Resources

Community thermal imaging camera

Letchworth Garden Shed now loan a FLIR E6 thermal imaging camera. This camera was funded by a Heritage Foundation grant to provide a community thermal imaging service. Thermal imagers can be used to detect heat loss from your home, helping you identify where to target home improvements to reduce your energy bills.

Ideally the temperature difference between inside your home and the outside should be at least 10 degree to get the best results, so autumn and winter is the ideal time to inspect your house with a thermal camera. The community thermal service was originally provided by Transition Town Letchworth and training material they produced provides useful background material.

Visit Letchworth Garden Shed

Vision of a resilient Letchworth

In 2017 Transition Town Letchworth undertook a project to consider what actions could be taken that might help to ensure that Letchworth’s town centre is resilient and thriving. The resulting report, below, has been shared and discussed widely with interested parties in the town.

Vision of a resilient Letchworth

Reducing plastic in your venue

Those who have responsibility for community venues can:

Ensure that the grounds are litter free and recycling is encouraged.
Raise awareness of the damage to the environment caused by plastics and provide ideas for reducing use of single use plastics to groups who frequent the venue.
Provide equipment which will assist people hiring the venue to have a plastic free event.
Place posters (links below) in prominent places with plastic reduction tips in the venue and / or leave flyers (print as 2-sided on A5) for hall users to access.

Plastic Free Letchworth’s self-audit tool will enable you to identify your existing good practice and provides ideas for actions you can take to further reduce the use of single use plastic.

- Poster to raise awareness of issue with plastics and ideas for individual changes to reduce single use plastic use.
- Poster to encourage use of reusable nappies.
- Poster to encourage alternatives to wet wipes and make-up wipes.
- Poster giving ideas for plastic free periods.
- Poster giving ideas for reducing plastics in the bathroom.
- Posters for reducing plastics used in the kitchen, cleaning, storing and transporting food and serving food.

Organise your own litter picking event

Letchworth Garden Shed hold a set of Litter Pickers for local organisations to borrow.

Local groups arranging Litter Picks will need to ensure they have consent from the relevant local organisation and have conducted a risk assessment (Plastic Free Letchworth’s Litter Picking Risk Assessment is provided as an example).

North Herts District Council (NHDC) have advice available on their website, and can loan equipment from their Buntingford office.

Open spaces in Letchworth come under different organisations’ ownership. It’s important to notify the relevant organisation about your intention to undertake a litter pick so they can be prepared to collect any bags of litter and to deal with any hazardous items you may need to notify them about that require specialist removal.

As a rough guideline, the Greenway is the responsibility of Letchworth Heritage Foundation, parks and paths are generally the responsibility of NHDC but some of the paths and green spaces on the housing estates are the responsibility of the Housing Association, Settle.

Sustainable new neighbourhoods

In 2015 Transition Town Letchworth undertook a project to review previous housing developments in the town and to consider the features desirable. The resulting report was shared with the Heritage Foundation and councillors. They hoped to influence design briefs and design principles to ensure housing promotes low energy living and vibrant communities.

Holding a plastic free event

A Plastic Free Event is any gathering of people that makes an effort to eliminate plastic pollution and waste by using durable, reusable, non-plastic alternatives. Steps that groups can take to reduce waste at their events or events held at their venue are:

Resource the venue with a set of glasses, ceramic plates, and cutlery, which can be used for parties. Try asking hall users for donations as many people have a surplus of kitchenware they may be happy to donate.
For outdoor events, ask guests to bring their own bottles, cups, and cutlery.
In ladies toilets consider stocking plastic free sanitary products and let people know why you have chosen this option.
In baby changing areas spread the word on the plastic in wet wipes, suggest water and paper tissues / cotton wool as a better alternative.
Provide re-usable bunting that can be borrowed for parties as an alternative to balloons and plastic banners.

This Festival Guide contains ideas and suppliers for hosting plastic free events.

Calculate your carbon footprint

The first step to reducing our carbon footprint is understanding which of our activities generate the most carbon. Transition Town Letchworth's ‘What’s Your Carbon Footprint?’ offers a review of online tools for calculating your Carbon Footprint and suggests that one of the better ones to use is by Carbon Independent.

Top tips for reducing your food carbon footprint

We can achieve big reductions in our personal carbon footprint by changing our diet, while helping to reduce pollution, preserve the environment and slow global warming. Many of these changes will also save money, improve our health and even keep us fit!

