Thursday, May 19, 2016

Victoria's Green Matters - 19th May 2016



Deal With IT's Secretary Victoria Nicholls writes a regular column in the East Kent Mercury:

I doubt that many of us realise just how important plants are to our lives; in fact, more than important – they are vital. Plants add oxygen to the atmosphere and regulate our climate; they provide us with food, fuel, medicines and timber.

A recent ‘State of the World’s Plants’ report by experts at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, shows that there are 390,000 species of plants with more than 30,000 used by people.

But 20% of these plants are facing extinction. The greatest threat comes from farming where habitats are destroyed – cattle ranching and palm oil production, for example, account for 31% of the destruction with deforestation for timber accounting for another 21%. Construction of buildings and infrastructure destroy another 13% while climate change is a smaller factor at 4% but this is likely to grow. The full impact of these losses will probably not be felt for another 30 years as plants, especially trees, need a long time to produce offspring. One important crop that is already suffering, though, is coffee as rising temperatures make it impossible for the beans to grow and cause an increase in diseases in countries such as Ethiopia. Bananas have little genetic diversity, making them vulnerable to threats and wild relatives need to be found to breed new, robust varieties.

In contrast, there is good news as 2,000 new species of plants are discovered every year, raising hopes for new sources of food that are resistant to diseases and climate change.

Saturday, May 14, 2016

Deal Seedy Saturday 14th May

Thank you to everyone who volunteered, donated/swap plants, played Ukes or made cakes for today's Seedy Saturday at the Landmark Community Group here in Deal. 

Very cold northerly wind meant we did not have the quantity of people today that we usually have but this did mean we had time to talk about what Deal With It is doing in Deal for longer which was really good.

We had £36 in donations - all money goes to Garden projects at Landmark or Deal Station

Especial thank you to the Uke Club based at the Landmark for playing us - Those Uke hands needed regular warm up breaks in the Cafe :)

All our pics are here

Our next event will be a Beach Clean on Sunday 26th June - We will be organising a Summer shindig in August.

Sunday, May 8, 2016

Seedy Saturday - 14th May

The next Deal Seedy Saturday will be on Saturday 14th May starting at 11am at the Landmark Garden on Deal High Street.

This is a plant and seed swap so please bring some labelled plants or seeds to swap.

We hope to have some music provided by the Landmark Ukulele group and some cakes to share

All Welcome

Thursday, May 5, 2016

Victoria's Green Matters - 5th May 2016



Deal With IT's Secretary Victoria Nicholls writes a regular column in the East Kent Mercury:

It was only recently that there was a report about the poor air quality in many of our cities which was causing between 40,000 – 50,000 premature deaths a year. Now there is a further report by a cross party committee of MPs, which has labelled the situation as a ‘public health crisis’, that has concluded that diesel vehicles are the major cause of the pollution and that the government is not taking action.

The committee has found that 97% of modern diesel cars are emitting more toxic nitrogen oxide (NOx) pollution than the legal limit. New cars are subject to testing on a rolling road where they may pass the test but rarely match industry figures when out on the open road. (This is discounting any ‘tricks of the trade’ that may have been employed to cause the recent emissions scandal concerning VW).

‘Client Earth’, a non-governmental organisation, took the government to the Supreme Court last year over its failure to act on emissions and won its case but one year on is dismayed to find that little action has been taken.

Sales of diesel overtook sales of petrol cars in 2010 as everyone was encouraged to choose diesel because of its lower carbon dioxide emissions and more miles per gallon; time has shown us that this was short-sighted.

There has been a call for a diesel car scrappage scheme to get old diesel vehicles off the roads and for Clean Air Zones to be imposed in major cities.

Victoria Nicholls. Transition Deal.

Monday, May 2, 2016

Bank Holiday Beach Clean 2nd May

Massive thank you to our 25 volunteers who managed to collect over 71kgs of rubbish from the Deal Beach (Sandown Castle end) in a little over an hour

Another great Deal Community story - our new pickers and flags were donated by Deal Folk by the Sea buskers, The clean supports the great efforts of the Sandown Community Garden group who are doing so much to transform this end of the town and our volunteers are drawn right across the community

Our next clean will be at the end of June - date to be confirmed