Many users of Hackney Marshes would have been happier if the photos of Sophia Evans in the Guardian (07-04-21) had been used to tell a more instructive story.  Extolling the beauty of the river Lea and glamorising it as a ‘secret  paradise’ will unfortunately only serve to compound the river’s environmental problems, made worse by the pandemic and expose insouciant visitors to high levels of risk.

For regular marsh users the ‘Hackney Beach’ phenomenon of last summer was a…

We assembled at the Town Hall because there is Climate and Ecological Emergency. Our world has never been hotter in the 200,000 years of humankind. Ferocious fires, floods, food shortages and mass extinctions are a fact of today and without legislation like the CEE bill here and worldwide far worse lies in store. We are fast approaching the critical threshold…

We welcome the appointment of Mete Coban MBE to lead Hackney's efforts to tackle the climate crisis and we are pleased that he has already acknowledged the climate emergency as a priority.

Hackney formally declared an emergency in 2019.  We…

                                                                   Arch Villain                         The privatisation of railway arches has led to rent hikes and business closures

Running through Hackney and Tower Hamlets is their nineteenth-century backbone of railway…

I'm Lucy and I'm working as a Community Activator at the Library of Things, which is opening in the Old Baths on Eastway in Hackney Wick this spring. This will provide an affordable way of borrowing useful things for household, DIY, gardening and more, including steam cleaners, drills, projectors and ice cream makers from as little as £1 a day. The Library of Things already have successful branches in Crystal Palace and Morden. The Hackney Wick Library of Things is supported by partners…

Photo: Tim Lewis

The recent articles in the Observer and the…

Faced undisputedly with a climate and ecological emergency why isn’t there much wider support for the eponymous private members’ bill proposed by Caroline Lucas of the Green Party? That’s the question that Sustainable Hackney posed in December to Meg Hillier, Labour MP for Hackney south and Shoreditch. If the Climate an Ecological Emergency bill (CEE bill) has the support of Diane Abbott in Hackney North, why isn’t Meg Hillier supporting it too?  

Ms. Hillier has declined to…

Growing Communities is taking on two paid interns for three months from 15 February to work alongside our head grower in our Hackney market gardens. This is aimed at young people aged 18-24 who are not currently enrolled in a higher education degree and live in or near Hackney. We would particularly welcome applications from Black, Asian and minority ethnic young people (aged 18-24) as we recognise that racial and cultural diversity is chronically lacking in the horticultural and…

With the increase in use of green spaces for exercise we are republishing these walks.  It will be interesting to try them again to see how things have changed in the last 10 years.  Enjoy!…

Despite the twenty-five COP (Council of Parties) meetings organized since 1995 by the UNFCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) which is tasked with strengthening the global response to climate change; there is little or no sign they’ve had any impact at all on the soaring levels of green-house gasses.  

2020, despite a significant ramping up of renewables, is likely to be another year in which all the wrong sorts of records have been broken.  It’ll…

The Silvertown Tunnel must be stopped! In 2018 London’s mayor pledged that by 2030 the capital would have air pollution concentrations within the WHO (World Health Organization) guidelines for fine particulate matter. The Silvertown Tunnel will scupper this policy aspiration. Currently at £2 billion, twice the original budget; it involves the construction of a four-lane carriageway under the Thames beside the existing Blackwall Tunnel. No road building project has ever reduced traffic and…

About 50 years ago, Dutch local authorities and city planners were beginning to realise that many city streets were unsuitable for unbridled expansion of the motor car and - assisted by public pressure - the principle of ‘woonerf’ (literally ‘living yard’) was born: shared space between pedestrians, cyclists and cars, but with pedestrians having priority. By 2000, there were 6000 of these schemes in The Netherlands. Because of the proliferation of street signs and other street furniture,…

Did you know that the new Hackney Parks and Green Spaces Strategy will affect green spaces on estates?  From next year the Hackney Parks Department will take on the management of 237 green spaces on Hackney's estates in addition to the 58 parks and green spaces they already manage.  That's why it is vital that estate residents have an input to the strategy…

At this year’s Sustainable Hackney AGM, we asked people to talk about what they wanted to help build Hackney back better.  Now we are asking everyone who wasn’t there.

Hackney Council are holding a meeting early in March on building back better in Hackney post-Covid, and this is a chance to feed into it: if you tell us,…

Hackney Stand up to Racism’s Christmas fundraiser is again dedicated to supporting Care for Calais. Again Sustainable Hackney is glad to support this initiative, but not on the other hand glad our support is…

Education for Sustainability is a priority work-stream of Sustainable Hackney and our ambition is to see the borough become a beacon for EfS. So when the Head of Ofsted, Amanda Spielman, this week dismissed out of hand the opportunity to make schools’  curricula responsive to the existential threat of climate change and the ecological crisis; it was…

The penultimate Bulletin is out now, available in print at Hoxton Trust. Happy Reading!…

As Black Lives Matter protests exploded around the world, statues of racists were toppled after mass protests. The trustees of Hackney’s Museum of the Home held a public consultation on whether the statue above its door, of slave trader Robert Geffrye, should come down. Hackney people voted overwhelmingly for its…