September 2002 Newsletter
The
following articles are reproduced from the September 2002 newsletter,
and so any information within this page is correct only as of September
2002.
For the latest up-to-date information, please see the relevant campaigns as indicated by the buttons.
Car Free Deansgate
Last year, Manchester Friends of the Earth persuaded the local council to close Exchange Street for "European Car Free Day". We had many stalls, an inflatable "Earth" ball and free tickets for public transport to give away.
On the back of our successes last year, and our subsequent lobbying of Manchester City Council, helped by the blessing that the national Government has at last given to the Europe-wide campaign, local authorities around Greater Manchester are at last taking the concept of an annual car free day seriously.
This year, the event is known as "In Town Without My Car Day" and will be held on Sunday 22nd September. In Manchester, the council will be closing part of Deansgate (between St. Mary's Gate and St. Anne's Street) to traffic for the majority of the day. (Buses will be re-routed to ensure no public transport passengers are adversely affected.) It's not quite the turfing over of Deansgate that a councillor once promised, but it's a good start!
There will be over 30 stalls on the day, many arts and crafts but also other environmental groups. There will also be a mass cycle ride to celebrate the official opening of the Fallowfield Loop (a walk and cycle way).
We are delighted also that Stockport, Bury and Rochdale councils have shown some commitment to this year's In Town Without My Car Day. In Stockport, Great Underbank, near the Merseyway Shopping Centre, will be closed to cars on Saturday 21 September and shoppers will be treated to music from Imagine FM DJs, competitions to win a bike a day during the week leading up to it, street entertainment and information stalls. There will also be a led walk to mark the opening of the Fred Perry Way.
Bury Council are organising an ambitious event on the Saturday, involving a road closure, entertainment and information. Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council will be marking the weekend by running a led cycle ride in and around Heywood & Middleton townships.
Take Action!
Manchester Friends of the Earth will be at both the Manchester and Stockport events, so we look forward to seeing you there. If you'd like to help on either stall, ring the office on 0161 834 8221 or e-mail office@manchesterfoe.org.uk
No Money For Railways In Manchester
A day of action (see the previous newsletter) in April with lots of media attention in Manchester, kicked off a campaign to highlight the lack of investment in the railway network planned as part of the Government's Comprehensive Spending Review, particularly for areas outside the South East.
In July, just weeks before the release of the Comprehensive Spending Review, Friends of the Earth (FoE) heard that more money was not planned, and reacted with a media campaign. Manchester FoE were interviewed the GMR Breakfast Show, and the story featured in their hourly news bulletins.
We weren't overly impressed with the Chancellor's spending review as announced on 16th July, which involved no new money for railways. Future campaigning on the state of the railways, an essential component of a modern sustainable transport system, is vital and the group will be holding another day of action in September or October!
Take Action!
Write to your MP, at House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA, about the lack of new money for rail in the Comprehensive Spending Review, pointing out that the recent reports by both the CBI and the Transport Select Committee echo FoE's call for more cash for rail. It's also worth mentioning that there is a widening gap between falling motoring costs and rising public transport costs, a gap that the select committee called "incomprehensible".
Cause A Splash!
The Mersey Basin Campaign, a waterside regeneration partnership in the Northwest of England, are launching the eleventh Mersey Basin Week from 5th - 12th October 2002.
The week has been organised to encourage individuals, schools, voluntary and community groups and other organisations to make a difference to their local waterway, be it a river, canal or pond. In the past a wide range of events have been organised by groups, from clean ups and bulb planting to "Pirate Island" - a fun canoeing based event along the Ashton Canal.
Groups are encouraged to develop innovative ideas of events and register them with the Mersey Basin Campaign. Grants of up to £100 are available to support the efforts of groups, to pay for skip hire, tools, materials or anything that is necessary for a successful event.
Take Action!
If you would like to get involved in the Mersey Basin Week, please contact Bev Mitchell, Mersey Basin Campaign (b.mitchell@merseybasin.org.uk, 0161 242 8212) for an information pack and grant application form.
Transport, Communities And The Environment
MFoE's new Social Inclusion Project aims to help communities that are socially disadvantaged by working with them to tackle issues relating to transport and getting around.
We will use a technique called Participatory Appraisal (PA) to work with the local communities to help identify problems and solutions. PA has been used successfully in developing countries and has now begun to be applied to the UK. For example, Oxfam and Sustain (the food and farming group) used the technique to examine and address food poverty in three inner city areas in the UK.
Since the last newsletter the project has moved on. Due to there already being a lot of similar work in East Manchester, we've decided to do the project in the Northmoor area of Longsight. There is already a "home zone" there, but home zones do not necessarily address wider transport issues. Training of MFoE members and local people took place during the last weekend in August, and the actual consultation work will take place during September and October.
Take Action!
For more information, contact Graeme (graeme@manchesterfoe.org.uk, 07905 790 426).
Get Real!
