Category Archives: Sustainability

Your Resilience Plan – Waste and Recycling

March 6, 2021business, Environment, recycling, resilience, Sustainability, transportlocal business, Resilience Plan, The Handbook of Practical ResilienceElizabeth J Walker

The energy cost of waste is another factor of modern life which is subsidised by cheap fossil fuels. Goods have to be manufactured, transported and disposed of. Closing the loop to cut out the transport is the resilient way forward. Ultimately, we need to buy local and recycle locally.

Much of the waste generated by a household is packaging. You are in control of this. Consider that glass, cardboard and metal could be reprocessed in a small factory nearby. Plastic requires more specialised equipment and generates harsher pollutants, so still needs to be transported to a larger, more expensive facility.

bag from cat pouches — There are inventive ways of repurposing plastic waste!

Keeping this in mind, take steps to reduce the amount of potential waste coming into your house. Find out if you can get milk delivered in glass bottles. I buy my fruit juice from the tractor shop now, as they sell locally made apple juice in glass, not imported juice in tetrapax. Where there’s no alternative, rinse out plastic bottles before recycling. Removing organic waste helps the process and cuts costs.

During your shopping trips, study the recycling symbols on packaging and learn what they mean. If the manufacturer claims something is recyclable, is this really practical? Will your doorstep collection accept it? Where else could you take it? Can you recycle things that aren’t collected? Do some research. If the label is just ‘greenwash’, buy something else. Write to the manufacturer and tell them why you’re doing this.

Another area of everyday life where you can change your habits is the use of disposable products. Buy refillables instead. They often start more expensive, so you have to look after them to reap the cost benefits. Cultivate a new habit, that of buying quality goods and taking care of them so they last. Pens, razors, lighters, batteries – change them all over! Look for ease of repair in larger purchases. Are they fixable? Or just another disposable product at the end of the day.

Now consider the actual need for packaging. Is there anything you can buy in bulk and transfer to your own containers? Some shops allow you to refill bottles, mainly for their own eco-friendly cleaning products. Others sell dry goods in large bins, from which you weigh what you need into a paper bag and transfer it to a more robust container at home. Cut out the middle-man entirely and organise a local buying group.

Once a few people are involved in waste control, it’s worth considering local reprocessing. How could that work? Could enough people commit to buying locally made preserving jars, or animal bedding made from shredded cardboard, to provide a stable customer base? What are the barriers here?

Adapt to working from home by using those precious hours, previously wasted in a senseless commute, for community building. Organise a tour of a modern recycling plant, or other such facility, to understand the waste stream better. Form a research group, consider a business plan, talk to entrepreneurs. Recyclate is a valuable resource, especially if the supply and demand are stabilised in a circular, locally based, system.

Learn more about taking control of your environment in easy but relentless stages with The Handbook of Practical Resilience!

Don’t forget food security, for which you’ll need Recipes for Resilience.

Resilience Lite

December 13, 2020Disaster planning, pandemic, resilience, survival skills, SustainabilityRecipes for Resilience, Resilience Plan, solutions, The Handbook of Practical ResilienceElizabeth J Walker

A few years ago, when I was doing my annual Resilience Check, I noticed my scores in the Community Networking and Emergency Planning (National Plans) sections could improve. What was I missing? I hadn’t been to a local Council meeting for over a year. Attending these, however far outside your comfort zone it may be, is crucial in developing a resilient community.

So I went along, intending just to listen with a positive attitude. After all, these people are volunteers. I ended up being persuaded into filling a casual vacancy. Now I’m the Parish Resilience Officer!

The Council commissioned a new website, and I was asked to write a list of ‘Easy Things One can do to Reduce Carbon Emissions’. Now, I’m not a fan of simplistic solutions. ‘The Handbook of Practical Resilience’, at 180 pages, is as reductionist as I usually get.

However, there are a few tips which fashionable ‘To-do lists’ often omit, and here they are…..

ENERGY – Always remember to turn devices off when you’ve finished with them for the day. Leaving them on standby wastes a surprising amount of electricity!

FOOD – Cut down on food waste by shopping with a list and planning ahead to use up leftovers. Buy food from local suppliers wherever possible.

