RIBI ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY GROUP NEWSLETTER FOR CLUBS & DISTRICTS OCTOBER 2014 Due to the late notice of this project, there was not much activity. However one Club with just 4 people told me they cleared an area and got 10 sacks of rubbish including over 200 beer cans, 5 boxes of used needles, a push chair, a radio and sledge and a lot of bracken all of which weighed about 100 kgs. It just shows what an impact can be made with just four people!
THE WOODLAND TRUST I have heard from some Clubs that they have been successful in their application for trees under The Woodland Trust scheme for giving packs of 30, 60, 105 or 420 trees to School or Community Groups such as Rotary. This time the emphasis has been on trees to commemorate World War One. One Club is planting a tree for each of the 42 soldiers who lost their lives during WW1. They have managed to get local shops to display a photograph and a piece about each of the soldiers as well. This has given them great publicity. Trees for planting next March are now available. Another Club has purchased for each of the 30 Primary, Secondary and Private Schools in their area a large tree and then asked them to name a Regiment who fought in WW1. A Tree Dedication Service is being held, and then afterwards there is to be a special Schools Remembrance Service at the local cenotaph in time for the 2 minutes silence on the 11 November. A school band will play the hymns and provide a bugler to sound The Last Post, and special prayers will be said for 2 V.C.s who attended two of the local schools. Up to 1000 people are expected on the day. CHRISTMAS TREE COLLECTION I do not apologise for again mentioning this project which caught my attention a year or two ago and which was entered for the Rodney Huggins Award. It is such an easy way to make money! All you need do is to select an area in a town (or a whole small town or village) where you think there will be lots of children living, and therefore some likelihood that there will be lots of Christmas Trees. Just after New Year, you do a leaflet drop in the area saying that you will be coming around to collect their old Christmas Trees in a few days. Epiphany falls on a Tuesday next year, so you might get away with collecting them the Sunday before, as most people will take down their trees over the weekend. In the leaflet, you can state a particular charity for whom you are collecting or just ‘Rotary Charities’ and ask for a minimum donation of £3. Most will give you £5 anyway!
You then need a team of 3 or 4 people with a lorry to collect the trees. To make more space on the lorry, you may wish to cut them down, or take some of the branches off, or even hire a wood chipper. When my own Club did it last year we took everything to a centre called Horticap which employs disabled young people to do gardening and run a horticultural centre. We were going to chip them there, but the Centre actually used the trees in their wood burning stove to heat their greenhouses. One hint is that bungalows rarely have trees, so much better to go for houses when doing your leaflet drop!!! Another way is to do it through your local supplier, but the only problem there is that you might be covering quite a large area collecting the trees, whereas doing a leaflet drop confines the area more specifically. Have a look at the leaflet on the RIBI web site for more details THE SUSTAINABILITY TRUST This is a Rotary organisation with many excellent ideas for Clubs. Have a look at their web site www.thesustainabilitytrust.org . There is also a leaflet about them on the RIBI web site. Following our successful Christmas Tree Collection (above), we gave our money to their Kilimanjaro Tree project which seemed the most appropriate. This involves planting fruit trees in and around Mount Kilimanjaro where the removal of other trees for firewood is causing huge problems with the melting of the ice cap. It is an ecological disaster waiting to happen in Tanzania if nothing is done. It is hoped that by planting fruit trees which will yield a crop, this will stop the people cutting them down. The trees are also needed to help prevent further erosion in the area. Other excellent projects include the promotion of Solar Cookers which work simply from the sun and avoid the need to use precious fuel. The Babylon Project is also showing how food can be grown vertically where space is limited! Solar Aid creates light from solar energy in areas where electricity is not available. RODNEY HUGGINS AWARD Many of you will have your District Conference in October or early November. Hopefully you will also be having a District Environmental Competition in which Clubs submit the projects they have undertaken the previous year. Please can you ensure that at least the winners, if not some of the runners up enter the Rodney Huggins Award. Entries must be in by the 31st January 2015. This may seem some time off, but it is never too early for entries to be made. Entry forms can be found on the web site, and, thanks to the generosity of the Rodney Huggins Family Trust, there are cash prizes to be won as well!!! RIBI WEB PAGE LINK For leaflets on all the subjects above as well as many others which I am sure you will find useful, go to the RIBI web site and then go to Members where you will need to log on. Click ‘Service & Our Programmes’ and then ‘Community’. After that you will see under Community ‘Environmental projects/leaflets. Click on that and you will get to your leaflet. For copies of this newsletter go to http://www.ribi.org/members/humanitarian-service-programmes/community/environment-sustainabilitygroup/environment-projects/ If you are still having trouble getting through to the new RIBI web site, please feel free to contact me if you want any leaflets or information. Where you are able to access the leaflet, if you need any more information, please contact the person, Club or Organisation named on the leaflet or me, Terry Knowles, Secretary of the RIBI Environmental Sustainability Group, 13a Old Barber, Harrogate, North Yorkshire HG1 3DF E-mail :- TERUNA2@aol.com Tel 01423 525014