The first meeting of the Carbon Conversations Revisited group has taken place! Eight of us met to discuss reducing consumption and waste: how we are getting on, sharing ideas, what’s going well and what’s hard. We decided we would keep a diary of all our expenditure between this meeting and the next, as one of us has found that really helps to keep expenditure (and therefore carbon emissions!) down! Next meeting we are going to talk about travel (often a hard one). We all enjoyed sharing ideas and particularly sharing feelings – for example, we found it can affect feelings of status when other friends are talking about spending a lot of money – it feels hard to have people think you are poor when you’re not! This really shows how important it is to have the support of like-minded people – it is very easy to get demoralised in a high-consumption world!

This group is closed for the duration of the four sessions, but if you are interested in joining another group, we can certainly create a second one if there are enough takers. At the end of our four sessions we’ll probably continue, but there may be spaces in the group at that point, so do let me (Bev) know if you are interested! I can really recommend it!

We’ve had a CCF book group for several months now and it’s been so successful that we are starting a second one in October. The groups are for anyone who has completed Carbon Conversations and are a great way of keeping each other enthused about low carbon living. The first book group started as four “Continuing Carbon Conversations” sessions about food. Some of the books we looked at were: Tescopoly, Eat your Heart Out, and Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal – all books on the Carbon Conversations reading lists, but which we hadn’t had a chance to read before. I found it was good having a deadline for reading the books – I ended up reading far more than I would have done otherwise!

After the fourth session we decided to keep going, choosing six books about low carbon living that we would all read, one for each session. Everyone made suggestions and we voted at the start. So far we have read The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett and Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. With everyone reading the same book, we get really interesting discussions.

The first group is full, but a new one starts in October on Wednesdays. This group has participants already but there are several spaces for new people. The first session is 19th October at 7.30pm in Chesterton, and participants will be discussing Tim Jackson’s Prosperity without Growth (which I notice David Cameron took on holiday with him!). Other books to be decided. If you are interested, please email Jane Heal.

Do join us! (and also let us know of any really good books on low carbon living you would recommend!)

Exciting new groups starting this autumn for people who have completed Carbon Conversation groups! Join our “Carbon Conversations Revisited” discussion groups or sign up for six weeks “free-from” meat, dairy etc.
Following a really interesting discussion last month with Carbon Conversations “graduates”, we are starting a number of groups this autumn, open to anyone who has done Carbon Conversations:

Carbon Conversations Revisited

We are setting up a group of four meetings for people who have done Carbon Conversations (and it doesn’t matter when you did it!). The plan is to meet (probably monthly) in someone’s house and go into more depth about each of the four Carbon Conversations topics: food, home energy, travel, other consumption and waste. We have 12 people already interested in this and are currently trying to find the best day, but we are happy to set up another group on a different day if more people are interested. This is not a reading group, but a chance to discuss topics more fully and share ideas for low carbon living. If you are interested, email Bev.

6-week Free From groups

We have also established four groups of people who want to try living in a certain way for six weeks. One of the groups (eat locally) has had its first meeting, but there is still time to join, and the other three groups are just in the process of being set up. The groups will run independently of each other:

• Meat-free group
• Dairy-free group
• Plastic-free group
• Eat locally group (starts Sept 4th, but one person is starting a week later, so it’s okay to join then)

The eat locally group also has a blog on the CCF website about this experience.

Email Bev if you are interested in any of the groups.