A Waste-Free Community Climate & Eco Fair

23 June 2021  |  by Gemma McFarlane

In 2018, Earth Overshoot Day fell on 1st August. Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year.

When we discussed partnering with Seaford Town Council to hold a community climate and eco fair, we chose this date to highlight this. It turns out this year, Earth Overshoot Day falls on the 29th July – two days earlier!

If we were just looking at UK consumption, our overshoot day would fall on 21st May!

 

What does this mean? It means we can’t carry on consuming the way we do if we want to leave a habitable world with enough resources for future generations.

We need to think more about the resources we use. So, to show it can be done, the ethos of this fair is to show what we can do with the resources we have. This has the added bonus of not costing a lot of money!

What steps are we taking to make this event as sustainable as possible?

Inviting organisations to join us

Over 40 local groups and organisations will come together to share their knowledge and skills to help us understand and learn more about how we can protect our environment. We decided to make the fair as sustainable as possible, we wouldn’t have anything for sale including food.

Promotion

Social media advertisement

We will keep printing to a minimum, we will only print a small amount of A4 posters to use on local notice boards in plastic sleeves which have been reused since the early 90’s! We’ll also advertise on social media and in our newsletters.

We have acquired used supermarket banners and old sign boards which we will paint over to advertise this fair and use again for future projects.
We’ve asked other exhibitors to be mindful of waste too.
We do have a website which uses electricity but we worked out that 16,000 visits to our website is the equivalent of streaming one film online. If we get 16,000 visitors to the fair, we will be very happy!

Visit our website

A reused banner ready for decorating by local primary schools

Equipment needed

Thank you to the children of our local primary schools for decorating banners to advertise the fair.

We want to say a huge thank you to Dazzle Events who are very kindly donating a marquee to be used for the day, and to the Rotary Martello Seaford, who are also kindly donating the use of their marquee.

We will borrow gazebos, tables, chairs and anything else we can. What we can’t borrow we will buy secondhand and then sell on if we can’t use them again in the future.

We will purchase a second hand battery powered PA system which we will continue to  use for talks in our sustainability hub (coming soon).

We will not use diesel generators. The only electricity will be used for our country rock band on the day – Cushion the Blow.

Any printed information posters and games we make will be reused in our sustainability hub and future events.

We will have a 100% off sale where we are giving away stuff for free to show how we have enough ‘stuff’ already, we just need to think of better ways to redistribute it instead of burying or burning it and buying new!

We have chosen the Salts because it is central, the train station and bus stops are nearby so it is easy to get public transport to the fair. As the Salts doesn’t have any bike parking, we will install a temporary bike park so please cycle down if you can. Dr Bike will be with us so you could get a bike check while you’re there.

We will have a Repair Cafe stand where young people and adults can take apart broken electrical items that would have been thrown away and see how it was made. An added bonus of taking the items apart means we can distribute the parts into the relevant recycling points.

Of course, we couldn’t make this happen without the fantastic volunteers who feel this is important enough to give their time and energy to discuss ideas, make things, prepare information, games, activities, and help on the day. All making an extra effort so we can be more sustainable.

The most noticeable waste at an event is food and food packaging. This is why we decided not to have any food stalls at this event. We invite you to join us in our challenge to make this event more sustainable by bringing along your own food and drink and joining us for a waste free picnic.

The fair won’t be free of fun! We will have lots to do – games, activities, talks, art, a bug hunt, story telling for adults, music and more!

Here are some tips for a waste-free picnic!

• Making your lunch at home not only saves unnecessary packaging, it can save you money, can be healthier, you can choose foods you like and the amount you like which cuts down on food waste with the added bonus of knowing where your ingredients come from.
• The internet is full of inspiration for lunchtime recipes. You can type in an ingredient you want to use and a list of recipes will jump out at you so there’s no excuse for soggy sandwiches!
• A picnic is an event! Bake a cake or biscuits to share.

What to put your lunch in?

• Tupperware! It comes in all shapes and sizes, can fit all of your lunch requirements and if looked after, can last a lifetime. Don’t forget your fabric napkins, reusable plastic plates, cutlery and blanket!
• Before the age of coffee shops on every corner, we used a flask. Dig out that flask which is probably still going strong or take your refillable coffee cup with you wherever you go.
• Don’t forget your refillable water bottle – there is a water refill station on the wall of the toilet block in the Salts thanks to Refill Seaford & Newhaven.

Food tips

• Fruit always looks more appealing and tastes better when it’s cut up and mixed into a salad. A 450g pot in the supermarket can cost from £3 and can feed 1 – 2 people. A 2kg watermelon will cost £3, less than 10 minutes to cut up and can feed your family and more to share! And any leftover fruit cores or peel will feed your compost.
• Cut up any raw veg and salad – carrot, celery, cucumber, radish, salad leaves, cauliflower – anything in season is good for grazing.
  *We will gladly take your leftover fruit and veg scraps in our compost bin at the fair to add to our compost if you don’t want to take them home with you.

• Decant dried fruit and nuts from large bags into small tubs – this is good for portion control and more economical than buying small portions. Dried apricots are an excellent healthy snack containing half the sugar of most other dried fruits.
• Fruitcake is good for picnics or long days out as it holds together, lasts for months if stored correctly and is a good afternoon snack.
  Tip: When baking fruitcake, I bake as many as I can fit into my oven – they take a long time to bake so it’s good to make the most of your oven space.
  Fruit cake recipe ( For a wheat version, replace the gluten free flour and oat flour with 205g plain flour).
• Homemade flapjack or cereal bars are another good picnic snack as they hold together well and taste so much nicer than shop bought.
• Apples and satsumas are a good portable fruit as they don’t bruise easily.
• Popcorn! It’s so cheap to buy popping corn and make your own, plus no nasty chemicals and packaging.
  BBC Good Food website

Please send us your picnic tips!

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