Harry Mellor - The CA-WN Exchange

Harry Mellor

West Northamptonshire Area Climate Summit 2024

West Northamptonshire Area Climate Summit 2024

On Wednesday 9 October 2024 representatives from West Northamptonshire town and village councils met at Delapré Abbey for the area’s first ever Climate Summit. Over 50 delegates took this first step in a five-year programme intended to develop and support local projects aimed at dealing with, and lessening the

Visit to Nottingham Energy Partnership

Visit to Nottingham Energy Partnership

Nottingham Energy Partnership (NEP) is a climate change and fuel poverty charity working across Nottinghamshire. They share CA-WN’s aims of reducing carbon emissions, increasing resilience and lessening reliance on fossil fuel. On our visit we were welcomed by their Chief Executive Officer, Miranda Cumberbatch, their former CEO Philip Angus

If only ...

London is about to trial an electric bus that looks like a tram, has a claimed range of over 200 miles and batteries that can be topped up in ten minutes at bus stands fitted with overhead charging points. The ieTram1 is manufactured at a purpose-built plant in Basque Country,

Syan Farm visit

Syan Farm visit

What is a Vertical Farm? As the vertical farmers at Syan Farm themselves say: "With space and time running out for open field farming, we’re looking up. We grow beautifully nutritious crops on multiple levels – vertical farming. It saves on space, reduces carbon and gives us total control

Britain's Housing Crisis

Britain's Housing Crisis

Broken Homes: Britain's Housing Crisis: Faults, Factoids and Fixes by Peter Bill and Jackie Sadek Today’s housing crisis featured in an earlier Bookshelf. I make no apology for another housing-related reading recommendation, this time 200 or so pages of useful historic context, anecdotes and picture-painting stories. Many

Our Housing Disaster: and what we can do about it

Our Housing Disaster: and what we can do about it

This little book, smaller than A5 and just 180 pages, by Julian Richer, entrepreneur and philanthropist, examines how our housing got to such a disastrous situation and suggests what we can do about. This is an essential and quick read for anyone wishing to understand the causes of today’s

New Local Plan for West Northamptonshire

New Local Plan for West Northamptonshire

West Northamptonshire Council is preparing a new Local Plan to guide the future development of our region. This post reveals how local planners made it possible to allow huge scale developments in the open countryside near Towcester. Harry Mellor – a resident of Easton Neston, the Parish next to Towcester – suggests

What's in our schools' air?

What's in our schools' air?

West Northamptonshire schools are being offered a free SAMHE air quality monitor and education resources. Why not sign up your school for the SAMHE project? Act now because registration closes at the end of May! SAMHE (pronounced ‘Sammy’) stands for Schools’ Air Quality Monitoring for Health and Education. It is

Last Chance to Find Duke

Last Chance to Find Duke

This is something different to lighten the mood, an utterly charming cartoon story by a Chinese author and illustrator – which explains why its English language speech bubbles have to be read from right to left. An insect researcher called 063 sets off to find a rare species of cricket whose

Six things for you and the world

individual impact

Six things for you and the world

Travel – Walking and cycling are healthy for you and healthy for the planet. For longer distances consider travelling by train instead of driving or flying. Renewable Energy – Switch your contract to a renewable energy supplier if your electricity supply is not already from 100% renewable sources. Switching a contract can

ONE in Milton Keynes

ONE in Milton Keynes

The ONE Campaign, sponsored by many of the world’s greatest charitable foundations, hosted a Great Big Green Week event for Milton Keynes. And CA-WN was invited. A diary clash had pushed the event to Saturday 24 June, the week after the official GBGW, which very usefully highlights that if

GBGW 2023: There’s no more water

GBGW 2023: There’s no more water

It’s true. All the water in the world is just that, all the water in the world. No one knows how water got here and we can't make more H2O. Welding two parts of hydrogen to one part oxygen doesn't work, unlikely as that seems

GBGW 2023: It starts at home

GBGW 2023: It starts at home

The government figures shown here chart our collective contribution to global climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions. Because everything we do has a climate consequence let’s keep in mind that when it comes to reducing emissions, as they say, every little helps - one way or another. With nearly half a

CA-WN's Air Quality Monitoring Project

Air pollution matters. No one likes bad smells but airborne particles can damage human health so it is important to know what is in the air we breath. For Northamptonshire there is just one official site for measuring air pollution. This project complements official measurements with real-time outdoor, hyper-local readings