Our first Eco-Fiesta

"Just wanted to say what a fabulous event it was on Sunday. The space was perfect and it had a real community feel."

Wow - that was quite an event!

Our first ever Eco-fiesta (in a specially-pedestrianised section of the High St) was a great success - way beyond our expectations. If you weren't able to come along, you can read a nice report of it with photos on the Westbury on Trym People site.

A key part of the day was the launch of our eco-pledge tree:

It’s now accepted that climate change from our over-use of oil, gas and coal is real, and it’s happening now. There’s huge peer-reviewed scientific evidence to support this. It’s also clear that we must act very quickly to reduce our carbon use - there won’t be a second chance. We need to take action on this at local, national and international levels, and our eco-pledge tree is a way for local people to say how they’re helping to do this.

Visitors to the fiesta selected pledges on our special eco-pledge leaves, then signed the leaf and tied it to the pledge tree.

Watch out for the tree at future SusWot events. [You can also commit to cutting 10% of your carbon emissions in 2010 at www.1010uk.org ].

We also made some Climate Change wake-up calls at the fiesta, as part of the worldwide TckTckTck campaign to get decision-makers to act quickly on climate change. There were 2632 such events in 134 countries, and UK supporters rang Gordon Brown. We're pleased to say he's now committed to personally attend the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this December - the first world leader to do this.

And we also launched two other new initiatives. The first is the "SusWot bag" - our own alternative to plastic shopping bags. Made from organic cotton. Price: £1.50.

The second initiative is a display of some ideas of how the centre of the village could be made more pedestrian-friendly. We know this is something many people are very interested in. We displayed some initial architect's drawings and asked for comments. The drawings are just ideas at this stage - nothing has been agreed, or formally proposed. The majority of the comments we got back were very positive. More on this later.

All in all, it was a fabulous day, and SusWot would like to thank all the volunteers who worked so hard to make the event such a success. We'd also like thank the following people for their help with funding, donating prizes or lending equipment:

Bristol City Council Neighbourhood Partnership, Coffee #1, Conrad Voke, Elmlea Infant and Junior schools, Garden Trappings, Jenny Exon of The Bowen Consultancy, Just-So Balloons, Mailboxes etc, Mel and Denise Ward, Mogfords, Mr Pat at Westbury Primary school, Oxfam shop, Sam Cross of The Chiron Centre for Natural Health, Tainton SDS, Terminus Garage, the Baptist Church Explorers, the Bristol 9, the Methodist Church, the Village Hall, the Westbury Society, Westbury Primary PTA, Westbury Veg.