Sustainable Ledbury aims to carry out, support and develop projects which will help enable Ledbury to reduce its carbon footprint and increase the efficiency of the use of its share of the world’s resources. This includes raising awareness, sharing information and helping to build community resilience to climate change.
Sustainable Ledbury acts as an "umbrella" organisation for a number of projects, including Town Trail Conservation, Plastic Free Ledbury and Ledbury Waste Reduction.
Sustainable Ledbury is set up as a ‘common interest group’, identifying some projects and enabling people to get together and ‘do’, not just ‘talk’.
History
In the summer of 2019, a few friends had a conversation about what could be done in Ledbury to work towards more sustainable living – and what was meant by that. This resulted in an open meeting in the Brewery Inn – a lively meeting of ideas and discussion. The challenge was how to turn this energy into some practical action. A few key areas of activity were identified and Sustainable Ledbury was formed.
The main areas of interest were and are waste reduction in general, transport, and looking after the open spaces in and around Ledbury. There was a lot of interest in setting up a Repair Café in Ledbury and this has proved very successful.
Waste reduction is a huge subject and at the same time Sustainable Ledbury looked at increasing knowledge/raising awareness. We invited the Waste Team Manager at Herefordshire Council to give a talk on the changing laws on waste management; arranged a visit to the Envirosort facility at Norton, nr Worcester to see what happens to our recycled waste; and started up a project group to look at how we could reduce the use of ‘single use’ plastic in Ledbury.
On the Transport side Sustainable Ledbury has made contact with the Malvern Hills Car Club to get Ledbury included in their scheme. With regard to open spaces, we started to look at the Town Trail.
Then in early 2020 the pandemic hit and everything went on hold. Through 2021 and now 2022 we have been ‘re-launching’ our activities as and when we are allowed, and are now a growing community.
Currently
We now have a Waste Reduction project in progress and (with support from Garden Organic and funding from Ledbury Town Council) have a group of trained volunteers. They will be out and about at events offering ongoing advice to the local community on a wide range of waste issues.
The Town Trail project is tackling the brambles, ivy and litter on the Trail and making great progress.
A Seed Library has now opened in Pot & Page Café as part of the Waste Reduction project
We ran a children's poetry competition at Pot and Page café, as part of the Ledbury Poetry Festival 2022.
The Repair Café has been very successful in reviving treasured possessions and diverting items from landfill and in 2022 moved to larger premises and is now a separate organisation.
Sustainable Ledbury welcomes both new members and any suggestions about what other projects we could consider, which will help Ledbury become more sustainable.
You can contact us via email at sustainableledbury@gmail.com or use the contact form to the right of this page.