Birmingham Friends of The Earth newsletter - Aug-Sep 2009

Insulation being retrofitted into an old house.

On The Home Front New homes are becoming much better in terms of energy efficiency and insulation values. Whilst this is good news, the UK still has a massive amount of existing poorly insulated homes that are going to be around for a long time to come - in fact 80% of the homes we will have in 2050 are standing today.

It is estimated that there are 9 million un-insulated cavity walls and 6.3 million lofts with poor or no insulation. In 2007 British Gas stated that: “As a result of poor insulation, ÂŁ1 in every ÂŁ3 spent heating homes in the UK is wasted....

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3 - Campaigns Digest 4

- Warehouse

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- BFOE at Glastonbury Festival

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- Cut the Carbon

10 - Stop Climate Chaos 12

Cover Article - On The Home Front

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- Guest Article - Bull Ring Open Market

17 - Organic Beer Festival 17 - FoE Local Groups Conference 18 - 24 Carrot Farmers Market 19 - Rail Consultation 20 - Volunteer in the Spotlight 21

- Diary

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- Membership Form

23 - Contacts 2

Campaigns Digest Transport 20’s Plenty for Birmingham – This movement is gathering momentum with local residents in Billesley now getting involved and going door-todoor in their neighbourhoods to get letters signed calling for a default 20mph speed limit on residential roads. There has been positive coverage in the press on this issue with statistics showing how well it has worked in other areas. We have been out on stalls at events for National Bike Week in various parks around the area, Balsall Heath carnival and Kings Heath farmers market. We’ve now got around 400 letters signed and hope to double this by the end of the summer.

Better Buses for Birmingham – This has mainly been a back-to-basics campaign of going to bus stops and talking to people about the quality of bus services, then getting them to sign letters calling for a Statutory Bus Partnership to drive improvements on all services in the region. However, there is also an epetition and facebook group for this campaign.

Local Rail – We continue to push for the reopening of the long-promised Camp Hill line to link Balsall Heath, Moseley and Kings Heath to the rest of the rail network and we also participated in a public meeting with Kings Heath and Moseley Forum on 15th July. It is now imperative that we prove the amount of public

support so these stations are included as a priority in Centro’s policy on West Midlands rail.

Local Shops & Food With the tireless work of Mary Horesh and other members of the group we have been extremely successful in getting lots of people behind the campaign. At stalls, festivals and farmers’ markets the message of planet-friendly farming has been well received and often we run out of postcards before the end of an event. The issue of food seems to be at the forefront of the public’s thinking about the environment right now.

Energy & Climate Change Get Serious about CO2 – the group have been developing a strategy to tailor this campaign to the specific nature of Birmingham City Council.

Other FoE groups are asking their councils to commit to 40% cuts by 2020, but we’ve already done better than that in getting Birmingham to commit to 60% by 2026. We are now working with the Council to ensure that the right decisions are taken to enable these targets to be met.

Stop Climate Chaos Copenhagen This campaign is just starting to get off the ground with the aim of making the march in London on 5th December the biggest ever show of support for action on combating climate change before the crucial

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Campaigns Digest talks in Copenhagen. This group led by Phil Burrows will be looking to increase awareness of this locally and fill loads of coaches with marchers.

Faith and Climate Change This project is helping people to improve the energy efficiency of their homes with free home energy checks available. Details of this are available on the Friends of the Earth and Faith and Climate

All change at renovation station The main parts of our building ‘The Warehouse’ is over a 100 years old.

Its energy efficiency is low (although it is higher than most buildings of its age), the roofs are leaking, there is limited disabled access, it is looking a bit shabby and we don’t use all of the space to its best potential.

This is why we invited everybody who knows us to attend a ‘Building Away Day’ last year and why we have a 1:50 model of ‘The Warehouse’ in our reception. We are trying to get as many opinions on our future layout as possible and the model is a great tool for visualising how the

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Change websites. Future projects include a Peace Garden in Cannon Hill Park for which we are hoping to secure funding for a landscape architect and ask people to build it as a “climate change resistant” garden. There will also be events in September (18th) on Climate Justice in collaboration with the Jubilee Debt Campaign and for One World Week in October.

