Vision 21 Press Coverage

Gloucestershire Echo - Gloucestershire Bites Back: Let's get up and grow says Cheltenham's Vision 21 - Thursday, December 11, 2008

ENVIRONMENTAL campaigners in Cheltenham want to help people bite back against the credit crunch literally - by growing their own food.

Vision 21, based in St George's Place, is offering an advice and help service to get residents digging, hoeing and munching the fruits of their labours.

Mike Bush, one of the volunteers helping the project said: "Many people want to grow their own food but might not have done it before and don't know where to start.

"There's great tradition of people growing their own in gardens and allotments in Britain, so it's nothing new, but we want to get to people who are new to it."

Mike and other volunteers will work with people who want to grow fruit and veg in their back garden, or even a yard or balcony.

Mike said: "We will have an outreach service for people who have a small piece of land or even less.

"We can show people how they can even grow beans in a window box or tomatoes in containers on a balcony in a flat.

"If someone has an overgrown garden and they want to use it for food but don't know where to begin, we will come out and help them.

"The family will have to have the commitment to carry it on, but we want to help people get started."

And he says the benefits of growing your own are never more apparent than in times of economic hardship.

Mike said: "If you don't count the cost of your time and labour it's not at all expensive to grow your own vegetables, seeds are cheap and you can harvest them for next year and swap them with friends and neighbours."

Vision 21 is looking to work with five families initially and also wants to hear from anyone who can donate tools and equipment to the project.

Trustee of the group, Cathy Green, said: "Some people want to reduce food miles, others want to save money. Whatever their motivation is, we want to be able to help."

For more information, contact Vision 21 on 01242 224321 or email office@vision21.org.uk

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Gloucestershire Echo - Your Town, Your Future: Let's go green - Thursday 27th November 2008

A RUBBISH-FREE town is the vision of an environmental worker in Cheltenham.

Talking to the Echo as part of our Your Town, Your Future series, Mike Harrison, the co-ordinator of a network of recycling champions, said the aim was to get people to send nothing to landfill.

Mr Harrison said his team of volunteers worked to help people produce less waste and wanted residents to make a permanent change.
He said: "It's a different way of life and, of course, if people do reduce what they use and reuse things and then recycle what they throw away, it leads to changes in other areas.  "They will look at the energy they use, how far their food has come and make a real change to their life."

Mr Harrison, who works for campaign group Vision 21, said it was necessary to help people make positive changes.  He said: "Our latest campaign is slim your bin. It will tie up with zero waste week in late January and we'll be showing people how to produce an absolute minimum. When we've done this before, we've had people with just a couple of kilos left in their dustbin."

The Cheltenham recycling champion network was set up in 2006 as a joint venture between Cheltenham Centre of Change – now Vision 21 – the Borough Council and Cheltenham Federation.  It scored a notable success earlier this year in getting people to collect old copies of Yellow Pages and has also put 60 battery collection boxes around the town.  Mr Harrison said: "We kept more than half a tonne of them from landfill. It shows that if you make it easy for people to recycle, they will.  "I think the council should be helping people to reduce their rubbish."

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