Greener Eynsford Blog
Green news and views relevant to our community
Eynsford Wins Environmental Challenge!
15th October 2024
Eynsford's Green Team entered the Environmental Challenge with Eynsford in Bloom as part of thier South and South East in Bloom entry for 2024. It detailed lots of the projects that both groups have undertook in the past year, some of them jointly. Eynsford received a GOLD award and was the category winner for the region! You can read the submission here.
Individual Carbon Footprint - April 2023
6th July 2023
Eynsford Green Team: Personal Carbon Footprint Monthly 2022 and 2023
My carbon footprint in April (0.55 T/CO2e) was higher than March (0.42 T/CO2e) because I took a return flight to Ireland (0.2T/co2e). It is lower than April 2022 because last year I took a return flight to Athens (0.72T/CO2e).
April Month: Personal Carbon Footprint 2023 total 0.55T/Co2e
The month is dominated by the flight I took. Why is flying such a driver of carbon emission? The simple explanation is distance. The emissions per passenger from flying short haul are around 115g/km, which is around the emission per km of one person in a relatively efficient car. The problem is we fly long distances, so my flight to Kerry and back is 1300km, the distance you might drive in the whole month. It contributed 0.2T/Co2e of my total footprint in the month of 0.55T/co2e.
To keep my carbon footprint down I need to minimize the distances I fly (or not at all). For comparison if I took a return flight to Sydney , the emissions would be over 5T/co2E – more than my current total annual footprint. So I am choosing to fly less and only short haul, making the most of the diversity Europe has to offer rather than fly to other continents.
Questions
We would love to receive any questions and could use this forum to discuss the most common ones. info@eynsfordparishcouncil.org.uk
Individual Carbon Footprint - May 2023
6th July 2023
Eynsford Green Team: Personal Carbon Footprint Monthly 2022 and 2023
My carbon footprint in May (0.39 T/CO2e) was lower than April (0.55 T/CO2e) because April included a flight to Ireland (0.2T/co2e). It is similar to May 2022 though the mix is different. I now have an electric car so electricity is larger this year but petrol should be lower. In practice in May I had a holiday in NW Scotland and this increased the car mileage so the footprint ended up similar to 2022. The impact from alternative travel options to Scotland (1300 miles return) I compare below.
The main alternatives to get to NW Scotland were take the electric car, take a small petrol car (99g/km), take train to Inverness and hire a car, fly to Inverness and hire a car. The carbon impact of the four options is above, with flying being the greatest impact at 0.35 T/CO2e, the electric car lowest at 0.04 T/CO2e, a tenth of the impact of flying. A small petrol car with 2 people is 0.12 T and train 0.08 T. Interesting that sharing a small petrol car brings it close to the train.
We chose to take the small petrol car, given concerns about finding charging points in NW Scotland. In practice, rather ironically, the nearest charging point to the place in Torridon was only 3 miles away and the nearest garage for fuel was 20 miles away. The Scottish government have been developing charging points very strongly.
Questions : We would love to receive and discuss any questions info@eynsfordparishcouncil.org.uk
Individual Carbon Footprint - June 2023
6th July 2023
Eynsford Green Team: Personal Carbon Footprint Monthly 2022 and 2023
My carbon footprint in June (0.29T/CO2e) was lower than May (0.40 T/CO2e) because May included a return trip in a petrol car to Scotland. June is the lowest month so far, my gas usage for heating was minimal. It is also lower than June 2022 (0.37) mainly because the electric car means grid electricity replaces petrol use for transport .
A question was raised this month about offsetting. Given that flights are such a large contributor to a personal carbon footprint, does offsetting the flight solve the problem?
Carbon offsetting aims to balance the negative CO2e impact of an activity (eg. a flight) with an equal but opposite, positive (eg. CO2 sequestration) activity such as tree planting. I am, though, skeptical about them…
Offset - pros
Conceptually a nice idea – offset bad activity with good activity
Offsetting - cons
Carbon offsetting does not work on the core issue of reducing CO2 emissions - we are already significantly in excess of the total environmental capacity of our planet – we have to actually reduce our impact not just balance it out
Offsetting can mean we don’t change our personal behaviour - we need to reduce our impact, offsetting lulls us into a false belief that our activity is balanced out and we can continue as now
Offsetting projects have different effectiveness rates and evidence is appearing that many of them are not delivering the CO2 reduction that is claimed, for instance tree planting must both be real, incremental and long term (ie the trees maintained for 50 years)
Questions : We would love to receive and discuss any questions info@eynsfordparishcouncil.org.uk
Individual Carbon Footprint - March 2023
6th July 2023
Eynsford Green Team: Personal Carbon Footprint March 2023
Annual overview: Personal Carbon Footprint by month 2022 and 2023
My carbon footprint in March 2023 was actually slightly higher than the previous month although lower than in 2022. The change from 2022 comes firstly from having more people in the house (we are hosting a Ukrainian family) so the energy use per person has become less – this is a personal (1 person) carbon footprint. Secondly from switching from a diesel to an electric car, so car footprint comes down but electricity has gone up.