WATER – Don’t waste water! Keep your plumbing system in good repair. A dripping tap can waste 15 litres of water every day.

HOUSING – Most houses have double glazing and good insulation these days. Try turning your heating thermostat down by a degree or two, or cutting an hour off the heating time. If you only have single glazed windows, put up a set of thick winter curtains as well as your normal ones, leaving a few inches of space between them. This double layer of cloth helps keep the cold out.

TRANSPORT – Cars are very useful, but we rely on them too much. Make at least one journey a month by other means. Cycle, or get the bus, to the market. Walk to visit friends in the next town. It’s important to support all the transport options available.

WASTE – Avoid buying disposable items. Get cleaning products in bulk and fill up re-useable containers. Buy refillable pens, start using rechargeable batteries for your gadgets.

COMMUNICATION – The ‘gate poster’ has come into its own during the pandemic. Local businesses were able to advertise food delivery services with the help of their community. Do you know where you could display information so that your neighbours will see it? It’s a good way of communicating. If you’re having a clear-out, maybe you could sell a few things rather than taking them to the tip?

CLOTHES – Take good care of your clothes. If you do, you can afford to invest in good quality items, which last much longer. Learn how to check seams, zips and labels to recognise quality clothes in charity shops.

ENVIRONMENT – Look after your local wildlife. A healthy environment is a direct benefit to you. Birds are important in controlling insect pests. Wetlands mitigate flooding. Walks in nature are known to be important for our mental health.

The full programme of achievable actions to boost your level of practical resilience can be found in the Handbook, along with instructions for creating and following a Resilience Plan. It’s not all about being careful with resources. I encourage you to go on adventures, have some fun seeing new places in your locality or further afield.

‘Recipes for Resilience – Common Sense Cooking for the 21st Century’ makes food security fun, with over a hundred easy-to-follow and adaptable recipes.

Notes on a Resilient Community

November 28, 2020Environment, Food, gardening, housing, resilience, resilient communities, Sustainability, writingagriculture, community, Recipes for Resilience, solutions, survival skills, The Handbook of Practical ResilienceElizabeth J Walker

I made these notes some years ago, while researching for ‘Recipes for Resilience – Common Sense Cooking for the 21^st Century’. A whole sheaf of writing was condensed into a ‘mind map’, as pictured below, and set aside.

If I need this information for an article, book or story, this serves to remind me of the conclusions I drew from the research. It underpins the description of a resilient village on page 198 of ‘Recipes’ for example.

However, other people don’t find it quite so clear, so I’m just going to expand on these notes a little.

I began the project by musing on how much land a single person might need to grow all their own food. An acre of vegetables is said to be sufficient, but you’d want more variety, more redundancy, perhaps extra food to trade for other necessities. This is what I came up with:-

One acre of vegetables

About a third of an acre for chickens – you’d get both eggs and meat here

One acre for a horse

One acre for a cow

A quarter acre for a sheep

One square yard of grain gives you one loaf; 200 square yards of grain crop should suffice.

A quarter acre of pond supplies fish

Barns, workshops and housing would occupy another quarter acre.

That’s about four acres, adding land for paths, fences, windmills and suchlike.

By that time, I was considering fuel as well. Four acres of coppiced woodland can provide enough to heat a house all year in a temperate climate.

This was looking like a lot of work for one person. Suppose you got ill? A house can accommodate several people. Farm animals don’t like to live alone. Resources and practical skills are only half of the Resilience Wheel. Community is important. Let’s add more people!

With four adults living in the house, the amount of woodland required remains the same, but we need more food:-

Four acres of vegetables

About eight acres of pasture. There’s now enough land for a serious rotation. The sheep follow the cows and horses, the chickens follow the sheep. You could bring pigs into the mix too.

Add a couple of acres of orchard, with fruit and nut trees. The sheep and chickens can forage here too. There will be beehives for honey and wax.

About half an acre of pond is probably still enough. Any more and the fish may be too hard to catch! If you have a flowing stream as well, there’s water power to consider.

An acre of grain gives extra for fodder.

