
Learn about garden birds (and take part in the Big Garden Bird Watch) – 25th January
Join our free online talk to learn about garden birds, hear more about their interesting lives and loves & how you can support them.
Join our free online talk to learn about garden birds, hear more about their interesting lives and loves & how you can support them.
Come with us on a winter nature walk up an old drover’s route and visit Shardeloes Lake. We’ll also be getting coffee/lunch after in a local cafe and you’re welcome to join!
Join us just after the new year and bring your broken items so our experts can give them a second lease of life for free!
Join us for an interactive 3-hour workshop to learn the science behind climate change and galvanise action.
Join us for our annual Christmas social to celebrate the spirit of the season and the progress we’ve made towards a greener, more sustainable area.
Join Buckinghamshire Community Energy (BCE) and Sustainable Amersham for our Green Energy Fair for anyone interested in finding out more about making their home energy efficient, and installing renewable and low carbon power and heating sources.
Join us on an interactive 3-hour workshop to learn the science behind climate change and galvanise action.
Come and join other volunteers to help remove the grass cuttings and autumn leaves so they don’t clog up our wildflower meadows.
Sunday 10th November, 2pm – (Holy Trinity Church) – Join us on a guided walk with naturalist John Tyler, to explore and learn about fungi in Penn wood.
Repair café on Saturday the 2nd of November! Electrical, woodwork, glueing, sewing and all sorts of general repairs will be available.
Wednesday 16th October 6-7pm Zoom
Join us to hear about what we have achieved, our application to become a Charitable Incorporated Organisation, and our plans for the future – all welcome.
Thursday October 10th, 7pm – 9pm
The Tank Room @ The Beech House, Hill Avenue, Amersham
Join us for another social gathering and meet like-minded local residents who all share the interest of helping make Amersham a more sustainable town. Sign up via Eventbrite to qualify for a free first drink (conditions apply).
Community Toys Cafe, St Michael’s Church, 5th of October 10-13 am, free, no need to register
Amersham Community Toys Cafe – Swap your pre-loved toys, costumes, clothes or books, for adults or children. Have a cuppa and a chat while helping your pocket, the planet and your sanity!
Saturday 14th September 10am- 2pm, at Amersham Free Church
Sustainable and Wild Amersham will be there, with information about the Repair Café, a Toy and Book swap, and nature activities for children.
Come and say hello, bring your toys and books to swap, and we need more volunteers, so if you can help out on the day, email us here.
Sunday 1st and 8th September (afternoon) at Amersham Hospital and Amersham Band sites.
Our trained scythers will be scything the meadows, but we need more volunteers to make the team complete; to rake up the ‘arisings’ (the cut grass and flowers) which will be used to create compost heaps that amphibians, hedgehogs and other creatures can use to overwinter.
Repair café on Saturday the 7th of September!
Electrical, woodwork, glueing, sewing and all sorts of general repairs will be available.
We are organising a family cooking session, on the 28th of September (at the Youth Club) where we will explore food, cooking and how to create nutritious and cost effective dishes that are less damaging to the planet and our future.
Come and learn this traditional skill to support the wildflower meadows managed by Wild Amersham.
Marieke and Adrian will lead a workshop on drawing nature, on the 31st of July, as a way to really engage with nature rather than being the next Rembrandt (though that is of course perfectly fine too).
Everyone is encouraged to try and remove at least ONE single use plastic item from their daily life for the whole 31 days of July! It’s just one small change, but collectively could have a massive impact. Will you join in by signing up to the one change pledge? There will be a notice board at our next Repair Café on 6th July, so come along, get ideas and post your pledge on the board, and let’s go on a plastic free journey together.
