Jellybrella: TTT's creative project for spring 2019

In Spring 2019 TTT is inviting everyone to join in with Jellybrella, our free and participatory community arts sustainabity project reusing waste to celebrate creativity, diversity, welcoming, wellbeing and making alongside others.  
We'll be popping up in February, March, April & May. All invited!

It's early days to be sharing this, but we've started to share info on Jellybrella so it's an opportunity to tell the full story on the blog. Yesterday we created an Instagram account - have a look.

Thanks loads to David Pitt for donating time to create our logo!

We're proud that the May 11th event will be part of the Wandsworth Arts Fringe. It will be a free family creative workshop for adults & children where we'll use scrap materials to create exciting sculptures. 

Specifically we'll be transforming the lost and found umbrellas of Tooting, getting together to enjoy some community making -  we'll all become artists making our community beautiful with stories & hands-on making together.

TTT's new series of practical & participative local 'Carbon Conversations' is running in April and May

Carbon Conversations is back! Our new series of six free meetings in April & May in SW16 - organised by TTT's Ben Cuddon. The six facilitated workshops enable individuals to explore how they can reduce their personal carbon footprints. The meetings bring together small groups of local people to discuss the areas of our lives where we can reduce our own carbon emissions: travel, food, domestic energy, consumption and waste.

A quote from a past participant: "The beauty of Carbon Conversations is the optimism, creativity and shared ideas"

During the six weekly sessions you'll discuss in a supportive atmosphere all the practicalities of making your own 'low-carbon lifestyle' changes. Making these changes is never one size fits all. 

Exploring your own situation, start point and preferences is so valuable and makes the series personal and practical. 
The meetings are well structured with a mix of games, activities and exercises.


Click here for the flyer and see below for summary details:
Venue: in SW16 near Streatham Common Station 
Timings: all meetings run from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm 
Dates: six Thursdays from April 19th to May 24th, one a week
Free: there is no fee to take part. The only cost is currently £14 for the workbook and learning materials, which TTT charges at cost. Sessions are led for free by TTT's trained Carbon Conversations facilitators. 

TTT has run over 10 series of Carbon Conversations since 2011. 
On average participants are able to identfy how to reduce their own carbon footprints by a third - by over 4 tonnes of carbon.
Wait a minute! 
What does 'four tonnes of carbon' mean? 
You may already be worried about shorthand & jargon. The way we facilitate the meetings means that you do not need to be an expert. 
Although it's a complex subject, we guarantee that by the end of the sessions you will learn useful new language and concepts and understand the practical elements of household carbon reduction.

This is a great place to start if you want to reduce your carbon footprint, meet some friendly and like-minded people and explore the topic as it affects you, rather than being lectured at!

As a participant said: 

"At the last session I don't think anybody wanted to leave!"

 Join us to find out how to reduce heat loss from your home!

 

It's International Compost Awareness Week! Here's lots of ways to get involved for 52 weeks & more

Over seventy years ago the 

organic agriculture pioneer 

Sir Albert Howard stated :

 "The health of soil, plant, 

animal and man 
is one and indivisible"

Taking care of the soil where we grow our food, making compost, reducing waste, healthy eating, exploring the 'circular economy' of growing plants, beginning to understand the web of beneficial organisms that exists below and above ground:  

our gardens, kitchens, eating and shopping preferences are the forums for all of these.

We can all learn more and make our own contributions even more valuable, right here in Tooting.

Wandsworth Borough Council has published a post in its website about food waste and composting, and we're copying some of the links here because they are accessible and practical ways being offered this spring and summer to learn more and share experience.

• Firstly, there's the Wandsworth Composting Project - all the details are here in this flier. TTT and other partners are contributing too.
• Secondly there's a practical workshop on composting skills on June 4th at Bramford Community Garden - here's the flier.
• Thirdly, there's the Grow Your Own at Home! gardening classes sponsored by Be Enriched, taking place near Tooting Broadway and starting on June 10th. Here's the flier.

In June and early July there are further public compost advice sessions planned - when the dates are fixed we'll share them.

Home composting may look like a dark art: 

these events will share the skills to demistify it for local residents.

The Wildlife Gardening Forum has a website that's a treasure house of experience, including a good web page on soil and fertility: click here to read it.

Home composters provide a community service as well as benefiting our own gardens by returning organic material to the soil. We remove kilos of kitchen waste per household every week from the borough's waste transport and processing. That borough service has a carbon cost as well as a financial cost - we can reduce both costs by working with our waste to recognise it as a valuable resource.

