The Eastbourne ECO Action Network in 2021: What was our year like?

As 2021 draws to a close, now is a good time to review the progress of the Eastbourne Eco Action Network.

As 2021 draws to a close, now is a good time to review the progress of the Eastbourne Eco Action Network, which has been very active throughout the year despite all the disruptions caused by the pandemic. Here’s a selection of the highlights as I, Andrew Durling, see them from my perspective as CEO of the Eastbourne Eco Action CIC.

Housing, Energy & Environment

The 2021 Eastbourne Eco Homes webinar was designed and hosted by the Housing and Energy Working Group. Their extensive research helped local residents make their homes much more energy-efficient. 

The Housing & Energy, Research and Transport Groups drafted three Technical Advice Notices (TANs), which were adopted by Eastbourne Borough Council. These rules form a crucial part of the planning guidance for ensuring that developments within Eastbourne are as environmentally sound as possible within current planning law. The TANs cover EV infrastructure, Sustainability in Development, and Biodiversity Net Gain. The Housing & Energy Group have scrutinised the EBC development proposals for the Old Magistrate Court site in Old Orchard Road, and are lobbying for these TANs to be fully incorporated into design schemes. Additionally, the group is actively working with Eastbourne Borough Council and the ECO Action Transport Group to create Low Traffic Neighbourhoods within the town.

The Research Group’s upstream liaison with Eastbourne Borough Council over the Environment Agency’s Pevensey Bay to Eastbourne Coastal Defences Scheme has been a success. Members of the group also collaborate with Ralph Lucas, an Eastbourne resident who is a member of the House of Lords, over biodiversity net gain standards in the Environment Bill and the ecological impacts of Queen’s Green Canopy Project. 

We liaised with councillors and council officers about the development of the Pevensey Bay to Eastbourne Coastal Management Scheme. The Environment Agency has designed the scheme to strengthen the local sea defences so they can cope with the predicted rise in sea levels that climate change will induce by 2100. Without improved sea defences, Eastbourne will become increasingly vulnerable to severe flooding from storm surges.

Sustainability in 2021

The Eastbourne Food Partnership (EFP), some members of which emerged from the EEAN’s Food Working Group and Climate Adaptation Group, became a Community Interest Company in 2021. The change enabled the group to successfully gain its first grant funding to facilitate the development of a sustainable, climate-resilient local food network that can ensure a supply of fresh, healthy, locally produced food distributed equitably to all local residents. 

Furthermore, the EFP is now a member of the national Sustainable Food Places network, and works in close collaboration with 3VA and East Sussex County Council. It has recently been liaising with councillors and council officers about how the Eastbourne Food Partnership, and the EEAN in general, could have some sort of presence within the Food Street project developing in Victoria Place.

Moreover, EEAN wrote vital proposals for ensuring that the Eastbourne Levelling Up Fund (LUF) remains within the purview of the Eastbourne Carbon Neutral 2030 strategy. The Transport Group and CIC submitted a proposal for the delivery of bus priority lanes, to unlock investment in zero carbon buses to reduce pollution supporting modal shift from cars to buses. Given that the LUF aims to increase the number of visitors to Eastbourne by 500,000 per year, a Transport Plan has to be at the heart of the LUF to prevent transport emissions within the town from increasing, and the Transport Working Group has been instrumental in designing that plan throughout 2021.

We have supported the continuing success of Treebourne (which evolved from the Carbon Capture Working Group) and EcoEd2030 (which evolved from the Education Working Group) through administrative support such as draft policy templates, advice on CIC forms, banking services for Treebourne; and an offer of financial grant to help with set up costs. Two CIC directors along with colleagues planted and cared for hundreds of baby trees in the Churchdale Allotment, some 400 of which have been transferred for planting at Tugwell Park.

Social Media & Public Profile in 2021

We have extended our active social media presence with the help of the one paid employee in the EEAN CIC gained under the government’s Kickstart programme. We created a fresh newsletter format using that presence to complete, and publicise, for the first time ever, a detailed survey – prepared by the Kickstart employee with aid from the Transport Working Group – of local people’s opinions about the local bus service, and how it could be improved. This has given a voice to bus users within our community, and we continue to lobby on their behalf. 

Some of the results have been used by East Sussex County Council in compiling its own analysis of local bus services and how to improve them.  This has helped increase our newsletter subscriptions by 47%. This bus survey reached over 12,000 local citizens. Our recent social media posts of Andy Durling’s speech at the COP26 rally in September reached over 6,800 people via organic growth across our social media channels. 

On wider communication, the CIC and other network groups contribute to the Eastbourne Borough Council ECN2030 Newsletter sent to over 10,000 residents; and the CIC and Groups have had articles published in the Eastbourne Herald, stimulating further engagement from the community.

As members of the Eastbourne Cultural Strategy Group and following on from our collaboration with them to facilitate the “Full Frontal” artworks on the empty Debenhams store, we have introduced this group to the possibility of using cultural engagement on the theme of climate change awareness and responses modelled on the excellent work of Creative Carbon Scotland.

We were delighted to work with a local artist and Eastbourne BID in the creation of the ‘You are part of history mural’ located at the junction of York and Grove Road in Eastbourne.

We participated in the march and rally organised by the Eastbourne Climate Coalition on 6 November to coincide with the start of the UN COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow. I delivered a speech to the rally on behalf of the EEAN, which was later published as a blog on the website. This address had an organic reach in social media of over 6,800, thanks to our Kickstart employee. The EEAN CIC is now collaborating with the Eastbourne Climate Coalition to set up a Climate Hub in Eastbourne.

Eastbourne residents participate in a protest march to recognise COP26

Thank you!

On behalf of all my colleagues in the EEAN CIC, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks and deep gratitude to all the CIC directors, groups and partner organisations within the EEAN for their hard work in the face of the incredible difficulties we’ve all had to deal with in this pandemic year. You are heroes all! I hope you have a very restful and peaceful Christmas and New Year and come back refreshed in 2022 to continue the great work of helping to deal with the greatest challenge of our time: the Climate Emergency.

On a more personal note, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude and thanks to Miles Berkley, my predecessor as CEO of the EEAN CIC, for his immense contributions to the EEAN and to ecological action generally during his two years in office. His dedication to developing effective collaboration between all partners within the Eastbourne Carbon Neutral 2030 campaign was exceptional and will have a lasting and deep impact.

Happy holidays!

Andrew Durling

Executive Director

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 YurasitsEleni Koureas on Unsplash.