The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 13 states: Take urgent action to combat Climate Change and its actions. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/climate-change/
As Soroptimists, we have been supporting this goal in some of the ways listed below.
Climate Change and Preserving the Planet in the Natural World Actions
Individual action on climate change can include personal choices in many areas, such as diet, means of long and short-distance travel, household energy use, and consumption of goods and services. We all can play a part in this by making small adjustments to the way we live. We are currently monitoring Club members’ approaches to combating Climate Change by asking them to feedback at Club meetings on whether they have tried something new from the list here: _Climate Change and Preserving the Planet in the Natural World Actions
Recycling
As a Club, we care about our environment and it is essential that we don’t throw away items that can easily be recycled. We are taking every opportunity to collect items for recycling and those in the picture above were brought along to a recent coffee morning.
If you have any of the following items, please let us know and we may able to help with their disposal: plastic milk bottle tops, blister packs. Contact enquiriessiepsom@gmail.com
Reducing food waste
We held a discussion about what is happening to our food and listened to a podcast. You can read about the discussion here and listen to the BBC podcast: Food Waste This led us to have a special day where we cooked food together with ingredients that we had all supplied. You can read about this here: Ben Johnson Day – Celebrating Black History Month!
In May 2022, We invited Clare Davies, CEO, Mid -Surrey Community Fridges to speak to members about the Community Fridge at Leatherhead Community Hub Mid Surrey Community Fridges Five Club members later visited the Community Fridge and saw how it operated.
Planting Trees
According to the Woodland Trust: “Trees are the ultimate carbon capture and storage machines. Like great carbon sinks, woods and forests absorb atmospheric carbon and lock it up for centuries. They do this through photosynthesis. The entire woodland ecosystem plays a huge role in locking up carbon, including the living wood, roots, leaves, deadwood, surrounding soils and its associated vegetation.”
Woodland Trust – trees fight climate change
As part of the Soroptimist Centenary (1921-2021), all Clubs were encouraged to plant trees as this activity was undertaken by the very first Soroptimist Club in the USA.
We planted cherry trees for an I Choose Freedom refuge and supported True Honour to plant a cherry tree in a nature reserve in memory of Surjit Athwal. You can read more about the planting of these trees on these links:
Tree planting in memory of Surjit Athwal
The trees can also be located on this map if you put in a search for SI Epsom and District on the left side at the top or scroll down the list of Clubs. Please note there is some sensitivity surrounding both locations, they are not precise. Tree planting map
The Big Plastic Count
Some Soroptimist International Epsom and District members took part in The Big Plastic Count initiative 16-22 May 2022. This involved counting all plastic ( recyclable and non recyclable) coming into the household for a week and submitting the information online. Veronica collected 44 pieces of plastic which would amount to a project amount of 2288 pieces over the course of a year. 34 % was hard plastic. Hard plastic is a lot easier to recycle than soft plastic. Whilst hard plastic is more recyclable, there are many items that cannot be recycled such as black plastic, polystyrene chips and toothpaste tubes. 66 % was soft plastic and according to Greenpeace, less than 1 in 10 local councils in the UK collect soft plastic like plastic bags and wrappers. Do you know if your council collects it and what happens to your packaging waste? It was possible to download a useful handbook with tips about using less plastic which is available here: Living-with-less-plastic-handbook (1)