Category Archives: LOCAL ECONOMIES
Event: In partnership with Wyre Community Land Trust and Globally Local
PROGRAMME:
Initial morning session in The Studio at Uncllys farm:
- historic background to the Ruskin connection;
- late morning and afternoon sessions visiting orchards; meadows; woodland management; bee keeping etc.
- opportunities over lunch and throughout afternoon to converse with fellow participants.
This will be one item in the proposed “Wyre Forest Green Alliance” Festival planned for the first two weeks in May. There will be opportunity to meet with members of Transition Bewdley/Transition Kidderminster/ Plastics Free Bewdley/U3a Environmental Concern Group and various other members of The Green Alliance.
LUNCH PROVIDED.
You will be given the address when you have booked. Lift share available – please email us if you are able to offer a lift or would like a lift.
CONTACTS (email addresses need to be copied and pasted, problems with active links)
Phil Beardmore: philip.beardmore@gmail.com
Malcolm Currie: info@globallylocal.net
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WMNEG has written urging the BCC to review its food waste policy
Members of West Midlands New Economics Group (WMNEG) note the recent announcement that an independent review of the city’s waste service will be ‘commissioned by the council as part of the joint commitment to providing the best standard of service possible for Birmingham’s citizens, businesses and visitors’.
In light of the government’s new Resources and Waste Strategy, published December 2018, and updated in July 2019, WMNEG members strongly urge BCC to take this opportunity to review its policy on food waste (currently 48% of Birmingham’s waste stream, according to your own figures).
One of the consultants used in Birmingham City Council’s research for its waste strategy paper 2017-2040 (Ricardo, Best Practice in Waste Prevention, Reuse, Recycling and Recovery, 2016) refers briefly to Oxford County Council’s [sic – actually South Oxfordshire’s] weekly collection of food waste which, via anaerobic digestion, is turned into energy and fertiliser – but you seem to have rejected this example of good practice (presented to the people of South Oxfordshire in admirably simple terms: see Appendix).
WMNEG would like to draw BCC’s attention to another example of good practice, a city of over three-quarters of a million people whose diversity matches that of Birmingham – San Francisco. Here the city authorities have engaged in an enthusiastic and successful programme of education about food waste collection, particularly in hotels and restaurants (with financial incentives part of the deal), but also in residential apartment blocks (considered problematic by many urban authorities). San Francisco’s composting facility is located 70 miles from the city – away from populated areas to avoid odour problems, and close to farms that purchase and use the compost to grow fruit, vegetables and grapes for wine – much of which produce is consumed in San Francisco. A circular economy indeed! (Sources: The Zero Waste Solution (Connett); San Francisco’s own website)
With climate change and reductions in the city’s carbon dioxide emissions also high on BCC’s agenda, note that, according to Connett, ‘agronomists say if every city replicated San Francisco’s urban compost collection programme [i.e. food waste and garden waste], we could offset more than 20% of the nation’s carbon emissions.’
Former Cabinet Member with this portfolio, Lisa Trickett, wrote in her blog (27 September 2017) of the need to decrease food waste rather than collect and recycle it, but surely in the real world both approaches are needed simultaneously?
WMNEG would urge BCC to take another look at food waste as a resource, in line with the principle adopted in your own strategy of recognising that ‘waste’ is in fact potentially a valuable resource, and that the ‘circular economy’ is the economy of the future.
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Appendix: South Oxfordshire District Council’s information for householders (from their website)
Your food is collected every week. Use your small kitchen bin to collect your food scraps each day and then transfer them into the large food recycling bin which we’ll empty each week.
What can I put in my food recycling bin?
- All your raw and cooked food waste such as leftovers and spoilt food, and including:
- meat and fish – raw and cooked including bones
- all dairy products such as cheese and eggs
- raw and cooked vegetables and fruit
- bread, cakes and pastries
- rice, pasta and beans
- uneaten food from your plates and dishes
- tea bags and coffee grounds
- cooking oil, lard and fats (can be placed in a plastic bottle inside the caddy)
- old cut flowers
NEW! We can now collect cooking oil placed in a plastic bottle (no bigger than 1 litre) from inside your food waste caddy…’
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CREDEX, a community currency, is being launched in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter
Malcolm Currie, a member of the West Midlands New Economics Group, has drawn attention to the Birmingham chapter of Green Drinks, which started in 1990, is active in over 500 cities worldwide, listed here and is fundamentally about face to face interaction.
