St Bees Parish Council’s Climate Change Working Group was formed in 2023. The working group comprises parish councillors, representatives from St Bees Eco Church, St Bees Green Future and the village schools, and individuals with an interest in environmental issues.
The Climate Change Working Group has been using the Parish Council Climate Change Toolkit as a guide for possible projects to consider. As part of this, the Climate Change Working Group has developed a questionnaire to identify which environmental projects residents would like to see a priority. This will help to determine which projects the working group will try to take forward.
Trees were planted at Adams Recreation Ground by St Bees Parish Council as part of “Plant a tree in ‘73”. Further trees have been planted at Adams Rec since then and last year saw two rounds of tree planting at the rec by the community.
In April 2023, around 200 native saplings were planted at Adams Rec as part of the Cumbria Coastal Community Forest project. The project’s aims include connecting communities to nature, increasing biodiversity and reducing the effects of climate change via carbon capture. Local volunteers and children from Little Learners Nursery’s Beach School helped to plant these trees.
Cumbria Coastal Community Forest tree planting
In November 2023 St Bees School received over 400 saplings from the Woodland Trust. Students from Year 7 to 9 helped to plant these saplings at the rec. Trees planted included birch, hazel, oak, holly, hawthorn, blackthorn, wild cherry rowan and crab apple.
Woodland Trust tree planting
Thank you for everyone’s help with tree planting at Adams Rec in 2023!
Great Big Green Week celebrates community action to tackle climate change and protect nature.
In 2022 St Bees Green Future held a community craft event, reusing fabric scraps and embellishments to create a banner, bunting and green hearts – the symbol for caring about climate change. There was also a discussion café focused on food and climate change.
This year Great Big Green Week runs from 10th to 18th June and several organisations from St Bees are hosting events.
Saturday 10th June (10.30am – 12.30pm) – The Community Garden (next to the vicarage) is open to visitors and volunteers.
Sunday 11th June (10.30am) – St Bees Priory celebration of summer service will feature a talk on going green.
Sunday 11th June (2.30 – 3.30pm) – Priory Paddock – guided tour of wildflowers.
Friday 16th June (6.30 – 7.30pm) – Beach Clean, meeting at St Bees Lifeboat Station. Organised by St Bees Parish Council.
Saturday 17th June (10.30am – 12.30pm) – The Community Garden is open to visitors and volunteers.
Saturday 17th June (6.30 – 8pm) – Great Big Green Family Quiz in the Village Hall on Finkle Street. There is a prize for the winning team and a raffle. The bar will be open for refreshments. Entry to the quiz is free, but donations to St Bees Green Future are welcome.
We have recycling bins or boxes for plastic, cans, glass, card and paper at the kerbside, and recycling crates for the same materials at the seafront car park. There are also recycling points for batteries, pens and medicine blister packs at St Bees Post Office, dental items outside 61 Main Street and snack packaging at the beach café; there is even a collection tub for soft plastics at the back of St Bees Priory. So, plenty of opportunities for recycling!
While it’s far better to recycle waste items than send them to landfill or for incineration, recycling still uses a lot of energy, so it’s a last resort and should be limited to items that can no longer be used. For items that you no longer want or need, reuse by someone else is the best option. And by reusing preloved items, this reduces our reliance on new products. The extraction of raw materials, manufacture of items and transport at each stage uses energy and, as a result, produces greenhouse gases. So, choosing preloved items can help reduce your carbon footprint. You also preserve resources, such as water, and save on packaging by choosing preloved goods. And if you’re looking to reduce your consumption further, repairing items can extend the life of your clothes, toys, electrical and household goods.
We informally pass items on to friends and you will often see items outside people’s houses in St Bees that are “free to a good home.” You can list items on St Bees Parish Buy and Sell or St Bees Parish Share Swap and Give Away groups on Facebook, but these groups are a good place to find preloved items and advertise for items wanted too.
If you have books to pass on or are looking for some new titles to read, there is the Little Free Library outside 61 Main Street. You can also browse the book shelves in the baptistry at St Bees Priory and the beach café, where you can leave a donation for any books that you take. St Bees School also holds an annual book swap for charity.
While clothes can be recycled via the collection points at the beach and station car parks, there is a Recycle With Michael clothing bank at St Bees Village Primary School, which raises money for the Salvation Army and the primary school. St Bees Green Future also runs a quarterly clothes swap. If you have clothes and accessories that are still in good condition, bring them along to the start of a clothes swap – look out for details of the next one! Once hung up and everyone has had chance to browse, you can then take as many items as you would like to. Preloved uniform is also available via St Bees Village Primary School.
Children grow quickly and develop new interests, so the preloved sales for children’s items that have restarted in the village are a great place to pick up clothes, toys, games and books for your children. These are now run jointly by St Bees Green Future and St Bees VSA, helping to raise money for St Bees Village Primary School.
That’s just what we are doing in St Bees at the moment. If you can’t find the preloved items that you’re looking for here, why not try Egremont Car Boot Fair, West Lakes Freecycle group, one of the local charity shops or the various buy swap and sell groups around West Cumbria?