Your buildings will still take up about the same area; a quarter acre

And the four acres of woodland.

That’s about twenty acres all told. The single person had to manage eight alone. I notice I’ve randomly added a few more acres into the total in the original notes. I forget why, so let’s do the same. Call it twenty-four acres to support four people, that gives us extra land for crop and pasture rotation. The animals are much happier in their little herds. The extra labour opens up possibilities.

Now we’ve almost certainly got a surplus of produce. This tiny community could even support an elderly person and children, who each need less than half the food of a working adult. Not many children, as a two-child family is the only way to sustain this group long-term. Land does not multiply itself.

Now they need some company. Let’s give each household of six a thirty acre plot, just in case they temporarily expand to eight people. Fallow meadowland is easy to grow and pleasant to have, easy to cultivate if needed. Twelve of these plots, as segments of a circle with the houses and valuables at the centre, form a circle a mile wide. We’ve now got seventy to a hundred people in a little village, bordered by a band of woodland.

That’s quite a small community. Could it get bigger and remain resilient? Let’s double the diameter of the circle to two miles. The houses are still only a mile, twenty minutes walk, from the edge. You’ve got horses, renewable energy for tractors, you’ve laid paths. According to the expanded calculations in the picture, up to 72 households could be accommodated, or three to four hundred people of all ages from babies to the very old.

Below is a diagram of how the cultivated land could be laid out, with crops needing more maintenance closer to the houses. Sheep graze the edge of the forest, to discourage saplings encroaching. Water as in ponds, streams, rivers or even canals, may have to be worked around. Perhaps a couple of segments must be left unclaimed to host these common resources.

The coppiced woods form a circle around the village. It’d be useful to have a zone of natural forest beyond these. Fungi and game were always a fall-back plan if crops failed. Lets say a thick band of woodland, a couple of miles across, separates one of these villages from another. Your neighbours are only four miles away, an easy journey on foot – though you have horses and electric vehicles.

All the elements are in place for a fully sustainable, completely resilient lifestyle. Add skilled crafts people making luxury items, remote working because you haven’t forgotten technology and still have the internet. Unlikely? It’s surprising how resilient the internet is now that it’s been discovered!

What you can actually do right now may bear no more relationship to this than an acorn does to a full-grown oak. Remember – every majestic tree was once a nut that didn’t give up!

Making waxed cloth – a craft interlude

February 7, 2020crafts, Sustainabilitycraft workshops, survival skills, waxed clothElizabeth J Walker

Here at Resilience Central, we decided to take a break from researching improvised face-masks and try out a craft recipe. Squares of cloth impregnated with beeswax are a useful alternative to clingfilm, so we set about making some.

Before you try this at home, make sure you have examined the item as sold in shops or craft markets. This will give you an idea of what it should look like.

You will need

some light cotton cloth, about thin tea-towel grade
beeswax
An electric iron which will be dedicated to wax-based crafts from now on
An old towel
greaseproof paper

You have to grate the beeswax, but a good rinse with boiling water should clean up the grater.

We had a block of about 500 grams and used two-thirds of it. We made two large cloths and four small ones from this, as follows….

We were working on the kitchen counter, but with a bit more thought we’d have found a large sheet of wood, or a table instead. Lay down the old towel, which will also belong in the wax box now – don’t try to wash it in a machine!

On top of this goes a large sheet of greaseproof paper. We were lucky enough to have catering size, but you can use smaller gauge and overlap the sheets. The layer of paper has to be larger than the cloth. The cloth to be waxed goes on next, and is sprinkled with the grated wax.

showing how much wax to use on one of the small cloths — Sprinkling the wax

After some trial and error, we found this amount worked for us. Cover the cloth with another piece of greaseproof paper. Set your iron quite high, on the linen setting, and on no account use steam. Iron over the top paper. You’ll soon see the wax melting underneath; push it all over the cloth with the iron.

ironing the waxed cloth — Ironing the waxed cloth

Observe how the greaseproof paper goes transparent. You can see where the wax is going. While ensuring a good seal, try not to lose too much over the edge of the cloth, as it’s very difficult to retrieve from the paper afterwards.

