ENVIRONMENT

Just east of All Saints and St Margaret's Church in Pakefield there's a row of ships, reaching out to the sandbar.

There's a couple of barges, several RIBs, and, disappearing from a mobile cable-corner thing, into the grey almost flat-calm sea, a cable.

This is Google's fibre optic cable, successfully laid under the seabed, all the way from Belgium. Successful, that is, until it reached our tricky coastal waters.

Thirty-three years after she first prepared Lely’s Flagmen of Lowestoft for display, Senior Paintings Conservator Elizabeth Hamilton-Eddy prepares them for the Queen’s House.

credit: National Maritime Museum 

The Street That Saved is on the radio. And is set to be on TV, too.

The Street That Saved is a competition between Suffolk and Norfolk to waste the least and save the most money!

Here's our podcast (under the Use It All banner) of the radio interviews done on Saturday morning.

Keep an eye and ear out for the story on BBC Look East next week.

Our first Challenge is keeping a week's record of what we throw away, foodwise.

Norfolk County Council are all over this

At the junction of St Peter's Street and the High Street there's a big sign saying 'Pedestrian Zone'. It looks quite clear to me but cars regularly pass by it. There were two signs but one of the signs was removed about a couple of weeks ago. Don't know why, or by whom.

The cars, the vans, even the bicycles, in that triangular area and down the road have long caused problems to people who foolishly think that when a big official sign says 'Pedestrian Zone' that's what it means.

On Sunday 8th August the Triangle Market Sails hosted a Smoothie Bike.

The Bike - basically a food blender powered by mad cycling – was a part of the launch of Lowestoft High Street's effort to become the Street That Won The Street That Saved, the competition designed to help us waste less food.

The figures are astonishing. The world, and us, throws away thirty percent of the food we buy. And not only does this throw away money, it chucks the planet under a bus.

So Hubbub welcomed the great and the good, as well as the enthusiastic and vocal participants.

One aspect of our daily living where we do not Use It All is the way that we heat our homes and workplaces. With soaring energy prices and the possibility that they will go up again this autumn, it also means that many people will be pushed into fuel poverty. It is also essential to improve the UK housing stock if we are to get anywhere near our commitment to combat climate change.

We know that many people reading this article will just be interested in what they can do, and what support they can get in cutting their growing energy bills. Therefore, we will deal with this first.

North Lowestoft Men's Shed has applied to Network Rail for the ex-Chadds, ex-Menzies building in Denmark Road.

They want to turn an unloved run-down building into a vibrant, green, community building. It was built sometime in the 1890's, so it has considerable historic interest, as well.

North Lowestoft Men's Shed think it's a perfectly sound building, ideal as a men's shed project.

Network Rail think it's only fit to demolished.

Use It All, Lowestoft Old and Now Community Website, Food Savvy/Suffolk Recycle, Most Easterly Community Group, Friends of Dip Farm and Lowestoft Town Council all had stalls under the Triangle Sails on Saturday the 18th September 2021.

Lowestoft Heritage Open Days Week seems to have been a tremendous success, again. An amazing amount of effort and work put into it right across Lowestoft, mostly by volunteers. An astonishing 115 events were listed.

Much of the info about being green for businesses is aimed at businesses with quite a few employees. But there's a huge number of much smaller businesses in Lowestoft. 

They may not think they can or should involve themselves in fighting the onslaught of climate change. They may not even think it will affect them.

But Suffolk is literally already feeling the heat. Not to mention coastal erosion, flooding, and transport costs. Small businesses can and should make every effort to be sustainable. Bottomline, it's where the profit lies.

Use It All's next collection stalls are on Friday 1st October Triangle Market and Saturday 2nd October Compass Street (opposite Uncle Sid's Zero Waste Store). We'll be collecting the usual things EXCEPT for pet food pouches which is on hold for the moment. CRISP PACKETS, TETRAPAKS, BRAS, PILLS BLISTER PACKS and so on.

We've added a new collection point - plastic plant pots - to the recycle map.

You can take filmy plastic to Tesco rather than bring it to us.