About Greening Petersfield

How Greening Petersfield began

Terena Plowright launched Greening Petersfield in the Summer 2007 and quickly found a group of enthusiast to join her in running the campaign. We formalised our meetings in early 2008 and now meet monthly.

In the Summer 2007 one action card  was delivered to almost every house in Petersfield. We asked householders to commit to simple actions to reduce their impact on the environment and put the card in their windows. After two weeks the cards were counted and an amazing 23 tonnes CO2 was saved and it wasn't only households that became involved, businesses across Petersfield joined in too.

We repeated this again at Christmas 2007  and this time saved a further 16 tonnes of CO2. Since this time we have been working on various projects. Learn more about these here. (link to project menu)

We were the first Greening group and since our invention the campaign has spread out across the South East and beyond. To find out which groups are currently running the campaign visit the Greening Campaign website at www.greening-campaign.co.uk

What is The Greening Campaign?

The Greening Campaign is simple. It is a community led solution to the problem of climate change. It brings people together to take action to reduce our impact on the environment through reduced carbon emission, reduced waste, and the conservation of water and other natural resources.

The campaign is broken down into four phases.

• Phase 1 - Engaging the Community. A very simple challenge card is delivered to every house containing actions for the household to commit too. When five of the actions have been done the branded card is displayed in the front window. After a number of weeks the cards are counted and the resulting carbon dioxide emission saving made are celebrated. This first stage allows everyone to take part and engages the community behind the campaign. It provides the beginnings of a group structure for the campaign to move forward.
• Phase 2 - This is a detailed look at the activities of the community and a more structured and planned approach to tackling climate change. Groups engage in longer term projects to bring about lifestyle changes such as food growing projects, renewable technology installation or community composting scheme.
• Phase 3 - A look at the effects of climate change and how each community will need to adapt to keep itself safe and functional.  A training course is available to support this phase.
• Phase 4 - A new start, becoming a more sustainable community

The formal objectives and aims for the Greening Campaign are:

Objectives

1. To raise public awareness about the risks of climate change.
2. To motivate the community to take simple action
3. To reduce the level of information and reduce the amount of action needed to be part of the solution to climate change.
4. To make remove financial status from the equation when calculating ability to act on climate change.
5. To allow people to recognise that small actions together have a huge effect.
6. To give each person a feeling of community through their actions and giving them identity through their actions (as on Red Nose day).
7. To stop isolation by making action against climate change visible.
8. To get a committee set up to run Phase 2.
9. To get the community committed to running Phase 2 of the campaign.

Aims

1. To encourage people to take part in the campaign
2. To encourage people to do 5 of the challenges
3. To encourage people to display the logo in the window.
4. To galvanise the community behind the campaign
5. To make the campaign simple and effective.