Building on the 2016 Tooting Foodival at home - home-made pasta recipe, plus seed sprouting

There are new posts on our Foodival blog (click on that link) which follow up on two of the fun events at this year's Tooting Foodival: celebrating local food together as a community.
One post gives Minestra Supper Club's recipe based on Elisabetta's pasta-making demonstration.
The other shares all the how-tos of our grow-you-own home seed-sprouting crusade.
Do enjoy both. Maybe you can combine the two...?
Let us know how you get on!

 

Both these posts celebrate local Foodival themes which have been London-wide campaigns in September: Urban Food Fortnight and Zero Waste Week
Click for more information.

Cleaning Up A Tooting Grot Spot

Earlier this month TTT organised a clean up of the Church Lane car park, which had embarrassingly been listed as one of the UK's Top Grot Spots.  With the help of Wandsworth Council this notorious dump was "cleaned for the Queen" and TTT held conversations about, well, anything really with a surprising number of passers by, in the hastily set up pop-up Living Room. Amazing what Lucy and Simon can fit in that van! 

TTT Team in the Pop-Up Living Room in Church Lane Car Park

And with Council Leader Ravi Govindia

More on this site from the Council here.  Do you know any other neglected areas of Tooting or around that could do with cleaning up?  Let us know.  It would be great to convert some unloved urban spaces into something the community can enjoy.

Conversations About Waste

Today, Saturday March 5th 12.30-3pm, join us in our colourful Pop Up Sitting Room in the Church Lane Car Park in Tooting, near the junction with Mitcham Road! TTT is hosting community conversations about reducing waste and how we make 'good change' in Tooting. Supported by Wandsworth Council, as part of the Keep Britain Tidy nation-wide celebrations to 'Clean for the Queen we'll be doing our bit to tidy up, save resources and cherish the place we live in. The nearby Al Farah cafe will be providing some provisions! Drop by! We would love to see you.

WEF - Rubbish, recycling and the circular economy

Wandsworth Environment Forum are holding a public meeting on Tue 19^th January (7pm, Room 123, Wandsworth Town Hall) covering such questions as:

• What can be recycled and where does it go after sorting?

• Is incineration of non-recyclables better than landfill?

• How is Wandsworth performing on waste processing and recycling? (Here are the government’s latest statistics for London: http://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/household-waste-recycling-rates-borough/resource/6f7bc5cd-217b-4eed-9450-af086f17908e) Unfortunately Wandsworth doesn’t compare well with the London and England rates.)

• Why doesn’t the council collect food waste?

• How might we do more together to minimise waste locally?

Sharon Ross from Western Riverside Waste Authority / Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) at Smuggler’s Way and Cllr Jonathan Cook, Wandsworth Council’s environment spokesman will be fielding such questions and no doubt there will be some lively discussion!

The concept of the circular economy will be presented by Gemma George from London Sustainability Exchange. As you may know, this is a new way of thinking about creating systems which re-use materials and effectively minimise waste and dramatically reduce our need for new raw materials. 

The idea is currently being promoted to the top end of the business world by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (founded by the former solo yachtswoman - see www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/).

The final discussion will look at how we, the community sector, and Wandsworth Council might work together to take forwards improvements to the current systems and any ideas for new initiatives.

TTT will be having a stall there and we hope to see you there! If can’t come to the meeting but have a question, please either sign up to Project Dirt Wandsworth Cluster, http://www.projectdirt.com/cluster/wandsworth/, or e-mail Vicki Carroll, WEF chair, on vickigoat@hotmail.com.

TTT receives Wandsworth Recycling Golden Ticket prize - THANK YOU Ms Osmond!

Wandsworth's Golden Ticket prize draw scheme means that every two months a properly-sorted bag of recycling - complete with a WBC golden ticket put there by the householder - is selected to win a £5000 prize. Half of the prize is a community pot which the winner donates to local community groups, and half is the householder's own reward.

Three weeks ago the first of four monthly draws took place, and Ms Osmond from Tooting selected Transition Tooting as one of the winners. We have received £1000, and so have two other organisations: FAST, a young people's project in Nine Elms and Share Community which offers training support for disabled people.

Charles from TTT; Michaela, Kerry and Jason from FAST; and Annie from Share Community



All of us in TTT are bowled over at being selected by Ms Osmond.   We hugely appreciate it, and will report back on what we do with these valuable funds in order to help make Tooting a more sustainable and happier place. Thank you again!

