What we do today and everyday helps form the kind of world we want to live in. Reducing our carbon emissions is ever more important: Working together we can achieve more – and we’re here today and every day to help you!
Here are some really great ideas – chose one (or two) for Earth Day and every day!
Eat less meat and dairy – saving money and carbon!
Leave the car at home – walk or cycle or bus and feel good!
Draughtproof the house – you’ve always wanted to and we can help!
Turn the thermostat down 1% – saving money, fuel and money too!
Shun single-use plastic – stop buying bottled water of coffee in a cup?
Join a local ‘Wild’ group and make your space more green & friendly?
What’s it all about? We all know we need to reduce our carbon footprint, don’t we? We can see climate change is real, that there are global issues and local concerns. Can we afford to do nothing, or can we really make some changes ourselves and have an impact?
Can you make a difference? What can you do to really reduce carbon, save money, and equally importantly how will you feel if you do make changes? How much difference can you really make as a person, and how easy will it be? We can help you!
Introducing the 10% Challenge: Understanding your personal and household’s carbon footprint, finding tools and approaches to become more aware, then being given plans, approaches, and support to reduce your footprint year on year is what the 10% Challenge is all about.
Tell me more?
We will help you calculate your carbon footprint today.
Prioritize changes you can make (how easy, how expensive, what return).
Build a plan with you to make a difference (travel, food, reduce/reuse, …)
Show you how to keep assessing, planning, and making real changes!
What next? Come and see us and get some great ideas to start your journey and make a difference now. Sign up with us to get more help. We are open Thursdays to Sundays (here)
Come to our Anniversary Party: we’ll have our team there ready to talk with you AND we’ll have special guests including RBWM’s Karen Davies (Cabinet Member for Climate Change, Biodiversity) and her colleagues signing up to and taking the 10% Challenge with you!!
Saturday 20th April 10:00 – 13:00 in the ECO Action Hub Maidenhead
You can’t fix what you don’t understand – luckily, the Climate Fresk turns climate science into a game! Played by over 1M people worldwide, this collaborative workshop allows you to understand the essential issues of climate change in order to take action.
Based on IPCC reports, you’ll learn how the climate functions – as well as the consequences of its disruption. Whether you’re a novice or an expert, you’ll learn a lot in just three hours.
How it works: The workshop is based on a 42-card game.
Each card represents an element, a cause or a consequence of climate change.
In teams, guided by facilitators, you have to find the cause-effect relationship between the different components of climate change.
Collective intelligence will get you from one set of cards to the next!
This step-by-step reconstruction provides keys to understand the complexity and develop an overview of climate change.
All you need to bring is your joy, energy, and willingness to learn! Just make sure to arrive on time so we can start the workshop with the whole group, and plan to stay for the full 3 hours (there will be a short break in the middle).
Tickets: offered at £10, £5, or free … we welcome a donation of £10.00, £5.00 for Students and unemployed, but no donation may also be fine. ALL the registration details you need are in the event link.
May we help you to be GREENER in 2024? Here are 7 great ideas to help you have a greener cleaner 2024. Reduce your carbon, increase nature, and save money this year!
Travel can be fun: Let the train take the strain and make your journey an enjoyable part of the holiday. Stop enroute and enjoy an interesting city. www.seat61.com has lots of advice about how to reach places quickly or scenically and how to book. www.railbookers.co.uk does it all for you!
A walk in nature walks the soul back home: Spending more time in nature can benefit both your mental and physical well-being. Doing things like growing food or flowers, or exercising outdoors can have lots of positive effects. Join your local wildlife group to get more involved. Wild Maidenhead www.wildmaidenhead.org.uk or Wild Cookham www.wildcookham.org.uk or all the ‘Wilds’ are listed here.
More joyful than ‘dry’ January! Veganuary is also much more worthwhile. www.veganuary.com will send you their celebrity cookbook, meal plans, recipes and lots more – all for free! If not for all January then try 1 more veggie or vegan meal than normal.
Upskill to upcycle? Try something new and celebrate new skills – like upcycling your unwanted furniture? Pop into our ECO Action hub and look at the items on display by our two associates for inspiration! You can buy them too!
Use that windowsill: A salad/ herb pot will give you fresh herbs for months. ECO Action will have seed and seedling swaps in the early Spring. Maidenhead Veg Growers Facebook site offers valuable help.
‘New’ Clothes are so ‘yesterday’: Pre loved sites like www.vinted.co.uk and local charity shops will make you an individual and save you money. The ECO Action Repair Cafe can help you make fabric repairs.
Save parking costs! Discover your local cycle routes. Cycling makes you fitter and saves money on petrol (no parking costs either). Maidenhead Cycle Hub will service your bike or sell you a reconditioned one www.cyclehub.org.uk/workshop!