On Tuesday 17th September, a Green Drinks session focussed on CREDEX, a community currency being launched in the Jewellery Quarter, at the LOCANTA RESTAURANT, 31 LUDGATE HILL, ST PAUL’S SQUARE. B3 1EH. The usual arrangements for Green Drinks applied and readers may see further information, on its website, by looking up the name of their nearest town.
The session featured Stuart Bowles’ introduction to CREDEX, an alternative/community currency.
The origin of this credit based system is the SARDEX currency of Sardinia. Turnover of this B2B system, amongst Sardinian SMEs, was €81million in 2017. Read more here.
The system has been adopted by eleven of mainland Italy’s regions, each region establishing its own local variant. This is a genuine “bootstrap” currency, which promotes the local, encourages innovation, supports moves toward sustainability. See the CBS article here.
It is a wholly credit based system; requires no capital or national currency loans to start trading; bears no interest; has no dependency on external funding.
Those attending learnt how this currency will operate in the Jewellery Quarter and how to get involved in developing it further.
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CONTACT: Malcolm Currie, Globally Local, info@globallylocal.net
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Local Futures: one week until we converge in Bristol!
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Join us in Bristol on October 20th for our 18th Conference
Moderated by writer and broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby.
Other events 19th-21st
Details here
Readers new to this organisation please note two of its sterling projects:
Planet Local – a web series showcasing diverse examples of localization in action in such areas as community renewable energy, local food and farming, local economy, eco-villages, alternative education, radical democracy, the local commons, and more.
The International Alliance for Localisation (IAL) was originally conceived as a way to formalise and expand this informal network of groups and individuals who are working on issues that fall under the broad umbrella of this global-to-local shift network. The hope is that the IAL will help to catalyse a powerful global movement for localisation. The general public and even most local groups themselves are often unaware that they are, in fact, part of a rapidly growing worldwide localisation movement. We believe that linking together these groups that are currently operating in isolation can greatly strengthen them all.
People and groups from 58 different countries have joined the International Alliance.
A few IAL members
At the conference, we will address one of the most pressing questions of our time:
How do we move forward to create healthy and inclusive economic models that work for people and planet?
Local finance, ethical banking, local business alliances, local food strategies, big picture activism, national and international networks for a new economy, connecting with nature, building community, empowering youth, direct democracy and inclusion…this is just a taste of the topics we will cover.
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Illustrated coverage here: Another World is Possible
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Prevent another economic meltdown with a European Green New Deal
Social Europe is a digital media publisher which examines issues in politics, economy and employment & labour and is committed to publishing cutting-edge thinking and new ideas from the most thought-provoking people. It recently published this paper by Colin Hines (left), Convenor of the Green New Deal Group, former Co-ordinator of Greenpeace International’s Economics Unit and author of several books, including Localization: A Global Manifesto (Earthscan).
Extracts
In the acres of recent coverage about the causes of the Lehman Brothers collapse and how to ensure it doesn’t happen again, there was much emphasis on changing the EU’s economic imperatives away from austerity policies that contributed to Brexit, the rise of the extreme right, increasing opposition to immigration and sluggish economic activity, particularly in the Eurozone. What was absent was detailed discussion of what needs to be done on the ground.
In a Green New Deal group report ‘Europe’s Choice – How Green QE and Fairer Taxes Can Replace Austerity’ we proposed a comprehensive plan for a continent-wide sustainable infrastructure project to generate ‘jobs in every community’.
In answer to the usual question of how this will be paid for we proposed that such funding would come from a new round of Quantitative Easing (QE), but, this time, the e-currency would take the form of ‘Green Infrastructure QE’ to fund vital, labour intensive economic activity. In the medium term, substantial funding could come from a more effective and fairer increase in the tax collected in Europe from wealthy individuals and companies.
It has been estimated that tax evasion (illegal non-payment or under-payment of taxes) in the EU is approximately €860 billion a year. Tax avoidance (seeking to minimise a tax bill without deliberate deception), which is the other key component of the tax gap in Europe, is harder to assess, but an estimate might be €150 billion a year. In combination, it is therefore likely that tax evasion and tax avoidance might cost the governments of the member states €1 trillion a year.
The form such a programme would take in the UK was detailed in our recent publication Jobs in Every Constituency: A Green New Deal Election Manifesto.
It consists of a nation-wide, carbon emissions reducing infrastructure programme focusing on:
- Making the UK’s 30m buildings super-energy-efficient to dramatically reduce energy bills, fuel poverty and greenhouse gas emissions;
- Accelerating the shift to renewable electricity supplies and storage, given the dramatic drop in their price worldwide and increased availability;
- Tackling the housing crisis by building affordable, highly insulated new homes, predominantly on brownfield sites;
- Transport policy that concentrates on rebuilding local public transport links;
- Properly maintaining the UK’s road and rail system;
- Encouraging electric vehicles for business and personal use and sharing.