Joe Peacock

building can be used and for getting feedback on different options. Guided by architecture graduate, Martin Harrison, the walls of the model can be moved, its roofs taken off and its stairs turned around so different layouts can be explored. Martin is recording the results and will collate them in a report so that Birmingham Friends of the Earth’s elected management committee can decide on a final design.

Everybody in the consultation has agreed on a few major improvements: Whilst the upstairs cafe is quirky and ringing the bell to get in feels very homely, there are issues with accessibility, opening times, store

rooms. Moving the cafe downstairs can solve all these problems in one fell swoop.

After trying to figure out a way in which the One Earth Shop and The Warehouse Cafe can work to promote each other better, Martin came up with the idea of the ‘Internal Street’.

Running through the centre of the building, the street will allow people to walk in through the cafe and out through the shop or vice-versa.

Disabled access has long been an issue that ‘The Warehouse’ has performed badly on. Our Victorian structure and lack of finances have

meant that we have not been able to make the building fully accessible. The design overcomes this with an easyambulating staircase and platform lift.

Whilst all these measures offer great improvements for the future of ‘The Warehouse’, we still don’t have funding for them. We do have a vision though, and we will keep on pushing until it is realised.

For more information on how you can be part of this project, please contact me using the details at the back of the newsletter.

Phil Burrows

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The shops and companies here have all come together because they are dedicated to working towards a healthier, more organic city.

So if you want to help make Birmingham a cleaner, greener place to live, or you just want to eat some good vegetarian food, then come to The Warehouse and see what’s going on.

SPROCKET Cycles

Sales, service, repairs, accessories. Bikes also built to your own specifications.

Established over 15 years ago in the Friends of the Earth Building in Birmingham The Warehouse Café has a reputation as a quality provider of vegetarian and vegan food in Birmingham.

“Real people serving real food with local, organic and fair trade leading the way” Guardian Unlimited.

To see the delicious menu go to www.thewarehousecafe.com For bookings and enquires Telephone 0121 633 0261 Email info@thewarehousecafe.com

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Open Wednesday to Saturday, 10am-4pm 0121 633 0730

• 100% vegetarian and vegan • A Large selection of organic and fairtrade products, most supplied and delivered by a workers co-operative • Vegan owners - no meat or dairy products sold Open Monday to Saturday, 10am-5pm

BFOE at Glastonbury Festival Did you know that the biggest music festival of the year is also Birmingham FOE’s biggest fundraiser of the year? For the past fifteen years, volunteers from Birmingham FOE and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament have been working at Glastonbury Festival providing the “Property Lock-Up” service.

It’s like a coat check service at a bar, but on a huge scale – just like everything else at Glastonbury!

Music festivals are a great way to enjoy the summer, but unfortunately they also attract criminals who prey on festival-goers dancing the night away. Every year we hear stories of people who have had valuables stolen from their tents. Particularly bold thieves have even been known to quietly open tents while the occupants were asleep inside! To keep people’s belongings safe, the Property Lock-Up service was created with secure, well-lit facilities in each of the main campgrounds staffed 24 hours a day by our volunteers.

word about Friends of the Earth campaigns, with “Fix the Food Chain” being the focus of this year’s efforts.

If you’re going to a music festival this year, don’t leave valuables unattended in your tent. From rucksacks and trolleys to wallets and car keys, we watch over items big or small, keeping them safe and dry 24 hours a day.

See www.festivallockups.org.uk for more details and look for the Property Lock-Up this summer at Larmer Tree, Big Chill, Green Man, and End of the Road!

By Brian Lucas

This year, more than fifty BFOE volunteers made the annual trek to spend a week camping and working at Glastonbury. It’s a great way to be part of the action and meet people at the festival. Although the service is free of charge, grateful festival-goers dropped more than £1700 into our donation tins, making it our biggest fundraiser of the year. We also spread the

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Cut the Carbon – Your Ideas Birmingham Friends of the Earth has done much to persuade the City Council to adopt a target of reducing Birmingham’s carbon emissions by 60% by 2026. The Big Ask campaign pressed all of Birmingham’s MPs to back the UK-wide Climate Change Act last year. Our city clearly has the chance to be a flagship in the Low Carbon Revolution, as it was in the (coal-based) Industrial Revolution. Now we need everyone’s ideas about what specific changes are needed to clean up the city’s use of energy.

