Welcome to our Spring 2024 Newsletter, which brings you the latest sustainable news and green ideas from our local area.

Spring is a season of hope, renewal (and hopefully sunshine!), so it’s the perfect time to get out into nature and enjoy the environment.

As usual, this newsletter brings you all the inspiration you need to live more sustainably and have some fun at the same time!

We hope you enjoy the read!

With Our Best Wishes For Spring

The Sustainable Three Rivers Team

PS Would you be interested in helping at a Repair Cafe? We’d love to start one in Rickmansworth but we would need some help! Do you know someone who’s great at fixing things?

If so we’d love to hear from them at hello@sustainablethreerivers.org. Watch this space for more information

Rickmansworth Community Garden is coming back to life after the long wet winter!

Volunteering sessions have started again at the following times:

• Sunday 10.30 - 11.30 Vegetables

• Monday 12.30 - 1.30 Flowers and Rose Garden Maintenance

• Thursday 12 - 1 Herbs

• If you’re coming along, please bring your own gloves.

The garden was established in June 2023 and has been thriving ever since. If you’d like to volunteer or help us out with organisation or communications, please email us at:

hello@sustainablethreerivers.org.

We’re a friendly bunch! 

S3R Highlights

It’s been a busy few months for Sustainable Three Rivers since our last newsletter. Highlights have included:

• Running workshops for primary and secondary school pupils as part of Feeling Good Week. Many thanks to S3R member and former horticultural lecturer Ted Casey (also known as Super Ted!) for taking the lead on these events. Find out more below.

• Gardening volunteers working alongside Three Rivers District Council staff to weed and plant out the Rose Garden. Many thanks to our wonderful volunteers who work so hard, both in  the Community Garden and Rose Garden.

• Working with TRDC to purchase a bench in celebration of the life of Barbara Owen MBE as a result of a very generous donation from the Rickmansworth Society. We look forward to the bench being installed in the Community Garden soon.

• Running a very popular Easter themed scavenger hunt to encourage young people to engage with sustainability issues around Rickmansworth and visit the Community Garden. Prizes included plants, books and fair trade chocolate! Many thanks to S3R Director Jane Irwin for her hard work on this.

Transition Streets in Rickmansworth

.A group of local residents in Townfield, Rickmansworth, have become the first in our district to take part in pioneering energy-saving programme Transition Streets.

They've now completed 5 of the 7 workshops in the programme and have already made some great changes. They've saved water through sharing water butts, saved money by sharing tips on smart thermostats and installing them, saved energy by installing loft insulation after being more confident to do it after speaking to the group members, and discovered where their homes are losing heat having received thermal images for free. They've also accessed a huge amount of money saving information and free lite retrofit surveys of their homes. 

In addition to this they've set up a sharing spreadsheet with all the items on their street that they have between them that can be shared! Saving people buying them and storing them when they're only used a handful of times! 

Still to come are sessions on water and promoting biodiversity.

If you’d like to take part sign up here: https://forms.gle/VFN87gd3MXVj1zQ9A

You can find out more in this interview Jess from the group did with Ricky News. Just click the link below.

As a local sustainability group we are often asked questions about key environmental issues. We’ve set up a new page on our website with answers to some regularly asked questions, and pointers to help you get more information.

If you’ve got a sustainability question you’d like answered, please email us as

hello@sustainablethreerivers.org

Guilt Free Gifting This Easter

Ethical shopping and gifting can be a minefield, with so much information available.

We’re not going to suggest going without chocolate at Easter of course, but if you are able to choose Fair Trade, this is always a good bet. Making your own gifts is a good idea too, with plenty of craft projects available online. Or you could see what your local charity shop has to offer.

For more advice on how to use your spending power to change the world for the better, S3R members use Ethical Consumer. Click the link below to visit the site.

Sustainability Workshops For Schools

We received excellent feedback about the very successful workshops for school students held in February, lead by Ted Casey and organised by S3R.

The workshops took place on separate days – one for secondary school students, the other for primary school students. We used our Community Garden for hands-on activities and our local library (a partner of our organisation) for educational talks and refreshments.

Secondary students from Croxley Danes spent time studying herbs already growing in the garden and planting others. They then built bird boxes using drills and learnt about the importance of different bird habitats. They also discovered more about the plant growing cycle and healthy eating, including the amount of sugar in different sweets and snacks.

Primary students from Little Green School also spent time building bird boxes, ready to be used on school grounds, and took part in a hands-on workshop learning about the different parts of flowers, using real specimens.

Just One Sustainable Thing…

Big change starts with small steps. Easter and spring are a time of hope and new beginnings, so it’s the ideal time to take the first steps on your sustainable journey - or travel further if you’ve already begun!

These are some of our favourite ideas you could try:

• Buy sustainable loo roll, tissues and kitchen paper from companies such as Naked Sprout or Who Gives a Crap. Try your local sustainable store (such as the Green Stores in Croxley) or shop online.

• Buy refillable household cleaning and washing products from companies such as Home Things or Splosh. There are plenty to choose from online.

• Source clothes and gifts in your local charity shop, or pot up your own plants.

What’s your favourite sustainable tip? What’s the one thing you can do this spring to help the planet? Visit our website for more ideas.

We are Sustainable Three Rivers, a Community Interest Group founded by local residents, which aims to help people in Three Rivers make lifestyle changes to protect the planet.  We also work with local groups and projects linked to sustainability and campaign to influence government and local council decisions to protect the environment.

If you’ve got any ideas for sustainable solutions, or questions about any of the points we cover, we’d love to hear from you!

You can email us at hello@sustainablethreerivers.org