When you’re sure all the cloth is covered with as even a layer of wax as you can achieve, give the top paper a quick warm up with the iron and peel it off. Pick up the waxed cloth and hold it up by the corners until it cools down a bit, then drape it over a rack or the top of a door.

The faster you separate the cloth and papers, the easier it will be. If you let the wax cool down, the paper may tear, which is a pity as you can reuse it for this purpose until it does.

finished waxed cloth hanging over the door — Finished waxed cloth hanging over the door

So that’s how we made waxed cloth.

You have to wipe it clean after use, not wash it. If the cloths begin to get a bit crumpled and cracked, get out the wax box again and re-iron them as explained above. You probably won’t need to add any more wax, just melt what’s already there and spread it around some more.

Remember to get your fortnight’s worth of tinned and dried food in! That’ll see you through a quarantine. There’s a list and lots of other useful advice in ‘Recipes for Resilience – common sense cooking for the 21st century’

Damage Limitation

October 17, 2018Disaster planning, Environment, resilience, resilient communities, SustainabilityResilience Handbook, solutionsElizabeth J Walker

Certain seagulls, who lay single eggs on cliff faces, prefer larger eggs to smaller. This can be observed by providing gulls with false eggs to nurture. They will reject their own egg in favour of one so large that the bird looks ridiculous trying to cover it.

There wasn’t any need to programme an upper limit into this genetically controlled behaviour. There were other limits on the size of egg likely to be laid, and no other birds of that size used this precarious habitat.

Humans are social creatures. Alone, we are poorly equipped for survival compared to other animals. Small family groups are also vulnerable, due to the long periods of child care required. In general, the larger the group, the better. Genetically controlled behaviour leads humans to feel more comfortable as part of a large group; other limiting factors controlled group size.

Most isolated humans would feel impelled to join a group, the larger the better. Advertisers, religions and political parties exploit this impulse to the hilt. Join our label, be part of our congregation, follow our leader!

Such unfeasibly large groups must sever their relationship with the land which supports them, such that other instincts like resource conflict seem irrelevant. These instincts do not go away, however, but simmer deep in the subconscious, informing behaviours which seem incomprehensible on the surface.

Competition for territory comes mainly from members of your own species, who require exactly the same resources as you. An expanding tribe would eventually encounter the borders of another group. Conflict might ensue, each group against the ‘other’.

In modern times, this was played out in destructive wars between nations. Now that it is far too dangerous to fully indulge this, different ways of identifying the ‘other’ are employed by primitive instincts trying to surface. In the absence of clear group markers, this leads to confused behaviours.

These instincts, around the potential of resource scarcity and the need to defend a ‘territory’ which cannot be defined, need to be brought into the open and dealt with honestly. We have indeed exceeded the carrying capacity of the entire planet, by a good long way, and urgently need to manage ourselves down from that while we can still prop up the process with non-renewable resources.

There’s no point looking at Science for answers. Science put the solution on the table back in the Sixties – efficient, cheap family planning. If we’d prioritised resilience over economic growth in the Seventies, Britain would be in far less trouble now. We may even have achieved the Age of Leisure as depicted in old science fiction novels, instead of having to work harder than medieval peasants.

However, it’s better to cry over split milk than to try and put it back in the bottle. Although it’s past time for an easy answer, there is a way forward. Start at ground level, resist the allure of labels, and consider what you couldn’t do without. Food, water and electricity are a good start.

Grow a resilient, sustainable civilisation underneath the worn out ways; the old will fall away like a broken eggshell as the new emerges.

I’ve done my bit by writing ‘The Resilience Handbook – How to Survive in the 21st Century’….now you need to read it!

April Diary 2017

April 21, 2017Food, gardening, Sustainabilityallotment, Diary post, garden pests, local food, Resilience Handbook, vegetablesElizabeth J Walker

It’s been an early, dry Spring in most of England this year. Here in our southwest corner, the rhubarb is thin and the potatoes slow to come up. On the positive side, the slugs are discouraged and the seedlings are getting a good start. Watering them is a daily chore now.

