The first Marlborough Climate Day was held on Saturday 2nd April in the Town Hall and at the Community Fridge. This was the first event to be organised by the Climate Action Working Party, which was created in response to the Town Council’s Climate Emergency Declaration.
The theme of the day, “What Can I Do?”, brought together many local groups and initiatives to focus on ways we as individuals and a local community can live more sustainably. Hayley Lambert from Packaging Not Included gave a talk on ‘Zero Waste Living for beginners’ while Professor David Waltham’s talk, ‘Drop a Tonne’ gave practical solutions for reducing emissions.
Susie Price, Chair of the Climate emergency Working Party and Community Fridge, told Marlborough.news, “This event is the first of what we hope will be many and it’s an opportunity to find out about what’s going on locally. Our future plans also include carrying out a green audit on the Town Council buildings and the council as a whole.”
Groups represented at the Town Hall included: Green Machines, Ramsbury (who recycle IT equipment), Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, the local branch of Citizens’ Climate Lobby, Bedwyn Trains Passenger Group (who are protesting about the cuts to train services to Paddington since the pandemic) and Action for the River Kennet.
St John’s students, Kitty Kaneen and Astrid Wilson-Gignoux, together with teacher, Environment Change Leader and Head of Science, Jonny Friend were present to highlight all the initiatives their climate school group has led. These include influencing the school canteen to use recyclable packaging and to serve more environmentally friendly food and lobbying the school senior leadership to tackle the problem of idling buses in the car park. They have run many environmental themed days to raise awareness of climate issues and emailed local MP Danny Kruger about local environmental issues. Their latest project is to organise a herb and wildlife garden.
Down at the Community Fridge in George Lane carpark, new raised beds are being prepared for a community garden. Milly Carmichael, who runs the Community Fridge, said, “The raised beds have been built by a Wiltshire Wildlife Trust adult well-being course and the council has provided the compost. We will have ‘pick your own’ veg and flowers and a surplus to be distributed through the fridge. It’s an exciting extension to our project.”
From January to March there were 325 visits to the fridge and an amazing 898kg of free food that would have otherwise gone to waste, has been shared. 237 people have benefited from the fridge since it opened last year.
The Community Fridge is open Thurs, Fri from 9am-11am and Saturday from 9am to 12. Milly says, “We have a tremendous volunteer team but we always need more volunteers.
Cllr Jo Waltham said, “We are delighted to host this first climate day – hopefully the first of many. Marlborough Town Council has to look at what actions can be taken to tackle Climate Change by considering how it impacts the council and the wider community of Marlborough. Finally, the Town Council has to look at how we can influence individuals to take action for themselves.”
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