences of the scheme onto some who just can't believe that civilisation will survive only having a waste bin collected once a fortnight.

The following site seems to be one woman's battle against bi-weekly waste collection. The forum is free and no registration is required so I decided to share my positive experience of our waste collection system. Some how I don't think this is likely to persuade her, it may however make others who come across the site think.

http://www.weeklywaste.com/

I think there may be room here for some concerted action to try and get the good news story of AWC out to the public. My suggestion is where you find discussion add note of your experiences, I'm sure the debate will be going on in many blogs and discussion groups.

24.4.07

Climate change vs Peak oil

There has been an interesting discussion on the Transition Culture blog about the subjects of Climate change and Peak oil. There is often debate about whether these issues are complimentary and should be used together in campaigning for change or should be seperated. Generally the latter view is more common amoung those who campaign against Climate change and see Peak oil as either irrelevant or worse as a potential threat to action.

George Monbiot on peak oil and transition towns

There is some interesting counter arguments to George Monbiot's talk in the discussion that follows the post and also a more detailed response later by Chris Vernon of the oil drum europe.

10.4.07

Scottish Parliament Hustings*

Hosted by Friends of the Earth Falkirk & Falkirk Churches Together
On Thursday 19th April 2007 7-9pm at the Salvation Army Hall
Woodside Court (off High Station Road), Falkirk.
Chaired by Ian Scott.

Falkirk East candidates
  • Annabelle Ewing SNP
  • Nataliee Maver Liberal Democrats
  • Cathy Peattie Labour
  • Stephen O'Rourke Conservatives

Falkirk West candidates

  • Scott Campbell Conservatives
  • Callum Chonczuk LibDem
  • Dennis Goldie Labour Party
  • Michael Matheson SNP
Regional List candidates
  • David Robertson Green Party
  • Tom Selfridge Scottish Christian Party
  • Lynn Sheridan Solidarity
  • Mary Straub Scottish Socialist Party
*All the political parties standing in the Falkirk Area have been invited to represent their views.