Climate change quiz: rank the solutions

Climate change is in the news as it never has been before:
Extinction Rebellion: Olympic canoeing champion Etienne Stott arrested in climate change protests - BBC Sport

Although this is actually hardly news:



50 Years Ago, President LBJ on Climate Change - YouTube
LBJ's climate warning 50 years ago - do we have your attention yet?
1965 President's SAC Report on Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide/

As mentioned on this morning's Book of the Week on Radio 4:
Futures Forum: Climate change: 'Losing Earth' @ Radio 4's Book of the Week

Here's a quiz from CNN:

The most effective ways to curb climate change might surprise you

By Drew Kann, Will Houp, Judson Jones, and Sean O'Key

Published April 19, 2019

The planet is barreling toward 1.5 degrees of global warming as soon as 2030 unless we enact “unprecedented changes in all aspects of society,” a dire United Nations report warned in October.

To reduce our impact on the climate and avert disaster, it’s going to take more than switching to high-efficiency light bulbs. But the most effective ways that individuals, policymakers and businesses can reduce our carbon footprint might surprise you.

Let’s see how much you know about what can be done to fight climate change.

Rank the solutions

The group Project Drawdown has ranked the most effective climate change solutions, and below, we’ve separated some of the top ones by category.

Actions are labeled to indicate whether they can be implemented by individuals, companies or policymakers.

What you can do

What industries can do

What policymakers can do

Drag the solutions below to rank the ones you think would have the biggest effect on curbing climate change.

Quiz: Climate change solutions - CNN.com - CNN.com
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Recovering conflict minerals

We throw away tonnes of phones every year as the new models emerge:

Futures Forum: Planned Obsolescence: and The Men Who Made Us Spend

This is an problem for the reputation of the likes of Apple:
Futures Forum: The increasing importance of managing 'reputation' >>> from East Devon to Volkswagen
Futures Forum: Of climate change, recycling and the right to repair >>> "being environmentally aware is crucial for the of reputation of Apple"

Especially as these gadgets contain a considerable amount of 'blood minerals':
Futures Forum: Conflict minerals in your gadgetry > the blood and sweat in phones and batteries

Apple is trying to make amends: 
Apple Releases 2018 Conflict Minerals Report, Remains 'Deeply Committed' to Responsible Sourcing - MacRumors

Including stepping up its recycling:

Materials stripped from recycled iPhones are being used in new Apple products

Daisy, Apple's recycling robot, has been hard at work

iPhones and other electronics are traditionally difficult to recycle (Photo: Apple)

Rhiannon Williams

Thursday April 18th 2019

Materials stripped from old iPhones by Apple’s recycling robot are making their way into the company’s new products for the first time.

The robot, christened Daisy, dismantles 1.2m iPhones each year in an effort to retrieve 14 valuable metals and materials, including gold, cobalt, aluminium and tin, some of which are now being reintroduced to Apple’s production lines.

Cobalt retrieved from old batteries are used to create new batteries in a range of Apple products, and salvaged tin is used in the solder on the main logic boards of 11 different devices, according to the company’s annual Environmental Responsibility report.

The inner iPhone components Daisy is capable of recycling (Photo: Apple)

Aluminium housing recovered from old Apple products retrieved from Apple’s Trade In programme has been remelted and used to make the latest MacBook Air, which went on sale at the end of last year.

Apple declared its intention to one day manufacture all future products using only recycled and renewable materials in 2017, and said it diverted more than 48,000 metric tons of electronic waste from landfill last year.

More than 7.8m Apple devices were refurbished in 2018, which would have been put up for resale on the company’s website.

iPhones and other smartphones contain precious and valuable metals, including gold, silver, aluminium, copper and tungsten, and rare earths such as terbium, yttrium, lanthanum, neodymium, gadolinium and praseodymium.

Extracting metals and other components from electronics during the recycling process is notoriously problematic, as environmentally-unfriendly chemicals and smelting methods are often used to break down electronics during extraction. 

Daisy dismantled 1.2m iPhones last year (Photo: Apple)

Daisy can recover materials traditional recyclers cannot at a higher quality, and is currently operational in the Netherlands and Texas in the US, Apple said.