The Local Strategic Partnership (Be Birmingham) includes the City Council, health service, other public bodies, business and the voluntary sector. It has made a first step in Getting Serious about CO2 by adopting the ambitious target, but has so far only produced a Strategic Framework document, which is thin on what actual changes will be needed to achieve real reductions.

Some ‘progress’ has been made, mainly due to the credit crunch and recession in 2008/09, which means less waste, less traffic, less energy being used in the city. The danger is that meeting the first year’s targets for carbon reduction could justify inaction. If real changes to how we operate are not made, and the economy picks up again, so will CO2. What is really needed is new and different low carbon behaviours

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to appear, including new incentives, technology and organisation that can change the energy base of society.

The danger is that “going green” is something that public bodies, businesses and individuals will think they cannot afford in difficult times The recession means falling income for public bodies, with less business rates, but a rising demand for services. The danger is that “going green” is something that public bodies, businesses and individuals will think they cannot afford in difficult times. Be Birmingham might even be tempted to fall back on massaging the statistics (!?).

Birmingham Friends of the Earth believes that cutting carbon can be a stimulus to cutting the current waste of resources and money. It will include turning things down, and doing less in some areas.

Therefore, carbon reduction does not need to cost more, overall.

Investment should be justified from

future savings. There is plenty of scope to create new jobs and businesses. Birmingham should be moving into the low carbon products and services needed for the future, bearing in mind Peak Oil, and the rising price of all energy, food and commodities.

Large organisations tend to continue in the ways that they are used to. New ideas often have to come from the outside. This is where the 400 members of Birmingham Friends of the Earth come in…

Birmingham should be moving into the low carbon products and services needed for the future, bearing in mind Peak Oil, and the rising price of all energy, food and commodities Take Action You now have the chance to suggest specific measures that would ‘cut the carbon’ in Birmingham. If

everyone can suggest three ideas, then we will have a wonderful ideas bank to present for greening the city.

The areas where much could be done locally are: Housing – We need to make it more energy efficient (bearing in mind that most homes for the future have already been built and that 70 per cent of homes are owner occupied).

Transport - We need to make cars emit less pollution and encourage people to use cars less, i.e. technical and behavioural changes.

Energy - We need to move away from importing fossil fuels. What sources of energy for low carbon are available in Birmingham that can be developed?

For each idea, please think about how it could cut carbon, who would implement it and how the change might be paid for, but also what benefits it would bring. You can write your suggestions down and drop them into the Warehouse at 54 Allison St, Digbeth, or email them to campaigns@ birminghamfoe.org.uk You can also come to the next meeting of the Get Serious Campaign action group on 24th August.

By John Newson

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Stop Climate Chaos - The Wave Between the 7th and 18th of December the future of our planet and billions of its inhabitants will be decided at the 15th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP15).

The 196 countries that are attending will agree on how to keep global temperatures from rising above 2oC, which is believed by the G8 group of industrialised nations to be the temperature at which global warming becomes uncontrollable.

There is still a long way to go over the next 5 months, with India and China are still refusing to sign up to a deal that will cut world carbon dioxide emissions by 50% by 2050 even though the G8 have agreed

to cut their emissions by 80%. This is because the G8 are not offering enough support for countries to develop in a sustainable way.

This is why Birmingham Friends of the Earth has teamed up with 100s of other organisations under the Stop Climate Chaos banner With only 20 weeks (from the time this article was written) until the meeting, we need to be asking our governments for a good deal, in which we properly support developing countries. This is why Birmingham Friends of the Earth has teamed up with 100s of other organisations under the Stop Climate Chaos banner. All of our efforts will culminate in one big march (also known as ‘The Wave’) against climate chaos on the 5th of December.

By showing public support for an international climate deal, our politicians and diplomats will be given the extra incentive they need

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to offer developing countries a deal that is good enough for them to accept.

In Birmingham we are working with many others to raise awareness of the event in December. In the two months before the event, we intend to sell tickets for coaches to the event in order to get as many people there as possible.

If you can help us to raise awareness, then please get in contact. We will be holding stalls, speaker events and flyering.

In Birmingham we are working with many others to raise awareness of the event in December.

