Sustainable Tring – Annual Reports  2023-2024 for the Annual Gathering Wednesday 15 May 2024

 

Organisation

ST is run by the Hive which is formed of group/project representatives. It meets every two months. Representatives of ST sit on Tring Town Council's Climate Action Working Party and Allotments, Environment and Transport Committee.

 

At a glance

• 284 subscribers to our mailing list

• 780 Facebook followers, 78 Instagram followers

• 5 ST newsletters

Summary of this year's highlights

• Formation of Sustainable Tring, May 2023

• Activity by ten established groups, including monthly Repair Cafe and Community Garden sessions, and regular litter picks.

• Support of Tring’s Own Apple Fayre, Oct 2023

• Ad hoc events e.g. film showings

• Engagement with, and awareness raising of, Dacorum Borough Council’s Local Plan affecting Dunsley and Cow Lane Farms in Tring

• Campaigning about the irregular housing application to convert barns within the Local Plan site, Nov 2023

• Presentation at Dacorum’s Climate Action Network conference, Nov 2023.

 

Reports - (see below) for the following were presented at the meeting; Tring Community Garden, Energy Group, Great Big Green Week, Hedges in Tring, Lobbying and Protest, Plastic Free Tring, Repair Cafe, Sustainable Wigginton, Tidy Tring Team,  Wild Tring. Contacts for all of our groups and projects can be found here.

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Tring Community Garden 2023/2024      

                                                                       

Many thanks to everyone who helped at the Garden this year - it's looking great!

 

Highlights and special thanks:

• Ben Cartwright – our town warden – cleared shrubs from our wildflower bank and built a rustic fence around our perimeter.

• Fay Copestake from Tring WI, who has been maintaining a raised bed and to Claire Williams who will be taking over from her this summer.

• Tring Town Council have allocated some CIL money to us to buy a wheelchair friendly picnic table.

• Tring Scouts held a session at the garden, they made some new seating and fixed some of the older benches. Many thanks to Brian Rook for coordinating.

• The ‘help yourself’ stall has been extremely successful, with a good exchange of equipment, plants and produce.

• We ran a seed swap with Les Smith from Sustainable Wigginton.

Aims for next year:

• Find more volunteers – come and join us!

• Continue to promote the ‘help yourself’ stall and the practice of No Dig.

• Hold another seed swap.

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Energy Group     

 

Thermal Imaging in Tring and villages

Volunteers carried out 17 thermal imaging visits between December 2023 and February 2024.

The visits need to be carried out in cold, dry weather. We share the results with homeowners to

help them prioritise actions to reduce heat loss from their homes. The visits are free of charge,

though donations to Sustainable Tring are welcomed.

Thermal imaging training for volunteers

Thanks to Jan and Sarah Sisson of Tring business Sunsible we were able to run another training session in Nov 2023 to prepare for the winter season.

Collaboration

We collaborated with Little Gaddesden Parish Council to demonstrate the thermal imaging service, and to support them to set up a similar scheme for the village.

Borrow a Power Meter Plug on your Library card

We collaborated with Tring Library to supply and lend power meter plugs. These can be used to calculate the running cost of home electrical appliances.

 

Looking ahead: We’re hoping to train Energy Group volunteers to carry out home energy assessments.

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Great Big Green Week 

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Tring’s Great Big Green Week 2023  - our first - was a huge success. We saw guided walks, films,

chess for climate, craft, pond discovery, a guided tour of an eco-house and so much more.

Although Sustainable Tring supported and promoted Tring’s GBGW, the individual events were

put on by community groups and inspired individuals. GBGW embodied the ethos of

Sustainable Tring by encouraging people to take action. 

To launch Tring’s GBGW 2024 we held an information evening on Wednesday 24 March 2024 with approximately 40 people attending. This year, Sustainable Tring and Tring Town Council have joined together to support events throughout the week. There are already 15 different events planned, with more being added all the time.