This is labour intensive, takes place in every locality and consists of work that is difficult to automate. It also contributes to improving social cohesion and environmental sustainability.
A Manifesto for Jobs in Every Constituency
This massive work programme in energy and transport would tackle many existing problems in our society. It would provide a secure career structure for decades. This would require a significant number of apprenticeships and the range of long-term jobs would provide increased opportunities for the self-employed and local small businesses. This growth in local economic activity would in turn create other jobs to service this increased spending.
The government should commit to a detailed programme explaining how to generate jobs in every constituency, using for example the energy and transport proposals in the Green New Deal. This would require extensive consultation with local government, businesses and communities to establish what such a programme should look like on the ground.
The government should commit to a massive training programme resulting in a huge range of skills to provide the ‘carbon army’ required to bring about a low-carbon future. A carbon finance sector would also be needed to publicise, advice and put into practice the range of large funding packages necessary.
The government must then explain how this approach would both mitigate the effects of any future global economic downturn and help compensate for the expected trends in automation. It must also make clear that a key advantage to such an approach would be to help meet the UK’s obligations under the Paris Agreement to curb carbon emissions.
Time for a Europe-wide Green New Deal: There is much handwringing by the greens, the left and centre parties about how to stop the rise of the right across the continent. A huge contribution would be for all these parties to adopt such a manifesto for jobs in every community, since it would return a sense of hope for the future, provide economic security for all, whilst fully protecting the environment.
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For a summary of the GND spending proposals in this article, go to https://www.socialeurope.eu/prevent-another-economic-meltdown-with-a-european-green-new-deal.
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PLANET CENTRED FORUM Bulletin Nº 12 Update 1: August 2018
Greetings again from our Planet Centred Forum network to our supporters and allies, plus also to members of kindred and linked groups.
We have noted before the dilemma that most of us face with conflicting calls on our time and energy from our various affiliations. For this reason we welcome news of other initiatives without generally expecting active responses.
However, we do caution against reaction politics. Especially getting drawn into current political issues within human affairs while taking our eye off the ball of the ongoing damage to our living planet from total human impact, whether due to population, consumption, destructive technologies, skewed values or other factors.
Doing it Locally
PCF has consistently drawn attention to the dangers of a globalisation driven by the Neoliberal agenda of endless growth (and hence profits). Cautionary voices have long been warning us: to name but one The Growth Illusion by Richard Douthwaite (1992).
As noted in Bulletin 12, intelligent localism has the potential to reclaim at least some power back from the Neoliberal hegemony. Part of the antidote can be confident thriving local communities and economies able to ‘short circuit’ long distance politics and trade. In the book of that name Richard Douthwaite (1996) outlined some of the economic strategies that might assist, while Localisation: A Global Manifesto by Colin Hines (2000) is also in our resource library.
Yet the challenges to ‘doing it locally’ are only too real. One is the individualist ethos of modern society making it difficult to establish strong community bonds. Equally serious is the money trap: our ‘need’ to maximise our incomes now skews both our social and ‘green’ choices. Only growing trust in strong local support networks will give us confidence to get beyond our bottom line anxieties.
Despite this, local initiatives are happening and we have reported on some of them in these bulletins. Many readers will know of others. The list includes housing co-operatives, co-housing schemes, community land trusts, worker co-ops, garden and allotment sharing, growing and food distribution co-operatives, LETS schemes, local currencies, time banks, credit unions, bread funds (pooled by and for self-employed workers), partial income sharing, maker spaces, transition town initiatives, local issue campaigns, shadowing elected councillors, citizen’s councils…
Read on here.
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SUSTAINABLE HOUSING FOR SMALL HEATH & Green New Deal endnote
Alan Clawley believed that maintenance and improvement of the built environment is the starting point for urban regeneration and localisation. In 2002 WMNEG was awarded a grant by the West Midlands Social Economy Partnership to do an action research study. Study visits were made and a report was published in 2004 for distribution to policy-makers, practitioners and academics.
The study, “Sustainable Housing in Small Heath” (2004), is the illustrated story of the year-long study into the application of renewable energy in an inner-city neighbourhood. In section seven of his report on Small Heath he set out his thoughts on this.
The large scale urban renewal schemes of the 80s was seen by government as the only an alternative to massive clearance, redevelopment with municipal housing and building huge new council estates on the edge of the city or further afield in new or expanded towns. The Conservative government with Michael Heseltine, its leading minister, was enthusiastic about it at the time.