March Month: Personal Carbon Footprint 2022 and 2023
My March footprint (0.42 T/CO2e) was slightly higher than February (0.39 T/CO2e). Two main factors – house gas use went up 10% (3451 kwh Mar vs 3079 kwh in Feb). In my mind I think March was a bit grey and damp so that may be the explanation. The official statistics come out a month in arrears so I only have Feb to go on, we’ll have to wait next month to see if that’s correct. House electricity use mainly from charging the car went up to 519 kwh March vs 380 kwh Feb given higher mileage in the car.
In the month 161 kwh were produced by the PV panels on my roof, around half of which was utilized in the house and half exported to the grid. 519kwh were taken from the grid. 315kwh were used to charge the car and 284 kwh to light and power the house.
Questions
We would love to receive any questions and could use this forum to discuss the most common ones. info@eynsfordparishcouncil.org.uk
Solar Panels - A Resident's View
23rd March 2023
Thank you to a resident of Eynsford who has provided details of their experience of having solar panels fitted.
Our experience of having a solar system fitted to our house in Pollyhaugh began back in June 2022. We received a communication from Kent County Council about a countywide scheme to promote the fitting of solar panels. The scheme was called Kent Solar Together and the idea was to have people register their interest and then invite companies to tender for the work. It was expected that this would result in reductions in the cost of the solar panels compared to what people would have to pay if they arranged for the installations themselves.
We had been thinking about having solar panels fitted for some time and were attracted by the scheme, not just because of the cost savings but also because of the assurance that participating in a council-backed scheme would give us that we would be contracting with a reputable supplier.
The company that fitted our panels was Home Smart Energy, who are based in Burgess Hill, West Sussex. We received an email from the company a few weeks after registering our interest asking us to confirm that we would like to proceed and to provide them with some information about the house, including photos and direction of the roof areas and a photo of the fuse board and whether there was any spare capacity within it. We subsequently received details of the proposed layout of panels to be fitted, along with an estimate of the cost.
Having accepted the estimate we paid a deposit for a surveyor to call and carry out an on-site survey of the property and finalise the installation. Based on this survey we had to delete one of the panels as it would be too close to one of our dormer windows. So the full system would consist of 7 500W panels, an inverter, battery storage, and a system that would, in the event of a power cut supply power to 2 sockets fitted above the inverter from which we could run extension leads to low power appliances in the event of a grid power outage, eg TV, table lamps, hob.
We didn’t hear from the company for a long time after the surveyor’s visit in mid-July but eventually, they contacted us to let us know that our panels etc would be fitted on Monday 12th December and that scaffolders would visit the week before. The scaffolding was erected as planned but unfortunately, the weather intervened with snow on 11th December and the installation had to be put back until the New Year.
The new installation date of 9th January finally came around and the whole system was installed in around 5 hours. The battery was 50% full when it was installed and it was a fairly sunny day so we could immediately see the cost of our electricity usage reducing from our smart meter.
As with everything these days, there’s an app linked so the system (SolisCloud) through which we can see how much power the panels are producing, whether we are charging or discharging the battery, and whether we are exporting any power back to the grid. The app also shows our overall electricity usage and how much of that has come from our own generation. It also shows how much CO2 the system has saved and how many tree plantings that equates to. As of 12.00 on 25th Feb we have saved 159.52kg of CO2 emissions which sounds like a lot but it only equates to 0.09 trees!!
The data shown by the app is available both for the current day and for each of the days since the system has been installed so we are able to build up a picture of how our generation varies with the weather (in particular the level of cloud cover) and what our cost savings have been.
As of now the solar-produced energy has been just under 35% of our overall usage for the period since the panels were installed, and we estimate that we’ve saved £86.18 (£1.83 per day on average) which considering the time of year we are really pleased with. On the sunniest days we have generated up to 73.6% of our consumption! Unfortunately on some sunny days we have found ourselves exporting over 40% of our generation to the grid without being paid for it since the process of getting ourselves set up to receive payment from our supplier (EDF) under the Smart Export Guarantee scheme takes over 4 weeks. Even when we are set up the rate we’ll receive will be very low (only 5.6p per kWh) so we’ll be doing our best to time the usage of our electrical appliances so that we use the electricity that we generate rather than letting it go to the grid. Since we are on Economy 7 we generally try and run our higher-powered appliances when the much lower night rates apply but on the sunnier days we’ll run our dishwasher during the day using our own power!
