Coop member? Then make sure you see 'Chasing Ice' in Canterbury on 12th June

Free tickets to see the film ‘Chasing Ice’

The Co-operative Membership is thrilled to be able to offer you free tickets to one of our exclusive screenings of the award winning documentary Chasing Ice which The Co-operative presents as part of our ongoing commitment to combating climate change.

‘Acclaimed photographer James Balog was once a sceptic about climate change but through his Extreme Ice Survey he discovers undeniable evidence of our changing planet. In Chasing Ice Balog deploys revolutionary time-lapse cameras to capture a multi-year record of the world’s changing glaciers. His hauntingly beautiful videos compress years into seconds and capture ancient mountains of ice in motion as they disappear at a breathtaking rate.’

Wednesday 12^th June, 5.30pm to 7.20pm

Venue: Gulbenkian Cinema, Canterbury

Tea and coffee served on arrival, film certificate 12A, 80 minutes long.

Have your membership number handy and visit  www.co-operativememberevents.coop  or phone 0800 015 1147 to reserve a place.

Why is the Co-operative offering you this opportunity?

As part of our commitment to delivering the Co-operative Values and Principles, we offer our members a wide range of events and activities throughout the year that support them. We hope you’ll enjoy this one. Find out more about our campaign for a clean energy revolution at: www.co-operative.coop/cleanenergy

Brixton Energy Co-op share launched

From Inside Housing:

A Brixton-based co-operative has launched a share issue, to fund the installation of solar photovoltaic panels on a Lambeth estate, using an innovative model which it hopes to roll out to social housing across south London.

Brixton Energy is selling 75,000 shares, each worth £1, in Brixton Energy Solar 1, a co-operative society set up to install 50kW of solar PV on the roof of a block on the Loughborough estate. The building is owned by Lambeth Council and run by arm’s-length management organisation United Residents Housing.

The co-op, made up of investors in the project and which sprang out of community climate change campaign group Transition Town Brixton and Brixton Low Energy Carbon Zone, decided to go ahead with the offer despite cuts to the feed-in tariff - the subsidy payment made to generators of renewable electricity - which has seen the returns fall from around 10 per cent to 5 per cent, leading to warnings from the solar sector that investor confidence has been shattered.

Investors in Brixton Energy Solar 1 will earn about 3 per cent a year, the offer document predicts, with another 2 per cent diverted into a community energy efficiency fund which will invest in greening the estate.

The co-op decided to push on with the plan regardless of the FIT reforms, which will see the tariff fall by 10 per cent every six months, because of the community benefits set to emerge from the fund.
The panels will earn a FIT of 15.2p/kWh, plus 3.1p/kWh from the sale of the electricity back to the grid, and the co-op plans to sell some of the electricity at a discount to URH.

‘It’s a beta model [a prototype] for re-powering South London,’ said Agamemnon Otero, one of the directors of Brixton Energy, a Stockwell resident and former analyst at investment bank Better World Finance.

Lambeth Council has installed some solar panels on some of its housing stock, however, Afsheen Rashid, who is part of the co-operative and works for the council, said that there wasn’t enough funding for the Loughborough Estate.

In the first five days, the share issue had raised £14,000 from 17 investors.
The co-op hasn’t yet signed a lease with Lambeth to rent the roof, but according to the offer document, this should be agreed by March when the co-op also hopes to install the panels.

The offer is open until 10 March.

https://brixtonenergy.co.uk/

http://www.transitiontownbrixton.org/

Coop member and fancy learning about beekeeping, then read on.....

If you're a member of The Co-operative, based in the South East and want to attend one of The Co-operative’s exclusive introductory beekeeper training sessions - read on!

Bee numbers in the UK have halved over the last 20 years and as a third of the food we eat is dependent on pollination, it is essential we have to save them.

The Co-operative’s Plan Bee campaign is a 10-point plan to tackle the loss of honeybees in the UK. No one knows for certain what is causing the decline in the bee population, which is why we have funded research into honeybee healthy and prohibited certain pesticides from our own brand fruit and vegetables. 

We have advised our members on how to become bee friendly gardeners and now we think it’s time to take the campaign a step further and offer you an opportunity to attend one of our FREE introductory bee keeping training events that will be taking place in May.

Details of events in the South East are below:

• Surrey & Berks | Friday 20 May, 10am – 4pm | Brooklands Hotel. Brooklands Drive, Weybridge, Surrey, KT13 0SL
• Kent | Friday 27 May, 10am – 4pm | Singleton Environment Centre, Wesley School Road, Singleton, Ashford, Kent, TN23 5LW

If you know of anyone who may be interested, please pass on this information.

For more information or to book your place/s please call 0800 015 1147. Places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis so please book fast.

free seeds for busy bees from the co-op

The Cooperative's Plan-Bee to protect our Bees is in full swing this year and giving away free seeds  for bee friendly flowers - full details here

Many wildflowers are nectar rich, providing a good source of nutrition for pollinators, however since the 1930s; the UK has lost 97% of its wildflower meadows.


To increase the number of wildflowers being grown in the UK, we have given away over 600,000 packets of wildflower seeds to our customers and members since 2009.


This year we are giving away a further 300,000 packets of seeds. On 17 April we gave away free packets of wildflower seeds with the Mirror in The Co-operative Food stores. If you missed this promotion you can request a packet below from 9 May.

Brighton's renewable energy coop launches

BRIGHTON'S BIGGEST RENEWABLE ENERGY PROJECT

"Our first project is to to raise £350,000 to install a 100kw solar system in Brighton and Hove.

Covering an area of 700 square metres, the panels will generate some £1.65m".

They aim to do this by forming the UK's first solar energy co-operative. The money will be raised by selling shares in the co-op; profit will then be split between co-op members and investment in new low-carbon projects. more details here

Plan BEE - Discounted Bee Boxes

The Coop's Plan Bee campaign to protect our Bees is now offering discounted Bee Boxs:

buy a discounted bee box

A bee box will help bees to shelter from the rain and by encouraging bees into your garden it should also help your garden bloom.

We’ve teamed up with GoneGardening.com to give Co-operative Members and Plan Bee supporters a 15% discount on a FSC-certified Bee Nesting Box with Zinc Roof – £9.34 (reduced from £10.99, plus p&p).

Full details here