By Julia Hilton

On 13th February 2019 – exactly a year ago – Hastings Borough Council (HBC) passed a climate change motion, pledging to limit its own use of fossil carbon, encourage others to do the same, and set a target for Hastings to become carbon neutral. The motion included specific policy commitments. Here is a progress report – the council’s stated commitments in bold:

Establish an ongoing Climate Change working group to scrutinise the climate impact of every policy.
No working group has been announced, just a single ‘climate champion’ councillor (Maya Evans) and two climate change officers. A far wider breadth of knowledge and experience is needed if the council is serious about action on climate change.

Develop a local and low carbon procurement policy. 
Not only has there been no progress on this, but the council has £3m in Barclays Bank, the top funder of fossil fuel infrastructure in Europe. This does not look good for a council that has called for divestment of fossil fuels from the county council pension fund and is meant to have a responsible investment policy. Finances may be tight but the council still has a budget of over £17m, giving them plenty of scope for prioritizing both local spending and companies actively working to reduce their carbon footprint.

Press ahead with a programme of sustainable energy generation aiming towards supplying 30% of the town’s electricity by 2030.
No announcements have been made, but digging the capital budget shows £6m allocated to solar panels including £2m for ground-mounted solar and £2m ‘unallocated’. There’s no mention of wind power although the south-east region’s energy strategy acknowledges a big role for offshore wind. Just one 12 MW offshore wind turbine could generate 66m kWh of electricity a year – that’s over 3,000 times the amount that could be generated by the proposed solar farm in Hastings country park. Other councils are co-operating on large-scale renewables: why not Hastings?

Ensure council land is maintained in a way that maximises species diversity and mitigates species extinction.
A little ironic, given the current plans to install solar panels in the Hastings country park nature reserve, close to a site of special scientific interest (SSSI) and in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). According to the Friends of Hastings Country Park, “It is inevitable that the construction of solar arrays [in the park] would result in the disturbance of the soil structure, loss of sequestered carbon, and a loss of biodiversity.”

Use the current review of the Local Plan to introduce stricter energy standards and insist on on-site renewable energy.
The Sustainable Transport Forum, Hastings Urban Design Group and Transition Town Hastings and St Leonards are all keen to ensure that there is a townwide conversation  about the local plan as an essential document for the future of our town, setting standards for housing, energy and transport visions. However, public engagement has been sadly lacking so far in the council’s efforts, despite a commitment within the motion to “Work with voluntary, statutory and community organisations in the borough to achieve the above commitments.”

All in all, HBC does not appear to be taking the declared climate emergency seriously. It could have convened a citizens’ assembly on climate change, established a panel advised by experts in the field, invested its money in an ethical bank, installed solar on many more council-owned buildings, taken the initiative in encouraging local businesses to install renewables, worked with East Sussex County Council to make a travel plan to encourage sustainable transport, made plans for planting more trees and explored the carbon sequestration potential of the country parks, encouraged small-scale local food-growing, and passed stricter energy efficiency regulations for both new and private-rented houses in the borough. Instead it’s done nothing of any note. 

People need leadership and information. We only have ten years to make the changes required in energy, transport, food and most especially our draughty housing stock. It is time to do regeneration differently. Good use of the £25m My Town funding due to come to Hastings would be a start.

• Julia Hilton is co-ordinator of the Hastings and Rye Green Party.

Over the past three years that Transition Town has hosted the event in Warrior Square Gardens, families, friends and newcomers to town have shared everything from hand-made sushi and rounders (with a 70-year age span) to home-made curry followed by a group dip in the sea to cool off. 

“When people come together in such a creative community, dishes from around the world take centre stage, but it’s the connections we make that create the real food for thought,” says Big Lunch co-ordinator, Sherry Clark. 

Sherry recently bumped into a woman she met at the first Big Lunch in 2016: “She said it was the best day of her life,” says Sherry. Apparently, she’d wandered over to see what was going on and was so excited that she went and bought some cans of tuna from the Co-op to share. “We didn’t have a can-opener, but we all had a real laugh. Sometimes, that’s all we need to feel we belong.” 