Another thing that we try to do is to reduce spikes in our electricity consumption during the day (which tend to lead to us drawing from the grid) by using lower powered appliances. Eg a lower powered kettle will take a bit longer to boil but we can power it entirely from our own generation.
As you can see from the photo below the controls, battery and inverter for the system take up very little room and can easily be fitted, as here, in a small cupboard.
We’ve included a screenshot below of what the app looks like on a smartphone. From the data in the top right corner you can see that we weren’t using anything from the grid at the point that this screenshot was taken.Biogas Powerplant
25th August 2022
The Darenth Valley’s Biogas Powerplant
by Erica Russell on behalf of the Green Team
Visiting a large scale anaerobic digestor is not a usual agenda item for the Parish green team but we were all curious to find out more about the ‘mini powerplant’ that has been built near Horton Kirby. Firstly, what is it?! This particular powerplant is driven by anaerobic digestion. This process relies on bacteria and microbes to break down plant material to create biogas, which in turn can be treated to allow the gas to be used for heating and cooking or to produce electricity. The process also creates biofertilizer than can go back onto the land. Across the UK anaerobic digestors recycle 2.5m tonnes of food waste each year.
The site is large, much bigger than any of us had expected. Oncoland Energy have spent over £10m on the plant and it’s run by a full-time manager and two staff. Initially designed to help spread the risk of fluctuating crop prices the digestor is also helping manage difficult agricultural waste, some of which produces large amounts of atmosphere warming gas – methane. Many of us in Eynsford will be familiar with at least one of the feedstocks used by the digestor – slurry from Bower Lane Farm! But, the site also takes in a lot of waste parts of crops, unwanted/oversized produce, including and rather surprisingly waste pomegranate skins. Carl explained that the site is working hard to develop relationships with local food processors to take on similar materials. The farm also grows some crops themselves to balance the nutrients within the digestor.
Digestor is a good description when thinking about how the process works – the feedstock is mashed and chopped up in a large machine (the mouth), fed into ‘the stomach’ through pipes, with biogas drawn off from the large digestors and then the odourless biofertilizer ‘waste’ is moved out into storage bays, before being used by local farms – very little is wasted.
Treating the biogas is complex and heavily regulated but the site is now producing enough back to the gas network to heat 2500 homes. The plant also has a small generator which, fuelled by biogas is putting electricity into the grid – about enough to light around 600 homes a year.
It was a fascinating visit, and we must give huge thanks to Carl Woolley, the site manager, who gave up his evening to show us around and explain the process.
We came, we repaired, we raised money!
16th June 2022
On Saturday 21st May, Eynsford's Green Team ran their first-ever Repair Cafe at Eynsford Village Hall!
Volunteers had been recruited from the local community to help with repairs including IT, bikes and textiles.
Unfortunately, our hoover repair man was unable to attend at the last minute, so other volunteers 'had a go' instead!
We sold some lovely tea and cake to people waiting for their turn. Visitors were encouraged to make a donation to the new village hall fund http://eynsfordvh.com/wp/how-t... and £150 was raised!
We hope to run the repair cafe again in the autumn and would love to recruit a few more volunteers to give up a few hours to help people to repair their stuff.
Thank you to Chris Lewington for the fab photos.
Repair Cafe for Eynsford
5th May 2022
The Green Team are organising a pop-up repair cafe in Eynsford to help the community reduce waste.
This is an opportunity for members of the community to get their items fixed rather than throwing them away and replacing them with new goods. Repairing and mending old and damaged items is becoming more popular. TV's The Repair Shop has raised interest, although we cannot offer repairs quite to that standard.
The Green Team and other volunteers will be offering simple repairs to clothes, toys and bikes. Residents will be able to see and maybe help with the repair, so that next time they will be able to do it themselves. We will not be offering electrical repairs at this point. If we can't help you, we might be able to point you in the direction of someone who can. Everyone is welcome.
Visible repairs have also gained popularity. The Japanese art of Kintsugi sees pottery being glued back together, but then the cracks are painted with gold. Rather than rejoin ceramic pieces with a camouflaged adhesive, the kintsugi technique employs a special tree sap lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. Once completed, beautiful seams of gold glint in the conspicuous cracks of ceramic wares, giving a one-of-a-kind appearance to each “repaired” piece. Visible mending of clothing is also becoming more popular, with decorative stitches such as sashiko or boro stitching, or embroidering designs around holes to make them into a new feature.
As people start to value the resources that have gone into making their clothes and other belongings, hopefully they will aim to use them for as long as possible, or pass them onto someone else to use.