An MSc student is inviting Sutton residents to tell her what would encourage us to buy renewable energy. If you have a few minutes to fill in the questionnaire you could win a Freeloader Solar Charger and energy saving bulbs and the results will be used to help researchers and industry experts better understand what people want from renewables..
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Bo2_2bZGrz27UgRhH2S47xyQ_3d_3d

Many thanks,

Anna

The sun defied the forecasts for a happy Hackbridge Carnival last Saturday! We ran a litter-picking squad for the parade, showed local people the actions they can take to be more sustainable on a giant 1mx1m printout of our Green Map of Sutton (based on OpenStreetMap data), handed out lots of info about the fantastic insulation offer and – since it was a carnival – got adults and kids equally enthusiastic about our Splat the Carbon game.

You can see David having a go on the right – Hackbridge residents and businesses are starting to drive down traffic and unecessary case usage. There was lots of interest in the community farm idea too, so we’re helping a group of residents start up a community champions group. Well, it’s not too hard when they first meet at our BBQ and then every month at The Grange pub in the park!

Look out for us at the Move it at the Manor green transport festival in Sutton town centre this Sunday…

Following the free sustainability visits in March 08, we held a ‘sustainable BBQ’ for Hackbridge residents on Monday 9th June using local BioRegional charcoal and vegetarian / local food. Around 40 people came along and luckily so did the sunshine! Local householders took the opportunity to meet their neighbours, swap ideas and share their findings from the visits (such as the fact that Hackbridge’s ecological footprint is slightly lower than the UK average and that Hackbridge residents know an average of 8 neighbours!).

We discussed idea of setting up a community farm and received a lot of support and many people volunteered to be community champions to help green Hackbridge even more. We are meeting again at 7pm on the 7^th July in the Grange to discuss what everyone wants to do. We still need more people to be involved so if you’re interested please let us know or come along to the Grange! Contact Anna on: 020 8404 5924, e: anna@oneplanetsutton.org.

Over 25 local people including councillors, mapping enthusiasts and OpenStreetMap volunteers turned out for our green mapping day in Worcester Park! On a sunny spring day we roved around the area adding in basic information like street types and names, as well as more unusual information like cycle parking facilities and bus stops.

Coverage of the London Borough of Sutton is now almost complete in OpenStreetMap, giving local groups an amazing free resource with which to create maps and analyse the local area.

We are putting the finishing touches on our Green Map of Sutton too, with the map key shaping up and the car club / cyclist information working nicely. We’re going to add in overlays for local photos, FixMyStreet issues and planning alerts too, and will expand the green shopping overlay with all the charity shops, independent green/fairtrade shops and anything else people think we should add. Let us know what you think by leaving a comment!

If all goes to plan, we’ll be able to bring together various local transport groups including the council’s green travel scheme, cycling groups, pedestrian/walking groups and others to collaborate with OSM. Some of those who came along all thought this was a great idea, so I’ll be chasing this up in the coming weeks.

The library we used as a venue also want a map of their area, so that’s something else to follow up. I’ll pop a copy on here for all to see, and am happy to do the same for free for any other local community centre / shop / etc. Just leave a comment and I’ll see what I can do.

Thanks especially to Alice from Smarter Travel Sutton, Charlotte and fellow volunteers from Living Streets / Cyclism, and Thomas and Philip who are local OpenStreetMap heroes, having single-handedly mapped most of the Borough themselves over the past year or so! Thomas and Philip are shown in this photo helping Alice to add in data after her first stroll around the area just to the North of Central Road.

We should be out and about again at the Move it at the Manor day in Manor Park, Sutton town centre. There we’ll aim to complete coverage of the pedestrianised shopping area, and again put in all the green travel options like cycle routes/parking and bus stops.

Look out for pedestrian and cycle routing too – we’re talking to some people in Cambridge and Germany who have great tools to help you find the quickest, quietest or safest route from A to B.

Switch to Good Energy by clicking here to get 100% of your electricity from renewable sources. For every home or business that switch to Good Energy through One Planet Living, Good Energy will donate £20 to One Planet Living in Sutton. At the end of each year we will hold a public meeting for Sutton residents to decide how the money should be spent in making Sutton sustainable. So if 1,000 of you make the switch, in May 2009 we’d have £20,000 to spend on local projects!

Come and join the OpenStreetMap community and put Worcester Park on the map. We’ll be walking around the area adding street names, libraries, pubs, playgrounds, parks, allotments, cinemas and other details to the map! More info on Sutton Active (thanks Adrian for all the help).

We’re in the process of building a green map of Sutton using OpenStreetMap, and Worcester Park is the last major area of Sutton with no coverage. With your help we are going to complete the Worcester Park area.

Why don’t we just use Google?

You can’t actually re-use, change or publish a lot of existing maps without violating copyright, so you’re stuck with Google’s or A-Z’s boring view designed for motorists. It can cost a lot of money!

OpenStreetMap is different – the data and the map images are available to everyone to use for free, so long as you credit the community when using them. Anyone can add to them – just like Wikipedia – so you can make the maps you want without the hassle or expense.

We’re making maps for cyclists, bus or car club users; maps showing where to buy local food; maps for heritage trails in Sutton. Once we all put in the basic data, we can make maps of anything easily!

So how will it work?

Just turn up! We’ll run workshops at 11am and 2pm for newcomers, and experienced mappers will be around to help you hit the streets and gather some data.

Well done to Cheam resident David Keeble, who scooped first prize in the “Sustainable Sutton” competition with his idea for making Sutton greener. His winning idea is to “set a ‘Green space Challenge’ to encourage a one per cent increase in quality green space each year in Sutton.” It will go into Sutton’s Sustainability Action Plan, the first version of which should be out in June.

David Keeble, who wins a £200 voucher for Pearsons Cycles in Sutton and an energy monitor so that he can keep track of home energy consumption, said, “I am delighted to receive the prizes and will definitely put them to good use. I fully support the One Planet Living initiative to make Sutton a better place today and for tomorrow. I’m looking forward to seeing a greener Sutton.”

Read more about David’s idea and the competition on the BioRegional news page.

Welcome to our blog, where we will be keeping you up to date on initiatives that form part of One Planet Living in Sutton. Over the next fifteen years we hope to transform Sutton into a genuinely sustainable suburb. This means reducing our ecological footprint while strengthening our community and improving our quality of life.

The whole community will need to get involved, from council initiatives to new social enterprises, from residents becoming more energy efficient to schools and businesses serving better food. If you have any ideas then leave us or a comment, or better yet add your ideas to the Sustainability Action Plan!