Manchester's Carbon Co-op is very excited to announce its submission to the innovative Energyshare programme for moral & financial support to begin putting solar panels on our City's roofs.
Energyshare is a fledgling online community of renewable energy & energy efficiency organisations and innitiatives, offering advice and information, an opportunity to contact and network with simialr projects and secure financial support.
The Carbon Co-op have been collaborating with the Kindling Trust to run a series of networking sessions for community renewables in Greater Manchester entitled, Fuelling Manchester. The events are purely social and the next one takes place on Thursday 26th May 2011.
This fifth gathering is for all those of us involved in community renewable projects, be that: water turbine co-operatives; bio-mass and woodland management enterprises; waste-to-energy projects, solar energy collectives or those involved in community-focused.
FeedingManchester.org.uk is a brand new website for Greater Manchester residents who love food and want to eat in a healthier, greener and fairer way. The website provides extensive information about buying, growing, cooking, eating and loving local fresh produce. It connects buyers with growers, customers with farmers, and cooks with ingredients. For sustainable urban foodies, we think this site will definitely become a favourite.
We are very excited to be working on refining Manchester's school meals to make them more sustainable, a piece of work which has huge potential. It has been made possible because of the partnership between Kindling, Food Futures, Manchester Fayre and Climate Friendly Food.
Friday the 8th April (2011) saw the finalisation of plans for the Carbon Saving Society (CSS), an organisation that seeks to attract investment in low carbon technologies in Manchester. The CSS forms an essential part of the finance model for the Carbon Coop, which aims to make it financially viable to retrofit buildings to achieve an 80% reduction in carbon emissions.
We have very recently completed our report: Sustainable Fayre, for Manchester City Council, which extensively explores ways for Manchester Fayre (the Council's in-house caterer responsible for school meals etc.) to lower the carbon impact of its food purchases and increase the uptake of sustainable food in the city, actively contributing to Manchester's Climate Change Action Plan.
In March, the Forgotten Fields project worked with a present day, small scale market garden - Glebelands City Growers in Sale - to find about the wealth of growers that existed in the area before supermarket culture took over.
On Monday 11th April Helen and Chloe visited Dunham Massey to meet with one of our organic growers, Chris Hewitt (pictured). Having discussed the Land Army project at FeedingManchester #6, the first stage of the project is now under-way, with 3 of our local growers having been interviewed and another two interviews to take place this week. The grower consultation will be the foundation for designing the Land Army pilot(s).
February saw the time of year for Peace Brigades International Guatemala training again, only this time Kindling's logistics role was very different from normal. The co-ordinator of the training team brought her 6 month old son Eduardo with her from Guatemala, so alongside logistical support Helen was the childcare for the 10 days.
We were chuffed to hear we have been awarded a Gold standard as part of a sustainability audit carried out by Sustaining Change – a project of Environmental Charity: MERCi.