May 2025

Our April meeting was held on 29 April 2025 in the Oaks Room, Memorial Hall in Upper Bucklebury.

Plastic Free Thatcham and Newbury

Nikki Coome (accompanied by Jenny and Eloise) gave an extremely interesting and informative talk about the issues we have with plastic usage and how Bucklebury, as a community, could become part of the Plastic Free Communities movement (a sub group of Surfers Against Sewage)

Some startling statistics included the following:

• In the UK, 11 billion pieces of takeaway food packaging are bought each year and we use 340 million single-use bags a year
• 240,000 pieces of micro plastic can be found in 1 litre of bottled water
• It's thought there's up to 200 million tonnes of plastic in the oceans
• Plastic enters the foodchain.  We eat a credit card's worth of plastic a week
• Plastic never dissappears.  It breaks down into micro and nano plastics.  It pollutes the air, land, and water and have been found in human blood and the brain.

To help reduce single use plastics, Plastic Free Communities, encourage businesses and community groups to reduce their use of plastics so that individuals have the decision taken away at source.  There is also an action plan for individuals.

With a population of 2,116, Bucklebury would need to get 2 businesses and 5 Community Allies to sign up to a pledge to reduce their use of plastics.  They would then aim to achieve  Bronze, Silver and then Gold accreditation depending on the amount of plastic they can reduce from their businesses/organisations.   Community Allies include schools, churches, guides, brownies, tennis club, horticultural society, village halls etc, etc.

We would need one person to sign up as the lead for the project but it shouldn’t be too demanding as we would, hopefully, become part of the Thatcham steering group (awaiting decision)  The scheme is also extremely well structured with all the information and guidance easily available.

We need to get a sub committee organised for this project and they would be involved in signing up businesses and community allies and helping them to assess how they could reduce their plastics.  Businesses and Community Allies can achieve status retrospectively so that if they have already eliminated plastic this would count towards their various goals. 

If we decide to join the Plastic Free movement we would need to organise 2 events a year that promote the project but these can be part of an existing event such as the Beerfest or Horticultural show. 

Detailed info available at https://www.sas.org.uk/plastic-pollution/plastic-free-communities/

Plastic Free Thatcham also have a reusable party box that can be hired out for event.  It includes high quality plastic cups and plates with the aim of .  They also have 120 high quality reusable cups that can also be hired for events.

UPDATES:

Gardening for Wildlife:

A huge thank you to everyone involved in pulling this together.  Bucklebury Farm Park paid for the project and Marston Farmgirl donated a large amount of additional seeds for distribution.  A team of volunteers filled 2,000 seed packets with the wildflower seeds (bought in bulk) and these have now been distributed, along with the leaflet, to most households in the parish.  Additional seeds are now available from Peaches Stores and L Interiors.  The Farm Park have taken 1,200 leaflets and seed packets for distribution to visitors and they have also been given to Bucklebury Primary School and were available at the recent Bucklebury Horticultural Society show. 

Nina pointed out that seeds can also be sown in the autumn.

Repair Café: 

We are still aiming to organise this for later in the summer.  Graham has contacted the Thatcham and Newbury Repair Café to ask if a group of us can visit to see how the event is organised.  Various people at the meeting have been to one of the repair cafes and they can be very busy so we will need a large number of volunteers to help from repairers to runners and people to run the café.

Since the meeting, Graham has confirmed that 4 people can visit the Thatcham Repair Café on Sunday 29^th June.

A whattapp group needs to be created so that communication can take place around this

We also need to promote the use of the Repair Café and it was suggested that perhaps Chris Read could contact Voila about having information/dates at their recycling sites so that people can think twice about leaving items there.

Orchard:   

The community orchard project has been costed and Graham Loader is to make grant applications to pay for it as soon as they are open.  The project is dependant on the support from the community for it to be planted.  The orchard project will require a number of volunteers to help with the ongoing maintenance.

AOB:

Eco Churches will be holding a survey of the plants in St Mary’s Churchyard on 14^th June

It was pointed out that the rubbish collected twice a year at the Common Clearing events is not separated for recycling and that perhaps this should be considered.

It was also noted that on these days, a very large number of dog poo bags are found thrown onto the common.  It was suggested that the parish might adopt the ‘stick and flick’ approach.  However it has since been discovered that it’s use is in decline due to nutrient enrichment in sensitive habitats and also the possible transmission of disease.

Date of next meeting – Tuesday 17 June 2025.