Here is a file to download of all of these if you want to have a keepsake: HERE
Choose one, choose two, … or more! Keep a track of them, come into the Hub and let us know how you are doing! And a Happy Green New Year to everyone from the ECO Action Hub WAM!
“Our Positive Tipping Points are bringing change to the climate crisis”.
New research at the University of Exeter highlights the growing threat of “tipping points” that could accelerate the climate crisis. They’re also identifying sources of hope: Positive Tipping Points. That sounds like good news?
We have identified Positive Tipping Points in a range of areas from agriculture and ecosystem regeneration to politics and public opinion. Some Positive Tipping Points are already in progress. Others are yet to be triggered. Understanding these areas and working to identify the opportunities could allow us to activate Tipping Points that could combine into cascades of positive change.
This is Parisa Wright’s TEDTalk last month. She’s talking about her journey to a more sustainable lifestyle and what she is now doing to help her family & her community.
Living Sustainably: Her story and the journey she has been on is so well described and emotionally powerful. She talks about how living sustainably to benefit her community and her children is all about saving money.
The recent illegal tactics adopted by Just Stop Oil and other such groups have split public opinion and sent news media like the Daily Mail into a proper ragin’ fury. Continual photos of long traffic queues on the M25 were accompanied by stories of key workers such as nurses who were unable to get to hospitals, relatives who could not attend funerals etc.
There is no doubt these activities caught the public’s notice, but left many feeling alienated from the cause because of the seeming unfairness of the results.
Photo: Proper Content
Intelligently, Chris Packham does not start by taking sides in the debate. He just asks the question: in the ever-worsening environmental crisis is it time to go beyond lawful protest into civil disobedience and illegal activities?
The resulting programme is more of a think-piece than a documentary. If the legal and governmental structures we have are proving unresponsive to the climate crisis, there is a case to consider more direct action. As we know, it can work (suffragettes) but it doesn’t always (anti-abortion protests in US).
Tragically, Packham partly blames himself for the current situation: as a high profile conservationist and spokesperson on environmental issues, he has failed to bring about the changes needed.
One of the most anguished parts of the programme is Chris Packham talking about his intense disappointment when attending COP 26 in Glasgow – the only truly global mechanism for dealing with these challenges. There, despite consistent and alarming evidence about the climate emergency, decisions were ducked, agreements were botched and national financial interest constantly put ahead of global responsibility – encouraged by the highly-paid and persuasive voices in the fossil fuel lobby. So we wait and watch to see what comes out of COP 27.
We rate this programme very highly and encourage you watch it if you haven’t already (link here). Not everyone liked it, with the Daily Mail reporting “Suella Braverman slams Chris Packham”. Well, that’s that sorted out then.
The BBC’s Planet Earth III is now on television and iPlayer.
Presented by Sir David Attenborough it’s a fascinating journey to the far reaches of our planet. It follows some of the world’s most amazing species, telling extraordinary stories that are dramatic, thrilling, funny and sometimes heart-breaking, but always full of hope.
For anyone who cares about the climate and biodiversity … it’s a must-watch!
Discover the secrets to greener gardening, embrace the power of weeds in your garden, and gain essential planting tips to thrive in scorching summers. Join Peter Gibbs in a thought-provoking conversation with the ECO Action Hub as he unveils the single most impactful change you can make in your garden to combat climate change.
🎧 Listen to the full interview here (5:20 mins): here
Peter Gibbs
Peter Gibbs, a well-known figure from BBC Weather and the chair of Radio 4’s beloved Gardeners’ Question Time, along with his contributions to BBC TV’s technology program Click and Radio 4’s environment series Costing the Earth, will guide you towards a greener, more sustainable garden and a healthier planet. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to make a difference!
This enlightening discussion is just one installment in our “Climate Conversations” series, brought to you by the ECO Action Hub.
Discover the secrets to greener gardening, embrace the power of weeds in your garden, and gain essential planting tips to thrive in scorching summers. Join Peter Gibbs in a thought-provoking conversation at the ECO Action Hub as he unveils the single most impactful change you can make in your garden to combat climate change.
🎧 Listen to the full interview here (5:20 mins): here
Peter Gibbs
Peter Gibbs, a well-known figure from BBC Weather and the chair of Radio 4’s beloved Gardeners’ Question Time, along with his contributions to BBC TV’s technology program Click and Radio 4’s environment series Costing the Earth, will guide you towards a greener, more sustainable garden and a healthier planet. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to make a difference!
This enlightening discussion is just one installment in our “Climate Conversations” series, brought to you by the ECO Action Hub.