For every 100,000 iPhones, Apple’s Daisy recycling robot has the potential to recover 1,500kg of aluminium, 1.1kg of gold, 6.3kg of silver, 32kg of rare earth elements, 83kg of rare metal tungsten, 1,000kg of copper, 29kg of tin, 790kg of cobalt and 1,400kg of steel.

Around 50m metric tons of electronic waste (e-waste) is predicted to have been generated throughout 2018, rising at a rate of 5 per cent per year, according to Statista.

Materials stripped from recycled iPhones are being used in new Apple products - inews.co.uk
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Recycling as a placebo

There are lots of questions around 'recycling':
Futures Forum: Incinerating plastic waste "does nothing to reduce demand for new plastic products and even less to mitigate climate change"
Futures Forum: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Rot, Recycle, RETURN
Futures Forum: "The reason we have a dearth of good quality recycled material is because we have such poor collection infrastructure."

Including here:
Sending plastic to the correct reprocessor - to EDDC - December 2018 - a Freedom of Information request to East Devon District Council - WhatDoTheyKnow
Sending plastic to the correct reprocessor - to DCC - December 2018 - a Freedom of Information request to Devon County Council - WhatDoTheyKnow

Here's some recent comment from the free-market Foundation for Economic Freedom think tank: 

America Finally Admits Recycling Doesn’t Work

It’s time to admit the recycling mania is a giant placebo.

Thursday, March 21, 2019

Jon Miltimore

A couple of years ago, after sending my five-year-old daughter off to school, she came home reciting the same cheerful environmental mantra I was taught in elementary school.

“Reduce, reuse, recycle,” she beamed, proud to show off a bit of rote learning.

The moral virtue of recycling is rarely questioned in the United States. It has been ingrained into the American psyche over several decades. On a recent trip to the Caribbean, my friend’s wife exhibited nervous guilt while collecting empty soda, water, and beer bottles destined for the trash since our resort offered no recycling bins.

“I feel terrible throwing these into garbage,” she said, wearing a pained look on her face.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that there was a good chance the bottles she was recycling back in the States were ending up just like the ones on the Caribbean island we were visiting.

Difficult Implementation

As Discover magazine pointed out a decade ago, recycling is tricky business. A 2010 Columbia University study found that just 16.5 percent of the plastic collected by the New York Department of Sanitation was “recyclable.”

“This results in nearly half of the plastics collected being landfilled,” researchers concluded.



Since that time, things have only gotten worse. Over the weekend, The New York Times ran a story detailing how hundreds of cities across the country are abandoning recycling efforts.

"Philadelphia is now burning about half of its 1.5 million residents’ recycling material in an incinerator that converts waste to energy. In Memphis, the international airport still has recycling bins around the terminals, but every collected can, bottle and newspaper is sent to a landfill. And last month, officials in the central Florida city of Deltona faced the reality that, despite their best efforts to recycle, their curbside program was not working and suspended it. Those are just three of the hundreds of towns and cities across the country that have canceled recycling programs, limited the types of material they accepted or agreed to huge price increases."

One reason for this is that China, perhaps the largest buyer of US recyclables, stopped accepting them in 2018. Other countries, such as Thailand and India, have increased imports, but not in sufficient tonnage to alleviate the mounting costs cities are facing.

“We are in a crisis moment in the recycling movement right now,” Fiona Ma, the treasurer of California, told the Times.

Cost is the key word. Like any activity or service, recycling is an economic activity. The dirty little secret is that the benefits of recycling have been dubious for some time.

“Recycling has been dysfunctional for a long time,” Mitch Hedlund, executive director of Recycle Across America, told The Times.

Has Recycling Always Been An Illusion?

How long? Perhaps from the very beginning. Nearly a quarter century ago, Lawrence Reed wrote about the growing fad of recycling, which state and local governments were pursuing—mostly through mandates, naturally—with a religious-like fervor. There were numerous problems with the approach, he observed.

"The fact is that sometimes recycling makes sense and sometimes it doesn’t. In the legislative rush to pass recycling mandates, state and local governments should pause to consider the science and the economics of every proposition. Often, bad ideas are worse than none at all and can produce lasting damage if they are enshrined in law. Simply demanding that something be recycled can be disruptive of markets and it does not guarantee that recycling that makes either economic or environmental sense will even occur."

If only lawmakers had heeded Mr. Reed’s advice, or that of John Tierney, who offered similar guidance in The Times the following year.