In June, Manchester Foe launched its campaign for Real Food to a packed audience at the Friends' Meeting House, and met with tremendous support from local residents. The meeting was the first step in a campaign to promote organic and locally produced food as a positive alternative to the mass-produced food found on supermarket shelves, which is often bad for people's health and is produced in a way that degrades the environment.
The public meeting was chaired by the BBC's Allan Beswick, and featured presentations by: Lauren and Graeme of MFoE; national FoE Real Food Campaigner Pete Riley; Rob Squires talking on the Leaf Street community garden; and Jonathon and Ruth from GM Free Cheshire. The public was treated to a selection of free hot and cold organic food, and presented with a free directory of local and organic food in the area.
The event was a resounding success, and audience feedback was extremely positive. Local resident Rhian Myhre commented, "Before attending the meeting, I knew very little about organic food and hadn't properly appreciated the scale of the problem. Generally, organic produce is considered an expensive alternative to supermarket food, not as accessible and not as tasty. But it's clear that this is simply not the case. The range of food available this evening - using entirely organic ingredients - has gone a long way to combat my own prejudices. This is an important issue and it must be addressed, sooner rather than later. I wholeheartedly support Manchester Friends of the Earth and wish them great success with this campaign."
Take Action!
If you know of anywhere near you that sells organic products, let us know by ringing the office on 0161 834 8221, e-mail office@manchesterfoe.org.uk
Copies of the guide are available by sending an A4 SAE to Manchester Foe, 6 Mount Street, Manchester M2 5NS.
Being Green, Electronically
Manchester Friends of the Earth has revamped its website, now with a more memorable address: www.manchesterfoe.org.uk.
The website keeps readers up to date with the group's campaigns and how to take action to help the environment. There are sections on each campaign and an on-line diary (check it often so you don't miss our socials!).
We've also several e-mail lists you can join to keep up to date. These are mcrfoe for general group issues and mcrfoe_transport, mcrfoe_climate, mcrfoe_waste and mcrfoe_realfood, all of which are self-descriptive, plus mcrfoe_socialinc which concentrates on our social inclusion work. To join these, send an e-mail to majordomo@foe.co.uk with any subject, and with the following as the body text:
subscribe name_of_e-mail_list
for every e-mail list you wish to join (each on a new line). If you have a default signature, it's best to put "end" (without the quotes!) on a new line after all the subscribe lines.
To send e-mail to the group, please use office@manchesterfoe.org.uk.
Take Action!
You can help the environment with the click of a button - check out the "Press for Change" section of national FoE's website:
For news of other environmental, peace, development, human rights and animal rights activities in Greater Manchester there's also the Networking Newsletter:
Tiptoe Through the GM Maize...
In late July, a group of 100 local people, farmers, gardeners and activists gathered at Lymm Village Hall to protest against a GM maize test site which had been planted nearby as part of the Government's farm scale trials.
The day began with speeches at the village hall from anti-GM campaigners, a local organic farmer and people from the local campaign group. Organic food was provided for lunch after which the protesters gathered outside the hall armed with banners, giant bees and butterflies and a seven foot scarecrow in a business suit signifying business entering the farms and fields. Led by a samba band the colourful procession, many of whom were dressed in protective white suits and masks, marched through Lymm before heading off to the test site.
On arrival at the test site some of the group began to assemble on a canal towpath whilst others entered the field and began removing the crops. The scarecrow was planted in the middle of the field. Several people took plants into the field and replaced some of the pollutant crop with sunflowers!
A few people were arrested, including a member of the samba band for allegedly "inciting people to do damage by playing music"!
Take Action!
For more information, contact the GM Free Cheshire Campaign on 07759 031 931.
A Third Runway for Manchester?
On 23rd July the Government published its plans for a massive expansion in airports: not just at Manchester but at every airport in the country, and with some new ones thrown in for good luck.
Under their basic UK option, the number of people flying would increase to in excess of 500 million a year by 2030 (up from 180m now). They intend to "consult" on these proposals for the next few months, until 30th November. Now environmental groups across the country must decide how to respond.
What this would mean for Manchester is: growth from 18.5m passengers now to a minimum of 40m and more likely 60-65m passengers a year - that is, the present size of Heathrow; the construction of more taxiways and aprons (2010 - 15), a fourth terminal by 2015, and then possibly a 3rd runway, built during the decade from 2020; plus new roads, more noise and air pollution, climate change emissions and general environmental damage.
These huge growth proposals are being repeated up and down the country - a new Midlands airport for 60m passengers; Stansted between 75-120m; or a new Thames estuary airport between 60-110m.
The mainstream environmental organisations (Friends of the Earth, CPRE, Transport 2000) have got together to form a national campaign against airport growth, called Airport Watch (www.airportwatch.org.uk).
The job of this campaign is to fight two battles: nationally, challenging the arguments behind the "need" for this growth in air travel and pointing out the consequences for climate change, pollution, road traffic growth, greenfield development and so on; and the regionally and locally, to support the communities around airports as they fight back against this assault on their quality of life.
