Due to the rapidly changing public health situation tonight's meeting has been postponed.

Our next environmental chat will take place on Friday 17th April  as 10th April is Good Friday, in Pitlochry Town Hall, West Moulin Road, Pitlochry, 7pm to 9pm. A Climate Cafe is where people come together for a regular monthly meeting which is open to everyone of any age whether they are familiar with climate change or not, but are interested in its effects on the environment.  Come chat about any concerns or interests you have, exchange information, find some answers. For more information contact:- Carol Aitken: [email protected]m or check out our Face Book page: Climate Cafe Pitlochry & District and our new Website: pitlochrycc.co.uk courtesy of Kate Kirby for more tips and information.

This month we are organising another Zero Waste event in the Pitlochry Town Hall on Saturday 18th April from 10am till 3pm. The Spring Green Festival will include a selection of stalls providing different products from food to plants, activities for the kids, a Biodynamic garden talk and a yoga session to name a few and  we will be providing information on reducing waste, recycling and continue our Big Climate Conversation. 

We are also working with Jane King and Jenni Moncrieff from both the Climate Cafe and the local Rotary Club to support the reduction of single-use plastic in Pitlochry, to make our town more 'plastic-lite'. We know that we cannot stop using plastics as it is such a useful and practical material, but the aim is to reduce its use, to reuse and refill containers and water bottles and then recycle the rest. We will also be encouraging those with shop windows to create a sculpture made from their single use or non recyclable waste and to display a poster to the effect that we are all working together to make Pitlochry ‘plastic-lite’. Check out Macnaughton's Hanger man.   

Carol Aitken -
This meeting was focused on a presentation by John Ferguson, director of Eco idea M and founder of PI Polymers Recycling who is working at Binn Eco Park with Zero Waste Scotland on Project Beacon, a project developing a facility that will up-cycle all types of plastics even the ones we think are non recyclable. It was a very interesting presentation and the discussion afterwards gave us a better insight into these recent advancements of processing the many different types of plastics we use so we can reuse them. 
"He has brought different businesses together to build something entirely new. Each business – Ferguson’s PI-Polymer Recycling along with Recycling Technologies Ltd and Impact Recycling Ltd – uses new unique cutting-edge plastic recycling technologies. Their co-location enables the development of an integrated system with the power to suck all types of plastics out of the waste environment.
One of the big barriers to recycling progress is that people are confused about what they can recycle or not. Project Beacon will demonstrate a system that enables householders to recycle all household plastics at the kerbside."
I have included a few links from the past few years explaining more about what he is trying to achieve. 

https://www.recyclingwasteworld.co.uk/in-depth-article/plastic-pioneers-black-packaging-recyclable/192642/  


https://www.letsrecycle.com/news/latest-news/scottish-plastics-facility-funding/

https://www.zerowastescotland.org.uk/case-study/project-beacon  

The next Climate Café meeting will take place at 7pm on Friday the 13th March at the HSPC, Atholl Road, Pitlochry.

Ideas to be discussed include:

• Working towards a Single Use Plastics Free Pitlochry using the Plastic lite Campaign/ Rubbish Trail.
• Using the Town Hall for our climate Cafe meetings from April.  
• Website is live but we still need any information, websites, links, etc to share with everyone.  
• #Big Climate Conversation, just waiting to hear back from Jess Pepper so I can forward  the final copy.  
• Zero waste Spring Green Festival ideas for 18th April.