Colehill Parish Council agreed, on 27th August 2019, to establish a Climate Emergency Working Group, in response to the climate emergencies declared recently by UK Government, Dorset Council and many other local authorities across the country, in order to establish the impacts on Colehill and to identify local actions that can be taken.
A Climate Emergency Working Group was established, and met for the first time on 3rd September 2019 to review and prioritise more than 70 environment improvement ideas identified by Councillors that we can potentially implement within Colehill.
With the onset of Covid, the working group meetings were suspended in March 2020. The future positioning of this activity will be reviewed once the immediate threat has passed and normal meetings have resumed.
The environmental improvement ideas and actions agreed so far are as follows:
Things Colehill Parish Council are doing:
- We will consider the environmental impact in all future decisions and actions taken by Colehill Parish Council.
- We will minimise our use of single-use plastics, including stopping the purchase of plastic bottles of water, Councillors will drink tap water and/or bring their own drinks to meetings in re-useable containers.
- All local organisations receiving Grant Aid payments will be asked to complete an Environmental Questionnaire to help us shape our policies
- Colehill Parish Council are offering free trees for residents. 630 trees were given out in December 2020, a further 525 distributed in October 2021 and 420 in both November 2022 and November 2023. This project is very well received by residents and we hope to continue this going forward whilst the demand is there.
Things individuals in Colehill can do:
- Recycle as much of your waste as possible:
- Check what items will be collected in your fortnightly household recycling bins.
- See what items can be taken to the Wimborne Recycling Centre (Tip)
- Most types of plastic bags and soft plastic wrapping can now be recycled at the Colehill Co-op or Tesco in Ferndown.
- If you’re not sure how to recycle any item, check the Recycle Now pages.
- Switch to LED light bulbs, they use a lot less electricity and last a lot longer, so they save you money as well as helping the environment.
- Switch to a Green Renewable Energy Supplier, to reduce your carbon footprint, use bigcleanswitch.org to obtain quotes from green energy suppliers.
- Contact Healthy Homes Dorset for free impartial energy advice via an advice line open Monday-Friday, 9am-6pm, on 0300 003 7023. They can also provide free loft and cavity wall insulation to people that qualify.
- Contact Renewable Heat Incentive for information on renewable heat technologies. They provide grants to support switching to biomass heating for residents not on the gas grid. (Note this scheme closes to new applications on 31st March 2022.)