Recent Events

The Solar Information Event on Tuesday 3rd November was attended by about 40 people.

An excellent presentation was given by Jeremy Rawlings from The National Energy Foundation. 

The slides can be downloaded here (warning this is a large file - 6MB).

You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open this file - which can be downloaded from the acrobat reader page.

Nine Shelford residents had a fascinating trip around the Donarbon recycling centre near Waterbeach. It was a great incentive for all of us to recycle more and more ! We found out that even though Cambridgeshire is doing well in terms of recycling, 50% of our household rubbish still ends up in landfill. Once our precious land is filled with our rubbish, it becomes ‘dead’ and impossible to use for agriculture or housing.

But, exciting things are afoot. Donarbon’s Mechanical Treatment plant, which will be operational from November 2009, will treat all the residual household waste in Cambridgeshire that is currently not recycled or composted (i.e. black sack waste).  Refuse trucks will empty their waste into a tipping hall where any obvious non-recyclable items such as carpets will be removed, and mechanical sorting equipment will extract materials such as glass and stones, plastic bottles and metals for recycling. What is left will be mostly kitchen and garden waste, paper, cardboard and dust. Massive conveyors will take this material to a composting hall.

We had a tour around the whole site in a landrover, including seeing the landfill dumps at first hand. It was smelly ; seagulls circled around and we saw the pipes protruding, letting some of the deadly methane gas escape into the atmosphere. (Methane gas in landfills is created by food waste that is put in black bags, and decomposes without oxygen in the landfill.)

We came back with the crucial message of :  KEEP RECYCLING to save energy, precious land and resources.  This state of the art treatment plant can only cope if we continue to recycle our household waste and even recycling one tin can saves 90% of the energy needed to remake a can !

Useful information and ideas:

•  Visit the new mechanical biological treatment plant Donarbon, Ely Road, Waterbeach 01223 861010. Soon a viewing gallery will be open. Contact the education centre coordinator, Karen Brenchley, 01223 204836, and take your friends and children to visit the site and learn more.
• Collect some free compost The free compost pile is clearly signed once you are through the Donarbon entrance gate. Take your own sacks or trailer and shovel to load the compost. Donarbon's site is open 8am–5pm from Monday to Friday and 8am–12 noonon Saturdays.

On a recent sunny Sunday morning, members of Sustainable Shelford munched delicious apple cake, picked apples, tasted wonderful cider from home grown apple juice and then had a go at juicing apples themselves using an apple press. This was thanks to the hospitality of a local Shelford resident and member of the Group.

Our next venture was to join up with other Shelford residents to collect three loads of apples which we took to Cam Valley Orchards in Melbourn, to be juiced, pasteurised and bottled. Our first batch made 114 bottles of juice, and we are awaiting news that the other batches of apples have been juiced and bottled. What a success!

Then, not to be defeated by the windfalls and remaining apples and pears, I borrowed the new Cambridge Community Apple Press and invited residents of Granta Terrace to a juicing day. After many cups of coffee, cake and chatting, we must have juiced the equivalent of about 40 bottles of apple and pear juice – juicing late into the evening.

We are now thinking that it would be great to have our own apple press, and maybe even a pasteuriser as well!