Sustainable Drainage – and why you need drought tolerant plants in a rain garden

On Saturday 28th May, Simon Bunn from Cambridge City Council took us on a tour of sustainable drainage features on the new housing estates around Trumpington. It may have been a Saturday morning but this was definitely worth getting up for. Thanks to Dawn and the Staying Dry project for organising this! There is nothing like getting out into the field to understand how things work at a landscape scale. Here are some photos to show you what we saw.

Simon describing the swale

This is Simon telling us about the first feature, which is a swale. But first, you need to know what is the point of sustainable drainage.

Funding Transition Cambridge

A guest post from Jacky.

In these ever more austere times of cutbacks and shrinking public resources, I often wonder how we in Transition Cambridge seem to be so active and busy as a group with not very much cash to hand.

Our income streams are small and mostly operate in the background: a donations bowl at shows and events, a Local Giving page, and the occasional random windfall cheque - from a grateful individual who benefited in some way from our activities! Some Transition groups have successfully applied for grants and funding and a small contribution from successful grant applications made under the TC name goes to help fund our running costs. There are a surprising number of grant opportunities around, ranging from a few hundred to several thousand pounds. Check out the Resources page on our website where there's a link to a handy page of local money pots. If you know of any others, do let us know or post details on our Facebook page. Occasionally a bigger; windfall comes along: the Sharing Feast of Liberated Food and Song in March raised over £500 to share between Transition Cambridge and Food Cycle.

Over the last few years we've been able to buy important resources (see pictures) but mostly our funds are spent on things with a relatively short life: beautiful posters and leaflets, often designed on a shoestring budget or by generous donations of time and expertise. Also we have expenses for essentials that keep the whole Transition Cambridge machine running such as website hosting, MeetUp membership fees and the odd stamp and envelope.

This super-large marquee is great for events that might need rain protection.

Our beautiful eye-catching Transition Cambridge display banner – light and portable, it gets several outings per year

Cropshare uses hoes purchased with a Sustainable City grant from Cambridge City Council

It's good to know that we can make things can happen without much  cash – but also good to remember  that none of it would happen without  the  energy,  passion and  community spirit of Transitioners!   

Transitioning to a circular economy

At the last energy group meeting the topic was the circular economy and how we can help to make it happen. Just as it is a challenge to achieve economic growth without using more energy, it is a challenge to do so without using more materials. However, given that we only have one finite planet we cannot sustainably use more and more materials.

I volunteered to research the subject ahead of the meeting and you can read my full report, including points made during the discussion, on my website here. Here are some interesting facts and some of the advice about helping the circular economy happen.

Fact 1: EU regulations require car manufacturers to recycle 85% of the materials in cars that have come to the end of their life. In the UK we usually do this by bashing the car into small pieces and sorting the bits. In Poland they employ people to take the cars apart by hand.

Fact 2:  In Canada there is a company called The Beer Store that reuses all its bottles and packaging.  They run a deposit scheme to encourage people to bring back the packaging back. Bottles are reused 12-15 times and 97.7% of their bottles are returned. Many other countries also have a deposit scheme but the returned bottles are recycled rather than reused. The main aim is to reduce litter.

Fact 3: Composite stuff is much harder to recycle than stuff made of one material. For example disposable coffee cups are often made of cardboard with a plastic liner. There is one company in the UK called SimplyCups that can take these apart and recycle the bits.

Fact 4: In the linear economy manufacturers get money by selling us stuff and they have little to gain by making it last a long time. From their point of view, the sooner it breaks the sooner we need a new one. Also it doesn't benefit the manufacturers if stuff is easy to repair. However, if we were to rent stuff then the supply company gets lots of benefit from making stuff last a long time and being easy to repair. Renting changes the whole business model in a way that encourages less material use.

Here are some things we can do to encourage the circular economy to become more mainstream.

