Transition Town Tooting

Tag: Recycling

  • The Great Greenhouse Build – we need your help!

    Our current outdoor learning project with Gatton School is to build a greenhouse in the community garden made from recycled plastic bottles (see picture below – this is what we hope the finished greenhouse will look like). The year 6 pupils come to the garden for an hour a week to work on this and despite lots of hard work on their behalf, it is slow going. After the Easter holidays, we have just two more lessons (ie two hours!) to finish the project. 
    Clearly this is going to be impossible – currently we have completed two side walls of the greenhouse (below), but we still have the back wall, the front wall with a door, two roof panels and two gable ends to make, and then we have to fit all the pieces together! Plus we have many more plastic bottles to cut.
    So we really need some volunteers to rally round and help out. At the first community session during the Seed Swap we had some great helpers and managed to build a wall of the greenhouse.
    Here’s how you can help:

    Because two more hours with 12x 10-year-olds isn’t going to be enough to finish the build, Sharon will be hosting some working parties in the garden in the Easter school holidays. Please come and help – we REALLY NEED YOU! There are tasks for all abilities so don’t feel you need any particular skills to make a contribution. If you have a hammer or a cordless screwdriver and can bring them along, even better.

    The drop-in sessions will be from 12pm-4.30pm on:
    Good Friday April 3
    Thursday April 9
    Friday April 10

    The Community Garden is at 5 North Drive, SW16 1RN.
    We’re tucked in behind the big red-brick house at that address, with entrance through the black fence to the left of the building. We’ll have a sign on the road.

    Bring your friends, bring your family (there’s even a playground for little kids to occupy themselves). And if you know anyone else who might be interested in helping out, please spread the word. The more the merrier. It really is good fun and hugely satisfying.
    If you would like to come along, or have any questions, please drop us a line at TootingCommunityGarden@gmail.com or the Tooting Community Garden Facebook page so we know how many people to expect.

    Hope to see you at the garden!

  • Reduce, Re-use, RESPARKLE! crafts workshop

    Tomorrow: Saturday 20th December
    TTT crafts with recycled materials, Tooting Library, 2:00 to 4:00

    Our free drop-in seasonal craft making workshop upstairs at the beautiful Tooting Library, 75 Mitcham Road, SW17 9PD. 

    All welcome, all ages, all tuition and materials provided
    Practical and fun session to illustrate making beautiful things from waste – and reduce carbon. Photos from our 2012 event here
     

    We’ll be using recycled materials to make creative presents, decorations or packages (for yourself or for others). 
    With quite a lot of glitter.

    Many thanks to the team at Tooting Library, and to GLL

    Crafts with recycled materials!
    Our biennial free drop-in seasonal craft making workshop upstairs at the beautiful Tooting Library.
    We’ll be using recycled materials to make creative presents, decorations or packages (for yourself or for others). With quite a lot of glitter.
    All welcome, all ages, all tuition and materials provided.
    Practical and fun session to illustrate making beautiful things from waste – and reduce carbon.
    Photos from our 2012 event here on PD:
    http://www.projectdirt.com/project/7213/#!/journal…
    Many thanks to the team at Tooting Library, and to GLL
    Any queries – email us at transitiontowntooting@gmail.com
    – See more at: http://www.projectdirt.com/apps/event/32290/#sthash.fDExqieP.dpuf
    Crafts with recycled materials!
    Our biennial free drop-in seasonal craft making workshop upstairs at the beautiful Tooting Library.
    We’ll be using recycled materials to make creative presents, decorations or packages (for yourself or for others). With quite a lot of glitter.
    All welcome, all ages, all tuition and materials provided.
    Practical and fun session to illustrate making beautiful things from waste – and reduce carbon.
    Photos from our 2012 event here on PD:
    http://www.projectdirt.com/project/7213/#!/journal…
    Many thanks to the team at Tooting Library, and to GLL
    Any queries – email us at transitiontowntooting@gmail.com
    – See more at: http://www.projectdirt.com/apps/event/32290/#sthash.fDExqieP.dpuf
    Crafts with recycled materials!
    Our biennial free drop-in seasonal craft making workshop upstairs at the beautiful Tooting Library.
    We’ll be using recycled materials to make creative presents, decorations or packages (for yourself or for others). With quite a lot of glitter.
    All welcome, all ages, all tuition and materials provided.
    Practical and fun session to illustrate making beautiful things from waste – and reduce carbon.
    Photos from our 2012 event here on PD:
    http://www.projectdirt.com/project/7213/#!/journal…
    Many thanks to the team at Tooting Library, and to GLL
    Any queries – email us at transitiontowntooting@gmail.com
    – See more at: http://www.projectdirt.com/apps/event/32290/#sthash.fDExqieP.dpuf

    Crafts with recycled materials!
    Our biennial free drop-in seasonal craft making workshop upstairs at the beautiful Tooting Library.
    We’ll be using recycled materials to make creative presents, decorations or packages (for yourself or for others). With quite a lot of glitter.
    All welcome, all ages, all tuition and materials provided.
    Practical and fun session to illustrate making beautiful things from waste – and reduce carbon.
    Photos from our 2012 event here on PD:
    http://www.projectdirt.com/project/7213/#!/journal…
    Many thanks to the team at Tooting Library, and to GLL
    Any queries – email us at transitiontowntooting@gmail.com
    – See more at: http://www.projectdirt.com/apps/event/32290/#sthash.fDExqieP.dpuf

  • Number 4 in TTT’s ’12 tweets to Christmas’

    Here is tweet number four:
    No.4 in @tttooting‘s 12 day to xmas: Make decorations from recycled or found materials like these pretty snowflakes goo.gl/XHTJYc

    And…a tweet number four bonus for followers on the blog:

    Make your house look festive this Christmas with unique and simple homemade creations from recycled materials or natural materials.