This will be the UK’s 11th annual Big Lunch weekend, which began at the Eden Project in Cornwall in 2009 as a picnic where “for a few glorious hours, cars stop, shyness stops, gloom lifts and the UK comes together to meet, greet, share, swap, sing, play and laugh for no reason other than that we all need to”.  Last year, over ten million people shared food, fun and friendship.

If you’re new in town, or have lived here since birth, come along on 2nd June from 12–3pm to celebrate this crazy, coastal community we all call home.

• If you want to know more about the Big Lunch: www.edenproject
communities.com/thebiglunchhomepage

The group is run by four people, each with an impressive track record of community work: Sherry Clark (Transition Town), Julia Hilton (Green Dreams Landscape Architects and Energise Sussex Coast), Jess Steele (Jericho Road) and Richard Watson (Energise Sussex Coast).

On 25th April the first of three planned events was held in the old ballroom at the Azur, traditionally a place of pleasure and connection. There were five inspirational speakers, all illustrating successful community regeneration schemes. 

Hazel Tilley spoke about the way residents at Granby, Liverpool reinvented four streets after they were ‘ghetto-ised’ by the council.  Progress was made through residents taking the initiative and collaborating first with each other, then with an architectural practice in London.

Melissa Mean, of Knowle West Media Centre in Bristol, described how they commandeered the furniture budget for a new business park set up by the council to create jobs as well as the art budget (‘for  a nice piece for the foyer’), bought a 3D printer, and trained locals to produce stylish pieces, 600 in five months. This led to a permanent light manufacturing unit which trains people and supplies a wide variety of goods. 

Maff Potts gave a moving account of his journey from corporate housing to setting up Camerados, a network of public living rooms maintained by the users and offering a network of friendly support to the community. A Camerados is “heavier than a stranger but not as heavy as a friend’. This has clearly proved a huge benefit in addressing the loneliness that can lead to more serious medical problems.

Alison Paul, of Paxton Green Time Bank in south London, illustrated a model of social cohesion created through people giving an hour of their time in exchange for an hour of assistance whenever they should need it. 

Stella Duffy of Fun Palaces described how she and her team are creating events across the UK in consultation with communities which bring people together and foster new connections through art projects. “Everyone is an artist” she said.

The message of the day was that using your initiative, but collaborating with others to share skills, energy and ideas, is the way to greater inclusivity and to find solutions to community problems. Small steps are the way to make progress and, in time, those in positions of money and power will be pulled in to propel the projects forward. The term ‘anchor institutions’ is used on their website. 

Clearly the problems in Hastings are specific to this town, and not all solutions from outside can be applied like a Band-Aid. However, as a stimulus to discussion and as a way to focus energies, the event was extremely inspiring and well-run. Though in a speech of 20 minutes or so, there was little time to drill down into the details of why certain strategies have worked, the speakers have most generously offered mentoring for the six ideas which the group identified as things which could be progressed:

• Guerrilla gardening: first action already planned for 9th May;

• Bringing time banking to Hastings, maybe in a mobile form around the community centres (supported by Alison Paul from Paxton Timebank as mentor);

• Creating ‘a public living room’ on the beach ( Maff Potts from Camerados will be available on the phone for advice);

• A hang-out space – maybe a container on the foreshore land as somewhere that stuff can happen – may be the link idea between many of the others (Hazel and Michael from GRanby4streets Community Land Trust as mentors)

• Scratch nights where people can bring their ‘half-baked’ ideas to share and develop with peers (Stella Duffy from Fun Palaces as mentor);

• A maker space combined with a library of things where people can borrow useful stuff (mentored by Melissa Mean from Knowle West Media Centre.)

• The website can be found at: http://commontreasury.org.uk It is a model of clarity and provides a very user-friendly space for contributions.