"Believing that there was no more room in landfills, Americans concluded that recycling was their only option. Their intentions were good and their conclusions seemed plausible. Recycling does sometimes make sense--for some materials in some places at some times. But the simplest and cheapest option is usually to bury garbage in an environmentally safe landfill. And since there's no shortage of landfill space (the crisis of 1987 was a false alarm), there's no reason to make recycling a legal or moral imperative."

That’s economics, you say. What about the environment? Well, the environmental benefits of recycling are far from clear. For starters, as Popular Mechanics noted a few years ago, the idea that we don’t have sufficient space to safely store trash is untrue.

"According to one calculation, all the garbage produced in the U.S. for the next 1000 years could fit into a landfill 100 yards deep and 35 miles across on each side--not that big (unless you happen to live in the neighborhood). Or put another way, it would take another 20 years to run through the landfills that the U.S. has already built. So the notion that we're running out of landfill space--the original impetus for the recycling boom--turns out to have been a red herring."

Recycling Efforts Backfire and Create Waste Themselves

And then there are the energy and resources that go into recycling. How much water do Americans spend annually rinsing items that end up in a landfill? How much fuel is spent deploying fleets of barges and trucks across highways and oceans, carrying tons of garbage to be processed at facilities that belch their own emissions?

The data on this front is thin, and results on the environmental effectiveness of recycling vary based on the material being recycled. Yet all of this presumes the recyclables are not being cleaned and shipped only to be buried in a landfill, like so much of it is today. This, Mises would say, is planned chaos, the inevitable result of central planners making decisions instead of consumers through free markets.

Most market economists, Reed points out, “by nature, philosophy, and experience” a bunch skeptical of centrally planned schemes that supplant choice, were wise to the dynamics of recycling from the beginning.

As engineer and author Richard Fulmer wrote in 2016,

"Recycling resources costs resources. For instance, old newsprint must be collected, transported, and processed. This requires trucks, which must be manufactured and fueled, and recycling plants, which must be constructed and powered.

All this also produces pollution – from the factories that build the trucks and from the fuel burned to power them, and from the factories that produce the components to build and construct the recycling plant and from the fuel burned to power the plant. If companies can make a profit recycling paper, then we can be confident that more resources are saved than are used. However, if recycling is mandated by law, we have no such assurance.

Again, economics is the key."

It’s time to admit the recycling mania is a giant placebo. It makes people feel good, but the idea that it improves the condition of humans or the planet is highly dubious.

It’s taken three decades, but the actions of hundreds of US cities suggest Americans are finally willing to entertain the idea that recycling is not a moral or legal imperative.

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has appeared in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Washington Times.

Reach him at jmiltimore@FEE.org.

America Finally Admits Recycling Doesn’t Work - Foundation for Economic Education




Recycling - Part 1 - YouTube
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Sidmouth Repair Café > Saturday 30th March

The last Repair Café was very well received:
Futures Forum: Sidmouth Repair Café > Saturday 23rd February

With great feedback on a busy day - and 25 satisfied folk, with such comments as:

“What was good about your visit:”

Fantastic! Friendly, helpful, fab idea.

Well done, thank you.

Very helpful, problem sorted.

Everything.  Marvellous to have this repair cafe ♥️

Excellent service and help

Very friendly volunteers and atmosphere.  Volunteer explained what they thought was the problem.

Fantastic, very good

Friendliness and efficiency.  Thank you.

Excellent and prompt service.

Yet again, school trousers repaired. Thank you.

Fabulous, much loved coat beautifully repaired.

Very satisfactory.

Just perfect.

Great. Printer fixed. Everyone very friendly 😄 

I had such a lovely morning meeting all your friendly faces! Thank you so much for all your help, wonderful community spirit! 

Great visit today - 2 pairs of trousers expertly repaired and a much loved coat - which was a challenge but now looking in perfect condition again - thank you! 

The Cafés are held at the Youth Centre on the last Saturday of every month:

Sidmouth Repair Cafe - Home | Facebook
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Sidmouth Repair Café proving popular

The Herald's monthly Residents' magazine reports on the popular Sidmouth Repair Café:  

Up-cycle and repurpose at Sidmouth Repair Café

PUBLISHED: 07:00 16 March 2019

Sidmouth repair cafe.

Sidmouth Repair Café offers a way to mend broken items.