• When buying stuff, consider buying second hand. 
•  When you have stuff you do not need, consider selling it or giving it to a charity shop. 
• If your stuff needs mending, consider taking it to a professional repair service. 
• If you are a designer consider ease of recycling as part of your design 
• Campaign for returnable bottles with deposits, like in Denmark, Germany and Canada 
• The next time you need to replace an appliance, consider renting instead.

CCF has some advice about this as well - and a challenge for you - on their Circular Cambridge campaign website.

Our next meeting will be about the energy used to make things - embodied energy. It is easy enough to find out how much energy you use when you operate your car, computer, house, kettle or whatever - but how much energy was used to make them? 

We love green energy

The easiest thing you can do for climate change? Switch energy supplier.

This Saturday I will be in the market square outside the Guildhall - wearing my thickest soled boots - encouraging you to switch to a green electricity supplier. We are doing this with other volunteers from the Cambridge Climate Alliance. I have been buying green electricity pretty much since I got involved with Transition Cambridge. It seemed to me to be the right thing to do. Let me explain.

We as consumers have power. When we exercise our choices not to buy the cheapest thing but the best thing, we expand the market and make those best things more available. Free range eggs, fair trade bananas, organic food in general – these are more and more available because we choose to buy them even when they aren’t the cheapest.

Green energy is better than fossil fuels. My electricity supplier uses mainly wind power and solar, but also energy from waste and water power. Green energy is extremely low in carbon emissions – even compared with fossil power stations fitted with carbon capture and storage which is supposed to be low carbon (see table). Since a quarter of our energy related carbon emissions come from generatlng electricity, switching to 100% green electricity would make a huge difference.

Technology	Carbon emissions gCO2/kWh
Current average electricity supply	462
Coal with CCS (integrated gasifier combined cycle)	175
Gas with CCS (combined cycle)	73
Solar PV panels (polycrystalline Si)	54
Onshore wind	8
Offshore wind	6

Data from Current and Future Lifecycle emissions of key 'low carbon' technologies and alternatives (for CCC) except current average supply from DEFRA carbon factors


Green energy is better in other respects too. It means investment and jobs in the UK. It doesn’t rely on complicated supply lines through unstable political regimes. Most green electricity is also clean electricity too - there are no pollutants emitted from working solar panels or wind turbines. Wind has a bad press for being dangerous to birds and bats but even the RSPB is now building its own wind turbine (see Why is the RSPB erecting a wind turbine?).

Like a lot of other ‘best’ things, 100% green electricity costs a little bit more. A few days ago I did a cost comparison of the best Big Six deal I could find with the best green supplier. For a medium electricity using household the extra cost is just 20p/day – approximately the cost of one fair trade organic banana from Tesco.

Of course if you haven’t compared tariffs recently you probably aren’t on the best tariff anyway – switching to green electricity may not cost you any more than you are paying already.

When I switched to green energy it was arguably unnecessary because the government required electricity companies to supply an increasing proportion of power from renewables. It worked pretty well – in 2014 the actual proportion was 19%, compared to less than 4% a decade before. However, the government is closing down that scheme and the new policy, contracts for difference is purely budget driven with no targets. So if I hadn’t already switched I would certainly switch now, because we need to tell the electricity supply companies that we aren’t only interested in price – we want our electricity to be clean and safe for the planet too. After all, climate change is expensive - cleaning up after storms and floods and coping with droughts costs a lot of money.

We often hear that renewables are now cheaper than fossil fuels anyway – so why does it cost more at all? The simplest answer is that although renewables can be cheaper in the long term they have a high investment cost up front – and investors don’t like to wait twenty years for payback time. So the costs are higher in the short term to pay for that investment. Also we have a lot of infrastructure already invested in fossil fuels and it is cheaper to keep that going than pay for new clean infrastructure.

