Potato Day - Montford (near Shrewsbury)

Shropshire Organic Gardeners Potato Day February 9th 2013


Volunteers from Shropshire Master Composters will be promoting home composting at the forthcoming Shropshire Organic Gardeners annual Potato Day event at
Montford Village Hall (NOTE - new venue from 2012)

Sat Nav - SY4 1AD (or see map at bottom of page)

The event will be held from 9am till 3pm, and includes a variety of gardening related stalls
in particular potatoes of course but there will also be a huge range of vegetable seeds, onion sets, shallots and garlic on sale plus fruit trees, bushes and plants and herbs too.

The event is completely free admission, and there will be stands serving (potato themed) breakfasts and lunches.

Plenty of coffee and cake (and free home composting advice) is also available all day.

Why should I recycle?

This may seem obvious to us but when we're out promoting composting and recycling with Shropshire Master Composters some times people actually challenge us as to why we should recycle at all.  To which of course we say it is absolutely vital that everyone recycles absolutely everything that they possibly can.  It may not seem much for each household to recycle a few cans or bottles but there are about half a million people across Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin and so together we create thousands of tonnes of waste and as they say 'every little helps'. 

Fortunately this sort of query is a rarity and audits have shown that around 75% of Shropshire's residents regularly recycle which is good news, but its really important that we all recycle as much as possible.  But we have come up with a few good reasons to recycle.

1. Recycling is easy

Alot of people have gone to a huge effort to provide people with recycling collection services. So all you have to do is put the recycling out for collection on the right day and its all done for you. Once you get into the habit its really not much effort for everyone to use these services.

2. Recycling is green

If you don't recycle it means more of the earths resources will get used up making new products. Recycling also reduces the need for landfill sites which can be polluting.

3. Recycling creates jobs

Sorting recycling is a labour intensive process and as such research has shown that recycling creates ten times more jobs than landfilling waste does.

4. Recycling saves energy

Using recycled material instead of new saves energy e.g. recycling aluminium cans uses 20 times less energy than making cans from the raw material.

5. Recycling saves CO2

The UK’s current recycling activities save over 15 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents per year. That's the same as 10% of all emissions from the transport sector - so its like taking 3.5 million cars off the road!

6. Recycling saves money

Landfilling waste is very expensive and so if we don't recycle more it increases the cost of waste management - not a good use of public spending. 

7. Recycling helps the economy

Your recycling provides material for UK industry to make new things. Recycling supports high tech and manufacturing businesses which are especially important to the UK economy.

Evergreen gas

Evergreen Gas is a British engineering company based right here in Shropshire established to develop modular small-scale renewable energy anaerobic digestion plants for farms and communities. This is in response both to government policy and to market demand which appears keen to see smaller AD plants developed. The Evergreen Gas design is radical and will look unlike the traditional AD plants which we are used to seeing.

 
They have developed a range of small scale AD plants based on electricity outputs ranging from just 25kW to 250kW.  

They are building a pilot-prototype, known as BMAD (Barrett’s Mill Anaerobic Digester), in South Shropshire to test the concept and to carry out research into optimising performance. This pilot construction should be complete by the end of 2012.

BMAD will be used not only as a pilot AD plant but also for demonstrating the feasibility of small-scale biogas upgrade for vehicle use. To this end Evergreen Gas has already purchased the first of its VW Caddy Ecofuel CNG vans to use as the Company Vehicle.

You can follow progress on BMAD and other projects via their on-line monthly report 

Market Drayton Grow Your Own Event

Re-using old bananas

Bananas are the best selling fruit in the UK.  We eat tonnes of them every year, but sadly we also bin tonnes too!  Its tragic that people throw bananas away just because they are going a bit black.  They can still be eaten and that should always be our first priority to use up edible food for what it was intended for - eating!  Our top tip then is to use over ripe bananas for making banana bread, banana cake or smoothies.  Here is our favourite such recipe from those nice folk at Love Food Hate Waste
http://england.lovefoodhatewaste.com/recipes/banana-and-walnut-bread  If you cannot eat them however - here are some querky ideas to try to keep them out of landfill.


1. Teeth whitener: Rub your teeth for two minutes with a banana peel every time you brush and they will be pearly white.

2. Medicine: Rubbing some banana peel on the area of an insect bite can help alleviate the itch.

3. Bird feeder: If you enjoy watching birds and want to help them through the winter you dont need to buy in special bird food, they really like banana skins.

4. Conditioner: One of the best conditioners money can buy has just one single ingredient - simply – ripe bananas!

5. Anti-wrinkle mask: Avoid buying expensive and chemical laden face masks just rub blacken old bananas on your face three times a week and you’ll soon see the results in younger looking skin.

6. Shoe polish: no need to buy chemical cleaners, simply rub banana peels on the surface and then buff off when a soft cloth.

7. Compost!  Of course you can add bananas and banana peel to your compost heap and it breaks down really well and adds Nitrogen to the compost.

All these are great tips to use up banana peel but remember its important not to waste food in the first place, so visit www.lovefoodhatewaste.com for tips to ensure food doesnt get wasted in the first place.

 

Half of global food production never gets eaten

Half of the food produced in the world is thrown away every year even before it reaches a human mouth, says a new research by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IME). Alarmingly, around two billion tonnes of the world’s produce goes as waste every year, caused by poor infrastructure and storage facilities, over-strict sell-by dates, “get-one-free” offers, and finickiness of consumer.

Each year countries across the world produce four billion tonnes of food, but between 30-50% of this food never gets eaten, claims the IME’s ‘Global Food; Waste Not, Want Not’ report. In the UK, up to 30% of vegetable crops are not harvested because of their cosmetic imperfections, meaning they do not meet the consumers’ expectations of ‘good-looking’ food. The report says that half of the food bought in the UK and the US is thrown away before consumption.


On top of this we know that UK consumers throw away about 7 million tonnes of food waste each year so there is clearly huge scope for improvements in the entire system from farm to fork and this can save us all money and reduce the environmental impacts associated too.

Read the full report here http://www.imeche.org/Libraries/Reports/IMechE_Global_Food_Report.sflb.ashx 

What to do with old Yellow Pages

Its that time of year again - when the streets of Shropshire are awash with shrink wrapped Yellow Pages left on every doorstep of every home and business in the county!

Of course you can tear the old one up into pieces (if you are super strong) and compost it at home no problem.  They rot down really well and produce good quality compost if mixed with green garden waste and fruit and vegetable peelings.

Of course a slightly easier option is being plugged by the local councils who are encouraging people to recycle them in the kerbside recycling boxes along with your newspaper and magazines. 

Of course the best thing to do environmentally speaking though is to avoid all this unnecessary waste in the first place. Just use the websites instead!  To do your bit for the environment simply contact the companies and ask to be removed from their distribution lists.  For more information visit www.saynotophonebooks.org