With plastic pollution high on the national news agenda Transition Town Hastings wants to play a part in the countrywide Refill campaign to phase out plastic bottles by creating a network of free tap water points.

The idea – begun in 2015 in Bristol – involves individuals downloading an app showing the nearest participating sites, usually – not always – cafes and restaurants, identifiable by Refill stickers in their windows, who will top up re-useable containers free of charge.

So far there are over 1600 active venues across the UK. Transition Town Hastings wish to develop the scheme locally by spreading the word to the owners of local businesses with public access. Both businesses and individuals can sign up online, and as an incentive to download their app, not-for-profit Refill allows users to earn points towards a free water bottle.

Single Use
Buying water in single-use bottles contributes hugely to environmental damage. Plastic bottles use up valuable natural resources to make, are polluting to transport and create mountains of waste.

Refill claims the average household uses 480 plastic bottles a year, but only recycles 270 of them. Nationally, of over 35 million plastic bottles used daily almost 16 million aren’t recycled; around 800 plastic bottles a minute end up as litter and landfill.

Bigger Issues
Earlier this year David Attenborough’s Blue Planet TV series showed the escalating problem of marine plastic pollution. A recent BBC news story revealed government cutbacks to local authority funding have resulted in reduced recycling rates in many areas. China, the principal destination for many re-cycled plastic bottles from Britain, has virtually stopped all imports. To combat the resultant environmental damage, green campaigners believe individuals must reduce their plastic use.

Welcome though the new government scheme to charge refundable deposits on bottles and cans is, carrying your own container means you don’t have to bother – and you save money.

Transition Town has enlisted Hastings in the Refill scheme and hopes local people will help: “If 30 people spoke to three cafe/restaurant owners – that’s 90 businesses covered!”  A local Refill Facebook page is planned.

• If you’d like to get involved, please contact them at info@transitiontownhastings.org.uk

Promoting the Scheme Locally
Recruiting retailers to join the scheme and provide free water inevitably involves a lot of legwork. HIP joined two local campaigners, Nick Sangster and Julia Hilton, out on the town. Potential fill-up points were obviously pubs, cafés and restaurants – but could include hairdressers or almost any other shop. Would they sign up?

Nick had previous experience of getting businesses on board in Brighton where the Refill initiative is already well established. He reported no resistance at all there to the idea, with most venues committing immediately. Although some smaller premises had initially been concerned about queues developing at busy times of day, six months on this hasn’t proved a problem and the increased footfall is welcome.

The Refill app uses GSM tracking to show anyone looking to fill a flask participating outlets in their immediate area, giving both the distances to and the nature of the enterprises.

Empowering Individuals
The activists set off towards the Palace bar, Source Park, Pier and White Rock Hotel. No persuasion was required to enlist Source Park, who immediately agreed to participate, but as the manager gently pointed out, they do this anyway – even selling their own funky steel water bottle.

At each successful recruiting stop, recruiters issue window stickers, photograph the concern inside and out and immediately upload the pictures and location details onto the Refill database via a mobile phone, where – after a few moderating checks – it’s available to view online within hours.

Not just small independent businesses are involved; large concerns – including Costa, Brewers Fayre and Sainsbury’s – have already signed up on a national basis

The Refill stickers in shop windows identify participating premises while also acting as a prompt to conversations about the bigger issue of disposable plastic pollution. As Julia – a Green Party member who originally suggested the project to the Hastings Transition Town group – explained, refilling bottles reinforces the habit of avoiding unnecessary plastic packaging and enables people to feel there’s something they can do about the problem on an individual basis.

We hope you have enjoyed reading this article from Hastings Independent. The future of this volunteer led, non-profit publication would be far more secure with the aid of a small donation. It only takes a minute and we would be very grateful.

Transition Town Hastirngs (TTH) is about to launch a project to encourage and support local food takeaway businesses to make the transition to sustainable, e n v i r o n m e n t a l l y – f r i e n d l y packaging.