If you’d like to be involved in GBGW 2024, please email Polly

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Hedges in Tring                                                 

 

A group dedicated to preserving and protecting hedges in Tring. Volunteers are surveying the

hedges in the town. The aim is to calculate how much carbon is being sequestered.

To date we estimate we have measured two thirds of the hedges in Tring. During 2024 we will

continue to measure hedges, and if the weather permits we plan to finish by the end of the year.

HiT in Great Big Green Week

Join us on Wednesday 12 June at 11am at the corner of Grove Road and Station Road.  All are welcome.

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Lobbying and Protest 

 

Helen shared at the meeting that she would like to start a group that focuses on lobbying and

holding the various levels of council to account. She invited anyone interested in joining this

group to get in touch with her.

Polly shared information about the Climate and Nature Bill. Zero Hour is the campaign for the Climate and Nature Bill, formerly the CE Bill and the CEE Bill. It's a plan for a new UK law that addresses the full extent of the climate and nature crisis in line with the most up-to-date science. The Bill is the only proposed legislation before the UK Parliament that ensures a comprehensive and joined-up approach to the climate emergency and nature crisis.

Environment campaigners are urging everyone who cares for nature to unite and march through London to Parliament Square on Saturday 22 June, with a simple demand to all political parties: Restore Nature Now. To join the campaign go to: https://www.zerohour.uk/

 

If you would like to join this march and attend as a group from Tring, please email us.

Saturday 22 June  12 Noon, Central London

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Plastic Free Tring

 

Plastic Free Tring have distributed window stickers to local businesses who are striving to

reduce/eliminate single use plastic. There has been a good response, with many engaged and

displaying window stickers. Joe aims to do more promotion for GBGW again to raise awareness.

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Repair Café

 

• The café has been running successfully for 2 and a half years, in our quest to lengthen the
  useful life of goods, reduce landfill and cut our carbon footprint.

• We currently have 27 volunteer repairers on our books.

• 383 items were brought to the café and of those 229 were successfully repaired.

• After costs have been covered, we have donated £425 to Dacorum Night Shelter and £175 to Youth Concern Aylesbury.

• We were awarded Tring Radio Local Heroes 2023 

A wish for next year:  To help establish a Repair Shed in Tring

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Sustainable Wigginton

 

Highlights of 2023-4:

• Successful launch of the Community Fruit Scheme in Wigginton, involving local volunteers 
  and tree owners to make juice out of spare apples.

• As a new member of the Sustainable Tring Hive, taking part in the Great Big Green Week events
  and the search for premises for a Tring Repair Shed.

• Assisting ST’s Energy Group with the completion of Thermal Imaging surveys in Tring and villages.

• Continue and expand the Community Fruit Scheme with a target of 300 bottles of pasteurised juice, assuming a normal apple harvest.

• Help find a site in Tring for a Repair Shed.

• Continue involvement in existing projects with ST and SW.

• Consideration of Transition Streets and other potential new projects.

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Tidy Tring Team

 

The Tidy Tring Team did its first official litter pick in September 2023. We have been out

together five times - each time we have around 12 people participating including a few children.

Our Facebook membership is now over 130, and at least 30 of those have signed up to the
Dacorum Street Champions scheme. The interest is there and growing.

 

Challenges ahead:

1) how to get a few more of our Facebook members to try joining a litter pick?

2) how to engage more with younger people - maybe through Beavers and Scouts, schools, etc. ?

 

Any and all ideas are welcome if they help us to achieve those goals.

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Wild Tring

 

The focus has been on awareness raising around biodiversity issues and local green spaces

via social media Facebook and Twitter.

 

Highlights from the last year:

• The number of followers of the Wild Tring facebook page has shot up & the page now has 512 followers.

• A new Wild Tring twitter page was also established – need to build up followers on this though!

• Persuading DBC to temporarily stop work on re-roofing council properties which house a swift colony; and to install soffit nest boxes for the birds.

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What’s next:

In the coming year Wild Tring hopes to see DBC formal adoption of Joe’s Wood and the implementation of the ecological management plan to safeguard this special little green space.

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