Strood Green to go even greener!
When The Shop at Strood Green, our very own community-run shop,
was established, one of its guiding principles was to be
environmentally friendly and to serve the local community in that
way. This was as a result of the questionnaire that was sent to all
residents in Brockham, Strood Green and Leigh in 2005, when we
received a lot of comments from people who hoped our new venture
would be idealistic enough to be as 'green' as possible.
Those people who have visited the shop regularly will
know that we use as little packaging as possible, offering paper
bags instead of plastic, selling our vegetables and fruit loose,
and our eggs are offered on trays (so that people can bring their
cardboard cartons back for re-use, when possible). We also have
volunteers collecting and recycling our own cardboard and packaging
from our (substantial) deliveries every week, so we end up
producing very little waste. Our tired vegetables go to local
chickens and rabbits!! And we offer our coffee grounds for people's
gardens (slugs hate coffee!).
As we have over 20 local suppliers from within a ten-mile
radius, some of whom deliver their vegetables to the shop by
bicycle (!) we know we have reduced our carbon footprint
substantially.
But we don't want to be complacent and we know there is
still a lot we could do. This community is now becoming very
familiar with the concept of community ownership, and we feel this
can extend to other types of community initiative such as
sustainability. Please help us by suggesting ways that The Shop at
Strood Green could become greener! Community shops as a way
forward are still in their infancy. This is officially one of the
top 10 community shops in England and is often visited by people
from other communities who have heard of its success - so let's
lead by example! We would love to hear from you and we shall
consider all suggestions.