Milestones for Sustainable Island Life
Arran residents have supported Eco Savvy’s Sustainable Island Life Project with some exciting milestones being reached!
Travel & Transport
Eco Savvy currently has 10 ebikes in use with Arran organisations for their Arran Eco Ebike Challenge – a scheme where Arran businesses can borrow ebikes for their staff to use for their commute to/from work. There have been 9 businesses take part to date with roughly 2,500 car miles reduced.
Five people have gone on to purchase ebikes with many more wanting to do so.
Individual ebike trials have proved extremely popular at events, with 112 people having a spin so far. Eco Savvy also now have trailers and a very exciting etrike available for trial!
Many Arran residents have also sought advice from Savvy Travel coordinators Andrew and Emma on the best ebike for their needs, where to buy an ebike and info on loan schemes and financial assistance.
Energy
The project has delivered audits for 20% of Arran’s residential homes.
Hundreds of households on Arran have implemented measures such as draught proofing, empowering themselves by installing energy monitors as a result of energy visits from energy auditor Charlotte. Excitingly, this has reduced a huge amount of carbon.
Eco Savvy continue to run Energy Drop In Surgeries every Tuesday 10am – 3pm where you can just pop in to the Eco Savvy office at Home Farm and speak to the energy auditor about any questions you might have relating to your heating, lighting, energy bills, insulation or anything home energy related.
Eco Savvy are also currently offering free energy audits for Arran homes giving help on different ways for residents to reduce their energy use and bills. Contact the office on 303 026 for info.
We hit some more milestones recently thanks to locals supporting the project:
- 10 air source heat pump installs
- 4 solar PV installs
…saving 55.2 tonnes of carbon annually for Arran
Food
There is a food share on Arran 4 nights a week now – Tuesdays in Whiting Bay, Thursdays in Brodick, Fridays in Lamlash and, just newly started, Sundays in Shiskine. The Food Share is where food from the Co-op is collected and given out for free.
Eco Savvy would like to emphasise that the food share nights are for everybody and would encourage you to come along! The food is nearing its use by date and needs to be given out that night or, unfortunately, will go in the bin.
In the past 11 months Eco Savvy have held over 150 food share nights with more than 5.1 tonnes/£24,000 worth of food going to local residents rather than landfill.
Pop in to your local food share and help reduce food waste on Arran!
Eco Savvy have also been holding food info and cooking workshops, with the most recent being the BYOPumpkin event! 
An intrepid group recently met up to carve out their spooky Halloween pumpkins but did you know that more than 8 million pumpkins – equivalent to more than 18,000 tonnes of edible pumpkin flesh – will be heading for the bin because the majority of us don’t eat or use it for anything but ornaments!
So, following on from pumpkin carving the group enjoyed a pumpkin cooking party, including the tasting and making of:
- pumpkin cake
- pumpkin tacos
- pumpkin pancakes
- pumpkin spice lattes
- pumpkin soup
- roasted pumpkin seeds (sweet & savoury)
Have a look at the Eco Savvy Food Forum Facebook page for the easy and delicious recipes and make use of your pumpkins this year!
With thanks to Eco Savvy project coordinator Ruth McLaren for sending us news and pictures!