Objectives

Help Make Us All Resilient in the Face of Climate Change and Peak Oil

Planning and Transport - with Lewis Goldwater

The Planning and Transport Working Group intends to focus on bringing sustainable transport infrastructure to Kington and the surrounding area by showing that we can use clean, quiet and low carbon methods to transport ourselves, move our products and purchase our goods. We seek to encourage the use of new technology such as low emission vehicles and IT and to promote low technology solutions where these offer genuine benefits to the local economy and environment. We also seek to ensure that Kington has more energy-efficient, affordable housing and facilities for leisure and recreation. Our projects will seek to improve the local, historic features which make Kington distinctive and also to improve and protect the landscape in the surrounding area.

Waste – Reduce, Re-use and Recycle - with Richie Cotterill

The Waste Working Group is already involved in a range of projects such as organising litter KLEEN-Ups, plastic bag reduction, promoting a community composting facility at the new Allotments and recycling. We intend to develop new projects including the promotion of a strategy for trade waste, co-ordinating a campaign against over-packaging and unnecessary waste, bringing together creative thinkers, artists and practical people to create new solutions to our wasteful practices, involving students in local waste research projects, building a pleasant seating area and recycling information notice board in a suitable location, exploring the possibilities of developing Kington’s sewerage system as a low-energy eco-friendly reed/willow bed scheme to replace/supplement the current high energy old-style filter bed and eventually setting up a Kington Sustainability Centre with a Zero Waste Manager. KLEEN: Tough on Litter, Tough on the Causes of Litter!

Education and Health  - with Martin Fitton

The Education and Health Group will explore how Kington’s schools can become a more central community resource to benefit both the school and everyone in Kington. The Group seeks to expand the Eco-Schools initiative, encourage participation in the Food for Life initiative and other sustainable projects such as Kington Primary School’s Eco-Committee litter projects. We hope to sustain outside school hours learning and establish KLEEN for Kids. Projects will provide both practical skills to students, parents and members of the wider community including our own courses to develop craft, repair and re-use skills and to promote energy saving projects. We also seek to aid learning about healthier life styles through an increase in grow your own, enjoyable local eating and walking and cycling.

Communication and Awareness Raising - with Rob MacCurrach

If KLEEN is to be effective then promoting our activities to everyone in Kington is essential. KLEEN meets as an enthusiastic group once a month at the Oxford Arms. We need to spread out and multiply and that means we need both ideas and action to raise KLEEN's profile to engage, educate, empower and involve everyone in Kington. The Communication and Awareness Raising Working Group aims to inform everyone about KLEEN’s activities and to stimulate interest within the community for KLEEN’s work. Our initial projects will involve film shows and discussion evenings using sustainability as the basic message.

Kington is ideally placed to build on its local strengths, to meet future challenges and to take up the opportunities to guarantee it’s long term resilience by responding to increased energy costs and climate change. Together we can achieve positive and practical action to reduce energy use and save money. KLEEN seeks to involve enthusiastic locals and partner organisations to create a more sustainable Kington.

KLEEN’s Working Groups are listed below with a brief summary of their aims. The overall aim is to respond to climate change and “peak oil” by treating them as opportunities that will allow us to develop a more enjoyable, creative, sociable and sustainable community.

KLEEN Energy  - with Gordon Coppock

The Energy Working Group is focussed on energy awareness, saving and generation. It aims to discuss and develop information about our present sources of energy and where future sustainable sources could come from. We advise people on how energy can be saved by improved home insulation and more efficient energy use through our Home Energy Surveys (HES). We advise on ways in which energy can be generated and are seeking to identify and promote larger energy generation schemes that could lead to a community-owned facility.

Food and Farming  - with Ian Laurie

The Food and Farming Working Group aims to encourage and support the use of locally grown food; to measure and monitor the proportion of food that is locally produced and to identify products with high food miles which could be substituted by locally-produced foods; and to identify and support projects, such as community-supported agriculture, that will increase the use of local food. Anyone who has an interest in good locally-grown food, farmers markets, vegetable gardening, allotments, wild food, backyard poultry, beekeeping or any other relevant source of local food will find working with this Group challenging and exciting.

Money and Work – Economics & Livelihood – co-ordinator needed

The focus of the Money and Work Group is to seek to encourage Kington to become more self-reliant and economically resilient by promoting measures to ensure that more of our local spend is retained within Kington and by seeking to identify means by which more local jobs and other opportunities can be created for local people. Consideration is being given to projects from a local currency to providing jobs and training in craft and rural skills.