You wouldn’t have thought so many people had pens to recycle, but they did. The same was true for dental items, snack wrappers and medicine blister packs.
The idea for a sustainability group in St Bees came from the interest in using the recycling points for these harder to recycle plastics around the village. If people were keen to recycle items that would otherwise be binned, what else could we do as a community towards reducing waste and our carbon footprint?
St Bees Green Future began in July 2021 as a Facebook group; a place to share ideas for how we can live sustainably and encourage other people to do the same. Although we have held several online meetings via Zoom since then, the St Bees Green Future Facebook group is still active and that’s where most agenda items start as ideas.
Sustainable Choices – Reduce Reuse Recycle
The group decided to focus its initial efforts on reducing consumption of new goods by organising swap events, where people can bring their preloved items along to swap for something else. There was most interest in organising clothes swaps, so that is where we started. We held our first clothes swap in May 2022 at Adams Recreation Ground and since then we have run quarterly clothes swaps there.
There was also interest among members of St Bees Green Future to set up a repair café, where broken items, from clothing and furniture to bikes and tools, could be brought along to be fixed by volunteers. Although a small number of volunteers with repair skills from the parish were interested in getting involved, we started to make enquiries about running a repair café in Egremont. However, as the Revive programme at Mirehouse will include a repair café, we are waiting to hear further information before taking this project any further.
We have since held a preloved toy and book stall at the 2022 Bees Bash and a further two preloved events for children’s items at St Bees Village School. Our most recent preloved children’s event was run jointly with St Bees Village School Association and the two groups plan to organise further preloved events to raise money for St Bees Village School.
Planting for Pollinators
Cumbria Wildlife Trust and Cumbria County Council have worked to reverse pollinator decline across north and west Cumbria by creating, improving and connecting pollinator-friendly habitats. This provides food, shelter and nesting spots for bees, butterflies and other pollinating insects.
As part of this Planting for Pollinators project, St Bees Green Future received 100 packets of local wildflower seeds and information booklets about pollinator-friendly gardening to distribute. The wildflower seeds were given to residents that expressed an interest, and the remainder will go to families via St Bees Village School and the local Beaver group.
Great Big Green Week
In 2022 St Bees Green Future ran a community craft event during Great Big Green Week – a UK-wide celebration of community action to tackle climate change. We used fabric scraps and leftover craft items to create bunting and a welcome sign for use at events. There was also a craft station to decorate a green heart – the symbol for caring about climate change. The highlight for children was using a sewing machine to stitch the bunting fabric!
We are currently organising events for this year’s Great Big Green Week, which runs 10th to 18th June. Look out for details!
Working Together
St Bees Green Future also has representation on St Bees Parish Council’s Climate Change Working Group. As part of this group, we are working with parish councillors and other community members to explore how as a community we can take further steps to act on climate change.
Keep up to date with the activities of St Bees Green Future via our email newsletter – contact stbeesgreenfuture@gmail.com to subscribe.
Find out about the steps our community is already taking towards a more sustainable future and be inspired to get involved.
St Bees Green Future, St Bees Parish Council, Adams Recreation Ground, the Community Garden, Eco Church and the schools are already taking action to protect the environment and reduce our carbon footprint.
Reduce reuse recycle
While we have recycling collection points in St Bees for various items of waste, recycling is always a last resort. So, for items still with lots of life left in them, we reuse what we can. We have Facebook groups for the parish to buy and sell or share, swap and give away items. St Bees Green Future organise swap events and preloved sales, and there is also a Little Free Library in St Bees. These opportunities allow us to pass on and use preloved goods. And by doing so, we reduce our reliance on new items.
Food growing
St Bees Parish Council provide allotments for residents. The Community Garden (next to St Bees Priory) produces fruit and vegetables, with produce available to residents and visitors. St Bees Village Primary School is also developing a vegetable plot and orchard, which the children and their families will benefit from.
Transport
St Bees Parish Council proposed a near-level traffic-free cycle track along the valley between St Bees and Mirehouse, which is now part of the Whitehaven Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan. Commuters, leisure cyclists and walkers alike would benefit from this route.
St Bees Parish Council has also proposed a Travel Hub at St Bees Train Station. The extension of the station car park would help encourage rail travel by commuters. The plan also includes charging points for electric vehicles and e-bikes, as well as improved cycle parking.
Energy
Community energy includes collective action to install renewable energy systems for the benefit of the community, as well as tackling fuel poverty and reducing energy use. Community energy is one of the topics that St Bees Parish Council’s Climate Change Working Group will explore.
Rewilding
As well as Priory Paddock, a wildflower and conservation site, rewilding projects are also underway along the verge on Beach Road, at Adams Recreation Ground, in the Community Garden and in the grounds of St Bees Village Primary School.
Tree planting
St Bees Parish Council plants trees in the parish. The schools and Adams Recreation Ground also undertake tree planting in their grounds.
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Sustainable St Bees 