Time Travel for Visitors to the Dumfries Environment Fair
Members the local network took young visitors on a trip into the future from their Eco-Congregation stall at the recent Dumfries Environment Fair. Youngsters were invited to climb into a “Tardis” and after suitable time machine noises they emerged into the future to see how we are tackling current environmental challenges. Solutions talked about included:
New forms of energy generation and storage eg:
- The cycle path surface in the Netherlands that is made up of solar panels – and, yes you can cycle on it!
- The “Tesla” power-wall which can be fitted in houses to store up to 7kwh of electricity generated from solar panels for use at night or whenever the sun doesn’t shine.
- The buses in Aberdeen that run on hydrogen produced from electricity that can be generated from renewables
Eating locally grown food eg:
- The Incredible Edible project
- Growing local food in cities underground (in London they are using disused “Tube” tunnels), using ultra efficient LED lighting
Sharing:
- A Danish company “leases” baby clothes. You simply return them for reuse, when your baby has grown out of them. There is another company that does the same for fashion items, such as jeans – the fashion changes and you return your out-of-date pair to be made into a new more fashionable item.
- Encouraging people living in the same area to jointly own and use bigger household and garden items such as lawn mowers and hedge cutters so that they can be shared and not everyone has to have their own.
All these solutions really already exist but will become much more common, as we move to a more sustainable, low carbon world. The message was that, in many ways, we have the technology and we have the solutions – we have hope for the future!
Special thanks are due to Grainne Kennedy (who came up with the idea and manufactured the Tardis), Kate from St Andrew’s RC Church in Dumfries and also members of the Dunscore Eco Team who came to help out on the stall and gave our visitors a candle, a message about Earth Hour and a prayer to take home all in specially designed and environmentally friendly bags.