Living a low carbon lifestyle can be difficult because often the easy choices are not the low carbon choices. When it’s raining it’s easier to get in the car than on the bike. It’s easier to buy a ready made meal of unknown origins than to make something from scratch. But switching to a green energy supplier is about the easiest thing you can do. You just choose one, tell them what you want, and wait for it happen.


There are three main green energy suppliers:

• Ovo energy www.ovoenergy.com
• Ecotricity www.ecotricity.co.uk
• Good Energy www.goodenergy.co.uk

All are small as yet but they are growing fast. Ovo Energy tripled in size in one year and now has 500,000 customers. So you won’t be on your own. If you love green energy - why not switch?

See also our information sheet ‘We Love Green Energy’ which I will be handing out on Saturday.

Cambridge City Council consults with environmental groups on Climate Change

Bev Sedley, Kati Preston and James Smith at the Climate Change Strategy Workshop

I am always impressed when I have dealings with Cambridge City Council officers on climate change issues because they care just as much as we do and are always keen to work with us where we can. Right now the council is in the closing stages of the five yearly review of their climate change strategy and I was delighted when David Kidston (Strategy and Partnerships manager) picked up our idea for a workshop to discuss the plan and ran with it. The date was set for 2nd Feb and in the end there were about 30 people there room a whole range of environmental groups in Cambridge including 38 degrees, Pivotal, Cambridge Past Present and Future,  Cambridge Carbon Footprint and of course Transition Cambridge.  Fortunately the Guildhall has some good sized rooms.

It was a bit of a rush, trying to review the whole strategy in 90 minutes but we did a valiant job. David asked for our comments and ideas on each of the 5 objectives and there were council experts to answer questions and explain. So, for example, the reason why the strategy calls for electric taxis but not electric buses is because there are no electric double decker electric buses on the market yet - and single decker buses can’t handle enough people. Emma Davies said she was delighted that we supported their idea to use planning rules to promote energy saving measures as consequential improvements. (So for example, if someone has plans for a home extension they would be required to take measures to reduce energy use in the rest of the house at the same time, where feasible). But mainly the council wanted to hear our new ideas, of which there were plenty. Suggestions included the council buying electricity from a green energy supplier, adjusting the park and ride bus services to improve uptake in those services, running an Open Eco Office event along the lines of CCF’s Open Eco Homes, and many more.

In fact the council has already achieved significant carbon savings from previous projects such as switching to LED lighting (Corn Exchange and some car parks), upgrading heating and cooling equipment (various swimming pools and leisure centres and offices) and even a heat recovery system at the crematorium. However, most of us didn’t know about this and there was a general feeling that communicating these successes to more people would change perceptions and raise aspirations across the city.

Also there will soon be a ‘Cambridge Sustainable Housing Guide’ that will set higher standards for sustainability and energy efficiency than current building regulations. Unfortunately this will only apply to new social housing sites and developments owned by the council because the council is not allowed to apply it more widely.

We covered a lot in a very short space of time, and David Kidston said that all of our captured comments would be included in their report to councillors.

Home insulation targets in sight

It has been a very long and eventful journey from April 2014 when the Cambridge Green Communities fund was first announced but the target 1000 'hard to treat' homes to be insulated is now in sight. The deadline for registering is the end of March so if you are still thinking about it you need to do so quickly. More than 950 homes have already signed up and nearly half of those completed.

I heard the latest news yesterday from Justin Smith, home energy officer at Cambridge City Council. We were both at a workshop discussing the Cambridge City Council Climate Change Strategy (consultation now closed). The strategy is for the whole city, not just managing the council's own carbon footprint, and the Green Deal Communities funding has been a significant plank in the actions for objective 2 'Reducing energy consumption and emissions from homes and businesses in Cambridge and tackling fuel poverty, ...'.

Homes are classified as 'hard to treat' because they are unsuitable for cavity wall insulation, typically because they don't have cavity walls. Cambridge and the surrounding areas have an awful lot of homes with solid walls and also homes with 'system build' constructions that don't have fillable cavities. Insulating them makes a big difference: improving the comfort of the residents, and reducing energy use and carbon emissions. There are also grants for a variety of energy saving measures for houses in the private rented sector. The total funding provided was  £7.8 million.