Phil Burrows

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On The Home Front Continued from front page The current trend of focusing on the standards of new build housing fails to address the issue.” That’s a lot of wasted energy, wasted money, and excess carbon emissions.

So what can we do to remedy this situation? Well, we should be getting insulating, after all energy efficiency is the cheapest and easiest way to reduce carbon emissions. It also has a raft of other additional benefits - social, environmental and economic. The primary one is reducing energy use, and this then results in reduced carbon emissions, reduced reliance on fuel imports, reduced fuel bills, and lifting people out of fuel poverty. Furthermore, the fitting of insulation also aids job creation through both its installation and production, so these would also be ‘green’ jobs. Given the longevity of an insulation installation, all of this would be achieved by this pay once solution.

Green Job Creation In Birmingham alone, if the City Council insulated buildings and fitted green energy systems, it could create 433 ‘green’ jobs, according to independent research released by social enterprise and environment experts Carbon Descent. This new research analyses the manpower required to insulate homes and businesses and install green energy in buildings – which are two of the key ways in which the Council could achieve

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its policy of reducing carbon emissions by 60% by 2026. New jobs could be available as loft laggers and insulation specialists, but could also extend to architects, plumbers, builders, electricians, and plasterers, with new admin, manufacturing, transit and warehouse positions also created to support the installation of these insulation and renewable energy products.

...if the City Council insulated buildings and fitted green energy systems, it could create 433 ‘green’ jobs Fuel Poverty Fuel poverty is another major problem that can be helped considerably through home insulation. In 2007 there were about 4 million households in fuel poverty in the UK (which is defined as a household spending 10% or more of its income on home energy), and since then fuel prices and unemployment have risen sharply. In fact every 1% increase in household fuel prices puts about 30,000 households into fuel

poverty. The government also has a policy to eradicate fuel poverty by 2016, so fast action on insulation would reduce energy costs for those in fuel poverty, as well as creating jobs and cutting carbon.

Birmingham Friends of the Earth will be pushing Birmingham City Council to take up the challenge in our forthcoming ‘Get Serious’ campaign, but more about this in a later newsletter.

Local and National Government should be pushing ahead with a massive insulation programme, rather than the rather modest measures currently being undertaken.

Get Insulating Local and National Government should be pushing ahead with a massive insulation programme, rather than the rather modest measures currently being undertaken. You can be sure that

So what should we be insulating, how is it done, and what’s the best order? It is recommended for maximum impact that energy efficiency measures in the home should be implemented in this order: loft insulation, wall insulation, hot water cylinder insulation, draught proofing, low energy lights, and finally adding controls and upgrades to the heating system. Let’s have a look at the first two of these, which would have the greatest impact and be best value for money.

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On The Home Front Continued from page 13 Loft Insulation: About 25% of heat is lost through your roof, and the Energy Saving Trust calculates that you could save up to £205/year and about 800kg of carbon if you have insulation in your loft. In fact, if everyone insulated their lofts to the recommended depth of 270mm (using mineral wool) then around £710 million and 4 million tonnes of carbon would be saved each year!

Insulating a loft is fairly easy, and if you’re confident and good at DIY then you can even do it yourself.

This usually involves laying a quilt of mineral wool over the floor of the loft, although other products are available, such as sheep’s wool quilt or celullose fibre (which is made from recycled newspaper). If you want to use the space in your loft as another room, then you’ll need to insulate the underside of the roof, which is usually done with rigid insulation boards rather than quilt. A variety of different products are available to do this job.

Wall Insulation: There are generally two types of external wall in homes, solid walls and cavity walls (i.e a wall with an inner and outer masonry wall with a void between). About a third of heat is lost through cavity walls, and even more for solid walls, and the Energy Saving Trust calculates that you could save up to £160/year and 600kg of carbon by insulating

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your cavity walls, and up to £400/ year and 2 tonnes of carbon by insulating your solid walls.

...you could save up to £160/year and 600kg of carbon by insulating your cavity walls, and up to £400/year and 2 tonnes of carbon by insulating your solid walls.

Cavity walls (which are pretty common construction if your house was built after the 1920s) can be filled with insulation, and if your house was built from the early 1990s then it is likely it already has insulation in. Usually this is done by drilling small holes in the joints of the wall (which are filled in afterwards) into which insulation is blown in, either mineral fibre or polyurethane foam.

