24 May 2016
When you ring Pocheco, a company that makes 2 billion envelopes a year in their factory close to Lille in France, the holding message describes Pocheco as “the first ecolonomic factory in the world”. If you ordered a copy of
’21 Stories of Transition’ from us, you will have received it in a Pocheco envelope. They are also one of the stars of the film ‘
Demain‘ (see clip below). When I spoke to Emmanuel Druon and Liz Dinsdale at Pocheco, first thing I wanted to know was, what is an ecolonomic factory?
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18 May 2016
‘This Changes Everything’, the recent film starring Naomi Klein and made by her partner Avi Lewis, is ambitious in its scope and its reach. We meet those trying to block the expansion of fossil fuel extraction in the US, Canada, India, Greece and other places, as well as those fighting for air quality in China.
The story of the First Nations of Canada coming together to resist tar sands is particularly moving, their conflating the fight against climate change with “bringing our Nation back to life”.
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17 May 2016
You may have read recently about
Bristol Energy Coop (BEC) and their ambitious share offer which aimed to raise £10.5 million for renewable energy projects in Bristol. They have already reached £9 million, and are still looking for the last bit, and it’s not limited to people from Bristol, so if you’d like to support them, see more info
here. BEC was set up 5 years ago in order to accelerate the rollout of renewable energy in the city, and to use that to drive local economic regeneration and to recycle benefits locally. If that all sounds very Transition to you, as you’ll see later, it is. I asked
Andy O’Brien and
Chris Speller, BEC directors, to tell us more about what they do (here is the podcast, edited transcript below):
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16 May 2016
Thursday May 12th was the fifth Local Entrepreneur Forum in Totnes. I’m not going to write the usual blow-by-blow report of the event, as
I’ve done that in previous years, and in many ways this one stuck with the format of previous years, albeit with a few tweaks and different timings. If you are wondering what a Local Entrepreneur Forum is, I took the liberty of asking Jay Tompt, its originator and co-ordinator, that very question on your behalf, and here is what he told me:
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9 May 2016
Transition Stroud were the 8th ‘official’ Transition initiative, forming in 2007. Its first big event was the visit of Richard Heinberg to the town, who gave both a public presentation and also a talk for Stroud District Council. Since then, the group has been extremely active, and as it enters its 10th year, is focusing on how best to move forward and how to put the best foundations possible beneath the work it has already done. One key part of this was an event called
‘Transition Stroud: 10 years and beyond’ held at the town’s Subscription Rooms, to which I was invited to speak. Here is a podcast I made about the evening:
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