Ms Osmond's donation is extra generous because she added £500 of her personal prize to make the community pot a round £3,000 - so her three selected organisations each received £1,000.

NB this scheme continues for three more draws, so it is really worth householders popping their golden tickets into correctly-sorted recycling, and certainly worth community organisations registering as potential beneficiaries. To get more tickets or to register, click here on the WBC website or  here on the WRWA site 

Here we are joined by Michael Singham, WBC Waste Strategy Manager...and yes, a bag of recycling. 
The next draw is on the 18th December - Good Luck and Happy Recycling!

Wandsworth Oasis UPFest: Tuesday 3rd November

'It's all about waste'  That's how Gill Perkins, CEO of the Wandsworth Oasis charity, describes the driving theme behind UPFest: the Oasis event on Tuesday November 3rd:

All welcome to a fun and original evening: a catwalk and showcase of the joy of upcycling clothes and textiles. 
TTT are proud to be involved via Jeni Walker and her initiative Sustainable Making and Arts Tooting - SMArT. 

Location: the Oasis shop at 234-250 Mitcham Road, Tooting SW17 9NT
Timings: 5:30pm to 10:00pm on Tuesday 3rd November.
More UPFest details online here- entry by donation.

Jeni has been making scrap silk skirt scrunchies in World AIDS Day red - available on the night next week. Here she is last week in the decorated window of the new Oasis shop at Amen Corner in Tooting:

Oasis supports local people who are affected by HIV and have successful charity shops around the borough. Gill and the team work (tirelessly) to sell as many of the items donated as they can, but inevitably there is still so much that may be fated to become landfill. 

From today: the new 5p tax will be charged for single-use plastic shopping bags

The long-debated tax of 5 pence per single-use plastic bag becomes law from the 5th October in England, and applies to 'free' bags from larger shops and chains (enterprises employing more than 250 people). Smaller shops can also charge if they wish. The sums charged go into pots for charity...so there are some complex processes, rules, exceptions (and fines for non-compliance) behind the scenes. 
Read the government's guidance for retailers here.

So what? 
In 2013 we used 8 billion of these 'free' bags per year, just from UK supermarkets....with year-on-year totals growing.
Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland have already implemented this tax - the latest figures show that in Wales, the use of these short-life bags nationally has been reduced by 79% over 4 years.

The majority of these bags are instant waste, with an enormous cumulative impact in terms of costs of dealing with household and business rubbish, and blight from windswept litter all around us. 
Read TTT's earlier 2010 post about global plastic pollution here. 
They are derived from oil, a non-renewable resource. (There are other options such as bidoegradeable cornstarch).

Of course there is a carbon saving if bag use is reduced - savings in terms of materials used to make them, and their distribution, and the carbon costs of disposing of them. 
'Reduce' has much more positive impact than 're-use' or 'recycle' and is much more within our own control.

What does this mean for me?
There's a new article - click here - which summarises exactly that.

There's an easy option that can suit all pockets: 
use a textile 'bag for life'. 
Made of jute or cotton, they are recyclable when they finally pack up - cut up and composted, or used as mulch.

For a good short article about re-usable bags, click here.

Cloth bags also have a carbon cost in their own production and distribution; some long-life shopping bags are made of plastic textiles.

Who's Playing At This Year's Foodival?

Two singer songwriters, two bands, a ukulele combo plus some alternative making & carnival will light up this weekend's Tooting Foodival at the Samaj Hall.  But can you guess who the performers are? Clues below:

Head over to the Foodival blog for the full details of this great line up. 

We look forward to seeing you at Mushkil Aasaan on Saturday for the vegetable and fruit collection or for the food and entertainment at Samaj Hall on Sunday. Or Both! Don't forget to bring your plate!

#seedtofeast

Reducing Waste for Foodival

In today's news we learn that 90% of seabirds have eaten plastic and are likely to retain some in their gut. It's pretty horrendous that so much waste plastic ends up polluting our oceans and we will be highlighting waste at this year's Tooting Foodival. 


It is easy to forget that plastic comes largely from fossil fuels, that diminishing supply of 300m year old organic matter [see US Dept of Energy] that currently powers the global economy. 


An event we ran nearly five years ago, Plastic from Oil Well to Ocean via Tooting, looked in more detail at this topic and, perhaps surprisingly, is by far the most read post in the history of this blog!  Some of our readers evidently think this topic is important. 

