Sustainable Blewbury is the operational name of the Blewbury Village Society Environment Group (BVS-EG), which was established in 1993. It acts as a forum for exchanging ideas, creating awareness and promoting action where needed on a wide range of topics related to the village and its environment – including the village fabric, amenities such as footpaths and open spaces, springs, streams and the natural habitat, and local area issues likely to have an impact on Blewbury. In recent years the BVS-EG has carried out initiatives relating to the Parish Plan and the Blewburton Hill book project A View from the Hill.
The Blewbury Energy Initiative was the first of a family of new village initiatives relating to sustainable living and coping with climate change. These initiatives are prompted by the realisation that we need to lower our dependency on fossil fuels and to explore ways in which we as a village can adapt to a lower-carbon standard of living, while maintaining a good quality of life. In 2008, in order to better reflect our broader objectives and the emphasis on sustainability, the BVS-EG was renamed Sustainable Blewbury.
Sustainable Blewbury is managed by a Core Group, and comprises five separate initiatives:
- Energy (including Transport)
- Travel and Transportation
- Food and Farming
- Natural Environment and Heritage
- Waste and Recycling
Specific projects currently underway include:
- Thermal imaging programme, and advice on home insulation, energy conservation, solar PV and thermal systems, and other renewable energy sources. Ran a successful solar PV group discount scheme.
- Energy-related website with a great deal of information and advice: www.blewbury.co.uk/energy.
- Weekly produce stall selling surplus fruit, vegetables, plants, eggs, preserves, etc. from village gardeners.
- Permaculture project creating a demonstration plot starting from a bare downland field, with a variety of fruit trees underplanted with soft fruit, vegetables and herbs in multiple layers.
- Orchards and village trees surveys, with orchard results published as a booklet, and notable trees in the village documented we will extend this to the rest of the parish.
- Downland project to identify remnants of original chalk downland and study their intrinsic biodiversity, leading to creation of a new Local Wildlife Site within the parish and working to improve its habitats, especially by tree and scrub management.
- Millbrook project to monitor the biodiversity and ecology of the Millbrook, which rises from springs in the village, and work to restore a spring basin (the Cleve), including an invertebrate survey and wildlife monitoring.
- Village skills project to record the special architectural details of buildings and village fabric, leading to identification of skills that are in short supply for maintaining and repairing historic buildings.
These projects, and others, are described in more detail on on our website, and recent progress is also described on our Newsletter, which we publish every few months and is downloadable from our website.
