Just one of the displays at the Cranleigh Eco Festival
Well, Cranleigh’s first Eco Festival finally took place on Saturday 23rd April after a great deal of hard work! I’m happy to report that it was a success and an opportunity not just for members of the public to learn more about our existing voluntary groups already working hard to promote sustainability in various ways, but also an opportunity for them to network with each other.
In addition of course there were a selection of eco-friendly artisan businesses which were really interesting – and in some cases, delicious!
In the Gallery, there was the exhibition of the Festival’s schools’ competition “What Nature Means to Me”. It was inspiring to see the work of children and teenagers giving their take on the natural world. The entries covered a lot of detail from just a love for nature to concern about climate change. There was plenty of thought provoking stuff and a big message to all of us to do our bit for our future environment. The overall winner of the competition was a beautiful pencil drawing by Glebelands pupil Atreyu Strange – a deserving and unanimous winner.
The talks were also informative and included a fascinating talk by Moira Sweeney (a certified vegan coach) who gave a lot of helpful advice on how to incorporate vegan food into your diet (whether choosing to go the whole hog – forgive the pun – or just becoming more of a flexitarian). The point being that reducing meat and dairy is still better both for you and the planet than carrying on eating a meat heavy diet.
Another of our speakers was Tom Lankester (Sustainable Transport Officer for Waverley Borough Council). He gave a talk on how to incorporate “active travel” into your daily life. Active travel to the likes of you and I simply means walking and cycling or using public transport of course. Tom also spoke about Waverley’s walking and cycling strategy.
One of our speakers was unfortunately ill but I finished off the talks with some suggestions on how to reduce your carbon footprint. There’s so much that we can do within our households. A good step to start you off is to check out WWF’s carbon footprint calculator (but you do have to be honest!) which you can find here:
https://footprint.wwf.org.uk/#/
Sharon Duggan
Cranleigh Climate Action Group
www.facebook.com/howtoliveagreenerlife