Sunday 7 July from 11 – 3pm Explore local wildlife and enjoy a summer picnic! Eight local nature organisations with nature activities for children, local wildlife information, Syrian pastries and plenty of space for a lovely summer picnic so bring a blanket and a hamper! The Wildlife Explorer Day will be held at the southern end of Coleshill Common (see cross on map below); free parking will be available at the Coleshill CoE Infant School. If you are from outside Coleshill and are not familiar with the Common, the easiest way into the Common is the path from Village Road (near HP7 0LZ, see arrow below or what3words reap.goats.fetch or google pin: https://maps.app.goo.gl/gPWL28djeKS5keZTA)
Repair café on Saturday the 6th of July! Electrical, woodwork, glueing, sewing and all sorts of general repairs will be available. Sustainable Amersham started the Repair Café in July 2022, and it has been very popular as a way of prolonging the life of all sorts of prized possessions and reducing the amount of items heading for the bin or for recycling. We look forward to seeing you! How it works. Our friendly volunteers will guide you through this process. We don’t as for payment, but if you can donate this all helps to keep the project running. If you would like to help us either as a repairer or as a meet and greeter, pop in and say hello, or drop us an email. There are lots of other local Repair Café’s that run on different days. Find out details here.
The Sustainable Amersham Book Club is open to everyone! We meet every few months on a weekday evening in Amersham. Anyone can dip in and out of it, depending on whether you can make the date, or are interested in the next book. To give you an idea of the these are the books we have read since we started, which are a mixture of non-fiction and fiction. Ravenous: How to Get Ourselves and Our Planet Into Shape by Henry Dimbleby, author of the National Food Strategy. The Overstory by Richard Powers Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, to delve into indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants. Wasteland– by Oliver Franklin Wallace -the current read for 2nd July 2024 Reserve your spot here If you would like to get more information please contact Urja
The Sustainable Amersham Book Club is coming on the 2nd of July. We will discuss ‘Wasteland’ by Oliver Franklin-Wallis, to delving into the messy issue of what happens to our waste. Anyone can dip in and out of the book club depending on whether you can make the date, or are interested in the next book. Reserve your spot on Eventbrite (free) Have a look at our previous Book Club events here!
Saturday 22nd June 2024 12:00 noon – Central London The natural world is in trouble and we need to take action. Sustainable Amersham is participating in the Restore Nature Now action. We will be travelling to London as a group on Saturday to show we care! Contact us if you wish to participate. We want to see UK politicians show strong domestic and global nature and climate leadership by: 1. Giving a pay-rise for nature 2. Making polluters pay 3. Delivering more space for nature 4. Putting a right to a healthy environment in law 5. Ensuring fair and effective climate action
Sustainable Amersham will hold our second Toy Swap at Amersham Library on Saturday the 29th of June as part of their “little green adventures”.
Local families can bring in their pre-loved toys and swap them for different ones giving these items a breath of new life by rehoming them.
On June 27th we will host our second People, Planet, Pint , from 7pm. Join us at our next social gathering in the Pump room at the Beech House, Amersham. If like us, you’re worried about the climate crisis and want to feel you’re not alone, come and join like-valued local folk at our next social evening. This is hosted in partnership with People, Planet, Pint and is an opportunity to meet people from Amersham who share an interest in making our town and community more sustainable. Reserve your (free) spot on Eventbrite (link to come, email us for more info). In our last event in February, despite the rain and diary clashes with other sustainable events in and around Amersham, a select few made it out to meet and chat about sustainability topics. We covered a range of themes. We talked about the carbon footprint of cloud computing and, more importantly, the under-documented carbon emissions created by the colossal processing requirement of Generative AI. We also talked about UK food security and how vulnerable we are as a country to increasingly fragile international supply chains. We talked about grassroot solutions at a local level and the urgent need to make sure we all understand where our food comes from and how agriculture is impacted by extreme weather. Most importantly, we had a giggle. Despite all there is to be concerned about, when we come together and share stories and values, the world doesn’t seem such a terrible place. Come and join us in June!
Every two years, the Chesham Bois parish council holds a summer fete on the Common along North Road. This is a very popular occasion, featuring music, entertainment and a wide assortment of stalls, selling food, drink and local crafts. Many local organisations are also represented. The fete has enough to occupy residents and visitors to Chesham Bois for a summer afternoon in a lovely location. Sustainable Amersham will be there, watch out for us for some activities and sustainable fun!
Take part in No-Mow-May. By simply not mowing your lawn for a month, your patch of green, big or small, has great potential to provide food and shelter for insects.