Sidmouth Repair Cafe

There is more and more about ‘repair cafés’ in the media. The first started ten years ago in Holland as part of the movement to upcycle and repurpose – to give stuff a new life rather than throwing it away.

It’s a very simple set up. Anyone can take along anything to fix – from clothes to computers, from lamps to lawnmowers. A team of experienced ‘fixers’ help to repair whatever it is – to be taken away and reused.

The Sidmouth Repair Café had its first session last September – and it’s proving popular.

Not only can folk take along a teddy or toaster to be brought back to life, but they can sit for a chat over a cuppa. So, it’s about reducing landfill and maintaining repair skills – and working with the local community.

The Sidmouth Repair Café is held on the last Saturday of every month, at the Youth Centre on Manstone Lane.

Hope to see you on Saturday, March 30.

To read more features from East Devon Resident, click here.

Sidmouth Repair Café offers a way to mend broken items. | Sidmouth and Ottery breaking news and sport - Sidmouth Herald

And click here for more from the Sidmouth Café:

Sidmouth Repair Cafe - Home | Facebook
Sidmouth Repair Cafe | Don't let Devon go to waste
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Incinerating plastic waste "does nothing to reduce demand for new plastic products and even less to mitigate climate change"

How do we see incineration?

In Vienna, they have a state-of-the-art facility - which also looks like a piece of art:

Müllverbrennungsanlage Spittelau – Wikipedia
Spittelau | Waste incineration | Energy generation | Energy supply | About us | Wien Energie
In Vienna, energy is also art - VIENNA – Now. Forever

In the UK this method of dealing with waste is seen less favourably:
Futures Forum: Incinerating rubbish 'will increase air pollution, exacerbate climate change and threaten much-needed recycling'

National Geographic looks at the situation in the US and beyond: 

Is burning plastic waste a good idea?

Many within the trash industry think so. But incineration and other “waste-to-energy” projects may pose dangers to the environment.

BY ELIZABETH ROYTE

PUBLISHED MARCH 12, 2019

This article was created in partnership with the National Geographic Society.

WHAT IS TO be done with the swelling flood of plastic waste, if we don’t want to see it snagged in tree branches, floating in ocean gyres, or clogging the stomachs of seabirds and whales?

Plastic production is expected to double in the next 20 years, according to a report issued by the World Economic Forum. Plastic recycling rates, meanwhile, hover around 30 percent in Europe, just nine percent in the U.S., and zero or close to it in much of the developing world.

This past January, a consortium of petrochemical and consumer-goods companies called the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, including Exxon, Dow, Total, Shell, Chevron Phillips, and Procter & Gamble, committed to spending $1.5 billion over five years on the problem. Their aim is to support alternative materials and delivery systems, beef up recycling programs, and—more controversially—promote technologies that convert plastics to fuel or energy.

Sophisticated incinerators that burn plastic and other municipal waste can produce enough heat and steam to turn turbine blades and generate electricity for the local grid. The European Union, which restricts the landfilling of organic waste, already burns almost 42 percent of its waste; the U.S. burns 12.5 percent. According to the World Energy Council, a U.N. accredited network that represents a range of energy sources and technologies, the waste-to-energy sector is likely to witness steady growth in coming years, especially in the Asia Pacific region. China already has some 300 waste-to-energy plants operating, with another several hundred in the pipeline.

"As countries like China close their doors to foreign waste and an overburdened recycling industry fails to keep up with the plastic pollution crisis,” says John Hocevar of Greenpeace, “incineration will increasingly be pushed as an easy alternative.”

...

Zero-waste advocates worry that any approach to converting plastic waste into energy does nothing to reduce demand for new plastic products and even less to mitigate climate change. “To uplift these approaches is to distract from real solutions,” says Claire Arkin, a campaigner with the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives—that is, solutions that allow people to use less plastic and reuse and recycle more.

