Living Sustainably

Sustainable Danbury will promote ideas for a more sustainable lifestyle including:

  • Recycling and reuse including repair
  • Achieving a healthy and sustainable diet
  • Growing your own and sourcing food locally
  • Home Energy saving ideas and tips
  • Sustainable travel
  • Waste reduction

Enhancing Biodiversity

Working with other organisations such as the National Trust and Essex Wildlife Trust to create a Nature Network across the whole of Danbury

Following the UK's exit from the EU and the Common Agricultural Plan the government is changing the ways that subsidies to farmer and to land management are paid.  A key new programme is called Nature Recovery Networks (NRN). A Danbury NRN could allow us to link up the existing Nature reserves using corridors on farms or via networks of gardens for example through planting of trees and hedgerows or by bettermanaging public areas for wildlife. 

Community Energy

Building community resilience through the ownership of local electricity generation capacity

The way we are generating electricity is changing. Renewable energy from solar, wind and water will play a much greater role in powering our homes, businesses and transportation over the coming years and will eventually provide nearly all our energy needs.
The structure of the energy supply system is also changing. The old centralised model of large fossil fuel burning power stations connected by the National Grid is giving way to a much more de-centralised system of local energy generation.
We have already seen major renewable energy projects being completed from arrays of Wind turbines to Solar Farms. Most of these are funded by large companies and owned by remote investors. However this is not the only model. Community Energy is a movement based on local ownership and control of the energy generation assets. Community Energy organisations are run as co-operatives which, whilst they are run as commercial businesses, are operated with local democratic control with surplus income being re-invested or distributed to good causes in the locality.

Central government and Essex County council are supporting Community Energy initiatives and Sustainable Danbury is investigating the feasibility of community energy in Danbury with projects such as installing further solar panels on local schools and businesses.

Community Energy England is the advocate body for Community energy and its website is a source of further useful information

The short video from 'Power to Change' a leading advocate of community owned business is well worth a watch

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