Having failed to negotiate a supply of wheat seeds – it’s hard to buy a small handful – I planted some old gleanings I found in the seed box. They seem to be coming up, but look exactly like grass just now. If the experiment doesn’t work, I’ll dig over and plant out squashes, or grow a catch crop of cress.

We managed to subdue most of the really wild quarter of our new Resilience Allotment while the soil was still soft. To clear the established perennial weeds – couch grass, bindweed, dandelion and horsetail – we turned the matted turf over to a spade’s depth, pulling the exposed roots out by hand as we broke up the clumps. These went to the tip for recycling, as they can sprout again from fragments.

The rough bit of the allotment before digging — The rough bit is on the left

A layer of leaf mould covered with cardboard sheets was laid on the sections we dug over, topped with another layer of leaf mould. Holes were cut in the card and our vegetables planted through it, in a handful of compost. The thick mulch will discourage the weeds – though we haven’t seen the last of them – and give our plants a head start.

The leaf mould was free, from a huge pile dumped in the allotment car park. It’s not ideal; in this dry weather it starts to blow away, and I worry that the potatoes may not like it.

“Do not dig your potatoes up to see if they are growing” – a modern Zen saying!

There was an urgent need for a weed suppressant though, and the leaf mould was available in large amounts. Resilience gardening is about making use of local resources, in a very permaculture-like fashion.

It’s also about low maintenance. While I’m concentrating on the allotment, the original Resilience Garden is ticking over nicely. The leeks and purple sprouting broccoli are finishing now, the kale going to seed, and the new peas coming up. The wild garlic is getting a bit ragged, but other salad leaves are coming up fast. The remaining small piece of lawn takes me more effort to maintain than the vegetable patch does.

You can learn the basics of starting a Resilience Garden from the Handbook...the best way to learn is to try things out. Even a windowsill pot of herbs is worth doing!

Why do you need the Resilience Handbook?

April 14, 2017Disaster planning, Resilience Handbook, Sustainabilityagriculture, clothes, floods, local business, Somerset, willowElizabeth J Walker

The answer is in the subtitle – ‘How to survive in the 21^st century’.

Even in a quiet little island like Britain, there are more episodes of ferocious weather now than we were used to in the last century. Flooding is a growing problem. What can you do about it?

Read the Emergency Planning section of the book, keep it handy to consult if you suddenly have to evacuate your house. It’ll tell you what to do, remind you to turn off your utilities, how to pack a grab bag.

You may not be directly affected by flooding, but the damage to the economy is shared by all. What can you do to help the long-term situation?

Rain comes from the sky, but flooding happens on land. Meetings of experts discuss useful management strategies, but the people responsible for the land have to implement them, Most of these are farmers, already struggling to make a living.

If they were able to sell to you, the consumer, without having to be routed through a supermarket chain…they’d have more money. Enough, perhaps, to consider engaging with flood relief; to invest in growing willow, in reforesting the hillsides.

The Resilience Handbook outlines a number of practical steps you can take to support community resilience at every level. It’s a call to action, not an invitation to more debate. Read through it, then keep it to hand as a reference book. Much of what it says won’t be clear to you until you begin to fulfill the set tasks.

Ignore the sneering quitters who tell you your personal buying choices mean nothing in the bigger picture. Supermarkets didn’t spring out of thin air. They evolved as a response to these choices. You can choose to return to a more resilient, locally based economy. Both processes are achieved one piece of shopping at a time.

It’s not just about food and its effect on the landscape. Every time you wash your clothes carefully, so that they last longer, you’re doing your bit for a sustainable community. Less waste means less landfill space. A culture where clothes are respected and cared for encourages a market for quality products. Well made clothes can be repaired or altered by local businesses, not thrown away.

local craft shop — Shops like this often take in sewing jobs

Every little helps, as they say. With the Resilience Handbook you can keep track of your efforts, see how tiny changes lead to bigger ones, learn what really is important and know that you’re doing as much as you can to secure it.

An Interesting Meeting

January 10, 2017renewable energy, South West England, Sustainabilitycommunity, Resilience Handbook, solutions, SomersetElizabeth J Walker

I attended an Avalon Community Energy meeting on Monday. We were admiring the new solar panels they’d arranged to be installed at a local school. Despite the continual obstacles thrown in the path of this worthy project by central government, everyone was civil to the visiting MP.