Solid walls (in mainly pre 1930s homes, although some 1960s and 1970s prefab homes also) have two options, either insulate the outside or inside. Insulating

outside involves fixing rigid insulation boards to the outside face of the exterior walls, which is then finished with a decorative and protective finish, such as render, metal or timber cladding. This approach does tend to change the look of the house, which is fine for a rather dull looking 1960s concrete building (it might even look much better), but perhaps not for a nice ornate Victorian house (of which Birmingham has a lot), and especially so if your home is listed or in a Conservation Area.

So, you can insulate the inside (also known as ‘drylining’), which involves fixing rigid insulation boards to the inside face of the external walls. Over this sheets of plasterboard are fixed to create

a new internal wall finish. There are even products available that have the insulation board bonded to the plasterboard to make the job quicker and easier. Obviously this does cause a certain amount of disruption to your home and you’ll need to redecorate the walls in question, so if you’re having a redecorate anyway, it would be a good time to insulate the walls too.

Further Information The information above is only a brief outline of how to go about insulating your home and you should always seek professional advice, but more information can be gained (as well as many other ways to save energy and carbon) from the Energy Saving Trust at: www.energysavingtust.org.uk Look in the ‘Home Improvements’ section.

Cutting carbon emissions means encouraging an innovative approach so a focus on job creation and green innovation may well be the best way to convince Birmingham City Council

The Energy Saving Trust also has information on getting a grant or subsidy to cover some or all of the cost of energy saving improvements in your home, many of which are provided under the CERT (Carbon Emission Reduction Target) programme, which is largely funded by energy suppliers. Find out more here: www.energysavingtrust.org. uk/What-can-I-do-today/Energysaving-grants-and-offers/Searchfor-grants-and-offers

By Ben Mabbett

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By Carol Byrne, LOVe (Local Organic Vegetables)

Bullring Open Market The Bullring Open Market, nestled in between the Bullring Shopping Centre and the Wholesale Market is jarringly noisy and famously cheap and cheerful. I’ve worked there for about four years, selling organic and, where I can, local produce. However, the market itself has been the lifeblood of Birmingham since Peter de Birmingham was granted a market charter in 1166 in order to hold weekly markets. Since then it has changed greatly with the diversity of products available reflecting the diverse make-up of the Brummie population.

The market means different things to the people who use it but for us it is a way of life, especially on the outdoor market - usually businesses are family run, and passed on through generations.

Traders fought hard in the late 90’s to keep the market alive and it appears that just ten years later the battle has resumed. The plan is to move the Wholesale Market about 3 miles away, to Witton, to a superduper, made to measure building.

Consultation has begun with current residents of the Wholesale Market but no consultation has (yet) happened with retail traders up in the Bullring. The current feeling amongst the traders is that they are being ignored and the threat to their business is being played down. The objection to the move

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is that currently not only do the majority of fruit and vegetable traders buy their stock there, and as a Birmingham resident succinctly pointed out, “These bargains are only possible because of the proximity of the Wholesale Market and the opportunity it gives to traders to continually top up their stock without incurring transport costs”, but they also pay for storage within the Wholesale Market.

Traders are not against change, and have shown through the years their resilience and ability to adapt to changing customer needs, but they want to be considered in

10th Organic Beer Festival & Barbecue city planning processes. To many traders, this feels like the beginning of the end of the Bullring Open Market.

Markets have been found to play an important role in providing affordable, high quality food for local residents. Consequently, markets bring together a diverse group of people from different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds, and all are catered for. A quick look around the Bullring Open Market reveals stalls catering in Caribbean produce,

Asian produce, organic produce and dairy products. To potentially lose this asset to Birmingham would be a huge mistake and traders are currently working on setting up a campaign to support the Bullring Open Market and try to ensure its future.

By Carol Byrne, LOVe (Local Organic Vegetables) Take Action and Further Information Contact Carol at organicarol@hotmail.co.uk

FoE Local groups conference 2009 Every year all the activists involved in campaigning for Friends of the Earth have the chance to meet up, hear about national campaigns and share ideas about how to run local campaigns, too. This year it is being held in Nottingham over only 2 days 12th-13th September (it’s normally 3, but there’s a credit crunch and financial difficulties).

the Manchester group to see who can get the most people along, so here’s hoping we succeed in topping them this year. To anyone who hasn’t been yet, I’d strongly recommend going.