As usual, as part of Foodival, we will aim to give the south west London public a taste of locally grown, locally cooked, low food mile, tasty food.  But we really want to minimise the waste we create as much as possible and especially waste from plastic that is so harmful to our environment, the natural world and ultimately us.  So, can you help us?

This year we are asking all festival attendees to BRING YOUR OWN plate and cutlery to the Foodival.  That way we will have less waste, fewer CO2 emissions and a lighter environmental footprint.  Yes it might be a bit of a hassle and something we are not used to doing, but also is this small change that hard to accomplish?  We hope that as many of you as possible will try to join in with this initiative.  We will have biodegradable plates & cutlery on hand as a back up, but there is still an environmental impact inherent in any product manufacturing, so we will be charging for these! 

So the message is please BRING YOUR OWN or suffer the £1 a plate!

'The future is dappled in the present': green sky thinking now

This post is a round-up of eight imaginative projects and developments that are happening now, in Tooting and beyond. 
It's a selection of what we've spotted in the past month.

My title comes from Paul Allen of Zero Carbon Britain at the Centre for Alternative Technology, one of the contributors to Playing for Time (see below). Paul's natural-world image means that the opportunities for making a sustainable future are all around us...if we look.

We hope there is something here to catch your interest and inspire on the Bank Holiday. 
(Plus, in three posts from last week: there's our plastic bottle greenhouse to build in the garden 1200-1600 this Thursday and Friday, and then Restart and the first Tooting Field Day later in April.)

1  Playing for Time
Lucy Neal, who founded TTT in 2008, has been spending the past two years writing Playing for Time, her book about making art as if the world mattered.
Playing for Time joins the dots between key drivers of change in energy, finance, climate change, food and community resilience – and offers ‘recipes for action’ for readers to try.

It's a wonderful collection of how artists round the globe are at the same time imagining the future and working in the real world on what matters to us all.  

The book is not only for artists, and one of the points of the book is to encourage us to look out and across our silos of specialism. 
Dip into the 400 pages...you'll be hooked!

It's Lucy's book, and it's also a collaboration with sixty other contributors...so it's a great representation of the spirit of joint action, connecting with others and local solutions that we can share as 'Transition' values. And yes, there is quite a lot about Tooting in the book!

Playing for Time was published last week, and TTT blog readers can order the book from the publishers now, and get £5.00 off the price.
To order, enter this discount code: ONPFT2015 at Oberon Books.
Offer valid until 31 Dec 2015...but no need to wait until then.

2  Energy from the kinetic force of footsteps (or footballers) 
“My idea was a floor tile that would convert the kinetic energy from a footstep into electricity" says engineer Robert Kemball-Cook about his invention that provides off-grid power anywhere. It's expensive now - but "We are establishing a whole industry that never existed before.”  
Read about Pavegen here

The Anti-Upgrading Exhibition - at the Lightbox

'Our enormously productive economy demands we make consumption a way of life'.

This is a quote from 1955 on the wall of an exhibition now showing at the Lightbox Gallery in Woking.

A toilet brush is the unlikely centre-piece of the exhibition.  Its description reads ‘This is a well designed toilet brush from Addis bought in the late ‘80’s when our house was built, and still as good as new! It still performs perfectly.... it has probably been used over 30,000 times.... (This brush has been very thoroughly cleaned!)

The exhibition 'Waste Not...' runs (free) until 8^th April at the gallery (30 mins on the train from Clapham Junction or Wimbledon).  It is an exhibition of old appliances and other objects that are still used - or at least have been kept in the hope of being used!  
It shows the objects themselves and short films of their owners talking about them.  It's all about maintaining things - it is the anti-upgrading exhibition! 

On 28^th March, the South London Makerspace and Restart Project held a fixing and mending workshop at the gallery where they showed members of the local community how to fix their electrical and electronic items, sharpen old saws and tools and mend self-assembly furniture with new parts printed on a 3-D printer!

If you are interested in getting involved locally with mending, fixing or making - or just have something you'd like to fix - come along to our Tooting Restart Project workshops  at Mushkil Aasaan, 220 - 222 Upper Tooting Road, SW17 7EW (next to Nandos)

Sat 25th April - 2.30 - 5.30

Sat 11th July - 2.30 - 5.30

Sat 26th September - 2.30 - 5.30