Great Big Green Week - Community Gardens: beyond gardening
There is so much more to community gardens and allotments than growing food.
Here are just a few of the many positives that come from being part of a community garden or allotment:
Skill sharing
Community gardens welcome people with varying gardening experience. From beginners to skilled gardeners, everyone can get involved and learn lifelong tips along the way. Or if gardening is not for you, there are other ways people can get involved and share useful skills, including providing land, tools, running workshops or building planters and sheds.
Building relationships with neighbours
Community gardens can provide a space where people can work together towards a collective goal. Working alongside neighbours to create a beautiful space is a great way to interact and build relationships and overcome issues such as loneliness and isolation.
Spending time outdoors
Having a garden of your own isn’t the reality for everyone in the community. Community gardens provide a safe space where it encourages people to be outside and to enjoy local nature on their doorstep.
Self-sufficiency and saving money
Families and individuals are able to grow healthy and fresh food for a very little amount of money. A sense of achievement through eating what you grow it is always a bonus too.
Green previously underused land
Land offered for community gardens is often brownfield sites, meaning it was previously used land or land that was underused. Transforming these places to biodiverse havens can really brighten up urban areas.
Improves mental and physical health
Being outside and in nature can make us feel happier, that’s a fact. Gardens can be relaxing, even looking at green space can help people de-stress. It is also a great way to keep physically fit and healthy without being too strenuous.
Community gardens
Did you know Elmbridge has numerous community gardens and allotments, all contributing to a more biodiverse borough? Find out where they are and how to get involved.
Great big Green Week: forget fast fashion
Great Big Green Week is here! If you want to do your bit for the environment, you might consider giving your shopping habits a makeover.
Fast fashion is not sustainable. With 100 billion items of clothing produced each year, fashion is the third largest manufacturing industry in the world.
With that in mind, you may be surprised to know that the average person only wears 20% of their clothes much of the time. That’s a lot of unused clothes gathering dust!
Fast fashion is a relatively new concept and can cause negative impacts for the planet, causing more damage than aviation and shipping combined. The industry can also have ethical implications with exploited workers and animals harmed.
Fast fashion can also cause environmental issues including textile dying contaminating our waters and excessive water usage in the manufacturing process (2,000 gallons for a typical pair of jeans!).
Although fast fashion may appear cheap, the lower quality items often do not last as long. Discolouring, shrinking or damages are more frequent, forcing you replace these items much sooner, resulting in an endless cycle.
The good news is there are many things you can do to reduce your impacts and here are a few to start your journey:
Someone’s waste is someone’s treasure
Elmbridge has many pre-loved clothes shops and is a great way to avoid fast fashion. Check out local charity shops and clothes swap events nearby or have a look at the Molesey Clothing Exchange.
Renting clothes
Renting clothes has come a long way and is perfect for keeping your wardrobe fresh, especially for one off occasion outfits.
Choose sustainable materials
Be a conscious consumer and look for sustainable materials when you are shopping for clothes. Organic materials that can decompose quickly like cotton, linen and wool are much more environmentally friendly in comparison to materials such as polyester, nylon or acrylic.
Shop locally
Try and find fashion items that are made and sold nearby. Buying items that are made locally reduces emissions as the items do not have to travel as far from the manufacturer to the consumer.
Find more information about reusing, repurposing and recycling in Elmbridge
8 June - Celebrating Great Big Green Week
Great Big Green Week is back from 8 to 16 June. This year, the UK’s biggest celebration of tackling climate change and protecting nature is inviting us to switch our habits and consider community swaps to help create a better tomorrow.
Making greener swaps is easier than you think with the many local initiatives available to help us live a greener life and look after the environment:
Clothes swaps
Looking for new holiday clothes? We all know that endless manufacturing of new clothes comes with a heavy environmental price. Also, what to do with our old clothes?
Thankfully, there are many ways to recycle clothes locally. If they are good enough to wear again, there is the option to donate them to your favourite charities where they will find a new lease of life.
Community clothing swaps are also a great solution: you will save money and help someone in your community who needs them.
If your clothes aren’t in good enough condition for swapping or donating, our waste and recycling partner Joint Waste Solutions (JWS) have a free weekly textile collection in Elmbridge. They may reuse some of your donations or will recycle them into padding for chairs and car seats, cleaning cloths and industrial blankets.
Elmbridge Repair Cafés
We all have broken items sitting in the back of drawers or in a garden shed. Most of them could be repaired instead of ending up in landfill. Thanks to the skills of their volunteers, The Oxshott Net Zero and the Walton-on-Thames Repair Cafes can fix a vast array of items and give them a second life. Why not check them out?
Green skills swaps
The Great Big Green Week this year is also inviting people to swap environmental knowledge and skills. We are lucky that those skills are widespread in Elmbridge where most residents are keen gardeners and advocates of the outdoors.
How do you feel about swapping those green skills to boost your local biodiversity and help create a more sustainable environment for all? You could:
Volunteer for your local environmental community groups
Help create a brighter, more welcoming neighbourhoods with increased biodiversity in local villages and green spaces by joining in-bloom groups and community gardens or allotments.
Get involved in local conservation tasks
You can do your bit for your local countryside sites, by giving a hand to the countryside team with habitat protection and light woodland management. Find out about the regular work parties across the borough.
Become an Elmbridge sustainability champion
Support your local community sustainability groups to take positive changes to lower the borough’s emissions and increase the borough’s biodiversity.
Help us tackle the decline in biodiversity
As part of our climate emergency response, we are looking at diverse ways to manage our green open spaces. You can do your bit by identifying specific areas for tree planting or where to create nature corridors and let us know at greenspaces@elmbridge.gov.uk
Alternatively you can support Surrey County Council’s pledge to plant 1.2 million trees by 2030 across the whole county.
Find a Great Big Green Week event near you
To get more information on how to get involved in climate change initiative, check out local events.
Contact
If you have any questions, email communications@elmbridge.gov.uk
Sign up to receive the residents’ newsletter