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Transition New Mills

Tag Archives: sustainable hayfield

Your Money Affairs

20 Saturday Jun 2015

Posted by Michael Daw in Events

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sustainable hayfield

Got a little money – lump sum or recurrent – you want a decent return from, but you want put to good use, avoiding unwise and ethically unsound investment? Or, maybe, you find ordinary credit lines difficult to access and want a responsible lender? Then read on…

Our friends at Sustainable Hayfield have organised an evening focused on ethical finance – the use of money to achieve commercial returns via ethically and environmentally sound practices. It’s at The Royal Hotel, Thursday July 2nd, from 8.00p.m.

They’ve managed to get senior people from some key financial institutions to come to Hayfield, to make presentations on what they do, their ethical stance, the products and advice they offer – and take questions from audience members. They include The Co-operative Bank, Investing Ethically (nationally-renowned independent ethical advisers with a deep commitment to ethical financial planning, linked to Quakers and Business) and the Manchester and High Peak Credit Union. And the event will be chaired by a staff member from Ethical Consumer magazine, based in Manchester.

Laurie from Sustainable Hayfield says, “It’s quite a coup to get these all to come. We’re fairly sure there’s not been anything like it in Hayfield before! Many of our supporters may have considered – at least in  principle – about how their investments might be more ethically-based but maybe haven’t known where to go for advice and information. This event may open doors, and answer questions, for all of us. We hope very much you’ll join us!”

The evening follows their AGM, being held at 7.30p.m., to which you’re also invited. It’s very brief and unfussy. If you like what you know about Sustainable Hayfield and want to get more closely involved/help shape their activities, contact their Chair, Cath Moss (cathmhayfieldsustain@btconnect.com).

SHAGM2015Poster

 

Widened Horizons? A Report

12 Friday Dec 2014

Posted by Michael Daw in Events

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Sett Valley, sustainable hayfield

Thirteen of us attended our Widening Horizons workshop (original blog here) on 29 November where we peered into a Transitioned, sustainable future for New Mills and the Sett Valley. (As well as people from Transition New Mills, we had four or five from Sustainable Hayfield and it was great to be working together.)

We used a process called ‘backcasting’ (like forecasting, except you start in the future and work back to the present) to envision ideal scenarios in ten years’ time (or even, in one group’s case, thirty years’ time) and how we might get there.

Perhaps we’ll have…

  • Sustainable, bio-diverse woodlands enabling the Sett Valley to be self-sufficient in some varieties of fruit and nuts
  • Greenhouses growing local bananas and pineapples
  • Collective community planning on what food needs growing
  • No need for supermarkets
  • Over 3,000 houses generating solar electricity.

But what do we need to do straight away to set us on these paths? One thing that will certainly help is money. Cath Finn shared her valuable experience in securing money for projects, including signposting possible funding sources.

No good meeting is complete without agreeing actions to take us forward. These included:

  • Moving forward on a Sett Valley Corridor Community Orchard in collaboration with New Mills Community Orchard
  • Enhancing and extending a forthcoming Food Hub for New Mills (more details on this coming up in a future blog!)
  • Establishing a regular food festival as a celebration of local food and to share skills related to food
  • Looking into a skills exchange to make best use of locally available people resources
  • Hold another meeting in 6 months’ time with similar objectives to tease out new projects and follow up on projects.

Detailed notes may be found here: Widening Horizons-Notes+Actions-29Nov2014

Widening Horizons WorkshopWidening Horizons Workshop

Cheaper Solar Panels for your House?

11 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by Michael Daw in Energy

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

solar energy, sustainable hayfield

Sustainable Hayfield is exploring the scope for attracting significant discounts from solar power installers by bringing together households interested in having solar panels installed. Is this of interest to you?
Owners of solar panels get three distinct benefits:
  • a renewable source of electricity, reducing CO2 emissions and dependence on energy providers;
  • opportunity to become more self-sufficient in energy, and reduce bills significantly;
  • you generate an income stream by exporting electricity to ‘the grid’, currently about 15p per KWh, guaranteed for 20 years (a typical installation would have 2-4 kilowatts capacity).
That’s all very positive. The downside has been installation costs. Whilst costs for a typical house have fallen hugely – from around £15,000 ten years ago to £5-6,000 now – this is still a big sum, though they should last for 20-25 years with no problems.
Sustainable Hayfield has heard from installers they’d be very keen to talk, offering considerable reductions on normal prices, where they can arrange a number of installations together in a location. This is because it clearly reduces their costs (travel, scaffolding, more efficient use of time etc.). Sustainable Hayfield would like to bring together interested local households and approach a range of installers with an outline proposal for near-simultaneous installations i.e using the purchasing power of a ‘critical mass’ of consumers to lever savings.
Are you interested? Have you thought about solar power but been put off by the cost or because you’ve not known enough about the prospect? Why not join us in seeing what’s available? There’s absolutely no obligation at this stage, just an expression of interest in the idea. We already have a small number of local households who’ve registered interest, but we want more. That could include you, local friends and neighbours. It would be great if we could approach installers with 10, 20, 30 prospective installations, which we think would be a very attractive proposition to them.
If you’d like to register your outline interest, please contact Mike Crompton of Sustainable Hayfield (pmcrompton@gmail.com) (tel: 01663 744248) in the next 3- 4 weeks. The intention is to hold a meeting of those interested. We look forward to seeing what ‘people power’ might be able to achieve!

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