Lots in the offing from REACT following our last meeting. We have an exciting environment and energy fair planned for Sunday 24th May, so please put it in your diaries now. It’s the day when you can find out all about what’s happening to our climate and what you can do to reduce your own carbon footprint, all in one place.
There’ll be about a dozen stalls set up in Gerrans Memorial Hall, covering everything from domestic energy reduction and insulation, electric vehicle charging, sustainable agriculture, local food suppliers and horticulture to biodiversity, tree planting and wildlife initiatives. We hope Wild Roseland and Plastics Free Roseland will have stalls and there’ll be refreshments served from the kitchen featuring our local suppliers.
Fun activities are planned for the kids, including a special bike which shows how hard you have to pedal to fire up a new LED lightbulb as compared with the old-style incandescent bulbs. If you pedal hard enough you can produce enough energy to whizz up a smoothie! Sounds like the adults might like to get involved too.
The Carbon Buddy Project will have a stand at the fair. This is a new initiative founded right here on the Roseland, designed to help everyone and anyone find a way past all the obstacles, to get started with reducing their own personal carbon footprint, and keep going without getting downhearted. It’s based on a ‘how to’ book ‘The Carbon Buddy Manual’, written by local resident Colin Hastings and self-published with the help of a creative team almost entirely based in Cornwall. Copies of the manual will be on sale at the fair. There’s also a related website www.carbonbuddyproject.org
Meanwhile, in the Memorial Hall Annexe, there’ll be a series of specialised talks and question-and-answer sessions with expert speakers. Subjects could include the impacts, worldwide
and locally, of global warming, sustainable energy solutions, sustainable agriculture and land management, tree-planting, rewilding and food production initiatives that we can get off the ground on the Roseland.
We also hope Cornwall Council will have a presence at our event, to tell us more about all the initiatives it’s taking following its declaration of a climate emergency.
The fair promises to be not just informative but good fun, but to make it a success we could do with a bit more help from you! Would you be up for lending a hand with some of the organising in the run-up to the fair or be able to help on the day? If so, please contact our lead organiser Sheelah Goldsmith sheelahgoldsmith@gmail.com.