More... useitall

Meeting weekly at The Land, Denmark Road

email info@northlowestoftmensshed.org

Meet at the carpark at the end of Grand Avenue, near Deans Beans

Join Suffolk Beach Cleans for an Easter Monday Beach Clean to work off all the chocolate eggs!

We usually clean for an hour (weather depending!) As always everyone is welcome and all equipment will be provided - but if you have your own gloves and litter pickers please bring them. Dogs Welcome! Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.

Please let us know if you intend to come as it helps for getting equipment ready.

We look forward to 'seaing' you on the beach!

"The Coat of Hopes is a patchwork coat on an ongoing walking pilgrimage through the UK towards the end of the climate and ecological emergency"

The Coat of Hopes is a coat featuring hundreds of blanket patches made by groups and individuals who have encountered it on its journey.

“It has been made by and worn and walked by many hundreds of people on a journey on foot of around 1500 miles so far. It carries people's hopes for the places they live, sewn into the blanket patches of which it is made.”

A new recycling scheme for medicine blister packs has just started. There are now four different locations you can now take your empty blister packs. 

They are Trinity Church, Uncle Sid's Zero Waste Store, and the Mayfly cafe, all in the High Street, and The Olive Centre, next to the library in Clapham Road.

The scheme is a Most Easterly Community Group initiative, called Use It All, supported by Lowestoft Town Council. It's very much a pilot scheme, designed in part to estimate need.

Use it All has teamed up with Lowestoft Town Council to run a pilot scheme on those pesky medicine blister packs.

There are now collection points in four locations.

Trinity Church, top of High Street

Uncle Sid's Zero Waste Store, High Street

The Olive Centre, Clapham Road

The Mayfly, High Street

Here you can deposit your empty medicine packs, and they will be eventually recycled by ReFactory.

Did you know this is Big Plastic Count Week, 11-17th March?

Thursday 14 March 2024 The Future of Plastics 19:30 – 21:00

One of the ways to tackle pollution and resource scarcity is to reduce the amount of plastic we are using. This talk will provide an insight in the future of plastic and what plastic is doing to the environment. This event will take place at: The Cut Arts Centre, Halesworth IP19 8BY Suffolk

You can get tickets from here

Sometimes we have big household items which we need to replace. Quite often the replacements are second-hand, and households are left with large things which are difficult to get rid of, especially if you don't have access to a van or a trailer or something. And so sometimes they get dumped in back alleys or on the street. Fly-tipping. No one wants that.

Lowestoft Town Council has a remedy. They are funding a trial scheme 'Bulky Waste Free Collection and Disposal' service.

Without doubt, the biggest technical challenge for retrofitting historic buildings, such as Lowestoft Town Hall, is accommodating plant and services. Air-source heat pumps (ASHP) cannot be placed in basements, unlike traditional boilers, as they need air (obviously). They also must be visually and acoustically screened. Read more CREDIT: architectsjournal.co.uk
 

East Suffolk Cleansing are responsible for removing litter and fly-tipping, or dumped rubbish, from public land. Public land includes roads, pavements, adopted passageways, council-owned car parks, parks and recreation areas, lay-bys, and so forth. There is no charge for this service.

Officers will clear incidents of fly-tipping on public land as soon as possible, with the majority of incidents being removed within 24 hours of reporting.

Local community group #We Are Here Lowestoft (#WAHL) has had a significant influence on our MP, Peter Aldous, and on this government's response to the Climate Change Emergency.

The Government has been forcing through parliament its Levelling-Up and Regeneration Bill. Some intense lobbying of politicians over several years resulted in several important amendments being inserted. In a classic to-and-fro between the House of Commons and the House of Lords the amendments were removed in the Commons and re-instated in the Lords. 

If you were on Lowestoft's sunny South Beach on 28th August you may have seen people writing in the sand. It was a huge postcard to Rishi Sunak, our current Prime Minister. 

“Dear Rishi, hear our voice, save our beach, Floods 1953. Love, Lowestoft xxx”.

Many people watched and commented, and some Lowdown postcards – Lowdown's favourite social media – were completed. Being a holiday town, it wasn't just locals. 

Use It All is having to take a break.

We currently do not have anywhere to store collected recyclable material.

We hope to return in October, but in a slightly different form.

Still be collecting...

We will be collecting TetraPaks and possibly medicine blister packs on a regular basis. Other things we used to collect are now fairly easily dropped off at shops and supermarkets.

Use It All is all about trying to reduce our individual carbon footprint. Terracycling is one of the things we can do. Terracyling is actually the name of a US company who specialise in recycling stuff that other systems find hard to process or turn into something else.

https://www.terracycle.com/en-GB  "Zero Waste Boxes" https://zerowasteboxes.terracycle.co.uk/pages/how-it-works   

UK citizens are the worst consumers in Europe for buying single-use, irreparable goods. In this new BBC Radio 4 programme material scientist Professor Mark Miodownik explores how we got to this unsustainable state.

You can find the programmes here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000vgh9

Tuesday's warning that gas shortages in this coming winter might lead to interrupted electricity supplies – that is, power cuts – reminded me of Lowestoft's own new power station.

The Great Yarmouth B&Q now does a range of planters and plant pots made from recycled tyres (notoriously difficult to recycle). So enhance your garden and help the environment..

183 BILLION Tetra Paks produced EVERY year. A maximum of 23% recycled, worldwide. 

They are Use It All's, by volume, biggest incoming. (Crisp and similar packets come a close second, partly because of the good ship Triangle assiduously collecting for Use It All)).

Because they are mixed materials (plastic, card, aluminium) they are hard to recycle, though if they are pre-sorted, it becomes possible.

In Suffolk, the policy is - 'We-can't separate them at Great Blakenham, so they can't be blue-binned. We will collect them at Recycle Centres."

There's a lot of symbols! The labels are useful, but it's a bit of a minefield. Local Government - in our case Suffolk County Council - do most of our recycling. They do it by 'kerbside collection' (bins),and through recycling centres. Many other things can be recycled (that's the labels) but to collect the greatest amount in the most efficient way - ONLY PUT IN THE BLUE BIN WHAT YOU KNOW CAN BE RECYCLED!

As a rule of thumbs..