Eco Savvy’s first year
Just over a year ago, in April, a small group of people began to prepare a long empty shop in Whiting Bay for opening. This involved hours of cleaning, scraping, upcycling and painting. Thus began the Eco Savvy Community Shop, and the Eco Savvy Community itself: an Arran-based group, which aims to identify and accomplish environmental projects. These should benefit the community and support sustainable living, including working towards zero waste for Arran.
Start-up was achieved with a donation of £100 in the bank, a gift of a few rent-free weeks from the landlord and absolutely no grants or subsidy. The shop sells a wide range of donated goods as well as more valuable items to be sold as ‘second chance’, with a share for both Eco Savvy and the seller. Best of all the shop seeks to sell upcycled items; people all over Arran apply their craft and imaginative skills to unwanted or worn out objects, lovingly turning them into objects of beauty or with a new use.
The shop had a very busy summer with much appreciation from islanders and visitors. Members flooded in – currently over 350 – and new volunteers stepped forward. Slowly as the shop settled into its busy routine, other wider tasks were begun, such as outreach to schools, encouraging them towards environmental green flags, and Skills Sharing events. These have been held regularly, allowing anyone with a skill to share or learn – from knitting to bicycle repair – to meet with others, in a sociable atmosphere, accompanied by tea and cake. The emphasis here is on finding enjoyable ways of outwitting cultural pressure to buy, consume and discard. In Spring 2015, skills sharing focussed specifically on teaching crafts for the Woollen Woods project: knitting, felting, crochet etc, encouraging the use of old materials, aged jumpers and unwanted blankets.
Eco Savvy has held an evening of fun and glamour, but also a serious, waste reducing purpose, the Fashion Show, where previously hidden talents as supermodels were astonishingly revealed. There have been auctions, and a Pop-up Shop for second chance clothes and shoes. In all its work, Eco Savvy aims to support islanders to pass on, re-use or re-home items which might otherwise end up in landfill.
As the first year ended thoughts began to turn towards future developments. Discussions about developing a community garden on a field in the Arran Community Land Initiative led to Eco Savvy’s funding a 2 day Introduction to Permaculture course in late April, led by Lusi Alderslowe and open to both Eco Savvy and ACLI. Permaculture offers an ethos very much in tune with Eco Savvy’s waste nothing aims and its ethics focused thinking on Earth care, People care and fair shares. It is an approach which seeks to learn from natural processes,, working with the givens of climate, aspect, soil, and will serve Eco Savvy Community gardeners well as plans for the garden take shape.
Throughout this first year, volunteers have developed ways of working together, with a small working group forming to carry out the main tasks and regular Volunteer meetings for updating the wider group and shaping policy by means of discussion and forums. The working group at the heart of the project is open to anyone who wants to be involved and one of the most heartening aspects of the first year has been to discover what a diverse range of skills, talents and creative ideas are available when given space for expression. Eco Savvy is currently negotiating for recognition as a charity and three trustees are in place to take this forward, but the strength of the project lies in its wide base of enthusiastic and creative volunteers.
