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On March 28, at 6am I boarded a train bound for Wigan, filled with anticipation and excitement for the great un-known for what was set to be the first of many CTRL Shift emergency summits for change. Thanks to the Permaculture Association (the organisers), along with the most forward thinking solution based organisations in the country, I was very lucky enough to get a bursary ticket for the event. These…

April 10 saw activists assembling outside the London based UN International Maritime Organization (IMO) the scene of talks about whether to tackle carbon emissions from shipping or carry on with the planet-wrecking business as usual agenda.

Currently if the shipping industry were a country it would be the world’s sixth largest polluter, but nevertheless the Paris Climate talks of 2015 avoided dealing with this issue delegating it instead to the IMO.

In our globalised…

Sustainable Hackney has reported for some time that the Fracking threat is closer to us than many suppose… While soundings of public opinion reveal minority support for fracking, most Londoners are unaware it is happening just down the road from them and a mere 25 crow-miles from here.

The fracking of large swathes of Sussex and Surrey for shale or tight oil is a growing threat with four major test sites already drilled and a fifth planned. With this in mind…

Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, has taken the next step towards divesting the London Pension Fund from fossil fuels, and he’s called on other London Boroughs to do the same. This is good news, but there’s still lots to do to get the commitments we need and to build the fairer, cleaner Hackney and London we want to see.

A few things you can do to get involved - no contribution is too small ...

Sign the petition to Divest…

There is a buzz of conversation, laughter, a whoop of excitement as a dead vacuum roars back into life.  People are having fun.  So that's why they call it a Restart Party!   

Can you have fun and help save the planet?  Turns out you can.  Hackney Fixers has been running repair parties for electrical and electronic gadgets since 2014 and in four years has…

The Landworker's Alliance and Growing Communities have launched a series of practical proposals, accompanied by illustrative case studies, for a scheme to dramatically increase local fruit and vegetable production following…

An alliance of farming and environmental groups are calling for the government to give special protection to small and medium sized farms in its new Agriculture Bill. The government's consultation on the future of food, farming and the environment is open until the 8th May and you can have your say



This is an unmissable opportunity to feed into…

A strong message that emerged from the Climate and Jobs Conference on March 10th was that we can’t afford any longer to treat climate change as solely and narrowly an environmental issue.

The image of the polar bear stranded on an ice sheet belies a deeper human reality. Our gaze should be directed instead at the millions whose…

A new campaign to win public support for the UK’s first solar powered film venue was launched on March17.

The joint campaign led by Hackney Energy, the Wilton Estate Tenants Association and the Rio Cinema aims to raise around £40,000 to install 55 solar panels on the cinema’s south facing…

Image: Fairtrade Foundation

Celebrations of Fairtrade Fortnight in Hackney were made extra special this year as, thanks to a grant from Hackney Council, we were able to ‘buy in’  presentations from Ketra Kyosiimire, a visiting female coffee producer from Uganda who gave interesting, illustrated talks on how coffee is grown and how fairtrade benefits the…

Members of the East End Trades Guild will meet the Hackney and Tower Hamlets mayors on Tuesday 13 March and ask them to commit to their agenda for affordable workspace and a London Living Rent.

The manifesto calls on councils across the capital to:

• Recognise Community Value of small and micro business to boroughs’…

Mayor Philip Glanville invited representatives of Hackney's social enterprise sector to the Town Hall in February to present the results of a consultation with more than 250 SEs to create a Social Enterprise Manifesto for Hackney. 

The manifesto is full of ideas on how Hackney Council can support recognition and development of the sector.  It highlight three strategic aims for the sector locally: promoting awareness & understanding of social enterprise, building…

If the thought of insects makes you crawl read on to learn how they might soon be appearing in a supermarket near you.

The human population is increasing on a daily basis and it doesn't look like it's ever going to slow down. Before very long the problem of feeding all those hungry mouths will become a burden that calls for new ways to provide our daily nutritional requirements. There is a growing band of experts that is looking to the insect world for an answer to our…

Sustainable Hackney – Education for Sustainable Education (EfS) Network -  gave a presentation to the Hackney Primary Headteachers’ January meeting on the urgency of introducing EfS into their schools. 

The presentation was supported at the meeting by Councillor Jon Burke (lead cabinet member for sustainability) who aims to make every Hackney council department function sustainably.…

Recently, we have seen the demise of the outsourcing mogul Carillion under a £1.5bn debt pile with a possible loss of up to 20,000 jobs in the UK. This was followed 2 weeks later by profit warnings of another outsourcing giant, Capita, whose share value plummeted by nearly 50%, wiping £1.5bn of its stock market value. The process of outsourcing public services started under the Thatcher years, but accelerated under the Blair-Brown years with the private/public financing initiatives.…

Hackney Fixers hosted a busy day of fixing on 3^rd February at the Redmond Centre, with over 50 people coming for help with their ailing electrical equipment and clothing.  One happy lady, Elizabeth, asked for “an extra big smile” to be drawn on the fixing log, she was so pleased to have her phone working again!

We realised with a start that this was…