Last year was the first time I’d been and I must say it’s one of the most inspiring weekends I’ve had for getting me motivated to go out and make the most of all opportunities to make a change. There is always a friendly rivalry between us and

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24 Carrot Farmers Market We are lucky enough to celebrate another farmers’ market joining the many springing up around Birmingham suburbs - the Jewellery Quarter held their first 24Carrots market on 4th July as part of the Jewellery Quarter Festival.

The market will provide supplies of fresh local produce to the communities of Ladywood. There were 24 stalls on the first market day and lots of visitors to the Jewellery Quarter attended the market in the lovely sunny weather.

The time between the moment fruit and vegetables are picked and the moment you eat them is minimal, making them fresher than the supermarket equivalent.

Farmers markets offer fresh organic fruit and vegetables and other more exclusive products that are not on your “local” supermarket shelves.

All the fresh produce is seasonal

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and it is grown in the best possible conditions, maximising nutritional content and taste. The time between the moment fruit and vegetables are picked and the moment you eat them is minimal, making them fresher than the supermarket equivalent. And, even better, the middleman is cut out so the farmers profit directly from selling their produce.

The Jewellery Quarter in the heart of Birmingham City Centre, is in a conservation area and is home to over 400 jewellery businesses, specialist wedding retailers, fine restaurants, bars and galleries. As such it is a thriving commercial centre attracting shoppers from the Birmingham area and beyond. Also there are many residential buildings in the area so the locals will also appreciate the market.

A group of local people, part of the Jewellery Quarter Neighbourhood Forum, set up the market. The aim for the market is that it becomes a fully self-funding social enterprise, providing regular monthly markets throughout the year and other special one-off events that benefit the area and its community. Any and all surpluses will be re-invested back into the development of the market and for the improvement of the area for the benefit of the community.

Hopefully see you at the next market!

By Mary Horesh www.24carrots.org.uk

Trains, its all about car parks In just a few weeks, on 11th September, a ground-breaking rail consultation closes.

Dependant on the outcome, and that relies on input from the public, the railways around the West Midlands could be better connected and better used.

The consultation looks at the railways in the region of the West Midlands (ie Warwickshire through to Shropshire). A copy of the consultation is available from David Ride at Centro in Birmingham or online at www.centro.org.uk/ consultation/consultationhome.asp So, you alight at a station and what might you want? At Wythall Station you might want a safe route to the Transport Museum (no chance, try crossing that dual carriageway at the roundabout); at Tamworth you might want a bus to your destination (barely a route passes the station). However, the document, as it is, suggests you want a car park.

This car park provision – is it viable? Maintenance will cost about £200 per annum but what about construction costs? Fortunately Network Rail in July 2008 gave an indication of these in a press release about Rugby Station: ‘This forms part of a £90m initiative to provide additional car parking spaces at a number of stations on the West Coast Main Line. The project will take a year to complete and will increase the total number of spaces from 470 to around 750 providing

an extra 280 spaces.’ Putting the numbers into the calculator gave a silly answer for construction cost per car park space.

The current document, to which we hope your responses will make a difference, focuses on journey to work flows in major cities and fails to see that, even in a major city such as Birmingham, not everyone is headed for the centre. Past lobbying too, has been ignored as the 1000 signature petition generated in 2005 by Councillor Martin Mullaney and the 1000 letters by Birmingham FOE in 2007 leaves Kings Heath local rail services well below other aspirations. Bromsgrove figures in the document, as does Longbridge, with car park prominence.

Frankley, long in the Local Transport Plan is not there, and railway freight is described as a nuisance (rather than an environmental good and possible Longbridge business catalyst).

The summary document asks that responses to the consultation indicate how and why a proposal would pay for itself. If, for instance, you would use the train if the stations had bike racks, or are put off by lack of train/bus connections, indicate how often.

Take Action Please respond to the consultation, no matter how briefly by emailing rdpfeedback@centro.org.uk John Hall

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Volunteer Spotlight Joe Peacock interviews Martin Harrison

How long have you been involved with BFoE? For about a month and a half.