The TC energy group have done our best to support this project from the start. Soon after the launch we ran a forum on Thermal Comfort in Older Houses and put links on our advice pages to encourage people to sign up. Also there have been several events run by Cambridge Carbon Footprint. At each one there were experts to answer questions on solid wall insulation issues and Justin Smith explained the funding on offer. However, in the initial stages it was slow going. It was a learning experience both for the council team and for their Action on Energy delivery partner, Climate Energy. To be fair, Climate Energy were very experienced working with social housing but for private home owners the requirements are a bit different.

One problem was that Climate Energy were rather limited in their expertise. They could supply external wall insulation but if you wanted anything else done at the same time - such as insulating a flat roof or doing maintenance on the eaves, then that was difficult if not impossible to arrange. In the beginning, when Climate Energy was the only approved installer these limitations were a serious problem but gradually other local installers have won approval and now there are nine with a wide range of expertise including other types of insulation and windows as well as wall insulation.

Then in October last year Climate Energy went into administration causing consternation for Justin and the council team - and hundreds of home owners who had already contracted with Climate Energy and paid their deposits but not yet had the work done. Fortunately Climate Energy had subcontracted installations to other firms such as Thrift Energy and they have been very flexible about taking over the individual household contracts - sometimes even honouring the deposits already paid if they could not be recovered.

The deadlines for completing the installations is still tight and there is very little money left now (so if you want to take advantage of the £4000/home grant still available you had better get to it right away). The whole project has been a nightmare to administer and Justin definitely has a few more gray hairs than before. However the benefits will be felt for many years. The residents of the homes that have been insulated will appreciate the extra warmth and lower bills - and the installers who have been involved in delivering those schemes have gained experience in delivering insulation to difficult homes. These skills will be invaluable in the future as there are a lot more houses to retrofit as we transition to a low carbon economy in 2050.

Running a repair café - an interview with Chris Möller

Mending a saucepan at the Royston repair cafe

What is a repair café? How did you get involved?
It’s a place you can bring stuff that is broken, and there are people there like me that like to fix things – and if we can we do. They started in the Netherlands: there is an organisation, www.repaircafe.org. They have about 200 registered there and 100s more across the world. You give them some money and they give you an information pack and logos you can use.

I went to one first in Royston to see what it was like, and then I started one in Cottenham. We have a community centre that has a café and a room behind that you can hire. I asked if I could have it for free and they said yes – because there’s always lots of waiting around and while people are waiting they will sit in the café and have some coffee, so it works for them too. Now I also help with the Cambridge ones, organised by Transition Cambridge and Cambridge Carbon Footprint. So I do 10-12 a year, something like that.

What sort of things do you mend?

Electrical appliances are the bread and butter.

Small electrical appliances are the bread and butter; also computers and computer peripherals, phones, toys, bikes, pushchairs, a parasol - anything that turns up.

The most common job is a toaster with a burnt out element. They have a nichrome wire and it gets a hot spot and breaks. You could put a new element in but they are very specific to each make. So my standard technique is, typically the wire is wrapped around a mica sheet so you drill a little hole in that, push the tail end through and join it up on the other side.

Also thermal fuses – lots of things have a thermal fuse, like a hair dryer – put your hand over the end for a few seconds and it gets too hot, blows the fuse and it’s a write-off. But a new fuse costs about 20p. You put that in and it’s as good as new.

I have a checklist of all the tools and bits I need to bring. It takes me about an hour to get it all together in boxes before I go – it weighs 80 kg and I keep adding new items every time I find I need something I don’t have with me.

