WAG grant funds exciting new project in Carmarthenshire
Carmarthenshire County Council has taken advantage of the Welsh Assembly Government’s footprint grant. The grant has been used to fund a project to reduce the footprint of Carmarthenshire communities.
“Byw Sir Gâr” – Back in 2007 Carmarthenshire’s Local Service Board (LSB) identified sustainable development as one of its two key priorities, and has adopted an integrated approach to delivery. In order to improve our engagement with communities on this agenda, we have developed a new scheme - “Byw Sir Gâr / Living Carmarthenshire”. It is a community-wide programme aimed at supporting residents to:
• Save resources
• Save energy
• Travel wisely
• Shop locally and ethically
• Care for the local area and biodiversity
The schemes being piloted in the village of Ferryside during November 2009, and support is given on two levels:
1. Community-wide engagement to promote sustainable living, climate change, and activities on renewable energy, sustainable travel, developing local food cooperative and allotments, community composting scheme amongst other things.
2. Household-level: working with up to 20 individual homes to monitor current energy and water usage, waste and recycling, measuring their footprint and working towards reducing their impacts. These households will be given energy monitors before the month, a full home energy survey during the first week, and will be supported throughout the month to implement the recommended changes to their homes and lifestyles.
Before the campaign was launched, an Ecological Footprint survey of the whole village was undertaken (274 households). Over a 100 responded and the data is currently being analysed. A workshop with the local primary school has also been delivered - who has recently been awarded with their first Eco Schools Green Flag – to raise awareness of ecological footprinting as a way of understanding our impact on planet.
The results of the Byw Sir Gâr / Living Carmarthenshire pilot will be shared with other communities over the coming months with the hope of rolling-out the scheme to other communities across Carmarthenshire from 2010. The scheme is being widely publicised and to date they have enjoyed coverage on the BBC, Western Mail, S4C, local newspapers and radio.