Spring finds us buoyant, revitalised and, well….springy!

The really good news is that, following our appeal for support at the beginning of the year, we were inundated with wishes, blessings, words of support, letters written, gifts of voluntary time and energy, and donations and pledges of financial help. This show of community priorities came from our business membership, community groups, charitable organisations and hundreds of individuals and we couldn’t help but get the strength and encouragement required to keep our work going. ‘Invaluable’, ‘Essential’ and ‘Why aren’t you already funded?’ were the most mentioned words which, combined with the spirit of our initial backer Gerald Morgan-Grenville, picked us up and onwards we go.

We are completing the process of becoming a Charitable Company and welcome Barry Coles as our Treasurer and one of four fine Trustees. Please see ‘The General’ for details of all Trustees, Members and Volunteers. We will highlight those that made donations and offered support at a later date on this website.

We have had to make some logistical and premises changes which should hopefully enable us to operate more sustainably in the long-term future. The most noticeable change is that we have had to lose Unit 10 to save costs. This was our store room and community workshop, however we have down-sized and relocated the workshop to our main Depot building, much to the delight of Martin, Steve, Ant, Kevin and Andy from the Fishermans Arms Day Centre.

Losing the store space has meant we have had to find space in the depot for milk bottle tops and other plastics , but we are pleased to have found a local outlet for much of our baled cardboard which will be turned into solid fuel bricketts or ‘Hot Cakes’ – made from old thatch reed, wood chippings and cardboard. We are doing a swap of our cardboard for finished bricketts which we are selling to raise funds for an essential replacement collections vehicle (a Luton or LWB High Top Transit or similar). If you or anyone you know has a woodburner or Aga/Rayburn then this fuel is just as efficient as coal or logs, is cheaper and made entirely from local waste materials.

NOPE! A group of people from this project joined several hundred others in February in a joyous demonstration against proposals to build a power station on Portland which would be fuelled by Palm Oil from Indonesia. This ridiculous idea of cutting down rain forests to grow a fuel crop destined to make electricity half-way round the world seems to be only supported by a handful of Portland Councillors, the Port Authority and a couple of businessmen who will gain financially if it goes ahead. Charlie and Leon were on local TV news highlighting the natural energy resources that the area has – wind, solar and tidal – in abundance! To find out more and support the campaign please visit the NOPE (No Oil Palm Energy) website: www.nope.org.uk . They will be having another demonstration in Weymouth on Saturday 1st May – see you there.