Isn’t it a bit scary, taking someone else’s stuff apart?
Well if it was worth thousands of pounds it would be! But most of the things people bring in they’ve already written off. You say to them I’ll do what I can. I’m not an expert and I may make it worse. They say fine – have a go. Then you explain what you are doing. You might open it up and say, I don’t understand this, do you mind if I experiment? and they say OK.

There is a legal issue too, but the way I see it is, if you asked your neighbour to fix something for you and they damaged it, you wouldn’t sue them would you? Well the repair café is a way of meeting some new neighbours. Asking someone to fix your thing at a repair café is like asking a neighbour.

You do need a good grasp of what you can and can’t do. You need to understand about safety, including your own safety - like with microwaves you need to be a bit careful you don’t fry yourself. I have some advice for repairers that covers some of those issues.

How did you learn to do all this?
The trite answer is I have three sons and they were good at breaking things so I got a lot of experience. Right from my childhood, my Dad would never dream of throwing anything away until he had mended it at least twice and I’ve inherited that from him. It wasn’t the money so much, it was more that he didn’t like to be dependent – we have so much stuff these days that we have no idea how it works and we rely on other people to keep it going. My Dad would hate that.

What do you like about doing a repair café?
Well honestly, the look on someone’s face when you bring their whatever-it-is back from the dead – it’s just priceless. That alone is ample reward for my time. Last Sunday I was at Royston and someone brought in a broken DVD player. Unfortunately I hadn’t brought my TV with me so I couldn’t test it but I did the usual maintenance and said let’s hope – well apparently it worked first time and I got this gushing email, they were so thrilled - it is very satisfying.

And also its fun, and you get to look inside all sorts of things that you wouldn’t normally come across. For example, the other day I was given an astronomical telescope sight to fix. I’d never seen one before and I’m never likely to do so again. I took it apart and there was a wire that was broken so I fixed that and it all worked.

People know I fix things so if they knock on my door and ask me to look at something it's quite useful to be able to say – why don’t you bring it along to the next repair café!

How much does it cost to do these repairs?
Well a screw doesn’t cost much, or a fuse, or a bit of insulating tape. Most of the repairs are things like that. But we do say to the repairers, if they have expenses then we will pay for them from the donations. We usually make a profit.

Are there any repairs you’ve done that are particularly special for you?
The thing that tickles me most, was a couple that brought in the press button from the igniter for a gas hob. They couldn’t find a replacement and they had looked everywhere – even in India when they went to visit family. The switch was held together by two rivets, so I drilled them out and took it apart and inside there was a little phosphor-bronze spring that was broken. So I soldered a piece of wire across the break and put it back together again with two screws to replace the rivets – and hey presto it worked! They were so thrilled – I had achieved the impossible as far as they were concerned.

Of course like most of the repairs we do it made no sense at all commercially – the switch probably cost 20p new and it took me 20 minutes to fix it. You couldn’t run a business like that.

Also I remember a 7 year old boy came in with a radio-controlled car that was broken. His Dad was very clear – he said you are going to show this boy how to repair this and he will do it himself. I have to say the boy did a cracking good job. There were a few broken bits inside that we managed to glue back together. My experience with my own son’s things has taught me which glue to use in which circumstances.

Sometimes people bring things that aren’t actually broken, especially if they’ve been donated so they don’t know much about it. A lady came in with a couple of kids and a pushchair she’d been given and it would only go round in circles. Well the truth was one of the wheels was locked in position and she needed to be shown how to unlock it.

What sort of people volunteer as repairers?
Oh all sorts: mostly retired, but we also get undergraduates who like repairing computer equipment, and we have a husband and wife couple who are both very good. It’s a mix.

What would you say to someone thinking of volunteering as a repairer?
Come along and make somebody happy – and have good fun yourself! Surprise yourself that you can fix things you didn’t know you can fix.

When is the next repair cafe near here?
The next one in Royston will be 1st November - look out for it at https://www.facebook.com/roystonrepaircafe. There may be one before then in Cambridge - if so it will be in the Transition Cambridge newsletter.