No Mow May is a movement started by the charity Plantlife. It encourages people to let their lawn (or part of their lawn) grow long in the month of May, so flowers can flower, and in the process, helping all kinds of pollinators and other mammals, birds and amphibians that feed on them. And it’s also for you: to enjoy the beauty of a mini-meadow. Wild Amersham @ Sustainable Amersham is encouraging as many people in Amersham to take part in #NoMowAmersham this year. Let’s try and create a chain of mini-meadows in our town this May. Take part in #NoMowAmersham. Let your lawn grow. Sign up with #nomowamersham here. There’s lots of ideas for your mini meadow on the Plantlife website, including ID guides, tips for looking after a longer lawn, and colouring pages for children. Register your lawn with Plantlife here. Find activities for your children here. If you’d like to know what plant you are looking at, email us. Or come to one of our wildflower walks during May. Book her for the walk on the 12th of May or 17th of May. And if you can, post any photos of your flowering lawn (or before and afters!) or flowers or visiting insects etc on social media under #nomowamersham. Let’s see if we can turn Amersham into a flowering nature corridor of mini meadows. For plants, for insects, for nature, for us.
Repair café this Saturday! Electrical, woodwork, glueing and all sorts of general repairs will be available, but there will be limited sewing repairs this session. There will be a seed and seedling swap (check out our last one here), so be sure to bring any spare seeds or plants! If you don’t have any come by and get some for a small donation. The household refill pop up, Orca and Bee cannot come to this Café, but they deliver free locally so have a look at their website. We look forward to seeing you!
We are organising a family visit to a local organic farm (Collings Hanger Farm) in the Spring (11th of May), where parents and children (4-12 years) will be shown around and will be able to understand how a farm works and the impact of food on our environment.
We would like to invite young people aged 12 to 18 to design a logo for us, to be used as part of our communications in the future.
Madelyn Postman, a Sustainable Amersham volunteer and sustainability specialist, talked about the impact of fashion in our environment as part of the Speak Up for the Planet talks on the 17th of April. Watch the recording here. Madelyn covered these important topics for anyone who wears clothes! What are the three big problems in fashion? 1. Resources. For example, it takes 2,000 gallons of water to make a single pair of jeans. 2. Waste, emissions and pollution. Over-supply in the industry means that about 40% of garments made are not even sold. Supply chains are hidden and 85% of clothes find their way to landfill or to the Atacama Desert in Chile! 3. Human Rights. Brands often exploit their workers And the three solutions 1. Buy fewer new clothes. Sounds easy but breaking habits can be hard. Buy second hand from online outlets such as Thrifted, Beyond Retro and Vinted. You can sell stuff you don’t wear through them too. Choose plastic-free fabrics that use as little resource as possible. Top of the list are hemp, linen and recycled cotton. If you want to find out about brands and their ethical rating, look up Ethical Consumer and Good on You. 2 Care for your clothes. Wash them only as often as they really need, capture microplastics with a guppy friend, and try creative mending methods such as Japanese sashiko: Sashiko is a Japanese stitching style that was originally used by working class people as a means to mend used clothing and household items. But it is so much more than that! The even, geometric patterns of sashiko create a beautiful decorative effect 3. Share clothes. With friends of course, but there are websites for that too such as Hurt and some high street retailers including Selfridges and John Lewis have introduced rental schemes. When you buy new, do some research. Look up the retailer’s ethical score. Do they offer a mending service? Check the label for plastics. Madelyn also explained the circular economy. This goes further than recycling by building re-use of materials into the design process. Information on https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/. What about digital clothes? Yes, really. Photo by Edward Howell on Unsplash
Our Earth also needs our help to protect it from all the harmful activities our society brings. This is why on the 22nd of April billions of people celebrate Earth Day to make a stand and show that they care for this, our precious home.
Why not take a step at home to show you care while getting your creative juices going?
