Month: June 2020

Government Announces UK is Failing on CO2 Emissions

Eastbourne Borough Council, like many other local authorities, has committed to do all it can to reduce carbon emissions in the town to net-zero by 2030 and has declared a climate emergency. However, much of this cannot be achieved without Government initiatives. Their advisers this week are warning that the UK is falling behind on its own target to cut greenhouse gas emissions and risks an increase in CO2 emissions now that the COVID-19 lockdown is easing.

Eastbourne Borough Council,  like many other local authorities,  has committed to do all it can to reduce carbon emissions in the town to net-zero by 2030 and has declared a climate emergency. However, much of this cannot be achieved without Government initiatives. Their advisers this week are warning that the UK is falling behind on its own target to cut greenhouse gas emissions and risks an increase in CO2 emissions now that the COVID-19 lockdown is easing.

Lord Deben, chair of the committee on climate change (CCC), published its progress report to parliament this week and it states that ministers must act fast to avoid a carbon rebound. Chris Stark, chief executive of the CCC, said: “Without central and integrated leadership we will fail in our task”.

These initiatives would include more active travel, new schemes to insulate homes, raising carbon taxes, switching to electric vehicles and ensuring reliable broadband to allow working from home.

Much of this can be supported by the local authorities. Taken from the best examples in the UK is the Friends of the Earth, Ashden,  31 climate actions for councils. This outlines practical suggestions to reduce carbon at a local level in areas that local authorities have either direct control of or could influence.

So how much progress is being made?  This week the latest CO2 statistics for Local Authorities were published by the Government. Eastbourne, for geographic and industrial reasons, tends to have a lower than average carbon footprint.

The latest data is for 2018 and shows a 1.4% decline from 2017. The carbon footprint for Eastbourne is now 293,000 tonnes per annum or around 3 tonnes per person. This reflects the steady improvement across the UK, over the last 10 years, with less coal and more renewables.  So for example, one challenge for the town is natural gas, which is over 40% of all our carbon emissions.

Locally, as across the rest of the UK, commercial and residential sectors have shown significant reductions with only transport remaining stubbornly at around 80,000 tonnes p.a. The report also states that nearly all of Eastbourne’s footprint is within “the scope of influence of the local authority”.

With 2030 only 10 years away there will need to be a major change in strategy to even begin to approach the net-zero carbon target.

Read Delivering a Better Eastbourne by EEAN Transport Group outlining some suggestions for improving our town’s carbon emissions.

Paul Humphreys

EEAN, Transport Group

Img Veeterzy, Unsplash.

Big Summer Beach Clean

Plastic Free Eastbourne wants to encourage everyone to join our whole-town Summer Beach Clean in July. The event will be fully COVID-19 aware.

Now the lockdown is being gradually eased and people can gather in small groups in their gardens and public places, we can begin to regain the momentum and actions to make Eastbourne cleaner and more sustainable.

Plastic Free Eastbourne wants to encourage everyone to join our whole-town Summer Beach Clean. The event will be fully COVID-aware.

Dates of the Summer Beach Clean

  • Friday 10 July
  • Saturday 11 July
  • Sunday 12 July

The time would be individualised and it will be up to you when you take part.

What you need to do

To comply with the current regulations, your volunteering group should not include more than 6 participants.

Check the map below and decide how many beaches you and your group want to clean. Select the stretch of beach by identifying the groyne numbers at each end of your choice. See the detailed map here.

Groynes are the wooden walls dividing our beach into sections. They have been set up to reduce the shingle beach material from being washed away by wave action.

Groynes with numbers.

Register your attendance by emailing your names, ages if under 18, time and date you wish to participate along with your chosen groyne numbers. Send this all to plasticfreeeastbourne@gmail.com. or phone for further details 07971 909454.

You will be sent a confirmation email along with a Risk Assessment and Safety Briefing, as well as a list of items you should bring. This will include protective gloves, which you can order for free, face-covering (COVID-19 regulation), suitable clothing, refillable water bottles, sun protection, hand sanitiser.

On the day and before the start of your chosen time, sufficient debris bags will be left on top of the lowest numbered groyne you have chosen for you to collect.

We hope you will be able to record the amount and type of debris you have collected and perhaps take a photo or two for sharing. You might also like to write a short piece to tell us about your experience.

If you want to purchase litter pickers at £5 each, please order them in your email. They will be awaiting your arrival at your chosen groyne. Payments will be accepted online.

When you finish collecting, please tie up your bag of debris and leave it next to (not in) the nearest waste bin. The local council will collect the bags afterwards.

Overall, this event is intended to make our beach clear of debris. Equally, it is intended to provide a whole-town experience to raise our self-confidence and our sense of being able to work creatively and positively during this worrying era.

Eastbourne has a well-deserved reputation for rising to challenges and bringing about improvement to our town and to our surroundings. Join us!

Oliver Sterno

Plastic Free Eastbourne , SEA~SurvivalEqualsAction

Everybody’s Business

When you think about it, there is so much you can do which will not add any time or effort to your day. If you go out on a walk, there is nothing stopping you from putting some gloves on and picking up as much litter as you can. There are no excuses. COVID-19 had to grind the Earth to a halt, and now it is the best time to reform the Earth into a state where future generations will not have to suffer from an irreversible hell. This is our home; this is everybody’s business.