Reduce the amount of meat (particularly red meat), fish and dairy produce in your diet.
Choose seasonal food as much as you can, it won’t have clocked up CO2 through being transported, stored or produced in ‘hot-houses’
Choose food that is produced locally or from the UK
Avoid air-freighted food
Try and grow some of your own salad, vegetables or fruit (even more local and seasonal!)
Try use alternatives to single use glass bottles
Only boil as much water as needed when you make a hot drink
Don’t buy bottled water!! The tap water in the UK is perfectly drinkable
Eliminate food waste (in the Western World about 25% of all food produced gets thrown away!)
Buy the food with the least packaging

The carbon footprint of food

The carbon footprint of food is the greenhouse gas emissions produced by growing, rearing, farming, processing, transporting, storing, cooking and disposing of the food we eat. Throughout any food’s lifecycle different greenhouse gases may be emitted, such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, each with a greater or lesser ability to trap heat in the atmosphere.

Carbon emissions from food account for as much as a quarter of all human carbon emissions. If the effect of deforestation to make space for farmland is included, food contributes over 30% to our individual carbon footprint.

In the UK just under half of our food carbon footprint comes from producing food, about 25% from processing, 20% from transport and 10% from packaging. Read Transition Town Letchworth's report on the carbon footprint of food.

The Story of Stuff

Spending on new goods is encouraged through advertising and seen as a mechanism for economic growth, but how many of the goods we buy are really necessary and how much fossil fuel is associated with these goods? Our cupboards often contain items we seldom use. More people are realising that happiness gained from a shopping trip does not last long but decluttering our lives has a more lasting impact. Take a look at the Story of Stuff for a thought provoking video.

Activity sheets

The activity sheets below describe activities students could choose to deliver to support climate repair:

Reducing single use plastics

Books and short video clips to help students understand the problem that plastics can cause for the environment.

Wild Tribe Heroes books
All the Way to the Ocean (Joel Harper) – Available as a book or animated video and aimed at infant age.
Two minutes on marine litter (animated video suitable for junior age children).
Solving Plastic Pollution (suitable for junior / senior age children, 4 minutes long).
Plastic Oceans (suitable for senior school children, 10 minutes long).

Students could explore what different products are made from and try to find alternatives for those which are plastic.

The Story of Microfibres will raise awareness of plastics in our clothing.
This video gives a personal story about Living Plastic Free.

Students could undertake a classroom bin audit, identifying items which are made from plastic and then thinking how to reduce the amount of plastic thrown away by identifying if you could refuse, reuse or find alternatives to single use plastics. Examples of items identified by schools to target so far include:

Replace disposable cups with reusable washable beakers
Encourage PTAs not to sell single use glow bands and sticks at their events.
Replace school milk in a carton with a straw with an alternative with less plastic.

Students could make some products that are a plastic free alternative to everyday products, ee.g. a soap bar, beeswax food wraps or reusable snack bag.

Students can devise and implement a plastic free campaign, two ideas for campaigns are:

REFILLABLE BOTTLES AND CUPS: Encouraging students to bring refillable bottles instead of single use plastic bottles in packed lunches and on trips. A video suitable for older junior / senior school children is The Story of Bottled Water.
PLASTIC FREE LUNCH WEEK: Plan and implement ‘plastic free’ lunch box days – lunch boxes without single-use disposable plastic. The children could make their own plays or even videos to give ideas on how to have a plastic-free lunch box.

Re-using non-recyclable plastics

Students could try some of these creative ways to up-cycle and re-use plastics that might otherwise go to landfill:

The Community Plan for Letchworth Cycle and Walking Network

The Community Plan for a Letchworth Cycle and Walking Network was developed by Letchworth Cyclists and provides a series of schemes which can be delivered in stages, but once all delivered will provide a full cycle network across Letchworth. It also includes schemes to improve the existing walking network.

The Community Plan for a Letchworth Cycling and Walking Network – The Schemes provides the detailed scheme descriptions grouped by areas of the town. The detailed scheme information can also be accessed online in an Openstreet Map (click on the ‘peardrops’ to see what’s planned for a particular location).

The Community Plan for Letchworth Cycle and Walking Network report describes the methodology underlying the proposed schemes, including the traffic solutions which are included.

Our cycle network

Help maintain Letchworth’s Cycle Network by reporting any problems with the quality of roads, paths and cycle tracks, including encroaching vegetation, to Hertfordshire County Council Maintenance team.