How did you first find out about BFoE and what made you decide to get involved?

Through a training provider called Peopleserve who help line up voluntary placements for people looking for work so that they can gain some experience. I’ve been looking for a job in architecture and this was a good opportunity to get that important experience whilst being in a nice place to work.

What do you do at BFoE? I’ve been involved with the project to design some improvements to the Warehouse building. I’ve taken part in the consultation exercise for building users, building a model of the building which can be used to demonstrate the possible changes. I’ve drawn up sketches and proposals about how to use the building to its full potential.

What do you think is the most important environmental issue and why?

For me it’s the way buildings use and waste energy, which was drilled into us at university. Buildings are by far the biggest emitter of CO2 and it’s a shame that we are moving so slowly to using zero carbon technology because it all exists. There are so many ways to do it now that it should be the standard.

What’s your best green tip/ advice?

Making energy-saving improvements to your house is cost effective if you look at it in the long term, so just do it.

ANY OLD LIGHTBULBS? - WE ARE COLLECTING THEM AT BFoE! If you or anybody you know is swapping their lightbulbs with energy saving ones, then please could you get them to give us the old ones.

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They will be turned into chandaliers for the lights in reception and put forward as a way of recycling and energy saving.

Phil Burrows (General Manager)

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Campaign Meetings Monday Night Meetings – 7:30pm at the Birmingham FoE Warehouse, Allison St 3 August – General Meeting 10 August – Transport Action Group 17 August – Local shops and food & Stop Climate Chaos Action Groups 24 August – Get Serious Action Group 3 September - Strategy Meeting 7 September - General Meeting 14 September – Local Shops & Food, Get Serious Action Group Meetings 21 September –Transport and Stop Climate Chaos Action Groups 24 September - Launch pad event for new campaigners 28 September – Discussion meeting (How to ration global CO2 emissions)

Other Events 7-9 August - Big Chill festival 4-6 September - Moseley Folk festival 12-13 September - FoE local groups conference, Nottingham 18 September - Climate Justice event with Jubilee Debt Campaign

Farmers’ Market

Bearwood: 3rd Saturday of the month 9am-4pm Birmingham University: 4th Wednesday of the month 9am-2pm Harborne: 2nd Saturday of the month 9am-2pm Kings Heath: 1st Saturday of the month 9am-3:30pm Kings Norton: 2nd Saturday of the month 9am-2pm Moseley: 4th Saturday of the month 9am-3pm New Street: 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month 10am-4pm Solihull: 1st Friday of the month 9am-5pm Sutton Coldfield: 2nd Friday of the month 9am-3pm Jewellery Quarter: 19 September

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Contact us: Friends of the Earth (Birmingham) The Warehouse 54-57 Allison Street Birmingham B5 5TH Tel: (0121) 632 6909 Fax: (0121) 643 3122 E-mail: info@birminghamfoe.org.uk

Chair: Benjamin Mabbett Campaigns Co-ordinators: Mary Horesh & Joe Peacock Campaigns Support Worker: Joe Peacock General Manager: Phil Burrows Treasurer:

Web: www.birminghamfoe.org.uk

Margaret Lynch

Friends of the Earth is:

Aviation:

- The largest international network of environmental groups in the world, represented in 72 countries.

James Botham Climate Change & Energy: Andy Pryke Multi-faith and Climate Change Project:

- One of the UK’s leading enviromental pressure groups.

Rianne ten Veen & Maud Grainger

- A unique network of campaigning local groups, working in more than 200 communities in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Joe Peacock

- Over 90% of its funds come from its supporters.

John Hall

Birmingham FoE: Campaigns at a local level to effect environmental change (in ways which feed into national and international policy) through: - Direct action - Lobbying - Education

Waste and Resources: Local Shops & Food: Mary Horesh & Nigel Baker Planning: Transport: Martin Stride Newsletter Editors: Katy Barry Joe Peacock Antonio Roberts Website Editor: Phil Burrows Talks: Paul Webb and others

- Empowering others to take action

All enquiries and callers welcome.

- Participation and representation through public fora

Find us on page 74 of the B’ham A-Z, grid ref: 4A

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Printed on 100% Recycled Paper Using Vegetable Based Inks

Birmingham Friends of the Earth