Is burning plastic waste a good idea? National Geographic
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Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Rot, Recycle, RETURN

Sarah Allen of Exmouth provides some very handy tips on living in the modern world:
Futures Forum: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Create 1 wheelie bin of rubbish per 6 months, with kids!
Futures Forum: Sarah's 7Rs > Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Rot, Recycle, Return.
Futures Forum: How to recycle in East Devon

She offers a last look at her ideas via Transition Exmouth:

SARAH'S 7Rs 

To be blunt: we all talk about it but Sarah actually does it so take some leaves out of her book. Here is the link to Sarah Allen’s blog on the subject of reducing waste:

http://www.rhubarbandrunnerbeans.co.uk/how-i-reduced-our-landfill-to-almost-nothing-well-about-13th-full-every-3-weeks-but-that-s-not-so-catchy

Here is Sarah's 7Rs take on that mnemonic: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Rot, Recycle, Return. Sarah agreed to my publishing her notes so here is her advice (her last piece for the moment sadly) on RETURN:

• Return to supermarket/company saying why.
• Find an ethical superstore
• Look at Return The Plastic FB page + Greenpeace’s recent campaign.

In conclusion she says: 'By doing all this, I end up with very little going in my bin; it might seem like a lot of effort and don’t get me wrong in some respects it is. However, I really think a lot of it is simply changing one habit to another'. 

Thanks Sarah.

Transition Exmouth
Transition Exmouth - Home | Facebook 

And here are those Return The Plastic Facebook pages:
Return the Plastic - Frome - Home | Facebook
Return The Plastic Packaging - Home | Facebook
Return the Plastic
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District Council rejects considering motions > full council meeting Wednesday 27th February

At its full council meeting today, the District Council did not be consider several motions which had been put forward for consideration:
Futures Forum: Knowle relocation project: District Council rejects motion "for the ongoing costs to be published to show confidence that this project will breakeven"
Futures Forum: District Council rejects considering motion "to recognise that Climate Change and Global Warming are the key issues of our time, to acknowledge the strong concerns of young people and for the council to commit to introducing a policy of carbon measurement and reduction"

Here's the agenda for today's meeting:
Agenda for CouncilWednesday, 27 February 2019 - Blackdown House, Border Road,Heathpark Industrial Estate

It included a list of questions from Councillors, including: 

Questions by Members to Full Council on 27 February 2019 

under Procedure Rule 9.2 

Question 1: Procedure Rule 9.2 to the Leader from Councillor Susie Bond 

Eight Notices of Motion were submitted for debate at the 27 February council meeting, all within the prescribed time scale and all with the requisite number of supporters. Five of those NoMs were rejected by the Chief Executive. What criteria was used by the Chief Executive to decide which Notices of Motion would appear on the agenda paper, and which would not? 

Answer: The Chief Executive has to ensure that all submitted motions fulfil the legal criteria for valid motions. In summary form, all motions have to be timely, relevant, accurate, legally precise and fair. The difference, for example, between an officer report and a motion is that a report can provide members with all relevant information to support a recommendation. A valid motion has to achieve a similar objective but all that information has to be clear from the ‘face of the motion’. It was the Chief Executives opinion that the 5 rejected motions did not fulfil the relevant criteria. Had the proposers of the motions discussed their suggested wording with the CEO in advance of the cutoff time limit he could have helped with the drafting. They did not do so, so unfortunately the Chief Executive was obliged to take the action he did. 

Question 2: Procedure Rule 9.2 to the Leader from Councillor Susie Bond 

In January 2017, EDDC's Strategic Planning Committee agreed that two Councillors should represent the views of East Devon Councillors at the GESP Panel. Such was the concern that only two Councillors were to be given such an onerous responsibility given that the GESP will impact each and every one of us, it was agreed at the same meeting that an Informal Reference Forum should be set up and that the make-up of this group should be politically balanced. I am not the representative of the Independent Group, but informed the responsible officer that I intended to attend the most recent meeting as an observer. I subsequently received a phone call blocking me from attending! This is the first (and only) time that I have been blocked from attending a meeting in my role as District Councillor. Does the Council Leader agree that meetings of the Independent Reference Forum should be open to all councillors who choose to attend, in the interests of openness and transparency? 

Answer: It is accepted that the GESP is matter of considerable interest. There are however 5 Councils working in partnership to try and achieve the GESP and it was agreed at a relatively early stage that as each Council would be taking the GESP through its own internal procedures (thereby ensuring all members could engage) it was not appropriate to expand the Reference Forum to each and every member that might want to attend. The Forum provides the opportunity of a non-binding politically balanced sounding board and in view of its limited role I think the rationale remains valid. 