    Get out in the crisp wintery weather and collect some pinecones. They look great as a table centre round a candle or hung from ribbons. When Christmas is over they can go back in the garden. 

    Plastic bottles are so versatile and come in a variety of sizes to make things from.  Try these bottle-bottom snow flakes or bottle penguins (click on the names to link to the websites).

    Use paper and wrapping paper off cuts to make these hanging decorations: click here or here.

  • Restart Party 2

    Tooting’s second Restart Party was held on Dec 3rd at Mushkil Aasaan with more electronic items being fixed by volunteers for free courtesy of the Restart Project.  We had quite a few laptops and tablets this time round. Sidd (pictured) had come all the way from Ilford with his laptop screen recycled as an external monitor – pretty impressive!
    UPDATE: see Sidd’s blog on how he did it

    Sid with his home made machine

    The Restart Project is a London-based social enterprise that encourages and empowers people to use their electronics longer, by sharing repair and maintenance skills.  We are very grateful to Janet, Ugo and their amazing team of volunteer fixers for running another event with us, and I personally am delighted to have had my old camera fixed after 5 years in a drawer – thank you!

    We hope to make Restart Parties a regular feature in Tooting and are on the lookout for skilled local fixers.  Would you like to share your skills (and probably learn new ones) while helping keep electronic stuff out of landfill? Contact us at the usual address if you’d like to get involved in future Tooting Restart events (transitiontowntooting@gmail.com).  David

    Fixing the shutter on my camera

    Laptop consultancy
    What’s in here?

  • Insect Hotel – trash to treasure (of sorts…)

    Have you ever thought about how much material gets used once and thrown away? Or is not financially worth re-using? Or how most people won’t be satisfied buying something second hand, it has to be new?

    Somewhat in tune with Transition Network’s December theme of “Less is More”  I thought it would be of interest to look at the materials we are using in the Insect Hotel build.

    The structure is supported on waste flag stones donated to the garden. The four uprights used to be fence that ran across the garden and was blown down in the gales a year or two ago, the horizontal shelf supports too. Those bracing pieces are temporary…

    Week 5 – all we need now is the habitats… and the bugs!

    Click below to read how the roof was put together…

    This week, the students from Gatton raised the roof, along with David, Sharon, Esther and I. The roof is made of amazing 4b2 timber – this particular stuff came out of our loft when we were lucky enough to convert it a year ago. The booming domestic renovation business is not set up at all to re-use or recycle. Time and money rule, and its cheaper to dump these timbers in a skip than de-nail and re-use – criminal if you ask me, imagine a waterfall system of being passed onto smaller and smaller projects, but that’s another idea for another blog. The tiles too came from our job.

    Detail showing roof structure and re-use timber and tile

    If you need any of these materials, just go for a bike ride and find a house wrapped in scaffolding and ask the builders. Chances are, they’d be more than happy to offload it too you (you might need a bigger vehicle than a bike to transport it!) as it reduces their waste costs and so increases their profit as this is already figured into a fixed price to the client.

    The only thing new so far on the build is the tile batons – I couldn’t find any re-use ones, unfortunately. However, when I went to buy them, I found out my local timber merchant has stacks and stacks of pallets, considered an inconvenient waste and were kind enough to drop 5 of them round to the garden – that’s the rest of the shelving material sorted! The simplest Insect Hotels are made from skips, so if you’re looking to do one… check out here for pallet-based inspiration.

    And here for a previous blogpost on innovation in building waste re-use.

  • Restart Party, Wed 3rd December – let’s get stuff fixed!

    Do you have an electrical or electronic item that needs fixing and don’t want to have to throw it away? 

    After a fantastically successful evening in September we are delighted to announce that the Restart Project, a London-based social enterprise that encourages and empowers people to use their electronics longer, have agreed to run a second “Restart Party” with TTT in Tooting next month.
      
    Sound interesting? Then come along to the event. 

    Restart Party at Mushkil Aasaan

    220 – 222 Upper Tooting Road, SW17 7EW, 

    Wednesday December 3rd from 6.30 – 9.30pm.

     


    Challenge the culture of built-in obsolescence and take back control of all your electronic stuff! 

    Do note that Restart Parties are a community self-repair space where you take responsibility for your own gadgets and data, so please do not forget to take any back-ups beforehand, if relevant – and if possible arrive during the first two hours to allow time for fixing!