My name is Oliver, I am 12, and although I don’t have to do it, I pick up litter.

Midway through April, I started the account @uklitterpickers on Instagram. I was generally eco-aware before, but there is a difference between awareness and activism. I didn’t quite know how bad the situation with litter was on our planet, but by learning from other people and following various social media accounts I realised that the reality was much worse than I ever thought. I started picking up litter on walks from time to time and I got a good reception from my friends. This motivated me to launch my account – I feel I need to do something about the current climate crisis we are in.

Whenever I go on a litter picking walk, I always count my litter and take a photo at the end of it helping me to keep track of how much litter has been picked up in my area. At the beginning of May, I joined a group called the 1 PIECE Army (@1piecearmy on Instagram) uniting people from different countries across the world who pick up litter. Their mission is to collect 1 million pieces by the end of 2020. At the time of writing, we have just surpassed 100k pieces across 15 weeks and over 20 countries.

The group is amazing and is growing at an incredible rate, and an all-round pleasure to be in. I also volunteer making a graph and a map every week for their impact report, as well as working closely with the director of the group giving ideas and helping out generally. I have also designed their group logo.

This journey has taught me communication skills, social media management and different ways to help the environment. I want to take this opportunity to talk about some accounts that I have interacted with who helped me along my journey.

@ecoplanetpedia is a group which posts environmental news and motivates me to post more. I have talked with them many times about issues and discussed environmental problems. @cleansomethingfornothing is an amazing account which reposts people’s litter picking using their hashtags. I have also worked closely with this account. Finally, @thebethechangecommunity who has been close to the 1 PIECE Army and are celebrating their one year of litter-picking. If you are interested to support these guys’ work, you might like to check out and follow their accounts.

One noticeable difference is that before this work seeing a piece of litter on the ground didn’t bother me. I would look at a bottle on the floor and not take notice of it and think that it’s just another piece of litter and it’s not my business. Now, I realise that each plastic bottle has a story behind it. One bottle can tell you what kind of person has dropped it, when they dropped it, and why they dropped it. That is why I can feel a pain inside when I see a bottle on the floor, and an even bigger one when I can’t pick it up.

When you think about it, there is so much you can do which will not add any time or effort to your day. If you go out on a walk, there is nothing stopping you from putting some gloves on and picking up as much litter as you can. There are no excuses. COVID-19 had to grind the Earth to a halt, and now it is the best time to reform the Earth into a state where future generations will not have to suffer from an irreversible hell. This is our home; this is everybody’s business.

Oliver Witts

Eco Activist, @uklitterpickers

Photos by Brian Yurasits on Unsplash, Oliver Witts

Will People of Eastbourne Celebrate With Plastic?

Now the lockdown is being gradually eased and people can gather in small groups in their gardens and public places, will people of Eastbourne be planning a celebration?

Now the lockdown is being gradually eased and people can gather in small groups in their gardens and public places, will people of Eastbourne be planning a celebration?

Plastic Free Eastbourne wants to encourage all communities to hold celebrations should they wish to when this pandemic has allowed us all to gather and mingle once again in groups.

But while we were in the lockdown, our town has changed. It has the cleanest air for a long time. Our wildlife is enjoying the lowest levels of pollution in their habitats for decades. We can hear birdsong and nature in clear conditions. Our streets and open spaces are as free of litter as ever before. We would like to retain these conditions from now on.

One big way of retaining this newly obtained environment is to make sure wherever possible that any gathering remains single-use plastic free, which is in line with Eastbourne’s status as a Plastic Free Community since December 2019, fully supported by Eastbourne Borough Council.

The examples of single-use plastic hugely damaging for the environment include but are not limited to:

  • balloons,
  • plastic single-use water bottles
  • clingfilm
  • plastic cutlery
  • single-use plastic packaging
  • lighted lanterns

Instead, we should try to celebrate like we saw people doing in the newsreels during VE Day in 1945. Not one balloon was visible and yet, they obviously were having a great time!

So what are the alternatives? We have some suggestions for you:

  • planting a tree communally
  • ribbon dancers
  • banners and streamers
  • kites and spinners
  • tissue paper pompoms
  • light a candle
  • drumming
  • seed bombs to name just a few.

Of course, all of these should be plastic-free, made from recycled materials, or for more than one use. Hygienic packaging of food and drink should be washable and reusable, such as plastic reusable boxes with lids. Alternatively, products made from Vegware or similar should be chosen.

We would like to build on the great work which we as a town have done together to reduce single-use plastic already. We have the reputation for being at the forefront of developing a Plastic Free Community. If we all agree, we can take our campaign up to the next level and contribute greatly to becoming carbon neutral by 2030.

And above all – we will keep our town and our coastline free of plastic for the next generations to enjoy.

Oliver Sterno

Plastic Free Eastbourne, EEAN Education Group

Photos by Brian Yurasits , Eleni Koureas on Unsplash.