Question 9: Procedure Rule 9.2 to the Portfolio Holder for Environment from Councillor Matt Booth 

It was good to see that the CEO recognises the issue of climate change emergency as one of “critical importance”. On 15th February, the day of the national schools’ strike, Devon County Council committed to debating a motion on ‘Climate Emergency’ which took place at a council meeting on 21st February. 

Does the Portfolio Holder agree that while it is essential to retain focus on all aspects of green living and a green economy, including the excellent work of the EDDC Environment team in particular with recycling, the pressing issue now is that of carbon reduction as recommended by UN scientists behind the inter-governmental IPCC report published in October 2018 that warned global warming will be irreversible if temperatures are not reduced to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels within 12 years, by subsequent recent reports, and by an increasing number of councils most recently Cheltenham Borough Council who two weeks ago committed to working towards being carbon neutral by 2030? 

Does he also agree that it is essential that this council should debate this issue as soon as possible, if only to agree that it should commit to taking immediate steps towards adopting a carbon reduction policy? 

Answer: As we have made clear we are looking forward to engaging with the County Council on this issue and ensuring that a comprehensive approach can be adopted by both tiers of local government in Devon. A report will be brought to Cabinet in due course so that councillors can engage in the debate 

Question 14: Procedure Rule 9.2 to the Leader from Councillor Cathy Gardner 
My proposed motion asking this Council to publish regular updates regarding costsavings from relocation was denied by the CEO. Can the Leader assure residents that fully transparent information on energy costs for Blackdown House and Exmouth Town Hall will be published on a regular basis? 

Answer: We will be bringing a report to Cabinet to inform members of the final costs of the relocation project. This report will remind members of the regular reporting that will take place as a result of our normal procedures and members can then debate what extra reporting requirements may be appropriate.

Questions by Members to Full Council on 27 February 2019

Here's a full reposting of the very handy overview from Radio Exe of the motions which were/not considered:

East Devon's full council meeting

Wednesday, February 27th, 2019 9:20am

By Daniel Clark and Anna Byles

East Devon Council's new HQ at Heathpark, Honiton.
Motions put forward NOT being discussed.

Motions to support recycling, to call for a new property ombudsman to streamline complaints against shoddy builders, and for East Devon to get its fair share of the police precept rise will be discussed at today's full council meeting.

But motions over the full relocation costs of the move from Sidmouth to Honiton, to put electric charging points in all car parks, what to prioritise in a ‘No Deal’ Brexit and on climate change will not be discussed.

Various motions that councillors had put forward for debate at East Devon District Council’s full council meeting today, were rejected by the council’s chief executive, as either the agenda already provides the opportunity for debate or the wording of the motions were inaccurate.

RELOCATION

Cllr Cathy Gardner had proposed a motion calling for the council to commit to publish an annual ‘summary of accounts’ for the relocation project until break-even is reached as relocation from Sidmouth to Honiton was proposed and predicated on the basis that the project would breakeven within 20 years and deliver cost-savings to the council tax payers of East Devon.

Cllr Gardner said: “Whilst some of this information is already available we feel it is vital for the ongoing costs to be published to show confidence that this project will breakeven. A majority of Councillors voted for relocation on the basis that money would be saved on energy bills. We are left unsure of whether breakeven will ever be proven.”

But an EDDC spokesman said: “The rejected motion contained inaccuracies and omissions that had the potential to mislead councillors and it was also premature. It is however proposed to bring a report to the next meeting of the Cabinet that will summarise the position reached with regard to the sale of the Knowle and the relocation. Cllr Gardner can raise the matters she is concerned about as part of the debate into that report.”

The motion would have called for the accounts to include
energy costs for the Knowle for the past 20 years (for comparison);
energy costs for both Blackdown House and Exmouth Town Hall per year;
the capital receipt for the sale of the Knowle;
a Red Book valuation of Blackdown House as of 1 March 2019;
the full costs for the relocation project since its inception, including: project management; removal, furnishing and equipment; staff retraining and travel expenses; new-build costs for Blackdown House; refurbishment costs for Exmouth Town Hall; and any other associated costs.”

CLIMATE CHANGE

Cllr Matthew Booth’s motion had called for the council to recognise that Climate Change and Global Warming are the key issues of our time, to acknowledge the strong concerns of young people in particular the recent walk out of school children and for the council to commit to introducing a policy of carbon measurement and reduction within all aspects of its own activity.