    See great reports of our last event here and on How We Get to Next here.

    Could we have a Tooting Restart Group so that we could hold more regular local Restart Parties?  If you are interested in the idea do come along on the night – or if you can’t make it contact Hilary Jennings on transitiontowntooting@gmail.com. 

    You might also be interested to know that Restart hold regular skillshare get togethers http://therestartproject.org/skillshares/

  • Restart Party in Tooting Sept 9th

    We are delighted to announce that the Restart Project, a London-based social enterprise that encourages and empowers people to use their electronics longer, have agreed to run a “Restart Party” with TTT in Tooting next month. 


    The Restart Project aims to reduce electronic waste by helping people learn fundamental repair and maintenance skills, enabling them to fix all kinds of electronic devices rather than throw them away or recycle them.  Slow laptops, broken printers, smartphones, coffee grinders, you name it, Restart will attempt to assist with a fix. 

    Sound interesting? Then come along to the event, challenge the culture of built-in obsolescence and take back control of all your electronic stuff!  Do note that Restart Parties are a community self-repair space where you take responsibility for your own gadgets & data, so please do not forget to take any back-ups beforehand, if relevant !

    We look forward to seeing you at this great event at Mushkil Aasaan, 220 – 222 Upper Tooting Road, SW17 7EW, Tuesday Sep 9th from 6 to 9pm. The event is also advertised om meetup.com here.

  • Re-used & Reclaimed: Carbon Conversations Meeting 3

    Our third meeting in the current Carbon Conversations series was all about exploring and reducing our carbon footprint in the things we purchase. That’s a big topic which ranged from ‘why do we buy stuff anyway?’ to re-use and ‘upcycling’.
    Richard is a participant and has been researching an apect of consumption: re-using building materials, He recommends a couple of interesting projects below:

    Hi all, I’m researching ways we can enable re-use of materials that come out of domestic scale renovation/extension work. This is something dear to my heart having been involved in making projects with Transition Town Tooting and at home using reclaimed timber – you guys will remember the water catchment project, (which was all reclaimed except for 5 lengths of timber that needed to be longer than the available) and the cold frame project that was 100% reclaimed materials.

    Re-upholstered chair with funky echeverias.
    Anyway, during my research I’ve found some really cool initiatives from around the world, and I thought I’d share them with you.
    Have a look at the vimeo clip from the Portland, Oregon based organisation called “The Rebuilding Center” and tell me if you give it an English chuckle or join in with the tears at the end!

    The Rebuilding Center also has done projects using bicycles to transport the materials they salvage form demolition jobs – hardcore! They also have lots of project ideas.

    Handmade cable drum chair

    Yooz is up in Scotland and integrates re-training in its business model.

    Ok, there’s two. Hope you like ’em and it inspires how we can better re-use the copious amounts of useful material going into skips up and down the land.
    Richard

    And thanks a lot, Richard! For more about this meeting series, click on CARBON CONVERSATIONS at the top of this blog page. All welcome to the next series we run.
    And maybe you have ideas for Made in Tooting re-use and reclamation?
    Do get in touch.

  • Ecobuild 2014

    This year’s Ecobuild had plenty to catch the eye and ear.  I was particularly interested in the Resource section on reuse and the circular economy. Here’s three projects which sounded good:

    • The RSA’s Great Recovery Project about how redesigning systems can help conserve valuable resources and minimise waste. 
    • The London Re-use Network who give young people a chance to develop skills repairing unwanted household items which are then provided to those most in need, in social housing for example, at the same time saving more dumping in landfill. 
    • Rentez-vous which enables women to rent fashion items from each other and from fashion houses rather than buying wardrobes full of things rarely to be worn.

    Meanwhile a seminar we attended on Community Energy will definitely be helpful for the Furzedown Low Carbon Zone project.  As well as these highlights, Ecobuild as usual hosted the best in sustainable design, construction and renewable energy.  It’s invariably an inspiring event to sample all the latest ideas and to gather useful information.             dt

  • Work & Play Scrapstore in Tooting

    I made a visit to the recently re-opened Work and Play Scrapstore in Blackshaw Rd this week. Running for over 20 years, the Scrapstore promotes the re-use of resources for environmental and community benefit and has a great collection of card, trimmings, fabric, plastics, carpet pieces and costumes.  The Scrapstore is a registered charity and provides resources to  schools, community groups and local artists – TTT’s art making group SMArT visits regularly.  

    Many thanks to Scrapstore volunteers Alison, Elizabeth, Lucy & Susan (all pictured) for showing me around.  The ethos of the Scrapstore seems a good fit with Transition ideas, and would be a great resource for future events.  

    Meanwhile can anyone out there assist the Scrapstore with donations?  I was given a wishlist of desirable items so please do take any of the following down there on a Tuesday if you are able. dt

    Wishlist:
    finer fabrics, felt, metal bottle tops, coloured card and paper, ribbon, laces, haberdashery, buttons, sewing tape, zips, elastic, knitting wool, plastic offcuts, plastic foam in sheets (2mm thick and up), wine corks, paper cups and plates.

    Find out more at http://workandplayscrapstore.org.uk