There are several businesses in Hastings, who are already using biodegradable packaging, including Trinity Whole Foods, Café Des Arts and Eat @ (including the Stade and Alexander Park Cafe). The good news is that these businesses report that the transition was made fairly seamlessly and at no extra cost.

There are several well established eco-companies making these products – biodegradable packaging such as Bio-plastics, plant starch packaging, sugar Bagasse packaging and mycelium mushroom packaging (see footnote).

TTH members are currently drawing up a questionnaire to present to local businesses, with some information about e n v i r o n m e n t a l l y – f r i e n d l y packaging and its cost-effectiveness, and they are hopeful that Hastings businesses will be open to this change.

They are also hoping to present an ‘affinity scheme’ to the packaging manufacturers, whereby they get several businesses on board and
then arrange for appropriate price discounts with the manufacturers.

In addition, TTH are hoping to initiate conversations with Hastings Borough Council to adopt these successful schemes, as they are
relatively easy and cost little to implement, and will have a highly significant effect on helping to protect marine life and keeping our beaches clean.

Alongside this will be a campaign to deal with the major problem of plastic bottles, cans and other single use drink containers.
Living, as we do, close to the sea, we see how much plastic and other waste is washed into the sea, and
we see in the media how badly beaches are affected all around the world.

In England, 35 million plastic bottles are used every day, of which only approximately half are recycled. Every year, 18 tonnes of plastic ends up in the seas, equivalent to five grocery bags for every foot of coastline around the globe.

This is having a catastrophic effect upon marine life as well as on human health.

A recent United Nations report stated that the current levels of plastic debris and plastic particles in the world’s oceans “presents a
serious threat to human health and marine ecosystems”.

The Ellen MacArthur foundation report, launched at the World Economic Forum recently, said: “by 2015 there will be more plastic than fish (by weight) in the ocean”.

At the 2015 great British beach clean-up, over 100 plastic bottles were found for every kilometre. A 43% rise from the previous year!
The amount of rubbish on the beaches was the worst on record, with 3298 items picked up per kilometre surveyed.

A spokesman for the Marine Conservation Society said: “it’s a damning indictment that the current legislation to stop litter reaching the sea isn’t working… From public litter to industrialwaste, fishing litter to fly tipping, this problem belongs to us all. So, it can be fixed”.

Because of the worsening situation, many environmental groups, including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, have called this
year for the introduction of deposit return schemes (DRS).

Caroline Lucas of the Green Party presented a motion to the House of Commons proposing such a scheme be introduced as part of the National Litter Strategy. She quoted the recent success of the mandatory charge on plastic bags that has reduced bag distribution by 6 billion.

Evidence from other countries also strongly supports a move to DRS, as well as a re-usable bottle scheme.

11 countries in Europe and several regions of America and Australia have adopted these schemes, with dramatic results. For example, in Germany the DRS initiative has resulted in an amazing reduction of plastic bottles by 98.5% and aluminium drink containers by 96%! Also, reusable bottles make up 45.7% of all the drinks sold in Germany.

Ultimately it will also help to stem the dramatic rise in the production of plastics that now accounts for 20% of fossil fuel consumption.

■ If you are interested in helping Transition Town or finding out more about their work, please go to the website at: www.
transitiontownhastings.org.uk Or you can email them at: info@transitiontownhastings.org.uk

Footnote

Bioplastic, unlike finite oil-based plastics that take millions of years to form and hundreds of years to degrade, can be commercially composted within 12 weeks. Plant Starch packaging is made from renewable crops, such as corn or potatoes. It composts naturally. Sugar Bagasse packaging is the waste product from sugar cane once it has been harvested. The fibrous material is a renewable resource that is ideal as hot food containers and is naturally compostable. Mycelium mushroom packaging was developed by the American firm Evocative. This remarkable technique allows bespoke packaging to be moulded. IKEA is planning to replace polystyrene packaging, that takes thousands of years to decompose, with mycelium packaging, which only takes a few weeks. Several large businesses in New York are already using this kind of packaging, including Dell computers.