The New Labour government has moved even further down this path. Few council houses have been built and within a few years there may be no council owned housing at all. The job of managing and building social housing has been passed to the voluntary housing movement.
Whoever is responsible for “social housing” in Small Heath it is inconceivable that they will try to return to the days of mass clearance and redevelopment. They will have enough on their plate dealing with the legacy of the former council housing built since the war without worrying about poor owner-occupiers. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that some form of public intervention will be needed in the next decade to ensure the future of its people and their houses.
THE MEANS
We have the technology for sustainable housing now. For the last twenty years the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales has been trying out new ideas for ecological housing. Their website describes the technologies which are available now, publications, consultancies and training courses. The basic tools in the sustainability tool box include photo-voltaic roof tiles, solar heaters, super-insulation, rainwater collection, and reed beds. There are many more yet to come.
Fitting all 8,500 houses in Small Heath with a solar water heater would be a start. A more detailed technical and financial feasibility study needs to be done to get an idea of the total costs involved over many years and suggest means by which it could be financed. There are now many ecological consultants and green architectural practices capable of doing this.
There are no solar panels in areas like Small Heath: the application of this technology to Small Heath is the next step. If a big impact is to be made then it is in areas such as Small Heath that progress must be made. This will not happen on its own, nor can it be left to the manufacturers of green building products to sell them to the residents of Small Heath. Government must take the first step to make sustainable housing affordable and available to people on the lowest incomes. This will certainly require a new Act of Parliament, along the lines of the Housing Act 1974. A private members bill will not be adequate.
The practical approach would be like that used by Urban Renewal in the 80s as described earlier. This will mean organising work at the individual, street and neighbourhood levels:
- A local project team should be set up for Small Heath with staff skilled in sustainable housing.
- An open competition for providing the service could be held for which suitable agencies, such as housing associations, surveyors, architects, community development trusts, voluntary organisations, and even departments of the City Council are invited to bid.
- Small factories and workshops should be set up at the start to make, install and maintain the components needed.
- Local people would be employed and trained to run the businesses and do the work.
No time limit should be put on the programme. The process of converting old houses into sustainable houses should be seen as a continuous process of renewal that needs long term support, not bursts of funding.
ENDNOTE: 2018
Colin Hines, convenor of the Green New Deal Group, has advocated such ‘retrofitting’ measures nation-wide. In the Guardian last week he adds:
“A climate-friendly infrastructure programme would make the UK’s 30m buildings super-energy efficient, dramatically reduce energy bills, fuel poverty and greenhouse gas emissions. Building affordable, highly insulated new homes, predominantly on brown field sites, would involve a large number of apprenticeships and professional jobs, as well as opportunities for the self-employed and local small businesses. This can be paid for by “people’s quantitative easing”, from fairer taxes, local authority bonds and green ISAs”.
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New Economics: a local alternative to Uber
Transport for London has decided not to give Uber a new license, though its application (Uber requires drivers and users to have a smartphone) will still be operational in London while Uber appeals against the decision. Problems have arisen partly due to the company’s policy of not finding out whether the prospective driver has a criminal record.
An Uber executive from the scandal-prone company is said to have advocated hiring investigators to “dig up dirt” on journalists who criticize them. A commissioner in Virginia who opposed Uber was flooded with emails and calls after the company distributed his personal contact information to its users in the state.
Uber has been banned from or – due to legal restrictions – has voluntarily pulled out of Alaska, Oregon (except Portland), Vancouver, Bulgaria, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, German, London, the Northern Territory in Australia, Japan, and Taiwan.
The New Economics Foundation has called for a mutually-owned, publicly-regulated alternative to Uber, providing better working conditions for drivers and higher safety standards for passengers.
Stefan Baskerville (NEF: Unions and Business) said: “Digital platforms are here to stay and technology cannot be reversed. The question now is how they should be controlled and by whom, as well as the standards they set and how they treat people. It is time to develop alternative models which put people back in control”.
As NEF points out, drivers in different parts of the UK are developing their own platforms
In 2015 Cab:app was co-founded by London taxi driver Peter Schive, who said: ‘Cab:app draws on the heritage and expertise of the black cab industry and translates it for the digital world.
Other early examples included the Bristol Taxi App – abbreviated to Braxi – which will only employ drivers licensed by Bristol City Council. Farouq Hussain, ‘one of the brains behind the app’, described it as being “just like Uber, only local”, with no surcharge and 25% pay cut. He added: “Our app takes the best of Uber and makes it local”.