Fancy a cuppa and a pastry with a bunch of friendly people and a bit of a chat about the state of the world?Sustainable Amersham will held its second People Planet Pastry event on the 16th of April at the Beech House (close to Amersham station). Anyone could turn up to this free event and get to know people in the community at the same time as having some stimulating conversations about the beautiful nature that surrounds us and the things that we can do to make sure that we protect the environment we have to live in. Sustainable Amersham volunteers were also around to introduce some of our work, but more importantly hear about what our neighbours care for and how we can make it better!
On Sunday 21 April join woodland expert John Morris on this walk to learn about the trees and other wildlife, how people used the woods in the past and the challenges of managing woodland today.
17th of April, 10-12 am, Amersham Band Phil Dearman, a local artist and teacher, held a workshop on drawing nature. 12 people attended and enjoyed a morning of learning how to draw natural objects. Photo by Margaret Jaszowska on Unsplash
Wild Amersham held its first seed swap at March’s Repair Café. We were delighted to see so many members of the local community turn up and enthusiastically engage with swapping both flower and vegetable seeds in anticipation of the coming growing season. We had several goals for the seed swap. Seeds are typically sold in quantities far greater than any gardener can make use of and we want to reduce waste and help people save money. Second, we want to encourage the growing of veg and flowers to both address the escalating issue of food insecurity and to provide food for all pollinators. This isn’t simply about honeybees, but also includes solitary bees, bumblebees, butterflies, and many species of wasps, flies, moths and beetles. Third, swapping anything is a sustainable community activity that brings people together as was clear at the seed swap: old friends and new were enthusiastically sharing gardening tips. And finally, growing vegetables immediately triggers a greater awareness of food provenance – something we all need knowledge of in the era of ultra-processed foods. So it was entirely thrilling to witness not just experienced gardeners come and support this new initiative but also people entirely new to gardening who were keen to have a stab. In total we estimate some 150 packets of seeds were swapped by about 40 people. Join us for another seed swap at our next Repair Café on May 4th, where we hope to also swap seedlings.
Amersham Town Council in conjunction with Amersham’s high schools is organising a Climate Action Day at St Michael and all his Angels church on the 23rd of March from 10-1 pm.
The event, lead by local students, will focus on sustainable fashion and will feature fashion shows, stalls with information on the impact of fast fashion and ideas on how to make our fashion choices count.
Mother’s day is coming! A moment to celebrate that most beautiful (if sometimes challenging) relationship between a mother and her children.
Why not exchange a truly special home-made gift that gets the kids entertained and is a bit kinder to the planet?
By counting all the plastic you throw away for a week, you can help gather the vital evidence we need to convince UK ministers, supermarkets and big brands to lead the way at global talks that could finally phase out plastic production for good.
Let’s get counting!
Sustainable Amersham’s first ever Toy Swap came to Amersham on Saturday the 24th of February as part of their “little green adventures”.
February 29th saw Sustainable Amersham’s 2nd People, Planet, Pint event, hosted at the Beech House on Hill Avenue. Despite the rain and diary clashes with other sustainable events in and around Amersham, a select few made it out to meet and chat about sustainability topics. We covered a range of themes. We talked about the carbon footprint of cloud computing and, more importantly, the under-documented carbon emissions created by the colossal processing requirement of Generative AI. We also talked about UK food security and how vulnerable we are as a country to increasingly fragile international supply chains. We talked about grassroot solutions at a local level and the urgent need to make sure we all understand where our food comes from and how agriculture is impacted by extreme weather. Most importantly, we had a giggle. Despite all there is to be concerned about, when we come together and share stories and values, the world doesn’t seem such a terrible place. Thank you to People, Planet, Pint’s organisers Small99 and its sponsors Krystal. We will have another get together at 7pm on June 27th. If you’d like to meet others in Amersham with a shared interest in sustainability, save the date! And join us! Keep an eye out for event details.
Join our free online talk to learn about garden birds, hear more about their interesting lives and loves & how you can support them.
Come with us on a winter nature walk up an old drover’s route and visit Shardeloes Lake. We’ll also be getting coffee/lunch after in a local cafe and you’re welcome to join!
Join us just after the new year and bring your broken items so our experts can give them a second lease of life for free!