Would you like to take part in this campaign? The initial fight will be for the remaining three months of the consultation period; and then there will be another 6 months before th Government decides to accept or reject these plans, based presumably on the amount of grief they have been given during the consultation.
The opportunity is: if we can defeat the arguments being used to justify airport growth nationally, then we can protect not just the community and the area around Manchester Airport, but at every other site in the country as well.
Take Action!
If you're interested in being involved, please contact Graeme (07905 790 426, graeme@manchesterfoe.org.uk).
World Summit Watch
Thirty years on from the first Earth summit in Stockholm, the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) has tried to tackle the same issues. In a recent poll 7 out of 10 people said they thought the WSSD would make no difference to the future of the planet. The chance to turn the world around was wasted. What more of an effect on the future could they ask for? The politicians have devised a sound plan for the destruction of the Earth and all on it.
"The Ecologist" magazine recently compared the official promises of the Stockholm (1972) and Rio (1992) conferences on the environment and development with actual progress. At the Rio conference there was a commitment to "returning individually or jointly to 1990 levels of ... anthro-pogenic emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases .... [by 2000]". Actually, carbon dioxide emissions had actually risen in the US, Japan, Canada and Australia by 2000. Whilst there were also promises on the conservation of the world's forests, 418m hectares of natural forest have been lost worldwide. Plans for the conservation of water and sustainable agriculture have met similar fates.
And the 2002 Earth Summit? There is no commitment on renewables, references to them in the declaration being replaced with "cleaner fossil fuels". There were only two actual commitments in the declaration: to halve by 2015 the number of people who do not have access to basic sanitation; and to establish marine protected networks by 2012. There is a commitment by 2020 to ensure that chemicals are produced in ways that minimise significant harmful effects on human health, rather than questioning the need for chemicals, and the commitment on biological diversity is actually a backwards step.
Charles Secrett, director of Friends of the Earth UK commented that "The Earth Summit should have been about protecting the environment and fighting poverty and social destruction. Instead it has been hijacked by free market ideology, by a backward-looking US administration, and by the global corporations that help keep reactionary politicians in business."
Greener Guide To Living
Many of us feel strongly about a host of environmental issues but think that we don't have enough power to make a change. However, environmental issues can be tackled by individuals. Here is part one of the greener guide to living: saving resources at home.
The Problem
Most of the materials that go into making what we use - from aeroplanes to toilet paper - are made from non-renewable resources that are being rapidly depleted. At today's rates of consumption, world copper reserves will be depleted in less than 100 years, and the world's forests are falling quickly under the loggers' saws.
What you can do
Recycle materials you use
Recycling saves resources, decreases the use of toxic chemicals, cuts energy use, helps curb global warming, stems the flow of water and air pollution, and reduces the need for landfills and incinerators.
Make an effort to participate fully in your town's or building's recycling program. If there's no recycling program where you live, encourage local officials to start one. If you have a recycling program where you live, work to expand it.
In the meantime, learn where you can take items such as paper, cardboard, glass, aluminium, plastic and tyres to be recycled, then make an effort to go there.
Recycle old clothing by donating it (in season) to homeless shelters, thrift stores, and other community organisations.
Buy recycled products
Look on the label for the products or packaging with the greatest percentage of post-consumer recycled content, which ensures that the materials have been used before. Paper products should have at least 30 per cent post-consumer waste. A higher percentage is even better.
Compost
Composting reduces the burden on overcrowded landfills and gives you a great natural fertiliser for plants and gardens. Buy a composting setup at a garden supply or hardware store. Start with yard trimmings, fruit and vegetable food scraps, and coffee grounds.
Buy products with less packaging
A large percentage of the paper, cardboard and plastic we use goes into packaging - much of it wasteful and unnecessary. When you buy a product, look at the packaging and ask: Can it be reused? Is it made of post-consumer recycled materials? Is it necessary at all?
Reward companies that are most enlightened about their use of packaging by purchasing their products. Contact companies that overpackage and tell them you will be more likely to buy if they change this policy.
Likewise, tell store managers and manufacturers who are making good environmental choices that you recognise and appreciate their efforts.
Use durable goods
Bring your own cloth bags to local stores. Replace plastic and paper cups with ceramic mugs, disposable razors with reusable ones. Refuse unneeded plastic utensils, napkins and straws when you buy takeout foods. Use a cloth dishrag instead of paper towels at home, and reusable food containers instead of aluminium foil and plastic wrap. Keep a ceramic mug for water and coffee at work rather than using plastic or foam cups. Encourage others to do the same.
Leave grass clippings on the lawn
Grass clippings make good fertiliser when they decompose. Leaving them on your lawn keeps them from occupying limited space in the local landfill.
Buy in bulk
Encourage the introduction of, and participate in, bulk buying programs whereby you can purchase larger quantities with less packaging.