He made a short speech, indicating more sympathy for renewables than we were accustomed to hear. He regretted that taxpayers’ money had to be spent along lines informed by good business practice; later he deplored the competitiveness between various renewables providers. If business models could run a country, politics would never have happened in the first place.

The he said something really startling. We were moving away from centralised power distribution, he said. We could be building the last generation of large power stations.

Moving towards local control of the power supply is a key pillar of resilience. As control cannot be achieved without generation, renewables represent the only way forward for resilient communities. Sourcing energy in this way also leads to a more distributed network with fantastic resilience. Emergency heating, lighting and cooking facilities could be maintained in every household! Large scale power cuts would be a thing of the past.

Moving away from centralised power generation wasn’t anywhere near the top of my ‘Realistic Things to Achieve’ list. It was just a vague pipe dream, an ‘if only people would realise the importance’ idea, facing decades of struggle even to get on the agenda!

Energy groups such as ACE need to move in from the pioneer fringes and occupy the centre ground for communities to take advantage of this unexpected trend. To seize opportunity, an organised group has to be in place, poised and ready, with a sound business plan backed by an informed community. Is there such a group in your area? If not, why not?

Take back your power.

waterwheel-1

The Resilience Handbook outlines how you can form a community group in your area. More information can be found through the links on this page.

It can be a very slow process, getting a community to work together. Encourage yourself with a resilience plan; find out more in the Handbook

Adventures at the Green Gathering

August 11, 2016crafts, events, renewable energy, resilience, Sustainability, WalesResilience Handbook, TransitionElizabeth J Walker

Wow! What a great festival!

I love off grid events – without the diesel generators churning away, the sound levels are gentler, the lights less glaring. The whole atmosphere is more relaxed. It fits into the splendid natural setting of Piercefield Park like a hand into a glove.

The weather was fabulous, with plenty of shady places under trees or in cool venues to shelter from the hot sun. At night, gaily illuminated cafes, bars and venues were strung on curving lines of coloured festoon lights.

If you were inclined to learn resilience skills, there were abundant workshops teaching everything from archery to willow weaving.

Steward Control at the Green Gathering was the last job I did before retiring from event work to promote resilience. Some of the volunteers remembered the trial version of the Resilience Handbook which they were issued with back then! Training event stewards to cope with camping out – often for the first time – provided valuable material for the final version.

The splendid Laura now manages the stewards, but my colleague Linda Benfield is still a director of our company, and also of the Green Gathering itself. We created the Resilience Wheel concept together some years ago.

We were struggling to write an energy questionnaire for Glastonbury, for a Transition Town funding bid. The problem was the huge disparity in energy awareness from house to house, and how to reflect this in a meaningful sense. At the same time, we were involved with the Town Council’s emergency planning committee.

The two projects started to overlap; we began to see the issues around putting these plans into practice, the multiple factors, the many variables. The number of things that should be in place and weren’t. Surrounded by flow charts and spider diagrams, we had a sudden insight and reinvented the wheel!

Anyone can find their place on it. All your efforts towards a sustainable lifestyle – that would be one which isn’t going to vanish in a puff of fossil fuel smoke – feed into one central goal. Resilience. You can’t do without it.

The Resilience Wheel isn’t just a picture. It’s a tool. You have to pick it up and use it.

International Downshifting Week

April 21, 2015recycling, Resilience Handbook, SustainabilitysolutionsElizabeth J Walker

This week, April 20th – 26th, is International Downshifting Week.

“InterNational Downshifting Week is a non-profit awareness campaign designed to help you slow down your pace, lean towards the green and get a better handle on the work/life balance in favour of life.

It was founded in 2003 by contented downshifter Tracey West, who believes a little downshifting can have a powerful impact on your physical health, your mental well-being, your relationships with colleagues, family and friends; it can even improve your sex life.”

Find out more here.

elizabethjwalker

Author, teacher, consultant. Plan your future in uncertain times with 'The Resilience Handbook – how to survive in the 21st century'. Find out more….