Chew Magna

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Chew Magna Moving towards a zero waste society
A service village 8 miles south of Bristol
commuter belt 450 houses, 1200 inhabitants 2
banks, P.O., Doctors, Dentists, Opticians, Vets,
Co-op store, Travel Agent, 4 Estate Agents,
assorted small businesses, 3 churches, funeral
director, secondary primary schools and a
café. Wealth considerable, Traffic intolerable,
Carbon emissions enormous. Sustainable not by
itself!
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Origins of Go Zero

• Parish plan - survey for the future
• RSA Coffeehouse Challenge to create a zero
  waste society
• Coffeehouse conversations (some in the pub)
• Larger and larger meetings
• Open day
• Four groups formed

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Four Groups

• Energy Transport
• Waste Recycling
• Consumption People
• Converging World

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Achievements

• Newsletters
• Meetings
• Open days
• Website www.gozero.org.uk
• Email list
• Media coverage
• Fund raising - revue, raffle, sales
• Schools involvement
• The Converging World

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Success ?

• General awareness - up
• Waste recycling - up
• Energy savings up
• Solar panels up
• Local food up
• Fair trade up
• Trees up
• School links up
• Church links - up
• Global links up
• Wind turbines up (in India)
• Local development green
• Plastic bags down

• Travel no change
• Congestion worse
• Public transport - abysmal
• Car / lift sharing - minimal
• Dragon Flyer - minimal
• Biofuels stalled
• Community renewables nil
• Community energy saving nil
• Business involvement - low

Presentations to other communities - many
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Assessment
Phase 1 excitement, campaigns, easy changes,
then energy wanes (realise that there are some
things we cant do yet) (diminishing returns on
efforts to promote change, green fatigue) Phase
2 consolidate, long term perspective, small
projects (becoming part of the community
establishment) (link to other groups share
ideas, organise, develop a united voice) Phase
3 plan and implement community scale
changes (requires champions, personal energy,
funding and partnerships)
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Sensitivities

• Them and Us
• Green Police
• Doom mongering
• Hypocrisy
• Inflated expectations
• Busy bodies - its local authority and central
  governments job

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The Future is an experiment

• Its an old community listed buildings back
  to the Domesday book
• High inertia - change is slow, people are
  settled, little new construction
• Wealth means no pressures to change
• Might require a sustained crisis
• Plan
• Continue with phase 2 - especially linking and
  organising