The most recent: in June Anlaby-based 966 Taxis in Hull designed and launched its Uber-style app which they believe could transform the service. Alice Martin (NEF: Lead for Work) said: “TFL’s move will send ripples across the country where there has been a recent surge in private hire licenses given out to support Uber’s growth, particularly in the Midlands, Yorkshire and the North West” adding:
“We’ve been working with drivers in different parts of the UK who are developing their own platforms. The time has come for the Mayor to back a better alternative to Uber and lead the way for other local authorities to do the same”.
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COMMENT
Jeremy Heighway writes:
Years ago (but still after the dawn of apps) I thought about putting some effort into an app that would be more closely related to hitch-hiking than getting a taxi.
Basically, new trips by car should not be generated (aside for slight detours), and drivers would only be sharing the costs of trips they would have made anyway – and not making an actual profit.
I hope that a new platform manages to get the idea across that socially and ecologically sound mobility is not via job and journey creation using cars, but more efficient vehicle use.
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Addressing a question posed at the recent Planet Centred Forum seminar
Could you give us some guidelines about how you would change the present economic system to a new and greener economy, so that the current (political) parties have something to work on? They will need this if they are going to move from a market economy.
Good guidelines/practical strategies for moving towards a green, balanced economy were given on this website recently and last week the concept of a circular economy was summarised on Localise West Midlands’ website.
A regenerative ‘Circular Economy’ includes more localisation of economic activity and would replace and address the social and environmental damage done by the current ‘Linear Economy’ with its ‘take, make, dispose’ model, depleting finite reserves to create products that end up in landfill or in incinerators. It achieves its objectives through long-lasting design, maintenance, repair, reuse, remanufacturing, refurbishing, and recycling – reducing waste to zero. Some examples of such practice are presented on the website of the World Economic Forum.
20th century
The idea of circular material flows as a model for the economy was presented in 1966 by an economist, Professor Kenneth Boulding, in his paper The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth. In the 70s, Walter R. Stahel, architect, economist and a founding father of industrial sustainability, worked on developing a “closed loop” approach to production processes. He co-founded the Product-Life Institute in Geneva; its main goals are product-life extension, long-life goods, reconditioning activities, waste prevention, advocating “more localisation of economic activity”.
21st century
‘Resource’, the first large scale event for the circular economy was held In March 2014 and Walter Stahel joined the programme of 100 business leaders and experts. Many major stakeholders and visitors from across the globe attended. An annual large scale event is now increasing the uptake of circular economy principles.
The Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) a charity, which receives funding from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Northern Ireland Executive, Zero Waste Scotland, the Welsh Government and the European Union was set up in 2000. From its headquarters in Banbury it works with businesses, individuals and communities to achieve a circular economy through helping them to reduce waste, develop sustainable products and use resources in an efficient way. (Above: the header for its March report)
On 17 December 2012, the European Commission published a document entitled Manifesto for a Resource Efficient Europe. This manifesto clearly stated that “In a world with growing pressures on resources and the environment, the EU has no choice but to go for the transition to a resource-efficient and ultimately regenerative circular economy” and outlined potential pathways to a circular economy, in innovation and investment, regulation, tackling harmful subsidies, increasing opportunities for new business models, and setting clear targets”.
Peter Day explored the work of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and its associates on radio (In Business) on 23rd April 2015 – listen again here.
Ellen (right) established this independent charity in 2010 and eloquently outlines the economic opportunity of a circular economy, giving the concept wide exposure and appeal.
Any comment?
Marc Stears, New Economics Foundation – an extract
Marc Stears: webmaster@neweconomics.org writes:
We are six weeks away from a general election. Politicians always say elections are important. But this time, their usual talk of “the most important vote for a generation” is absolutely right.
This election is about power, and about Brexit. It’s about the right to shape Britain’s relationship with the EU and the rest of the world.
But it is also about the right to try to shape our country’s future at home. Because the way Britain works right now is simply not accepted by millions of people.
People yearn to gain some purchase on the places where they live, and the forces which shape their lives. People want control over what matters to them – their work, their homes and families.
At the New Economics Foundation, we are fighting for real control. That means:
* Building power in our workplaces, where new technology is combining with the old power of capital.
* Real choice over where we get to live, in the face of a vicious housing market which continues to deny so many of us a decent, affordable home.
* Revitalised local communities, which are so often overlooked by top-down efforts at regeneration.
* Fair access to essential services like energy, rather than allowing six giant companies to dictate terms to everyone.
* A reformed financial system, so that banks can start to serve the public interest and not just their own.
West Midlands New Economics blog 