Village web site: http://www.hockerton.com/

50% OFF LOCAL VEG!!

Eat local Veg, Benefits you benefits the environment

Sustainable Hockerton is working in partnership with your local vegetable growers,

Red Earth Organics and Maxeys farm shop to help promote more sustainable and yummy

food!

Why fruit and vegetables?

At the heart of unsustainable living is the hidden impact of our food buying habits.

Food can account for twice as much carbon impact as your house’s energy consumption.

This is largely due to food miles, packaging etc so by eating local food we can cut

this impact quickly and dramatically. And of course by eating veg, five a day and

all that, we potentially improve our own health!

How it works?

To promote this sustainable buying choice Sustainable Hockerton is offering

residents of Hockerton Parish 50% discount on vegetables purchases from

Red Earth Organics, organic veg boxes. Further details from supplier.

And shortly a similar discount at Maxeys Farm shop.

The money to fund this is coming from the surplus generated by the

community owned wind turbine in the village and complements the other schemes

it offers (£200 of energy saving things for the home, electric car charging point in the pub etc).

There is a limited amount of funding support so please sign up quickly.

Open to people living in Hockerton parish

Two suppliers involved Red Earth Organics and Maxey’s Farm Shop

The purpose of the scheme is to encourage local people to eat more local vegetables.

Red Earth Organics    http://www.redearthorganics.co.uk

50% discount on the cost of a vegie box. (May contain fruit!)

People taking up the offer will need to inform Red Earth they want to use the

Sustainable Hockerton subsidy. Contact for Red Earth Organics info@redearthorganics.co.uk

and Tel: 07794 467 545.   Red Earth will then charge the customer for 50% of the value of the box.

The remained of the value will be billed to Sustainable Hockerton Limited (SHL).

First come first served basis.

Can be the occasional box or on regular orders.

Maximum 24 boxes per household and no more than one box a week in this phase of the offer.

First phase: Up to £1000 allocated from Sustainable Hockerton to subsidise the vegie boxes,

when this is used up the phase stops and will be reviewed. Red Earth to notify SHL

when value reaches, or nearly reaches £1000 and to notify customers the scheme no longer

#will subsidies their boxes. They are of course welcome to continue purchasing the vegetables!

Possible future phases may use a similar approach but probably only for new people taking up the

scheme. Phase one will finish by September 2015.

Maxey’s Farm Shop

TBC

Some background on the impact of food:

“The price of food is disguising externalised costs - damage to the environment, damage to climate, damage to infrastructure and the cost of transporting food on roads," Professor Lang told the BBC News website.

The authors calculated that if all foods were sourced from within 20km of where they were consumed, environmental and congestion costs would fall from more than £2.3bn to under £230m - an "environmental saving" of £2.1bn annually. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4312591.stm

Our diet effects our carbon footprint – eat more veg and reduce your impact. http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/food-carbon-footprint-diet

http://www.carbontrust.com/news/2012/03/food-the-carbon-story

ref Impact of carbon. Government Information Report 53 http://regulations.completepicture.co.uk/pdf/Energy%20Conservation/Best%20Practice%20Guidance%20and%20Case%20Studies/Building%20a%20sustainable%20future%20Homes%20for%20an%20autonomous%20community.pdf

Village Survey on Turbine Revenue

A village survey was carried out in December 2012 to find out parishioners’   opinions on where the money allocated from the village wind turbine to the parish of Hockerton should be spent.  The information from this survey will then feed into the decision making process of Sustainable Hockerton which in turn will decide on the best ideas to fund baring in mind its aims, practicalities of the ideas and their overall effectiveness.

To help the directors of Sustainable Hockerton decision making process a report on the survey has been written and can be seen in full Report on survey .

In Summary:

Basic analysis of the survey showed three popular ideas. Combining these with the relative carbon savings and cost shows two actions which meet the criteria of; good value and popular. These are:

“Open space in village for walking/sitting, children’s’ play area, food growing etc, Community orchard and Allotment space”

(This assuming 12 people are fed from the food grown.)

Although these two actions above are described as good value, qualitative assessment may make other choices appropriate - it is hard to determine “sustainability” in full in an analytical way.

There were many other ideas which were “runners up” and may yet prove to be the ones supported. The process is on going and all input is welcome so please get in contact especially if you are a resident of Hockerton! (e-mail at our enquiries address enquiries@sustainablehockerton.org or phone  01636 816902)

Past Community Events

Many and varied but in particular....

Alan Simpson MP (On right)  formally opens turbine

Communication Strategy

Background 

People from the Hockerton area have been meeting since July 2006 to promote a more sustainable Hockerton; Meetings have always been open and have been advertised in the village hall notice board and by leafleting residents. So far 46 people have attended at least one of the nine meetings held between 7/7/06 to 5/7/07. A name for the group has been chosen - Sustainable Hockerton.

Aims and objectives have also been formalised. The aim of the group is to make Hockerton a more sustainable village and reduce the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere. This would include supplying its own energy needs from renewable sources. The objectives of the group are; in brief:

• A reduction in energy demand.
• Renewable electricity generation.
• Renewable heating methods.
• Reduced impact from travel.
• Increase in the use of local skills and resources.
• Reduction in the amount of waste produced.
• Increase the amount of self sufficiency in water and water treatment.
• Raise the awareness of sustainability issues through education.

It is this group that has put forward the idea of a wind turbine to generate clean electricity for the parish and use any profits from this scheme to promote the other objective. A wind turbine is a potentially contentious solution so it was felt a survey of  parish residence was necessary to clarify the situation.

To assess the mood of parish residence a survey was carried out in February 2007. All the residents of the parish were given a pamphlet describing the ideas of the group and asking for comments on them.