He said: “I personally do not care how we begin to do this, or who does it, but that we act now not wait for some planned strategy in the future.”

An EDDC spokesman said that the issue of climate change emergency is acknowledged to be of critical importance but that it would be appropriate to wait to see what Devon County Council decides. They added: “Currently, however, the County Council is considering its position and will shortly debate the matter. As we are in a two tier area it is appropriate for the District Council to assess the position taken by the upper tier authority and then respond accordingly. The public would expect us to work in partnership with the County Council rather than unilaterally.”

ELECTRIC VEHICLE CHARGING

Cllr Eleanor Rylance had submitted a motion calling for the council to plan for and implement over the next five years a full rolling renovation programme of its car parks estates to fit and bring into operation electrical charging points at every space for domestic cars, and cycle parks with charging points for all types of cycle and that there should be mandatory EV charging points for the parking spaces of every new-built house in East Devon.

She added: “This council should approach the future of electrically-powered domestic vehicles with enthusiasm and proactivity, play a positive role in helping develop the use of electrical and should make this infrastructure, that will be a necessity within the next ten years, available in advance of full electrification of domestic vehicles in 2042.

But an EDDC spokesman said: ““The agenda already provides an opportunity for this issue to be raised so this motion was inappropriate.”

BREXIT

Cllr Rylance had also submitted a motion that said in the event of a No Deal Brexit or a version of Brexit that causes significant disruption, the council should approach this event as a situation of emergency in respect of its most vulnerable residents, dedicating any available human, material and financial resources required to palliate any negative outcomes for these groups, but the motion was rejected.

Talking about all the motions, a council spokesman said: “The council agenda for February contains the most important annual decision, namely the setting of the budget and the approval of the Council Tax for the forthcoming year. The process leading to this meeting has included several meetings where members were encouraged to raise all items of future relevance so these could be assessed as part of our service planning process and for assessment as part of the budget.

“It is unfortunate that some members did not take these opportunities and have chosen instead to submit their proposed motions.

“It is also noted that the wording of the motions was not checked in advance with relevant officers who would have been able to give timely advice as to their wording.”

But motions on the police precept, protection for new home owners and supporting recycling will be discussed

POLICING

Cllr Tom Wright’s motion says: “In view of the £24 per band D property increase in policing precept, this council urges the Chief Constable to recognise the needs of East Devon when deciding how to allocate extra resources. East Devon residents are the biggest contributors to the police budget in Devon, other than Plymouth. It is only fair that we should get a fair share of the larger cake.”

NEW HOMES

Cllr Douglas Hull’s motion says: “The Government has stated that it would therefore be introducing as a priority a new property ombudsman to streamline complaints against shoddy builders. As a council that not only provides an excellent and highly regarded building control service but also has seen significant levels of new building in its district, we call on the government to fulfil its pledge to provide this much needed remedy for homeowners as a matter of the highest priority.”

RECYCLING

Cllr Peter Burrows’ motion says: “This Council continues to support the fine work done by the EDDC Recycling team in achieving the best results in Devon and to support and encourage local Organisations and voluntary groups who are involved in trying to reduce the amount of single use plastics used in their communities & beaches by making resources and expertise available, where appropriate. The order of priority should be – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. To actively help promote such activities through the Councils social media platforms.”

The full council meeting will be held at East Devon District Council’s new Honiton Heathpark HQ at 6pm today (Wednesday 27th February)

East Devon's full council meeting - Radio Exe
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Exmouth Repair Café > breaking the world record for the highest number of items mended in a single day!

Last weekend it was also Repair Café time in Exeter:
Futures Forum: Exmouth Repair Café > Saturday 23rd February

And they were aiming for a really Big Fix:
Break a world record with your broken gadgets at the Big Fix - Devon Live

Which they did:
Exeter Repair Cafe - Home | Facebook

And very nicely! Congratulations!

11:07

Exeter repair cafe sets new world record

BBC Radio Devon

The Exeter Repair Cafe has broken the world record for the highest number of items mended in a single day, organisers say.

Hundreds of people turned up to take advantage of the free service, which sees volunteers fix items including clothes, furniture, electrical appliances, bicycles, crockery, appliances and toys.

The cafe mended 263 items on Saturday - the previous record was held by a shop in Cambridge at 232 items.

Big Fix event organiser Catherine Causley said many items are "relatively easy to fix"...

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