Eco Open Houses

Practising Transition

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The Practising Transition campaign has been exploring ‘What is a Practice of Change and Why are They Important’.

A Theory of Change is an idea about how change happens. A Practice of Change is something more tangible – a set of practical approaches or activities that we have experienced as creating the changes in the world we want to see. We have Practiced them and seen the differences.

As part of this exploration Practising Transition have been holding a series of webinars and TTW’s Pauline took part in the workshop focused on Eco-Open Houses speaking about how Eco-Open Houses help individuals save money, live more sustainably, and encourage them to try new thing.

The recording is now available here: https://practise.transitionmovement.org/eco-open-houses

Eco Open Houses Retrofit Video

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Big thanks to TTW director Rolf Londal for a lot of work on the retrofit video that was filmed by TTW Chair Steve Limbrey, with assistance on sound by Ryan Haines and Claire Hunt, back in January.

It’s finally available (after a lot of frustrating computer malfunctions during the editing process) on our YouTube Channel and can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3LgGorRwEA

It’s a long video but it does contain lots of helpful information from local retrofit architect Sarah Kemp, Dave Burholt from Re-Gen Builders (both in the form of a slide show) and the rest of the panel. Maybe you can watch it in small chunks…

Retrofit Talk & Q&A with Local Architect & Panel

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Join us on Tuesday 25th January 2022 for an inspirational, practical and encouraging retrofit talk and Q&A session with local architect, Sarah Kemp, as part of our postponed Eco Open Houses event.

This event held in The QEII Room, Shoreham Centre, between 6pm-8pm, will be looking at a whole-house, phased approach to reducing your home’s carbon emissions. Based in Shoreham-by-Sea, Sarah Kemp set up Eskay Architects in 2004 and works with homeowners and developers on extensions, renovations and conversions, specialising in creating comfortable and energy efficient homes (which can also save money on fuel bills).

The panel includes 3 Eco Open Houses householders (who have retrofitted their homes, one of whom is also a business owner), a local builder, an energy adviser who also has experience in draughtproofing, a solar expert and hopefully a Passivhaus architect (latter to be confirmed).

To register for your free place, please go to Eventbrite here

BIFFA Site Visit As Part of Eco Open Houses

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We are so pleased that we have now been able to reschedule the site tour of the Mechanical Biological Treatment Plant at Warnham as part of our Eco Open Houses event.

The tour offers you the chance to learn what really happens to all that black bag rubbish! West Sussex have some of the most state-of-the-art waste & recycling plants and processes in the UK, which help to dramatically reduce the volume of waste going to landfill in our county. Some of us took this tour a few years ago and found it really interesting and informative!

The tour will take place on Monday 21st February 2022 at 10am-12pm.

Places are very limited, so if you would like to register for your FREE place, please do so asap via https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/visit-to-biffa-site-warnham-as-part-of-eco-open-houses-tickets-217701490017

New Eco Open Houses Videos!

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We are gradually re-creating aspects of our Eco Open Houses event that had to be cancelled in April of last year and we now have two new videos on our Eco Open Houses playlist!

Dan Goodchild, Carbon Reduction Manager at Adur & Worthing Councils has recorded an update for us on the Councils Carbon Neutral 2030 plan and what they are currently working on. This includes the flagship project: Worthing Heat Network which uses heat from Worthing’s main sewer network! You can watch the recording via our YouTube channel and EOH playlist here

Duncan Anderson, Chief Exec from South Downs Leisure also kindly shared his recent video; Going green in the leisure industry with us. He talks through what they have been doing to reduce their environmental impact. You can watch the recording via our YouTube channel and EOH playlist here

Many Thanks to Dan and Duncan!

Eco Open Houses Video Tours Now Available

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We are beginning to see some progress on trying to patch together our Eco Open Houses event that we had to cancel last year.

We’ve delivere d the EPIC tour as well as a tour of the Recycling Plant at Ford and one of our directors, Rolf Londal, has made videos of some of our wonderful eco homes. You can find them on our YouTube channel here.

As/when we are able to organise more events and videos, we will keep you posted!

Site Tour of Ford Recycling Plant

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Join us for a FREE site visit to Ford Recycling Plant on Monday 11th October 10am – 12pm. A great chance to see what happens to the waste that ends up in your bin!

West Sussex have some of the most state-of-the-art waste & recycling plants and processes in the whole of the UK. This website https://www.westsussex.gov.uk/land-waste-and-housing/waste-and-recycling/recycling-and-waste-prevention/what-happens-to-your-waste/ offers information on what happens to residents’ recycling and we are sure you will find a visit to the site at Ford really interesting.

This site visit was due to take place in April of last year for our big Eco Open Houses event, which had to be postponed due to the first lockdown, so we are especially thrilled to be able to finally present this event.

For more details and to book your FREE ticket, please do visit our Eventbrite listing:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ford-recycling-plant-site-visit-tickets-167960190451

 

Site Tour of Sompting Brooks with EPIC

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Join us for a guided tour with Alistair from EPIC around the newly completed restoration of Sompting Brooks on Saturday 11th September 10am – 11.45am.

EPIC stands for “Enhancing Places, Inspiring Communities”.  This amazing urban chalk stream restoration project, funded by the National Lottery, has been working with the help of a team of dedicated community volunteers to realign the course of the Broadwater Brook to enhance its ecological potential. From September the site will become accessible to the public for the first time, enabling people to connect with this natural heritage along a river trail with seating areas and a wildlife viewing hide. Come along and get a guided tour of this beautiful and important new watercourse!

Plastic Free Worthing, another great local community group, undertake monthly beach and greenspaces clean-ups that anyone can take part in and have kindly agreed to come along and share their work as part of this tour. Jean Raleigh from PFW will talk about plastic waste and the damage it causes to the environment and what they are trying to do to help. Alistair from EPIC will also talk about plastic pollution issues and how they affect the site and, of course, how the restoration project has evolved over the last two years.

This tour was supposed to be taking place in April of last year for our big Eco Open Houses event, which had to be postponed due to the first lockdown, so we are especially thrilled to be able to finally present this event, with some changes.

To book your FREE ticket, please do to our eventbrite listing: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/epic-site-tour-tickets-164733380977

 

Eco Open Houses Video Tours

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After the initial huge disappointment with having to cancel last year’s Eco Open Houses event and then a year of wondering how on earth we could still present the event in some form, we’ve made a start on Plan B!

We will gradually be putting videos of some of the venues that would have been open to the public up on our YouTube channel EOH playlist and hopefully one or two new ones that have emerged since, so do look out for them. We hope you will find them inspiring and that they might encourage you to give some things a go that can fairly easily be implemented or incorporated into your lives (if you aren’t doing them already!).

If, having looked at the video, you’d like to take a look at the case study for that property or the event brochure, you can visit the EOH section on our website for more details and links: https://www.ttworthing.org/events/#eco-open-houses

In the light of the Government’s roadmap not quite going according to plan, we also hope that the next step will be to create some bookable Zoom events so watch this space for news of that.